Sudan

Cold War II: Gates is off to meet with China's military brass, an attempt to cool down superpower tensions. Before he left, Gates told reporters that the US would have to start a new generation of weapons to contain China, even though the cost will be substantial. He also said that the new Chinese stealth fighter prototype wasn't all that stealthy. He has the prototype's engine in mind with that comment. India and Russia are jointly developing a new stealth fighter. Bear in mind Russia already has a stealth fighter, upon which China is dependent for engine technology. Probably Russia has already cut China off as the Russo-American alliance strengthens, forcing the great dragon to design and produce stealth engines from scratch. Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and South Korea could conceivably acquire American stealth fighters. The old adage about not getting into a land war in Asia applies to China as well as everybody else. Add up the population of all the above countries that could field anti-Chinese stealth fighter jets and the number is much greater than China's population. If a single alliance stitched all those countries together, it would be very bad for China.

Long War: The Sudanese election has begun. In one week the South will have seceded and made the first step in creating a new country. Months of negotiations between South and North Sudan will set boundaries, split oil revenue, divide the old national debt, and tackle other thorny issues. If any of these issues restart the Sudanese Civil War (SCW) it will be very bad. The multi-decade long SCW killed 2 million people and started the Long War by creating Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountain of the modern jihadist movement.
The SCW was a Muslim vs Christian affair. This is why over the past few months Muslim on Christian Long War violence has been soaring. Al Qaeda executed a huge Christian terror strike in Egypt. Iran has been turning up the gas. The Pakistani blasphemy laws are being used to execute Christians for the first time. A dozen Al-Qaeda plots have been broken up in Europe (which Al-Qaeda thinks of as Christian), this is much higher than normal.
The potential end of the Christian killing SCW is sending shock waves through the jihadist community. If the CIA can ride this beast into the ground by steering Sudan through the months of negotiations without war breaking out, then it will be very bad for Al-Qaeda. The birthplace of Al-Qaeda will have been handed to the Americans on a silver platter.
But can the CIA do it? Recent Sudanese history is very sticky with CIA fingerprints and suggests that the Agency is on the ball. Consider: in 2009 the North violated the treaty that had ended the original war by arming rival southern clans and turning them against each other, fomenting a mini-civil war in the South. This came to be known as the "civil war within a civil war." But these southern tribes mysteriously one by one stopped fighting each other and Bashir, the evil war criminal leader of the north, totally turned around, becoming a CIA good bad guy or as his opponents call him, a CIA stooge. This is evidence that the CIA is doing a good job so far. But great challenges lay ahead.