What’s the best predictor of which candidate will win the presidential nomination. The winner of the Iowa caucus? The winner of the New Hampshire primary? Actually neither is as good a predictor as the…
With the US economy back on its feet, US President Barack Obama has returned to his earlier reformist stance.
Davis Turner/EPA/AAP
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week was important for both policy and political reasons. In it, Obama argued for a more egalitarian “middle-class economics”. In the process, he prepared…
One of the over 160 million Muslims in India
Adnan Abidi/Reuters
As President Obama celebrates India’s Republic Day on January 26, he will be visiting the largest democracy in the world and one that has more than 160 million Muslim citizens. That’s roughly half the…
In his State of the Union address, the President’s core message was that the US has emerged strong from the twin crises caused by the 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2008 global recession. And the challenge…
Editor’s note: “The state of the union is good,” and the attitude of President Barack Obama in his annual speech to Congress was upbeat. Good economic news and no more election campaigns were the backdrop…
Editor’s note: “The state of the union is good,” and the attitude of President Barack Obama in his annual speech to Congress was upbeat. Good economic news and no more election campaigns were the backdrop…
Barack Obama outlined a vision of post-recession liberalism that was at once hopeful and limited in his State of the Union address.
EPA/Astrid Riecken
On Tuesday night (US time), President Barack Obama gave his second-last State of the Union address – and the last one that has the potential to shape his legacy. Next year the country will be caught up…
President Barack Obama has pointed to an improving economy and the need for a taxation system that shares the benefits in an agenda-setting State of the Union challenge to the Republican congressional…
In this year’s State of the Union Obama has new found confidence
Larry Downing/Reuters
There are many ways to look at the Obama approach to the 2015 State of the Union – the idea that the President’s strategy is ruining the culture and tradition of the State of the Union address is just…
There’s nothing like a little juxtaposition to put things in context. On the same day Oxfam warned that 1% of the world’s population would soon control 50% of its wealth, US President Barack Obama came…
Did the Saudis and the Americans do a deal over oil in 2008-09?
solkanar
What on earth is going on in the oil market? Does the recent 60% collapse in oil prices in six months really reflect shifts in underlying supply and demand for crude oil? I’m afraid not, as I have been…
Coming to a community college near you. Obama launched his tuition-free promise in Tennessee.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Demonstrating again he is no lame-duck president, Barack Obama has proposed a new higher education initiative celebrated on social media as #FreeCommunityCollege. Obama’s plan to provide free community…
But can the promise be delivered? President Obama at Pellissippi State College in Knoxville, TN
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Last week, President Barack Obama announced a proposal to guarantee that students could attend a community college for free for their first two years. The announcement was one in a series of previews of…
Nabila Rehman, 9, shows her drawing of a drone attack on her Pakistani village that killed her grandmother.
Jason Reed/Reuters
Jeff Bachman, American University School of International Service
On November 24, two weeks before the Senate Intelligence Committee released its “torture report,” Reprieve, a UK-based human rights NGO, published the results of its latest investigation into President…
The author with his brother and father on the way to Florida
“Normalization” – that’s been the word of the week among Cubans and Cuba watchers. Set aside for the moment whether it’s really possible for a dictatorship and a democracy to have normal relations, since…
The star-spangled banner yet waves over a Havana taxi-bike.
EPA/Alejandro Ernesto
The recent news that the United States and Cuba are finally beginning to “normalise” relations has understandably caught the world’s imagination, given the two countries’ longstanding mutual hostility…
The restoration of full diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba, announced simultaneously by Barack Obama and Raúl Castro yesterday, is a huge political breakthrough. The benefits to the Cuban economy…
Fidel Castro during a visit to Washington in 1959.
U.S. Department of State
The action by President Obama to move toward the normalization of US-Cuba relations is long overdue. The US ruptured ties with Cuba in early January 1961, under President Eisenhower, not only in the context…
Obama announces the biggest Cuba policy shift in 50 years.
EPA/Doug Mills
In the United States and Cuba’s strained relationship over the past 50-odd years, certain key flashpoints stand out: the Bay of Pigs incident, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and many more. December 17 2014…
“We cannot again allow history to be forgotten”
Handout/Reuters
At the end of a long and challenging week, the famous aphorism, “we have met the enemy and he is us” readily comes to mind. The issuance of the long awaited Senate “torture report” has set off a debate…
Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney