“We have to decide, as a nation, whether our need for Middle Eastern oil is more important to our future than our conduct as a moral and ethical people.” Which brave presidential candidate would lay it on the line so clearly? None yet. And that’s the problem with the national debate on the war in Iraq, and possibly, our foray into Iran as well.
While debate rages in the United States about the military in Iraq, an equally important decision is being made inside of Iraq–the future of Iraq’s oil. A new Iraqi law proposes to open the country’s currently nationalized oil system to foreign corporate control. But emblematic of the flawed promotion of “democracy” by the Bush administration, this new law is news to most Iraqi politicians.
Russia, according to the Western news media, is increasingly slipping toward totalitarianism. The man allegedly pulling all the strings is Russian President Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB operative and apparatchik extraordinaire. This misconception of Putin as a powerful dictator whose control over his citizens must be countered through punitive measures is deeply ingrained. The myth is embraced by journalists and politicians alike.
It has been a year since the horror of the bloodshed in Sudan’s Darfur region–with over 200,000 dead in three years–began leaking across the border into Chad. It has also been a year since a simmering conflict boiled over into a full-scale confrontation between World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Chadian President Idriss Deby. Are the two connected? In a word, yes. Here’s how.
While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.
Great power competition in Central Asia ebbs and flows in a timeless and tireless fashion. Unlike in Europe and East Asia during the Cold War and after, the fault line for the current jockeying for position in Central Asia between Washington and Beijing is not easily discernible. Instead, fluidity, uncertainty, and even outright reversal of fortunes among the major players have been the norm.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign policy analysts have struggled to find a term to characterize the epoch we now inhabit. Although the ÂPost-Cold War Era has been the reigning expression, this label now sounds dated and no longer does justice to the particular characteristics of the current period. Others have spoken of the ÂPost-9/11 Era, as if the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were defining moments for the entire world. But this image no longer possesses the power it once wieldedÂeven in the United States.
The outcome of the November midterm elections in the United States may well hinge on oil and atoms. The issue of atoms, namely Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is potentially more explosive. But the price of gas, since it hits consumers in the pocketbooks, may have the more immediate effect.
South Africa has entered the most difficult political period since the end of apartheid in 1994. At the heart of the crisis is the question of the future direction of the country.