The partisan fight over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress has shown the increasing disunity in the USA over policies towards Iran and the problems of an effective nuclear deal with Tehran. However, it is worth remembering that no American-led deal can prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons if Iran wants them and the American political class and the general public should get used to it. A brilliant analysis by Alochonaa’s IR chief Dr. Simon Leitch
How did the USA, a state with otherwise high human rights standards and a competitive democratic political system, end up prodding the C.I.A. into torturing people at ‘black sites’? Dr. Danny Coopers, an expert on American politics argues that the answer lies in the combination of the leadership personalities and the unique political situation in the USA after 9/11.
After 9/11 the U.S. government captured terrorists, ‘enemy combatants’ in Afghanistan and, occasionally, some innocent bystanders during its retaliatory War on Terror. Those captives were taken to ‘black sites’, places free from those pesky legal protections and domestic civil rights legislation, and some were subjected to torture during ‘enhanced interrogations’. Now, after years of delays, a U.S. Senate report is out detailing what actually happened in those torture sessions and the recriminations have begun. Simon Letich writes;
Hillary Clinton is often seen as a near certainty to win the Democratic nomination, if not the Presidency in 2016. Jon Kofas explains why you would be foolish however to write off the Republicans or even other Democrats in 2016.
As Hillary Clinton moves inexorably closer to a shot at the post-Obama U.S. presidency, her latest book looms large as a potential guide to how a Clinton administration would view the world and the U.S. role within it. As her memoir shows, Clinton is far from a foreign policy dove and her liberal internationalist leanings might have an important impact in the less stable parts of the world.
Alochonaa (Dialogue) 