Articles

It's all over but the counting. Russia's presidential election may still be some six months away, but the outcome of that contest is already crystal clear: a return of Vladimir Putin to the country's top post.

On September 24th, Mr. Putin, who currently serves as Russia's prime minister, ended months of fevered speculation about his political plans when he confirmed that he intends to stand anew for the country's presidency—and that, if elected, he will switch places with his hand-picked protégé, current president Dmitry Medvedev.

That result is all but a foregone conclusion. Over the past decade, thanks to the machinations of Mr. Putin and his coterie, Russia has crept steadily back toward Soviet-style authoritarianism. Today, the "United Russia" political faction headed by Mr. Putin dominates the country's political landscape and controls both houses of Russia's legislature, while his loyalists stack virtually all meaningful leadership positions in Moscow and the country's 83 regions. And with political power increasingly centralized in the Kremlin, divergent viewpoints are given less and less legitimate outlet. Dissidents and activists who do not accept the prevailing status quo have found themselves in legal jeopardy—or worse.

You could be forgiven for dismissing the latest diplomatic spat between the United States and Pakistan as just another hiccup in a long-estranged marriage. Trading accusations and navigating diplomatic crises has become a weekly affair for this deeply troubled alliance. But the broadside launched against Pakistan by the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in congressional testimony on September 22 represents a rupture so dramatic that its significance is difficult to overstate.

Does the Islamic Republic of Iran pose a cyber threat to the United States? On the surface, the idea seems far-fetched. Squeezed by sanctions over its nuclear ambitions, suffering from widespread social malaise and weathering unprecedented divisions among its leadership, Iran hardly seems an imminent threat to the U.S. homeland - even if it does pose a vexing challenge to American interests in the greater Middle East.

Yet mounting indicators suggest that Iran's leadership is actively contemplating cyberwarfare against America and its allies.

Ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11 and the start of the war on terror, it is fair to ask: Where do we stand in this struggle? Listening to the rhetoric of the White House, it would be easy to get the impression that Washington is just days away from declaring “Mission accomplished.” With the death in May of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. commandos, the United States “is within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda,” newly appointed Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters in July. “I think we have them on the run.” More recently, John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism czar, said much the same, telling the Associated Press that the group that carried out the most devastating attacks on the U.S. homeland in American history is “on the ropes.”

Such triumphalism, however, is both premature and unfounded. After all, the contemporary terrorist threat confronting the United States and its allies is considerably larger than just al Qaeda. America today faces a trio of distinct - and daunting - strategic challenges.

As the United States and other NATO countries begin to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, Afghan and US policymakers alike fear a return to the carnage that characterized the five year civil war (1996-2001) between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. In that conflict, battles over large population centres and campaigns of ethnic cleansing killed thousands. To prevent a repeat of that disaster, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration are now seeking to negotiate a truce with the Taliban. But just how likely is such a peace deal to materialize – or to hold, if it does?