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Saturday, October 10, 2009

A Foreign Policy Victory

While negotiations on this deal did not begin in the Obama administration, our role in keeping it from derailing is grounds for a pat on the back:

Turkey and Armenia signed an accord Saturday to establish diplomatic relations after a century of enmity, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helped the two sides clear a last-minute snag.


This will help us expand influence in the troubled region, which is a bit of good news for Georgia no doubt, and possible for Western Europe:

Better ties between Turkey, a regional heavyweight, and poor, landlocked Armenia are a priority for President Barack Obama. They could help reduce tensions in the troubled Caucasus region and facilitate its growing role as a corridor for energy supplies bound for the West.


This is something else I hope President Obama is working to achieve. I'm not shy about giving President Obama credit for doing the right thing in foreign policy--it just hasn't happened that often so far.