Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | RUPEE NEWS | March 11th, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? |

Another article about the end of US hegemony has been published in the Atlantic Monthly. Imperial blindness: Another Empire stuck in Af-Pak quagmire unable to extricate itself out of Kipling’s hell. The US has squandered it wealth and prestige in the past decade. The Unipolar world is ending. There are clear signs of a resurgent Russia and a rising China. Parag Khanna says that “India has missed the boat”. Europe is a major contender for a World Power. It seems likely that the hegemony of the sole superpower will be replaced by a world with at least four major poles–The USA, Russia, Europe, and China. There may be other contenders and those who want to be counted, but the the quad will rule the world. Each node of the quad will try to manipulate other smaller powers to their advantage. For example during the Bush Administration the US tried to use Bharat (aka India) a counterweight to China. The Obama-Clinton policy is to build a strong relationship with China. “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” By Parag Khanna: Dawn of a multipolar world with China and Europe and maybe Russia….

People talk glibly of ‘the total disarmament of the frontier tribes’ as being the obvious policy…but to obtain it would be as painful and as tedious an undertaking as to extract the stings of a swarm of hornets, with naked fingers.” Winston Churchill

Can Obama pull US out of the AfPak quicksand? Choosing China & Pakistan over Bharat (aka India)
Can Obama duplicate Swat peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan

The last time the political tectonic plates collided, the eartquake was felt all over South Asia, Eastern Europe and in Latin America. After the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan the USSR imploded under the drunk leadership of Mr. Yeltsin, and was reduced to the status of Latvia and Estonia. It was ignored and humiliated. A resurgent Russia can be analogized to a resurgent Germany after Versailles.

In the past two decades, America was the undisputed leader and the main military power on the planet. Parag Khanna is one of those that feel the USA squandered away that leadership and missed a golden opportunity to lead by example and with moral authority. Python swallows alligator and explodes: Lessons from the Peloponnesian War.

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline. Paragh Khanna

Castro on collapse of US Imperialism. Decries “Law of jungle”

Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to America’s image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. Condoleezza Rice has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.The Geopolitical Marketplace

While the Obama administration seeks to improve America’s position vis-à-vis Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Europe, and Asia, the most critical foreign-policy front of all – the home front—is looking brittle. This development is new, as for almost seven decades – ever since Pearl Harbor—policymakers have taken for granted that the homefront would cooperate with military missions and expenditures. America could build ships, planes, and tanks, and assert itself as the pivotal outside power in many parts of the world, and the home front (despite sometimes outspoken political opposition, as during the Vietnam War) would financially support those efforts. This held true from the time of the end of the Great Depression right up until the onset of our current great recession. The emergencies of World War II and the early Cold War years, coupled with a constantly expanding economy, allowed the home front to write blank checks for our endeavors abroad. But the big question in foreign policy today is, Will this continue in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s?

Soon after the Iraq war turned nasty in 2006, the American people lost their stomach for involvement there. It was only because the surge paid fairly quick dividends, which got Iraq off the front pages, that public disquiet was reduced to low-level muttering. But that was before the economic crisis hit. Given the state of people’s retirement accounts and job prospects, where will the public be regarding Afghanistan a year from now? I’d guess that the Administration has no more than a year to show striking progress in Afghanistan before the public starts to growl like it did at the Bush Administration in the 2006 mid-term elections.

But Afghanistan is only the most obvious potential casualty of the recession. Also at stake are the expensive weapons programs and air and sea platforms that allow the United States to sustain its position as a global military hegemon. Regardless of what happens on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. dominates the air and the main sea lines of communication (SLOCs). Ultimately, it is this fact that makes this country the preeminent global power that it is, and gives our diplomacy the heft it requires to sit at the front of the table at critical gatherings around the world. Yet maintaining that position doesn’t just cost money, it costs lots and lots of money—billions, not millions. Why the recession could spell the end of American dominance by Robert D. Kaplan The Shrinking Superpower. Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Already the first signs of friction on the world scene are being felt. The Russian invasion of Georgia as a result of the NATO expansion, the Chinese rebuff of Delhi, the US-Beijing Naval tension, and the Chinese request to America to stop the destabilization of South Asia are some examples of a changing world.

The geopolitical marketplace will decide which will lead the 21st century.The key second-world countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia are more than just “emerging markets.” If you include China, they hold a majority of the world’s foreign-exchange reserves and savings, and their spending power is making them the global economy’s most important new consumer markets and thus engines of global growth – not replacing the United States but not dependent on it either. I.P.O.’s from the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) alone accounted for 39 percent of the volume raised globally in 2007, just one indicator of second-world countries’ rising importance in corporate finance – even after you subtract China. When Tata of India is vying to buy Jaguar, you know the landscape of power has changed. Second-world countries are also fast becoming hubs for oil and timber, manufacturing and services, airlines and infrastructure – all this in a geopolitical marketplace that puts their loyalty up for grabs to any of the Big Three, and increasingly to all of them at the same time. Second-world states won’t be subdued: in the age of network power, they won’t settle for being mere export markets. Rather, they are the places where the Big Three must invest heavily and to which they must relocate productive assets to maintain influence.Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from his book, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order,” Random House.

Fixing Afpak: Inability to define exit strategy spells inevitable US military catastrophy in Kabul Obama’s sane policy: Negotating with the Taliban Betrayals, blackmail in Bakiyev cloaking failure as success hiding the defeat declaring victory withdrawing from Afghanistan within 12 months Obama to unveil new policy: Marshal Plan & end to bombing raids in Pakistan
Convincing the US tin ear of the Pakistani point of view Peek into Obama’s brains: Bruce Reidel on Pakistan Growing consensus in the Obama team: Much of Pakistan’s problems originate in Afghanistan
Obama advisor Weinbaum predicts total Afghan policy review: Sees focus on talks & Reconciliation Afghanistan: Gen. Petraeus’ Pakistani advisers: Indians jittery Obama adviser gives deep insights into new Afghan policy

The fact that the public has docilely accepted this arrangement for so long does not mean that it will continue to do so. Despite the many new billions that President Obama’s budget allocates for jump-starting the economy, he intends to substantially cut the Pentagon’s money-line. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned that the financial “spigot that opened on 9/11…is closing.” Gates might more accurately have said it is the financial spigot that opened following Pearl Harbor that’s closing. For the only interruption to the succession of high budgets the Pentagon has enjoyed since Pearl Harbor occurred during the 1990s, when America felt itself at peace, with no overbearing security threats. That decade saw the Navy lose almost half of its ships. The 1990s may provide only a taste of what is to come as the recession deepens and elongates, leading to tectonic changes in the public mood.

Conservatives are already protesting the short shrift President Obama seems to be giving the Pentagon, but they are crying into the wind. The President’s approval rating is exceedingly high. The lesson seems to be that the President and the Democrats can do what they want with Pentagon budgets, and, if the economy doesn’t pull out of its tailspin relatively soon, they will.

Nonetheless, I do not expect any sudden slashing of defense budgets. What I foresee is a more gradual siphoning of money away from vital programs over the next decade, even as China, India, and other countries enlarge their navies and other forces. This will not necessarily lead to a security dilemma for the U.S., but it will certainly lead to a multipolar world and the end of American dominance. The only development that could change this equation would be a new and sudden threat – and one other than mass-casualty terrorism. For while terrorism would lead to larger budgets for the intelligence establishment, the conventional air and sea platforms from which great powers are made would not be affected.

Defense policy will be increasingly geared toward protecting the homeland, even as globalization makes for a smaller, more intricately connected world. America, in the final analysis, will be better protected, even as its global reach wanes. That is what to expect if the recession is still with us a year from now. Why the recession could spell the end of American dominance by Robert D. Kaplan The Shrinking Superpower. Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | RUPEE NEWS | March 11th, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? |

US AfPak policy review results mimic Chinese demads given to Hillary Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. ~Abraham Lincoln In 1821 The Taliban was a construct of the CIA and was armed by the CIA:–Congressman Dana Rohrabacher Obama’s Vietnam & Cambodiazation of the Afghan war Solutions to “Obama’s Vietnam” Kabul: The Final Spring Offensive? End of NATO? Afghanistan: The writing is on the wall. Can Obama read it? UK Brig. Smith: “We’re not going to win this [Afghan] war”
Failure and Defeat in Afghanistan: Inevitable Frustration & misdirected Payback for ally Pakistan US Charge of the Light Brigade into Pakistan is a US failure and has to stop
Pakistan’s do more list for the USA Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan & Swat run by Taliban Huge Migraine for India
Facing the Khyber poltergeist & Ganges hobgoblin NATO war: UK 1880 defeats in Afghanistan
“Charge of the Light Brigade” in Afghanistan AGAIN: Unfortunately the lessons of the unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838–42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students.
Bin Laden used Reagan’s USSR strategy to Destroy US Capitalism? Cambodiazation of the Afghan war Rescueing the Pashtuns of Afghania from Afghanistan
Unite! Erase the Durand Line Solution: Fixing “AfPak” expedites the inevitable union between Pakistan & Afghanistan The emerging “Leave Pakistan to Afghanistan” strategy goes mainstream–Extricating the US from the Lost in the Khyber