Growing competition for oil may escalate to something as hot and dangerous as nuclear proliferation
The geopolitical implications of this gathering crisis for world oil supply 2010-15 are immense. The risk of further military interventions and conflicts in the Middle East is clearly high. Total world oil reserves are estimated at 2.5-2.9 trillion barrels, of which [...]

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Those are the 40-plus countries with the scientists, engineers and infrastructure for building bombs — and in at least one other case, that of South Africa, a history of having done so.
About a dozen are nuclear “rollback” states, ranging from Sweden and Switzerland, which seriously researched the weapon option in the 1950s and 1960s and [...]

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WITH oil prices at their present highs and Iraq at last making tentative progress towards stability, the last thing anyone wants to hear is that conditions in the Middle East could be about to take an abrupt turn for the worse. Unfortunately, they could. Recent weeks have brought a spike in chatter about the prospect [...]

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A new international relations orthodoxy is coalescing, to the effect that America is slouching towards mediocrity. In newspaper columns articles and on TV talk shows you will hear journalists charting the “relentless relative decline” of the United States. The military is overstretched; the economy is exposed; the political system is broken; the punters are suffering [...]

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In the 1930s, only few people recognized the dangers posed by Adolf Hitler´s book Mein Kampf, which clearly laid out his plan for the destruction of the Jewish people and the establishment for German hegemony across Europe. In a similar fashion, bin Laden´s objective for the restoration of the Caliphate is also as well-known – [...]

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America’s preoccupation in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has significantly undermined its influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Much has been written about how China has attempted to fill the “American void” in the Asia-Pacific and to reconfigure the region’s geopolitical architecture, but little attention is being accorded to Russia’s new power plays in the region, [...]

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Imagine this: Ten fighter jets take off from a base in northern Israel, fly over Jordan, Iraq and into Iran to bomb air-defense missile systems, radar stations and nuclear facilities. They then leave Iranian airspace safely without sustaining any enemy fire.
Sounds implausible? If the IAF has its way, the possibility will become realistic in the [...]

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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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Russia is one of the least peaceful places in the world, according to a new study, which ranks it among countries mired in drug trafficking, guerilla wars and political instability.
Russia took 131st place out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index, just below Colombia and above Lebanon, says the study, released late Monday. Iceland [...]

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The US military in Iraq had said its troops had found Chinese-made missiles which they believe were smuggled in by groups in Iran aiming to arm militants fighting US-led forces.
The US military has repeatedly accused Iranian-linked groups of training Iraqi extremists in the use of armor-piercing weapons known as explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs).
Afghan authorities had also [...]

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Russia’s oil industry
WHEN the price of oil reached another record on May 6th, of over $122 a barrel, analysts pointed to attacks on pipelines in Nigeria and turmoil in Iraq as the immediate causes. Even small disruptions to supplies from such places can cause the price to jump, since only Saudi Arabia has the capacity [...]

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John Bolton gets it right as usual. This is not a preemptive attack on Iran, but in response to their meddling in affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
See Video…

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The end of the unipolar moment, underlined by the American fiasco in Iraq and by the ascendancy of China, Brazil and India, raises again questions about the structure of the global system and how Europe fits within it.
After the end of the cold war and with the accelerating pace of globalisation, Europeans were inclined to [...]

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THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.
Surely the author of this sentence is on the ganja, you might say. Something [...]

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The reality is that as far as the current run-up in gasoline prices is concerned, other factors are more to blame: shrinking oil output from such key producers as Mexico, Russia and Venezuela; internal violence in Iraq and Nigeria; refinery inadequacies in the U.S. and elsewhere; speculative stockpiling by global oil brokers, and so on. [...]

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BAGHDAD — A series of conflicts with insurgent groups along Iran’s borders may be impelling Tehran to back its own allies in Iraq in what it regards as a proxy war with the U.S., according to security experts and officials in the U.S., Iran and Iraq.
Dozens of Iranian officials, members of the security forces [...]

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According to British media, the US is set to attack Iranian military facilities. DEBKAfile’s military sources add that the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf.
War tensions in the Middle East have shot up - not only over the signals flashing between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, but also on the US-Iranian [...]

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Five years ago, the US government presented what it said was proof that Iraq harbored biological weapons. The information came from a source developed by German intelligence — and it turned out to be disastrously wrong. But to this day, Germany denies any responsibility. By Erich Follath, John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark more…

SPIEGEL [...]

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HNN Editor: Dr. Conrad Crane is sometimes referred to as the historian who predicted what would happen in Iraq. In point of fact a lot of historians warned that we were headed into a mess. But Crane, Director of the U. S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA, bravely issued his [...]

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A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500-million from the United Nations’ oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam’s regime manipulate [...]

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Military contractors from Latin America are playing a far greater role in Iraq than most people realize, and the implications will be felt from Baghdad to Bogotá.
Media stories about private security firms (PMFS) such as Blackwater have highlighted the important—and controversial—role that private security contractors play in supporting U.S. military forces in Iraq. What few [...]

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