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Mohamed Hanif of the BBC's Urdu Service points to the manner in which the CIA and the ISI collaborated in the two time destruction of Kabul. And he points to a Pakistani view outside of the military which is not obsessed with India and would like to get down to the basics- electricity and infrastructure, better lives, and a safer neighborhood. In this perspective the Pakistani military and the Americans both do not understand the basic needs of the large majority of Pakistanis yearning for a better life. Contrast this with the Thomas Friedman piece which complains on the other side, with a note of innocence, of becoming a sucker in this game of a two-faced Pakistani military and intelligence services using the Americans for their own game, supporting the Americans and the insurgents at the same time. Hanif almost has the last word in this, pointing to the ordinary Pakistanis who are just poor and looking in.

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Now that the trigger mechanism in the August 2, 2011 Debt Ceiling and Deficit bill is in place- with the trigger calling for 50% of the cuts of $1.2 billion to come from defense spending- thoughts are turning to how and what to trim, and what the overarching framework should be. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Joseph Nye, says there is a right way to trim Defense spending. The winding down of the two Bush wars could be used to cut ground forces to 1990 levels, trim the purchases of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, make better use of drones and less costly technologies, and cutting health care costs in defense. This would not affect U.S. national security. What is needed now is also a framework of what the U.S. wants to see happen in its role in the world. Here Nye reminds readers that President Eisenhower decided not to get involved in Vietnam on the side of the French in 1954, saying it was more important to strengthen the U.S. economy. Its important to remember that this decision came only a couple of years after the end of the Korean War. The idea being the U.S. could not police different countries or engage without considering the big picture. In today's context this also means not engaging in nation-building in remote places and in environments that make it not worthwhile to engage precious resources. The U.S. says Nye should consider itself more in Reagan's terms of "a beacon on the hill." Another factor he alludes to is that 70% of the world's military expenditures are now made by the U.S. and its allies. This means there is great potential for burden sharing. Just as the U.K and France essentially combined their resources for achieving overall defense goals of the two countries to accomplish the same things that they did before, the U.S. can do much in combination with its allies. This helps frame policy and solutions for defense. Pearlstein offers policy and solutions for the economy, and Krauthammer offers policy and solutions for deficit reduction in the Washington Post, August 5, 2011, giving an overall picture of what the U.S. and Europe should strive for in coming years....

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The protests for democracy continue in Syria in May 2011. On May 20 2011, 26 protesters are gunned down. The Assad government continues to crackdown on the protests. Friedman sees the events in Syria having wide reaching impact on the Middle East. He calls it a keystone nation because of relations with Iran, the Golan Heights, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, the long border with Turkey, the border with Iraq, and Hamas relations with Syria. Compared to Egypt the international community has been for the most part silent in its support for the democracy protests in Syria. Friedman also asks the question about rival sects in Syria and other Arab countries and what happens afterwards. Would a post Assad period lead to people from rival sects putting aside differences and working together to build and sustain a democratic government. He says there is uncertainty but also that something deep down is coming to the top in the Arab world- that Arabs want to be full citizens of their countries with a voice in their government and in the way things are run in their countries. ...

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Peter Baker of the New York Times takes a detailed look at Obama and the Presidency in October 2010. He has a long informal interview with President Obama, and uses his knowledge of prior Presidents, to provide a revealing look at Obama's first term in office upto this point. It provides an exceptionally insightful look at the man and his administration, in all its facets, facets that have create both hope and disillusionment. Obama comes across as the cerebral person even in his musings about popular disappointment with the administration, and does not seem connected with the gut-wrenching issues of jobs, foreclosures, the economy, and the economic future as a President needs to be. After all the inspirational rhetoric, Obama, says Baker, did not stay connected to the people who put him in office in the first place. And revealingly Baker shows that even today Obama talks only to a few insiders, compared to Clinton's wider circle, to understand what is happening in the country.

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This opinion piece in DW.com says India's prime minister should not isolate prime minister Sharif of Pakistan, as he had no part in the escalation of tensions in Kashmir. Foreign and military affairs are now run by the Pakistan Army, and isolating Sharif only entrenches the Army it says, which has kept up tensions similar to the situation in 1999 with the Kargil crisis when the Pakistan Army initiated a conflict in Kargil region. At that time Indian premier Vajpayee and Pakistan premier Sharif were improving relations. 

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Pakistan's GDP growth is expected to be 4% in 2012, an increase from 2% in 2011. Foreign exchange reserves are up to $18 billion. Repayments in 2015 to the IMF will be a quarter of the payment in 2012, says Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. Tax collections are up 24% for the first 9 months of the fiscal year 2012. Remittances from Pakistanis aborad are up 21% to $9.7 billion and exports up 5.5% over the $25 billion exports for 2011. In an WSJ op-ed, April 16, 2012, Michael Boskin,who helped negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement for the elder President Bush, says it is time for a free trade agreement between India and Pakistan. Shaikh says he expects to see trade with India up from the insignifcant levels of $2.7 billion in 2012 to $10 billion by 2015. Boskin sees the potential for trade at $50 billion based on trade models. This would help change the landscape in the South Asian region after decades of neglect, strife and conflicts and is long overdue to benefit the billion people on the subcontinent....

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Lt. Gen Trainor and Michael Gordon describe the situation during the last months of U.S. presence in Iraq. President Obama is ambivalent about the size of the military presence he would like to leave, settling for 3000 troops and a few F-16's from a inital figure of 10,000. Obama sees the presidential election approaching and sets an objective of keeping it minimal. The military cooperation treaty with Iraq has to be approved by a Iraqi parliament with different factions in parliament not likely to approve it. Prime Minister Malliki decides not to move ahead. In the end no military cooperation treaty is signed after 8 years of war and a date is set for a complete withdrawal. Iraqi airspace is used by Iran to ship supplies to Syria's Assad regime, and the U.S. has less leverage in the region as the Arab world goes through a transition to popular government and elections. The Obama administration shifts most of its attention to Afghanistan where the U.S. has no vital stake in the long run compared to the Middle East region, with its large population, growing economies, move towards democracy and meeting the aspirations of hundreds of millions of young people. One Middle Eastern leader says the U.S. had no long term policy under the Obama administration for Iraq, and this applies also to the rest of the Middle East region, and mostly reacted to events as they happened. The Obama administration's committment to the war in Afghanistan, just as it focussed on winding down the war in Iraq, responded to the American public's waning support for the war in Iraq. It did not reduce the total cost of the conflicts because of the initial escalation of the war in Afghanistan and later slow progress towards a negoiated settlement to that conflict. A negotiated settlement is the best the U.S. could achieve, and the best desired objective considering the limited interests in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan most of the dynamics would be determined in the long run by the situation in Pakistan, and India-Pakistan relations, which the U.S. could influence constructively only through dialogue, promoting cooperation between the two countries, and economic relations....

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Of the estimated 14,400 candidates for provincial elections in Iraq, about 4000 are women. And security improvements have enabled women even in Basra to stand up for elections. In the current Iraqi constitution there is amandate for 25% of seats in Parliament to be reserved for women, but there is no such provision for provincial elected parliaments. This does not imply that years of lack of representation in the last 50 years under dictatorships, and the rule of religious parties and militias, is going to be easily overcome. Many qualified women simply don't want to risk standing for election because of threats to their safety and the male dominated culture that prevails. Its the courageous ones who are standing. The hope is that women can also put adent in the deep corruption that prevails in government and bring a new perspective and better representation of society.

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Critics of the Obama administration's so-called "light footprint strategy" for the Middle East say it is more about keeping distance from problems in that region. This is a reaction to the extensive involvement of the U.S. in two wars in that region and intuitively makes sense, as well as being in line with American public opinion to focus on problems at home. The shift or pivot to Asia of president Obama also comes in that context. The problem with this approach is that this ignores the fact that most of the momentum and effort for the freedom struggles throughout the Middle East from Tunisia first, then Libya, Egypt, and now Syria, comes from within. The lead role is now being taken by France and Britain, with German public opinion also lined up in support. The U.S. in forfeiting its role as a facilitator with strategies such as "no-fly-zones" is losing the opportunity to gain the goodwill in the Middle East with cost that is negligible in comparison to the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, and comes after the huge U.S. effort to remove one dictator in Iraq. A minor followup effort is all that is required from an administration that pushed for the "surge" in Afghanistan. When history is written the investment of the Obama administration in Afghanistan may show little results, if what is considered by the media and experts as an unpopular and undemocratic government of Karzai falls in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. There is little doubt in public opinion in the U.S. and worldwide that the movement for freedom and democracy in the Middle East and democratically elected governments will become a lasting facet of the new Middle East. It also provides huge opportunties for trade and investment as is shown by the gains made by Turkey in just 2 years. This is why the Obama adminstration policies in the Middle East show a lack of grasp of the facts showing the Middle East as opportunity more than threat for the next decade, especially in its overreaction to the Bush era policies. This happens as there is a demographic explosion of young people in the Middle East. An administration that was keen to sense the demographic changes in North America, has failed to grasp this fact and why the struggle in the Middle East flashes daily on television screens young people carrying on the struggle. A pivot to Asia means a pivot to the Far East more than Asia because India is part of the South Asian-Middle Eastern region, which presents another paradox because as China is slowing the entire South Asian-Middle Eastern region of Asia is where future growth is expected to accelerate in the next decade. ...

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Leon Panetta, former U.S. Defense Secretary, answers questions from a CNN correspondent and GW professor at George Washington University in Washington D.C. He says President Obama dropped the ball when it came to taking on Congress over budget cuts and on tough issues in Iraq and Syria. Panetta says he told Obama that getting back into the ring was necessary to get things done.

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Scholars and experts on the Middle East have offered their assessment and understanding of the Middle East seen through its long history. This includes Bernard Lewis at Princeton, Ramadan at Oxford, and Efraim Karsh of King's College, London. Karsh's new book "The Tail Wags the Dog," describes the story of British, Russian and American involvement in the Middle East in the 20th century and into the 21st century. Karsh offers a corrective assessment to many myths about the Middle East in 2015 with sectarian and religious conflicts, and historical volaltility- that the events in these countries are dependent on the foreign powers and influences. Karsh shows how the people in the Middle East have influenced their own narrative thorugh passions, conflicts and failure to bring together different opinions and strains of thought for peaceful progress. He sees the surge of Islamist politics in the midst of the Arab Spring as stemming from the way large parts of the population remained unaffected by the changes of twentieth century technological developments and modernization. The religious conflicts of the seventeenth century in Europe that took place just as Europe began to open up to new ideas and influences and the modern period, show how religious conflict can take place for long periods covering a continental region, before it recedes into the background. Ultimately it is the actors in these countries that have to find a way forward without engaging in continuous strife and violence, sectarian conflicts, and pulling together for a consensus around pushing economic development and progress. ...

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Mark Landler's interview with Hussain Haqqani in Oct. 2013 provides insights into the misperceptions on both sides of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship since 1947. Particularly the way Pakistan cannot shake free from seeing everything through the prism of India. He points out that Ambassador Holbrooke had a forward looking approach to the South Asian region, but failed to get the support of president Obama and the weak leadership of president Zardari, resulting in a squandered opportunity for the region to look beyond the twentieth century's conflicts towards a brighter future.

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Friedman points to the parallel between the democracy movements in Eastern Europe and the Arab World, and sees one difference. Whereas the countries in Eastern Europe were mostly homogenous except for Yugoslavia, the countries in the Arab world are homogenous only in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Which makes the transition to democracy that much harder with sectarian interests, the Sunni-Shiite divide, tribal differences, and the lack of a transition period for building democratic institutions. This will require vision, leadership and perseverance from Arab peoples and from the outside world.

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Friedman reports from an election booth in the Shubra el-Khema neighborhood of Cairo during the Egypptian parliamentary elections in 2012. He says the realities are quite different as the poorly educated women who were voting described their day to day concerns to Friedman about security, education for the children and social services. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al Nour party win most of the seats. Yet the democracy protests have empowered all parts of Egyptian society, and has created checks and balances in the process.

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Defense Secretary Gates does not see Russia as the threat it was in the Cold War, first because Russia's conventional forces are a "shadow" of what they were during the Cold War, and Russia has adverse demographic trends that will diminish Russia's ability in conventional forces. He sees the Georgian war in the context of Russia's seeking to exorcize, as he puts it, past humiliations. And Gates sees opportunities in the relationship with Russia. Such things as Russia's willingness to work with the US on Afghanistan. Evidence of this is Russia supporting the renwal of the UN resolution on Afghanistan. Another indication is that Russia he says is very worried about the drugs coming out of Afghanistan, and has been supportive to provide alternative routes for Europeans to get equipment and supplies into Afghanistan. These views come across in an interview on December 17, with Charlie Rose, a five time elected Congressman, for the PBS Charlie Rose show. They are also reflected in an article in Foreign Affairs journal's current issue. Gates was a CIA analyst and has some insightful observations. Gates told Charlie Rose that he does not see the Islamic radicals and violent Islamic extremists as a threat in the same way as the threat in the Cold War years. This threat is not as big as the threat to freedom during the Cold War. He says the failure in strategic communications was huge as agencies of the US government engaged in activities in other countries, like the Agency for International Development and the US Information Agency, were neglected starting in the in the 1990's. Communications in other countries of what the US represented and stands for was left to the Pentagon, a role the Pentagon was ill-suited for. He sees the Islamic terrorism as more of an ideological conflict. Speaking at a town hall meeting at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, in December, Gates pointed to these communications failures as a real challenge for the new administration. But he now sees a huge opportunity in this past failure, and ways of addressing it creatively, in addition to commiting resources and people to this effort. Walter Pincus wrote this article, and its part of the fineprint analysis effort at the Washington Post in which speeches, reports, and other documents are examined by people like Pincus, to catch the really important things, uncovering the fine print that really makes the headlines. Another aspect of this fineprint effort is that there are a huge number of reports, and speeches and documents that had a tone reminiscent of the Cold War during the Georgia war and yet they do not correctly reflect the real situation about Russia, as Gates sees it from his analysis of what is actually happening. Gates has used Foreign Affairs, the Dec 17 Charlie Rose Show on PBS in which he was interviewed, and the speech at the Balad Air Force base in Iraq, to communicate his views and analysis. They are important to underline and emphasize precisely because they show that all that cold war hysteria reporting and speeches may be misleading and lead to improper conclusions and mistakes in policy, wasted effort, wasted resources, and lost lives. And just as the US strategic communications was starved of resources and effort, so also this necessary work to retrieve and give emphasis to the important things is neglected. One additional link to this is the speech, discussion, and QA session in Washington DC at the time of the G20 summit in which President Medvedev and the new administration's elder statesman and diplomat Marilyn Albright, former secretary of state, expressed their hopes and plans for a new era in Russian-American relations. ...

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Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party wins 125 of 269 seats in Pakistan's parliament. The Tehreek-e-Insaf party of Imran Khan won 31 seats and the PML-N party of the current president Asif Zardari won 32 seats mostly in Sindh province. Independents won 31 seats and some of these independents are likely to support Sharif in forming a new government. Election turnout of 60% showed a large degree of enthusiasm in this election and hopes for economic revival in Pakistan. The focus of Sharif will be on improving the economy, tackling electricity shortages, and building infrastructure. Sharif promised to pursue peaceful relations with India and Afghanistan, and keep the focus on the economy. Sharif and his advisers are bringing a new deftness in the dealings with the Army, the Pakistan Taliban, saying he would call for a halting of drone strikes, limiting the role the U.S. plays in the region, both positions popular in Pakistan, separating differences with former president Musharraf from the institutional role of the military. Small business owners and large business support Sharif's efforts to tackle electricity shortages, with an estimated loss of $12 billion in idled factories alone. The long period of political conflicts between the military, the judiciary and the political parties have led to neglect of Pakistan's economy, as neighboring countries in Asia surged ahead. The realization that popular pressure for improving standards of living and the economic opportunities are both huge has led to an extraordinary election, and put Sharif at the centre of an important new beginning for Pakistan. ...