International Herald Tribune

At a dinner for Western experts and journalists on Sept. 9, President Vladimir Putin of Russia issued a stern warning over impending Western moves to grant a form of conditional independence to Kosovo.

He said that Russia would use any such move as a precedent for solutions to the existing "frozen conflicts" in the Georgian autonomous republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These are under de facto Russian military protection, just as Kosovo is under NATO protection.

Georgia’s arrest last week of… more

Flush with cash from high oil prices, ascendant in its battle with homegrown jihadists, buoyed by a newly robust private sector and entry into the World Trade Organization, and led by a popular, reform-minded king, Saudi Arabia has sputtered to life. After the dark days of the 1990s, marked by stagnation, drift and policy paralysis, the kingdom faces a brighter future.

As custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina, and a heavyweight in councils of Islamic states, Saudi Arabia… more

During the Vietnam War, a Communist leader famously told his US counterpart that the US could kill ten Vietcong for every American who died, and yet would still lose in the end. The same is true of Israel and Hizbollah. Israel is losing for the same reasons that it lost its previous struggle with that organization: bombardment from the air is ineffective; occupation on the ground has to be permanent, and involves an unacceptable stream of Israeli casualties; and outright… more

In many ways, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney are rather similar characters. Both are highly intelligent, but both see the world above all through the restrictive prisms of security and national power.

Both are patriots, but like so many leaders with a tendency to see national power and their own power as one and the same thing. Both are capable of great ruthlessness in defending what they see as the vital interests of… more

There are sensible and foolish arguments against the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. The foolish ones are those based on a theological approach to nuclear nonproliferation. The serious ones relate to the nature of the new U.S.-Indian "strategic partnership," and to wider U.S. strategies in the region.

The argument that India must not be rewarded for developing nuclear weapons is a foolish one. In the real world, there is no more chance of India giving up its nuclear deterrent than there is… more

The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections ought to lead to a fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, especially since it follows electoral successes for Islamist parties in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The most important lesson of the elections is that the United States cannot afford to use the rhetoric of spreading democracy as an excuse for avoiding dealing with pressing national grievances and wishes. If the United States pursues or supports policies… more

With the Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute now settled, in a murky but apparently satisfactory fashion, it is time to reflect on what the affair says about the West's relations with Russia and, still more important, the West's relations with Ukraine.

The reason a serious debate is necessary is that the West's strategy toward Ukraine has been founded on a bizarre illusion: that Ukraine would leave Russia's orbit and "join the West," and that Russia would pay for this process.

A pattern has established itself in Western coverage of so-called "people power" revolutions. The revolutions themselves are reported on television and on the front page of newspapers, and extensively praised and analyzed on the editorial pages. Distinguished staff correspondents fly in to cover the story. The revolution is described as part of a growing wave of democracy sweeping the region or the world. The latest examples of this treatment have been the Western responses to the "colored" revolutions in Georgia,… more

Since 9/11, American policy has focused far too much on changing other countries, and far too little on getting along with them. Too much talk of democracy, and not enough of diplomacy. This wouldn't matter if the United States were powerful enough to impose its will, but the war in Iraq has cruelly exposed the limits to U.S. military power, and the next phase in America's approach to global terror and national security must start by acknowledging these limits.

With… more

Speculation about the Saudi regime's vulnerability to radical Islamists is now commonplace. But further east, another authoritarian government that the United States has embraced recently faces a similar threat.

Islam Karimov's iron-fisted regime in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan -- which he ruled as the local Communist Party boss from 1989 until the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 -- is lurching toward crisis. It continues to be rocked by bombings and assassination attempts, most recently bomb attacks late… more