In the wake of the Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss the formation of yet another Washington think tank. But the freshly minted U.S.-India Institute for Strategic Policy is an organization to watch and one that may help reveal the next target of American power: containing China.
In a key victory for President George W. Bush and anti-AIDS activists, the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday approved a five-year, $15 billion package to fight HIV/AIDS in 14 African and Caribbean nations. The bill, which would provide $3 billion each year beginning in 2004 to some of the world’s worst-affected countries, provides that up to $1 billion in each annual installment should go the cash-strapped Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
After its successful invasion of Iraq, the U.S. appears to be at the height of its power. One can understand why many feel the U.S. is supreme and omnipotent. Indeed, this is precisely what Washington wants the world to think.
Close on the heels of Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra’s call for an India-U.S.-Israel strategic alliance, comes the confirmation that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be visiting India in the next few weeks. Some observers in New Delhi consider Mishra’s call, made at the annual dinner of the American Jewish Committee, as a curtain raiser for the Sharon visit. What they seem to ignore is that the India-U.S.-Israel strategic alliance has moved beyond last call to center stage and that the plan for Sharon’s visit is some 15 months old.
Shiite And Sunni Muslims Struggle To Fill Leadership Void In Iraq By Ahmed Rashid | May 2, 2003 Editor : John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center ( IRC ) Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
On the eve of the war in Iraq, Pete Du Pont published an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Getting Serious: Questions for the Peaceniks.” Du Pont posed six “familiar” questions “we ought to be asking the peace protesters.” Although Du Pont’s tone is depreciatory and cynical, the challenge to peace advocacy that the questions convey merits serious response, especially in light of the neoconservative exultancy that the disposition of the Iraq war has elicited.
If the unilateralist hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush were hoping that the easier than expected military victory in Iraq would bring the U.S. public closer to their views, they are likely to be very disappointed by the latest public opinion poll. It shows that much of the public appears to be more in tune with the views of “Old Europe”–a moniker applied by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to describe European countries that opposed Washington’s rush to attack Iraq–than with those of the neoconservatives around Rumsfeld.
According to the Bush administration, settling Iraq was to be a prelude to settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict via the Bush “road map.” Although yet to be formally released, a draft of the road map was deposited in the British House of Commons library by the Foreign Office on April 13. The following are highlights of and commentary on the draft.
When the Bush administration totals up the cost of the Iraq War it had best be prepared to tack on billions more to clean up the toxic residue of how this country wages war, specifically its widespread use of cluster weapons and Depleted Uranium (DU). While the shooting has wound down, the consequences of using these controversial weapons will be around for a long time to come, with clusters taking a steady toll on the unwary and the young, and DU poisoning the air and water.
As U.S. forces consolidate the occupation in Iraq the neoconservatives are bringing the war home again, re-opening the front in Washington with an artillery barrage against the State Department.