Susan Rice

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice gave a speech in Israel yesterday urging that peace demands more than “lip service,” an unsubtle dig at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Augustinian approach. She singled out President Shimon Peres, a leading peace-processor, for praise:
“As President Peres always reminds us, being serious about peace means taking risks for peace,” Ms. Rice [...]

Here’s the guest list for today’s White House meeting to discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. New additions to the discussion: Amb. Susan Rice, a close Obama adviser turned ambassador to the U.N.; and Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, the “war czar” who will oversee interagency policy coordination. Wait, isn’t that Richard Holbrooke’s job…?

As reports of political violence in Iran intensified after Friday’s fiercely disputed election, the Obama administration insisted that it would not interfere with the struggle for power between regime-backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the thousands of demonstrators who contend the election was stolen.

You know, spending a lot of time dredging through the public record on torture is a rather depleting exercise. So it’s a glass of lemonade in a desert to read the Obama administration’s human rights pledges issued by the State Department today. The administration announced last month that it would seek a seat on the [...]

Official negotiations among United Nations members begin today in Vienna over a U.N. declaration to guide global drug policy for the next decade.
As we’ve written here recently, the Obama administration has come out strongly in support of needle exchange programs — a break from previous administrations that’s been welcomed by health care and human rights [...]

Since 1988, the U.S. has banned federal funding for needle exchange programs. But with a president who pledges to lift the ban, why is the United States opposing UN efforts to promote them?

Politico’s Ben Smith adds to Laura Rozen’s report on President-elect Barack Obama’s South Asia-themed dinner last week. Ben learns that Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi was there, along with an important defense adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Ret).
That raises a question: why doesn’t — as best I can tell — [...]

“It shouldn’t be an either/or debate” between military force, diplomacy and development, Clinton says, “we want to blend those.” But what does that really mean? Right now it means that soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be diplomats and development workers as well. But it’s not clear at all what Clinton means [...]

Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress has a screencapture from CNN’s presentation of United Nations Ambassador-designate Susan Rice at the Obama national-security team rollout this morning.

ABC News is reporting that Susan Rice — you remember her, I’m sure — is now the leading candidate to become Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations.
On the merits, I tend to think Rice is so talented she’ll be great at any portfolio she gets. And given that she’s been part of Obama’s foreign-policy [...]