Joseph I. Lieberman

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A bomb is released from a Russian Su-34 strike fighter in Syria last year in this photo obtained from footage taken from the Russian Defense Ministry website. (Associated Press)

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For more than 50 years, national security leaders have gathered annually at the Munich Security Conference, a conclave established during the depths of the Cold War as a meeting place for the Western allies standing against the communist threat. I have been privileged to attend almost half of these meetings — from the era of hope and excitement that followed the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s through the divisive and difficult wars of the post-9/11 decade — but none has been as troubling as the one held this month.

That is because the world has never seemed as dangerous and leaderless as it does now.…  Seguir leyendo »

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As debate intensifies over the nuclear agreement reached with Iran, the Obama administration has sought to deflect criticism by arguing that there is no alternative to the current framework, no matter what its flaws, and that its rejection by Congress is guaranteed to produce catastrophe — isolating the United States from its allies and destroying any prospect for a diplomatic settlement. A vote against its preferred policy, the administration has argued (not for the first time), is a vote for war.

The administration has used these same arguments before to try to stop Congress from imposing economic sanctions on Iran. Not only did the predictions of catastrophe fail to deter Congress from moving ahead but also, when the sanctions were adopted, the doomsday forecasts were proven wrong — just as the current predictions will be.…  Seguir leyendo »

U.S. F/A-18 fighter jets take off for mission in Iraq from the flight deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, in the Persian Gulf, Monday, Aug. 11, 2014. U.S. military officials said American fighter aircraft struck and destroyed several vehicles Sunday that were part of an Islamic State group convoy moving to attack Kurdish forces defending the northeastern Iraqi city of Irbil. (Hasan Jamali/AP)

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It would be wrong to view President Obama’s decision to order airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and to give weapons to Kurdish fighters as a continuation of the war in Iraq. It is more accurate to see it as a mission to prevent a repetition of the war in Afghanistan. We have a chance to stop the Islamic State before it creates a sanctuary in Iraq and Syria that it could use to strike the United States, just as al-Qaeda used its sanctuary in Afghanistan to kill thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. That, to his credit, is what the president has begun to do.…  Seguir leyendo »

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As the Obama administration grapples with how to respond to the terrorist takeover of northern Iraq, one consequence of the crisis should be clear: There is an urgent need to reassess the White House’s recently announced plans for Afghanistan — specifically, its pledge that all U.S. troops will be withdrawn by the end of 2016, other than a small contingent attached to our embassy in Kabul.

Of course, Afghanistan is not Iraq; there are key differences between the two countries. But there are also parallels and lessons from America’s experience in both wars that we ignore at our peril.

As with Iraq three years ago, the White House has justified the proposed Afghan pullout as “ending” one of the wars it inherited.…  Seguir leyendo »

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As nuclear negotiators in Geneva renew their attempts to strike a deal with Iran, predictions of a diplomatic breakthrough are rife. Yet rather than reassure the countries most directly threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapon, the prospect of an agreement with Tehran is provoking unprecedented anxiety among America’s Arab and Israeli allies. Why?

Part of the reason is that these countries worry the White House will accept a flawed agreement that ultimately will not prevent Iran’s nuclear breakout. While the Obama administration has emphasized in recent weeks that a “bad deal” with Tehran would be worse than no deal, it has failed to build a consensus — in Washington or internationally — about what a “good-enough” agreement must entail: which Iranian nuclear capabilities need to be verifiably abandoned and which safeguards put in place to instill sufficient confidence that Tehran can’t continue creeping toward the nuclear finish line.…  Seguir leyendo »

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International reaction to the latest round of unsuccessful nuclear talks with Iran more than two months ago has been disconcertingly muted. Perhaps, after nearly a decade of stalled negotiations, the world has become numb to Iranian intransigence, a policy that is unlikely to change no matter who wins the country’s presidential election Friday.

But a sense of crisis is warranted by the April deadlock in Kazakhstan, and it should be a turning point in the U.S. approach to Iran.

While Iran has been stonewalling the international community at the negotiating table, its nuclear program has progressed — and is poised to make advances that call into question the sustainability of U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

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As 2012 draws to a close, Syria is descending into hell. At least 40,000 people, and likely many more, have been killed, while millions have been forced to flee their homes. Over the past 12 months, Bashar al-Assad has steadily unleashed ever-greater military firepower in response to what began as peaceful protests by the Syrian people. Starting with tanks and heavy artillery in February, the Syrian regime escalated over the summer to using attack helicopters and fighter jets. In recent weeks, it has begun firing Scud missiles at its own population.

The world has failed to stop this slaughter. President Obama has declared that his “red line” is Assad’s use of chemical weapons.…  Seguir leyendo »

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A series of tragic events in Afghanistan has increased the desire of a war-weary public to end our mission there. As heart-wrenching as these events have been, they do not change the vital U.S. national security interests at stake in Afghanistan, nor do they mean that the war is lost. It is not. There is still a realistic path to success if the right decisions are made in the coming months.

The painful lesson we learned on Sept. 11, 2001, remains true today: What happens in Afghanistan directly affects our safety here at home. We abandoned Afghanistan in the 1990s, and the result was a fanatical regime that allowed its territory to become a base for global terror attacks, while inflicting medieval tyranny on the Afghan people, especially women.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Recent media reports have suggested that the Obama administration has decided to reduce sharply the number of U.S. troops it is willing to keep in Iraq beyond this year, possibly to as few as 3,000. Administration officials have denied that any decision has been made on force levels. We hope that is true, because such an approach would disregard the recommendations of our military commanders, jeopardize Iraq’s tenuous stability and needlessly put at risk all of the hard-won gains the United States has achieved there at enormous cost in blood and treasure.

We have frequently traveled to Iraq, meeting with national leaders in Baghdad, local officials throughout the country, and U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The United States has a first-rate, professionally run facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that is designed for terrorist detentions, interrogations and military trials. So why would a suspected Somali terrorist, captured half a world away, be held on a Navy ship for two months of interrogations and then brought to a New York federal court for trial? In our opinion, there is no good reason.

Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a member of al-Shabab with close ties to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was captured in April on a boat traveling between Yemen and Somalia. He stands accused of providing material support to AQAP and al-Shabab, as well as conspiring to teach the making of explosives.…  Seguir leyendo »

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I've just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.…  Seguir leyendo »