The Obama administration has vastly expanded the use of armed drones and concentrated a great deal of diplomatic effort on building and maintaining alliances that share information about terrorists, provide access to get near them, and then strike against them.

The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads.

Two presidents pursued human rights policies that were serious and effective, Reagan and George W. Bush. They understood that American support for human rights activists is a moral imperative for us and also makes the world safer for us.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

It seems clear to me that the Obama Administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like respect for human rights to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to achieve that goal - and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.

Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.

There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro.