Epstein Secrets

ook on U.S. foreign policy during the 1990s, he and Samantha Power recently edited a volume of writings by and about one of their mentors, the late Richard Holbrooke. Chollet would seem to be a good fit for a president who promised to "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" in his inaugura

apital — for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad. In his speech before the non-alignment summit,

cies will push Cairo into EFTA00712755 the camp of the GCC states and Turkey in the context of this Cold War, whose main headline today surrounds Bashar al-Assad's departure or stay. On the other hand, it will also not be easy for Cairo to infiltrate what was achieved by Ankara throughout a decade of its absen

w era of partnership and bolster democracy. Nearly three years later, reality has set in. The partnership, although initially energized by the late Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was hamstrung from the outset. The problems do not stem only from the U.S. drone campaign and t

from the start, then, the feeling is, it did little to show it was taking the matter seriously. The appearance is of an Ankara that was so fixed on Bashar al-Assad's departure that other matters were never considered properly. The sad fact in all this that Turkey is nowhere nearer today than it was 10 or 15 yea

nal state ally is Syria, but President Bashar al-Assad would not be able to direct his armed forces to

2723185 inexperienced White House advisers." Nasr, one of the most respected American authorities on the Middle East, served as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan until his death in December 2010. From that vantage point, and later as a close observ

, the question may well be redundant because military intervention is already taking place in a variety of ways. Russia and Iran continue to supply Bashar Al-Assad's forces with arms and military advice, while elements of Lebanese Hezbollah may also be involved in fighting anti-Assad units. At the other end of

folly of a `game- changing' intervention. Such a course of action must have the magnitude to tip the balance in favor of the rebels and accelerate Assad's downfall. Those opposed to intervention represent a spectrum of opinions. Some are pacifists who oppose all wars. Others are political orphans o

cal life and for that of the regime put in place in 1970 by his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad. Forty-one years in power The rule of the Assads, father and son, has now lasted 41 years, a score comparable to that of other long-lasting Arab autocrats, each apparently determined to be a préside

Arab autocrats, each apparently determined to be a président-a-vie. In no other part of the world have so many rulers clung so assiduously to power. Bashar appears genuinely to have believed that the Arab nationalist ideology he inherited, his opposition to Israel and his support for resistance movements

tly financed a London-based network of Bashar’s opponents to the tune of $12m between 2005 and 2010. A continuous whole It is probably fair to view Bashar al-Assad’s term of office and that of his father as a single continuous whole. Not only did Hafez al-Assad decide that Bashar should succeed him, but he also be

after calling Hillary a “monster,” traveled with the secretary of state to a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva. Some months before he died, Richard Holbrooke, the legendary special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had brokered peace between them, but now no one knew what would happen en route.