United Press International

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Clashing fundamentals of vastly disparate societies are the basis for an unsuccessful bid for democracy, according to experts such as Lee Smith, visiting fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington.

"The problem is not the regimes and the lack of democracy; nor is it the flawed policies of the White House," said Smith, an expert in Arab and Islamic affairs.. "The essential problem is the same (whether in Iraq, Lebanon or Israel): fear, distrust… more

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Encouraging fair play in the international oil market, not isolation, is the route U.S. policymakers should take, energy economists say.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an isolationist attitude has been taken up by many organizations and members of Congress and the Bush administration have expressed similar sentiments, said Pierre Noel, research associate with the Electricity Policy Group at the University of Cambridge.

Their claims that the United States would be better off importing less… more

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. foreign policy experts are trying to bring their concerns to the American public in new and more systematic ways.

With little more than a month to the midterm congressional elections in November, renewed national policy debate came to the U.S. capital in a big way this week.

"One thing that I remember about the Cold War period is that there were endless discussions in Washington about big strategic issues ... but there was no… more

Happy days are here again. Or so say William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the co-helmsmen of America's neoconservative establishment. In their upbeat Weekly Standard assessment of the Dec. 15 Iraq parliamentary elections, they ridicule "sour experts" whom they assert are going far out of their way to explain why "the peaceful election of a national assembly for a fully self-governing Arab democracy was not a turning point." But the election, according to Kristol and Kaplan, was no less than an… more

My career as a journalist began in Iraq. My big break was writing a piece for the New Yorker magazine about the Iraqi resistance in Fallujah, so I have remained attached to that city--and I am not the only one.

In July I was in Mogadishu, Somalia. Men there wear T-shirts emblazoned "Fallujah," shops bear the name, too.

In August I was in Pakistan, where magazines are sold dedicated to the heroes and martyrs of the town. In Saudi Arabia, the… more

The battle over John Bolton, President Bush's pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is not a competition between Senate Democrats and Republicans. It's actually a brewing civil war inside the Republican foreign-policy establishment. None of the dramatic events of the four public hearings to date on Bolton's nomination would have been possible without the active complicity of a large swath of the GOP establishment.

Nine senior U.S. government officials -- some, like Carl Ford, known to be heavyweight… more

John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security since May 2001 and now President Bush's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, not only tried to get State Department intelligence analyst Christian Westermann "removed" from his portfolio (read: "fired"), he also seems to have recruited help from a U.S. senator in trying to get Ambassador Charles "Jack" Pritchard fired from his position as America's lead envoy in negotiating with North Korea.

Many officials have said Bolton's behavioral… more

I just received this March 1, 2005, letter written by House Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Security.

Waxman is basically blowing the whistle on the administration's extravagant use of "sensitive but unclassified" designations on official acts to block public access to and transparency of government policymaking.

On pages 5-7, Waxman reveals that John Bolton promulgated the… more

Japan's media have carried an "official apology" by Crown Prince Naruhito -- available at: japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050303f1.htm> -- to his parents. Last May, the Crown Prince made the public comment, "It is true that there were developments that denied (Crown Princess) Masako's career as a diplomat as well as her personality."

Allegedly, this statement triggered icy relations between the Chiyoda Palace, occupied by Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, and the Akasaka Palace, occupied by the crown prince and his wife. In… more

When I was more youthful, less cynical, and thought that some of the world's most severe problems could be solved if every American just gave a dime, or a quarter, or a dollar, I had no idea how expensive fixing some of the world's problems could be.

George W. Bush has just asked Congress for another $82 billion to fund our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If approved, our total direct spending on these wars, according to the Congressional Research Service, will… more