All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.
History is laden with belligerent leaders using humanitarian rhetoric to mask geopolitical aims. History also shows how often ill-informed moralism has led to foreign entanglements that do more harm than good.
Changing the DNA of a large, multilateral organization such as the United Nations to deal effectively with modern threats is not easy. Indeed, when the United Nations was created in the wake of World War II, threats came almost exclusively from one state carrying out acts of aggression against another.
The United States should not frame its policy options in terms of doing nothing or unilaterally sending in the Marines.
Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.
Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere.
I think Obama is right when he talks about the rule of law as a cornerstone of what the United States should stand for. That can encompass our elected officials' adherence to law and our country's return to the Geneva Conventions.
Serving in the executive branch is very different than sounding off from an academic perch.
The way governments treat their own citizens matters; it matters because it can have a direct impact on international peace and security - and on our respective national security interests.
When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause.
If your aim is to attack the United States, it is hard to imagine a more difficult way of getting here than by posing as a refugee.
I like to think that as I get older I'm getting better at spending time with people who have qualities that make them worth spending time with.
What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid.
The U.S. government engages with many countries around the world in official dialogues on human rights.
Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen.
The United States and the Obama administration have consistently opposed the delegitimation of Israel. We've also consistently pushed for legitimation of Israel across the U.N. system. We uniformly oppose one-sided actions designed to punish Israel, and we will continue to do so.
Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others.
Half of Syria's refugees are children, and we know what can happen to children who grow to adulthood without hope or opportunity in refugee camps. The camps become fertile recruiting grounds for violent extremists.
We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.
I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?
