Global Paradigms

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leon-t-hadar/obama-afghanistan-_b_885478.html Leon T. HadarJournalist and foreign affairs analyst Barack Gorbachev: Adjusting To The Global Reality The political leaders and the generals were continuing to debate on whether to start pulling out the troops from Afghanistan at a time when political power was being consolidated by a relatively young reformer interested in mending relations with the rest of the world and despite the growing recognition that the war there was lost. But finally, in April 1988, Mikheil Gorbachev, the leader of the USSR, introduced a timetable for the departure of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, announcing that the withdrawal of about 100,000 troops will start in the following month. It took Gorbachev another four years to complete the withdrawal from South Asia while he was also trying to manage the gradual erosion in Soviet hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe and the broader restructuring of the global position of the Soviet

Business Times - 28 Jun 2011 US says hello to realism, bye bye to neoconservatism The majority of Americans agree the US should 'pay less attention to problems overseas' By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IN A speech before an audience of Asian defence ministers and military commanders in Singapore early this month, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates pledged that the United States would sustain its military presence and diplomatic involvement in Asia. He was trying to calm anxieties among US allies in the region about rising isolationist sentiments that are seen to be affecting Americans these days as they confront the realities of skyrocketing budget deficits and a military overstretched in two major wars and a few small ones in the Middle East. But even Mr Gates admitted during his address in Singapore that 'fighting two protracted and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has strained the US military's ground forces, and worn out the patience and appetite of the Ame