The Global Power Barometer (GPB) has been tracking global reaction to President Putin’s Munich speech and to follow-up comments from various officials within the Russian government. Global reaction was favorable to President Putin’s point about a “unipolar world” and his objection to the “almost unrestrained, exaggerated use of force” by the U.S. Reaction to the Putin speech within the U.S. was negative, particularly among conservative commentators who charged that President Putin was initiating a new “Cold War”.

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By Karim Sadjadpour

“You know the thing about Iran,” a European Ambassador in Tehran once lamented to me. “It has such a rich culture, a grand history, wonderful people. The cuisine is sophisticated and the scenery is breathtaking. It’s got incredible poets, musicians and filmmakers. Beautiful art and architecture…But it’s cursed with such lousy politicians.”

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by Prof. Cynthia E. Ayers and COL (R) David W. Cammons

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Dept. of Defense, or any organization within the U.S. government.

“Get the U.S. out of the U.N.!,” a sign near Gettysburg shouts. “The United Nations sabotages America’s security,” author Eric Shawn declared in his book The U.N. Exposed. Iranian spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham told reporters that the U.N. “must be relocated from the U.S.” And a few days after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s rant before a U.N. audience, a New York Daily News editorial encouraged Chavez to “take the atrophied, self-abasing remains of a global idea 2,100 miles to Caracas!”

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By Haim Malka

Let’s stop fooling ourselves. No number of meetings between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will blossom into full-fledged negotiations. The U.S. strategy is to hold talks so Palestinians can begin to imagine what a final agreement might look like. Yet the two leaders are too weak, and their politics too complicated, to contemplate making even symbolic concessions on long-term outcomes. Jerusalem, refugees, and territory will not be the carrots to lead this process forward. Instead, they will be the poison that dooms any opportunity for progress.

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By Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank -- Islamabad and New York

Five British citizens, four of whom are of Pakistani descent, were convicted Monday of planning to attack targets in the United Kingdom under orders from al Qaeda using fertilizer-based bombs. Their convictions underline the fact that from its Pakistani hub al Qaeda now has the capability not only to plan once-off attacks in the U.K., but is also able to plan a sustained campaign of terrorist operations against the United States’ closest ally. And the ease with which al Qaeda has recruited operatives from the U.K. suggests that a future attack on the United States by British militants trained in al Qaeda’s training camps in Pakistan is a real possibility.

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By Yaşar Yakiş, Ghassan al-Atiyyah, Khalid al-Dakhil and Scott Lasensky

Istanbul, Riyadh and Washington - No one fears instability and violence in Iraq more than Iraqis and their neighbors. But mutual suspicions and rivalries, and a lack of U.S. commitment to regional diplomacy, have prevented Iraq and its neighbors from turning common anxieties into a common agenda. However, an emerging regional diplomatic initiative—the focus of this week's foreign minister's conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—could be a turning point that leads all sides toward concerted action.

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By Wayne S. Smith

Terrorist acts are a serious and growing problem in much of the world, especially in the Middle East and Africa. It is a problem that must be addressed. One does not contribute to that effort, however, by putting forward false targets, as the just-released State Department Report on Terrorism does by including Cuba on the list as a state sponsor of terrorism. As was the case last year, this year’s report puts forward not a shred of evidence to demonstrate that Cuba is a terrorist state.

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By Ershad Mahmud

Islamabad – Many Western media and policymakers appear preoccupied with the danger of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremists– whether small terrorist groups or organized political parties who may try to take power in upcoming elections. Their immediate concern is not the independence of the judiciary or the establishment of democracy, but rather Pakistan’s internal stability in the immediate-term, and the protection of certain Western interests abroad.

That’s a mistake. By focusing almost exclusively on the ‘terrorist threat’, these individuals are in fact supporting the government’s imposition of emergency rule. This focus has helped divide international opinion over President Musharraf’s recent declaration of emergency rule: although most commentators share in widespread condemnation of recent undemocratic actions under emergency rule, international opinion is now divided over whether “terrorist threats” may have justified Musharraf’s initial decision to impose it.

President Musharraf took full advantage of these Western apprehensions when he denounced the judiciary as a terrorist ally. However, this argument was turned upside-down when the same judges who had passed orders to release some of the Red Mosque’s alleged terrorists were sworn in under the PCO.

There are many indicators that Western worries about terrorism are unfounded. To date, the army has not faced any significant internal strife from Pakistani terrorist groups. Domestically, such individuals have limited social sanctity and are referred to as terrorists, not freedom fighters or revolutionaries. Thus the survival of armed vigilantes in Pakistan is unlikely in the long run, irrespective of who leads the country, due to such groups’ illegitimacy in the eyes of the people.

The same is true for al-Qaeda, which is a foreign outfit with no significant domestic support. The fear that such groups can take control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal seems exaggerated. This is not meant to trivialize real concerns about growing radicalization; however, an exclusive focus on this issue simplifies the situation, ignoring the actual diversity in Pakistani culture and politics.

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By Farah Zahra

Pakistan’s “creeping Talibanization” has been in the national and international media for a while. Nonetheless, Benazir Bhutto’s assassination comes as a shock to the entire world. Before she went back to Pakistan from her self-imposed she publicly stated that she was aware of the risk involved and also that she was prepared to take the risk. Now that she has been assassinated, the question remains: What is next for Pakistan?

Will President Musharraf be able to calm down the whole nation by telling them that it is a ‘barbaric’ act of ‘a terrorist’? How do we discern where politics ends and terrorism begins in this country? Will the people of Pakistan and the world at large be lulled into a stupor where the usual phrase of “an act of terrorism” accounts for simply everything?

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By Alizeh Haider

Scotland Yard’s probe into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has failed to address the more important questions surrounding the event. Pakistani Senator Farhatullah Babar of the PPP, Bhutto’s party, said as much recently: “It is really immaterial,” he said. “In what way does it negate the PPP’s position that there are hidden hands behind Bhutto’s murder?”

Not only has the report been largely rejected for being self-contradictory and overly presumptuous, but it also calls into question the government’s real objective for commissioning this investigation. It now seems Scotland Yard was inducted as proof of the government’s genuine and earnest efforts to investigate Ms. Bhutto’s murder. However, far from vindicating itself, the government has only succeeded at drawing further criticism.

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By Haider Ali Hussein Mullick

When a new government takes charge in Pakistan, there will be little time to celebrate the return of civilian rule. Faced with a plethora of socioeconomic problems made worse by rising suicide bombings, Pakistanis have not felt this insecure in their homes and cities since the conventional wars with India. The United States administration is equally nervous about its estranged, nuclear-armed ally facing the nearly insurmountable task of eradicating al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Given the electoral loss of Islamists in insurgency hotbeds in northern Pakistan, Pakistani civilian and military leaders, backed by the United States, have an excellent opportunity to go beyond short-lived counter-terrorism tactics to a multifaceted sustainable counterinsurgency strategy.

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By Hady Amr

DOHA, Qatar -- You have not read this in the news before.

Three months ago, an American citizen was kidnapped in Northwest Pakistan. He was murdered. His body was just recently recovered by his bereaved family. I learned about the kidnapping shortly after it happened, when my dear friend Ayesha wrote to tell me that her brother, Imran, had been abducted in Northwest Pakistan, still bravely expecting him to be recovered.

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