#Libya

A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to get a phone call inviting me to the Democratic Convention to hear President Obama give his acceptance speech.  I’m a registered independent voter and over the course of my life have voted for candidates of both parties.  Attending the convention was one of the best experiences […]

To provide context to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and the death of J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Foreign Affairs has put together a collection of the 33 best pieces on the country. Spanning nearly 20 years, “Libya in Crisis” includes articles by Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh […]

Sometimes you have to do quite a bit of searching to find a good topic for an article. Sometimes the topic finds you. Since my blog is about democracy, I would be remiss if I did not mention the events that transpired on the evening of Sept. 11, 2012 in Libya. As are most, I […]

  I’m saddened by the murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, his colleague Sean Smith, and two other colleagues. It’s especially vexing that they should have been killed by Libyans after the role the U.S. played in liberating Libya from the dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Perhaps the Libyans weren’t thinking about that when they […]

This short (59 min.) film was shot in 2003, well before the revolution that resulted in Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster and death in 2011. While an interesting topic, it will most likely be relegated to a small footnote in Libya’s history. From the time he took power in 1969, Colonel Qaddafi surrounded himself with […]

He simply could not resist. The addiction of power won over his pledge; Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his return to political life by igniting a new controversy over the lack of action of French President François Hollande in Syria. In a joint statement with Abdulbaset Sieda, president of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council […]

Currently, a key question for U.S. policymakers is how to engage with and/or support new governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. For those of you interested in the topic of U.S. foreign assistance to the Middle East, I strongly recommend a new Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) paper, The Federal Budget and Appropriations for […]

While much of what is immediately important about a democratic election is whether it was sufficiently free from corruption and interference for voters to decide the outcome, the devil is sometimes in the details. Seemingly minor bureaucratic and logistical concerns can threaten the value of an otherwise legitimate democratic exercise. Even in the United States, […]

The international relations history buffs among you probably know the story of former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s quip about the French Revolution: when someone asked him about the revolution on one of President Nixon’s trips to China in the early 1970s, he said that it was “too soon to say.” Last year, a former foreign […]

When the International Criminal Court finally came into existence in 2002, it was lauded as a serious step towards universal justice and accountability for the worst international crimes. Ten years later, some of that excitement has worn off. Nowhere has that been more the case than Africa, the continent that has so far been the […]

Here are the week’s must read articles: “Good Leak, Bad Leak” By Uri Friedman Foreign Policy A brief but informative look at the various leaks during the Obama administration and their political and legal implications. “Understanding Cyberspace is Key to Defending It” By Robert O’Harrow Jr. Washington Post In the aftermath of Stuxnet and its […]

The countdown is on. In three days, Chicago will be hosting the 2012 NATO summit from May 20th to 21st. New figures will be traveling to Chicago, among them the newly elected French President François Hollande. Prior to the beginning of the Summit, this piece will outline one of the most important threats that NATO […]