Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, December 13

Religion and Geopolitics this week includes:

• Bold Modi tackles Muslim Kashmir head on 
• A Foreign Policy of Russophobia
• Immigration is foreign policy, too, just closer
• Did NAFTA Help Mexico? An Assessment After 20 Years
• Here Are The Big Winners And Losers Of Low Oil Prices
• How US Diplomacy Helped Transform Russia from Potential Ally to Adversary

India's Narenda Modi is a very different leader of the second most populous nation on earth. Deeply religious and eminently practical, he is a harbinger of the new nationalists who will emerge not only amidst the Asian nations but in Europe and South America as well. The post-Cold War international landscape is a multipolar world. Nations and their leaders will define many of the new magnetic poles of gravity.

The House resolution on Russia seems bad history and bad policy. That old cold warrior Pat Buchanan has a crusty constitutionalist objection.

Immigration is foreign policy too. An article by Minneapolis StarTribune writer Doug Tice asks just those questions that might foster a pivot to the Americas in national policy.

A historical question that must inform future policy: Did NAFTA help Mexico? Here is an unbiased but negative reply.

The drop in oil prices we notice at the gas pump affects the nations in diverse ways. Oil producers like Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria and Mideast states are hurt. Large agricultural countries (China and India) are helped. Here's a good summary.

Written by an American diplomat in Russia at the time of the the dissolution of the Soviet Union, here is a brief review of the missed moment in US strategy during the Bush senior and Clinton years.