Would those be the Turkish troops the Iraqis forcefully rejected? Easy to say now, of course we could be sitting here condemning the boneheadedness of igniting a Kurd/Turkish war in Northern Iraq.

Indeed, Mark; that's the crux of it.
Making such a move assumes that such a force could be effective... and the fact is that their history doesn't suggest their being able to be effective.

In the employee/employer world the fastest way to tee off an employee, is to push someone beyond heir ability on some curcial task, thus setting them up for failure.

Great idea. All of the major security challenges we face arise from the near and far east, a region in which our pseudo-allies, France and Germany, have no useful military assets or even (as the Iran follies indicate) any real political influence. In the few areas where the continental Europeans can actually help, they already are helping to the max, ie intel cooperation and police work.

Rather than waste so much diplomatic bandwidth and political capital on France and Germany, we should immediately shift resources and attention to the nations that actually have the potential to help (and hurt) us in the region that critically affects our security: Turkey, India, and I would add, Russia.

Asian Century now. Time to move beyond the postures and reflexes of the last century. Eastward Ho!

Ironic that three of the four nations I mentioned (Israel, India and Russia) command the majority of the world's (non-US) programming and scientific technical talent. Another reason to forge this new Asia-centered alliance in this Asian Century.

I'm a big proponent of this idea. Given my interests, I've tended to look at it from the Central Asia angle, where India reportedly has (or soon will have, even though there's also denials) an airbase in Tajikistan (I haven't looked into this in a while, things may have changed).

With Russian and China seemingly hellbent on competing with the US in Central Asia, a closer US-India-Israel-Turkey alliance begins to make all kinds of amazing sense in the Middle East, Central, and South Asia.

One way to move this forward would be to adopt a version of the Canadian PM's proposal for a working group parallel to the UNSC that would focus on transnational security issues and that would include the G-8 plus Turkey, Israel and the key Asian powers: Japan, China, India, Korea.

Eventually, by proving itself a truly useful forum for addressing an increasingly chaotic international security situation (as opposed to enabling France to thwart the US), this group would become the successor to the UNSC. Less legitimacy, perhaps, but legitimacy in the eyes of the Asian powers ie the ones who matter most. And a lot more effective.

Actually Russia might wish to tilt toward our side. Chinese immigration and economic dominance threatens to turn the Russian Far East into a de facto Chinese province within a generation. Russia-India ties, certainly in the trade sphere at least, can be resurrected in short order. And the potential technology transfers to be gained from allying with the US-Israel-India are also very attractive.

Unless India has rather more transport capability than I'm aware of, it's something of a moot point. Given other nations' logistical capabilities at the present, if a lot of troops need to get somewhere they can't walk to, they're either going to be 90% Americans, or they're not going to be there at all.

Alliance with india would make a kind of sense.

After all, we allied with iraq after iran changed into something that didn't want us. We have a longstanding alliance with pakistan against india, but if the paks are the main al qaeda supporter why not dump them for india?

When we can't avoid foreign entanglements, isn't the next best thing to switch back and forth between deadly enemies?

India is a deadly enemy? Seems like we've done a pretty good job of playing one against the other over the years. Needless to say Bush gets little-no credit for bringing Pakistan to heel. Werent we supposed to send 200,000 troops lumbering across the Pakistan border looking for AQ instead of going into Iraq? How would that brilliant foriegn policy (and military) blunder have left southwest asia looking? Seems to me we've got both giant nations with nukes on their best behavior, rapidly rounding up AQ for us. Somehow i dont expect to see raves for that on the cover of the NYT any time soon.

I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of putting together a Russo-Chinese-Indian-Turkish stabilization force. Now, of course, the Iraqis and especially the Islamists and Kurds are going to have virulent objections to this policy. But they have virulent objections to the US presence as well. This could have the added benefit of changing the equation from one of simply the West vs. Islam. Or it could totally backfire.

I've always thought we should forge a much closer bond with India, simply based on the fact they are the largest functioning democracy in the world, there is an abundance of english speakers, and they have managed democracy in a region, and given an astonishly diverse population, that has not at all been friendly to democratization. All in all, an amazing accomplishment.

I would agree as well that the brainpower that comes from this region is and should also be a significant factor.

In addition, India does act as a future counterweight, if any is needed, to China, or Pakistan.

Lots of reasons folks. Lots of reasons.

Whoever said the US has a longstanding alliance with Pakistan against India must have been asleep for over a decade. In the Cold War we did maintain a relationship with Pakistan because of their strategic location wedged between three communist (or quasi-communist, in India's case) Asian giants. But US foreign policy has been tilting toward India since the end of the Cold War, for all the very true geopolitical reasons cited. In fact we only started rebuilding bridges to Pakistan shortly before 9-11, after keeping them on sanctions for several years. Obviously the effort picked up steam quickly after that -- but not to the detriment of India, however they might whine about our friendliness with Pak.

As for Israel and Turkey, you cannot find a country that has been a better friend of those two nations than the United States.

On the whole, Siddarth, you're right that this loose triple-alliance is a rising geopolitical force. But I disagree that the US is chasing the curve. On the contrary, this is an example of the US being ahead of the curve, and again being on the right side of history.

The Kurds are not objecting to US presence, BTW.

I am mindful of Kissinger's recent article stressing that nations act on self-interest more than on diplomacy. I don't want to negate the efforts of Foggy Bottom, but am cautious not to overvalue them.

Having Bill Clinton or John Kerry or Reagan or Bush 41 would not have made much difference to France. They would have sorrowfully, rather than angrily told us to take a hike.

France is not an ally. Since 1989, France's grand strategy is to thwart and counter the US hyperpuissance wherever possible. In this century, this strategy is applied to the maximum in the middle east, where the French see huge potential economic gains to be made (note the W Qurna-TOTALFinaElf deal with Saddam in Nov 2002) from opposing the US and very significant domestic costs from siding with the US.

The Atlantic Alliance is dead, folks. Has been since 1991, when the SU collapsed. No point in wasting so many cycles with can't help us, can't hurt us Euros.

Asian Century now. To coin a phrase, let's MoveOn (and look eastward)....

Siddarth,
Just by way of clarification, the Jews first arrived in Kerala a long, long time before the 16th century. In fact, they first got to Kerala after the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. It is believed they landed in the great port of Muziris (later Cranganore).

Yes, I did live in Cochin for 16 years :)