As the United States increasingly looks to China for help over tackling problem issues such as Iran, Burma and Darfur, concern is growing in Taiwan that the island’s sole international protector may be dropping its guard. The de facto independence of Taiwan, viewed by Beijing as a renegade province, depends in the last resort on American defensive guarantees and arms supplies.

President Pervez Musharraf’s ”second coup” amounted to a serious personal blow for Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, and American counterterrorism and nation-building policies in the Pakistan-Afghanistan badlands. Whatever his other failings, the Pakistani leader is a gentleman of the English colonial school, writes Simon Tisdall.

President Hu Jintao on Tuesday spoke like Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister of the 1950s, who famously told his people that they had never had it so good. Under Hu’s leadership in the past five years, he said, ”China’s overall strength grew considerably and people enjoyed more tangible benefits. China’s international standing and influence rose notably.”

In typical he-man style, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, ignored an alleged assassination plot and went ahead with a visit to Tehran recently. Iran says the plot story was propaganda fabricated by its enemies, which may well be true. Historically speaking, Russians need no outside help doing away with their leaders. They manage perfectly well by themselves.

Street demonstrations alone are unlikely to bring down Burma’s ruthless military junta. They have been tried before, notably in 1988, when about 3 000 civilians reportedly died in the resulting crackdown. Nor will any amount of huffing and puffing by Gordon Brown and other Western leaders have much impact, especially if (as in the past) it is unsupported by concrete, punitive measures.

Iraq’s politics, as opposed to Iraq’s grim daily ground-floor reality, increasingly resembles a game of illusions which those involved conspire to maintain or prolong. It is an Alice in Wonderland world — except there are no white rabbits disappearing down holes, let alone being pulled from hats.

Problems are piling up for Republicans as they seek a presidential election candidate with the strength and charisma to overcome the ”Bush deficit”. The choice on offer has failed so far to inspire the party’s base. And polls suggest adverse ideological and demographic shifts could confound any future nominee.

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaeda elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering United States Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

Bloodshed in Karachi, nationwide political turmoil, and border clashes between Pakistani and Afghan troops have heightened the sense that a potentially unstoppable, many-fronted crisis is about to engulf Pakistan’s President General, Pervez Musharraf. After almost eight years of smartly pressed, barely legitimate uniformed rule from his colonial-era residence in Rawalpindi, Musharraf is fast shedding friends at home and abroad.