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AMMAN, Jordan — A politically inexperienced king takes control of a Middle Eastern monarchy from his powerful father, surrounds himself with U.S. military hardware and spies, loses touch with his people and is finally ejected in a popular uprising.
That was the tale of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the pro-American ruler of Iran [...]

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Hugo Chávez’s anti-American rant at the United Nations left most Americans puzzled, incensed and even outraged. What makes Chávez tick?
To understand him, stop thinking of oil-producing Venezuela as a Latin American country. Think of it as a dysfunctional Middle Eastern petro-state. Doing that is the key to understanding Chávez and Venezuela.

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A military assault on nuclear plants in Iran remains an option for U.S.
A B-2A Spirit thunders down the aging airstrip of Whiteman Air Force Base and takes off, curving east over the rolling forests of Missouri.
It flies past the empty silos where Minuteman nuclear missiles slumbered through all the long years [...]

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MANAGUA, Nicaragua Bolstered by booming oil profits, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been on a military spending spree, raising fears that one of Washington’s fiercest foes in Latin America is threatening the region’s military balance.
Those concerns are expected to be debated this week when defense ministers from across the Americas meet at [...]

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Rosneft and Gazprom is in the process of acquiring more oil and gas resources to control not only Russian but also global energy resources.
They will control soon more than half of Russian fossil based energy resources. That gives a tremendous power for Putin and Kremlin.

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Beneath the sheen of high-tech tranquillity that characterizes modern, conformist Japan stirs an angry, alienated and deeply pessimistic populace teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
So the ascendance of a hawkish new leader, Shinzo Abe, as the handpicked successor to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi raises fears that the nation’s long-repressed well [...]

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Historically speaking, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the source of much international as well as domestic tension. From the 1979 hostage crisis to the development of a suspicious nuclear programme (according to the International Atomic Energy Agency) to the draconian treatment of its subjects, the clerical regime has managed to [...]

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“The September 11 attacks are rightly regarded as a reflection of staggering U.S. intelligence failures in the years leading up to the terrorist strikes,” Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, observes in his latest book, “Enemies: How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets — And How We [...]

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Ten years ago, on the eve of Taiwan’s first direct presidential election, totalitarian China test-fired several missiles into waters off the coast of Taiwan to intimidate its voters.
Since then, Beijing has continued increasing its military pressure on Taiwan. Currently, it has deployed more than 800 missiles aimed at the island nation.
It is [...]

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Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration labeled the conflict into which it plunged this country the “war on terror.” But this is no more descriptive than calling the fight in Iraq a “war on IEDs.” The more pressing question is: Are we, or are we not, engaged in a larger clash of [...]

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