The Good News Pinochet Missed

Most Pakistanis support their military regime, according to a recent survey. And their neighbors, Indians, too, seem quite fascinated themselves.
The Thai generals seem to be enjoying similar admiration. Someone should have polled Thais.
What could this entail for the rest of the world? Are military regimes back in fashion as bulwarks against other authoritarian entities. Could the Iraqi and Afghan armies be deemed guarantors of stability?
In places outwardly too refined for the military to directly control the levers of power, the generals could probably back their own parties and politicians. After all, it was the Army Times editorial and collective criticisms from retired generals that sealed Donald Rumsfeld's fate long before the Democrats captured Congress from the GOP.
Turkey is a case where the military guarantees democratic stability -- as long as the politicians avoid injecting religion into statecraft. With Iran dead-set on acquire nuclear weapons, maybe the generals could emerge as an acceptable and modernist alternative to the mullahs.
Perhaps more and more retired generals could contest elections in places other than Israel.
The philosophical dimensions, too, could become clearer. If a state feels it needs institutionalized coercive powers to defend itself against adversaries, maybe the same force could be used to protect itself from within.
The saddest part of this survey is that poor Pinochet couldn't live to hear this.

Bicycling Our Way Out Of Iraq

[H]istorians will look back and say, “How come Bush and Blair couldn't see the threat?” That’s what they'll be asking.

It was one of those moments when Bush truly bared his soul.
Ever since the Democrats won the congressional elections last month, Bush has been bending over backward and running as fast as he can to accommodate the opposition. Bits and pieces of the Iraq Study Group leaked to the press gradually piled pressure on the White House. He even praised the Baker-Hamilton recommendations with scant regard to the morale of the military risking their lives and limbs in Iraq, although he was careful to rebuff some of them.
Was the commander in chief becoming the cut-and-run chief by proxy? Was legacy becoming more precious to Bush than victory in a war he staked his entire presidency on? Was he using the election results to trade America’s national security for securing his place in history?
If the Bush we saw Thursday is what we’re going to see over the next two years of his presidency, then there still is hope for those who believe in the genuineness of the Iraq war.
The premise of the WMD threat proved to be wrong. The democracy project is faltering to the point of failure. Saddam Hussein may have redeemed himself in the eyes of some of his most scathing critics. Yet there is one purpose of the Iraq war that Bush should have been candid about from the start: Oil-linked national security.
America can still withdraw from Iraq in humiliation. The plunge in the morale of the world’s most powerful military may not spell doom for the country. Isolationism can be accepted as a policy option once again. The Islamofascists may even leave us alone. But what are we going to do about oil?
The Democrats and the environmental kooks aren’t going to let us drill in Alaska or anywhere else. Even if they did, could the American economy sustain the price of oil? Would American consumers be prepared to pay $5 per gallon at the pump?
There’s a way to find out. Maybe Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic brigade should bicycle their way to the new session of Congress next year. The Republicans who have gone into hibernation after the ISG report became public would want to join in in a true bipartisan spirit. Then ordinary Americans, consumed by guilt over our consumption of cheap oil ensured through the death, destruction and debris we inflict half a world away, may catch the habit.
If that happens, we could then rejuvenate the bicycle industry through federal subsidies – boosting employment. A fortress America fortified by a missile defense system would do us good, barring, perhaps, that giant asteroid we might miss.
Maybe we should pull out of Iraq.

Not Out Of The Woods Just Yet

AMID the gloom surrounding the future of the world’s forests comes some assurance that the situation might not be that bad after all.
Adopting a new technique for measuring the state of the world’s forests, an international team of researchers suggests the world could be approaching a “turning point” from deforestation. Forests cover 30 percent of the world’s total land area, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The world’s trees store 283 gigatonnes of carbon, 50 percent more than there is in the atmosphere. The 13 million hectares that are cleared each year have left conservationists and nature enthusiasts seriously pondering the fallout on global warming.
In a departure from the almost exclusive focus on the size of a forest area, the new study includes such other components as biomass and the amount of carbon stored. When the researchers applied this technique to data from the FAO’s Global Forest Assessment report, they discovered that forest stocks had actually expanded over the past 15 years in 22 of the world’s 50 most forested nations.
They also showed increases in biomass and carbon storage capacity in about half of the 50 countries. However, the data also revealed that forest area and biomass were still in decline in Brazil and Indonesia, home to some of the world’s most important rainforests.
From the lucrative international timber trade to the growing demand for farmland and firewood, economics has fueled deforestation. The study focuses primarily on the status of forests in relation to the problems of atmospheric pollution.
The wider imperative of conserving flora and fauna – many on the brink of extinction -- requires emphasis on strengthening natural habitats and local ecosystems. Safeguarding the hydrologic cycle and preventing soil erosion and landslides, too, require attention on specific regions and factors beyond biomass and the amount of carbon stored.
Tempting as it is to be complacent, the latest findings should encourage greater efforts towards strengthening sustainable forest cover.

Global Graft And Poverty Predicament

Transparency International’s 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index has underscored the traditional poverty-corruption nexus. A composite ranking that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys that poll perceptions of public sector corruption in 163 countries, this year’s index is more exhaustive than its predecessor’s.
As in the past, impoverished countries dominate the cluster of countries considered most corrupt, with Haiti at the very bottom of the list. Developed countries are deemed the planet’s cleanest, with Finland, Iceland and New Zealand tied on the top spot. On closer observation, the poverty-corruption linkage may not appear so conclusive. At No. 20, the United States fares somewhere close to Chile. At No. 45, Italy provides a more compelling case of the prevalence of corruption in the absence of poverty.
Theoretically, TI’s definition of corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain – encompasses a wide range of activities, many of which go beyond financial considerations. Cultural variations, moreover, tend to preclude the establishment of universal standards. Some societies may be more tolerant of practices others consider unacceptable.
In some countries, public apathy at the endurance of corruption may have contributed to a grudging acceptance. Reassuringly, TI does not encourage the use of its indicators as a condition for aid disbursements. Yet the international donor community, exasperated by the misappropriation of aid money, would be tempted to ignore TI’s stipulations. Amid a growing list of countries competing for international assistance, nations at the bottom of the TI index are at a conspicuous psychological disadvantage.
International organizations like TI, in partnership with civil society organizations and the media within countries, have thrust the anti-corruption campaign to the forefront of national priorities. Concerted and sustained action toward holding governments accountable to their commitments on transparency and good governance would contribute.
The people living in countries at the bottom of the TI index are already victims of the corruption and misrule perpetrated by their governments. They must not be punished further by efforts – well meaning – to restrict their access to international assistance.

Sri Lanka: Warriors Or Peacemakers?

Are Sri Lanka’s main belligerents at war or at peace?
The question has become more important after Sri Lanka’s ruling party and the opposition agreed to work together towards a political settlement to the island’s bloody ethnic fighting which has claimed more than 60,000 lives.
Welcome as the development is, it only covers one of the country’s two major protagonists.
The Tamil Tigers’ suicide bombings on navy targets earlier this month, which killed nearly 100 sailors, made it difficult to believe that they were preparing to meet with government representatives in Geneva later in the month.
The ferocity of the Sri Lankan air force’s bombing campaign in the east raised similar doubts about the definition of peacemaking the Colombo government has adopted.
The peace process launched four years ago, after 28 years of civil war that claimed over 60,000 people, seemed promising. The 2002 ceasefire – the pivot of the peace process – lies in tatters. More than 1,000 people have died since violence surged in April. Some 220,000 have been displaced, mostly Tamils and Muslims in the north and east of the country, where the Tamil Tigers are fighting for an independent homeland.
It is easy to blame President Mahinda Rajapakse for the dissipation of conciliation. After all, he won power last year after taking a hard line against the conciliatory former premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man with whom he sealed that unity accord this week.
Rajapakse, to be sure, exploited Sinhalese fears that Wickremesinghe concessions to the rebels risked splitting the country. Yet Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran seemed fed up with the peace process long before Rajapakse arrived on the scene.
The Tamil Tigers launched violent attacks while Wickremesinghe was in office. By preventing pro-Wickremesinghe Tamils from casting their ballots in last year’s election, Prabhakaran virtually ensured Rajapakse’s triumph.
Despite the latest peace moves, Colombo is said to be planning to double defense spending to $1.3 billion next year. The rebels, for their part, have been warning in every way they can that conciliation cannot mean capitulation.
The best hope for peace is that neither side wants to be the first to announce a return to a full-scale war.

Either Way, Kim Jong-il Wins

Was it or wasn’t it? Did Kim Jong-il test a nuclear weapon and set off tremors seismologists in different countries measured so wildly differently?
Or did the eccentric North Korean leader mix tons of TNT with a cocktail of components intended to throw all those machines off course?
For Kim, at least, it makes no difference. Even before an official confirmation, critics were competing with one another to denounce North Korea’s brazen defiance of international opinion.
The rare admirer – like Iran – was no less effusive in praising the world’s last Stalinist outpost for standing up to the Americans.
When – or, more appropriately, if – it becomes conclusively known what triggered the tremors, what does the world do?
Repeat the same ritual of condemnations that would have lost its efficacy? Or simply withdraw the criticism should it be confirmed that Kim fooled the critics?
And Iran? Obviously it has the least to lose from any revelation that Kim’s nukes are a dud?
What if the test was for real? President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would have an opportunity to reiterate support for Kim’s defiance of America laced with mockery of the primitiveness of the sole superpower’s mastery of the seismology. (And thereby encourage Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to step in with his two cents?)
If Kim is insane, as some have suggested but most seem to believe, he makes a poor job of proving it.
Remember the missile test he conducted a couple of months ago? That prompted even the Democrats to position themselves as ardent champions of President George W. Bush’s missile defense program ahead of the November mid-term elections.
Those tests forced many to wonder how a government that can’t afford to feed its people pursue advanced defense programs through purchases on the black market?
If Kim kept his people hungry to save money for the nuclear and missile programs, then how could North Koreans still endure the pristine form of a system that has become a relic of human monstrosity in the rest of the world?
But how many people recall that the missile tests had failed? Either way, Kim wins.

The Stalin Connection

The latest flare-up in the troubled ties between Russia and Georgia may have subsided somewhat after Tblisi handed over four Russian military officers it had detained on espionage charges to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The next eruption may come any time.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have taken a turn for the worse since the Rose Revolution catapulted pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili into power almost three years ago.
Moscow, which strenuously seeks to keep most of its fellow former Soviet states within its sphere of influence, believes a recalcitrant Georgia could sent the wrong message across the ‘near abroad’. It has been particularly swift and sweeping in its retaliation against Georgian transgressions, compared to those of other ex-Soviet constituents.
Describing the arrest of its soldiers as ‘state terrorism,’ Russia has cut off air, rail, bus, sea and postal communications, and has declined to purchase Georgian parts for locomotives. It is threatening further economic sanctions and stopping remittances from the more than 300,000 Georgians working in Russia.
Georgia, for its part, accuses Russia of backing the secessionist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of its effort to keep the small nation in its firm grip. The Saakashvili government has been able to defy Moscow because it is confident of winning American support if push came to shove.
Admittedly, the stakes in region are significant for the West. Georgia and Azerbaijan form a gateway linking the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and are vital for the control of Central Asia’s massive fossil resources. Georgia's location is vital to NATO’s ability to secure the Black Sea region. For the United States, Georgia provides a platform to project power toward the Middle East.
Yet the Georgian president may have overplayed his hand this time. NATO’s refusal to be drawn into the dispute, along with a realization of the possible negative fallout of an escalation on Georgia’s local elections, may have persuaded Saakashvili to relent.
Yet the essential question remains. Why is Moscow so sensitive in its dealings with Georgia? Could there be a psychological dimension? After all, Joseph Stalin, the most dreaded Soviet leader whose legacy today’s Russia endures, was a Georgian.

NATO’s Afghan Test

When NATO stepped out of its regional jurisdiction in 2003 to lead the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, those running the organization had no illusions about the gravity of their task.
In its first military mission outside the Euro-Atlantic region, the North Atlantic Alliance faces a formidable opponent in a resurgent Taleban. NATO’s objectives are to assist the government of President Hamid Karzai in its efforts to rebuild and stabilize the country. Initially, NATO was present in the north and west of the country, as well as in the capital city, Kabul. However, at the end of July, NATO forces took over control from American troops in southern Afghanistan – the homeland of the Taleban, ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.
Since taking over military operations in southern Afghanistan, NATO has encountered fierce resistance from Taleban fighters. Attacks on NATO troops have increased and casualties have mounted on both sides. The insurgents are showing an offensive capacity that has caught NATO by surprise.
They have economics and geography on their side. The southern-most provinces -- particularly Kandahar and Helmand -- are the principal areas of drug production. Moreover, the region borders the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Blood ties are no doubt thicker. Pakistan, moreover, has been less enthusiastic in its anti-Taleban campaign than in its drive against Al Qaeda.
All this has precipitated a sense of disquiet among many European governments, something that would surely grow as casualties mount. A recent request by senior NATO officials for more troops met a lukewarm response. Only Poland agreed to provide 1,000 soldiers, who won’t be available before February. Moreover, they are not expected to patrol the southern provinces.
There is a lot at stake for NATO in Afghanistan. Success in defeating the Taleban and in securing the government of President Karzai could set the stage for further global operations. Yet NATO is already committed in many operations around the globe, including Kosovo and Iraq. With new hot spots emerging regularly, mobilizing additional personnel and assets would prove to be a huge challenge. Much depends on the outcome in Afghanistan.

A Coup And A King

The calmness with which Thais responded to this week’s military coup must not lull the generals into complacency. Cleaning up the mess they accused Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of creating would require a degree of determination and dexterity few juntas in history have been able to muster.
To be sure, Thaksin was one of Thailand’s most popular and successful politicians. He emerged when the country really needed a strong-willed leader in the aftermath of the 1997-98 East Asian financial crisis. Thaksin presided over the resurgence of what has certainly become one of Asia’s most formidable economies.
Although he continued to command the loyalty of rural Thais, Thaksin’s style alienated his political opponents and urban voters. Sustained protests in Bangkok and other cities against the premier’s alleged financial irregularities involving his billion dollar family fortune compelled Thaksin to hold early elections. An opposition boycott and technical hitches subverted the vote. Under sustained pressure from the streets earlier this year, Thaksin had made a clear pledge to quit power. However, he remained firmly in the saddle.
Amid the polarization, King Bhumibol Adulyadej appealed for restraint and reason. Although Thais had experienced 17 coups since the 1930s, the prospect of another one was hardly on many people’s minds.
Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, the army chief, insists his takeover enjoys the blessings of the widely revered monarch. Bhumibol’s silence over the crisis suggests that may be the case. But for how long?
Gen. Sonthi has pledged to hand over power to a civilian administration as soon as possible. But, then, no military ruler has insisted he was in for the long haul. Once an interim government is in place and fresh elections are held in a year under a new constitution, the army will have to return to the barracks. The legitimacy as well as the viability of the process would ultimately depend on the degree of cooperation Thai political parties extend to the military leaders.

A Long-Running Love-Hate Saga

The attack on the American Embassy in Damascus has fixed the spotlight on the complicated relations between the two countries. The preeminent Arab rejectionist during decades of US-driven Middle East peacemaking, Syria has always benefited from one odd American ability: the juxtaposition of its antipathy for the Baathist regime with its eagerness to cultivate it as a serious partner.
American secretaries of state hardly complained when they were left waiting for hours in Damascus for an audience with the wily Hafez Al Assad. American presidents easily took time off in Vienna or Geneva from their extended global travels to meet the Syrian leader.
During the first Gulf War, Assad’s tacit support for the US-led campaign to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait played a major part in granting the mission the legitimacy of Arab support. There is reason to believe that a Syrian-Israeli peace treaty might have been pulled off had Assad lived a little longer.
Bashar Al Assad’s elevation to the presidency brought a whiff of optimism. The generational newness the new leader brought to his job could only benefit the relationship. Bashar Assad’s eye for the change sweeping the world around Syria could only precipitate those much needed reforms.
But Bashar not only retained the old guard his father carefully cultivated, he also shed few of the repressiveness of the regime. Still, many rosy-eyed analysts remained hopeful that the former ophthalmologist would come out with a modern vision for the region. There is considerable speculation that an initiative toward formal Syrian-Israeli peace may be in the works at this very moment.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Syrian authorities for their handling of the embassy attack, and expressed her condolences for the death of the Syrian security officer. A press statement from the Syrian Embassy in Washington was hardly conciliatory. “It is regrettable that US policies in the Middle East have fueled extremism, terrorism and anti-US sentiment,” it said. That must have been posturing, given the kind of pressure Damascus is from Washington. US officials didn’t seem too bothered by Syria’s roughness either.
Listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, Syria continues to figure high in the imperatives of Washington’s Mideast diplomacy. Unofficial sources suggest that Syria has dramatically expanded the extent of its cooperation with the US-led war on Al Qaida in recent years.
We are told this cooperation included the reported US submission of questions for an al-Qaida figure in Syrian custody in 2002; Syria’s 2003 arrest of Al Qaida couriers allegedly carrying $23.5 million; and Syrian support for Lebanese security activities against Al Qaida-linked groups in 2003 that prevented attacks on US interests and the US ambassador to Lebanon.
In public, the mood continues be one of defiance. The US withdrew its ambassador to Damascus following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al Hariri in February 2005. Early reports from a UN probe into the killing implicated top Syrian officials – perhaps even Bashar Assad – in the murder plot. Lebanese popular pressure forced Syria to pull its troops from its neighbor.
Syria, together with Iran, sprung back into action this year through its Hezbollah proxy. Syrian support for Hezbollah during the massive Israeli attacks may even have erased some of the Lebanese people’s hostility.
Doubtless, the US and Syria have a mutual interest in preventing the rise of militant Sunni Islam. Washington, on the other hand, would love to drive Damascus and Teheran wide apart in the larger regional scheme of things.
Although some American officials, in the afterglow of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, called for regime change in Syria, the US seems to have been chastened – and not just by the Iraq quagmire. Washington knows that sudden convulsion could create a political vacuum the Muslim Brotherhood could exploit. Thus the love-hate relationship continues.

The Blair Ditch Project

Even in the midst of the most serious revolt against his leadership, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has held his ground. Although he does not intend to go on and on forever, Blair has always insisted, he cannot and will not offer a deadline for this departure because that would paralyze the government and the ruling Labour party. In his latest remarks on the subject, the prime minister has merely shortened his vision of incumbency. He certainly has disappointed those who see Labour’s renewal clearly rooted in an immediate change of leadership.
The punditocracy has long affirmed the profound extent to which Blair has lost control of his party. For Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer and Blair’s presumptive successor, those sustained utterances must have made the wait excruciatingly long. Amid reports of a shouting match between Blair and Brown, precipitated by the resignation of at least eight junior ministers, the chancellor chose to put up a public appearance of loyalty to his boss. Hours before Blair announced he would quit within the next 12 months, Brown told reporters that any decision on a departure should certainly be Blair’s to make. Behind that façade of fealty, Brown emphasized how much higher he regards his obligations to the party – no doubt a subtle suggestion to the premier.
In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, when Blair’s downhill slide accelerated, factional infighting was a luxury Labour could afford. With the Tories in almost perpetual disarray and the Liberal Democrats struggling to expand their base, Labour leaders knew voters had no alternative to putting up with an accumulation of scandals and double dealing in the ruling party.
In March, Blair sounded confident enough to suggest he might have made a “strategic” mistake by promising to step down before the next general election. Since then, the Tories’ remarkable gains in the local elections have intensified pressure on the prime minister. Now that he has made a more explicit commitment to step down, can Blair count on Brown’s full support for the remainder of his agenda? More importantly, can all this bitterness allow Brown to maintain an ability to implement the party agenda and to lead a united Labour to another electoral victory?

MADness On Iran

Now that Iran has used the latest United Nations deadline on its controversial nuclear program to reassert its legal right to enrichment under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the international community is mulling those elusive additional options.
The question is stark. Can anything stop Teheran, bolstered by growing oil revenues as well as the triumph of its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, over Israel, from accomplishing its ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons?
There probably was a time when the mullahs’ unpopularity had sustained the democracy movement. Now the democrats either support Iran’s nuclear program or are too afraid to challenge it. US troops on both flanks – Afghanistan in the east and Iraq in the west – have not deterred the theocracy. The Islamist revolution of 1979 has won a new lease on life that may keep it going for another generation.
Considering America’s dismal standing in the world, China and Russia would probably have blocked Washington’s efforts in the Security Council even without their commercial interests in Iran. The Europeans want to maintain the two-year-old fiction called dialogue with Teheran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the preeminent rabble-rouser in the region. What he says is certainly what Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini thinks. Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, wasn’t taken too seriously in Washington when he was in office. A tourist who happens to be a former president of Iran would hardly amount to much in Washington. In any case, the world wasn’t really sure whether Khatami genuinely was a reformer or just masquerading as one at a time when the Islamic regime was facing its worst crisis on the streets and in the central bank.
In public, the urgency of continued dialogue with Iran will continue to be stressed internationally. For a country in its 28th year amid empty talk of rewards and penalties, a sudden change of behavior would be irrational.
A little Cold War-type behavior would be in order -- specifically mutual assured destruction. Ahmadinejad wants to nuke Israel and wipe it off the map. Israel can use its nukes to deter the Iranian president. Ahmadinejad probably would like to nuke America too, but he hasn’t said so. As for the Europeans, he knows he would have, in the words of a perceptive observer, to nuke the Little Satan and Big Satan before targeting the Middle Satan. That’s the stick.
Iran essentially wants security guarantees and recognition as a legitimate regional power. The US can provide that carrot. A Shah-era anointment of Iran as the regional cop is not irrational as it might sound. Voices in favor of engaging with Teheran have grown in influential Washington circles. Moreover, Shiite Iran would prove an important ally against Bin Ladenism and other radical manifestations of anti-Americanism occurring from the rival Sunni Islamists.

Living With Chavez

From his stride and stridency, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is increasingly looking like the standard-bearer of the International Left his detractors have long claimed he has hungered for.
Chavez’s recent visits to Russia, Iran, Malaysia, Mali, Angola and China clearly reflected the resoluteness of his quest for global influence. If he gets that temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, you can expect the Chavez to amplify his attitudes and approach.
Of late, a growing number of realists have sought to play down the substance of the Chavez phenomenon. His incessant anti-American rhetoric may actually be driven by political compulsions at home. And his ability to hold America hostage by cutting off oil sales? Probably considerable. Yet recognition of that threat has given some way to a realization that the United States imports only about 12 percent of its petroleum needs from Venezuela. The United States, on the other hand, accounts for more than half of Venezuela’s oil receipts.
Chavez’s announcement last week of plans for a six-fold increase in oil sales to China over the next 10 years might have more bark than bite. For one thing, China currently imports only about two percent of its oil needs from Venezuela. Moreover, there are geographical and technical challenges to overcome before the trickle becomes a flow. Even if Caracas-induced pain were to bite the Americans, they could perhaps expect to get palliatives elsewhere. Chavez the economic threat might not be one worth losing sleep over.
What about Chavez the politician? The Venezuelan president has been achieving growing political influence in his neighborhood and other parts of the developing world. With anti-Americanism set to become the stock in trade for the foreseeable future, Chavez can expect to count on an expanding constituency.
Oil profits have funded Venezuela’s multibillion-dollar arms purchases from Russia, including jet fighters, military helicopters and assault rifles. As a former military man who still needs to nurture sections of that constituency, the imperative of re-equipping the armed forces cannot be overlooked, especially if it also means boosting Venezuelans pride in themselves. The downside, of course, is that Chavez operates in an environment where belligerency can break out at extremely short notice.
From another standpoint, the outlook is more assuring. The United States has lived with Cuba’s Fidel Castro for almost five decades. There should be few reasons to doubt its ability to coexist with his anointed successor.

Malaysia: An Opening For Anwar

Anwar Ibrahim, the disgraced former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, must be marveling at the sudden auspiciousness that seems to be coming his way. Tensions have escalating between former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and his designated successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
As a one-time Mahathir heir apparent, Anwar knows the price of insubordination. During the Asian financial meltdown nine years ago, Anwar suggested Malaysia should follow the International Monetary Fund’s road to recovery. That was something Mahathir had no patience for. Once Anwar fell out of Mahathir’s favor, he careened on a relentless course of legal woes ranging from sodomy to slush funds.
Abdullah, who replaced Anwar as Mahathir’s designated successor, was careful not to ruffle the boss’s feathers. Even after he rose to the top job three years ago, Abdullah continued to extend more than palpable deference. The assurance of office seems to have inspired Abdullah to make his own mark on Malaysia. He scrapped one of Mahathir’s pet projects -- a bridge between Singapore and Malaysia – triggering a war of words between the two.
Abdullah benefits from the fact that the ruling United Malays National Organization is divided on the bridge issue. Mahathir, for his part, understands how Abdullah has squandered much of his political capital through delays in implementing the anti-corruption policies he had once pledged. In this cleavage, Anwar sees a clear opportunity for his Keadilan party.
Although he was cleared of his sodomy conviction, Anwar is banned from standing for party office or for parliament until April 2008. Abdullah could use him to consecrate his final rupture with Mahathir and his power base.
If Abdullah is as serious as he sounds, he may be willing to pay the full price by lifting the ban on Anwar’s political activity. The whole realignment is likely to proceed slowly and quietly. If Anwar’s legal travails have taught him one thing, it is the virtue of patience.

Guenter Grass: Courage In Contrition

Former Polish President Lech Walesa wants German writer Guenter Grass to give up his honorary citizenship of Gdansk for having served in the Waffen SS. A seasoned left-wing campaigner and pacifist, Grass this weekend shocked the world by admitting he had been in the notorious elite force that underpinned one of the most abominable regimes known to humanity
Until now, it was only known that the Nobel Prizewinner had served as a soldier and was wounded and taken prisoner by US forces.
Grass was born in 1927 in Gdansk, then known as Danzig, the birthplace of Walesa's Solidarity movement, which began the final phase of the battle against Soviet communism. The Waffen SS was the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's notorious elite force, which expanded to nearly one million members during World War II.
The SS had a reputation for brutality toward soldiers and civilians in Nazi-occupied Europe. It ran the death camps in which millions of people - mostly Jews - were murdered.
For someone who wrote an acclaimed anti-Nazi novel -- The Tin Drum – Grass’s decades of silence smacked of dishonesty. Walesa, a Nobel peace laureate and honorary citizen of Gdansk, was right when he said the German author would never have received the honor had it been known he was in the SS.
Yet it is equally true that the world would not have known of Grass’ SS role had he not had the courage to acknowledge it. Burdened by this silence, Grass finally chose to speak. He told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had been drafted at the age of 17 into an SS tank division and had served in Dresden. Few details of his service are known other than that he had served in the Frundsberg Panzer Division after failing to get a posting in the submarine service. This much we know: Grass was no Heinrich Himmler.
Clearly, Grass has suffered immensely in silence for his dark past. The latest revelation certainly casts a shadow on his legacy. His contrition – courageous in no small measure – should count for something.

The Plot Thickens In Cuba

Even the most inveterate critic of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba must find the silence emanating from Havana disturbing. Raul, the brother to whom Fidel transferred his powers to five days ago, is yet to make a public appearance. Were the dancers in Miami premature or prescient?
Has Raul gone into hiding in an elaborate attempt to identify and liquidate rivals in an effort to consolidate power? Or has a third element, possibly from within the armed forces, taken over the island nation that has vexed nine American presidents? If so, who might that be?
It seems easier to believe that Fidel is dead than to accept that Raul has been overthrown. For someone close to 80, surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding carries significant risks. Dr. Castro’s personal lifestyle may have raised the threshold several notches.
Raul, on the other hand, is understood to have the strong backing of the Cuban military. According to his hagiography, Raul played a central role in the revolution. More conspicuous is the fact that he has served as defense minister for most of the past half century. And, moreover, he is the senior-most vice-president. However, it was precisely on Raul’s strength within the military that he has long been assumed the heir apparent. It’s a different matter if someone more ambitious within the armed forces has emerged without the legions of Cuba watchers around the world knowing him.
President George W. Bush recently signed a report of the Committee for Assistance to a Free Cuba, stating America’s intention to undermine a Castro-to-Castro transition of power. But, now, the White House is probably the most anxious constituency outside Cuba to see that Raul finally emerges in full control.
Bush understands how easily chaos in Cuba can convulse Miami. The president’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush, already has enough on his plate in the form of the November elections. The Guantanamo Bay crisis, moreover, could take on separate – and potentially more serious – dimensions.
Bush’s worries don’t stop there. If Raul fails to appear, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could feel further emboldened to take up from where Fidel left. Unless, of course, Fidel appears on TV to announce his return to work.

Between Hope And Fear In The DRC

AS PART of its largest peace mission ever, the United Nations on Sunday oversaw one of the world’s most ambitious experiments in democracy. Millions of eager voters lined up outside schools and community centers across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire, to elect a president and parliamentary representatives.
The run-up to the DRC’s first multiparty election in over 40 years was gripped by fears of an upsurge in violence. After all, until four years ago, the DRC was a battleground for domestic armies as well as soldiers from a half-dozen other African countries.
Although the war has formally ended, thousands of rebels and soldiers continue to terrorize the people. The transitional government, comprising former warring factions, was dysfunctional. The former rebel armies continue to pillage and feud over control of mines and other resources in the country the size of Western Europe.
However, fears of mass attacks on polling stations proved unwarranted. There were isolated attacks on the electoral commission in East and West Kasai provinces, strongholds of the opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress, which boycotted the polls. A voting station was set on fire the night before the polls. After the balloting ended, rampaging youths in one town destroyed 52 polling stations.
In the end, as the Israeli-Hezbollah fighting grabbed the international spotlight, DRC voters took another bold step to end a war in which nearly 4 million may have died. International institutions played an impressive role. The U.N. force numbers 17,500, and its election administration has spent more than $400 million raised from international donors. The European Union, which provided much of that funding, dispatched its own force of 2,000 to help with security.
There is palpable apprehension inside the DRC and abroad that the world is using the election to ratify the rule of President Joseph Kabila, who has served since his father, Laurent, was assassinated in 2001. In this heated atmosphere, armed factions that stand to lose power may trigger fresh violence. Ominous sounds are already being heard. Three of the DRC’s vice-presidents, including two former rebel leaders, challenged Kabila. If the losers are unwilling to accept the results of this round of voting the DRC could find itself in a new spiral of violence.
Even if a clear and unchallenged winner emerges, the international community cannot afford to pull out of the DRC and hop into the next crisis zone. The country needs a sustained campaign to reform and train the other tools of statecraft – the bureaucracy, judiciary, army and its newly elected legislators. With so much invested in the peace process and so much promise already evident, the DRC project must be followed through to its logical end.

Al Zawahiri Again. Where’s Bin Laden?

The most striking aspect of Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman Al Zawahiri’s latest video broadcast is its relative freshness. It took only two weeks after Israel began its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza for Al Zawahiri to warn, via the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera, of a massive response.
Al Qaeda could not remain silent in the face of a “Crusader war,” Al Zawahiri states, adding that it saw “all the world as a battlefield open in front of us.” Events in Lebanon and Gaza showed the importance of the battle in Afghanistan and Iraq, he added.
More revealing is the following: “The war with Israel is not about a treaty, a ceasefire agreement... It is rather a jihad for the sake of God until the religion of God is established. It is jihad for the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine, as well as every land that was a home for Islam, from Andalusia to Iraq.”
Clearly, the tenor of the text suggests that it was written after the scale and severity of the Israeli attacks triggered international calls for a ceasefire – which makes the video even newer.
Over the past two years, Al Zawahiri has released many his statements in the form of videos. His boss, Osama bin Laden, uses audio statements. Does this mean Al Zawahiri has a greater ability to move around?
On the other hand, could bin Laden’s reliance on old video or still pictures suggest that his appearance has declined lately? If so, he certainly would not want to give the impression of weakness or infirmity to the faithful. Or is the Al Qaeda chief relying on the audio format to reduce the chances of Western intelligence tracking his location?
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda tapes, once recorded, ostensibly had to cross a complicated distribution network. The obvious risks inherent in physically transporting the tapes to a broadcast outlet may have delayed their eventual transmission. More recently, Al Qaeda appears to have chosen to transmit its tapes directly via the Internet. The easy availability of equipment, coupled with improvements in high-speed access, may have assured faster dissemination of audio and video.
But if these technological advances have worked for Al Zawahiri, couldn’t they do the same for bin Laden?
Furthermore, the Al Qaeda chief might have considered issuing this particular statement himself, especially considering the firmness with which his organization has underscored the international dimensions of jihad.
Or maybe bin Laden has undergone plastic surgery or any other such alteration in his physical appearance to avoid detection – in which case a video appearance would make little sense.

Royal Thai Democracy

THAIS have once again had the opportunity to reflect on their good fortune in the person of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The world’s longest reigning monarch has ended a long spell of political uncertainty by setting new elections for October 15.
Bhumibol, a constitutional monarch in the truest sense, emerged to end the political impasse created by the outgoing prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. The expensive snap poll Thaksin held three months ago had been invalidated by Thailand’s constitutional court, casting a shadow on the country’s political future.
To be sure, Thaksin’s decision to seek a fresh mandate fell within his constitutional prerogative. A huge corruption scandal involving the premier and his family had fueled months of street protests against his policies.
As a democratically elected premier, Thaksin had every right to hold the April 2 elections, since governing had increasingly become difficult. Moreover, the protests consuming the Thai capital and other urban centers could not obscure the massive support Thaksin continues to enjoy in countryside.
Much time, money and political capital could have been saved had the opposition parties participated in the snap elections and campaigned to defeat Thaksin. But the Democrat, Chart Thai and Mahachon Parties boycotted the election, arguing that it was unfairly set to favor the prime minister.
Although his Thai Rak Thai Party won the election, Thaksin had to step down under the combined pressure of an incomplete mandate and continuing opposition protests.
Since then the country has been plunged into a political stalemate for months, without a functioning parliament and run by a caretaker government. The king had asked the nation's top three courts to work out a solution for the crisis.
While the subversion of the democratic process was undoubtedly a source of much concern, the fact that political developments could take their own course under a sagacious monarch testifies to the maturity Thailand’s democracy has attained.
Until the early 1990s, Thailand’s military – with its long record of coups and other acts of direct political interference – was capable of stepping into the vacuum democrats had created.
The new elections are an opportunity for Thailand’s political parties to make a clean break from their record of squabbling. Thais can continue to rely on the monarchy’s wisdom to sail through crises. But they do expect their politicians to exhibit the commitment and resolve needed to consolidate the democratic process.

Condi’s Element Of Surprise

Clearly, the rest of the world seems to believe Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hezbollah-Hamas kidnappings is President George W. Bush’s fault. The real bad news is that the White House seems to believe that, too.
President Bush has decided to dispatch Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to convey Washington’s interest in scaling down the conflict. Not to the extent, though, of forcing Israel to declare a unilateral ceasefire. This is wise.
Equally prudent is the Bush administration’s move to present Rice’s journey as a prelude to her visit to Rome where she will meet with Arab officials at an international conference on Lebanon.
The obvious question: If a ceasefire or any similar initiative is off Rice’s agenda, then why bother to visit the region at all. The element of surprise.
Admittedly, Israel and the United States have been closely coordinating efforts to give the Israeli military sufficient time to carry out their offensive against Hezbollah.
What Rice’s visit would do is create the perception of active U.S. engagement. This might seem disingenuous to the president’s critics. But it is a brilliant way of discouraging other entities from stepping in. Once Israel achieves its military objectives against Hezbollah, it could be expected to goad the Bush administration toward formulating a cease-fire.
Hezbollah is banking on its ability to spring surprises on Israel and the United States. But every move is directed from Damascus and Teheran. If Condi can leave the Iranians, Syrians and the Hezbollah equally baffled over what American might be up to next, we’re all for it.

Bush’s 1st Veto: Good Economics, Better Ethics

For the first time in his five-year-old presidency, George W. Bush has used his veto – against federal funding for stem-cell research. How could something that enjoyed wide support from Democrats and Republicans finally break Bush’s reluctance to use a prerogative previous presidents have employed with abandon.
Moreover, which part of the debate forced Bush to describe the Senate vote as having “crossed a moral boundary?
Supporters claim stem cells can turn into any kind of cell in the body and may prove to be
extremely useful medically, for example in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, spinal-cord injuries and Alzheimer’s. They argue that the most promising research into such cells has come from using human embryos. Now that infuriates the religious right.
Bush has said he would allow federal funding for research only on already existing colonies, or “lines”, of embryonic stem cells. By a large margin—63 to 37—senators voted to expand federal funding for research on new lines.
Several prominent Republicans supported the bill, which passed 63- to 27. Majority leader Bill Frist, a medical doctor, and John McCain, both seen as presidential candidates in 2008, were for the bill.
The politics are clear. Opinion polls suggest that stem-cell research is popular. So the Democrats are virtually united in the matter. In the GOP, too, strong alliances have been forged. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Nancy Reagan, who watched her husband suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, were united in asking the president to sign the bill.
Did Bush – rumbling along the final years of his presidency – veto the bill merely because he felt he could afford to dispense with political considerations? Or was his move intended to bolster the Republicans’ image ahead of November’s midterm poll. Americans would be more likely to admire Republican lawmakers who stood up to
a president of their own party.
Or maybe Bush has long grappled with some serious questions. Perhaps the promise of embryonic stem cells is overrated. If they can offer greater prospects of breakthrough than the existing lines of cells, then why aren’t private-sector investors rushing in with cash?
Economics must have given way to ethics. Might a flood of unintended consequences ensue? For instance, would cash-strapped women be encouraged to get pregnant simply to produce and sell embryonic stem cells?
Take that a step further. What if cost-cutters flooded the developing world for their raw materials? Compassionate conservatism rings with enough pejoratives. There’s no room for genetic colonialism.

Cold War Comfort Amid Shadowy Insecurity

The comforting part of the craziness of the last week is that the world seems finally to have slipped back into some of the certitudes of the Cold War years.
Post 9/11, our fears emanating from shadowy non-state actors have left us additionally confounded. There’s no way of knowing for sure whether our leaders are projecting the terrorist threat to protect us or their own jobs? A return to more definitive issues of life and death can only be reassuring.
In waging war on two fronts, Israel has proved that conventional notions of security remain at the forefront for those who care. With the Israelis ready to widen the war, the Middle East is in the throes of the kind of regional conflagration that erupted once a decade between the 1940s and 1970s. With Egypt and Jordan formally at peace with the Jewish state, the Hamases and Hezbollahs weren’t inclusive enough among their own constituents to create anything akin to the multi-state combustion of the past.
Unlike past wars, when Iran’s monarchy actually served as a pillar of stability, Teheran is on the side of Hezbollah, the ayatollahs’ clients. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s words carry great commercial value, too. Every time he threatens to nuke Israel, oil prices shoot up several dollars. But, hey, Ahmadinejad is an elected president. He knows where rhetoric should end and reality must prevail. Deep inside, he probably worries that Israel might extend its right to self-defense all the way to extinguishing Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, buoyed by rising oil prices, has brought his country firmly into that exclusive international club called the G8. His desire to focus the St. Petersburg summit squarely on energy security and infectious diseases may have been upset by the convulsions in the Middle East. But Putin’s ebullience remains undiminished.
While US President George W. Bush lies wounded in his final years in power, Putin is toying with the idea of changing the constitution to extend his tenure in the Kremlin. Now that Putin believes his dog is better than Bush’s, he’s salivating to make his mark on international peace and security. By threatening to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution against North Korea’s missile development program under Chapter VII, Moscow has revived the patron-client relationship that thrived under the communist gerontocracy. (In a pre-summit analysis, one Washington Post columnist anointed Putin as the head of the globe’s anti-democracy bloc.)
The real shift in international equations is underscored by China, whose abstention on key Security Council resolutions Washington and the wider West had come to count on in recent years. Beijing joined Moscow in opposing a Chapter VII resolution on North Korea. The unanimous resolution the Security Council finally adopted has none of the teeth to leave the kind of bite the Bush administration wants on Kim Jong-il’s bottom.
For all the reassurance a return to the verities of the Cold War offers, there is a scary part. Al Qaeda and its cohorts desire precisely this does of complacency in order to plot something big.

Bashar Al Assad’s Grin

Amid Israel’s stepped-up military strikes on Lebanon, in retaliation for the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers, it is hard not to wonder how wide a grin Syrian President Bashar Al Assad must be sporting.
President George W. Bush’s assertion holding Damascus responsible for Hezbollah’s actions must have provided much amusement in official Syrian circles.
During earlier Israel-Hezbollah clashes, the American president could pick up the phone and ask President Hafez Al Assad – Bashar’s dad – to sort things out quickly. For all the bad press he got, Assad Sr. was known for keeping promises – at least the parts that he meant seriously.
Hafez Assad’s love-hate relationship with the US was legendary. Syria would be on or around the State Department’s list of states sponsoring terrorism. But Warren Christopher, secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s first term in the White House, would have no problem waiting for hours in Damascus to meet the wily old man.
These days, things have gotten a lot complicated, especially since last year when Syria was forced to pull out its troops from Lebanon. Lots of Lebanese disliked the presence of Israeli troops in the south, too. The Israelis withdrew in 2000, providing the rest of the world the unencumbered opportunity to focus its pressure on the Syrians.
The assassination of Rafik Hariri, the billionaire former prime minister of Lebanon, in February last year sealed the Syrians’ fate. The suspected complicity of Syrian government officials in the assassination triggered widespread revulsion, eventually forcing Bashar to call his 14,000 forces home.
The crafty Syrians didn’t exactly lose from the pullout, though. Damascus still calls the shots in Lebanon, especially when it comes to Hezbollah. But now the Syrians don’t feel they have to take responsibility.
Against the backdrop of the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of Lebanese targets, some in the Hariri family, too, must be having second thoughts about the wisdom of evicting the Syrians.

China Lays Geopolitical Tracks

Apart from being a grand engineering feat, China’s new railway linking the city of Golmud in Qinghai province with Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is a major geopolitical triumph.
The line is aimed at promoting tourism and trade in the region, as well as at helping with the mining of Tibet’s rich deposits of coal, copper, gold and zinc. Tibet, which has been under the control of Beijing since the 1950s, could soon become less reliant on grants from the central government.
Geopolitically, the railway brings China closer to South Asia, a region traditionally dominated by the other Asian giant, India.
As part of an effort to bolster its growing ties with India, China has teamed up to re-open the Nathu La pass between southern Tibet and India's northeastern state of Sikkim. That pass had remained closed ever since China and India fought a brief blood bloody war in 1962.
For India, the move represents a diplomatic victory of sorts. Beijing has not recognized the incorporation of Sikkim, formerly an independent monarchy, into the Indian union in 1975. Of late, Beijing seems to have moved closer toward recognizing the merger. If anything, the reopening of Nathu La should have been the clearest signal yet of Beijing’s acquiescence.
Indian analysts, however, are more inclined to see the opening of the pass as part of China’s effort to strengthen its foothold in South Asia. And they have good reason.
Last November, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal succeeded in bringing China into the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as an observer. This move caught India by surprise. New Delhi eventually acceded to Beijing’s entry as a price for Afghanistan’s inclusion as a full-fledged member of SAARC.
The following month, India found itself virtually excluded from an emerging East Asian community of nations with China at the center.
The Indian media, which for long had avoided taking up the China-as-an-adversary line, has stepped up coverage in that light. Leading commentators continue to warn the Indian government against placing too much confidence on the burgeoning ties with China. Some have drawn parallels with the months preceding the 1962 war.
Building on its close political and military ties with Pakistan and Myanmar, China is using economic and military means to draw India’s other smaller neighbors into its own sphere of influence. The People’s Liberation Army’s recent incursions and road construction in Bhutanese territory are aimed at pressuring the tiny Himalayan kingdom to end its protectorate ties with India.
Amid a downturn in India’s relations with Bangladesh, over such issues as illegal immigration, Islamist terrorism and trade, China has gained naval access to the Chittagong port. Through a road link with Bangladesh via Myanmar, China hopes to access Bangladesh’s vast natural gas reserves.
China, the major arms supplier to Bangladesh, recently offered to provide Dhaka with nuclear reactor technology, heightening Indian anxieties.
For now, India seems to have brought Nepal back into its own sphere of influence after the kingdom’s heavily pro-Chinese tilt under King Gyanendra’s 15-month direct rule. Although the monarch has lost all of his political powers following weeks of protests – driven in large part by New Delhi – that brought pro-Indian parties back in the saddle, Beijing’s influence in Nepal remain considerable.
China’s growing ties with the Nepalese military and its stated goal of extending the railway line from Lhasa all the way to the Nepalese border suggest it has the landlocked Himalayan nation close in its sights both in terms of its regional policies and the wider imperative of defeating the United States’ policy of containment.
The Qinghai-Tibet railway, built at a cost of around $4.2 billion, runs for 1,140 km at an average elevation of 4,000 meters, making it the highest railway in the world. The project has been one of the most difficult to build, with its long sections of elevated tracks and bevy of bridges and tunnels. The route crosses an active seismic zone and traverses frozen ground saturated with water that can rise or fall by meters as the temperature changes.
Against this background, experts expect a massive overhaul will be needed within a decade. Given the stakes involved, Beijing can be expected to bear both the massive physical challenge as well as the hefty financial cost of keep the trains rolling.

Iran In Putin’s G-8 Gambit

In the run-up to the Group of Eight (G-8) summit he is hosting later this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin is sounding increasingly assured about his country’s role in that exclusive club and the wider world.
Although Russia has been invited to attend annual summits of the world’s industrialized democracies for some years now, this is the first year it has been accepted as a full member of the G-8.
In fact, Moscow was invited to join the G-8 without having attained the economic or democratic development of the other members -- United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy. This exception was made in an effort to spur Russia’s continued progress on the road of free-market economic reforms and as a reward for the post-Soviet democratization process.
As the host of the July 15-17 summit, Putin has shaped the agenda around energy, education, and the eradication of infectious diseases. European nations rely significantly on Russian natural gas supplies. Moscow, which exports oil around the world, recognizes competitively stable energy prices as the key to its long-term economic prosperity.
The other G-8 members, too, have energy high on their minds – but in a less enthusiastic spirit. The Kremlin’s recent effort to tighten control over energy exports has raised concern in Europe. The Putin administration’s suspension of natural gas supplies to Ukraine several months ago – ostensibly for the former Soviet republic’s efforts to pull itself out of Moscow’s orbit -- left Europe with shortages. Europeans seeking assurances of reliable gas supplies from Russia confront a government setting most of the terms.
On the political front, Russia is sliding back to a form of authoritarianism, although not exactly Soviet-style repression. Moscow, moreover, is growing more confrontational in the articulation and implementation of foreign policy.
With Russia having turned its back to the political and economic obligations underpinning its G-8 membership, Putin could find himself having to justify Moscow’s continued presence in the organization.
Putin, for his part, can be expected to use the Iran nuclear crisis to establish Russia’s credentials as a responsible international player, mindful of its effectiveness in deflecting criticism of the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign policies.

Behind Bush’s WMD Diffidence

The Bush administration’s half-heartedness in disclosing that coalition forces have discovered about 500 shells containing chemical weapons since 2003 -- mostly sarin nerve gas and mustard gas – is perplexing, to say the least.
After all, this White House has been pummeled mercilessly for its apparent failure to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, one of the key reasons the US invaded Iraq and overthrew the Baathist regime.
The president and his advisers have been called liars when the Clinton administration and the intelligence agencies of France, Russia and other nations had concluded that Saddam’s chemical-, biological- and nuclear-weapon capabilities posed a serious threat to international peace and stability.
Political opponents of the president and the press – dominated by Bush critics – have either rubbished the latest reports or simply ignored them. It becomes easier to flout the journalistic tenets of accuracy and fairness when the president’s approval ratings dip below 40 percent.
Yet there could have been genuine reasons for the White House’s timidity. If the United States had promptly announced the WMD discoveries, wouldn’t that have been tantamount to leading terrorists, including those from al-Qaeda, to the stockpiles?
This undoubtedly would have placed coalition troops at risk. Forced to choose between a marginal advantage in public relations and exposing troops to further harm, the White House reassuringly opted for the latter.
Speaking of al-Qaeda, a chemical attack would have been a monumental propaganda coup, enhancing recruitment and financial support. For Americans, morale in Iraq and on the home front would have plummeted.
Another reason for the White House diffidence might have been the urgency of protecting informants. The decline in human intelligence has been blamed for most of the bungling of the past decade. The US intelligence community is clearly on a campaign to strengthen its ability to get real information from real people on the ground.
Unprotected informants serve to silence ones still at work and dissuades many from offering their services. Here, too, the wider imperative of boosting America’s human-intelligence capabilities may have taken precedence over some media mileage.
One thing that persuaded the White House to go low key must have been its conviction that nothing would have changed the minds of its opponents in the political arena and the press.

Roots Of The Taleban’s Resurgence

Afghanistan has seen a dramatic increase in fighting, especially in the southern and central regions. Coalition forces and the Afghan military released a statement June 24 saying they had killed at least 65 Taliban fighters, as part of Operation Mountain Thrust.
More than 10,000 Afghan, NATO, and US forces are taking part in counter-insurgency operations in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Zabul, the stronghold of remnants of the ousted Taleban regime. US and Afghan officials see the operation as an effort to extend the reach of the Afghan government and to expand humanitarian and reconstruction efforts.
“Operation Mountain Thrust is not about just killing and capturing extremists,” Col. Tom Collins, a US army spokesman, told reporters. “It is very much about establishing the conditions where the [Afghan] government can extend its authority into areas where it does not currently have a presence.”
Mohammed Diaoud, the governor of Helmand province, has cautioned against a resurgence of the Taleban. “It’s not as if they are all sleeping,” Diaoud told a reporter. He hastened to add that the Taleban do not “have the ability to fight against such an organized operation." Some expect the security situation to improve as NATO raises the number of troops in Afghanistan from some 9,700 to more than 15,000, mostly where insurgents are most active.
How has the enemy risen from the ashes of defeat? One reason could be that the Taleban were never defeated to the extent we have been led to believe. Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been quite selective in his support to the Bush administration’s war on terror. Islamabad has been helpful in the capture of Al Qaeda leaders and in the interception of the organization’s communications. When it comes to the Taleban, Gen. Musharraf has his limitations. The Taleban, after all, was the creation of Pakistan, an organization that was expected to bring order to the factional fighting that followed the withdrawal of Soviet occupation forces.
True, the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) wing recruited and trained these fighters – fresh graduates of Islamic seminaries that proliferated in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Islamabad’s backing for the Taleban was most substantial during the civilian governments of Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. To get a true picture of the dynamics involved in Pakistan, the perception that Islamabad has lost its leverage in Afghanistan with the fall of the Taleban regime must be juxtaposed with the rise in the influence of New Delhi. The most democratically elected government would have a hard time bolstering cooperation with the United States against the Taleban.
Pakistan’s support alone cannot explain the Taleban’s resurgence. Reports from the field speak of younger, more aggressive commanders rising through the ranks and becoming more audacious in their tactics. They have benefited from some of the operational weaknesses among coalition forces. The British and Canadian troops who recently replaced some American forces have not yet acquired the skills of the departing soldiers.
At a broader level, the Taleban have been incorporating tactics employed by insurgents in Iraq. The increasing use of suicide bombers and the selection of high-media-value targets bear the hallmarks of the Iraqi insurgency.
Another shift seems to have occurred. Like the anti-Soviet mujahideen before them, the Taleban preferred to fight in rural areas. Warfare in the region’s rugged terrain is deeply etched in many Pashtun tribes. Recent fighting, however, has been focused in more populous areas.
The role of Al Qaeda comes into focus here. If the organization could join hands with avowedly secular Baathists in an anti-US insurgency in Iraq, Al Qaeda certainly would have fewer reasons not to back the Taleban, a wholly owned subsidiary. The precise relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taleban following the latter’s overthrow in late 2001 remains unclear. Some suggest that the leaders of the two groups have fallen out.
However, if Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri are indeed hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, then it is clear they are doing so at the behest of the Taleban, who enjoy considerable support among the region’s tribals.
Finally, the Iran factor comes into play. With American forces bogged down in the Iraqi insurgency, Iran has been the principal state beneficiary. By pinning down the US military on their eastern flank as well, the mullahs in Teheran must hope to improve their leverage against the Americans on the nuclear and a raft of other issues.

Beijing To Washington Via Pyongyang?

Those with a bent for deciphering North Korea’s erratic behavior have swung into action following Pyongyang’s reported preparations for testing a long-range missile that one day may be capable of reaching the United States.
Is Kim Jong-il just jealous, as The New York Times pondered, of all the attention Iran has been getting as a result of Tehran's recent nuclear bad behavior, and craves a spotlight of its own? Or is Pyongyang merely operating on a normal defense-modernization schedule? Did the Bush administration somehow instigate this whole crisis in a new effort to justify its own missile-defense program?
Another group of Pyongyang-watchers might be tempted to dismiss such speculation, citing Kim’s personal eccentricities – some would prefer the more precise term instability. If there is any country today where one man symbolizes the state, it has to be North Korea. Where else could you find a regime bent on acquiring the most modern means of destruction while its people are starving?
The Bush administration, which believes the missile is now fully fueled and ready to go, has been warning of devastating consequences this “provocation” would inflict on North Korea.
For all its rhetoric on how 9/11 changed the world as we knew it, President Bush and his advisers are adhering to a Cold War-era arms-control doctrine. Kim knows that an American retaliation against his country – devastating as that would be -- would also destabilize South Korea and Japan and beyond. Moreover, mutual assured destruction is not a smart deterrent in an age of suicide bombers, most of who tend to be clinically sane until the very end.
Perhaps the answer lies in China, Kim’s principal -- and many believe only – ally. The Chinese have been at the forefront of the six-party talks on North Korea, winning praise from the Bush administration. In the U.N. Security Council, American diplomats know that even if they cannot get Beijing to vote with Washington, the Chinese could make things easier by abstaining.
Admittedly, U.S.-Chinese relations have undergone a remarkable upswing since the spring of 2001 when a U.S. Navy patrol aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in China after what officials described as a "minor" mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet.
The fallout was anything but minor: political and military tensions between the two countries had plunged to such depths in a generation. Of course, 9/11 and the war on terrorism brought the two countries closer. After all, China was battling its own version of Islamic separatism in the restive region of Xinjiang.
But China seems to be having second thoughts about whether the Bush administration really abandoned the neocons’ “containment” strategy. If Washington’s honeymoon with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf could end in such short notice, China’s communist leaders could not be so confident, could they?
The pointers were clear. In February, the Pentagon released its Quadrennial Defense Review, which listed, among other things, traditional threats by “near-peer” powers like China. In its annual report to Congress on China's military, the Defense Department refocused on China's growing maritime capabilities. Both virtually resurrected the “China threat.”
The resignation of Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, in Beijing’s view, brought the clearest indication of a hardening of the Bush administration’s posture. Zoellick, who did not give a reason for quitting, was the architect of a more engagement-based U.S. policy on China. As a “responsible stakeholder,” according to the Zoellick approach, China could cooperate globally with the United States. In fact, the two governments had created a permanent panel – which Zoellick led from the American side – to discuss global issues and events.
If Washington could revert to a pre-9/11 posture, so could Beijing. Did the Chinese leadership decide to send that message through North Korea – for added emphasis?

Iraq: Amnesty No Slur On Sacrifice

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki, a Shia, unveiled a national reconciliation policy that includes the possibility of an amnesty for sections of the predominantly Sunni insurgency, he knew he would meet stiff opposition in Washington.
With the American military’s death toll having crossed the 2,500 mark since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the “sacrifice-in-vain” argument against an amnesty is bound to gain momentum among families of the victims, their elected representatives and wider American society.
Realities on the ground offer an opportunity for more sobering thought. In the aftermath of the killing of Abu Musaub Al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the American have been reminded how the foreign jihadists represent only a portion of the insurgency that shows no sign of abating. For planners in American and Iraq alike, however, the urgency of taming the indigenous militants has always been pressing. The government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi tried to push an amnesty but succumbed to American pressure.
It might never be known how significantly the US decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s military went on to shape the insurgency. In the run-up to the invasion, the media widely quoted experts and analysts who suggested a serious risk of urban warfare by Saddam’s military once US-British forces advanced on Baghdad.
Are the insurgents members of the same divisions that melted away without a fight on the fringes of the Iraqi capital in the final days of the invasion? The time needed to find out for sure would doubtless claim more American lives. More importantly, the raging insurgency will continue to kill and maim infinitely more Iraqis.
Admittedly, Zarqawi’s departure marks a serious blow to the jihadist component of the insurgency, more so in psychological than in operational terms. It is imperative to use an amnesty to separate Iraqi nationalist insurgents from jihadists when it has the greatest chance of working. Indeed, a targeted amnesty may be Iraq’s last hope of surviving as one nation.
Zarqawi’s real legacy – the sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis – casts a more dangerous shadow on Iraq, a reality Maliki recognizes. By appointing Sunni and Shia former army officers as defense and interior ministers respectively, the new prime minister has provided a small but real opening.
If the Shias, Kurds and mainstream Sunnis are sufficiently assured that an amnesty would foster reconciliation by bringing Sunni insurgents into the political process, outsiders should not have a veto.
An Iraq steadily gaining the peace and stability required to emerge as a vibrant democracy will have been worth the enormous sacrifices Iraqis, Americans, Britons and countless others have made.

China’s Year Of The Doghouse

The Year of the Dog seems to be gnawing at China’s international image with unusual ferocity. In a scathing report this week, Amnesty International accused China of stoking conflicts in Sudan, Burma and Nepal by selling arms to those regimes shunned by the rest of the world.
Striking at the basis of China’s emergence as a principal global player, the London-based human rights watchdog said: “China's arms exports, estimated to be in excess of one billion dollars a year often involve the exchange of weapons for raw materials to fuel the country's rapid economic growth.”
Such interests, according to a separate story by the Inter Press Service, has led China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, to block to US efforts to impose economic and military sanctions on recalcitrant countries.
Rejecting the AI report, Beijing insists it has been exporting conventional weapons properly in the light of international rules. Teng Jianqun, a researcher with the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told Xinhua news agency that China has always put its limited arms export under strict control and surveillance.
He noted that China adheres to three principles in arms trade: it should help enhance the self-defense capability of import countries, should not impair regional and global peace, security and stability, and should not be used to interfere with other countries' internal affairs.
Before the ethical dimensions of Chinese arms sales could fully settle in, Apple announced it is investigating a newspaper report that staff in some of its Chinese iPod factories work long hours for low pay and in “slave” conditions.
Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper alleged that workers received as little as £27 a month, doing 15-hour shifts making the iconic mp3 player. Employees at the factory lived in dormitories housing 100 people and outsiders were banned, the newspaper said. Apple said it did not tolerate its supplier code of conduct being broken. “Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible,” the company said in a statement.
Apple added it is investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China.
Could there be a broader agenda at work here? The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the world of its principal bogeyman (although some would still say an “inspiration”.)
The new baddies – Baathist Iraq, Iran, North Korea, for instance – couldn’t rise to the level of the Soviet threat that kept the world on its toes. Among many, nostalgia for the Cold War set in deep. In light of subsequent events, many must have wondered, might an Afghanistan Soviet Socialist Republic have done more for regional and even global security?
The idea of a grand alliance of disparate groups behind the demonization of China is not as far-fetched as it sounds. The steep rise in gas prices? Blame the booming Chinese middle class. Criticism of increased military spending on conventional threats in the midst of our new kind of war (on terror)? Point to Taiwan. Economic instability? Ah, those clever currency manipulators in Beijing.
The enduring moral of the Cold War: Make sure you always have someone else you can blame for when things go wrong.

President Garcia Confronts A Polarized Society

For many in Washington, the temptation to portray Peru’s recent presidential election as less a victory for Alan Garcia and more a defeat for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez will persist. The prospect of another domino falling into the Venezuela-Cuba-Bolivia league had kept the Bush administration on its toes.
By returning to power after a gap of 16 years in a second round run-off against Ollanta Humala, a former army officer, the 57-year-old Garcia evidently feels vindicated. His first term in office, between 1985 and 1990 was a fiasco.
With corruption charges persistently hovering over him, Garcia’s rule saw Peru going bankrupt. Inflation skyrocketed as the currency nosedived exacerbating the economic pain of large segments of the population. This helped the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas to expand its influence across the country.
If Peruvians have given the social democratic leader another chance, they have done so with the primary intention of denying Humala power.
During the campaign, Garcia tried hard to show Peruvians that he had matured in the intervening years. Surely, he will be careful not to repeat the mistakes of his first term.
But his task is compounded by the fact that he has to govern a splintered society.
Garcia has acknowledged this reality by promising a broad government staffed by officials drawn from a wide spectrum of parties and political tendencies. There is a flip side to a unity government: the polarization of Peruvian society will have moved into his administration to paralyze decision making.
Although he lost, Humala carried 14 of Peru's 24 administrative regions and swept his stronghold in the southern highlands, where the country's poor and indigenous population is concentrated, receiving 80 percent of the votes. Simply put, he retains the ability to politicize Peru's disadvantaged and mobilize them into a cohesive group.
One thing going for Garcia is his pro-US policies and good neighborly attitude. Befriending Washington as well as moderate leftwing governments in Chile and Brazil would remain the principal tenet of his foreign policy.
For most Peruvians, Garcia will have to produce results closer to home. The new president needs massive investment, particularly from the United States, to harness his country’s vast natural resources and to ensure a profitable market for exports.
Garcia’s victory saved the recently negotiated Peru-US trade accord. How far Washington chooses to go toward rewarding that achievement would determine the momentum the second Garcia administration ends up acquiring in the weeks and months ahead.

Follow The Hawala Trail

How could Abu Musaub Al Zarqawi’s head – bloated alright -- be found in one piece amid the rubble left by two 500-lb bombs? His remains, we were told, were identified by sight and by finger-prints. So the tip of at least one of his fingers was intact.
Who’s going to pocket the $25 million bounty on the self-proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq? More importantly, who turned him in?
Whoever had the most to lose from al-Zarqawi alive. Iraqis, Americans, Muslims from other countries were victims of the Jordanian terrorist who shot to prominence with the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003. That attack, which claimed the top UN official responsible for Iraq and dozens others, marked the onset of the insurgency.
Zarqawi’s death was undoubtedly a huge psychological victory over the insurgents. But, as President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and top Iraqi officials insisted, Zarqawi’s death does not diminish the threat he posed alive.
A lanky bearded fellow huddled somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was troubled by Zarqawi’s transformation from a small-time radical into one of the world’s most feared men.
Here was a fighter who was always at the front – actually multiple fronts -- not sermonizing from some cave or crevasse once in a while. Equally at ease with IEDs and the Internet, Zarqawi was constantly seeking to innovate. He had acquired such mythical standing among his adversaries that his clumsiness with that rifle didn’t detract from his legend.
Clearly, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri were more than troubled by Zarqawi rise. They feared him as a potential rival with multitudes of radicals behind him ready to kill or die for the cause. The Al Qaeda top brass just couldn’t find a good reason to discredit Zarqawi. True, the way he fanned Shia-Sunni violence spilled too much Muslim blood in a war that was officially against the infidels. Before Bin Laden could condemn Zarqawi’s methods, he recognized how powerfully they worked. After all, killing yourself and your co-religionists for the larger good was sanctioned under jihad.
Iraqi and American military officials have said the plan to kill Zarqawi was the culmination of weeks of sifting through tips and tracking down credible leaders. It generally takes bin Laden several weeks to deliver his tapes to Al Jazeera. Maybe the Al Qaeda leader used a similar channel of couriers to order his lieutenants to liquidate Zarqawi.
While we’re at it, maybe that last tape from bin Laden contained a coded message to loyalists to lead the American and Iraqi forces to Zarqawi and then commiserate in his “martyrdom”. It won’t hurt to start following the hawala trail for signs of some of that $25 million.

Making Somalia Too Dangerous For Al Qaeda

The faint possibility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program has allowed the Bush administration to overlook – at least publicly – the significance of the fall of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, to Islamists. This does not mean the White House is ignoring the grave implications – both operational and psychological – for America.
During the waning weeks of the first Bush administration, the United States intervened militarily in Somalia, originally to alleviate a major food shortage. It didn’t take long for the mission to expand into full-blown combat against the warlords who had precipitated the food shortage.
After American forces sustained heavy casualties in a fierce operation in Mogadishu, and televised images of Somali rebels dragging a captured American soldier across a street were beam across the world, the new Clinton administration withdrew US troops from the country. Osama bin Laden, in calling for a holy war against the United States, cited that retreat as a reflection of America’s weak resolve.
After 9/11, Washington developed a new interest in Somalia, fearing that it would serve as a base for militant Islamists. The United States maintains a small contingent of Marines and Special Forces at a former French base in neighboring Djibouti. Quietly, these forces are engaged in an important battle of the wider global war on terror.
After longtime ruler Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled in a coup in 1991, Somalia descended into civil war. The country has fractured into chaotic enclaves. In the north, the breakaway region of Somaliland governs itself. In the south, drought threatens hundreds of thousands of lives, with 1.4 million people in need of food assistance. In the town of Baidoa, 250 km inland from the capital, an interim government exists only in name. With no effective government in place at the national, federal level, much of Somalia is ruled by warlords who make their own local laws.
Militias belonging to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) started battling an alliance of warlords in the south, leading to hundreds of deaths. Washington responded by backing the UIC’s rivals, known as the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.
The UIC proposes Islam as a way to bring unity to Somalia, raising fears among the population of Sharia-sanctioned harsh punishments. However, after taking control of Mogadishu, the group has rejected efforts to project the organization as a Taliban-like monster ready to offer sanctuary to the likes of Al Qaeda.
The scars immortalized in Black Hawk Down, coupled with the quagmire in Iraq, inhibits a full-fledged American military involvement. On the other hand, the fall of a strategic capital to Islamists hits at the heart of the war on terror.
Because of its geographical location, Somalia can affect the stability of the entire region, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Situated close to vital trading points between Europe, Asia and Africa, moreover, Somalia is critical to economic stability as well.
Stepped-up American support for the rival warlords might seem ill-advised, considering what Somalia has gone through over the last 15 years. However, it does make sense as a first step toward another policy: making Somalia too dangerous even for Al Qaeda to move in.

Let’s Not Glorify The Gulag

In the post-World War II military history of the United States, the reflexive presumption of guilt some Americans have vis-à-vis the brave men and women in uniform will surely stand out as a principal unvanquished adversary.
Exotic proper nouns like My Lai, Abu Ghraib and, now, Haditha have become metaphors for the brutality American strength is capable of unleashing. War has always been ugly. And it gotten uglier as the enemy has become obscurers. Roadside bombs, snipers aiming from residential areas, rockets fired from donkey carts have replaced missile silos, elite battalions and bomb shelters as searchable targets. The world’s most advanced fighting force is contending with warriors whose defenses are as unsuspecting as the channels of detestation.
Even before the official enquiry has gained pace, the details of what happened in Haditha on November 19 last year are graphic. A four-Humvee convoy of US marines from Kilo company was patrolling the town. A white taxi drew near. Marines signaled for it to stop. A bomb exploded beneath the fourth Humvee, killing its driver.
What happened next? The American soldiers said 15 civilians were killed in the explosion along with the driver. Someone then started shooting at the US soldiers, who returned fire, killing eight insurgents.
A Time magazine investigation published in March, however, found evidence of a massacre. Witnesses claim that the Americans were not fired on. Worse, the civilians who died that day – as many as 24 -- were murdered by the marines.
The Americans ordered five occupants of the white taxi, whom they may have suspected of involvement in the bombing, to lie down. They ran away instead, and the marines shot them. Then, some of the marines allegedly burst into nearby houses and killed 19 more people, only one of whom had a gun. The dead reportedly included eight women, a child and an elderly man in a wheelchair.
When President Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq, citing, among other things, the murderous nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the White House set for itself a higher standard. Americans are justified in expecting their military to follow a more civilized set of rules. Without Time’s expose, the world might not have learned of the tragedy. Americans still do not know how high up the Marine Corps chain of command the original cover-up went. How did the president, the defense secretary and other
top officials respond when they first learned of the false reporting.
Americans need to be told what steps are now being taken, besides remedial ethics training, to make sure that such crimes against civilians and such deliberate falsifications of the record do not recur.
The media must maintain sufficient vigilance on this story, in the face of competing ones, so that the investigation is transparent and the legal course – if any is required – reaches its logical conclusion.
Jumping to conclusions before all the facts are out does not serve any useful purposes. Comparing Guantanamo Bay with the Soviet Gulag, moreover, is tantamount to absolving Stalin and his henchmen of their worst excesses. Americans expect their politicians to be better than that, even in an election year.

Why Would Iran Want To Talk?

Just as the skeptics were saying all along, Iran has taken the United States for another ride. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Thursday his government was open to talks with the United States on his country’s nuclear program, but he rejected the U.S. precondition that it must quit enriching uranium first.
Mottaki was responding to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said the previous day that the United States would be willing to talk with Iran if it suspended its uranium enrichment and reprocessing.
The U.S. offer to negotiate was seen as a major policy shift. Washington has had no high-level talks with Teheran for more than 25 years. The two countries formally broke off relations in 1980, after the seizure of the American embassy in the Iranian capital in 1979.
Many in the United States have faulted America’s systematic isolation of Iran – once a famously staunch American ally with a proud civilization -- for the escalation of tensions. If the mullahs went on the warpath, it was only because of the strong support successive U.S. administrations of both parties provided the Shah’s brutal dictatorship which the Islamic Revolution overthrew.
So the Bush administration got a rare round of applause from leading newspaper editorials for demonstrating “maturity.” Lost in the exultation was the fact that it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who first broached the issue of direct talks, not the other way around.
Bush, for his part, appeared to exude a sense of vindication. Teheran’s repudiation, after all, proved that critics of his administration’s hard stance against Iran were wrong. At the end of a cabinet meeting, the U.S. president conceded that it remained to be seen if Iran's seemingly-negative response to the proposal was its last word on the subject.
Bush had enough cover to revert to his characteristic toughness. Foreign ministers of the five permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany, meeting in Vienna, reached agreement on a package of incentives for Iran to halt sensitive nuclear activities, or penalties if it refuses. The offer will now be formally conveyed to Iran.
The so-called "carrots and sticks" package would offer Iran a set of financial and technology incentives if it ended uranium enrichment and returned to nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany. If it refuses, there would be U.N. Security Council action against Iran and escalating sanctions.
But isn’t there a simpler question here? Why should Iran feel the urgency to hold direct talks with the United States when it has the stick of the resurgent Shias next door in Iraq to wield against Washington? And who knows? Mullah Omar of the Taleban may be the latest beneficiary of Teheran’s oil-generated largesse, considering the seriousness the anti-American insurgency has acquired in Afghanistan, another neighbor.
Moreover, each time Ahmadinejad threatens to nuke Israel off the map, he send oil prices shooting up a couple of dollars. That kind of cash inflow would goad Teheran to widen its gaze for potential allies against America, not grovel before the Great Satan it believes it can bog down across its eastern and western borders.

NAM: Authoritarian Amalgamation

The Cold War still evokes memories of two power blocs struggling to spread their ideology and influence under the shadow of nuclear Armageddon.
The United States-led western democracies used all their power to spread the frontiers of the free world. The Soviet Union, representing half a dozen communist satellites in Eastern Europe, was intent on vanquishing the forces of imperialism and expansionism.
The Third World, with its micro-nationalism, ethnic fissures and tribal fault-lines, provided the superpowers their battleground.
For an entire group of newly independent nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the pressures were too daunting. In some, Marxist governments emerged through violent revolutions aided and abetted by Moscow. In others, right-wing autocracies – mostly military regimes – seized power through active support from Washington.
Caught in the crossfire, some countries decided to form their own alliance: the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Leaders like Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser, India’s Jawahar Lal Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito and Indonesia’s Sukarno, believed the Third World could assert its role through collective action. NAM went on to include over 100 members, representing 55 percent of the planet’s people. It is the largest international organization after the United Nations, containing nearly two-thirds of the U.N.’s membership.
Officially, NAM saw itself not formally aligned with or against either power bloc. Members focused on national struggles for independence, the eradication of poverty, economic development and opposing colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism.
NAM was intended to be as close an alliance as NATO or the Warsaw Pact. From the outset, it had little cohesion. Many of its members were aligned with one or another of the great powers. Cuba, allied with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, organized a summit in 1979. India, another Soviet ally, was an active NAM member. The large number of U.S.-backed military regimes that professed non-alignment was a source of amusement to the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, NAM cracked open right in the middle. Soviet client states fully supported the invasion, while others cried foul.
Nevertheless, NAM has had a great source of internal cohesion from its very inception: It contains the largest collection of the world's authoritarian governments.