Posts in "international relations"

By Elliot Engstrom at 7:11AM

May 9, 2010

An Interesting Perspective on Pakistani-American Relations

Nathan Fox-Helser, who is both a member of Wake Forest Young Americans for Liberty and a new author at the left-libertarian blog Rethinking the State, wrote a paper on American foreign policy in Pakistan for a political science class he took this semester. I've been working on building the Wake Forest YAL Wiki recently as a tool to be used by future chapters, and I got Nathan to send me the paper, which I converted into a wiki article. The paper contains an interesting analysis of the past and current situation in Pakistan, as well as several conclusions that are reached based on this analysis. Nathan's thesis statement is as follows:

Understanding the causes of these discontinuities in interest and conflicts in views demonstrates that America needs to act skeptically, think innovatively, remember the costs of policies and deflate its policy, and, all the while, avoid international abandonment.

Tensions between US and UK Increase

While the reckless actions of the United States government in recent years have certainly stirred up resentment at home against American policies, it would seem that the traditional "best friend" of the US may now begin to publicly display a similar level of resentment. A British House of Commons committee stated Sunday that the special relationship between the US and the UK needs to be ended, also adding that the UK no longer wishes to be seen as America's "poodle." Agence France-Press reports:

Talk of a "special relationship" between Britain and the United States should be dropped, a House of Commons committee said Sunday, adding the Iraq war carried important lessons for Anglo-US ties...
..."The UK must continue to position itself closely alongside the US but there is a need to be less deferential and more willing to say no where our interests diverge," the committee chairman, Labour's Mike Gapes,said, summing up the report.