Changing alliances add to woes of the US

[lindashaw]

Mushahid Hussain: Changing alliances add to woes of the US
| | 10/09/2003

http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/print.asp?ArticleID=97189


snip...

In that article, The New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, made a telling comment on how the American Establishment was virtually "hijacked" by a bunch of "25 intellectuals". He said: "I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are located within a five-block radius of Washington) who, if you had exiled to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened."

snip...

While not openly confronting the United States, whose military presence now stretches from the borders of Saudi Arabia to Russia, regional countries are seeking to build durable ties with neighbours, seeking diplomatic space and hoping new linkages would be both a buffer and a deterrent to US "encroachment" on their sovereignty.

A number of interesting recent developments testify to this little-noticed pattern in regional politics:
The visit of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah to Moscow, the first since King Faisal (then Foreign Minister) went there in 1926;

Jordanian King Abdullah's journey to Tehran, the first since the Islamic Revolution overthrew the monarchy in 1979;

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi's visit to Pakistan, and the decision by both neighbours (one an American ally and the other an American adversary) to co-operate and co-ordinate on Afghanistan by establishing a Trilateral Commission of the three neighbours;

snip...

The changing geopolitical landscape is adding to increasing difficulties for the US as it sinks deeper into the Iraq quagmire. These emerging relationships would be significant in reshaping the region politically in a direction opposite to what Washington would desire, since it has been unable to promote its own political restructuring of the region post-Iraq and Afghanistan.

[DemoVet]

1. They can't do that!

Mr. Rove would not approve. How dare they not follow his carefully planned scenario?

[DemoVet]

2. Serioulsly, though

did those smug, self-congratulating PNAC pinheads really think that the rest of the world, especially the middle east, was going to watch this happening without reacting to it in ways to insure their own protection? Even the Europeans (the "Chocolate Quadrangle") of Germany, France, Belguim, and Luxembourg are talking about setting up a military cooperation center outside of NATO. Can the dissolution of NATO be close at hand, especially now that there seems to be such a radical divergence of interests between Continental Europe and the U.S. and Britian? Without the threat of a Soviet invasion, what compelling reason is there for NATO to exist in it's present configuration, with the US as majority partner?