All Commentaries
The Price of Failure in Kashmir
Following Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf’s speech on May 27th and the Indian government’s official response the following day, it is clear that while war clouds have temporarily receded they have most certainly not been lifted. India will wait to see “results,” i.e. what steps the Pakistan government will take to end the ability of terrorists to strike from across the border into Indian territory, including Jammu and Kashmir. One must distinguish here between two claims. Any attribution that the Musharraf government is directly behind the December 13 attack on Parliament and now the May 14 attack in Kaluchak, Jammu, is not substantiated by evidence and is, politically speaking, utterly implausible. The Musharraf government is not so foolish or naïve as to impose even further pressure on itself in circumstances when his own regime is fighting for internal survival, or to want to shift attention away from the state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat and the world’s criticism of the Indian government on that score.
Kim Jong-il: Promises, Promises
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il seems to have been born with a natural charisma. To the constant amazement of the outside world, he has been winning the hearts of foreign visitors who meet him face to face, from former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to conservative South Korean lawmaker Park Geun-hye.
Farewell Crusader? Insiders Will Cash In Regardless
A year and one-half into his tenure and on the brink of pushing the military budget over $400 billion per year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has finally decided to cancel a major weapons program in the name of military “transformation.” His weapons cut of choice is the Army’s $11 billion Crusader program, the largest project of United Defense, whose largest shareholder is the Carlyle Group, an investment firm that employs such former Republican luminaries as former Reagan Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci (chairman), former Secretary of State James Baker, and former President George Herbert Walker Bush (for the occasional $100,000 speech or overseas marketing trip).
Farm Bill Outrage Goes Global
The ink was hardly dry on the furious newspaper editorials inspired by the Bush administration’s decision to protect the steel industry when along comes the Farm Bill to further stoke the fire. The world is supposed to be moving toward more open markets, embracing liberalization as the route to globalization–and then the self-appointed leader of free trade abandons the script. These turnabouts couldn’t come at a worse time, as negotiations to deepen global trade rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO), just getting started in Geneva, will now begin with almost every country in the world expressing disgust with the U.S. retreat behind trade barriers.
Washington Is Ignoring Human Rights Abuses: The Indonesia Case
When U.S. and Indonesian officials met in Jakarta in late April to discuss resumption of military cooperation, it should have caused alarm bells to ring all over Washington.
U.S. and Israeli Governments Out of Step with Public According to New Polls
Both in the U.S. and in Israel, government policy and actions do not reflect popular sentiment. Two recent surveys–one by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and another by the Dahaf Institute in Israel–found that the American and Israeli public support more even-handed approaches to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Nuclear-tipped Foolishness
On April 11, 2002, The Washington Post publicized the Defense Science Board’s study of integrating nuclear-tipped interceptors into America’s planned national missile defense (NMD). Initial Bush administration reviews of missile defense technology discounted the possibility of using such a system. However, the administration may be concerned that other missile defense proposals, employing “kinetic hit-to-kill vehicles” that strike a target head-on, cannot guarantee successful interception. Some analysts have suggested that this form of interception is as difficult as “hitting a baseball with a golf ball.” Beyond guaranteeing a successful interception, some NMD planners also hope that nuclear explosions in space would guarantee the destruction of biological or chemical agents in ballistic missile payloads.
Challenging the Myths about the Failure of the 2000 Camp David Talks
U.S. Arms Transfers and Security Assistance to Israel
U.S. press coverage of Israeli attacks on the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian towns on the West Bank often treat the U.S. government as either an innocent bystander or an honest broker in the current conflict, often without giving a full sense of the importance of the U.S. role as a supplier of arms, aid, and military technology to Israel. In its role as Israel’s primary arms supplier, the United States could exert significant potential leverage over Israeli behavior in the conflict, if it would choose to do so.
Too Much is Never Enough: Bush’s Military Spending Spree
Forget that the Bush administration is sending U.S. troops to train local forces in Yemen, the Philippines, and Uzbekistan, and that since September 11th the U.S. has stepped up military aid to Turkey, Pakistan, India, Jordan, and a number of countries who are “with us” in the war on terror.