POLITICS-US: Negroponte Pick as Intel Chief a Win for Realists

In choosing Ambassador John Negroponte as the country's first National Director of Intelligence (NDI), U.S. President George W. Bush has opted for a hawkish, tough, ruthless realist who could very well clash with more ideological forces in the administration.

POLITICS-SYRIA: Hariri Killing Sure to Bolster U.S. Hawks

Whether or not Syrian President Bashar Assad was behind Monday's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the car-bombing is sure to strengthen forces inside the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush who have long argued for "regime change" in Damascus.

POLITICS-US: Fallen Hawk Soars Again

Elliott Abrams, a figure from the Ronald Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal who describes himself as a "neo-conservative and neo-Reaganite", is moving to centre-stage in U.S. foreign policy as head of President George W.. Bush's Global Democracy Strategy.

POLITICS-U.S.: Iran War Drums Beat Harder

Despite the Bush administration's insistence that, at least for now, it remains committed to using diplomatic means to halt Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme, war drums against the Islamic Republic appear to be beating more loudly here.

POLITICS-US: A Meeting of Minds and Policy

There is little doubt that George W. Bush and Natan Sharansky, a Soviet émigré who is a top political official in Israel, share a similar perspective about international affairs, especially in the Middle East.

POLITICS-US: Hawk-Realist Impasse Could Persist in Second Term

With the pomp and circumstance of the inaugural and the State of the Union address now out of the way, the foreign policy direction to be taken by President George W. Bush in his second term remains a subject of considerable speculation and uncertainty.

POLITICS-U.S.: Middle East "Uber Alles" in the Second Term

Clearly buoyed by Sunday's election in Iraq, a confident George W. Bush told the nation that the Middle East will dominate U.S. foreign policy during his second term as president, just as his proposals to privatise the 70-year-old U.S. social security system will be his top priority at home.

POLITICS-U.S.: More Cannon Fodder, Please

Amid rising concern about the over-extension of U.S. military forces and the growing budget deficit, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative group whose past foreign policy recommendations have often been followed by President George W. Bush, is urging Congress to add 25,000 new soldiers to U.S. ground forces each year over the next several years.

POLITICS-U.S.: Losing Feith

The departure by mid-2005 of the number-three man at the Defence Department, announced by the Pentagon Wednesday, marks the latest hint that Pres. George W. Bush is moving foreign policy in a more centrist direction.

POLITICS-U.S.: From Holocaust to Hyperpower

The importance of this week's recognition by the United Nations of the Nazi Holocaust lies as much in its relevance to today's international realities as it does to the historical significance of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet forces 60 years ago Thursday.

POLITICS-U.S.: Bush’s Delicate Dilemma on Darfur

If U.S. President George W. Bush wants to show the world, particularly the European Union, a more multilateralist face in his second term, a special United Nations commission of inquiry that has been investigating war crimes in Darfur, Sudan is about to hand him a golden opportunity.

POLITICS: Bush Plugs the Window-Dressing, Cheney the Nitty-Gritty

Two very different messages about the future of U.S. foreign policy were broadcast to the world on Inaugural Day Thursday, and listeners everywhere could be forgiven for feeling confused about their import.

POLITICS-US: War-Weary Public Leery of New Overseas Adventures

President George W. Bush faces a difficult challenge in rallying U.S. public opinion behind his clarion call for spreading freedom and democracy abroad, according to a number of surveys published over the last two years.

POLITICS-U.S.: Neo-Conservatives At Sea

Jubilant over President George W. Bush's re-election victory just two months ago, neo-conservatives who played a leading role in shaping the radical trajectory of U.S. foreign policy after the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks appear increasingly divided on key issues and uncertain of their position in Bush's second term.

POLITICS-US: Bush Urged to Seize the Moment on Mid-East Peace

Three dozen of the nation's most prominent Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders Wednesday issued a special appeal to U.S. President George W. Bush to appoint a high-level special envoy to work full time on promoting peace talks between the governments of Israel and the Palestine Authority (PA).

POLITICS-U.S.: More Dissent in Pentagon Ranks Over Iraq War

For the second time in as many months, a report by a key Pentagon advisory group has implicitly taken the administration of President George W. Bush to task for major failures in pre-war planning, particularly with respect to Iraq.

POLITICS-U.S.: Rice Surprises

Ending weeks of sometimes fevered speculation, Bush administration officials confirmed Thursday that Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice's deputy at the State Department will be a confirmed Atlanticist and arch-realist, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick.

POLITICS: Meanwhile, Back in Iraq…

While the world's attention has been focused for the past 10 days on the catastrophic tsunamis in South Asia and the subsequent relief efforts, the situation for the United States and its dwindling number of allies in Iraq appears to have worsened.

CHALLENGES 2004-2005: If Not a Unipolar World, Then What?

With the United States piling up unprecedented trade and budget deficits and bogged down in Iraq without a clear exit strategy, the neo-conservative vision of a U.S.-dominated, unipolar world over which Washington would rule as the ''new Rome'' is seen increasingly by foreign policy elites here as a chimera.

POLITICS-US: Hawks Plan ‘Peaceful’ Regime Change in Iran

A heavy-weight group of mostly neo-conservative hawks has published a new proposal for Iran policy that relies heavily on ''peaceful'' strategies to achieve regime change, such as those used by Washington since the 1980s in Central and Eastern Europe, most recently in Serbia and Ukraine.

POLITICS-U.S.: So Little Time, So Many Regimes to Change

The interregnum between November's election and the formal launch in January of U.S. President George W Bush's second term has a strange feel.