Europe & Central Asia

Progress on Cluster Bombs

Good news is in short supply. The economy remains bleak. The war in Iraq entered its seventh year last week, and violence reaches new pinnacles in Afghanistan. But there is one bright light amid all this gloom. Real progress is being made to ban

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Hearts and Minds and Empire

While there is no doubt that President Barack Obama is winning hearts around world, the jury is still out on whether he can convince skeptical intellectuals. A surge in Afghanistan, residual troops in Iraq and the resumption of renditions in the Horn of Africa conjure up fears of quagmires.

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Serb Demonization as Propaganda Coup

This is part of a strategic dialogue on Yugoslavia. See John Feffer’s opposing argument here, and their respective responses here. The successful demonization of the Serbs, making them largely responsible for the Yugoslav wars, and as unique and genocidal killers, was one of the great propaganda triumphs of our era. It was done so quickly, with such uniformity and uncritical zeal in the mainstream Western media, that disinformation had (and still has, after almost two decades) a field day.

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Pakistan, Proliferation, and U.S. Priorities

The government of Pakistan released A.Q. Khan from house arrest earlier this month. The former head of the country’s nuclear weapons uranium enrichment program had been detained since 2004, following revelations of his decades-long role as part of a nuclear black market selling nuclear technology, materials, and even nuclear weapon designs.

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Afghanistan: Build Infrastructure, Not Bases

Afghanistan: Build Infrastructure, Not Bases

In 1995, Sakena Yacoobi cofounded the Afghan Institute for Learning (AIL) — today one of the largest nonprofit organizations in Afghanistan — and is now its president and executive director. AIL provides education and health services to over 350,000 women and children annually in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with offices in the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sakena has received numerous prestigious awards for peace-building, including the Peacemakers in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, the Gruber Prize, the Bill Graham Award from the Rex Foundation, and most recently, the Kravis Prize for Leadership.

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The U.S. and Afghan Tragedy

One of the first difficult foreign policy decisions of the Obama administration will be what the United States should do about Afghanistan. Escalating the war, as National Security Advisor Jim Jones has been encouraging, will likely make matters worse. At the same time, simply abandoning the country — as the United States did after the overthrow of Afghanistan’s Communist government soon after the Soviet withdrawal 20 years ago — would lead to another set of serious problems.

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The Making of a New Global Strategy

The Obama administration started with a bang in developing its own strategy toward different regions of the world. There are several ingredients in that strategy. The new president has promised a return to multilateralism. It’s searching for common ground with Russia. There are outstanding invitations for negotiations with America’s traditional adversaries like Iran and North Korea. And the administration’s approaches to Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are likely to be radically different from those the Bush administration pursued unsuccessfully.

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Warring on Warriors

Last week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates briefed President Barack Obama on Afghanistan and the Pentagon’s proposal to send 15,000 more troops there by late spring. Obama is expected to accept the plan as a "down payment" on his pledge during the campaign to put more troops into the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents. These troops are only about half the number requested by the field commanders, and Gates will return with a new request soon.

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Multilateralism in Munich

Team Obama’s debut on the world stage at last weekend’s security conference in Munich was highly anticipated. With his pledge for a "new era of cooperation," Vice President Joe Biden struck the right note for a European audience still haunted by the Bush administration’s "with us or against us" approach. But once the memory of Bush fades, Europeans will realize the price of Barack Obama’s multilateralism. Like the U.S. president, they’ll be forced to define what kind of multilateralism they want and what they’re willing to sacrifice for it. More than any other issue, Afghanistan will produce this moment of truth sooner than might be expected, while determining NATO’s relations with Iran to a greater extent than expected.

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