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...

The likelihood is growing of a stalemate in Afghanistan between the Hamid Karzai administration backed by NATO military power and the Taliban, other Jihadi and al Qaeda forces operating mainly out of safe havens in Pakistan.  The effect of such a stalemate would be a de facto defeat for NATO in its first operation so far outside its traditional European territories. Creating and perpetuating a stalemate requires simply that the Taliban and its supporters prevent Karzai from establishing physical...

I would like to thank all of you for giving attention to my posts. My purpose is to widen debate at the American center so that impacts on non-Americans of US foreign policies are factored into the heat of domestic politics. US policies impact heavily on non-Americans and the costs of being on the wrong side of the super power are very high. This is regardless of who occupies the White House. Blogs offer a channel to make inputs before the policies are framed. They allow us to think together...

Speculation is growing in America and around the world that the Bush administration might take military action against Iran in the near future. Thinking through this possibility should go beyond the usual partisan arguments of Washington about Iranian interference in Iraq and the security of Israel. Taking on Iran would be a first step to a new kind of world war. American analysts are looking upon Iran as a Shia vs. Sunni affair and appear to be much too sanguine about its ability to withstand...

American foreign policy under George Bush and Condoleezza Rice is turning into an incubator of civil conflicts while being absent in other spheres, where it could do some good. The US is not a prime cause of internal conflicts but it is helping to turn the smoldering embers of old hatreds among local tribes and sects into blazing violence. Since World War II, US foreign policy was the world’s indispensable peacemaker. It helped to save more lives and aid more people than can be counted. It...

  The chief premise underlying George Bush’s new policy of surge and benchmarks for Iraq is that absent military security, the Baghdad government will fall and the entire country will collapse into unrestrained civil war that could seed wider regional conflict. The core argument is, “If we do not make sacrifices now we will have to return there later under much worse conditions and after much more Iraqi suffering. We may also be attacked in the homeland.� These opinions deserve...

In working out steps forward in Iraq in the coming days, it is worth reviewing the US model of leadership in a part of the world that does not share its history of civilization. As Washington struggles to find a new approach, training the Iraqi army, police and administration is an option on which there is agreement across the American political spectrum. This is based on the premise that Americans have things to teach Iraqis about war, governance, law and order, and peace. Many Americans were taken...

There can be a start to a solution to the Iraq mess if Washington truly considers thinking out of the box to see what might be best for the Iraq’s unfortunate people rather than how to lighten the load on America. There can be a start to a solution to the Iraq mess if Washington truly considers thinking out of the box to see what might be best for the Iraq’s unfortunate people rather than how to lighten the load on America. The starting point is to trust Iraqis to find their own solutions...

Washington is giving serious thought to sending more than 20,000 troops to Baghdad mainly to militarily defeat the Mahdi militia of the nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This could be America’s greatest blunder so far and also cause the world to see it as an act of desperation. Supporters of this option hope it would strengthen Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s hands by removing a main obstacle to political deals among Iraqis. That would help to stabilize the country within...

The United Nations might be the only international partner capable of offering the Bush administration a face-saving device to exit from Iraq without seeming to be defeated. On January 1, 2007, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General many American conservatives loathe, will hand over to Ban Ki-Moon of Korea. During the election process, Ban, whose country is a close US ally, received firm support from John Bolton, the outgoing US Ambassador to the UN. The unassuming Ban is a consensus builder and consummate...

The search for a dignified exit from Iraq, while ensuring some amount of stability to prevent all-out civil war is a central question both for US foreign policy and countries in the region. Nobody has the answers but calls for diplomacy are becoming more insistent within the US, while European and other countries are urging the White House to deal with the Iraq issue within a wider framework of peace for the region. In time, various solutions will emerge but a successful start to the search requires...

With the fog of elections out of the way, the world is sighing with relief that the shortsighted cabal led by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld has met its Waterloo. But their successors are not necessarily wiser although they do favor different tactics to achieve key foreign policy goals. European observers expect political deadlock and squabbling in both Congress and Senate. There is little reason to believe that the sun of bi-partisan decision-making has suddenly dawned on Washington. There has...

In a few short years, American legislators have shot their country in the foot so many times that its moral, economic, political and military influence in world affairs is unlikely to recover for decades. In fact, it may never recover since other major nations are not sitting idle while America weakens from within. A main reason for this growing weakness is the state of US democracy. Seen from the outside, the American people are stuck in a quagmire of “democracy fatigue�. Polls show...

The cut and run from Iraq has already begun, whatever the spin put on this process by the White House. This is the opinion emerging among key Asians and Europeans familiar with Iraq and the Middle East. What is meant by cut and run? It is abandonment of an undertaking before completion because the losses or obstacles are so many that it is better to cut one’s losses and let the whole thing go. The often-stated purposes of the US presence in Iraq were to provide a democracy-based political...

North Korea has brought the international community to the brink of war. Either it must be punished or Washington, its allies and friends have to eat humble pie. That may happen because American military power is useless in this context. The US could destroy North Korea utterly but South Korea would suffer extensive destruction from the North’s conventional missiles. Worse, thousands of American soldiers might die on South Korean bases before leaving their compounds. North Korea has just...