He was the brains behind ‘Charlie Wilson’s War.’ Now his tactics are hot, from Pakistan to Colombia.
Strange things are happening in the jungles of Colombia. After years of fighting a fierce, conventional war against the leftist guerrilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s military accomplished a major feat earlier [...]

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Today the two leaders, often partners but sometimes rivals, offer starkly different paths toward development, and it is Brazil’s milder and more pragmatic approach that appears ascendant. Amid the decline of American influence in the region, the Brazilian president is discreetly outflanking Chávez at almost every turn in the struggle for leadership in South America.
Chávez [...]

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Look behind the curtain of virtually every major problem in the Middle East, and you will find Iran: killings in Iraq; arms and money for Hezbollah’s assaults on Israel and Hezbollah’s attempts to usurp the elected government of Lebanon; support of Syria as the hotelier of the region’s major terrorist groups; support and training of [...]

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Yet the satisfaction of a diplomatic challenge eventually handled with skill is soured by the string of psychological humiliations that Britain has suffered.
First, there is the apparent incompetence of the Royal Navy in providing insufficient protection to lightly armed inflatables, at a time when relations between Iran and the West were particularly volatile following the [...]

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From the moment it began, it was clear the confrontation between Iran and Britain over the capture of fifteen British military personnel would be no isolated incident. First, there is the nuclear issue. Britain has sought to internationalize the dispute by raising complaints at the UN Security Council and European Union, both of which are [...]

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The 15 “European” hostages aren’t making that much news in “Europe.” And, insofar as they have, other “Europeans” — i.e., Belgians, Germans and whatnot — don’t look on the 15 hostages as “Europeans” but as Brits. Europe has more economic leverage on Iran than America has. The European Union is the Islamic Republic’s biggest trading [...]

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The Anglo-Iranian Hostage Situation Makes Europe’s Flaws Obvious
by Victor David Hanson
“It’s completely outrageous for any nation to go out and arrest the servicemen of another nation in waters that don’t belong to them.” So spoke Admiral Sir Alan West, former First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, concerning the present Anglo-Iranian crisis over captured British [...]

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