Jack A. Smith: Obama's Foreign Policy Objectives

You've seen the "headlines" in the last few weeks and days: The Arab uprising, the faked killing of Osama Bin Laden, Washington's effort to keep troops in Afghanistan and Iraq (to steal the latter country's oil), Egypt's reopening of the border with Gaza, Pakistan's role in the Afghan war, President Obama's speeches on the Middle East and Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intransigence, the Fatah-Hamas unity moves and plans to gain UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, and that's not the half of it! Each event looms large in the mass media and in political discourse, but each is only a part of a much larger mosaic that constitutes the Middle East/North Africa and Central Asia component of the Obama Administration's foreign and military strategy. This component is Washington's top priority, because any significant deterioration of US domination in MENA, and the frustration of its ambitions in Central Asia, especially in combination with weakening economic and political influence in the world, which could hasten America's decline as the unipolar global "leader".