Of a rather long list of foreign policy issues requiring close attention, none seems more urgent than the United States' relation to Russia.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/letter-to-democrats-on-u_b_45075.html
In case you did not see the inspiration for this comment.
Observation of US military deployments since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Expansion of NATO into former Sattelite States has led me to conclude that part of the reason for the War in Iraq, and Afghanistan is to create a wall of US influence surrounding Russia.
American Moves on the Global Chess board seem to be carefully calculated to Isolate Russia, and keep it from effectively shipping Oil to the Far East.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was in no small measure intended to provide a secure route for a natural gas and oil pipeline to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean. This route would cut almost 6 weeks off the travel time for Russian Petroleum products sent to China and Japan.
If the US succeeds in blocking Russian Oil from reaching the Far East, and controlling the flow of oil from the Middle East, we would have effective control of Chinese economic expansion.
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