Don’t look now, but foreign policy is back on this year’s election agenda.

While Election 2012 is still very much about the economy, foreign policy issues are increasingly making a comeback.  And as the conversation focuses more on Iran, foreign policy is emerging not because of a lack of news about the economy, but rather because of the increasing connection between the two topics.

The tensions between the U.S. and Iran illustrate the linkage.  In response to the European oil boycott, Iran recently announced that it was cutting off exports to Britain and France, which, in part, drove oil benchmarks to a nine-month high of nearly $123 a barrel.  This, in turn, “could prove worrisome for U.S. drivers since many U.S. refineries use imported oil to produce gas”.  Gas prices are already rising across the country – currently the national average is above $3.50 a gallon – and many worry that gas prices could rise beyond $4 a gallon by the summer.  There are even concerns that gas could spike to $5 a gallon if tensions surge.

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This article, co-authored by PSA Advisory Board member and former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering and William Luers, former U.S. Ambassador and President of the United Nations Foundation from 1999 to 2009, originally appeared in the New York Times.

Envisioning a Deal With Iran

IF you deal in camels, make the doors high,” an Afghan proverb cautions. As the dangers mount in the confrontation between the United States and Iran, both sides will have to raise the doors high for diplomacy to work, and to avoid conflict.

A diplomatic strategy must begin with the United States’ setting its priorities and then defining a practical path to achieve them. To achieve its top priorities, it will have to learn what Iran needs. Since the United States will not get total surrender from Iran, it must decide what it can put on the table to assure that both sides can reach a deal that will be durable.

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This article was written by two Fall 2011 Fellows in PSA’s Congressional Fellowship Program.  All CFP articles are produced by bipartisan groups of Democrat and Republican Fellows who were challenged to develop opinion pieces that reach consensus on critical national security and foreign affairs issues.

KORUS Free Trade Agreement: An Agent of Stability

Almost sixty years ago at the end of the Korean War, the relationship between the United States and South Korea took on a new meaning.  The relationship was built on a cooperative framework between allied forces in order to promote stability on the peninsula through a strengthened commitment to the mutual goals of protecting democratic values, peace and economic security.

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This article authored by former Senator Alan Simpson originally appeared in the McClatchy Company news service.

The U.S. Needs the U.N., and the U.N. Needs the U.S.

Jan. 12 marked the second anniversary of the horrific earthquake that ripped Haiti apart. While we quite properly remembered the unthinkable loss of Haitian lives that day, less well remembered were the deaths that same day of more than 100 U.N. officials in the collapse of the building that housed the headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti.

They were there in an effort to help the process of nation building in Haiti and to assist with humanitarian relief efforts there. Their deaths remind us that the United Nations and its staff members serve in many difficult places working on the most difficult issues. Their efforts serve us all.

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