On any given night in north Bogotá, groups of athletic, broad shouldered young men with cropped hair, conversing in their native American-English, can be seen enjoying beers in the upmarket bars of the Colombian city. Most of these men are among the 800 U.S military personnel and 600 U.S. civilian government contractors allowed to work in Colombia as part of the U.S. aid package known as Plan Colombia. It has been almost a year since the first phase of Plan Colombia officially ended. Since then the Colombian government has been left wondering whether U.S aid to Colombia will continue to [...]
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice drew many raised eyebrows when she predicted that the battle between Israel and Hezbollah marked the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East. Maybe she was showing extraordinary prescience; maybe foolhardy optimism. Several weeks and hundreds of deaths after the conflict erupted, the path to a ‘new’ Middle East looks as treacherous as it has for a generation. The deck seems stacked against Secretary Rice’s hopeful forecast. The government of Israel is determined – and is solidly backed by public opinion at home – to put an end to the Hezbollah threat and thereby [...]
A rising chorus in the United States and elsewhere is now saying that the key to bringing peace to the Middle East, and ending the 23-day-old war in Lebanon, can be found in Syria. (It could also be found in Iran, but talking to Syria is a lot easier to swallow for Washington than talking to Tehran.) Among those to loudly lobby for dialogue with Syria are the veteran journalist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the Syria-expert at Oklahoma University Joshua Landis, Professor David Lesch, who is a biographer of President Bashar al-Asad, former Secretary of State Warren [...]
