Why the U.S. military is pouring forces into a remote West Pacific island.
Feb. 26, 2007 issue – For an out-of-the-way spit of land in the West Pacific, Guam has been getting a lot of interesting visitors recently. First came a steady stream of Pentagon bureaucrats and senior U.S. military officers. Then, a few weeks ago, [...]

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Iran’s regional foreign policy has not yet caught up with its new pre-eminence; it is making as many enemies as it is gaining friends. If Iran and the Arab countries — and alongside them the US and the international community — do not manage today’s tensions wisely, the region could enter a period of protracted [...]

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Is the era of cheap oil really at an end? Or could a glut send prices into a freefall? Should Western countries fear energy blackmail from oil- rich powers?
There’s no crystal ball to predict oil’s future, but Leonardo Maugeri believes that much can be learned by looking at the industry’s past.
Maugeri is the author of [...]

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Officials find rugged terrain makes invasion virtually impossible.
In fact, officials tell WND they have war-gamed a full-blown invasion and ruled it out because of the difficult terrain in Iran, a mountainous fortress compared to Iraq.
“It’s a non-starter,” said one official.
He explains Iran is ringed virtually 360 degrees by towering mountains, and even if they were [...]

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Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Thursday he was in favour, under certain conditions, of Poland housing missiles for a defence shield that Washington wants to set up in central Europe. “The government and I are in favour of an agreement on the missile shield, but, naturally, only under certain conditions,” Kaczynski told a press conference.
“There [...]

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Despite all that, Putin has painted himself into a corner as he faces the end of the two terms in office that the Russian constitution allows him. This is a man who speaks the language of a modern leader trying to rebuild his country, when in fact he and his cronies have really just wanted [...]

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Mexico has reinforced security around oil installations in the three southeastern states where most of the nation´s crude is extracted and processed in light of threats by Islamic fundamentalist militants to attack infrastructure that helps supply energy to the United States.
This week a Saudi branch of Al Qaida urged its followers to attack the oil [...]

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan had three major goals. The first was to demonstrate Russia’s renewed power and influence in a region where U.S. influence is on the decline. The second was to facilitate Russian economic relations with the countries he visited. The third goal was to continue Russia’s [...]

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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has a tough choice to make: Destroying a powerful arsenal of SA-7 missiles would appease the US and other donors, but it would also make him appear weak to his anti-American friends.
Newly elected Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega finds himself the new caretaker of a powerful arsenal of Russian SA-7 missiles from [...]

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The foreign ministers of the three countries have met four times in the past — twice on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in 2002 and 2003 and then Almaty in 2004 when they gathered for a meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Lavrov, Li Zhaoxing, and Natwar [...]

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