In The News

Defiant North Korea Fires Seventh Test Missile

Justin McCurry July 5, 2006
North Korea has test-fired several missiles, asserting sovereignty over its weapons program, and the UK, France, NATO, China, Russia Japan, the US and South Korea have united in speaking out against the tests. The UN Security Council discusses the issue today. One of the tests was a long-range missile that either failed or was aborted by North Korea. Some speculate that, despite North Korea’s...

A Nuclear Hand of Friendship

Vinod Khosla July 4, 2006
India is not a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; its first nuclear tests were conducted after the treaty’s 1967 deadline, and it is not formally recognized as a nuclear power. Because India will unlikely submit its reactors to the NPT guidelines without such recognition, Vinod Khosla sees the agreement between that country and the US as a positive way to draw India into the...

Dealing With Terrorists: Sometimes Talking Is the Lesser Evil

Martin Griffiths July 3, 2006
Using dialogue to find political solutions to conflicts involving “terrorist groups” has largely been discounted in the arena of international diplomacy, writes the director of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue. Reasons for discarding this approach are threefold: By resorting to violence, terrorist groups forfeit their right to dialogue; engagement could legitimize the terrorists’ tactics; and...

Somalia: Why the International Contact Group Should Support the Islamic Courts Union

Abukar Arman July 1, 2006
The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) currently controls Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, and has managed to bring a level of security to the city that had been unimaginable for the last decade. The ICU’s ability to bring a modicum of peace to the country means that the movement has, writes Abukar Arman, been embraced by Somalis as a “spontaneously formed populist uprising against the abuses and...

Lost in Translation

Gregory Kulacki June 30, 2006
Pundits and politicians often raise China as a possible military threat for the US and other neighbors– but the characterization could be inaccurate. The US intelligence community must revise its techniques for gathering reliable information about the Chinese military apparatus, argues security analyst Gregory Kulacki. US strategy vis-à-vis China could be culled from scattered and unofficial...

Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantánamo

John O’Neil June 30, 2006
Protesters throughout the world have vehemently opposed the US indefinitely holding suspected terrorists in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – and the US Supreme Court has lent some support to that argument. The court ruled against the US use of military tribunals to try detainees held in the Guantánamo prison, and in so doing, finally delivered the Bush administration from a legal limbo. In a 5-3 ruling,...

For Dr. Sengupta, Long-Term Visa Is a Long Way Off

June Kronholz June 30, 2006
Highly successful immigrant researchers, doctors and engineers often wait years for citizenship in the US. The US Labor Department has a backlog of 235,000 skilled-immigrant permanent-residency applications, and the Citizenship and Immigration Service has another backlog of 180,000 cases. About half of the Ph.D. engineers and scientists in the US are foreign born, according to the National...