Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice already has a place in history. But there’s a lot of history left for her to make, and she’s out to make it count.
The risks are manifold. The challenges, some might say, insurmountable. Pressing for a Palestinian state and an Arab-Israeli peace. Stability in Iraq. The puzzle of Iran. Strengthening [...]

Russians went to the polls yesterday and handed Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections. It came as no surprise — for weeks, election watchers have pointed to massive voter intimidation.
Putin, as he asserts his “moral authority” to lead Russia, may be an old-style Russian strong-man — but his grip [...]

You want to know about anti-Americanism in the world? Here’s the unhappy conclusion of a big-time panel of Republican and Democratic heavyweights, out yesterday: “America’s reputation, standing, and influence are at all-time lows, and possibly sinking further.”
Never in our history, says the report, have we, as a nation, been so poorly regarded in the world. [...]

It is the biggest frontline U.S. ally in President Bush’s war on terror, and today Pakistan is in a state of emergency. Constitution suspended. Elections postponed. Supreme Court chief justice fired. Streets full of police. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of protestors and opponents of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military ruler, are under arrest.
Critics call it martial law. [...]

The news from Turkey, even before last week’s House committee vote on Armenian genocide: U.S. standing with a key ally since the Cold War is in the cellar. Turks, who feel they stood with the U.S. again and again for decades, now say they see the United States as a major threat.
If this relationship collapses [...]

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf won a messy and still legally disputed election over the weekend. Looks like another term for the U.S.-backed strongman. Maybe he’ll take off his military uniform, or maybe not.
Just to add to the confusion, a U.S.-backed rival to Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, may return now from exile. Meanwhile, a battle in Pakistan’s [...]

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York has turned into a doozy. The city where Fidel Castro called JFK “ignorant,” Yasser Arafat packed a pistol on his hip, and Nikita Khrushchev banged the UN podium with his shoe, has gone after Ahmadinejad with a vengeance.
“Bearded blowhard” said the New York Post. “Petty, cruel dictator” [...]

Iraq has the world’s third largest proven reserves of oil, and they’re barely tapped. This week, the price of oil reached $82 dollars a barrel — the highest in history. And Alan Greenspan says in his new memoir that, at least for him, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was “largely about oil.”
Iraq’s ocean of oil [...]