US Gov't Peacekeeping Issues

On Wednesday, just one day before Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew was confirmed as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sat down with his incoming replacement, Thomas Nides.

North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad has decided to stay on as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, a move that will keep him at the center of the intense budget battles expected in the 112th Congress.

The Senate minority leader's opposition to an omnibus package likely means a continuing resolution to keep the government operating.

Richard Parker is the Communications Director of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition

As the dust settles from the midterm elections and Congress returns this week for their “lame-duck” session, the freshmen members of the 112th Congress are also making their first appearance in town to begin their orientation process.   With all of the hyper-partisan rhetoric from the campaign season, the big question in Washington is whether or not the members of a new divided Congress will be able to agree on anything.

The U.N.'s top advocate for child soldiers, Radhika Coomaraswamy, told Turtle Bay she was "very disappointed" by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to waive a prohibition on military assistance to foreign armies that employ youths in their fighting ranks. But she urged the U.S. military to use its influence to convince these countries to sign pacts with the U.N. designed to end the conscription of children.

The midterm election results were a strong rebuke of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's stewardship of political power, but they turned almost entirely on domestic issues, not foreign policy. Therefore, the foreign-policy implications of the election are likely to be indirect rather than direct.

John Bolton is out with a new jeremiad, this one arguing that the decades of effort to reform the U.N. budget system have come up all but empty, and that the best available course is for the United States to insist on a switch to voluntary contributions.