US programme and defenceless states?
More striking yet has been the rise of a new kind of "People's Power"- a term used by Mr. Bush, that relates to former Soviet Republics that are crying for democracy and US friendship.
If Afghanistan was the USSR's Vietnam, Iraq may turn out to be America's. The greatest gamble of the Bush administration was certainly its "regime change'. With no end in sight, the draining Iraq War has made Bush's tunnel vision foreign policy a shamble. The war in Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison abuses have left the Middle East increasingly unstable; oil prices on the rise; dollar undermined; and US military desperately over-stretched.