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Erdogan's Agenda

May 16, 2013  •  National Review Online

Later today, President Barack Obama will sit down with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office. It will be a friendly reunion. Obama has said Erdogan is one of the few foreign leaders with whom he has developed "friendships and the bonds of trust." Speaking to the Turkish parliament four years ago, on his first trip abroad as president, Obama declared, "Turkey is a critical ally. Turkey is an important part of Europe. And Turkey and the United States must stand together — and work together — to overcome the challenges of our time." These challenges are many — among them, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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Why won't Washington support Kurdish Independence?

May 9, 2013  •  The Kurdistan Tribune

Not since the second decade of the twentieth century has the Kurdish dream of independence appeared so attainable. Saddam Hussein is gone, and Kurdish oil has earned billions of dollars. The Syrian civil war has enabled Salih Muslim's Democratic Union Party to consolidate control over much of Syrian Kurdistan. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's peace deal with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has led many Turkish Kurds to believe themselves to be on the verge of confederation inside Turkey, an intermediary step toward independence. Even if the Turkish initiative collapses, Erdoğan has confirmed Öcalan as the indispensable man, undoing more than a decade's worth of Turkish efforts to consign the PKK leader to irrelevancy.

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Twisting Intelligence to Exculpate Our Enemies

May 9, 2013  •  National Review Online

As he contemplated his run for president, Senator Barack Obama repeatedly accused the Bush administration of politicizing intelligence. In 2005, for example, he declared, "At the very least, the administration shaded, exaggerated, and selectively used the intelligence available" to justify the Iraq War. He spoke against the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations because of "accusations related to political pressure on intelligence analysts." The Center for American Progress repeatedly promoted the "Bush lied, people died" canard, and the New York Times declared in an editorial, "The Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence."

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'Forgotten' Africa turns to Iran as a result of western neglect

May 7, 2013  •  Public Service Europe

Western diplomats should not dismiss Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's West African tour last month as the last gasp of Iran's lame duck president. While the west seeks to isolate Iran against the backdrop of nuclear sanctions and concerns regarding Iranian terror sponsorship, the Islamic Republic has crafted a broad-based Africa strategy that will last long after Ahmadinejad's final days as president.

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Obama's Dithering Let the Syrian Situation Spiral

April 30, 2013  •  U.S. News & World Report

On August 20, 2012, President Barack Obama made chemical weapons use the trigger for U.S. intervention in Syria. "A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized," he declared, adding, "That would change my calculus." With Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's announcement that Syrian government forces used chemical munitions against Syrian rebels, many Republicans are castigating Obama for his apparent inaction.

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Books by Michael Rubin