Evaluating the New START Treaty and debating its merits was a major undertaking here, and I am very grateful to Secretary Gottemoeller and to others who contributed to what I thought was a very extensive and productive effort to evaluate that treaty and to lay the groundwork to put a record together. We scrutinized it through months of open and classified hearings, hundreds of questions for the record, more than a week of debate in the full Senate. And ultimately, the committee supported it 14 to 4, and we passed it in the full Senate with 71 votes. I am proud that we sent a signal to the...

Ukraine appears to have mobilized around its new President. Ukrainian Armed Forces have been actively re-closing their border with Russia and pushing back Russian separatists. At the same time, President Putin's instigation of this conflict continues to breed uncertainty as to whether a corner has, in fact, been turned. President Putin is entirely capable of trying to divide Ukraine one day and then, when the international community applies pressure, withdraw from the scene long enough to avoid the international community's scrutiny, while effectively continuing his aggression to achieve his...

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline cross-border segment would link Morgan, MT, at the Canadian border to Steele City, NE. It would have a capacity of 830,000 barrels of tar sands per day. Proponents of the pipeline point to jobs, economic development, and energy security as reasons why the pipeline should be approved, and claim that the alleged harm to the environment is overstated. Opponents raise climate change concerns, concerns about potential spills, and downplay any energy security or economic advantages of the pipeline. The link between the completion of the Keystone pipeline and...

The P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China, facilitated by the European Union) has been engaged in serious and substantive negotiations with Iran with the goal of reaching a verifiable diplomatic resolution that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and on November 23, reached a set of initial understandings that halts the progress of Iran's nuclear program and rolls it back in key respects. A year ago Iran's nuclear program was growing and becoming more dangerous with each passing day. That is no longer the case. Iran has committed to...

Each year over a thousand children are abducted from American homes and taken to a foreign country. Too often, they are permanently out of reach of U.S. law and are never returned. It was David Goldman's extraordinary 5-year battle to bring his son, Sean, home from Brazil that helped highlight the horrendous problem of international parental child abduction. Far too many parents have waited far too long for the return of an abducted child and Mr. Goldman has helped focus the world's attention on the heartbreak of child abduction. The U.S. Senate ratified the Hague Abduction Convention in 1980...

In 2010, terrible droughts in Russia, in China, and floods in Pakistan decimated wheat harvests and created a global shortage. The price of wheat increased dramatically. The Middle East, home to the world's top nine wheat importers, felt it acutely, especially since the region's farmers struggled with their own parched fields. Much of Syria was gripped with the worst drought it had ever experienced. The price of bread skyrocketed across the region and demands for regime change were not far behind. About 600 miles north of the Syrian border, the ashes of Malaysia Airline Flight 17 blanket a...

At the moment, there is clearly a stalemate at the political level. The Geneva II process failed to achieve any forward momentum and fell far short of the goal to agree on a transitional governing body in Syria. The Syrian opposition delegation went to Geneva ready to work responsibly on behalf of the Syrian people and Assad's delegation demonstrated their contempt for international efforts to mediate an end to the violence and preserve what is left of Syria. If there was any doubt about the true character of this regime, it was brought into sharp focus when Assad went after family members of...

What is the best best way forward to end the horrific violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Over the last two decades, over 5 million people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more displaced. There have been brutal killings, continued recruitment and conscription of child soldiers, and horrendous acts of sexual violence against women and girls. The M23 rebellion was just the latest iteration of a long conflict that has stalled economic development and destroyed the social fabric of communities in eastern Congo. The international group of envoys, including the former Senator, Russ...

International attention is feverishly focused on the question of "if" the P5+1 and Iran will be able to agree and on what. Any deal with Iran must demand significant dismantling of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, including eliminating the vast majority of Iran's centrifuge cascades and Low Enriched Uranium (LEU), terminating Iran's R&D efforts to create more advanced centrifuges, and moving the timeline for detectable breakout by Iran beyond a year. Less attention is focused on perhaps the more critical, strategically relevant question: What happens after a deal? What are the strategic...