As Clausewitz explained, war is an extension of politics by other means. His maxim is certainly true today, and no current affairs journal would be complete without an in-depth look into the realm of conflict and diplomacy that shapes international relations and internal politics.
The change in Iraq from a US military-led effort to a joint Iraqi-US political-diplomatic enterprise is one of the most complex transitions in history. Those involved confront a myriad security, economic and political challenges. But if it succeeds, the transition could result in a major improvement in the lives of the Iraqi people, as well as an end to the historically confrontational relationship between the governments in Baghdad and Washington.
The fact that Afghanistan has big reserves of various mineral resources, as announced over the least few years, says little about the future prospects of the country’s economy. As things stand, corruption is very likely to undermine the potential benefits to the generality of the Afghan population that could arise from exploration of these resources. Corruption in Afghanistan has become a way of life.
The greater Middle East represents a big challenge for the Atlantic Alliance. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are all issues of great concern for the allies. The question is: Does NATO have the right approach to deal with all these different scenarios?
Organizations will inevitably try to recruit members and increase their influence, so what makes Inspire, Al-Qaeda’s new magazine, and Mleeta, Hezbollah’s theme park resort a cause of concern? The shock that both the magazine and the theme park have inspired originate from the fact that as extremist organizations their ideologies don’t have an obvious “mass appeal.” What if that changes as a result of these initiatives?
The excellent relationship between Jordan and the United States has become strained during their year-long negotiations over a proposed bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement. Jordanians want to use their recently discovered uranium to make fuel for their planned nuclear reactors, while Americans are seeking to impede further nuclear weapons proliferation. A compromise would be to allow Jordan to lead an international center that would provide uranium fuel to the entire Middle East.
The success of the ICC's June conference itself should not be assessed solely on the negotiations on whether to add the crime of aggression to the court's docket. The ICC members came into their own in Kampala as a community of states united to fight impunity. Debate planted the seeds for revitalizing discussion of cooperation, including when it comes to assisting the court in arrests. If the promise of Kampala to put a priority back on bringing to justice those responsible for the world’s worst crimes is realized, it will be a legacy well worth having.
Although soldiers are trained to fight conventional wars, the American counterinsurgency in Afghanistan resembles a peacekeeping effort more than anything else. The values that counterinsurgency efforts depend on are not those that soldiers are trained to appreciate. Given this contradiction and the US’s questionable successes in Afghanistan, it is time to review what our expectations are of a military that is doing a job it was trained explicitly not to do.
Among the several previews to the recently released US National Security Strategy, Brennan once more highlighted that the new document marks the end of the “war on terror.” Dropping the expression that proved so damaging to the US image and interests is certainly a welcome development, but more needs to be done to permanently bury a view of the world that only breeds more extremism.
The decisions by China and Russia to support the fourth sanctions resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council demonstrate the extent to which Tehran has alienated its former partners. These two countries have also decided to curtail other ties with Iran, largely in response to refusal of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime to address international concerns about its nuclear ambitions.
It is no coincidence that Afghanistan’s first major peace conference did not go well. The central players involved are geared for more war, and all the incentives point that way. Even the withdrawal of foreign troops, publicly pointed out by Karzai as a preliminary and essential condition for peace, is not going to happen by 2011. The Afghan president more than anyone else needs the NATO and US troops to stay.
Suicide bombings as a tactic can be traced back to the early 1980s. If one takes into consideration suicidal actions in combat that are very similar in nature to suicide bombings, then they can be traced back to the Second World War, and even to the eighteenth century. However there seems to be something exclusively characteristic of the suicide bombings carried out by Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.
How is geopolitical power expressed at a global scale? Relations between US, China, Israel and Japan demonstrate the leverage their respective leaders have and the pressure they can exert over one another. Netanyahu and Hu Jintao have played their hands best. Obama has been beaten, constrained, but still has global leverage, and Yukio Hatoyama was constantly on the losing end.
A global survey shows a steep decline in US approval ratings in Muslim countries
As many regional variables begin to play into the future defi nition of Saudi-US ties, the formula that was once used to characterize their rapport no longer applies writes Caryle Murphy
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A brilliantly well-measured piece of thought-provoking reflection which should merit the attention a ...
Dr. Kwaku Asante-Darko at Aug 18, 2010 5:36 PM
I believe that egypt has to
1. Free its dependency on US for aid.
2. Have an assertive pol
...
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