16 July 2011 — Strategic Culture Foundation
The Wali Karzai Assassination and Its Consequences
15.07.2011 | 12:00 | Najmuddin A. SHAIKH
What is not contested is that Ahmad Wali’s untimely death will add another layer of high uncertainty to the political and administrative turbulence that now prevails in Afghanistan. Ahmad Wali was indisputably, from the Afghan perspective, the master of all he surveyed not only in Kandahar but also in much of Southern Afghanistan. From the American perspective Wali was always a favourite of the CIA having been on their payroll from early on and the man they depended on for providing safe houses, security guards and intelligence on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban…
15.07.2011 | 11:50 | Sergei SHASHKOV
Syria is the only Mideast country which still does not depend on the West and tries to stick to its own policy… One thing is clear: if the Syrian government is forced to step down, this will undermine stability all across the region, which will certainly affect Lebanon, where there is no government for almost six months already. Hezbollah and Syria appear to be the only factors helping to maintain a kind of balance. Neither it will do good Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq. Even Saudi Arabia may later regret what has been done…
Mumbai’s Woes and their Implications
14.07.2011 | 14:37 | Aurobinda MAHAPATRA (India)
The bomb blasts at the three locations in south and central Mumbai on 13 July 2011 killed at least 21 people and injured about 131 people as per the official sources… Though the recent blasts were unable to dent the spirit of Mumbai and its people, or putting in a different way, though the attacks were unable to affect India’s policy options towards its neighbours or other aspects of its policy making, it certainly challenged India’s recently acquired expertise in counter terrorism operations… The menace of terrorism is not bound to any particular nation or group of nations, it transcends national boundaries, and it holds devastating potentials for the human society…
Will international terrorists help the U.S. build ‘The Greater Middle East’?
13.07.2011 | 20:45 | Pyotr ISKENDEROV
The so-called ‘Arab spring’, which started as a wave of anti-government riots in Tunisia and Egypt, is now developing in full accordance with the US scenario, its main aim being to reshape the geopolitics, which the Bush administration once described as ‘The Greater Middle East’ plan…
Three-Stranded Cynicism: The Right in the US Debt-Ceiling Debate
13.07.2011 | 00:00 | David KERANS (USA)
Non-American audiences can be forgiven if they have declined to follow the futile federal budget negotiations in the US over the last two months. The White House has not managed to finesse compromise on any budgetary issue with the Republican Party over this period… The context of the stalemate is about to change, however, and radically, because prolonging the impasse beyond another couple of weeks would trigger a US sovereign debt default, a genuine danger to the US and the world economy…
“For the revolution from Tunisia to Siberia!”
12.07.2011 | 16:39 | Konstantin GORDEEV
The last session of the Bilderberg, which was held on June 9-12, 2011, in Saint Moritz in Switzerland besides the topics announced earlier (the Fukushima disaster, the shutdown of the nuclear plants in Germany, the Arab revolutions, cyberspace problems), also focused at the “liquidation of Europe”(as it was claimed by the General Director of Deutsche Bank J. Akkerman) and artificial prolongation of the global financial crisis in order to weaken the national economies and to create the transnational management system…
12.07.2011 | 00:00 | Andrei VOLODIN
The disintegration of the Soviet Union became a geopolitical mousetrap for the West. Obsessed with the fight against the remnants of communism, Washington and its allies overlooked the fresh trends in the global politics which at the moment define the regrouping of forces in the international system…
11.07.2011 | 11:58 | Andrei VOLODIN
The coming December will mark the completion of two decades of the post-Soviet era. The anniversary of the destruction of the Soviet Union – the world’s second superpower – is an appropriate moment to venture an integral assessment of the tectonic geopolitical shift which left the international community sinking into chaos and facing an increasingly dim outlook…
A Significant Addition to Anti-Terrorism Efforts
11.07.2011 | 00:00 | Aurobinda MAHAPATRA (India)
The recent revelation by Rossiskaya Gazeta is a significant addition to efforts against terrorism… The first part of the report includes about 600 foreign companies, outfits and individuals which are linked to terrorist activities, while the second part presents a list of 48 organizations and over 1,500 individuals, whose illegal activities are established in Russian court or whose activities on Russian territory are officially terminated…
Developments in Afghanistan From the Greater Middle East Perspective
10.07.2011 | 16:04 | Alexander KNYAZEV
Considering that the NATO invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were consecutive steps towards the implementation of the Greater Middle East project, the agenda behind last spring’s tide of Arab revolutions must be to restructure the Western part of the pertinent extensive region… The assembly of an independent Baluchestan from chunks of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is a key step within the US strategy. It may be the most important aspect of the evolution that the bulk of NATO forces will relocate to the north of Afghanistan and to Central Asia.
No Point in Discarding State Capitalism (II)
10.07.2011 | 10:17 | Alexander SALITZKI
In general, it is fair to say that in today’s Chinese economy efficiency, scale, innovation, and creativity reach higher concentrations in the state-run rather than in the private sector. China’s private sector appears to be overloaded with small-scale, unsophisticated, and short-living businesses. The pattern clearly does not fit with the Western stereotypes, but grasping it helps to understand how China earned its reputation for steady modernization…
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The New Dark Age 