As Western intelligence agencies are discovering, al-Qaida is by no means finished. Training camps have reappeared in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan, as Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network regains its strength.
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Rand’s latest paper on Chinese anti-access strategies paints a dark picture for any U.S. military attempt to defend Taiwan during a crisis. China is preparing to fight a “local war under high-technology conditions,” the authors warn.
“Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and Their Implications for the United States” gives a detailed overview of likely [...]

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While the Knesset heard about potential scenarios for reaching peace with Damascus on Thursday, senior defense officials warned of an unprecedented military buildup in Syria and said that prevailing in a war with Israel’s northeastern neighbor would not be as simple as some might have been led to believe.
Following the Second Lebanon War, IDF Military [...]

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Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela, and other members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (G.E.C.F.) met in Doha on April 9 amidst Western fears that Moscow may encourage the birth of a “gas O.P.E.C.” Western decision-makers fear that such a new organization could give producers of natural gas an advantage over consumers.
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The new Cold war won’t be like the last one, with massed tank divisions stretched across the German plain ready to repulse a Communist invasion of Western Europe. No, the looming power struggle between resurgent Russian nationalism and Western liberty will be determined by raw economic muscle and political clout or, in Russia’s case, blackmail [...]

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Financial sanctions have a big place in a tool-box designed to thwart the proliferators of Pyongyang and Tehran.
To hawkish critics of Mr Bush’s readiness to negotiate with both North Korea and Iran (if only the latter would suspend its uranium and plutonium work as the UN Security Council has demanded) on nuclear matters, these setbacks [...]

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NEW DELHI: India successfully tested the 3,500-km range Agni-III ballistic missile on Thursday, taking an important step towards building a minimum credible nuclear deterrence against China.
Though it is the most ambitious nuclear-capable missile to be tested by India till date, Agni-III still falls well short of the ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) that China has. [...]

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The Fengyun — “Wind and Cloud” — 1-C weather satellite was a proud worker in China’s space program. Launched in May 1999, it provided a wealth of information that scientists used for forecasting floods, sandstorms and disturbances in space caused by solar activity.
Now, it has been reduced to a nebula of [...]

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On the 9th, the Committee for Democratization of North Korea released some satellite pictures of Kim Jong Il’s private villas in North Korea. The committee is a newly founded organization which unites all defectors based groups and was officially established on the 10th.
Former secretary to the North Korean Workers’ Party, Hwang Jang Yop has taken [...]

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Satellite imagery turns globe into a computer peep show.
This is the Age of Google Earth and Microsoft’s Live Search Maps — of computer wizardry that offers a whole new window through which to peer down upon the world. It’s a planetary perspective that would have been the envy of explorers from Marco Polo to Neil [...]

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The US is perceived by many as an international bully, a modern day imperial power. At this critical moment in history, Washington correspondent Justin Webb challenges that idea.
He argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little justification in fact. His three part series takes him to Cairo, Caracas and Washington but it begins [...]

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In the years since the Cold War, the Russian Federation has been caught in a perpetual gray area, mired in a lengthy and ongoing transition between old and new: authoritarian political structures and democratic institutions, a centrally planned economy and a market system, imperial superpower status and ordinary statehood. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, [...]

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India on Thursday successfully tested its most powerful nuclear-capable ballistic missile, which can reach targets as far away as China, from a military range off the country’s eastern coast, the government said.
The Agni III, with a range of more than 3,000 kilometres, was launched from the Integrated Test Range in the eastern Orissa state, Defence [...]

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It is usually silly to offer a single solution to complex problems. But it’s hard not to when looking at the serial savagery in Iran and the Arab world.
Oil — the huge profits it provides and the insidious influence it gives those selling it — explains most of the world’s worries over the Middle East.
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What [...]

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Australia does some strange things in its foreign policies. The latest “security” (read “military”) tieup with Japan is no exception.
Canberra insists that the tieup has no anti-China implication. But a tieup with a Tokyo beset by anti-Beijing dislikes and fears, and which seeks to recruit even such unlikely candidates as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [...]

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