foreign relations

“The biggest problem we face is that there’s no agreement on what terrorism is and it’s become completely subjective,” said Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counter-terrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At the time of the scheme, Robert Menendez was the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a powerful role that gave him significant influence over US foreign policy.

As Linda Robinson at the Council on Foreign Relations warned, this “crusade…is doing incalculable harm to government and public service.”

The State Department’s legal adviser, former Yale Law School dean Harold H. Koh, testified at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the nation’s actions targeting Libya involved “no U.S. ground presence or, to this point, U.S. casualties.”

"The special envoy's additional designation will likely create some challenges, at least in India. India typically prefers not to be "hyphenated" with Pakistan," says Alyssa Ayres from the Council of Foreign Relations, an American think-tank focussed on US foreign policy.