Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times says that “diplomacy is still better than bombs” and that “moral outrage is just the starting point for a decision to intervene.” He then goes through all the major powers in his piece …
Nice Washington Post piece on Saturday about how the “center of gravity” in global oil exploration and production is shifting to the Western hemisphere. No, the bulk of global conventional oil reserves still sits in the Persian …
The quiet coalition has come together to reverse the decline of the opposition rebel forces in Syria, according to this nice front-pager in Wednesday’s Washington Post. Much like in the case of Libya, the Obama Administration is …
Nice Washington Post story about how the U.S. is training Ugandan soldiers (along with some from Burundi, Sierra Leone and Djibouti) in Uganda on how to do battle with Islamic extremists in Somalia – namely the al-Shabaab group …
As Bashar Assad looks more internationally isolated by the day — and far more vulnerable to Western economic sanctions than uber-bad boy Iran — it behooves us to think through what general advantages accrue with his eventual …
Comes from Bloomberg:
China Gets Cheaper Iran Oil as U.S. Picks Up Tab for Hormuz Straits Patrols
Brilliant huh?
But a wonderful capture of the illogic of Obama’s “strategic pivot” to East Asia: the more we try to hem in …
Great Washington Post piece on China’s intense desire for stability on Korean peninsula, thus the clear backing of the “Great Successor” Kim Jong Eun. Wrap-up paragraph says it all:
The notion of a democratized Korean Peninsula
…
WSJ lead story about Chinese developing a ballistic missile designed to fragment – like a cluster bomb – on the deck of a U.S. carrier and wipe out all aircraft and personnel. Naturally, it’s unbelievably provocative to us, …
Nice piece in the New York Times on Tuesday, previewing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s much-anticipated announcement of almost a half-trillion in defense cuts over the next decade.As Mark Thompson just noted, not a whole lot …
My favorite – and most frustrated – anti-nuke activist Helen Caldicott believes Fukushima drives Japan out of the industry and – by extension – kills the industry worldwide.
But telling WSJ piece last Friday suggests otherwise, for the best reason: (print ed. subtitle: “Few civilians want bombs, but leaders see plutonium playing …
You get two variants of this logic: 1) if the US leaves Iraq, Iran wins automatically (or it’s won already because the Shiite majority actually rules); and 2) even more than al-Qaeda, Iran is the real beneficiary of the Arab Spring.
Both judgments are wrong in the way that America’s capacity for frantic self-doubt and self-blame …
[Co-written with Michael S. Smith II of Kronos Advisory LLC]
The demise of Col Qaddafi, a despicable despot who should have met this or a worse fate sooner, will likely give rise to power grabs in Libya by groups whose agendas will often be anything other than what meets the eye. Despite many power holders’ claims of …
WAPO and NYT reporting over the weekend that the US will send around 100 armed advisers to help the Ugandan military work the stubborn problem of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a beyond-its-expiration-date insurgency that’s terrorized rural populations across four states for a couple of decades now. These guys really are the worst of …