Yes, the American “mission impossible” 500 lb gorilla is crumbling into the sands, its pretentious military overstretch now compounded by its loose fiscal stupidities. Don’t you agree with that, Professor Kennedy? Hasn’t your controversial prediction in the closing parts of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers been realised?
Well, slow down a minute. It [...]

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Vladimir Putin’s appointment this spring as prime minister of the symbolic “union” of Russia and Belarus was yet another example of the troubling similarities between today’s Russia and the other most stable and prosperous Russian regime of the past 80 years: Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union in the 1970s. That economy, too, was fueled by then-record [...]

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More strategic unhelpfulness from Russia and China.
From the article:
Russia and China vetoed proposed sanctions on Zimbabwe on Friday, rejecting U.S. efforts to step up punitive measures after the African nation’s disputed presidential election.
Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council, in a show of hands. But the failed [...]

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What the Games Mean for Beijing’s Future.
Failure to plan for predictable problems has turned China’s coming-out party into an embarrassment.
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Yet even as Beijing has worked tirelessly to ensure the most impressive of Olympic spectacles, it is clear that the Games have come to highlight not only the awesome achievements of the country but also the [...]

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Isaac Ben-Israel, a former Israeli Air Force general and now member of the ruling Kadima party, spoke with SPIEGEL about the limits of sanctions in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. He says Israel is prepared to mount a military strike against the mullah regime if diplomacy fails. more…

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Fear are growing that Robert Mugabe’s regime had been strengthened ahead of a presidential election with the secret delivery of a shipment of arms from China.
Reports said the weapons, including three million bullets, mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, had been off-loaded from the Chinese vessel, the An Yue Jiang, at the Angolan port of Lobito [...]

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NARGIS POSES HUMANITARIAN DILEMMA
The stubbornness of Burma’s military junta puts the West into a hopeless situation. If the international community wants to provide relief to victims of Cyclone Nargis, then it has to play by the regime’s rules. But the West’s submissiveness sends a dangerous signal to despots everywhere. By our reporter in Rangoon more…

Junta [...]

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Israel’s military intelligence has projected that Hamas would be capable of producing missiles with a range of up to 50 kilometers.
The military has concluded that Iran wants the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip to achieve the capability of firing missiles and rockets at targets in Tel Aviv, about 50 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. [...]

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China as an “emerging superpower” makes for a compelling story line in the media. It is reinforced by the propaganda image that the current Chinese leadership would like us to accept. But the reality is quite different. Although recent events in Tibet and western China – and the central government’s response – appear to be [...]

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