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During his flying visit to Kabul, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad trumpeted the fact that Afghan and Pakistani intelligence had cooperated with Iran in the capture of militant leader Abdolmalik Rigi. Iran wants to extend this multilateral cooperation to the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. This would involve closer cooperation with the United States and foreign troops in Afghanistan, and therein lies the problem.
This week's United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing over the Google incident in China has shed much light on the conventional logic that has kept Washington and Beijing engaged in recent decades. The issues now facing the US and China are straining relations like never before, leading many Americans to wrestle with whether it makes sense to even be in a relationship with Beijing.
Indonesia is weighing the benefits of a new strategic partnership with the United States ahead of President Barack Obama's visit later this month to his childhood home. While deepening economic and security ties could put Jakarta at the forefront of the US's re-engagement with Southeast Asia, many Indonesians fear the US has a "predatory" agenda.
Despite being a software superpower, India lags behind nations such as China in the security needed to protect critical networks from a cyber-warfare strike. An attack could cripple government offices and disable India's electrical and communications grids, while dealing a blow to myriad internationally outsourced operations and a corporate sector that has yet to wake up to the threat.
A chorus of the usual Washington suspects is singing ever louder for the Barack Obama administration to alter its plans to get all American troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Basing their arguments on their ability to divine the future, what they forget is that after the US invasion, Iraq descended into a monumental bloodbath - in Washington's presence, on its watch.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have had a "frank exchange" over the UN's plan to set up a panel to examine Colombo's human-rights record in defeating the Tamil Tigers. Domestically, this plays into the hands of Rajapaksa as he is adept at whipping up nationalistic groups that do not take lightly to what they see as foreign interference.
The arrests this week of "Jihad Jane" in the US and seven others in Ireland over a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist have prompted a return to the hypocrisy and general humbuggery set off by a Danish newspaper's publication of a series of anti-Muslim cartoons.
Inside the minds of our senior financial analysts.
Masterminds for dummiesCounter-insurgency, then and now
A Question of Command by Mark Moyar
Counter-insurgency thinking is once again in the limelight, just as it was 50 years ago, which is why this timely perspective will find audiences in and out of the military. The bulk of the book comprises nine case studies ranging from the American Civil War to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The author has done a great deal of research, though points of disagreement are inevitable.
- Brian M Downing
(Mar 05, '10)

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