Bush has little leverage to deal with abundant global crises- by Warren Stroble
From the corpse-strewn streets of Baghdad to Iran's uranium-enrichment plants, from Israel's escalating conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon to North Korean missile launch pads, the White House faces developments that appear to be getting worse for U.S. interests. Virtually every president faces a plethora of global crises, sometimes simultaneously. What's new is that the United States' ability to influence events has shrunk, largely because U.S. troops and treasure remain mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Iraq war has diminished foreign confidence in American leadership, according to foreign policy experts and some U.S. officials. In Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan, "events have revealed that our military superiority is not as great as we originally imagined. We are tapped out," said Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University international relations professor and West Point graduate. That has implications for dealing with challenges such as Iran's suspected drive for nuclear weapons and North Korea's recent test launch of missiles in defiance of world opinion, Bacevich and others said.
"We're really not in a position to dictate to others," Bacevich said, a trend that he noted isn't lost on America's adversaries.
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