The Obama administration is entering a crucial phase of its existence. President Barack Obama is about to determine his new strategy governing the Afghan war. He has a lot at stake because wars have a bizarre way of making heroes and villains out of presidents and prime ministers.
Tag: United Kingdom
Getting Serious About Denuclearizing Iran
On the front page of Saturday’s Financial Times (September 26, 2009) there was a somber looking picture of the American President Barack H. Obama, U.K.’s Premier Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy heading toward a podium to address the world press condemning Iran’s secret uranium enrichment plant near the city of Qom. The United States and its allies believe that Iran is getting closer to making nuclear weapons. However, the how much closer is still a matter of speculation.
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The Making of a New Global Strategy
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 Russia, invitation of negotiations with America’s traditional adversaries like Iran and North Korea, and at least the initial hope that approaches toward Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are likely to be radically different than the one the Bush administration pursued unsuccessfully. This is a huge agenda. But Obama’s administration has the enormous characteristic of freshness, metaphorically as well as substantively, in the sense that it is not carrying any baggage that had so infamously bogged down George W. Bush in an ostensibly endless inertia.
Au Revoir, Indonesia!
Indonesia has always been a place “way out there in Southeast Asia” for me. My world travels took me all over the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and Europe, but East Asia remained a place that did not capture my professional interest until 2005, when I visited Singapore. During that trip, I remember the distinct feeling of ambivalence among a lot of Singaporeans on all issues related to Indonesia. That further aroused my curiosity. Since then, Indonesia was the most interesting place for me in East Asia. Strangely enough, however, my first visit to that country didn’t happen until October 2008.