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Give Nouri al-Maliki credit. Since assuming his post in May 2006, Iraq's embattled prime minister has been written off by more than a few observers as an agent of Iranian influence or a cat's paw of the US-led Coalition. However, since early this year, Al-Maliki has definitively proven that he is neither. In the process, he has moved his country considerably closer to lasting stability.

Officials in Europe are beginning to sound more and more like their American counterparts when it comes to Iran. In the wake of President Bush's trip to Europe, they even appear to be moving towards freezing the assets of Iran's largest bank as a way of signalling their resolve over Tehran's nuclear intransigence. In recent months, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned publicly that a nuclear Iran poses an "unacceptable risk for regional and world stability," and his government has taken the lead in calling for tougher international sanctions against the Islamic republic. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made similar noises. "If Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons, it would have disastrous consequences," Merkel told Israel's parliament, the Knesset, during her visit there in March. "We have to prevent this." In practice, however, Europeans are sending a very different signal. Indeed, recent days have seen the Old Continent deal a body blow to efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic.
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What a difference eight months makes. Last September, General David Petraeus was essentially branded a liar for reporting to Congress that the situation in Iraq was improving markedly, that the so-called “surge” strategy was achieving its intended aims. Today, the general returns with more good news: violence in the country down 75 percent; Sunni sheiks cooperating with the government and Coalition (the “Anbar awakening”); and al-Qaeda in Iraq severely weakened and on the run. Unfortunately, General Petraeus will no doubt have to contend with a barrage of questions about the recent weeks’ fighting in Basra and Baghdad.

Slowly but surely, Iraq is turning a corner. In February, the Iraqi parliament approved two major measures aimed at normalising that country's fractious political scene. As significant as it is, however, this progress represents just one part of a larger picture. Indeed, future stability in Iraq may hinge as much on what transpires on two other strategic fronts as it does on the events now taking place in the so-called 'Sunni Triangle'.

It is axiomatic that nothing in government is so long lasting as temporary measures. Policies, programs and appropriations initiated to respond to a transitory issue take on lives of their own, spawning institutions which not only outlive their purpose but themselves create new problems to justify their continued existence. On the international stage today, the most egregious example of this principle is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). An alliance created in response to the devastation of the Second World War in Europe and the onset of the Cold War is now approaching its seventh decade, two generations beyond the restoration of Europe’s economy plus a large measure of European unity and a full generation beyond Gorbachev’s acceptance of failure in the Cold War.

Has it really been five years since the advent of Operation Iraqi Freedom? The war has gone on far too long, and been far too expensive. The mistakes made in the crucial transition period from major combat operations to “Phase Four” stability operations will be reviewed and debated for decades. But as the president pointed out in his Iraq-war anniversary speech at the Pentagon Wednesday, the comprehensive “surge” strategy has been working. The surge has been a runaway good-news story. And there is no more certain sign of progress in the war than its disappearance from media coverage. Stories on Iraq comprised only 3 percent of the news in the first ten weeks of 2008, compared to 23 percent a year ago — an 87 percent drop. “Good news” has turned out to be an oxymoron. No bleed, no lede.

It has been nearly five years since President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the U.S.S Abraham Lincoln and announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. During that time, the United States has gotten a first-hand education in the complex ideological and religious frictions that simmer below the surface in the Muslim world. And while the Bush administration’s “surge” has now helped the Coalition regain the initiative in the former Ba’athist state, it has become abundantly clear that if Washington and its allies hope to maintain—and, better yet, to expand—their influence in the region as a whole, they still have a great deal to learn about what makes its inhabitants tick.

Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam al Amriki, has come a long way since his days living on a goat farm and playing in his one-man death metal band Aphasia. The 30-year-old California native has quickly become the American face of al Qaeda. Azzam’s purpose is to make an appeal to the American people, to explain the current situation in the war and to exhort them to join in supporting al Qaeda and its cause.

In recent weeks, the White House appeared to be gaining serious ground in its efforts to cobble together an international consensus to confront Iran. Today, however, Administration officials are desperately trying to put the pieces of their Iran policy back together. The culprit is the intelligence community's new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which asserts that the Iranian regime currently is not in the business of making nuclear weapons.

After a short two-year tenure, Karen Hughes now departs as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. She concentrated on the public affairs area of her job by creating the Rapid Response Unit and regional media hubs—things that anyone would find hard to believe the U.S. government was not already doing before her arrival. Hughes inherited the detritus from the 1999 destruction of the U.S. Information Agency, and tried to put back some of the missing building blocks of public diplomacy. However, by almost every index, we are not doing well in the war of ideas. Some say we have already lost.

Timing, the old saying goes, is everything. Just ask Sen. Joseph Biden, Delaware Democrat. For years, he has been sounding the bell about the need to devolve Iraq into its constituent parts: one Kurdish, one Sunni and one Shi'ite. And for years, his suggestions about Iraqi "federalism" have fallen on deaf ears. But now, in the wake of Gen. David Petraeus' long-awaited September report on the "surge," Mr. Biden's idea for the former Ba'athist state is suddenly getting some traction.

Ever since its start six years ago, the United States has been waging the War on Terror chiefly on the Sunni side of the religious divide within Islam. The principal targets have been Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. As recently as September 2006, the White House’s counter-terrorism strategy was still focused overwhelmingly on the Bin Laden network and its offshoots, which were seen as the vanguard of “a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks, and individuals” threatening the United States. By contrast, the vision articulated by the president in his 2007 State of the Union Address is substantially broader. It encompasses not only Sunni extremists, but their Shi‘a counterparts as well. And, for the first time, it clearly and unambiguously identifies not just “terrorism” but a specific state sponsor — the Islamic Republic of Iran — as a threat to U.S. interests and objectives in the greater Middle East.
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American politics is entering a phase in which China is likely to increase in prominence, and where the fundamentals of U.S. policy toward the People’s Republic are likely to be called into question. Over the next two years, the White House’s approach is unlikely to change. But the Democrat-controlled Congress and presidential contenders alike can be expected to critique Administration policy and offer alternatives to it.

Defying all of its critics, the Bush administration may still be hanging tough in Iraq, but on another critical front of the 'War on Terror' – Central Asia – Washington appears to be in full strategic retreat.

A storm is brewing along the Bosporus. Since late April, when Turkey’s military issued a not-so-subtle threat to intervene in national politics to curb the power of the Islamist government, the country has been mired in political crisis. The current turmoil has everything to do with Turkey’s deepening religious-secular divide.

You have to feel sorry for David Petraeus. The commander of the multinational force in Iraq already has his hands full overseeing the "surge." Now he needs to deal with another, equally pressing problem. According to Iraqi officials, Turkey has mobilized some 140,000 soldiers along its common border with Iraq, in a maneuver that many see as a prelude to some sort of military confrontation between the two countries.

Just what does Iran have to do in order to get the attention of the United States? That question must be on the minds of officials in Tehran these days. After all, their regime has embarked upon an audacious -- and very public -- strategic offensive throughout the greater Middle East. But officials in Washington, preoccupied with flagging poll numbers and the ongoing insurgency in Iraq, don't seem to be taking notice.
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With the Taliban on the march, its cities paralyzed by demonstrations and its president targeted four times for assassination, Pakistan is facing its most severe crisis since the 1999 coup that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power. Over the past few months, surging Islamic extremism and widespread political unrest have erupted into violence, undermining the government's authority. Now, with elections on the horizon and the general's heavy-handed tactics aggravating tensions, Washington is being forced to reexamine one of its most critical and controversial alliances in the war on terror.

Ever since the Turkish parliament's fateful decision to deny the United States a northern front against Saddam Hussein's regime back in early 2003, Iraq has emerged as the defining foreign policy issue between Washington and Ankara. But now, a different—and potentially even more serious—challenge to strategic ties looms on the horizon.

In late February, just days after the expiration of yet another United Nations deadline, and with the UN Security Council gearing up to deliberate new punitive measures, Iran's firebrand president issued a defiant public statement. The Iranian nuclear program "is without brakes and a rear gear," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told religious leaders in Tehran in comments carried nationwide by state radio. "We dismantled the rear gear and brakes of the train and threw them away some time ago." The demarche was emblematic of the deepening crisis that has beset the international community since the fall of 2002, when a controversial opposition group disclosed previously unknown details about Iran's nuclear program. Since then, it has become abundantly clear that the Iranian regime is not simply developing a nuclear program for "peaceful purposes," as its officials stubbornly claim. Rather, mounting evidence indicates that the Islamic Republic is embarked upon a comprehensive, multi-faceted national endeavor to develop a nuclear arsenal—and that it is making serious progress towards that goal, in spite of international pressure.