Responsible story revealing huge gaps in the board dealing with US national security policies. The Iraq war sucked too much attention and resources and, meanwhile, the world's situation just got worst, creating serious imbalance.

This is not journalism. It is a position piece from a temporarily sidlined professional policy wonk and author. It is consistent with his past. Clarke argues for continuation of the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush (and probably Ford) politics of American military expansion and support of transnational corporations (US and foreign). His list cleverly includes Global Warming (not Peak Oil) with all the usual suspects and supports domination of US internal and foreign policy substantially unchanged for the past fifty years. Clarke limits his vision to the traditional security doctrine. The weakening US economy, the growing national debt in the hands of the Asian Powers, and the utter dependence on petroleum ... More »

Richard A. Clarke is a security expert with deep inside knowledge of how national security policy is made. It pays to listen to what he has to say about the Bush administration's failure to take serious account of anything outside its narrow obsessions with Iraq and terrorism. The article provides a fascinating inside view of security policy making. Clarke's conclusion that global warming ought to be our top international security priority will be surprising to those focused on more traditional threats, but certainly ought to be taken seriously by citizens and policy makers alike.

A good review of what the Bush Administration is NOT doing.

Great article if I was only looking at the distractions and not the obvious! If I thought that they had just made mistakes and misjudgments up to this point I can endorse this article. The one question people always shy away from is, Who made us the world police and the champions of democracy? We Americans need to do more research in to the workings of our government in our name from the past to now. Wake up people we are being robbed and everything else is just theater!

The story sounds great, well written, but maybe basically based on predetermined conclusions or political bias. Global warming being the most annoying with the usual supposition based on all scientist and not on only those scientist totally involved in that discussion. Therefore, when the vast majority of scientists are not directly involved in that specific study it falls into the political arena.

This is an excellent article by a person who knows the landscape that confirms the Bush administration has not been able to pay attention to fundamental questions of foreign policy.

Clarke is certainly able to view the US position in the world through the lens of national security, and he does so quite well. I do have a problem believing that global warming is a national security issue, that sounds like we have more ownership than national interest in the problem. However, golobal warming is a world issue and it will require world leadership by some country or group of countries to resolve. The US has squandered its world leadership role in Iraq and continues to do so, and I don't expect this administration to do more than give lip service to the problem much as it did with nuclear weapons in Iran and N. Korea. In these cases the US clearly demonstrated that it did not want a leadership role in a negotiated ... More »

Mainly because of Clarke's extensive working-experience with national security policy, this story scores very highly with regard to information, context, and trust. Ironically, the issue of global warming - caused primarily by the production of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels - has been supplanted by Iraq - a war caused primarily by securing US access to these fossil fuels.