Ruth Marcus writes about Ted Kennedy as people on the Hill know him: a Senator who pursues bipartisan compromise in the spirit of actually legislating for the common good.Look, there's Ted Kennedy, shoulder-to-shoulder with John McCain, Republican presidential front-runner, just after the collapse of the immigration deal the pair had brokered. And there he is, again, right behind a beaming Mitt Romney -- Kennedy's '94 Senate opponent,...

One of the (many) flaws in the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq stemmed from Hussein's history as a vector of proliferation. There wasn't any. In the worst-case scenario, in which Hussein somehow acquired nuclear weapons, we would have little reason to be concerned that he might transfer weapons or weapons technology to anyone else--nasty regimes, terrorists, or whomever. That didn't mean it would be hugs and puppies if Hussein...

Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.) decides to take a 'principled stand' and is holding up $10 million dollars necessary to buy the land where a monument to the passengers and crew members of United Flight 93 is to be built.Why is Taylor, chairman of the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee, holding up the funds?For Taylor, a large landowner in the mountains of western North Carolina, the issue comes down to principle: The federal government...

G. John Ikenberry has a post up at TPMCafe on what he terms the "security trap". The piece argues that a number of major changes (American Unipolarity, a 'revolution' in the concept of state sovereignty, lack of common threat as in the Cold War, and the rise of a more democratic international community) have produced conditions such that......as the Bush administration tries to solve the nation'’s security problems by exercising its power or...

The BBC (via FP Passport, my new favorite 'msm' blog) is reporting that Iran and Russia may have yet again reached a deal to shift the enrichment of Iranian uranium to Russia.Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told Iranian radio he had struck a basic agreement...Mr Soltanieh said the joint enrichment company would operate on Russian soilThis is almost exactly the same thing Iran said in...

Yesterday, Kevin Drum had an interesting piece on the failure of the Bush administration to take Iran up on an offer to talk about its weapons program and support for anti-Israeli terrorists shortly after the President declared the end of 'major hostilities' in Iraq. The story goes that Tehran exchanged messages with the US through the Swiss in which they offered...to resolve bilateral differences. The document acknowledged that Iran would have...

After having previously vowed to speak candidly with Chinese President Hu Jintao about affording more political and social freedom to Chinese citizens, President Bush managed to miss a golden opportunity and let diplomatic nicety get in the way.Most should by now be aware of the vocal protester who shouted at Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Bush during the welcoming ceremony at the White House today. The women apparently acquired a...

Chinese President Hu Jintao is in town to meet with our own commander-in-chief and while I am sure most people are focusing on the more visible issues of trade, currency valuation, and nuclear proliferation I like to look at the apparently insignificant, yet likely-to-cause-diplomatic-hay types of moments.FP Passport reports that while introducing the Chinese national anthem during the arrival ceremony on the South Lawn this morning, the...

The Atlantic Monthly recently asked a group of foreign policy "insiders" a number of questions about US foreign policy. The poll results were in the April 2006 issue, which is hidden behind a subscriber wall. The magazine greatly limited the possible poll answers. For example, the insiders were given a list of seven countries and asked to rank which would post the greatest threats to US security in the next decade. The outcome was perhaps...

Thanks to Dan, I read the interesting AU piece about Patrick. This is what caught my eye:“We wouldn’t have a car culture if it weren’t for superhighways,” he says. “The whole idea of being able to drive a car depends on the existence of a certain set of infrastructures. Material infrastructures, certainly, but also conceptual. Think about the metaphors we use. Someone who’s in control is in the driver’s seat. There’s something significant about...

Back in 1976, the eminent political scientist Robert Dahl pointed out a common error in the analysis of power among social theorists: the tendency to assume that power was a unit-level attribute, something that a unit or actor possessed in isolation. This was hardly a new observation, but Dahl did something very important with it: he coined a term to describe the problem. Dahl called it the "lump-of-power fallacy." But despite the efforts of...