Greece might finally start to pull away from its woes in the next few days because of a likely deal with its creditors to roll over at least €200 billion of government debt. That would make it easier for a second tranche of €130 billion to come in later this year. But Greece’s economic problems are far from over. They hang like a Damocles sword over the Eurozone that includes all large European countries except Britain. The sword’s edge is the severe austerity program imposed on Greece...

Terrorist bombs killed another 72 people in Iraq today, on a day considered holy by the Islamic Shia religion. This is a further sign of bloody sectarian strife boiling over after the withdrawal of US troops last December. It also presages a more significant trend that could make 2012 go down in history as the start of a seismic shift in the political makeup of the wider Islamic Middle East, from Morocco to Pakistan. The shift would be as fundamental as in 1919, after the Turkish Ottoman Empire’s...

Vladimir Putin seems to be battening down the hatches instead of showing more flexibility in the face of the massive prodemocracy protests since the rigged December 4 elections. In the latest protests in Moscow and several smaller cities on December 24, an estimated 120,000 middle class Russians braved icy weather carrying anti-corruption banners and chanting “Russia without Putin”. On December 27, Putin fired Vladislav Surkov, his chief political strategist of 13 years and of United Russia,...

Bahrain, the close American ally with one of the worst recent records of violence against pro-democracy protestors, received a formal a warning on Wednesday from the UN Human Rights chief. A team from the High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Bahrain from 13 to 17 December and concluded that the repression was unacceptable. It insisted the government should immediately and unconditionally release protestors convicted by military tribunals or still awaiting trial. Failing action, the Human...

The euro currency crisis is sliding from bad to worse. The gloom is likely to deepen on Wednesday when Europe’s executive body has its say on the feasibility of issuing special bonds to refinance government debt. European failure to restore confidence in its economic soundness and solvability will have unpredictable negative consequences for the US and other major countries because all have significant trade and financial relationships with Europe. In particular, their banks may be knee-capped...

Iran today successfully stared down a new move by the US, France, Britain and Germany to push it to the wall despite a strongly worded United Nations watchdog agency report that it might still be trying to build nuclear weapons. Few qualified observers doubt that Iran is covertly conducting a nuclear weapons program and controversy continues over whether it is a year or a decade away from success. But Teheran is running circles round the Western powers, which may suffer significant loss of face in...

The Arab league today gave a three-day extension to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his own people or face expulsion from it, despite being a founding member. This is big. The Arab League, notorious in the Arab world for decades of mealy-mouthed equivocation, is suddenly roaring led by Qatar, a sliver of gas-rich sand with less than 300,000 citizens. Syria, where civilization is traced back to 10,000 years and was a regional power for centuries under Ottoman rule, is standing cap in hand...

Britain and Germany are headed for a major clash on Friday when Prime Minister David Cameron travels to Berlin to tell Germany’s Angela Merkel that his country will not pay to bailout countries that use the euro currency. Britain is not part of the Eurozone and does not see why it should be penalized for the fiscal follies of others. The spat is the latest in the crises of government debt in the US and Europe, which many now fear could kick off a deep recession in Eurozone countries. This is serious...

With the remaining 33,000 US troops in Iraq preparing to leave, bomb blasts and a gasoline blaze in a market on this Muslim festival Sunday killed another 10 innocent persons and injured many others. The troop withdrawal was always known to be fraught with menace but things seems to be going from bad to worse. Bombings and killings occur daily as Sunni insurgents probably linked to al Qaeda and Shi’ite militias perpetrate lethal attacks against each other’s communities. The Obama administration...

The fallouts of the alleged Iranian attempt to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington will heighten Middle East tensions, even as pressure grows on Israelis and Palestinians to sit again at the peace table. If the allegations turn out to be true, the Saudi’s will put intense pressure on the Obama administration for exemplary and swift action. The risk is that the White House might, against its better judgment, find itself in the middle of a centuries-old violent struggle between the Saudi Sunnis...

NATO’s apparent victory in Libya, led by France and Britain with full US support, unveils a defining moment for NATO cooperation to protect civilians from massacre by a tyrant. But it is not one that the Obama administration can welcome without reserve. It seriously eroded American influence by causing China to join Russia, which Beijing leaders distrust and despise, in casting a veto in the UN Security Council. The veto was against the key American foreign policy goal of imposing sanctions on...

The significance for Israel will be small even if the Palestinians get full or limited recognition as a State at the United Nations in coming days. Even though UN resolutions in 1947 and 1949 created Israel, it has ignored dozens of subsequent UN resolutions and refused to implement them. It has done so with impunity since neither the UN nor the US or other governments have the power to force implementation. It can simply ignore the forthcoming resolution without any real diplomatic or other consequences....

The European debt crisis has moved several stops closer to hitting the balance sheets of already fragile US banks. The contagion is spreading quickly and may soon make inevitable the double dip recession in America predicted by many. The only way to slow down the pace is for President Obama to sharpen the warnings he gave today to force Europeans to show more mettle. For that, he will have to put much more pressure very quickly on Germany’s stubborn Chancellor Angela Merkel. The crisis is one...

The violence underway currently at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, which was overrun by demonstrators forcing the ambassador and some 70 staff to flee, has so far caused less concern in the major European capitals than the US. The ambassador and his staff are expected to land in Israel in coming minutes but only President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have voiced concern. No other government in Asia or Europe has reacted. The United Nations is also silent so far. Egypt’s top...

The scariest reaction to economic despondency and fear of immigrants is starting to happen in Europe. It has struck with ruthless shock and awe in a country that is among the continent’s most homogeneous. The killings by an over six-foot blond Norwegian using the automatic weapons and fertilizer bombs favored by self-motivated terrorists have sent a message that rigid beliefs are not the province only of Islamists. Anders Behring Breivik, 32, arrested in connection with the killing spree that...

Steadily, NATO and the US are digging themselves into a hole in Libya. Six months into the war, victory is far from sight and the anti-Gaddafi fighters recently recognized by Washington as Libya’s legitimate regime are fracturing by the week. The only quick end would be an Osama bin Laden-style assassination of Gaddafi but that it unlikely any time soon. Of course, the US could do the deed quite easily but Russia and China would immediately break off all cooperation. That would be betrayal but...

Jobs in America will take another severe hit if further bungling in the US and Europe causes a slowdown in growth of the major emerging economies, including China, Russia, India and Brazil. There are many threats to their growth but the worst come from failure to handle US public debt and potential government bankruptcies in Europe. European finance ministers will meet in Brussels on Thursday but the impasse over how to refinance debt may not be overcome. After the 2008 financial crises, China and...

The United Nations, which seems to be emerging as the indispensable partner in global affairs even for the United States, will be led for a second five-year term by South Koreas’s Ban Ki-moon who took over as Secretary General in 2007. The 15-nation UN Security Council decided unanimously today to recommend him to the 192-nation UN General Assembly for confirmation through to the end of 2016. The eighth person to serve since the UN’s creation, Ban has a mixed reputation in this very challenging...

Russia’s ambitions go far beyond the reset in relations sought by the Obama administration to achieving economic power capable of challenging the United States. This was the subtext of an unusual visit today to United Nations agencies by Vladimir Putin, the first by a Russian Prime Minister. Putin, who could be positioning himself for a further term as Russian President in elections next year, seems intent on rebuilding his profile domestically as the man with the most prestige and contacts abroad....

Current signs are that European efforts to save Greece from defaulting on its debt will be too feeble to prevent new financial tensions. They may grow into a global crisis equal to or worse than the fall of 2008. The latest indication came today from the European Central Bank’s blunt refusal to back a German plan to force creditors to take a haircut (accept less than 100 cents to the dollar) or reschedule the debt. The situation will likely come to a head at the end of June when Greece must start...

While President Barack Obama gingerly navigates the minefields of Israeli security and the Arab spring, a potentially devastating crisis for American foreign policy and security is shaping up in Pakistan. Even as I write this, a terrorist attack is reported underway in Pakistan against a major air force base and nearby naval base outside the southern city of Karachi. About 15-18 well-armed terrorists affiliated to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban seem to have entered the bases. Early reports say...

Early reactions from Europe and Asia to President Barack Obama’s elegant eloquence include caution and puzzlement at the key issues left out, although they stem from Mideast events and his support for democracy and human liberties. Somewhat like an educator, he clarified the broad lines of US policies in the Mideast and explained the recent historical context. But they were mostly restatements of already well known American idealism. The overall hope now is that the ideals and actual practice...

Osama bin Laden’s elimination though truly welcome is feeding new pressure for conflict between Pakistan and India. That would greatly complicate President Barack Obama’s efforts to drawn down US troops from Afghanistan starting July. A visit to India and reports from Pakistan give reason for concern. It is quite likely that Pakistan will engineer a terrorist attack within India to draw domestic attention away from its humiliation by the US Navy Seals. The public authority and image of Pakistan’s...

The Standard & Poor (S&P) cautious downgrade of US debt may cascade into real peril if world trade challenges add to the troubles policymakers already face in cutting the devastating budget deficit and national debt. In principle, US policymakers have up to 2013 to find credible bipartisan ways to reduce the deficit. But to get there they will also have to break the budget deadlock and create a path forward that does not repeat the deadlock. They will also have to reduce the nation’s...

It increasingly looks like the rug is being pulled tug by tug from under European and American hopes that Muammar Gadaffi’s main supporters might abandon him to avoid further punishment from US and NATO warplanes and naval missiles. The risk has increased that Libya may turn into a new quagmire for the US because it is the pivotal power in that alliance. Of course, predictions deserve large pinches of salt in such a volatile environment where the fog of war is especially dense. But fear is growing...