Obama will see foreign policy crises too

I know Barack Obama sees the economic crisis as his first priority. As I suggest in this article from the Register's Sunday Commentary section, however, he won't be able to ignore foreign policy or postpone some fairly consequential decisions early on. I mentioned the still-widening implications of the Mumbai terrorist attack -- India and Pakistan are edging closer to outright war -- and the crisis in Gaza. I thought it was a pretty balanced article. For my trouble, of course, I got several phone messages saying I was an Israeli dupe who is oblivious to Palestinian suffering, and a couple saying I was utterly unfair to Israel and maybe am a secret Palestinian. Ah, well. Judge for yourself.

Effects of Mumbai attacks

Here's the column I did for this Sunday's Register Commentary section on (some of) the impacts of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai Nov. 26. The upshot? Barack Obama, who a few weeks ago looked to becoming into office with foreign crises relatively quiescent, or at least capable of holding for a bit while he and his people figured out what to do about them, could facde a full-blown foreign crisis on his first day or two in office. It's certainly not what he had in mind. Krauthammer thinks he picked the foreign policy team he did to handle things in ways that didn't require his full-time attention, as his main ambition is to be a transoformative figure in domestic policy. Since I disagree with most of his domestic agenda, I would hardly welcome this, though it would certainly give me a target-rich environment for editorials and articles. Whatever, it looks as if he'll have foreign-policy problems that will demand something close to immediate attention.

Mumbai attacks: consequential and shrewd

The more I think about them (and write about them, which to me is a bit like breathing for normal people) the more I think the terrorist attacks in Mumbai Nov. 28 were the most consequential and shrewd actions by the jihadist movement (whatever the true perpetrators turn out to be) since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Pakistan and India had been edging toward something approaching a rapprochement, but that's off the table for quite a while. It will intensify Indian-Pakistani hostility, always bubbling under the surface, introduce or intensify divisions in India and perhaps destabilize the shaky Pakistani civilian government, such as it is. And it complicates things in Afghanistan.

Here's the piece I did on the attacks for Antiwar.com. And here's the Register's editorial on the attacks, which ran yesterday.