It has become impossible to credibly argue that the Bush Administration’s Middle East policies have advanced the national interests of the United States. After shifting enormous resources toward addressing the problems of the region following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and after cautioning patience through the “birth pangs of democracy,” the results have become clear. On every issue that the administration has prioritized — promoting Arab-Israeli peace, liberating Lebanon from Syrian and Iranian influence, democratizing Egypt, stabilizing Iraq, and containing Iran — America’s foes have grown stronger and its allies have grown weaker. Even more troublingly, virtually all of [...]
NEW YORK — Sri Lanka, celebrating its 60th anniversary of independence from British colonial rule this year, is using a carrot-and-stick strategy in the war that has enveloped the island nation for some 25 years and brought it to the brink of economic disaster. The country’s government has achieved some initial success in containing the home-grown terrorism perpetrated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, as it tries to wean away the Tamil population from supporting the LTTE’s agenda of carving out an independent state in the northern and eastern parts of the [...]
U.S. and South Korean officials are meeting in Washington this week to discuss provision of food aid to North Korea, amid concerns that the impoverished country is en route to severe famine. Seoul is waiting for Pyongyang to officially request its help, while Washington is basing the timing of its 500,000-ton donation on Pyongyang’s progress toward a denuclearization agreement. The talks come just days after Pyongyang released 18,000 pages worth of documents on its weapons-grade plutonium program. But nuclear weapons technology isn’t all that’s being bought and sold on the black market in North Korea. After the famine of the [...]
