News roundup 03.02.2006

This post is very late. Sorry about that, to those three or four who read me regularly. I'm trying to think of ways to make these posts -- and my effort -- more productive.

Themes?

This one would center on complex foreign policy.

Iraq

Phila. Inquirer has an interesting A.P. story with this:

During a meeting yesterday, leaders of three parties - including Sunnis, Kurds, and secularists affiliated with former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi - agreed to ask the Shiite alliance to withdraw Jaafari's nomination and put forward another candidate.

George Will today:

When late in the spring of 1940 people of southeastern England flocked across the Channel in their pleasure craft and fishing boats to evacuate soldiers trapped on Dunkirk beaches, euphoria swept Britain. So Prime Minister Winston Churchill sternly told the nation: "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations."

Or by curfews, such as the one that cooled the furies that engulfed Iraq after the bombing last week of a Shiite shrine. Wars are not won simply by facing facts, but facing them is a necessary prerequisite.

Uh, I like his point. But it was the Brit Navy who took over those boats. It's a nice faux history story though.

India

Washington Post:

NEW DELHI, March 2 -- President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh struck what both leaders called an historic agreement Thursday to provide U.S. nuclear power assistance to India in exchange for new inspections of India's civilian nuclear facilities.

Good news.

Russia

The Baltimore Sun:

These first weeks of the Public Chamber are a reminder that "democracy" consists of more than elections and noble-sounding institutions. Last year, the Kremlin pressed for creation of the Public Chamber as a way to foster dialogue between the public and state. As proposed by President Vladimir V. Putin, the Public Chamber would serve as a watchdog over government.

The problem, critics say, is that the chamber is a government creation. And it risks becoming another voice endorsing the Kremlin's every move. A third of the chamber's members were picked by Putin; its work is financed by about $4 million in government funds.

I do not think I am the only one that sees an incredibly complex 21st century, in terms of foreign affairs.

Lebanon

The Chicago Tribune:

CAIRO -- U.S. military officials have been quietly assessing Lebanon's military capability, making a general inventory of its army, air and naval forces, and suggesting reforms following a request last year from top Lebanese government officials.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a top military planner, confirmed the review this week but would not elaborate on recommended reforms. The review was initiated after a request was made directly through the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, military and political sources said, and is part of a continuing process to help democratic forces in Lebanon.

Hamas

The Los Angeles Times:

The militant group's recent victory in parliamentary elections is testimony in part to its long track record on the streets. Its services are often perceived as being of higher quality and less tainted by corruption than the cumbersome and often ineffective social network operated by the Palestinian Authority controlled until now by Fatah.

The work Hamas does at home is an often-overlooked key to the domestic popularity of an organization most known elsewhere for killing. The United States has declared Hamas a terrorist organization, and U.S. and Israeli counter-terrorism experts have cited numerous instances in which Al Qaeda and Hamas drew funding from international Islamic charities. Hamas also reportedly has used schools and hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza to store weapons and plan attacks.

Christians

The Christian Science Monitor:

As Mr. Bush gave his attention to Darfur, one of the world's most high-profile humanitarian crises, he was almost certainly cheered not just by a coterie of evangelical advisers, but also the sizable Christian right constituency. But his focus on a forlorn region of Africa suggests deeper shifts in the forces influencing US foreign policy.

Even as many in Washington trumpet the return of realism to US foreign policy and the decline of the neoconservative hawks, the staying power of the evangelicals is likely to blunt what might otherwise have been a steep decline in Wilsonian ideals.