US Foreign Policy

By John Feffer | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Let me start with a confession. I’m old-fashioned and I have an old-fashioned profession. I’m a geo-paleontologist. That means I dig around in archives to exhume the extinct: all the empires and federations and territorial unions that have passed into history. I practically created the profession of […]

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Al-Zawahiri Calls for al-Qaeda- ISIL Axis against Russia & US

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – al-Hayat [Life] reports that on Sunday, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, called for unity between al-Qaeda and Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in the face of American, Russian and Shiite forces in Syria. Al-Zawahiri, a mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the US, succeeded Usama Bin Laden when […]

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Syria: US Boots on Ground risks Conflict with Turkey, not Russia

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The White House’s announcement on Friday that the US will keep “less than 50” special ops troops at an HQ of the Kurdish YPG in northeast Syria for the purposes of training and strategic counseling raised concerns in some quarters that Russia might inadvertently bomb US […]

al-Qaeda

Syria: On eve of Vienna Summit, Has Russia changed the facts on the Ground?

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Writing in al-Hayat [Life] this week, columnist Walid Choucair outlined the successes he sees Russia to have had in its Syria campaign, and the goals for which it is reaching. Choucair is the Lebanese affairs bureau chief of this pan-Arab, Saudi-owned London daily, which has a […]

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US-Russia wrangle over Iraqi Sphere of influence: Parliament to Weigh In

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi is alleged to be under “enormous pressure” from Shiite militiamen and hardliners to seek Russian airstrikes on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) targets. On Oct. 1, he had announced that such Russian intervention in his country would be welcome. On Wednesday, the largest […]

China

The new Chinese Century? Can a Green China with no Mideast Entanglements Surpass US?

Neil Thompson

London (Informed Comment) – In the last fifteen years the United States has spent a total of between $4 trillion and $6 trillion on its twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while running up its national debt, and damaging its international prestige. The root cause of these foreign entanglements, and America’s costly position […]

Bashar al-Assad

Is the Syrian Crisis Nearing the point where Diplomacy Can make a Difference?

contributors

Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Introduction by Tom Engelhardt : Whatever happened to the “imperial presidency”? In mid-September, in the midst of the serial collapse of a $500-million Pentagon program to train “moderate” Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), President Obama suddenly claimed, through White House Press […]

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Syria: Will US arming of Kurdish-led Northeast Rebels Provoke Turkey?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The intrepid Anne Barnard and Karim Shoumali at the NYT have a piece on how Saudi-supplied TOW anti-tank weapons to rebels in Hama and Idlib are creating a US-Russian proxy struggle in northwest Syria (the CIA is actually the source of the weapons, with Saudi intelligence […]

Bashar al-Assad

Deal with Saudis? Why does the US care if Russia bombs al-Qaeda and its Allies in Syria?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama on Friday pledged not to turn Syria into an arena for a proxy war between the US and the Russian Federation. But he went on to criticize president Vladimir Putin for attempting to prop up Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad and predicted that Syria under […]