The Times (London)

“The Iran election seriously complicates Obama's game plan in the region,” said Steven Clemons, of the New America Foundation, a left-of-centre Washington think tank. “But if Ahmadinejad is sworn in and the situation gets relatively stable, ...

Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert at the New America Foundation in Washington, said that the furore over the case and similar ones would prove politically sticky for the Obama Administration as it sought to fulfil the promise to close Guantánamo. ...

Peter Bergen, an author and al-Qaeda expert, interviewed one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, who told him that the terrorist leader had given him two bullets to ...

The attack on the Marriott hotel is a shocking blow to Pakistan. What is really frightening is that the security measures in place worked: the lorry was stopped by guards at the barrier outside. As I found during visits to the Marriott during my recent stay in Pakistan, they were vigilant and effective.

Against a tonne of explosives, however, there is not much that can be done – except to cordon off the entire neighbourhood. Most of the Western embassies and consulates in Pakistan are protected in… more

Given all this, one might ask whether it was worth getting rid of Mr Musharraf. Although he too pursued an alliance with the US, he was at least personally honest, whereas Mr Zardari is widely known as “Mr Ten Per Cent”, because of his behaviour when his wife was Prime Minister in the 1990s.

If things go badly, many Pakistanis may come to regret Mr Musharraf's overthrow. But it's no good crying over spilt milk. As I found talking to ordinary people in the weeks before… more

Before making his speech on policy towards Russia in Kiev, Ukraine, later this week David Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that did not mean that he liked playing about with that power.

Faced with proposals for British policy that he understood to be deeply damaging to the interests of other great powers, Salisbury would look his colleagues in… more

Many factors are involved in the present conflict but the central one is straightforward: the majority of the Ossetes living south of the main Caucasus range in Georgia wish to unite with the Ossetes living to the north, in an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation; and the Georgians, regarding South Ossetia as both a legal and an historic part of their national territory, refuse to accept this.

Twice in the past century, when the empire to the north weakened and Georgia declared its independence, the… more

From the outset, Kendall Myers appeared determined to explode what he described as the “myth” of the special relationship between Britain and the United States. It had never existed, he said in his opening remarks, “or, at least, not one that we noticed”.

Instead, relations had been “altogether too one-sided” for a very long time. “The poodle factor did not begin with Tony Blair, it began, yes, with Winston Churchill.”

At this point Dr Myers acknowledged that “as an employee… more

All politics is local, the saying goes. The adage is particularly true in the United States. The attempt to understand next year's presidential election contest in simple terms of Left versus Right is profoundly misleading. The US is a country with culturally distinct regions bigger than many nation states. The party that wins next year will represent a confederation of regions, not a consistent political ideology.

Consider Howard Dean, the charismatic Vermont Governor who has emerged as front-runner for the Democratic… more