If wasn’t clear before it should be now: the Bush Administration can’t afford to attack Iran. With gas already at $4 a gallon and rising almost every day, Iran figuratively and literally has the United States over a barrel. As much as the Administration is tempted, it is not about to test Iran’s promise to [...]

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U.S. naval strategists followed these developments closely. They were far slower, however, to recognize that the really serious 21st century submarine threat was going to come from a technology they had abandoned decades earlier as obsolete.
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The January 2008 article, “Civil rights war in Canada” (pp. 11-16), quoted from REAL Women’s magazine Reality (Mar/April 2007) in saying that “adoptions, social services such as nursing homes, religious-based schools, marriages, employment conduct, etc., carried out by religious organizations will be held to secular standards, not religious ones.” One reason for this development, it [...]

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‘If We Fail, Humanity’s Survival Will Be on the Line’
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei talks to SPIEGEL about Israel’s propensity for unilateral action against countries like Syria, the US’s tendency to keep the IAEA in the dark and the threat of nuclear terrorism. more…

Photo Gallery: The Growing Nuclear Threat
Alarming Test Results: Iran Could Have Enough [...]

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President Sarkozy seeks a rapprochement with NATO while strengthening the European Union’s defense dimension. France’s allies, including the United States and Germany, have welcomed this. But Sarkozy faces strong domestic resistance to changing France’s relationship to NATO. By Leo Michel more…

The Third World War: Why NATO Troops Can’t Deliver Peace in Afghanistan
Trans-Atlantic Identity Crisis: NATO [...]

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Officials confirmed the JL-2 after it was first reported last week in two Japanese newspapers that quoted Japanese military sources.
“While the U.S. government provides insufficient informational warning about the JL-2’s capabilities, Asian sources have long commented it may eventually carry three to four warheads or a number of decoys,” said Richard Fisher, a military affairs [...]

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China and Taiwan agreed on Thursday to set up their first ever offices in each others’ territories, as they began historic talks aimed at consolidating a dramatic rapprochement and building trade ties.
Both sides said the restart of the dialogue, which China suspended a decade ago as relations between the long-time rivals plummeted, would be able [...]

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Scientists and engineers see a world of possibilities in lab-grown diamonds; jewelers are less enthusiastic.
I’m sitting in a fast-food restaurant outside Boston that, because of a nondisclosure agreement I had to sign, I am not allowed to name. I’m waiting to visit Apollo Diamond, a company about as secretive as a Soviet-era spy agency. [...]

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Others were driven by the uncertainty of the future. The posture Russia chooses to adopt in its efforts to reclaim its former status, in particular, was mentioned as cause for concern. The deterioration of Russian military capacity and the unlikelihood of a direct conflict make it more of a destabilizing factor than a threat. Nevertheless, [...]

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