Bin Laden's Death A Part Of Al Qaeda's Slow Decline

Osama bin Laden is dead. The leader of Al Qaeda was apparently shot and killed at a compound in Pakistan by American special forces. He'd been in hiding for almost a decade since ordering the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

The death of bin Laden is undoubtedly symbolic. As well as being the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, he was its name and, through the video messages which had such a global impact in the months and years after 9/11, he was its face.

But, in practical terms, his death will have little impact on a network which has already been in gradual decline for some years. Bin Laden has been holed up in a house with little opportunity to communicate with the outside world, so his influence on Al Qaeda's people and operations has probably been extremely limited since 2001.

Besides, Al Qaeda, which roughly translates as "the base," has never been a conventional military or guerrilla type terrorist group, such as the Tamil Tigers or IRA. It's always been a very loose affilitation of groups in assorted parts of the world, often with wildly differing views and methods. The role of Bin Laden and his chief lieutenants has usually been one of financier, facilitator and, though his favourite philosophical notion of "propaganda by deed" - suicide bombings to you and me - inspiration.

The death of Bin Laden will weaken the idea of Al Qaeda as a central network still further. Groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is primarily based in Yemen, will carry on regardless. But with the Arab Spring suggesting that, in some countries at least, there's a desire for a democratic rather than Islamist future, those groups increasingly look like they're alongside Bin Laden on the wrong side of history.

Midterm Setback Not All Bad For Obama

President Obama's Democrats have suffered a series of bad results in the US midterm elections. They lost control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, and only just managed to hang on to the Senate. The Republican politician who will be the next House Speaker, John Boehner, has said cutting spending is his top priority for the months ahead.

As bleak as the results seem for Mr Obama, there's an argument to be made that Tuesday's voting makes his re-election to the presidency in 2012 more rather than less likely. For a start, the Republicans now have to start running the country alongside the Democrats. Over the last two years, when the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, the Republicans have had few political levers to pull beyond opposing much of the Democrats' agenda. It may have given them the nickname of 'the party of no,' but it helped on Tuesday, as voters squarely blamed the Democrats for the sluggish nature of America's economic recovery.

But now they've got at least some national power back, the Republicans will have to go about actually governing instead of hurling criticism from the sidelines. This means that, if the economy continues to struggle in the coming months, the Democrats will try to force their opponents to share the blame. Also, with many Republican politicians having swept into office thanks to support from the right-wing Tea Party faction, any compromising of campaign promises in order to get laws passed could lead to a backlash against those same Republicans who are riding high for the time being. If Republicans will find it hard to go on saying no, they might find trying to govern just as difficult.

Two more elements are worth considering as we look ahead to the next presidential election. It's still two years away, and even if growth in the American economy remains slow for a good while to come, there's a good chance it'll have improved significantly by 2012. Just as Mr Obama has been blamed this week for poor economic conditions (when his name wasn't even on the ballot), you can bet he'll do everything he can to take the credit for whatever improvements we see between now and polling day.

Then there's the big choice facing Republicans, namely who their candidate will be. While the highly energised Tea Party supporters would prefer a right-winger in their own image like Sarah Palin or Jim DeMint, the Republicans' chances of winning over independent and middle-ground voters would probably be better served by picking someone more moderate, like the rather-dull-but-well-known Mitt Romney. It's difficult to see any of the potential contenders beating Mr Obama though. Yes he (probably) can, again.

Republican Split Could Help Obama's Democrats

Another series of primary contests took place across the US yesterday, as voters from both main parties picked their candidates to fight various seats in Congress and Governorships in the mid-term elections this November. Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln defied predictions to win her party's nomination to defend her Senate seat, but generally incumbent politicians have been struggling.

Normally this anti-incumbency mood would be bad for the party in power, which in this case is the Democrats. They hold not just the presidency, but also comfortable majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, established Republicans are having even more trouble winning their party's nominations, as right-wing rivals emerge from the Tea Party movement to challenge them.

This is much better news for President Obama and his Democrats. While the Tea Party folks offer enough energy and enthusiasm to get their candidates selected in Republican primaries, several seem to be too right-wing to have much chance against their Democrat opponents in November. Kentucky offers a classic example, where right-winger Rand Paul beat an establishment rival to take the Republican nomination for a Senate seat, only to get quickly bogged down in a race row following some confusing comments he made about civil rights law.

This all means that several unpopular Democrats may be able to hold on to their seats in November, precisely because the Republicans have picked candidates which are too right-wing to beat them in a general election. The challenge for the Republicans is to turn the enthusiasm of the Tea Party people into votes, and that could prove to be a tougher political test than anything the Democrats face.

The Terror Threat From Somalia And Yemen

Two failed attacks, both apparently carried out by alleged Islamist terrorists, have featured prominently in global headlines over Christmas and New Year. On Christmas Day, a Nigerian man is suspected of trying to blow up a plane as it landed at Detroit. The US now says the suspect has links to an al-Qaeda group in Yemen. And in Denmark, a man with alleged ties to Somalian Islamist group al-Shabaab broke into the home of the artist responsible for the infamous Prophet Mohammed cartoons. The man has now been charged with attempted manslaughter.

And so, Yemen and Somalia are suddenly back on the radar of world leaders, with phrases such as 'incubators of terrorism' being bandied around. We're more used to hearing that sort of thing in relation to Afghanistan and north-west Pakistan, where there was also a recent deadly terrorist attack during a volleyball game. The arguments about how to deal with the security problems in those countries are often debated, but how western countries might deal with the threat posed by terrorist groups operating out of Yemen and Somalia hasn't received much public discussion in recent years. The recent attacks mean that will surely now change, but there seem to be even fewer potential solutions than there are for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Somalia's al-Shabaab formed out of the remnants of the UIC, a Taliban-style Islamist group which briefly ruled Somalia in 2006 until it was overthrown by US-backed Ethiopian forces for, well, being a bit too much like the Taliban. Since then, there's been little central government to speak of in Somalia, which is why pirates have been able to operate with such impunity from Somali ports. Some of the pirates' cash ends up going to al-Shabaab, and the Danish incident demonstrates it now has both the ability and willingness to attempt terrorist attacks abroad. If further international attacks take place, the US may be forced to turn once again to its Ethiopian allies for help in fighting al-Shabaab, the deployment of US troops to Somalia being still far too sensitive a subject following the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident.

As for Yemen, there is at least a central government, and the US has given it tens of millions of aid dollars to help root out terrorists since the attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour in 2000. Following the failed Christmas Day bombing in Detroit, expect more help for the Yemeni authorities, including more US drones flying over remote parts of the country in an attempt to find terrorist hideouts. The solution to the Yemen problem may be a little more straightforward than that in Somalia, but the potential scale of the Detroit attack shows that al-Qaeda in Yemen already has the ambition to strike at major targets in the US homeland. The Obama administration knows it must act quickly in Yemen before the next terrorist plot becomes a reality.

The Big Question In Afghanistan Is What Happens After 2011

President Obama has finally made his long-awaited announcement on the future of US strategy in Afghanistan. He's sending an extra 30,000 American troops, with the health warning that they will begin to withdraw in 2011. The decision has met with a sceptical response in Afghanistan itself.

The stated aim of the western military involvement in Afghanistan is to fight Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies, and make it harder for Islamist terrorists to attack targets in the west. One of the major criticisms of the increased western involvement in recent months is that now the troops are focusing not just on fighting the west's enemies, but also on trying to protect and strengthen the Afghan government (which, as the controversial recent election showed, is widely corrupt). Critics call it 'mission creep' and accuse Mr Obama and others of trying to find new reasons to justify their involvement in Afghanistan, when they should have pulled out already.

That's believed to be the view of the US Vice-President, Joe Biden. But for leaders like Mr Obama and Gordon Brown, there's more to consider, namely what'll happen when the western troops withdraw. Now that Mr Obama has named 2011 as the start of the end of the mission (as an answer to one of the big criticisms of America's mission in Iraq, namely that there was no exit strategy), that deadline will dominate the way all interested parties act in Afghanistan. And it may end up to the Taliban's advantage.

The Taliban now knows that, if it can avoid complete obliteration over the next couple of years (with help from sympathisers in Pakistan, this shouldn't be a problem), the western troops will go home. Then it can take on the Afghan government. The Taliban did exactly that when it initially seized power in Afghanistan back in 1996. It was a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in which Al Qaeda harboured and trained the terrorists which carried out 9/11.

So, if the US and its allies are unable to help the Afghan government improve its security capabilities sufficiently in the coming months, there could be big trouble ahead. Leaving Afghanistan in 2011 might suit short-term western political opinion, but if the Taliban is able to regain control once the Americans have left, it would probably allow Al Qaeda the opportunity to strengthen, and therefore make a spectacular attack on the US or Europe far more likely. Although it may cause an increase in the human cost in terms of American, British and other international lives, spending the time between now and 2011 putting the Afghans in a position to defeat the Taliban is essential to the ultimate success of the west's mission.

Paying The Taliban To Switch Sides

President Obama is signing into a law a new bill which, among other things, includes a provision allowing the US to offer Taliban fighters money to put down their weapons and leave the insurgency in Afghanistan. This follows a similar scheme which operated with some success in Iraq. The idea is that ex-insurgents will be paid to defend their towns instead of attack them, and once the war is over will easily fit back into whatever passes for normal society.

This is another triumph for pragmatism over ideology in America's approach. If the promise of democracy and freedom isn't enough to convince Afghans to leave the Taliban, then the promise of a few quid and a steady job might be. It makes a bit of a mockery of the past rhetoric of US politicians including President Bush, which has often had a sort of 'our society is better than yours, we're giving it to you and you should be grateful for it' undercurrent to it.

But it would be wrong to assume the Obama people are the first to realise that hard cash might be more effective than western dogma in Afghanistan. In October 2001, the US bombing of Taliban positions initially had little obvious effect. Changing tack, the CIA quickly despatched operatives to Afghanistan with suitcases full of dollars, to literally buy off individual tribal leaders and warlords, getting them to stop supporting the Taliban. Only then did the US-backed offensive start to make any progress. This latest policy of the Obama administration helps show us that, for all of the west's efforts in Afghanistan since 2001, there's still an awful lot that hasn't changed at all.

Here's Some Money, Now Make The Problem Go Away

The US has agreed to supply military equipment to the army of Mali in north Africa, to help them fight Islamist extremists. The Malians are getting about five million dollars worth of stuff, in addition to assistance already being offered by neighbouring Algeria and Libya. They're up against a group calling itself Al Qaeda In The Islamic Maghreb, which has carried out dozens of attacks in the area over the last couple of years, including the capture and murder of Briton Edwin Dyer.

If five million dollars doesn't sound like a lot to you, well, you're right, it's not. Or at least it isn't that much in the context of global military resources. The reason the US doesn't feel the need to break the bank to help is that this particular wing of Al Qaeda is small, with maybe only a few hundred members at most. It emerged from the a much larger force of Algerian Islamists which spent most of the 90s fighting a civil war in that country, after a Muslim party was denied certain victory in an election by government chicanery.

That conflict died down years ago, but the radical strain of Islam has lived on through this small group of extremists, who allied themselves to Al Qaeda in 2007. This was basically an attempt to make themselves look big and important, in the hope they'd get more money and assistance from other Islamists elsewhere in the world. It's possible that this has actually happened, because the group has been able to carry out the odd notable terrorist incident since then. This is what has got America's attention.

You might wonder why the US would bother sending any money at all to deal with such an apparently insignificant enemy, so far away from home. Yet Washington knows it's just possible an American citizen or citizens could end up suffering the same fate as Edwin Dyer, and doesn't want to take the chance. By giving Mali money and equipment only, the US is accepting none of the risk of the security operation, but should get the reward that at least an attack against Americans becomes a more remote possibility. To the folks in the State Department, that's well worth five million dollars.

Why Giving The Nobel Peace Prize To Obama Is A Disgrace

US President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Even though he's only been in office for eight and a half months, and has failed in that time to bring peace to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter, the Nobel committee praised his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy." The decision was a big surprise. Most observers had expected Zimbabwe's long-time opposition leader and now Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, to win.

Even Mr Obama himself must be embarrassed. He has made domestic matters the main focus of his short presidency so far, and has yet to achieve anything like a major foreign policy success. But then the decision has nothing to do with making peace, and everything to do with politics. The Nobel committee is trying too hard to appear right-on, and has rewarded Mr Obama for little more than some encouraging speeches. Sadly, it further erodes the credibility of the prize, which suffered two years ago when Al Gore won for similar reasons.

It's interesting to draw a contrast with last year's winner of the prize, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. He's spent years in different parts of the world carrying out the dull, frustrating, unglamorous work of peacemaking, in places such as Kosovo, Indonesia and even Northern Ireland. Getting once-bitter enemies to agree on contentious issues is a skill he has often demonstrated, and it is that skill which offered genuine hope to the people of those troubled areas.

Mr Obama often talks about hope, and there's no doubt his charisma and rhetoric has inspired folks around the world. But if he's going to prove himself a worthy winner of the Nobel Prize, just talking about hope isn't going to cut it. He needs to follow the example of Mr Ahtisaari. And if President Obama goes along with the advice of his generals and sends an extra 40,000 troops to Afghanistan in the coming weeks, the decision to give him the Nobel Peace Prize so prematurely will look even more ridiculous.

Embarrassment For Obama As Rio Beats Chicago

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympic Games. It beat Madrid, Tokyo and the favourites, Chicago, in the vote among International Olympic Committee members in Copenhagen. It's the first time a city from South America has been chosen to hold the Games. To disbelief in the Windy City, Chicago was earlier knocked out in the first round of voting, despite the personal support of President Obama who had travelled to Denmark to make a personal pitch on behalf of a city he has a close association with.

Although it's a bit of a shock that Chicago lost so badly, the IOC has a long history of surprising decisions. One possible reason for Chicago's defeat could be tactical voting, a fate that befell the much-fancied Toronto bid for the 1996 Olympics. Many of the city's supporters within the IOC apparently lent their votes to Atlanta in an attempt to knock Athens out of the running, a tactic that backfired badly when it was Toronto that exited the contest.

However, a more likely explanation for Rio's victory and Chicago's defeat is the differing involvements of the presidents of Brazil and the US. President Obama's late decision to spend some of his political capital in backing Chicago in person has gained most of the media's attention in the build-up to today's vote. But President Lula of Brazil has been lobbying on behalf of Rio, around the world, for the last two years. The members of the IOC have presumably been impressed by his support for Rio over such a long time. No matter how popular Mr Obama may be, he's been able to devote much less time to helping Chicago since taking office. That might well have proved the deciding factor.

Chicago Plays The Obama Card

It's that time again. Four years after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, the members of the International Olympic Committee meet later this week in Copenhagen to decide where the 2016 Games will be held. The contenders are Chicago, Madrid, Rio and Tokyo. It's another strong field, and appears evenly matched. Or at least it did, until Chicago played what it hopes will be its trump card, President Obama. He's agreed to go to Denmark to personally support Chicago's bid.

The process of deciding which city gets to host the Olympics is still pretty mysterious, with the voting almost as secretive as a Papal conclave. The different cities don't really bid for the Games in the traditional sense anymore, the whole process is far more like a campaign, with all the tools of spin and PR familiar from the world of politics. And this is where politicians themselves come in.

The people trying to win the Games for each city don't really know which part of their campaign could make the difference. Will it be the technical specifications of the venues? The success of the IOC members' visit to the city? How about the transport links? Any of these might prove crucial, after all, in 2005 London only defeated Paris by a mere three votes.

But if there is one aspect to modern Olympic bids that everyone seems to agree is significant, it's the personal support of political leaders. Tony Blair put his weight firmly behind London four years ago, and more recently Vladimir Putin did the same for Sochi's successful Winter Olympics bid. Although the bitter rows about healthcare and other policies may have taken some of the shine off Mr Obama's image in the US, he remains hugely popular internationally, and the Chicago bid team will hope his gladhanding of IOC members in Copenhagen seals the deal for them. If Chicago wins, it'll be Obama wot won it.

Obama's Big Decision On Afghanistan

President Obama has got to decide whether to send yet more troops to Afghanistan. That's after the American commander of NATO forces in the country made a formal request for backup, thought to be around 30,000 extra personnel. In a report that was recently leaked, General Stanley McChrystal commented that the west's mission in Afghanistan would probably fail unless more troops were sent to bolster the force.

Mr Obama must be thinking that it wasn't supposed to be like this. A year and more ago, when he was still just a candidate running for the top job, it was easy to say that President Bush had done the wrong thing in focusing on Iraq to the exclusion of Afghanistan, and that a President Obama would change that. Iraq bad, Afghanistan good.

But now he's in the Oval Office, Mr Obama is being forced to see things from a different perspective. It's a well-worn cliche to say that Afghanistan is a graveyard of armies. But it's true enough, from Britain's various wars in the country during the 19th and early 20th century, to the Soviet Union's ill-fated occupation of the 1980s. Now that the Americans and NATO are in, they've realised that more resources are needed to do the job, otherwise they will join the long list of defeated military forces which were forced to leave Afghanistan.

So President Obama's choice is this. The first option would be to accept that the mission will never achieve its objectives, and announce plans to begin to pull out. This would probably be welcomed by some of America's NATO allies (like Italy), which are only now beginning to suffer the kind of casualties all too familiar to the US and Britain. But it would be a tough sell to the American people. After all the US doesn't like losing, and defeat in Afghanistan would be seen by many as defeat at the hands of those who attacked the US on 9/11.

The other option is to give General McChrystal what he wants, and commit to Afghanistan for the long haul. This is also a tough sell to both America's NATO allies and the American people, because the cost in terms of both lives and money may well be huge. In some ways this would be a far riskier option, because there are so many difficult-to-predict aspects of the Afghan issue which could have a major impact, such as the stability of the apparently corrupt Afghan government and the security situation in Pakistan next door. If Mr Obama takes this choice, he will be trusting to luck as well as the abilities of his military forces.

Stalemate In The Middle East

The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority have demanded that the other change their position before proper negotiations about a peace deal can take place. Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas were talking separately after a meeting with President Obama in New York on Tuesday, a meeting that appears to have achieved absolutely nothing.

Not that it was expected to. For decades the world has looked to the US President to push things forward in the Israel/Palestine conflict. This is because the US is by far Israel's biggest ally and supporter, and so the US President is just about the only outside person the Israeli government generally listens to. Some presidents have spent more time on this issue than others, but usually most of them at least attempt to make some sort of progress, even George W Bush had his ill-fated 'roadmap' to peace, which sadly proved about as effective as a broken satnav.

Barack Obama may yet devote time and energy to the problem, but he's got plenty of other issues to deal with just now. Healthcare is the main one. There's also Afghanistan. So not much of a look in for Israel/Palestine, and with the hardline Mr Netanyahu telling anyone who'll listen that the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon is by far the most important threat to Israel, there doesn't seem to be much desire from the Israeli side to get down to some serious talking with the Palestinians. As for Mr Abbas, he doesn't speak for Hamas which runs the Gaza Strip, so he can hardly claim to represent the whole Palestinian population. So with the focus of the main players firmly elsewhere, don't expect much progress towards restarting the seemingly never ending 'peace process' for some time yet.

For Obama, Afghanistan Is More Important Than A Missile Shield

President Obama's decision to abandon US plans for a missile defence shield in eastern Europe has made big news around the world over the last couple of days. The shield would have involved putting facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic from where any missiles heading towards western Europe or the US could have been shot down. The official reason for getting rid of the scheme is that Iran, purportedly the likeliest place from which those missiles might have been launched at the west, isn't as far ahead in its weapons development as had been thought.

As is usually the case in international diplomacy though, that's not the real reason for Mr Obama's decision. In fact, there are plenty of reasons, and the decision has all sorts of consequences which may not be immediately obvious. But the main theme is the sense that Afghanistan is now by far the most important international challenge facing the US, and all its foreign policy decisions are made in that context. In weighing up whether to go ahead with the shield or not, Mr Obama will have thought hard about the impact the decision would have on Afghanistan.

It's been widely said that the decision to scrap the scheme will ease tensions between the US and Russia. This is important because the US needs Russia's help in Afghanistan, and will do for years and probably decades to come. In the short-term, Moscow can allow NATO forces to use both the land and airspace of Russia and some nearby former Soviet republics, which will help their fight against the Taliban. But more significantly, in the long-term, once the Americans, British and the rest have gone, Russia will have a more important role in Afghanistan. The Kremlin likes to have control of countries in its 'backyard' and in future it'll be deals between Russia and local Afghan tribal leaders, rather than guns and air strikes, that keeps Afghanistan stable.

So President Obama's decision will have an impact far into the future. But there are lots of people who aren't happy about it, and those people are mostly in eastern Europe. Countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic want to avoid slipping back into Moscow's 'backyard' and wanted the missile shield as an extra guarantee of their independence from Russia. Not because the Kremlin was about to fire missiles at Warsaw or Prague, but to emphasise that they have American backing and that Moscow shouldn't try any funny business, like shutting off power supplies. That fear is multiplied many times over for Ukraine and especially Georgia, which are desperately trying to resist being sucked back into the Kremlin's orbit. If Russia's price for helping out in Afghanistan is the withdrawal of the missile shield, don't be surprised if they also manage to thwart those two countries' hopes of joining NATO.

Even In Death, Teddy Kennedy Can't Shake Off Chappaquiddick

US Senator Edward "Teddy" Kennedy has died. The long-time Democrat lawmaker and brother of the late President John F Kennedy, as well as Robert F Kennedy, was 77, and had been suffering from brain cancer.

When a politician dies, it's customary for fulsome tributes to be paid as even bitter political opponents find pleasant things to say about their late rival. And Teddy Kennedy is no different. Plenty of Republicans, with whom he fought bitterly in Congress for decades, have been praising his record of achievement and long service. He's even been described as an "effective lawmaker," although given that we're talking about the US Congress, I suppose everything is relative.

The reason why the tributes to Kennedy are focusing on his legislative record, is because he never became President. He thought about running in 1972, but didn't. Then he finally did run in 1980, but lost his party's primary election to Jimmy Carter. The main reason for both of those failures is the so-called Chappaquiddick incident.

The facts of the incident are still not entirely clear. But we do know that Kennedy crashed his car into water one night in 1969 and then left the scene of the accident. His passenger, campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne, was later found dead under the wreckage. Kennedy was given a suspended sentence for leaving the scene, but nothing more, amid claims he was given special treatment because of his surname.

The scandal prevented Kennedy from running for the presidency in 1972, and questions about it badly damaged his attempt eight years later, which meant that he had to concentrate on making laws in the US Senate to try to re-establish his reputation. He was successful up to a point, but Chappaquiddick has followed him to the grave. Kopechne's name became a trending topic on Twitter today, as right-wing bloggers and other Kennedy-haters brought it all up again. Usually when politicians have made mistakes in their personal lives, they are forgotten about when it comes to giving the eulogies. But in this case, it's right that Kennedy should not be allowed to escape Chappaquiddick. Regardless of his years of service to the US, it remains unforgivable.

Scottish Compassion, American Anger

The only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is back in his home country of Libya, where he will live out the last weeks of his life. Former Libyan secret agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi has terminal cancer. He's also the biggest mass murderer in British history, yet Scotland's justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has still decided to release him on compassionate grounds because of his illness. Most of the Lockerbie victims were American, and President Obama has led criticism of the decision, describing it as a "mistake."

It's not unusual in Scotland for prisoners, even serious criminals, to be released to die at home in this sort of situation. And because the bombing took place over a Scottish town, and al-Megrahi was later convicted by a Scottish court, it's the Scottish legal system, not that of England or the US, which is important here. With so many precedents in Scotland for showing this sort of compassion, Mr MacAskill is on solid ground legally to let al-Megrahi go.

Politically it's a different matter. While many of the British families of Lockerbie victims have expressed doubt about al-Megrahi's conviction, that's not the case in the US, where there remains a widespread belief that the right man was convicted, even though the evidence against him is circumstantial and thin at best, and there's surely no way he could have acted alone. This means US politicians are inevitably going to say al-Megrahi should die in jail. The images of al-Megrahi being greeted as a hero on his return to Tripoli don't help, and they've given plenty of fodder to the predictably furious commentators on US cable news.

Whether al-Megrahi really was the bomber or not cannot have been relevant to Mr MacAskill's decision. In the eyes of Scots law, he was. So, that Mr MacAskill resisted all this huge international political pressure is to his credit. It would have been far easier to let al-Megrahi die in Greenock jail. It seems that there's been no deal between Scotland and Libya, Scotland is getting nothing (except American scorn) for this act of mercy. Politicians often talk about making tough decisions, Mr MacAskill has actually gone ahead and made one. President Obama might not like it, but that's just tough. It's not up to him.

There are still plenty of questions about Lockerbie which remain unanswered. Who helped al-Megrahi? Did the Libyan government order the attack? Was it a different government, possibly Iran? Did al-Megrahi and Libya actually have nothing to do with it? Despite al-Megrahi's release, we seem no closer to finding out the answers to any of these. Perhaps the renewed interest in Lockerbie will flush out some new information. But with Libya keen to forget about the whole episode and continue its new, friendlier relationship with the west, I wouldn't bet on it.

The Shuttle Nears The End

NASA is about to make a fifth attempt to get the space shuttle Endeavour off the ground on its latest mission to the International Space Station. It's been delayed by a combination of technical troubles and bad weather. The mission is one of the longest and most complex in the history of the shuttle programme, and when it finally links up with the ISS a record will be set for the most amount of people in orbit at one time. But behind NASA's positive spin, it knows the shuttle is about to go out of service, and it's about to fall behind in the modern space race.

There will be seven more shuttle missions after this one, then the ageing fleet will be retired. The shuttles will eventually be replaced by the planned Orion craft, but probably not until 2015 at the earliest. In the meantime, NASA is going to have to rely on its once great rival, the Russian space programme, to keep the ISS going. It won't be the first time this has happened either. After the Columbia disaster of 2003, when the shuttle fleet was grounded, it was Russian Soyuz craft that carried people and parts to and from the ISS. After the last shuttle flies for the last time, it'll again be the veteran Soyuz that takes the strain, although Russia is planning a replacement that should come into service before NASA's Orion.

There's a big irony in all this. This is the month that the 40th anniversary of NASA's greatest victory over the Soviet Union, when it successfully landed men on the moon, is being marked. But now NASA is so hamstrung by a relative lack of money and political will, it's forced to rely on the Russians and the rest for the technology and cash to get the job done in space. This doesn't necessarily matter to anyone other than the Americans, it is the International Space Station after all, and it's right that it's an international effort. But the fact that for much of its working life the station will not be serviced by NASA craft proves that the Americans no longer own space in the way they once did.

Stranger In Moscow

President Obama has arrived in Moscow for his first visit to Russia since taking office. These US/Russia summits aren't the big deal they were back in the Cold War days, when the fate of the world seemed to hang on meetings between, say, Reagan and Gorbachev. But Mr Obama's got plenty of important things to discuss with President Medvedev and the man who's still the most powerful politician in Russia, Prime Minister Putin.

The headline news of the trip is likely to be a deal on reducing the two countries' stockpiles of nuclear warheads. So far, so 1980s. More contentiously, Russia is not happy with America's plans to build a missile defence shield with bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, both far too close for The Kremlin's comfort. The US wants to build the system to help protect it against a possible nuclear threat from, amongst other places, Iran. And the Americans could do with Moscow's help on Iran more generally, because Russian technology has been widely used in the Iranians' attempt to build a nuclear bomb. It'll be interesting to see if a deal can be reached, perhaps with the US scaling back its missile defence plans in return for Russia backing away from Iran, and allowing the US to use Russian territory to help the NATO effort in Afghanistan.

No prizes for guessing that, away from the national security stuff, economic issues will be the other main theme of the two-day summit. And Russia's in an increasingly strong position compared to the US when it comes to talking money. It was Russian cash that largely funded the recent Canadian-led buyout of General Motors. And with Russian trade with the US at surprisingly low levels (about the same as the amount Poland does), there's plenty of room for improvement. No matter how tense the talks get when it comes to security, Mr Obama will be very keen to find ways to get better economic links.

Obama's Big Test In Iraq

US forces have at last withdrawn from cities and towns across Iraq, handing control to local forces more than six years after the invasion. Those Americans left in Iraq will now be mostly confined to their barracks, in what military folk rather tediously call an 'overwatch' role. Basically they're able to step in if something goes wrong, but from here on in, the Iraqis are largely on their own.

You might think that things have been relatively quiet in Iraq in the two years since the 'surge' of US troops went after the bad guys and stopped much of the violence. And you'd be right, relatively speaking. But in the last couple of weeks there's been a sudden increase in bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere, which have left dozens of civilians dead. The people carrying out the attacks are keen to let everyone in Iraq know that the US is not leaving in victory, but is being forced out by the continued unrest.

The big question now is - how many more bomb attacks will the US allow to happen before its forces are ordered out of the barracks and back into the cities? Military bosses will be telling President Obama that relatively small operations in particular neighbourhoods could root out those behind the recent attacks, and that US troops wouldn't need to leave their bases for long. But Mr Obama will also have to consider the politics of all this. The reason the troops are leaving now is because he made an explicit promise to do so during his campaign for the presidency. To appear to go back on that promise, even if only for a short time, would be a political blow for him, and would also beg the question of how many more times US forces would be called on to leave their barracks to carry out further missions. Mr Obama would prefer not to have to send them back into harm's way at all. But if the bombings continue, he may feel he has no choice.

Not Even Obama Knows What Comes Next

Barack Obama has been sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. There were a few mis-steps during the inauguration - Senator Dianne Feinstein announced that Obama was about to take the 'oaf' of office, Mr Obama himself stumbled through the early part of the oath, and then he began his speech by wrongly stating he was the 44th person to take the job (Grover Cleveland did it twice, and is counted as both the 22nd and 24th president, so Mr Obama is only the 43rd man to serve as president). The speech itself, perhaps surprisingly, didn't hit the rhetorical heights of predecessors such as FDR and JFK. Instead he went for a more sombre, solemn speech, invoking George Washington's struggles against the British during the difficult winter of 1776 as he talked about the current economic crisis.

None of this particularly matters. All the pomp and ceremony of inauguration day will be largely forgotten, if not by tomorrow, then certainly within a few weeks and months, once Mr Obama is spending his days dealing with the problems he spoke of facing.

Expectations are high, unreasonably high in fact, and soon Mr Obama will be disappointing some of his supporters as he gets on with the business of government. But trying to predict how his presidency will turn out is a mug's game. This time eight years ago, President Bush took power with his large tax cut the main focus of his policy agenda. That slipped dramatically down that agenda within months, when al Qaeda attacked New York and Washington on 9/11. That event changed the world, and completely changed Mr Bush's presidency, for good (it helped him win re-election) and ill (his reaction eventually proved deeply unpopular around the world and, ultimately, at home too). It will be how Mr Obama deals with challenges he can't foresee now that will determine how good a president he will become.

Endgame At Guantanamo

The man who was allegedly the main plotter behind the 9/11 attacks on the US has told a pre-trial hearing that he wants to plead guilty. Four of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's co-defendants have done the same. This all happened in a military tribunal at America's Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, where the men and hundreds of others have been held for several years.

Most of the people held in such controversial circumstances at Guantanamo since 2001 are, if not entirely innocent, certainly guilty of not much more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time - Afghanistan in the winter of 2001/02, when a large number of them were arrested. The story of the Tipton Three, three young British men who apparently got caught up in the excitement of the time and ended up in the Taliban sronghold of Kunduz as the Northern Alliance closed in, is not unusual. It's been the detention of those suspects and others like them that's caused such damage to America's international reputation.

KSM and the other four are different. These are the real senior bad guys the US had in mind when it set up the detention centre at Guantanamo. But all the evidence suggests suspects of that level are in a significant minority, perhaps only a few dozen of the men held at the base. However, with President-elect Obama having already said he intends to close Guantanamo, the issue of what to do with these suspected al Qaeda operatives will no doubt be troubling him.

Mr Obama's got two groups of people to worry about most as he ponders how exactly to close Guantanamo. The first group is those men with stories like the Tipton Three's who are still held at the base, either because their home countries refuse to accept them back, or because the US knows the men would be tortured if they were returned to those countries. Beyond offering these men asylum in the US, it's difficult to see what Mr Obama can do. That would undoubtedly be a huge risk as, even though most of the men probably have no intention of carrying out any kind of terrorist act, there's always a chance one or two or more might.

Then there's those 80 or so real bad guys. Suggestions from the Obama team point towards putting them on trial in some kind of hybrid military/civilian court, possibly in America itself, possibly not. The major difficulty in getting convictions (in cases in which the defendants don't plead guilty) will be the use of torture on the suspects during their period of detention. Any half-decent defence lawyer should be able to pick plenty of holes in any prosecution case containing evidence gleaned from such interrogations. But however Mr Obama decides to resolve those problems, it seems as though we're now entering the endgame for Guantanamo.