Military planners in India are eyeing a crucial junction of the world which serves as the conduit for 80 per cent of China’s imported oil.
If these tensions were ever to boil over into war, India would probably exploit a crucial advantage. Its navy, which eventually plans to deploy three aircraft carriers and two nuclear-powered attack [...]

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Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday announced Moscow’s intention to preserve geographical spheres “of privileged interest” on or near its borders as part of a five point foreign policy statement in a television interview.
The announcement, in the wake of the recent conflict in Georgia, is likely to raise the political temperature in neighbouring states, especially [...]

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A six-day conflict in the Caucasus mountains has transformed the international balance of power, with Russia now looking stronger than ever. But what sparked it? Diplomatic Editor Anne Penketh reveals how the Georgian government walked straight into a trap set by Moscow – and considers the consequences of the first war in Europe for a [...]

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As NATO ministers gather in Brussels to discuss how tough to get with Russia after the Georgian crisis, an opinion poll shows one in two Poles fear an attack by Russia. Eastern European countries are unhappy with the response of the West. more…

The Dangerous Neighbor: Vladimir Putin Takes on a Powerless West
SPIEGEL Interview with Gerhard [...]

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WARSAW — Signing a missile-defense deal with its good friend the United States has earned Poland nothing less than the threat of nuclear attack from Russia — a threat that might not sound so empty these days, given Moscow’s bloody battle with Georgia.
That conflict has plunged Europe into serious crisis, sending waves of jitters through [...]

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Blame it on a dull black substance called coltan, also known as columbite-tantalite, also occasionally dubbed “black gold.” Coltan has been a source material in the manufacture of cell phones, DVD players, computers, and you guessed it: game consoles. Earlier this month, Toward Freedom claimed the metallic ore had exacerbated a decade-old conflict in the [...]

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In reality, the conflict between Russia and Georgia is not just about Abkhazia but about Russia’s lingering resentment at what it regards as Western encirclement. Following the end of the Cold war and demise of the Warsaw Pact, Russia believed it had an assurance from Nato and the West that there would be no expansion [...]

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The word “petrostate” typically conjures up images of Middle Eastern sheiks with fantastically wealthy lifestyles ruling politically repressive, oil-rich desert regions. Few realize that Russia actually leads the world in the production and export of natural gas and trails only Saudi Arabia in the production and export of oil. Even fewer know that Russia has [...]

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As drylands get drier and violence grows, new crises resembling Darfur will arise.
The world will experience a growing risk of conflicts over food, energy and water in coming years. The population rises each year by about 80 million people, with most of the increase in impoverished regions already facing environmental stress. Climate change, water scarcity [...]

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Revisionists say that World war II was unnecessary. They’re wrong.
Historical scholarship has nevertheless offered various sorts of revisionist interpretation of all this. Niall Ferguson, for one, has proposed looking at the two world wars as a single conflict, punctuated only by a long and ominous armistice. British conservative historians like Alan Clark and John Charmley [...]

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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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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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Israel braced itself for conflict on two fronts against militants in Gaza and an Iranian government persisting with its nuclear programme.
Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, said the “pendulum is closer” to a large scale military operation in Gaza after another Israeli civilian was killed by a mortar fired from Gaza on Thursday.
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One of Mr Olmert’s [...]

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Iran’s actions mean war. The United States and Europe should put an army together and go to war against Iran. Although, I do NOT believe this will happen. We can’t do it all ourselves, and Britain along with the rest of Europe will not help in this regard.
The bottom line is that Iran will continue [...]

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The long military standoff in Abkhazia, where a separatist dispute has risked escalating this year to a renewed war, has entered a phase of quiet diplomacy aimed at easing tensions and urging negotiations, according to officials on both sides of the conflict.
No agreement to negotiate has been reached, and the differences between the Abkhaz and [...]

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And the correlation between oil and violence is likely to grow stronger, since as Ross points out, countries in Africa, the Caspian basin, and Southeast Asia will soon become “significant oil and gas exporters. Some of these countries, including Chad, East Timor, and Myanmar, have already suffered internal strife. Most of the rest are poor, [...]

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Poverty and weak health systems contribute hugely to the problem, but another, largely overlooked, factor is responsible for nearly 30% of all malaria deaths in Africa - conflict.
In 2007, 26 million people were driven from their homes by conflict. The effects of climate change - and conflict over limited resources like water, food and land [...]

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Georgia has asked the U.N. Security Council to discuss Russia’s “military aggression” after saying a Russian jet shot down one of its unmanned spy planes.
To bolster its case, the Georgian air force released a video that it says shows a twin-tailed Russian MiG-29 shooting down a Georgian unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, over the separatist [...]

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But officials portray Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak as having little interest in a deal with Hamas. They acknowledge that a suspension of attacks by both sides might make the ongoing peace talks easier — and that the outbreak of an all-out conflict would almost certainly kill the Annapolis process. Yet, [...]

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If there’s a documentary that you need to purchase and invite all of your friends and neighbors over to watch, it’s Obsession: Radical Islam’s war against the West, a new film from HonestReporting.com. This follows up on their previous documentary, Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in the Middle East, an equally excellent film that chronicled [...]

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Link to this article.
In his upcoming book about the horrors of the 20th century (The war of the World), the British historian Niall Ferguson has a chapter called The Pity of Peace. It is about 1938 when World war II loomed and Britain — especially and importantly Britain — did precious little to stop it. [...]

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