In historical and constitutional terms, the recent political status vote in Puerto Rico was a necessary but obviously not decisive step on the road of self-determination leading to full self-government.
Apparently tired of waiting for clear direction from Congress, the people of Puerto Rico have used the tools provided by their own local constitution to schedule a vote for Dec. 13 on the status of the island.
As the highest ranking American official in the United Nations organization, I came to understand thoroughly that the national constitutional processes of the member states define the status of territories under their sovereignty.
Yet, Puerto Rico's economic convergence and political integration with the rest of the nation is in a state of arrest - even though the island has been within the national borders, political system and customs territory of the U.S. for a century.
Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.
When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.
Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.
The Iranians don't want the same thing we do in Iraq, not really; they want to control Iraq... the Ayatollah hates the United States; the Iranians are enemies of the United States.
The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan's needs and then act together to meet them.
While Israelis do not care too much about Europeans moral judgments, the E.U. is an important market for them, and European sanctions of any kind would be harmful to Israel.
The United States treated Gaddafi as an enemy due to his support for terrorism against us, until a rapprochement of sorts began under Pres. George W. Bush at the very end of 2003.
In 2004, President Bush gave Prime Minister Sharon certain guarantees about American policy, but the Obama administration treated those as a kind of private letter having no binding policy impact.
Egypt needs law and order in Sinai to save the tourist industry in Sharm el-Sheik and prevent the area from becoming a base for terrorists that will target Egypt itself, as well as Jordan and Israel.
Denmark has long been regarded as one of the world's most attractive nations, for citizens and tourists alike. My own visits there, years ago as a student, were delightful.
For the entire first term, Obama and his people blamed Bush for everything - which is another way of saying they felt Bush and the Bush years were the inescapable reference point for everything they were themselves doing.
Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.
The kind of job where you have to hustle and hustle and where you're not sure whether you will have enough clients next month, where you have less job security, is becoming much more common.
For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.
I'll always be American in my world view and allegiance. American in the naive way I go to other countries and tell them how they should treat their poor or clean their water.
Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and waxed strong only in certain zones.
Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.
