Senator Barack Obama will get a much warmer welcome in Europe than in Israel after his fact finding trips to Iraq and Afghanistan but the honeymoon could be short-lived were he to become President. The people in Germany, France and other countries are enthusiastic about Obama because having anyone other than George Bush in the White House would be a relief. Many would like to see Obama there because he is young and charismatic and thinks more like them about international issues. For many Europeans,...

Iran’s goal seems to be to bait Israel into quickly making precision attacks on its nuclear installations before diplomatic options are exhausted. Its apparently irrational regime may think the mess in the region will be so great that it will obtain even bigger gains in political influence than those from the debacle in Iraq. So it is deftly buying time through diplomacy and has received another prolongation of deadlines to halt its nuclear fuel enrichment activities. This concession was won a...

It is wishful thinking for Americans of any political hue to expect that Barack Obama or John McCain will be able to fight terrorism quite differently from George Bush, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere. His shoot-from-the-hip policies have created long term cages that make it almost impossible for the US to change course regardless of hope-filled audacity. The fact is that post-Bush terrorism has no purely military or non-military solution. Victory will come, if ever, from the right mix...

An air strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities will shatter both Washington’s credibility in world affairs and its own long term security. The intensified chatter that Israel may act before the November election or soon afterwards should be cause for consternation to all its supporters. Whatever Teheran’s rhetoric of peace, we should work on the premise that it is covertly developing nuclear warheads capable of reaching as far as Western Europe within 5-15 years. Undoubtedly, that...

As Barack Obama and John McCain haggle over immigration and reasons for the energy mess, they are sticking their heads in the sand about the real problem. That problem is the growing loss of faith among Americans in their ability to face the future as they struggle with consumer debt that has risen to $14 trillion from $8 trillion during George Bush’s sojourn in the White House. The need now is not for slogans about hope or “Change we can believe in”. It is to rebuild the people’s ability...

Rivals Barack Obama and John McCain agree on one thing – that persistence of $4-a-gallon gasoline will damage their electoral prospects. Obama democrats often place the blame on Big Oil, speculators and price gougers while McCain’s people blame controls on drilling offshore or in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Both sides agree that the US has compelling reasons both economic and geopolitical to sharply reduce its use of oil and import less from the unstable Middle East. Many from both...

An Obama-Clinton ticket has numerous pitfalls. On the plus side, it would be a like a surgical incision that in a single stroke removes the early-stage cancer caused to America’s high standing in the world by the Bush regime’s short-sighted hubris. This piece looks at the plus. Subsequent contributions will attempt to describe pitfalls. The damage done to America’s place in the world is like a cancer that spreads to unexpected locations unless it is caught early and excised. This remark is...

Now comes the hard part. Barack Obama has moved up from being underdog to the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party by humbling the Party’s first family of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Hopefully, the somewhat narcissistic focus of Primary season watchers on the Democratic Party’s internal squabbles will now widen to issues that really matter for America and the world. Yes, some of the squabbling was unseemly since it involved a white woman from America’s equivalent of royalty, however...

With near certainty now that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee, even doubters should accept that there is a fundamental current of change within the US to overcome the dark chapters of its history of racial discrimination. If he defeats John McCain in November, the message American voters will send to the world will echo Martin Luther King’s dream of having a country where a person is judged by his character and worth rather than skin color or origin. This should be cause for satisfaction...

The Dalai Lama is a holy person first and a politician second. It is worth remembering this during his visits to Seattle and elsewhere in America, in the current emotionally charged atmosphere over China’s Olympic Games. When I met him in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama said his mind was on “Shoonya”, a Sanskrit word for emptiness experienced as profound serenity. It was in 1990 and he was coming to terms with China’s suppression of uprisings in which several hundred people died. He subsequently...

The emerging shape of battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is not reassuring. Obama won hearts because he filled them with hope for an America marked by cleaner politics and more ethical interaction with the world. Clinton won many minds by making those who worry about America’s enemies and economic troubles feel that she offers a more masterly set of hands at the tiller. She played dirty but Barack kept the high road until the shocks of Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. It now seems that...

Many optimists think Main Street voters have moved beyond the “Guess who’s coming to dinner” syndrome of 1967. They think that all Barack Hussein Obama Jr. must do to win the Oval Office is to compete fairly and squarely with Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Among other arguments, they point to the support of white voters for Obama in Georgia and several other states on Super Tuesday and later in Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington. I would love to be persuaded but fear their optimism is like...

Celebrating his near equality with Hillary Clinton after Super Tuesday, Barack Obama said in Chicago that there are many rounds to fight in the remaining fierce competition but “we’re turning out to be a scrappy little team.” He will need every bit of brawl heading into contests in Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska, Maine, Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Wisconsin and Hawaii later this month. Whatever his successes, his audacity of hope image may take a battering in coming months...

Will Super Tuesday be transformational and “get America going again” (in the words of John F. Kennedy)? The conventional wisdom of the moment among political pundits is that Americans are crying for change. Voters are fed up and disappointed and want to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and feel that the President they choose to rule the world is honest, ethical and moral. Most of this hope is reposed in Barack Obama. His uprightness, appeal to the high road of ideals, flights of poetry...

Heading towards Super Tuesday, Pakistan has dropped off the radar of the primaries although it is the most likely place for the next civil war between Islamic terrorists and civilians. It might even become a cause of war with India and near total loss of American influence in the entire region. Terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists supported by the Taliban and Al Qaeda has spread almost all across Pakistan. Terrorists killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and have attacked Air Force and Army...

The Republican Party’s disarray heading into the Florida primary and the recent return to favor of John McCain in the polls is causing fear in some European quarters and relief in others. Most Europeans are against the Iraq war and they fear that McCain will prefer to score some kind of victory in Iraq rather than withdraw to cut losses, regardless of what happens on the ground. Others think he might bring some sanity into US policy by drawing down the war and turning more energetically to regional...

Europeans are watching the run up to Super Tuesday with a mixture of trepidation and bemusement after Barack Obama’s overwhelming win in South Carolina, where he captured 80% of the black vote. There is trepidation because the person and party that rule America have an extraordinary influence on the fate of Europeans, who are close military and economic allies of the US. Bemusement because the primaries are turning into a circus at which the audience sits in nail-biting tension waiting to see...

Climate change has slipped off the radar of both Democrats and Republicans as they enter the Primaries and election year 2008. Al Gore’s tirade against Bush may have delighted delegates at last December’s Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, but had little concrete impact on the politics of the US elections. How we treat Mother Earth, on whose health all of us depend for survival and progress, seems to mean little to Presidential hopefuls. They continue to fight for votes mainly on other platforms...

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has shed his army uniform and says he will allow free and fair democratic elections in January 2008 after ending the current martial law in mid-December 2007. Whatever happens will bring little change b ecause the current upheavals in Pakistan are not a bloody choice between democracy and political stability under a military dictator. They are the suffering of people caught between the hammer of a violent force rising in world Islam and the anvil of various secular...

Chinese President Hu Jintao has left the world guessing as to his foreign policy beliefs by playing his cards very close to the chest at the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist party. The Congress is the forum where the rulers of China gather to establish their pecking order and set policy guidelines for the next few years. His only visible move was to consolidate his power for the next five years and name new protegés to the nine-person Politburo Standing Committee, which stands at...

Iraq is not the only oil war at this time. New political battles for oil and gas are emerging as tensions rise between Western oil and gas conglomerates and the governments of non-Western countries, which are major future suppliers of these vital resources. The latest shock to the Western oil majors came from new measures begun this week in Kazakhstan to unilaterally violate international energy contracts, if its government decides that foreign companies are not obeying the rules. In Russia, a new...

With naïve carelessness, the United States is moving towards a new generational Cold War that may be the turning point in unraveling American leadership of the modern world. Pax Americana may be the shortest ever in the history of empires. The administration, media, politicians and a large swathe of electors are working themselves into an anti-Iranian frenzy and speedily moving towards a long era of hostility to that country. The US may never bomb Iran or conduct any other military act against...

President George Bush’s desire, stated in his televised address, to retain a long term military presence in Iraq to create and stabilize a permanent ally of the United States is likely to make Americans less secure over time. That insecurity will come not just from Al Qaeda, which has repeatedly vowed to push the US out of the region and will not hesitate to orchestrate massive attacks on the US homeland. It may also come from various State powers in the area. Obviously, Iran and Syria will...

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has laid a very skilful trap for President George Bush’s plans to place the beginnings of an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect Western Europe against a possible attack by Iran or North Korea. By suggesting that the shield should be located on a Russian military base in Azerbaijan, Putin has challenged Bush to protect all countries west of Iran and not just its Western allies. Further, he is trying to trick Bush into putting the shield...

A strategic shift in the balances that are currently keeping the peace between Russia and the West may be triggered at the G8 Summit in Germany from June 6-8, 2007. At first glance, the Summit looks innocent enough with German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeking attention for climate change and more equity in global economic relations between rich and poor countries. She is trying to steer clear of the emerging sets of strategic uncertainties menacing the horizon. But tensions are palpable and her skilful...