Repairing The U S Israel Relationship

"The U.S.-Israel relationship is in trouble," warn Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellows Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon in a new Council Special Report, Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship. Significant policy differences over issues in the Middle East, as well as changing demographics and politics within both the United States and Israel, have pushed the two countries apart. Blackwill, a former senior official in the Bush administration, and Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration, call for "a deliberate and sustained effort by policymakers and opinion leaders in both countries" to repair the relationship and to avoid divisions "that no one who cares about Israel's security or America's values and interests in the Middle East should want."

A critical overview and re-evaluation of the origins and development of the 'special' relations between Israel and the United States.

Turkey and Israel are two of the most important countries in the Middle East, but also are outsiders to the region for political and cultural reasons. Here Bengio examines the historic, geo-strategic and political-cultural roots of the Turkish-Israeli relationship, from the 1950s until today. Linking the relationship's evolution to the complexities of Turkey's historical ties with the Arab world, and changing domestic, regional and global conditions, the book traces the ebb and flow of the curious ties between the two countries. Bengio calls for a significant revision in the received wisdom about inter-Arab and Arab-Israeli conflicts and rivalries, placing Turkey in a more central role. The book approaches Middle Eastern affairs from inside the region, based on Turkish, Israeli and Arab sources, providing a much needed corrective to American - and British - centered accounts.

Over the last 40 years, the leadership industry has grown exponentially. Yet leadership education, training, and development still fall far short. Moreover, leaders are demeaned, degraded, and derided as they never were before. Why? The problem is leadership has stayed stuck. It has remained an occupation instead of becoming a profession. Unlike medicine and law, leadership has no core curriculum considered essential. It has no widely agreed on metric, or criteria for qualification. And it has no professional association to oversee the conduct of its members or assure minimum standards. Professionalizing Leadership looks to a past in which learning to lead was the most important of eruditions. It looks to a present in which learning to lead is as effortless as ubiquitous. And it looks to a future in which learning to be a leader might look different altogether - it might resemble the far more rigorous process of learning to be a doctor or a lawyer. As it stands now, the military is the only major American institution that gets it right. It assumes leadership is a profession that requires those who practice it to be taught in accordance with high professional standards. Barbara Kellerman draws on the military experience specifically to develop a template for learning how to lead generally. Leadership in the first quarter of the present century is different from what it was even in the last quarter of the past century - which is why leadership taught casually and carelessly should no longer suffice. Professionalizing Leadership addresses precisely the problem of how to prepare leaders in accordance with professional norms. It provides the template necessary for transforming leadership from dubious occupation to respectable profession.

In his 2016 book coauthored with Evan Roth Smith, Putin’s Master Plan, Doug Schoen warned of the Russian president’s grand vision to expand his country’s influence around the world, especially in Eastern Europe, while destabilizing the Western alliance and delegitimizing the very principles of free societies—and especially the political model of democracy’s exemplar, the United States. Now, in Putin on the March, Schoen brings the story up to date, warning that Putin’s mission is no abstraction but rather an active, ongoing campaign, and one that the Russian president has pursued with far more successes than setbacks. And Schoen warns again that the United States continues to lack a coherent plan for combating Russian aggression, political intrigue—including the cyberwarfare that has upended American politics—and the communications and propaganda offensive that seems continually to keep the Western democracies off balance. In Putin on the March, Schoen examines Russian moves across a range of geopolitical areas, including Moscow’s sustained menacing of its Eastern European neighbors, especially Ukraine, and analyzes Russia’s current posture regarding energy markets, the diplomatic situation, espionage and cyberwarfare, and Moscow-Washington relations. This follow-up reveals that Schoen’s previous warnings have been borne out. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia is achieving success in the three key areas in which it needs to prevail: foreign policy; control of Russian internal politics; and keeping the United States confused, demoralized, and even destabilized. Those who dismiss Putin’s behavior as unsustainable or reckless overlook the fundamental truth: he is getting away with it, and the more he gets away with, and the longer he does, the stronger he becomes—especially as the Western democracies grow more fractured both from their own internal problems and from lack of consensus on how to respond.

In Barack Obama and the Arab Spring: A Successful Balancing Act of Foreign Policy and Diplomacy, Ahmed Zohny develops a well-blended marriage of history and political theories of U.S. foreign policy, diplomacy, public diplomacy, and national security. In this interdisciplinary research, he uses data and findings from both the Arabic and English languages by genealogically examining President Obama’s foreign policy and diplomacy in response to the chronology of the unfolding events of the 2011 Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. President Obama and his top diplomats’ performances in response to each country’s events are assessed, critically analyzed, and compared to one another in terms of the U.S. bilateral relations with each country, U.S. national interests, and her strategic goals in the Middle East region. The findings of this research indicate that President Obama’s foreign policy and public diplomacy toward the Arab Spring proved to be a successful balancing act, prudent and in the best national interests of the United States in the Middle East.

Between 1945 and 1991, tension between the USA, its allies, and a group of nations led by the USSR, dominated world politics. This period was called the Cold War – a conflict that stopped short to a full-blown war. Benefiting from the recent research of newly open archives, the Encyclopedia of the Cold War discusses how this state of perpetual tensions arose, developed, and was resolved. This work examines the military, economic, diplomatic, and political evolution of the conflict as well as its impact on the different regions and cultures of the world. Using a unique geopolitical approach that will present Russian perspectives and others, the work covers all aspects of the Cold War, from communism to nuclear escalation and from UFOs to red diaper babies, highlighting its vast-ranging and lasting impact on international relations as well as on daily life. Although the work will focus on the 1945–1991 period, it will explore the roots of the conflict, starting with the formation of the Soviet state, and its legacy to the present day.

The 2017 Annual Report of the Council on Foreign Relations.