Peter W. Galbraith, the author of The End of Iraq and Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies, formerly served as a U.S. ambassador to Croatia. He discussed global challenges for the United States with foreign-affairs columnist John C. Bersia.

In the coming months, President-elect Barack Obama will assemble a foreign-policy team and begin the arduous process of listing global priorities, including the need for a new American image. Between now and Inauguration Day, that group should focus on critical issues that demand the incoming president’s sustained attention and creativity, starting with human rights.
This subject [...]

Among the most courageous, truth-seeking figures of the past century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn stood particularly tall. Although he succumbed to age and illness this week, the Nobel laureate left behind an impressive body of work that offers unending inspiration.
Indeed, Solzhenitsyn’s observations about tyranny and abuse are needed more than ever. Tyrants and abusers loom in all [...]

Whether Barack Obama’s multi-nation, overseas tour amounts to a political stunt – as critics claim – or not, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and U.S. senator from Illinois is moving in the right direction. So far, foreign-policy issues have played a pitifully small role in the campaign. To those who believe that discussing Afghanistan, [...]

When a country has a complicated, problematic and history-burdened relationship with another nation – as China has with Japan – one would anticipate strained ties at best. Why, then, has Chinese President Hu Jintao undertaken a state visit to Tokyo?

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — The slaves who once stared with terror at prospective buyers in the covered market here in America’s oldest city may be long gone, but tens of millions of their 21st-century brethren wear similar desperate expressions all over the world, including in the United States.
How can we tolerate such a disgrace? How [...]

WASHINGTON – Although I sympathize with the Tibetans here who have protested President George W. Bush’s plans to attend the Olympics’ opening ceremony in Beijing this August, the options for world leaders go well beyond the two extremes of gleeful participation in and angry avoidance of the games.
In an attempt to justify his decision, Bush [...]