What’s the world’s most worrisome nuclear-proliferation hotspot? Answer: the diplomatic table in Beijing where six-party talks are periodically convened to discuss North Korean nuclear disarmament. Every time the international negotiators gather—or even threaten to gather—Pyongyang seems to take another step toward unrestrained nuclear breakout.
In the summer of 2003, when the talks were first planned, Pyongyang [...]

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BERLIN, Jan. 25 (UPI) — Russia is trying to build a gas cartel in Europe by linking up with Algeria, a top EU official said.
EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs of Latvia said if Russia and Algeria agreed to cooperate in the production and distribution of gas to Europe, “they could create a kind of cartel,” [...]

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It’s unusual to hear frank talk of war at a confab devoted to the peaceful advances of globalization. But here on Day One at Davos, war talk was in the air. War, to be specific, between Iran and the U.S.
At a morning session devoted to the Middle East, and run by prominent business and political [...]

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In September 2004, PINR released an in-depth report on Iran’s foreign policy objectives. According to the report, the “best-case scenario for Iran is that the U.S. military is forced to withdraw from Iraq, leaving Iran with a dominant sphere of influence over a Shi’a-dominated Iraq or a breakaway Shi’a mini-state in the south, and that [...]

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Since the turn of the 21st century, American foreign policy and military muscle have been focused on the Middle East, and justifiably so. Between the USS Cole, the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslim extremists in the region have pitted themselves against the West, and [...]

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The USA may impose sanctions on Russia for selling surface-to-air missile system supplies “Top M-1″ to Iraq, which was announced before. State Department Sean McCormack said Wednesday that such measures were likely to follow because the Bush’s administration harshly criticized Russia’s defense contract with Iran and urged the Kremlin to terminate it, Gazeta.ru reported.
Link to [...]

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NEW DELHI — Russia’s defense minister yesterday harshly criticized U.S. plans to deploy missile-defense sites in Central Europe, saying Moscow doesn’t trust the U.S. explanation that they are intended to counter missile threats posed by Iran and North Korea.
Sergei Ivanov, speaking during a trip to India where he co-chaired a bilateral commission on military ties, [...]

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DAVOS, Switzerland - The high-profile Davos meeting of the international political, business, economic and academic elite began on Wednesday on the somber note that globalization is facing major threats due to worsening climate change, growing income disparities, escalating barriers to the movement of people, and global political and economic instability.
“We are living in a schizophrenic [...]

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MOSCOW, January 25 (Itar-Tass) — Most Russians believe that the United States is the world’s biggest super-power, but half of them are certain that Russia will be able to regain this status, too, at some future date, the latest opinion polls have shown.
However, still more people believe that it is most important not to [...]

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Iran has converted its most powerful ballistic missile into a satellite launch vehicle. The 30-ton rocket could also be a wolf in sheep’s clothing for testing longer-range missile strike technologies, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reports in its Jan. 29 issue.
The Iranian space launcher has recently been assembled and “will liftoff soon” with an [...]

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IF THERE is to be a new arms race in space, China will be in it. Its belated admission that earlier this month it destroyed one of its own satellites—blowing it to smithereens by slamming a ballistic missile into it over 500 miles (800km) up in space—is China’s way of saying that it will cede [...]

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Top Army commanders from South Korea and China on Thursday agreed to enhance cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries and improve military exchange programs, the Army announced.
The agreement was made during a meeting between Army Chief of Staff Gen. Park Heung-ryul and Gen. Ge Zhenfeng, deputy chief of the General Staff of [...]

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The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World (Paperback). Price $10.20 at Amazon.Com
As Iran continues to develop its nuclear program and explicitly denounces Israel, Michael Karpin’s The Bomb in the Basement provides important context for the ongoing tensions in the Middle East.
After Israel won its war of [...]

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The revelation last week that China had slammed a medium-range ballistic missile into one of its aging satellites on January 11 and littered space with junk fragments has created its own form of political debris in Washington, D.C.
“I hope the Chinese test will be a wake up call to people,” said Hank Cooper, a former [...]

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