Is President Bush planning a military strike against Iran (and perhaps Syria too) before leaving office? The administration’s internationalist neoconservative advisers continue to push for it, as does the neocon talk-radio chorus. The president gave some telling nods in that direction during his recent Middle East trip.

In March 2007, President Bush joined Mexico’s President Calderon in Merida, Mexico, for a three-day visit aimed at advancing the economic and political convergence agenda of the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). In October, President Bush announced his “Merida Initiative,” a scheme to give $1.4 billion in aid to Mexico’s police and military over three years, ostensibly to fight Mexico’s notorious drug cartels.

President Bush startled conservatives in his own party in 2005 with his support for U.S. ratification of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The Republican rank-and-file has adamantly opposed this effort to give the UN regulatory and taxing powers over all the world’s oceans and territorial seas since President Reagan torpedoed U.S. participation in the LOST scheme in the 1980s.