Word: favorered
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...Lukashenko has been able to manipulate the tensions between Russia and the West in his favor. Belarus is the only country that has successfully asked for and received loans from both Russia and the IMF, and Russia is still Belarus' major trading partner. But Lukashenko may not be able to keep up this balancing act for long. "If he wants to survive with Russia angry at his border, then Lukashenko needs to do some more thorough [political reforms] then he is willing to admit," says Vitali Silitski, director of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, pointing out that Belarus...
...Military analysts say that the fighting in South Waziristan will not be easy and that the government must be prepared to handle the potential fallout. The harsh, rugged terrain has found much favor with hardened guerrillas. "It will be more difficult [than the Swat-valley operation]," says Hasan Askari-Rizvi, a military analyst. "The Taliban are more deeply entrenched, and they are going to put up a fight. They will avoid head-on battles but will try to harass the army by other means, including ambushes." There is also the possibility that Mehsud's ranks have been fortified by some...
...member of the House of Lords without party affiliations, and chaired by a civil servant, Sir John Chilcot, can be expected to probe the political hinterland to Britain's actions, in particular the government's abandonment of its oft-stated objective of destroying Saddam Hussein's WMD in favor of pursuing regime change. Among other conundrums likely to be scrutinized: To what extent did British concerns about the dangers of American unilateralism trump competing fears about the reliability of intelligence and risk of rupturing European relations? How much effort went into postwar planning? Why did Britain continue to reduce...
...least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran's leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power...
...specter of an Islamist threat has often worked in favor of the region's governments. After 9/11, U.S. Central Asian strategy was dictated largely by the Department of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld. Uzbekistan, ruled its entire independent life by the iron-fisted Islam Karimov, was brought into the fold as a staging ground for American operations in Afghanistan, as well as a willing accomplice in the renditions of suspected terrorists. That cozy partnership ended in 2005 when the Uzbek army gunned down hundreds of civilians protesting for reform in the Ferghana Valley under the pretense that it was curbing...