Current Bulletin Issue - Volume 18, Bulletin 3, September 2005

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Islam in Europe Egypt Sodan

Central Asia Kirghyzstan

U.S. INFLUENCE UNDER PRESSURE

A serious weakness of U.S. foreign policy is its inability to judge the importance of threats to the U.S. superpower status. Today there are three: the Moslem jihad, which operates against the Americans and their allies by terrorism, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an alliance of six states – China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - with an area covering 60% of Eurasia, a population exceeding 1.45 billion and huge (though as yet not fully exploited) reserves of oil and natural gas, and France, which is hostile and tries – often successfully – to pull other EU members along its path, sometimes rendering US control of NATO uncertain.

The SCO was established in June 2001 and has been gaining influence ever since, partly because the interests of its four smaller members are protected by its practice of rotating its chairmanship and that of its important committees. For the present, it does not include gas-rich Turkmenistan, which would add further to SCO’s strategic and economic importance, but is likely to be pressured by the West not to accede.

One of the immediate SCO objectives is to remove US bases from the territory of its states. As of now, it seems to be well on the way to achieving this. (See Central Asia section on p. ) It is a powerful body, well able to stand up to NATO in its region. But NATO ‘s cracks are beginning to show. Even on the strategically crucial subject of Iran’s nuclear power, France and Germany wasted valuable time putting spokes in American wheels, while Russia has been helping Iran actively. But Russia is at least fighting Moslem terrorism. Western Europe is so afraid of it that Spain actually yielded to the terrorists’ political demands after they bombed Madrid’s railways.

This is the background to the extraordinarily strong recent speech of President George W. Bush, reaffirming very clearly his determination to pursue the war against Moslem terrorism. Unfortunately, until he gets rid of the Arabists in his State Department they will do their best to prevent this. On her recent behavior, Condoleezza Rice, will not fire them or stop them.