Wherever one looks, that is the case.

In Turkey, so necessary to world order, not only sitting at the strategic nexus of Europe, Asia and the Mediterranean world, but because Washington is prepared to take an optimistic view of the intent of a government moving away from militant secularism and flirting with Islamicism. Not to do so would jeopardize a vast program to wean the European Union off a monopoly dependence on Russian gas and, increasingly, oil, at a time when Moscow again moves toward an authoritarian regime. Oil, gas, and now a proposed new Central Asian Iron Silk Road — a railroad network terminating in Turkey — are necessary to keep the Central Asians from falling back under Moscow hegemony. And Turkey is their terminus on the way to world markets. And, having looked the other way with so many other fish to fry, Washington has to entertain efforts of the Turks to end the sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan for the terrorist KDD — even as Ankara, itself, dependent on the huge Kurdish vote for its comfortable majorities hems and haws. That, at a time, when in many ways, Kurdistan represents the solution the U.S. is searching for in Iraq.

In Pakistan, with the preservation of the military as the only functioning, reliable national institution, Washington has had to accept, then coax former general Pervez Musharraf back toward democratic forms. All this in the name of reform and progress toward democracy in one of the largest and most important Moslem countries. Yet neither the so-called political parties of Benazir Bhutto — who after all, during her prime ministries not only stole the country blind but presided over the North Korean missile and nuclear technology exchanges — and Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of those great democrats, the Saudis, has any versimilitude as effective politicians, much less democrats. Both have relied on the greedy, avaricious feudal landlords of the Punjab and monopoly capitalists of Karachi for their base. That the movement for democracy should be led by Pakistan's predatory lawyers in a dysfunctional judicial system would be a joke were it not taken so seriously by naïve American journalists.

Nor can Washington do much about a new port being built at the entrance to the Persian Gulf in Pakistan Baluchistan [where there is a small but festering insurgency]. However much it is aimed at giving the Pakistani navy "strategic depth" in any new encounter in its series of wars with India, the fact that it is Beijing financed and the Chinese are building it. That suggests it might just in the not too distant future become a port for the new fleet of Chinese submarines in their obvious attempt at a blue water navy and increasing presence in the Indian Ocean. Islamabad, after all, remembers that after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and the implosion of the USSR, unlike the U.S., China continued its alliance with Pakistan. That alliance may be built only on the old adage of "my enemy's enemy is my friend". But it obviously is the answer to the State Department's mantra that Washington can and will keep the Indians and the Pakistanis in separate "compartments".

The Indian compartment is cultivated by Washington and by foreign policy specialists in both political parties, after a half century of its alliance with the Soviet Union ended only when their friends in Moscow imploded. Now galloping Indian exports to the U.S., a rapidly growing wealthy and lobbying-skilled Indo-American business community and a gross national product zipping along at 8 or 9 percent have led some Washington amateur Machiavellians to believe in an Indian alliance as a counter to a still unknown "rising China". Alas! Armed insurgencies in 11 states, no progress on its Himalayan defenses against China rapidly expanding its [nuclear] hold on Tibet, a Maoist-emerging Nepal sandwiched in between the two giants, a sanctuary for enemies of Indian unity in both neighboring Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, all give the lie to this daydream. Never mind that Indian indigenous weapons programs are so loaded with graft and corruption decades of research and development have to be abandoned. Or that a fragile federal coalition government, dependent on the two Communist Parties for its parliamentary majority, has to go trotting back to Moscow and public pleas to Beijing to stay out of Indian domestic politics [by pro-Beijing Bengal]. New Delhi has to "balance" new Russian military purchases to hope to get through an essential nuclear and technological exchange with the U.S. And that despite a corrupt deal for a mothballed diesel-powered Soviet aircraft carrier has turned into one of those endless and worthless Indian projects.

Further east, in order to achieve what the negotiators say is progress on nuclear disarmament in North Korea, the U.S. has abandoned its commitment to the Japanese to see to it that settlement of the kidnapping of their citizens by Pyongyang is part of the agreement. True, nukes take precedent over former terrorist acts by one of the most notorious regimes in the world. That's why, after finally giving them a green light to proceed to its destruction, Washington nor Jerusalem will lay out the exact nature of North Korean participation in a WMD installation in the Syrian desert, only miles from U.S. forces in Iraq. If Pyongyang is moving along the path the negotiators have dictated, what was it doing helping the Syrians build …a bomb? A uranium enrichment facility? What? Yet, as the history of American negotiations not only with the North Koreans but with other opponents has shown, "successful" negotiations called for major concessions to a negotiating partner adamant in not making any himself. That may be why Washington has gone for incremental offers of meeting Washington's call for a halt to nuclear weaponry and missile and nuclear proliferation to pariahs around the world without much proof in the rice pudding.

In Southeast Asia, our ally Singapore [it at least welcomes our ships and cooperates in efforts to police the Malacca Strait, one of the world's most critical waterways, as vital to it as to the rest of the world], flaunts the American [and limited European] efforts to cut off the water to the group of corrupt thugs running Burma. As an entrepot, Singapore lives as a safe repository for ill gotten gains of its usually corrupt neighbors. But, for all its claims to its own Boy Scout regime, its machinations led to an explosion and a military coup d'etat in Thailand when it arranged an under the table deal for purchase of the former prime minister's electronics company. And it has been caught, apparently, again in Indonesia doing much the same. It was no accident that during his last visit to Indonesia, Mentor Minister Lee Kwan Yew had an interview with former dictator Soeharto who piled up billions in his 38-year-long rule. So when and how does Washington attend to the relatively minor matter of corrupt Burmese holdings in Singapore banks, in the long term more than a human rights issue given the fact that Beijing's alliance with the jungle hideout of the junta has become part of China's aggressive efforts to reach the Indian Ocean through the backdoor.

Ah China? It can be argued, of course, as the Chinese always do, that American guarantees to and protection of Taiwan against a military takeover are interference in China's internal affairs. [Our Australian ally, particularly the new right-left Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a China "expert", does.] But Washington's guarantee that any agreement for merger of Taiwan with China must be a voluntary one, one negotiated with peaceful intent, and not subject to the use of force, is as good a measure as any of the intent of a rapidly arming China in world affairs. The kind of rhetoric that often comes out of China and its refusal to honor the norms of transparency toward its military is hardly an encouraging note. [The Hong Kong runaround on Thanksgiving was a disturbing example when contradictory government elements, at a minimum, cocky military intending to insult at a maximum, was in play.]

Enough already! as the New York saying goes. The U.S. has a vast array of interests in trying to use its overwhelming force — military, political, economic, and cultural — as a weapon to keep the world stable and at peace. [Ah! If we could only return to the world of Ron Paul before there were ICBMs which could arrive in four or five minutes!] These are often in conflict. There will be no magic solutions to solve most of these problems, and American policy is bound to be filled with contradictions and compromises.

In many instances, there will not even be goodwill from the opponent to do so — the obvious example, Islamofascists, intent on bending the world to their will by the sword and violence and whatever chicanery is necessary [and permitted to infidels].

But there are times …In late November when at a gathering of some 40 powers at Annapolis to set again in motion negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians [and their Arab allies], an incident occurred. At the insistence of the Saudi Arabians who had deigned to appear after great entreaty from the U.S. — despite their very existence being guaranteed by American power in the Gulf — they insisted on the Israeli delegation entering the conference through a different doorway, the staff's entrance as a matter of fact. To add insult to injury, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to Israeli checkpoints on the West Bank to prevent suicide bombers penetrating into Israel as reminiscent of the Jim Crow restrictions she had known as a child.

Yes, getting the Saudis there was important. But was this compromise or was the U.S. compromised?