Incredibly, President Barack Obama’s in-depth Afghanistan review is underplaying the evident peril that arming unruly warlords empowers them to use American war techniques to scuttle his agenda and settle mutual scores with more lethal force instead . It is fast-forwarding two great dangers. First, it is ensuring that Afghanistan can have no central government in Kabul capable of enforcing discipline on the entire country through monopoly of arms and police work. Local warlords armed by America...

A misunderstanding of the meaning of victory in asymmetrical wars is a main reason why the US remains stuck in the bloody quick sands of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since military power is unable to deliver a sustainable peace, alternative strategies deserve consideration. As President Barack Obama seeks world esteem for US leadership during top-level talks in New York and Pittsburg this week, it is worth remembering the clay feet of military power. The US spends more on its armed forces and spy apparatus...

In Afghanistan, the US is heading towards futility if not defeat mainly because no policy maker in Washington or its allied European capitals is willing to notice the bull in the china shop obvious to others. Washington and its NATO allies are focused on the awful recent elections. They are running in circles trying to establish democracy and rule of law in country where the lifestyle of rural folk dominated by clans and tribes has not changed significantly in 1000 years. What is obvious to non-Americans...

Governments and international agencies are taking a big risk by playing down the potentially lethal effects of the H1N1 flu pandemic, earlier called “swine flu”, because most information during the last 11 months has come from the world’s rich countries. People affected are expected to double every three to four days for several months but in rich countries they are generally well nourished and access to medical care is easier. So they recover quickly and often suffer little more than symptoms...

In these dismal times, there is a piece of good news for over three billion poor people around the world. An effective public private partnership is required to make it work but the methods are quite easy and low cost. According to the World Health Organization and several other expert groups, it will prevent the loss of nearly one percentage point of GDP on average caused by health deficiencies. The loss occurs because of low productivity and high health care costs associated with vitamin and mineral...

Iran is pushing ahead with its covert nuclear weapons program while Israel bangs its head against a wall because of a change in Washington’s security posture that is already taking place. Hilary Clinton’s so far informal offer of a security, including nuclear, umbrella, to its friends in the Middle East is an admission that Washington is unsure of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It is becoming increasingly clear that Clinton and President Barack Obama think the only practicable...

India launched a 6000-ton nuclear powered submarine a few hours ago joining a select group of countries– United States, Russia, France, Britain and China – with the knowhow to do so. The 367-foot sub made with Russian help will become operational after trials lasting three to five years and will carry missiles with a range of about 450 miles. It will be able to fire nuclear warheads. This is both good and bad news. India lives in a tough neighborhood and almost all of its territories are...

Even as he asserts his desire to reset relations with Russia in a positive direction, President Barack Obama is sowing early seeds for a new Cool War if not Cold War with Russia and its satellites. The latest act was Vice President Joe Biden’s clear and full backing to Georgia, which is being interpreted there and in East and Central European capitals as an informal military guarantee of protection against Russian aggression. The specter of Cool War lurks in Biden’s repeated promise of full...

The White House is misreading the signals from Iran’s turmoil and may find itself in a box by the September deadline President Barack Obama has set to intensify pressure if Teheran does not offer cooperation. Following the street demonstrations contesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election, Iranian domestic politics have changed fundamentally and the country has entered a backstage civil conflict among powerful groups of ruling clerics. Unlike the George Bush administration, Obama is willing to...

The current month-long Indian elections, whose results emerge on Friday and Saturday, hold more jeopardy than almost any in the past for both domestic policies and likely impacts on India’s attitudes towards the West. First, let’s note that India and its democracy are inspirational for the world. This country of nearly 1.2 billion has over 714 million voters of whom about 350 million voted. Over 52% actually cast ballots in 828,000 polling stations across 543 constituencies secured by over 6...

The recent stock market rallies around the world hold peril because they are encouraging governments, especially in Europe, China and India, into thinking that the worst is over and reforms are less urgent. The toxic assets of major global banks are far from being on the path to purification, mostly because of policy confusion. This is despite the nearly 3 trillion earmarked by the US, Europe and China for domestic spending over three years to bail out banks, remove their bad debts and provide economic...

A deepening sense of disappointment is sweeping over the main European countries as the dust settles over President Barack Obama’s first trip to Europe. Coming weeks may demonstrate the unthinkable: that the bubble of Obama-mania in Europe has sprung enough leaks to start bursting soon. The people’s love affair with him continues albeit with added caution but specialists find few substantive changes in US positions on key issues, as they sift with rested heads through what his team actually...

There are growing murmurs in Europe that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has overplayed his hand under advice from the Americans, setting off the slow demise of Pakistan not only as a democracy but also as a governable country. A nightmare is shaping up on the streets of cities big and small in Pakistan. Pity its people battered between the hammer of military dictators and the anvil of civilian despots and Islamic totalitarians, blind to their struggle to feed and raise children in safety. The...

The thaw between the US and Russia is superficial and don’t hold your breath for progress to substantive gains any time soon. At recent key meetings in Brussels and Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered an outstretched hand but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov only slightly unclenched his fist. Moscow is preparing to wage a kind of asymmetrical diplomatic tussle with Washington. This is far from Cold War or hostility of any kind. But it is tough competition conducted...

People who love to travel will have a harder time in 2009. In an epoch when the world needs a sense of global community as never before, the global airline industry is headed for a dramatic downturn in 2009 as the recession deepens and widens into many countries outside the US and Europe. The airlines are already flying more than 60 million fewer seats since August 2008 and this figure is set to increase if managements do not find workable remedies. Soon people wanting to travel may not find a...

The unabated global economic turmoil has begun to separate the world by not only emphasis on national rather than international remedies but also slowing down cultural interchanges and tourism. Over time, the slowdown in the physical movement of people through travel for business and tourism may sharply set back consolidation of a global community built on peace and prosperity. In some areas, travel has dropped 35%. People have become cautious in all countries and are cutting back on expenditure....

Most of world outside the US, especially on the Arab street, will see the Gaza ceasefire as a gain for Hamas whatever the spin put on it by Israel and its supporters. Billions of Chinese, Indians and Africans will likely agree with the Arab street. In today’s globalized world, this would be a sorry result for Israel’s existential struggles. Few people outside the West understand the justice of Israel’s biblical right to Palestinian land or the legality of its war fighting. All understand televised...

All Barack Obama had to do to make history in America was to become the first black President in a country run mostly by whites who kept blacks down for centuries. But making history in the world will be a rougher ride. Experts need more time to fully study whether his victory means Americans have durably turned away from racism or it was mostly a wave of panic by voters stunned by the massive current crises of political, war and financial governance. Did they turn to him as a drowning person clutches...

A widely respected Indian astrologer living in Mumbai predicts that Barack Obama will be better for peace and prosperity in the world than American Presidents of the past four decades. He will succeed in bringing some useful solutions to the deluge of problems he faces around the world in addition to restoring a lot of America’s dented prestige among foreigners. Astrologer Bejan Daruwala says Obama’s main astrological trait is that he is capable of saving people from their own worst weaknesses....

Because of President-elect Barack Obama’s genuinely internationalist ambitions, the United Nations will be an indispensable backdrop for the first time in recent decades for the success of US foreign policy. The key foreign policy issues of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the financial and economic meltdown, climate change and energy use have global components coordinated mainly by the UN. On January 1, 2009, Iraq officially starts its post-American era under the agreement recently approved by the...

The recent bloody attacks in Mumbai, India, signal a clutching quicksand potentially more dangerous for President-elect Obama and his defense and foreign policy teams than the Middle Eastern wars or rising tensions with Russia. The main reason is the possibility of dirty nuclear weapons and crude biological weapon formulas falling into the hands of terrorists, as Pakistan slumps into deeper failures of government. Most dangerously, the more severely the terrorists are weakened by Pakistan’s...

I received this today from Karen Smadja, Information, Press & Cultural Affairs, Permanent Mission of Israel, 1-3, avenue de la Paix, 1202 Geneva Address by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the special Knesset session marking 13 years since the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin Jerusalem, 10 November 2008 Madam Speaker of the Knesset, Dalia Itzik, Honorable President of the State, Shimon Peres, President of the Supreme Court, Justice Dorit Beinish, Members of the Rabin Family, Members of the...

The only way President-elect Barack Obama can expect to live up to the hopes invested in him is to run all the risks on the side honesty. In his forthcoming press conference and speech, he should tell the people about sacrifices he expects from them to rebuild America as well as how he plans to honor his many promises especially for the economy. Obama’s resounding victory demonstrates that the old politics of social divides and religious and nationalist fervor is being replaced by the new will...

This truly is a time of hope for the world. For the first time in decades, ordinary Americans of the kind who work hard every day and earn little money have demonstrated how noble and common sense a democratic process can be. Obama is not transformational or even an agent of change. The people who brought him this success are transformational. They are the change. He is their symbol. He is the repository of their collective hope that the change they caused through their actions during the campaign...

As America’s global elections draw to a close, every news outlet and television network is reporting the polls with details similar to those given to national elections in their own countries. The great excitement is about the possibility of a black politician rising to US President. Much less is being said about policy differences between the Obama-Biden and John McCain-Sarah Palin tickets. It is hard to say whether this focus is a compliment to Americans or a comment on the widespread belief...