Strategic Paradigms by Ehsan Ahrari

The essence of Great Power military competition involving two potential adversaries is to prepare for a military contingency while doing everything to avoid such contingency.  That may sound somewhat illogical, but no one has ever said that balance-of-power-related maneuvers are either straightforward or simplistic.  What it means is that diplomacy will be given a high [...]

.!.   The administration of President Barack H. Obama has started the highly intricate process of developing its own strategy with a bang in different regions of the world.  Here are the ingredients of that strategy: multilateralism, looking for a fresh start—which promises to be substantially different from the preceding administration—search for common ground involving [...]

These are brief comments on stories that caught my attention.  I will attempt to write this series on my website as frequently as I can.  If you would like to see more of these in the future, please drop me a note on my gmail account: ahrarie@gmail.com OPEC AND GOD OPEC is reducing its production [...]

President-elect Barack Obama’s new national security team comprises strong and highly-qualified individuals.  Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and James Jones as National Security Advisor.  These are good choices, but what are the chances of an impasse on matters of policy stemming from these head-stong persons?  The positive side [...]

The reported choice of Hillary Clinton as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State does not make much sense. All presidents come to office with a definite worldview and a vision of America’s foreign policy during their term. Assuming that Obama shares these characteristics with his predecessors, his worldview was not quite similar to that which [...]

If either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton wins the net presidential election, there is going to be a radical change at least in the current size of American troop presence in Iraq.  But if John McCain were to win, the present U.S. commitment would remain the same or would even increase.  But the bottom line [...]