
The objective of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group which carried out the Mumbai attacks, is global jihad. They are second only to al-Qaeda as a terrorist group of global reach.

Pakistan may be forfeiting its sovereignty if it is incapable of cracking down on militants like those that launched the recent Mumbai attacks. As it appears increasingly unlikely that the Pakistani civilian government will be able to crack down effectively, the international community should intervene to protect Pakistan’s neighbors from the threat posed by Pakistani-based terrorists.

Following the Pakistani terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the international community should respond by declaring that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty will begin to show the world that states that harbor terrorists cannot take their sovereign rights for granted — these rights need to be earned.

President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a bipartisan, centrist national security team, with an emphasis on pragmatic competence. Already faced with a daunting foreign policy inbox, the incoming administration must formulate a response to the Mumbai terrorist attacks without undermining either the current administration’s credibility or the already-weak Pakistani government.
The Mumbai attacks bear the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group which operated in Kashmir in the 1990s, but has global reach today. It was founded and supported by the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency. If Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for the attacks, Pakistan will face new scrutiny from the U.S. as an ally in the war on terror.

The Mumbai terrorists attacked previously untargeted groups in India, including wealthy Indians and foreigners, in a likely attempt to discredit India as a safe place to conduct business and articulate a wide range of grievances with the government.

The Mumbai terrorists appear to have targeted wealthy Indians and foreigners in a series of coordinated attacks that have left over 100 dead and hundreds injured.

As emerging-market powers have grown economically, their geopolitical rise is occurring equally quickly. The G20 summit highlights a new ‘new world order,’ in which emerging powers have a stronger voice in international institutions. Despite their sometimes differing agendas, countries like China, India, Russia, and Brazil are learning to work together to earn a voice in this new economic order.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cautioned that the U.S. cannot maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without testing or modernizing its aging stockpile. Gates urged the next U.S. president to engage Russia in new arsenal reduction talks and pointed to the loss of top talent in U.S. weapons laboratories as a major source of concern.

Expectations are running high for major changes in the next U.S. administration's foreign policy, but how much change is likely, and will it be enough to close the gap between America and the world? Top experts from the Carnegie Endowment and elsewhere discussed this question during a two-day conference in Brussels.