Obama is to blame. By keeping on Robert Gates while appointing Jim Jones and, especially, Hillary Clinton, he has betrayed the economically populist, morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists who elected him. A primary challenge should already be very well-organised, the challenger to function as the grit in Obama's oyster from Day One. There are several possibilities, although, al...

This is an interesting example of a government department using web 2.0 technology to interact with citizens. The site is powered by Yoosk. It enables members of the public to send questions about British foreign policy to the Foreign and Commonwealth office. These are posted online and citizens can vote on those they want answered. Video films of responses to the questions by senior Foreign offic...

Two writers today make observations about Obama’s security team that underpin the point I made here: that those who think these appointments represent a lurch to the centre never grasped that President Bush’s own foreign policy lurched in this direction some time ago. In the Times, Bronwen Maddox notes of the so-called ‘hawks’: What they seem to represent is a continuation ...

Joe Klein wasn't impressed by the journalists' contribution to Obama's latest news conference: I was struck by the inanity of most of the questions from my colleagues. Granted, these are political reporters, not national security or foreign policy specialists, but what sort of journalist expects the President-elect to tell the "inside story" of how he selected Hillary Clin...

As well as appointing Hillary Clinton (whose stand on US foreign policy is almost identical to that of John McCain) as his Secretary of State, and retaining the services of George Bush's Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, Barack Obama has made some major s...

The Indian massacre has huge implications for U.S. foreign policy.

President-Elect Obama has announced a "new dawn" in American foreign policy and appointed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as his Secretary of State, leaving Robert Gates in Defence. As I said in an interview for the BBC Russian Service this afternoon about future Anglo-American relations, I cannot see any reason to expect many changes. Here is the list of the latest appointments.

Further to that, this:President-elect Barack Obama has chosen his foreign policy adviser, Susan E. Rice, to be ambassador to the United Nations, picking an advocate of "dramatic action" against genocide as he rounds out his national security team, Democrats close...

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his picks for the members of his foreign policy team today. As expected, Hillary Clinton is Obama's choice for Secretary of State and General James Jones, who's controversial views on Israel and the Middle East I've mentioned beforewill be Obama's choice for National Security Adviser. Robert Gates stays on for the present as SecDef, which i...

Elections have consequences as John McCain likes to say. So it would be unrealistic of us hawks to expect the president-elect to appoint the kind of national security team that John McCain would have. But from a hawkish perspective, the team unveiled in Chicago this morning is about as good as it gets. Hillary Clinton is one of the soundest Democrats on foreign policy; we can be confident that she...