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Michael Klare and the geopolitics of resource consumption (audio)
Jason Bradford, Reality Report via Global Public Media
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet is the latest book from Michael Klare, Director of the Peace and World Security Studies Program of the Five College Consortium in Amherst Massachusetts. Professor Klare has written widely on U.S. defense policy, the arms trade, and world security affairs. He has authored several books, and is the defense correspondent of The Nation and a Contributing Editor of Current History.

In this show, we discuss the geopolitics of resource competition. Nations are engaging in a dangerous zero sum game as they jostle over finite supplies of fossil fuels, including the positioning of opposing advanced weapons systems in unstable parts of the world. Will global warfare be the result, or is the current economic breakdown an opportunity to realize that the only workable “rescue package” is one that recognizes resource limits and the need for allocation of scarce goods and services towards productive ends, such as sustainable agriculture and renewable energy systems?
(8 October 2008)

Rivals Split on U.S. Power, but Ideas Defy Labels
David E. Sanger, New York Times
WASHINGTON — John McCain has said his worldview was formed in the Hanoi Hilton, the jail where as a prisoner of war he learned to stand up to his country’s enemies and lost any youthful naïveté about what happens when America shows weakness.

Barack Obama has written that his views began to take shape in the back streets of Jakarta, where he lived as a young boy and saw the poverty, the human rights violations and the fear inspired by the American-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto...

...As the campaigns tell the story, those radically different experiences in different corners of Southeast Asia have created two men with sharply different views about the proper use of American power...

But as the campaign has unfolded, both men have been forced into surprising detours. They may have formed their worldviews in Hanoi and Jakarta, but they forged specific positions amid the realities of an election in post-Iraq, post-crash America — where judgment sometimes collides with political expediency.
(22 October 2008)

Pakistan rejects 'America's war' on extremists
Saeed Shah, The Guardian
Serious doubts multiplied yesterday about Pakistan's commitment to America's military campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban after parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for dialogue with extremist groups and an end to military action.

The new strategy, backed by all parties, emerged after a fierce debate in parliament where most parliamentarians said that Pakistan was paying an unacceptable price for fighting "America's war". If implemented by the government, support for Pakistan from international allies would come under severe strain, adding further instability to a country facing a spiral of violence and economic collapse.

"We need to prioritise our own national security interests," said Raza Rabbani, a leading member of the ruling Pakistan People's party. "As far as the US is concerned, the message that has gone with this resolution will definitely ring alarm bells, vis-a-vis their policy of bulldozing Pakistan."

The resolution, passed unanimously in parliament on Wednesday night demanded the abandonment of the use of force against extremists, in favour of negotiation, in what it called "an urgent review of our national security strategy"...
(24 October 2008)