"Michèle Flournoy, former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama Administration joins Ayman to discuss withdrawal from Afghanistan, cybersecurity, and more…" Watch the full interview here: Full Interview
"While Mr. Blinken’s trip was a demonstration of renewed American commitment to an independent, democratic and Western-leaning Ukraine, for many longtime watchers of U.S.-Ukraine policy, it was a depressing reminder of how little has changed in a country that has become ground zero for a renewed power struggle between Washington and Moscow. "'It is very much déjà vu,' said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a Russia expert with the Center for a New American Security who advised the Biden transition team. 'It all feels [...]
"The Taiwan Relations Act (or TRA, as the law is more commonly known) remains the basis of the US-Taiwan relationship to this day… "'It’s a fairly convoluted political Band-Aid over an irreconcilable problem,' said Daniel Russel, the top State Department official for East Asian affairs from 2013 to 2017. 'We don’t have a new policy because there are no other options…'" Read the full article here: Full Article
"As president, Biden has called Putin a killer, applied further punitive sanctions and defended Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. His administration pulled back, however, on an assertion Biden made as a candidate that Russia had put bounties on the heads of American troops serving in Afghanistan and that Trump had refused to confront Putin over it… "Putin appears especially sensitive to Biden’s criticism, recalling his U.S. ambassador after the 'killer' remark, for example, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the transatlantic security [...]
"The supply of water for Crimea remains a key friction point. If Russia makes an incursion into more Ukrainian-controlled territory, it could be to loosen sharp controls over the Crimean water supply that Ukraine put in after the 2014 annexation… "Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a scholar at the Center for a New American Security and a former senior intelligence official specializing in Russia, said any operation by Moscow to take control of the water supply would be difficult. 'It requires Russian forces to [...]
"Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in London for talks with G7 allies after speaking out about countering China and Russia during an interview on '60 Minutes,' Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, James Jeffrey, joins CBSN to weigh in on the latest developments…" Watch the full interview here: Full Interview
"[T]here’s a reason 'The Human Factor,' by Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, escapes what would seem a likely fate of being interesting only to policy wonks and those with a direct stake in the issue, and it has something to do with the title. It’s a reference to a line from Dennis Ross, the best-known negotiator of the bunch. "'You can’t ignore the human factor,' he says at the beginning. 'Someone who has a human touch treats someone else with respect. Someone [...]
"Turkey’s relations with the US have suffered a blow, but the US needs to understand that in a changing world, regional stability cannot be achieved without Turkish cooperation… "James Jeffrey, a former US Ambassador to Turkey who knows the ins and outs of the relationship very well, recently stated that 'If the Biden administration, so concerned about re-establishing American global leadership, seriously wants to confront these threats, it can’t succeed without Turkey…'" Read the full article here: Full Article
"Trump is hardly the first president to try to cement his legacy with a flurry of last-minute actions. Still, when a president tries to handcuff his successor, that can feed into the notion that U.S. foreign policy is inherently unstable, damaging America’s global reputation in the long run, former U.S. officials and analysts say. "'This perceived instability or changeability of American foreign policy from one administration to the next means that foreign countries, including allies, feel like they need to discount [...]
"'In the post-Cold War years the U.S. could just dance around a lot of these little things and never make decisions,' says the Wilson Center’s James Jeffrey, a longtime diplomat. 'But with both Trump and now Biden there is a shift to recognize the reality of a situation, end the debate with a decision, and move on to what’s really important…' "By formally recognizing that the atrocities committed against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire more than a century ago constituted genocide, [...]