Friends and colleagues, I just want to take a moment to thank you all for a wonderful six months. This is my last post at Policy-Net, as my already extended contract expires presently.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Policy-Net, and I am delighted to have made your acquaintance and to have shared ideas with you. I think PNet is a very, very important tool for collaboration and discussion, and I hope it continues to serve students and interested stakeholders long into the future.

Very best…

In a most interesting piece for the right-leaning National Review Online, George Weigel argues that Mr. Obama's interpretation of the just war tradition - on which the latter predicates his support for the Afghan war and his opposition to the Iraq War - is fundamentally flawed.

In the just-war tradition, as rightly interpreted, the justified use of proportionate and discriminate armed force was always understood to be in the pursuit of peace, which was the fruit of justice, security, and…

Hats off to Mr. Obama. If you haven't been following the Nobel Prize.... thing.... take a moment to view the very brief clip posted above.

Obama could have made his acceptance speech about himself. He could have made it about how bad Mr. Bush was as president, and he could have used it to suck up to the Europeans, the Chinese or anybody else.

But he didn't.

I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the…

For an outstanding counter-perspective (that is, counter to my own perspective) on President Obama's recently announced policy on Afghanistan, check out Fareed Zakaria's latest:

It might seem hard to reconcile a more targeted and focused foreign policy with the expansion of a war and the introduction of 30,000 troops. But it is not unprecedented. When Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger entered the White House in 1969, they inherited a war in Vietnam that they might have believed in at some…

Well, there you have it. Mr. Obama's strategy on Afghanistan.

If you have a habit of stopping by, you'll know that the Waterloo Room is not a bastion of Obamamania. I share neither the president's instincts nor approach nor rhetoric on foreign policy. But I have been and continue to be respectful toward that office and mindful that the president is both doing his best for the United States and that he pursues his administration's policies with good intent.

According to this corner, the…

Late yesterday, US vice president Joseph R. Biden placed a call to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper to inform his ally about US plans for Afghan policy.

In lieu of a call from Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden placed a call to Harper about the Afghan mission, a White House official told Canwest News Service.

Meantime, the leaders of France, the UK, Italy, Afghanistan and myriad other states received calls directly from POTUS.

What's the deal? Did Mr. Harper not merit a call from the president…

Pretty neat, eh?

You'll recall in a recent entry in this corner I waxed despondent; or rather, sombre - about the Commonwealth's unravelling in terms of its social, economic and political integrity as a community of British nations and their natural cousins.

I regret the overall demise of the British Commonwealth as a force for solidarity between what I'll refer to as 'British' nations throughout the world. But I do understand it.

Her Majesty, however, in usual form, seems to be ahead of the game…

If you're not in the habit of reading Stratfor intelligence briefs, you should be. Today, George Freidman takes a good look at the possibility that sanctions might be imposed by the international community - the important crucible here being the P5 + 1 - and he gives dispassionate and worthy assessment.

The Iranian government has rejected, at least for the moment, a proposal from the P-5+1 to ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment. The group is now…

Leslie Gelb is part of the furniture in the American foreign policy community. He's a former head of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior bureaucrat. His new book, Power Rules, is hot off the press.

Gelb also co-authored, with the now Vice President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, a plan for salvaging Iraq back in 2006. (The plan consisted of five key points, though the predicate of the entire plan was decentralisation. It was panned by optimists on the hawkish…