Outside the Beltway

Expanding on events that have been going on for months, two oil tankers were attacked today near the entrance to the Persian Gulf

The White House claims to want to talk to Iran but the President’s actions make clear that negotiation is the furthest thing from his mind.

President Trump’s foreign policy has largely been a failure, and there are specific reasons why.

The Trump Administration is taking an unnecessarily militaristic approach toward Iran, and that poses real dangers for the country and for the Middle East.

With the apparent failure of the coup attempt in Venezuela, what happens next?

Lacking any real support from the military or police, the attempted coup against Nicolas Maduro has predictably failed.

The ongoing apparent attempted coup in Venezuela is already leading to talk of American intervention in the event of a crackdown. That would be unwise and unjustified.

Breaking News out of Latin America

The Trump Administration’s policies toward Iran aren’t going to work, but that’s because they aren’t supposed to work.

The Trump Administration still doesn’t have realistic goals for its negotiations with North Korea.

He conjures the imperialist past with such comments (and he doesn’t even use the term correctly).

After two years of spitting in their faces, President Trump is finding it hard to get America’s European allies to come to his aid.

President Trump has selected Kelly Knight Craft, the current Ambassador to Canada, to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Two months after being named, Heather Nauert withdrew her name as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations due to a ‘Nannygate’ problem.

The self-appointed Acting President of Venezuela has said he doesn’t rule out the idea of American intervention in his country, but we should rule it out immediately.

President Trump has lost another one of his top advisers on the fight against ISIS.

In what clearly appears to be a rebuke of the President, Defense Secretary James Mattis is retiring as Secretary of Defense.

President Trump is expected to name a former Fox News host as Ambassador to the United Nations.

National Security Adviser John Bolton offered an utterly absurd explanation for why he had not listened to the tape of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

Losing the midterms is not going over well with the President.

One hundred years after the end of World War One, the forces that led to it are waking up from a long slumber.

The Russians are interfering in our electoral system again, and they’re using our own hyperpartisanship to accomplish their goals.

Not surprisingly, it appears that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam, who effectively runs Saudi Arabia under his father’s rule, is behind the apparent plot against Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

Washington said farewell to John McCain today in a service that both remembered his spirit and his heroism, and stands as a sharp rebuke to what politics has been reduced to in America today.

President Trump reportedly vetoed a plan to issue a statement lauding Senator John McCain after he died on Saturday.

Jon Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, is rejecting calls that he should resign in the wake of what everyone seems to agree was a disastrous summit meeting with Vladimir Putin.

The supposed promises made at the Singapore Summit don’t appear to be working out in the real world.

A thinly-sourced report says Yes.

President Trump is touting his Photo Op Summit as the end of the North Korean nuclear threat. Reality is quite different.

With the start of the Singapore Summit just hours away, it’s not at all clear what the respective parties can possibly agree to other than what amounts to a photo opportunity.

Hurricane Trump hit the G-7 this weekend, and the damage it left behind will take years to clean up.

“Winging it” isn’t how foreign policy should be made.

The new American Ambassador to Germany is making what clearly seem to be inappropriate statements about domestic politics in Europe.

A couple weeks ago, the North Koreans made a big deal about destroying their nuclear test site. It now appears that the event the media witnessed was less than meets the eye.

Just over a week after he called it off, President Trump announced this afternoon that the June 12th Summit in Singapore was back on.

South Korea’s President is saying that Kim Jong Un has renewed his supposed commitment to ‘denuclearization,’ but it isn’t at all clear what that means.

Seemingly out of the blue, the June 12th summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been canceled by the United States.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a bombastic speech on Iran yesterday that reveals just how empty and dangerous the Trump Administration’s policy toward Iran actually is.

Not surprisingly, the North Koreans are pushing back against American efforts to force them into a corner on denuclearization.

It was never going to be as easy as the administration thought.

Ebola is making a reappearance in Central Africa.. Will the world be better prepared this time?

The National Security Advisor has broken up the team that manages global epidemics for no apparent reason.

As expected, President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the nuclear deal with Iran. There was no rational basis for doing so.

The United States is apparently looking to Libya as a guide for upcoming talks with North Korea. The DPRK most likely sees the fate of that nation and its leader as a warning.

President Trump may be looking to push Chief of Staff John Kelly aside by giving him a next to impossible job.

Not surprisingly, Mike Pompeo was confirmed as America’s 70th Secretary of State today. Now, the hard work begins.

For better or worse, Mike Pompeo will be confirmed as the 70th Secretary of State by the end of this week.

French President Emmanuel Macron is in the U.S. hoping to lobby President Trump to keep the United States in the nuclear deal with Iran. He’s got his work cut out for him.

The Kim regime has announced the end, for now, of its nuclear and ballistic missile testing programs. To understand why they made this concession, one needs to read between the lines.

Despite facing headwinds in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mike Pompeo will probably be confirmed as the next Secretary of State. That’s unfortunate.