In The News

The Arch of Globalization

Abdel-Moneim June 5, 2003
In the first installment of a two-part essay, Abdel-Moneim, director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt, offers five possible genealogies of the US-led war in Iraq. First, he argues, the war was about opening up the Middle East to processes of globalization. Globalization has been uneven, affecting world regions and countries differently, and the Middle East is the...

Downer Raises New Weapons Fears

Tom Allard June 5, 2003
Intelligence agencies in several countries now fear that materials used to make weapons of mass destruction (WMD) may have been smuggled into Syria around the time the war began in Iraq. Australian officials stated that this view is "prevalent" among intelligence services in the US, Britain and Australia. Although, the public may not see evidence of WMD for several months, officials...

US Makes New Plans for War on Pyongyang

Shane Green June 4, 2003
This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the US is developing a new plan to consolidate American and South Korean forces in areas away from the demilitarized zone in the Korean Peninsula. A US official told reporters that the U.S. military would be able to line up around the demilitarized zone if war broke out, and this would be "Kim Jong-Il's worst nightmare." Deputy...

Asean Needs New Tools for New Threats

Amitav Acharya June 4, 2003
Though the interdependency inherent in globalization renders all member nations of ASEAN increasingly vulnerable to external threats, this same inter-dependency must be drawn upon if these challenges are to be met effectively, says this article in The Singapore Times. The author, deputy director of Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, states that financial volatility,...

Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts

Patrick E. Tyler June 4, 2003
Though the Egyptian government has been cooperating with the American CIA for years, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says that the US failed to heed warnings from Egypt of an imminent terrorist attack against the US prior to September 11. The CIA denies that such intelligence was received, but is currently cooperating closely with Egypt because of the country’s extensive sources within Al Qaeda...

America's War on Terror Goes Awry in Pakistan

Ahmed Rashid June 4, 2003
Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, offers a scathing indictment of US foreign policy in South Asia, post-September 11. Rashid argues that US-led military action and victory in Afghanistan did not eradicate the Islamic fundamentalist ideology of the Taliban. Rather, Taliban's...

George Bush's Aqaba lesson – Jethro's 'The Man'

Rami G. Khouri June 4, 2003
In this opinion piece from the Jordan Times, the author offers some advice to visiting US President George W. Bush. "You would do well to remain humble in Aqaba when you're advising the local Arab and Israeli Semites about how to achieve good governance, because this is the place where it all started some three and a half millennia ago," he writes. The region is steeped in...