US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 06/19/13 By Michael Shank and Cassidy Regan As the U.S. government gears up to militarize more of the Middle East by arming rebels in Syria, we are witnessing a similar mission creep toward the African continent. Not merely in the more obvious military interventions into […]
POLITICO 06/17/13 By Michael Shank and Wayne Gilchrest U.S.-Iran diplomacy got a boost recently with the White House nomination of Samantha Power as the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. While Power, who chaired President Barack Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board, is not shy about military intervention, her work with […]
POLITIX 06/15/13 By Michael Shank and Kate Gould Iran’s presidential elections on Friday offered a rare opportunity for the world’s media spotlight to shift from focusing on Iranian officials, donning white lab coats flanked by metallic centrifuges, to the Iranian people. Tens of millions of Iranians headed to the polls, […]
THE HILL 06/12/13 By Michael Shank and Sabina Dewan Last week, a high-level panel appointed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon released its recommendations for a global development agenda when the Millennium Development Goals expire at the end of 2015 and when approximately one billion people will still […]
ROLL CALL 06/07/13 By Michael Shank and Kathy Zager The news that Russia is proceeding apace with arms shipments to the Syrian government, or that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the European Union are keen to arm the Syrian rebels, does not automatically kill the Syrian peace talks in […]
FOX NEWS 05/28/13 By Michael Shank and Kathy Zager United States-Russia diplomacy is finally making headway on Syria. Monday, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Paris to discuss their joint proposal for peace talks, they were encouraged by news over the […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 05/24/13 By Michael Shank and Matthew Southworth As President Barack Obama defended the nation’s ever-evolving counter-terrorism policy yesterday at the National Defense University and opened the parameters for military action in places outside of the traditional battlefield, the risk of writing into law permission for […]
USA TODAY 05/24/13 By Michael Shank Armed drones, at first blush, are a boon to America’s military toolkit, as President Obama reinforced in his counterterrorism speech on Thursday. Drones, in the short run at least, could mean fewer U.S. troops deployed and fewer American lives lost. Unsurprisingly, the appeal is […]
THE GUARDIAN 05/05/13 By Michael Shank and Matt Southworth A handful of Democratic and Republican senators are considering a rewrite of 60 of the most consequential words to ever pass through Congress. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and provides […]
THE HILL 04/29/13 By Michael Shank and Sabina Dewan The World Bank has always focused on poverty reduction; it is their stated mission to ‘help reduce poverty’. But actually ending it, with a target date, was never their explicit goal, until now. In Washington, at their annual spring meeting last […]