The west’s military-political strategy against the Gaddafi regime echoes its flawed approach to Afghanistan and Iraq, says Paul Rogers in this, his 500th weekly column for openDemocracy.
The diplomatic context of the anti-Gaddafi war is different from that of earlier western military interventions in the Arab world. But its motives, methods, silences, and falsities are all too familiar.
The international war over Libya began on the late evening of 19 March 2011. Its meaning depends on the angle of vision - and what happens next.
Even as the United States military quietly prepares for possible action against the Gaddafi regime, the violence of rulers in Tripoli and Manama promises to stall the Arab democratic wave of 2011.
The military balance of Libya’s domestic conflict is raising debate about external intervention. But the strategy of the Gaddafi regime is also crucial to what happens next.
In their pursuit of Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall, the powers that led the charge into Iraq face both military and political problems.
The Arab popular awakening is provoking serious concern among state and security elites across the west. But Israel’s stance is the most self-defeating of all.
How should the ferment in Tunisia, Egypt and across the Arab world affect al-Qaida's thinking? The movement requested advice from the reliable SWISH consultancy, whose report is here exclusively published.
The operational resemblance of aspects of the Afghan insurgency to the guerrilla campaigns against French and American forces in Vietnam is ominous for Washington.
The new age of insurgencies of which Egypt is an emblem has its deeper source not in the anger of the marginalised but in the system operated by the world's financial elites.
Beijing’s promotion of a new strike aircraft may be less a powerful addition to its military arsenal than a sophisticated part of a deeper strategy.
The uprising in Tunisia is at once a response to systemic inequity and injustice and an expression of the limits of elite control. But to the economic and political ingredients of the revolt must be added the potent if less evident one of global environmental crisis.
