WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For decades, Western navies have built ever larger, more expensive warships. Those vessels now look increasingly vulnerable to thousands of small, fast Iranian attack boats that could dominate the Gulf in the event conflict there.

In response, the U.S. Navy has sent almost its entire fleet of small patrol boats and minesweepers to the region, hastily refitting some to dramatically increase their firepower

Concerns over the Gulf, a key oil conduit, play into a much wider debate about whether developed navies waste their money in pursuing a small number of sophisticated ships. Perhaps, some argue, they should follow the example of poorer states like Iran, who invest in large numbers of smaller ships rather than a handful of larger vessels that could be easily sunk.

In readiness for any potential war with the U.S. Navy and regional allies, Iran’s navy and Revolutionary Guard have poured resources into small gunboats.

That, military officials and analysts say, would allow them to launch potentially devastating “”swarm” attacks.

Iran has said it would close off the Gulf if it were attacked by powers, including the United States and Israel, who accuse it of developing nuclear arms.

Western militaries say they are more than capable of meeting any threat and analysts believe that, given the sheer weight of U.S. military force in the region, Tehran would inevitably prove the ultimate loser in any conflict.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If or when policymakers finally decide Greece should leave the euro, the exit could happen so quickly that “new drachma” currency notes might not be printed in time.

In principle, some of the long-term consequences of Athens leaving the currency bloc are not unappealing. The euro zone would no longer have to worry about what has always been its weakest link. While a new Greek currency would almost certainly immediately crash in value as soon as it was issued, in doing so it would make the Greek economy much more competitive.

But the short-term effects would be brutal, both domestically and on the global economy. A post-euro Greece could find itself struggling to import food and fuel, with everyday life reduced to barter in goods and services and the government unable to pay workers in anything they would want to receive.

“It would be chaos,” says Marios Efthymiopoulos, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University Centre for Advanced International Studies and president of Thessaloniki-based think tank Global Strategy.

“The banks would collapse and you would have to nationalize them. You wouldn’t be able to pay anyone except in coupons. There is only one (currency) printing press in Greece. It is in the museum in Athens and it doesn’t work any more.”

The cost of managing what is increasingly being termed “Grexit” – with its resulting global market turmoil and colossal financial pressure on Spain and Italy – could dwarf the cost of keeping Greece on financial life support. But with northern European states – and their electorates – becoming tired of bailouts, the probability is seen clearly on the rise.

World leaders meeting at the G8 at Camp David recommitted themselves to keeping Greece in the euro zone, underlining worries over the costs of an exit. Not everyone believes that will prove enough. The unknowns, however, are enormous.

NAVARRE, Ohio/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The busy shop floor at Miller Weldmaster Corp could make a great location for an Obama campaign ad.

As workers assemble the family-owned company’s hot-air fabric welders, used to manufacture everything from inflatable rafts to truck tarps, it’s hard to know the recession of 2007-2009 ever happened.

Ten clocks on the wall of the plant in Navarre, Ohio, show local time from Norway to New Zealand and tell Miller Weldmaster’s comeback story in a word: exports. Sixty percent of the company’s business now comes from outside the United States.

Manufacturing growth, surging exports: These are central promises of Obama’s reelection bid, especially in blue-collar industrial states that could determine the election.

Mindful of the Indiana surprise of 2008, when a spike in unemployment helped Obama win the reliably Republican state, the White House has every reason to fear payback in states like Ohio, this time from any deepening of Europe’s financial crisis.

Already there are warning signs. One in four of Miller Weldmaster’s machines is sold in Europe, and sales are down 5 percent so far this year. A further drop could force the company to consider layoffs.

“We’ve taken a sigh of relief – we’ve been over the crunch,” says Jeff Sponseller, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. “The chance that this could happen again brings a lot of anxiety.”

NAVARRE, Ohio/WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) – The busy shop floor at Miller Weldmaster Corp could make a great location for an Obama campaign ad.

As workers assemble the family-owned company’s hot-air fabric welders, used to manufacture everything from inflatable rafts to truck tarps, it’s hard to know the recession of 2007-2009 ever happened.

Ten clocks on the wall of the plant in Navarre, Ohio, show local time from Norway to New Zealand and tell Miller Weldmaster’s comeback story in a word: exports. Sixty percent of the company’s business now comes from outside the United States.

Manufacturing growth, surging exports: These are central promises of Obama’s reelection bid, especially in blue-collar industrial states that could determine the election.

Mindful of the Indiana surprise of 2008, when a spike in unemployment helped Obama win the reliably Republican state, the White House has every reason to fear payback in states like Ohio, this time from any deepening of Europe’s financial crisis.

Already there are warning signs. One in four of Miller Weldmaster’s machines is sold in Europe, and sales are down 5 percent so far this year. A further drop could force the company to consider layoffs.

“We’ve taken a sigh of relief – we’ve been over the crunch,” says Jeff Sponseller, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. “The chance that this could happen again brings a lot of anxiety.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Despite quietly dropping the phrase “war on terror”, when it comes to battling worldwide militant networks the success of the United States and its allies goes well beyond the killing of Osama bin Laden.

With Britain deploying surface to air missiles, fighter jets and warships around London ahead of the Olympic Games, the threat of devastating attacks on Western nations has not gone away — and few believe it can ever be eliminated.

Some security experts fear it may still only be a matter of time until an individual or small group use a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons — or perhaps a cyber attack — to inflict a death toll to dwarf that of September 11, 2001.

But in the decade since the attacks on New York and Washington killed nearly 3,000, much has changed. Quietly, many of the tactics adopted by governments have made it much harder for large, complex organizations such as Al Qaeda to operate.

On Monday, U.S. counterterrorism officials said they had frustrated a plot by al Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula to attack airliners using a redesigned version of an underwear bomb used in previous attack attempts. But they said the plot was thwarted in the early stages and no one airline was ever at risk.

“The initial asymmetric advantage Al Qaeda enjoyed has been eroded,” says Nigel Inkster, a former deputy chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and now head of political risk and transnational threats at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Governments, intelligence services, police and judiciaries have all learned a great deal about how terrorist organizations work and have all upped their game in dealing with the threat.”

By the time Navy Seals killed bin Laden in his Pakistan compound, security experts say it appears the Al Qaeda leader had much less direct control over the militant group that he had in the pre-2001 era or even the early years that followed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s war crimes conviction may be seen in some quarters as a victory for global justice, but a backlash against costly, lengthy international tribunals is also underway.

Found guilty of aiding and abetting a host of crimes including murder, rape and torture as well as arming brutal Sierra Leonean rebels, Taylor became the first head of state to be convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two. He will be sentenced on May 30.

While Adolf Hitler avoided justice at Nuremberg by committing suicide in his Berlin bunker, his successor Admiral Karl Doenitz was convicted of crimes against the laws of war and planning a war of aggression.

Human rights groups and western governments in particular welcomed the Taylor verdict, saying it stood as a warning to others that while the wheels of justice might take a long time to turn, the age of impunity for national leaders was over.

But with the United Nations-backed “hybrid” court trial – including both international and Sierra Leonean members – taking a decade and costing an estimated $50 million, some see that as simplistic. Some put the cost of the entire Sierra Leone tribunal process at some $200 million, while British newspapers complained that plans for Taylor to serve his sentence in a British prison could cost taxpayers up to 100,000 pounds a year.

At the very least, some wonder whether the money could have been better spent in impoverished West Africa.

While Taylor’s prosecution was handled by a tribunal only looking at one conflict – Sierra Leone, not the Liberian civil war in which he is also accused of mass atrocities – most more recent war crimes cases are in the hands of the International Criminal Court.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It was not just U.S. Democratic voters who were looking forward to “hope and change” when Barack Obama became the 44th U.S. president.

Around the world, many anticipated the United States would behave very differently under the new leader. They wanted to hear less about Americans swaggering and throwing their weight around. Some, perhaps, wanted more talk of U.S.-style freedom and democracy, but not if it meant Washington imposing its will.

Few dispute that Obama’s election brought with it a noticeable change in tone. But 3-1/2 years later, there are growing complaints that when it comes to substance, relatively little has changed.

A scandal over the hiring of prostitutes by the U.S. Secret Service in Colombia, killings and Koran burnings in Afghanistan and drone strikes in Pakistan have helped fuel an impression of a United States that globally does what it wants regardless of others.

Even the “Arab Spring,” some complain, showcased U.S. hypocrisy: Washington withdrew support from autocratic allies like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak only when it became clear they were on the way out while still supporting authoritarian partners in states such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

The failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, where suspected foreign terrorists are held, despite Obama’s promises both before and after his election, has added to the disillusionment.

“We were very hopeful at the time Obama was elected,” said Abdel Rahman Mansour, an Egyptian political activist whose Facebook postings helped drive the revolution that ousted Mubarak in February last year. “But nothing happened. Obama didn’t deliver change but diplomatic rhetoric.”

WASHINGTON, April 14 (Reuters) – With a cease-fire barely holding and the deployment of unarmed foreign observers expected to ease but not end months of violence, world powers are still struggling to find a longer-term strategy for Syria.

After heavy diplomatic wrangling, the United Nations Security Council on Saturday finally approved the deployment of what could be several hundred monitors amid reports of sporadic ongoing fighting.

In theory, the world’s most powerful countries, the government of President Bashar al-Assad and much of the Syrian opposition have all signed up to a multipoint plan formulated by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan. But the reality remains much more complex.

While Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly said they want to avoid a Libya-style externally backed regime change, the United States, Britain and France still say they want Assad gone.

“The main focus at the moment is the … rapid deployment of monitors,” said one Western official on condition of anonymity. “That’s a priority, but it’s not the only one … at the end of the day, do not see a future for Syria with Assad in charge. We are in this for the long haul.”

But officials concede they have few immediate tools with which to make that happen. Even a U.S. plan to provide “nonlethal” support to opposition fighters could end up being shelved, some suspect, largely because the rebels remain so disunited and ineffective.

U.S. pressure, insiders say, has already deterred Saudi Arabia and Qatar from making good on long-running talk they might provide weapons.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As he locks down the Republican nomination for U.S. president, Mitt Romney is framing what looks to be a decidedly hawkish foreign policy.

But should the former Massachusetts governor defeat Democratic President Barack Obama in November, it remains far from clear how he actually would tackle what his own website describes as a “bewildering array of threats and opportunities.”

More clear is the strategy that Romney plans to use to try to diminish Obama’s record on foreign policy.

Obama, whose own foreign policy inexperience was widely viewed as a weakness four years ago, now generally gets high marks in polls on the topic – particularly since the killing of Osama bin Laden last year.

The president’s campaign cites the dismantling of al-Qaeda’s leadership and the historic sanctions against Iran as evidence of his effectiveness.

The Romney campaign, however, believes it can paint an alternate picture of Obama as naive, weak and perhaps secretly convinced that the world’s most pre-eminent superpower has entered an era of unstoppable and terminal decline.

Beyond his success at devastating al-Qaeda with drone strikes and special forces raids – a trend begun under Republican George W. Bush but accelerated by the current administration – Romney’s team argues that Obama’s foreign policy achievements are limited.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As he locks down the Republican nomination for U.S. president, Mitt Romney is framing what looks to be a decidedly hawkish foreign policy.

But should the former Massachusetts governor defeat Democratic President Barack Obama in November, it remains far from clear how he actually would tackle what his own website describes as a “bewildering array of threats and opportunities.”

More clear is the strategy that Romney plans to use to try to diminish Obama’s record on foreign policy.

Obama, whose own foreign policy inexperience was widely viewed as a weakness four years ago, now generally gets high marks in polls on the topic – particularly since the killing of Osama bin Laden last year.

The president’s campaign cites the dismantling of al-Qaeda’s leadership and the historic sanctions against Iran as evidence of his effectiveness.

The Romney campaign, however, believes it can paint an alternate picture of Obama as naive, weak and perhaps secretly convinced that the world’s most pre-eminent superpower has entered an era of unstoppable and terminal decline.

Beyond his success at devastating al-Qaeda with drone strikes and special forces raids – a trend begun under Republican George W. Bush but accelerated by the current administration – Romney’s team argues that Obama’s foreign policy achievements are limited.