November 29, 2013

Should Obama take Lessons from Putin?

By Michael Curtis
It is difficult to believe that President Barack Obama considers that the agreement between six countries and Iran on November 21, 2013 to limit temporarily some part of Iran's nuclear weapon and to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium up to 5% is a triumph for his view of diplomacy as the key factor for American foreign policy. He might be disillusioned by the events in Ukraine at the very same moment in November. They show that power politics and threats of imposing and increasing sanctions have proved to be more successful than discussions and negotiations with foreign leaders, desirable though these may be. On November 21, 2013 Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych unexpectedly announced that he was postponing the signing of an association agreement, essentially a trade pact, with the European Union (EU) that was to take place at the EU summit meeting in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on November 29. After five years of negotiation he claimed he had been forced to postpone...(Read Full Article)