Word: afghanistan
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President Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan under the cover of darkness Sunday on an unannounced mission to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. troops...
What role is there for the U.S. to play in this context? Since the U.S. has prioritized stabilizing Afghanistan over everything else in Asia, it has lost a lot of credit in both Delhi and Beijing. It is increasingly reliant on China, but has also undertaken security exercises [under the Bush Administration] that tried to work together with democratic countries like Japan, India and Australia at the exclusion of China. This fed into the traditional political claustrophobia many in China have - a sense that, in the end, Asia will be a very hostile environment for their development and geopolitical rise...
...With the health care victory in hand, Europeans will now want Obama to get back to issues more relevant to the continent, Schmitz wrote in Der Spiegel. While American politicians have battled over health care, "every other issue has become a sideshow," he says. "The Afghanistan mission: of marginal interest. Protecting the environment: postponed. Peace in the Middle East: off in the distance. Sanctions against Iran: delayed. Europe: not even worth a trip." Ouch...
...Nimruz province, a major smuggler's crossing into Iran. Says Gretchen Peters, an author and expert on Taliban drug ties with traffickers: "Counternarcotics, just like counterinsurgency, is like playing whack-a-mole. You knock it out in one place, and it pops up somewhere else." (See pictures of Afghanistan's battlefield priest...
...allies should do what was done successfully with World War II: destroy the enemy's warmaking capabilities, then help rebuild the country while maintaining a military presence to ensure that it doesn't make war again. It worked with Germany and Japan. Why not in Afghanistan...