The Australian

The energy, financial and political woes that grip the US signal a decisive shift in world power, mocking the liberal delusion that Barack Obama or John McCain can return American prestige and power to its pre-Bush year 2000 nirvana. There is no such nirvana. There is instead a new reality: the greatest transfer of income in human history, away from energy importers such as the US to energy exporters; the rise of a new breed of wealthy autocracies that cripple… more

The long-awaited report by David Petraeus to the US Congress on the war in Iraq has provoked a debate about tactics rather than what is needed: a debate about strategy. The tactics are those of the US troop surge (a weasel word for escalation). Observers agree that the surge has had some effect in reducing violence in parts of Iraq, temporarily if not permanently. But this success, if it is a success, ignores the larger question of US strategy.

The US… more

The day after the 2006 US mid-term elections, a polite but important coup is under way in Washington. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has gone. Brent Scowcroft acolyte, former CIA director and anti-neo-conservative realist Robert Gates has got Rumsfeld’s job. Democrats control both chambers of Congress. And George W. Bush has found that not only can he not stay the course in Iraq, he can’t stay the course on any policy front.

Quite uncharacteristic of his earlier tenure, somewhat desperate-sounding pleas… more

The West's great cities face serious challenges, with terrorists plotting to blow them up even as jobs and capital flee to the low-cost havens of the developing world. However, from Sydney to San Francisco, the political imperative all too often has been not to look for ways to stay safe or competitive, but instead how to make cities cool and hip.

To many public officials, the key to building a great city in the 21st century lies… 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 December 15 Iraq parliamentary elections (reprinted in these pages yesterday), 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,… more

Brent Scowcroft, one of the pillars of the Republican foreign policy establishment and best friend of George H.W. Bush, has dropped a few tons of highly destructive ordnance on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and others on the White House war team. In this week's New Yorker, the former national security adviser's usual wry and elliptical style turned to blunt, unmistakable disdain for the policies and "decision-making process" that this Bush administration has deployed.

Scowcroft's remarks followed an… more

In the debate about a second UN resolution authorising a US-dominated invasion and occupation of Iraq, both sides share a common premise. France, Russia and Germany argue that the UN will lose its moral authority if it rubber-stamps a war that the US has decided to wage. The Bush administration argues that the UN will lose its geopolitical credibility if it does not. Both sides are mistaken -- the UN has neither authority nor credibility to lose.

The UN has never… more