Ambassador Fredrick Barton assesses challenges facing his bureau stemming from conflicts around the world.

Madeleine K. Albright discusses world affairs and her career in U.S. government.

The sharpening partisan divide within United States politics is routinely affecting foreign policy, far more than in years past.

American diplomacy has changed dramatically in the past few decades, and has taken on a more conflict-prone direction, according to this New York Times piece.

Jimmy Carter is at it again, says Elliott Abrams on the former president's latest vilification of Israel in a recent Al Ahram interview.

Matthew C. Waxman argues that international law still plays a powerful role in justifying or delegitimizing the case for military action. Just like in the Cuban missile crisis, the United States needs to present a plausible case for self-defense in order to strike Iran.

The myth about how the United States won the Cuban missile crisis made it more difficult for presidents to do what common sense dictated, says CFR president emeritus Les Gelb.

Stephen Sestanovich offers a rebuttal to Leslie H. Gelb's reading of the Cuban missile crisis.

Micah Zenko says, in the aftermath of the attacks in Benghazi, President Obama faces tremendous pressure to "do something" in response, but force won't stop another attack.

Fifty years later, the effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis linger still because of the persistent effects of one lie—that JFK won the day without compromising, writes Leslie H. Gelb in Foreign Policy.

Though Americans fear a decline in the country's global influence, Stephen M. Walt argues that this may be an unnecessary fear.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has asserted that Russia is America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe;" a claim that has been heavily criticized, but may still be true.

The outcome of the presidential election will have significant impact on U.S. foreign policy, particularly considering the debabte over the potential of war with Iran.

Steven A. Cook says the news may look grim, but the United States is poised to remain the dominant power in the Middle East.

Will Inboden writes that the historic role of the Democratic Party of vocally opposing Republican policies only to later embrace those policies when they have been proven successful should at the least raise a skeptical eyebrow at the ongoing Democratic denunciations of Romney's foreign policy.

Foreign policy has not played a major role in the presidential campaign so far, but a close race could make it a factor in courting "the moveable middle," says CFR's James Lindsay.

Will Marshall writes in Foreign Policy that even though President Obama has been able to neutralize the Republican Party's traditional advantage on national security, with the upcoming presidential election, now is the time to return to the liberal principle of defense of freedom at home and abroad.

Elliott Abrams says every Democratic Party platform since 1992 has cited Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state—but this year wasn't so simple.

Peter Baker discusses the relationship between what presidential candidates say on the campaign trail and what they do once elected and what this relationship indicates about U.S. foreign policy if Mitt Romney wins the presidential election in November.

U.S. presidential nominating conventions often touch on national security and foreign policy, but don't always signal the direction of a winning candidate's policy, explains this Backgrounder.