Quality Leadership Weblog :-)

New Consensus On Terrorism(Washington Times)…John McLaughlin, Oct 6, 2008.  One of the major tasks for our next president is repairing the frayed consensus on how to deal with terrorism.
John McLaughlin is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and served as deputy director and acting director of Central Intelligence from [...]

Bush Should Keep His Word On Taiwan (Wall Street Journal)…Dan Blumenthal, Aaron Friedberg, Randall Schriver and Ashley J. Tellis, July 19, 2008, Pg. 9
In 2001, President Bush made a bold and principled decision to offer Taiwan a range of military equipment for its security. In 2008, as he prepares to leave office, [...]

U.S. Talks With Iran Exemplify Bush’s New Approaches
(Washington Post)…Dan Eggen
With his moves last week involving Iraq, Iran and North Korea, President Bush accelerated a shift toward centrist foreign policies, a change that has cheered Democrats, angered some Republicans and roiled the presidential campaign.
U.S. Is Present, But Iran Nuclear Talks End In Stalemate
(New York Times)…Elaine [...]

Dealing With Insurgents In Iraq, (FNC)…David Piper, July 16, 2008
…These are members of the 101st Airborne and they’re processing Iraqi suspects from the Balad area here in central Iraq. This is reconciliation Iraqi style. These men have simply walked in to this U.S. forward operating base to announce they want no part of the [...]

U.S. Envoy To Join Meeting With Iranian, (New York Times)…Steven Lee Myers, July 16, 2008, Pg. 9

President Bush has authorized the most significant American diplomatic contact with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, sending the State Department’s third-ranking official to Geneva for a meeting this weekend on Iran’s nuclear program, administration officials said Tuesday.

Gates Warns Of Militarized Policy, (Washington Post)…Ann Scott Tyson, July 16, 2008, Pg. 6
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned yesterday against the risk of a “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role.
Gates said in a speech that [...]

POST: Match and close. Thomas P.M. Barnett on July 11, 2008
ARTICLE: The State Department Confronts the Synergy Crisis, by Austin Bay, Strategy Page, June 24, 2008
Good and interesting sign. The program is basically what Enterra does in Kurdish Iraq, except we go way beyond matchmaking to actual deal closing with our investment centers.
But the underlying [...]

A few extracts from articles providing examples on the use of the diplomatic element of national power to gain support for reducing the inflow of fighters from Pakistan.
U.S. Blames Pakistan As Afghanistan Incursions Rise (Wall Street Journal)…Yochi J. Dreazen. U.S. officials have begun blaming Pakistan for Afghanistan’s increasing violence, an escalation in rhetoric that suggests [...]

Put War Powers Back Where They Belong(New York Times)…James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher, July 8, 2008
THE most agonizing decision we make as a nation is whether to go to war.
A bipartisan group that we led, the National War Powers Commission, has unanimously concluded after a year of study that the law purporting to [...]

The Wrong Partnership For Iraq, (Washington Post)…Bill Delahunt and Rosa DeLauro, July 8, 2008, Pg. 15

The June 15 editorial ” A Partnership For Iraq” criticized Democrats in Congress for opposing the proposed long-term military agreement between the United States and Iraq that would replace the U.N. mandate under which U.S. forces are fighting. The editorial [...]