The World Today

Regardless of how the Iraq episode ultimately concludes, one thing is certain: both Europe and the United States will try to paper over their bitter dispute. The US needs Europe, especially in its quest to maintain a new Middle East stability, while Europeans have little to gain from prolonging the spat. France has accomplished what it always wanted – raising serious questions about the very survival of NATO. And the Germans, who have achieved a similar result by accident rather than design, will do their best to restore their link with Washington.

Among the various arguments for and against war on Iraq, four require reconciliation if the UN and international legitimacy are to be preserved and a better future delivered for Iraqis. These arguments are represented by the French and British governments and two schools of thought within the US administration: the traditional ‘realists’ including Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the ideologues, or neo-conservatives, championed by Richard Pearle, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board.

The imprudent, casual spirit that permeates official American papers on the future of Iraq after conflict sends shock waves through those less complacent about reality there. Four ‘isms’ will overshadow the day after war. Each is a monster in its own right, but little attention is paid to them.

Three years after his election, President Vladimir Putin is manoeuvring Russia through another international crisis – the conflict between its former client-state Iraq and new-found ‘strategic partner’ the US. He does so with more political authority and policy control than any Soviet or Russian leader since the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. The intervening years have seen such historical titans as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, as well as the charismatic Nikita Khrushchev and the long-serving if undistinguished Leonid Brezhnev. What makes Putin so special that he should be mentioned alongside such figures, let alone considered more dominant than them?

Intelligence and security across Britain is often fragmented and modestly resourced – it was devised for an earlier age and a different threat.

The last two years have been seriously testing for Argentina as economic and political crises have followed one another almost as fast as presidents and finance ministers. A new president should be elected in a two-stage process beginning next month. But is the country’s leadership up to the task?