WASHINGTON, Jul 15 (IPS) - It was neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer who, in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, inaugurated Washington's unipolar moment.

WASHINGTON, Jun 30 (IPS) - New arguments by analysts close to Israeli thinking in favour of U.S. strikes against Iran cite evidence of Iranian military weakness in relation to the U.S. and Israel and even raise doubts that Iran is rushing to obtain such weapons at all.

WASHINGTON, Jun 10 (IPS) - A radical foreign policy idea put forth by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has drawn cheers of support from sources as varied as his campaign's neo-conservative backers to liberal internationalists from the camp of his rival, Sen. Barack Obama. But the idea is not without some surprising detractors.

WASHINGTON, Jun 2 (IPS) - In a major address on Middle East policy Monday, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, pledged to maintain the Bush administration's hard line against Iran and expressed strong scepticism about the ability of the current Palestinian leadership to reach a peace accord with Israel.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (IPS) - U.S. President George W. Bush's comments in Israel Thursday ignited a political campaign row back home as Democratic leaders decried his comparison of engaging enemies to Nazi appeasement.

WASHINGTON, May 15 (IPS) - In separate speeches delivered an ocean apart, the two standard bearers of the Republican Party Thursday offered rosy visions of a future designed to gladden the hearts of Israel-centred neo-conservatives without offering any details about how their dreams will be achieved.

WASHINGTON, May 5 (IPS) - Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.

WASHINGTON, Apr 25 (IPS) - Are the latest accusations and tough language leveled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea evidence of a resurgence by the remaining hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush hoping for a final confrontation against one or more members of the revised "axis of evil" before his term ends next January?

WASHINGTON, Apr 16 (IPS) - Throughout a long career in politics, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain has had his foreign policy shaped by his and the United States' experience in the Vietnam War.

WASHINGTON, Mar 21 (IPS) - Iran's post-revolutionary education system continues to teach children to discriminate against women and religious minorities, according to a report released Tuesday by Freedom House, a Washington-based nonprofit group that seeks to encourage democracy in the world.

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (IPS) - A new report published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think-tank purports to show the reach and scope of Iranian influence across the Middle East, but stops short of drawing conclusions about Tehran's intentions or grand strategy.

WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (IPS) - Forty-eight hours after Pakistani voters overwhelmingly repudiated the Bush administration?s "man in Islamabad", President Pervez Musharraf, Washington seemed uncertain about whether the election results marked a setback to U.S. strategic interests or an advance.

TAMPA, Feb 20 (IPS) - Cuban President Fidel Castro?s decision to resign his political office was met with a wide range of emotions and feelings in Florida, home to the largest Cuban population outside Cuba.

WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (IPS) - The U.S. military is "severely strained" by two large-scale occupations in the Middle East, other troop deployments, and problems recruiting, according to a new survey of military officers published by Foreign Policy magazine and the centrist think-tank Centre for a New American Strategy.

WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (IPS) - Despite Tuesday?s historic announcement by President Fidel Castro that he is retiring from public office, U.S. citizens must await the departure of their own sitting president 11 months from now before Washington?s nearly 50-year hostility toward the Caribbean island is likely to be reviewed. Even then, change is not guaranteed.

NEW YORK, Feb 19 (IPS) - As the U.S. moves towards holding death-sentence trials for six Guantánamo Bay detainees alleged to have plotted the Sep. 11 attacks, legal scholars and human rights advocates are questioning not only the six-year-long process and timing of the charges, but also whether the accused could ever receive fair trials.

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (IPS) - "Is the American era over?" That was the big question that launched a lengthy analysis by veteran international affairs reporter James Kitfield in the influential ?National Journal? last May. Significantly, the article -- which featured interviews with an all-star cast of former top U.S. policy-makers -- was titled "The Decline Begins."

NEW YORK, Feb 16 (IPS) - President George W. Bush?s critics are charging that he is attempting to use a "backdoor signing statement" to thwart Congress? desire to lift the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the U.S. Government for the past seven years.

BOSTON, Feb 14 (IPS) - Leading U.S. scientists called on Congress Thursday to make sure the next president does not do what they say the George W. Bush Administration has done: censor, suppress and falsify important environmental and health research.

WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (IPS) - Despite assertions by the George W. Bush Administration that the escalation strategy in Iraq -- known as the "surge" -- has been a rousing success, many of the problems of pre-surge Iraq still exist and, along with new issues, are exacerbating a tenuous political situation there.

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (IPS) - At the end of last summer, Sen. John McCain's bid for the Republican nomination for president was running on fumes. Broke and dejected, McCain was polling below New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and senator-turned-actor-turned-candidate Fred Thompson.

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (IPS) - Almost exactly five years after it reached its zenith with the invasion of Iraq, the influence of neo-conservatives has waned sharply in Washington, as their nemeses, the "realists" in the national security bureaucracy, have increasingly asserted control over U.S. foreign policy.

WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (IPS) - Concerned over the rise of "realist" influence over the final year of the Bush administration's foreign policy might extend to Cuba, right-wing hawks are mobilising against any possibility that Washington might ease its hard-line stance, or its 46-year-old trade embargo against the Caribbean nation.

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (IPS) - Neoconservative hawks lamented the latest casualty in the war on terror last Friday, as the axe fell on Stephen Coughlin's job. The Pentagon decided not to renew the contract of its "foremost" specialist on Islamic law and Islamic extremism when it ends in March, citing budget cuts.

WASHINGTON, Dec 30 (IPS) - If the last days of 2007 are any indication, U.S. President George W. Bush?s last year in office is shaping up as grim and lonely.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 27 (IPS) - The assassination of Pakistan's opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto threatens to de-stabilise a country which the United States describes as a trusted ally and a frontline fighter in the global war on terrorism.

WASHINGTON, Dec 27 (IPS) - 2007 will likely go down in U.S. history as the year in which the balance of power in the long-running struggle between hawks and realists in the administration of President George W. Bush shifted decisively in favour of the latter.

NEW YORK, Dec 26 (IPS) - A former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) ethics adviser has joined leading members of the U.S. legal community in calling on Congress to investigate the destruction of tape recordings of interrogations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (IPS) - Human-rights and humanitarian groups are hailing provisions of a major appropriations bill approved by Congress this week that bans the export of most U.S.-made cluster bombs and U.S. military aid for foreign governments that use child soldiers.

WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (IPS) - Although the image of the United States appears to have improved in Saudi Arabia over the past year, the Saudi public?s view of Washington remains largely negative, according to major new poll released here this week by Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT), a Washington, D.C.-based bipartisan group.