(Moments before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a family's home; photo credit: Ata Abu Madyam, Arab Negev News; click image to make larger)

I support Israel's legitimate interests and rights in what is a very tough neighborhood, but this behavior -- reported by Max Blumenthal -- is not that of an Israeli that is behaving responsibly and is rather, an Israel that is playing recklessly with its own interests and America's.

This story is one among many outrages that are piling up -- but do read.

Here is the first part:

AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL -- On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest.

The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing "facts on the ground" in the form of JNF forests. (See video of of al-Arakib's demolition here).
"]Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from an al-Arakib family's home. All photos by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News.

One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by "busloads of cheering civilians." Who were these civilians and why didn't CNN or any outlet investigate further?

I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta'ayush, an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities for the village's traumatized children, helping the villagers replace their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-Arakib's residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific.

After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

The rest is here.

-- Steve Clemons

(A digital rendering of the U.S. Capitol as it would have looked in 1814; credit: Scott Berg)

Pierre Charles L'Enfant's genius in planning Washington, DC becomes even more dramatic when reading and looking through this material presented in an interactive presentation in the Washington Post Magazine by George Mason University's Scott Berg.

Be sure to watch the animated treatment of the building of Washington, DC midway down the article.

-- Steve Clemons

China's Vice President Xi Jinping is widely seen in Beijing power circles as Hu Jintao's likely successor as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of the People's Republic of China.

There is an increasing amount of reporting about him as his ascendancy becomes more clear, but one of the interesting tidbits I have learned in the last few days is that Xi really loves Iowa. Of those politicians I have met here who know Vice President Xi, they all know that he spent a bit of time -- just a few days apparently -- near Des Moines, Iowa. And he fell in love with the small town feel of the place -- and a particular family.

I haven't been able to learn more than that -- but if he does secure China's top job, Iowa may be the pearl in the eye of China's next emperor.

-- Steve Clemons

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis has given Politico an essay on the foreign policy divide in the GOP that I would have loved to run here at The Washington Note.

His oped captures well the brewing tension inside Republican circles between those who on one hand want to put forward a constructive, national-interest driven strategy that has at its core a patriotic commitment to reinventing American power and those on the other who engage in blustery, pugnacious nationalism that either clobbers other countries in efforts to remake them or walls them off from America.

Katulis is anticipating a major speech to be given by Newt Gingrich at the American Enterprise Institute tomorrow, Thursday, titled "America at Risk: Camus, National Security, and Afghanistan". (Gotta love the title.)

The question Katulis asks is which part of the GOP foreign policy crowd will Newt Gingrich, who will likely attack the Obama administration's national security course and priorities, reach out to.

As Katulis writes in his essay:

Dissension in the Republican ranks was on full display in the conservative reactions to the Obama administration's National Security Strategy this spring. Conservative foreign policy analysts couldn't decide whether to accuse the Obama administration of plagiarism or treason. Some praised the strategy as a continuation of the Bush administration's approach; others condemned it as a recipe for weakness and an appeasement of America's enemies.

Newt Gingrish's speech will livestream here or can be seen in the box above starting at 2 pm on Thursday, 29 July.

Should be an interesting show. I hope Dick Cheney or John Bolton get the first question.

-- Steve Clemons

As it becomes increasingly clear that Pakistan will likely play an important role in any negotiated settlement in Afghanistan, it is important to understand Pakistan's motivations and strategy in South Asia. But in order to understand Pakistan's government, we must also understand how average Pakistani's view their country, it's policies, its neighbors, and more.

Please join the New America Foundation and the Pew Research Center for the release of Pew's new polling on Pakistani public opinions on issues of militancy, India, and the United States, with a presentation by Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut followed by commentary from New America President Steve Coll. The event will take place from 12:15 pm-1:45 pm, and will live stream here at The Washington Note. To RSVP, please sign up here.

-- Andrew Lebovich

(photo of Jackson Ikenberry next to Hachiko at Shibuya Station, Japan; photo credit: G. John Ikenberry)

Sorry folks. This may be a bit inside for some of you -- but I have this sort of weird, psycho connection with G. John Ikenberry, a professor of international relations at Princeton University.

Ikenberry is a policy intellectual I always have time for -- even though he 'wrongly' thinks that the problem the world is facing is an America that is so vastly powerful and outstrips all other global stakeholders that it runs big risks of seeing its power bounded by other competitors who will converge and conspire against its interests. (I see 'wrongly' in a friendly, jesting sense -- as Ikenberry is usually right)

I, in contrast, see a deficit in America's power as being the most serious contributor to global instability today. Allies are not counting on the US as much as they once did -- and foes are moving their agendas. The international system is in flux because of the profound doubt around the world in American power.

All that said, we are just sort of connected.

At exactly the moment I posted my piece on Dogs in China: More on Leashes, Less on the Menu, Ikenberry snapped this pic of his son, Jackson Ikenberry, standing next to the famous Hachiko statue outside of Shibuya station in Tokyo.

Hachiko stood by his owner, and now everyone gets to stand by Hachiko.

If you are a sucker for tear-jerkers, get Hachiko: A Dog's Story with Richard Gere at Red Box. Yes, I watched it -- and yes, I have to admit to liking it, but I'm a sucker for independent-minded pups.

OK, back to the serious stuff.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Ikenberry writes in that the following better describes his position:

The "Ikenberry position" might more accurately be:

the US has exercised its unrivaled power most effectively when it has invested it in institutions, alliances, and partnerships. The world still wants the US to be strong, if not unipolar, and oriented toward pragmatic global problem solving. No one else can!

My view is that America invents its power and builds it through the investments Ikenberry describes. His book, Liberal Leviathan, should be out soon -- and we hope to have him participate in these pages frequently discussing these themes.

-- Steve Clemons

I was pleased with how this discussion came out on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show in which we discussed the secret military field reports recently made public by Wikileaks.

Also on the program was New York Times chief Pakistan correspondent, Jane Perlez.

A side note about the line I used.

I did the entire interview on Skype.

Yep, I did.

It's sort of sad when it's tough to get a Skype line that clear in DC or New York -- but Beijing? No problem.

-- Steve Clemons

(Two boys and a pup in a tub being pulled to safey in Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, China; photo credit: Li Jinxiong, China Daily)

The real story behind the picture above is that there have been devastating floods in several of China's provinces -- including Zhejiang Province and Henan Province.

An aside though to this more troubling story of environmental pressures in China is the growing prevalence of dogs as pets -- as opposed to dogs for food.

Unlike the Bugs Bunny commercials in which the rabbit often ended up in tubs to be cooked, these boys and their little dog are safe. During other trips to Beijing years ago, I had difficulty finding restaurants that didn't serve dog on the menu. Perhaps I was just in the wrong part of town or didn't know the city well -- but dog meat was widespread as far as I was concerned.

But on this trip, I have seen more dogs as pets than I have ever seen before. Citizens in the district where I am staying are also petitioning the government to allow larger dogs as house pets.

And pleasantly, despite eating out at all sorts of places around Beijing these last couple of weeks, I haven't seen dog on the menu once -- neither in English nor in Chinese characters.

Just saying. . . Now if you are into bullfrog, snake, pig cheeks, pigeon, and boar -- you'll have an awesome meal throughout the city.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest note by General Asad Durrani, who previously served as the head of Pakistan's ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence. Durrani later served as Pakistan's Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany and to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a side note, current Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Kayani was a student of Durrani's.

The WikiLeaks "Coup"

There is general consensus that these "tens of thousands of classified documents" procured by the Wikileaks are mostly raw battlefield reports from Afghanistan, and reveal little that was not already known.

All the same, it has created an impact and confirmed many fears: that the war in Afghanistan was not going too well for the US led forces; that it was largely because of Pakistan's inter-services intelligence (the ISI) playing a "double game"; also that the Karzai led dispensation in Kabul did little to help; and that the indiscriminate use of force by the American military, a euphemism for war crimes, too has contributed to this failure.

If that was the intended message, the leak was obviously deliberate. The number and the nature of reports reinforce this inference. The following developments lead me to believe that it was done to win more support for the course correction that Obama's administration has undertaken.

During the last two years, it has often been claimed, and may even be partly true, that under the new counterinsurgency strategy, "collateral damage" was generally avoided.

Again, during the same period, since Pakistan has been successfully persuaded/ coerced to undertake military operations against some of the groups allied with the Afghan resistance, its support to the latter (must have) considerably reduced.

Most importantly, as the 'project Afghanistan' has gone so hopelessly awry, Obama's decision to start withdrawing the military next year was, at the very least, the least bad option.

Pakistan and its sympathisers will indeed now find their own arguments to control the damage.

The official spokespersons cannot do much better than reiterating that the "situation on ground" was different, that Pakistan has taken effective measures against the militants operating on its side of the AfPak borders, and that its policies have now won applause all around.

A number of regional experts have rationalized Pakistan's (alleged) support to the Afghan Taliban because it needs a countervailing force against the growing Indian influence (some of them even believe that in due course Pakistan would employ them in the Indian held Kashmir). Since this perception also exists in Pakistan and provides us with a reasonable excuse to keep the Afghan Taliban in good shape, I have no intentions to contest it in the present scenario.

Not many would pick up the courage to suggest that some other countries in the region -- Iran, Russia and China for example -- too are genuinely concerned about the presence of the US-led alliance in Afghanistan. All of them would therefore take their own respective course to subvert the NATO's "out of area" missions. While Pakistan and Iran would be the obvious suspects interested in a potent Afghan resistance, there are other players as well in this new Great Game.

An unintended consequence of these "leaks" may well be the ISI's enhanced stature in the eyes of the ordinary Pakistanis. With the all pervasive "anti-Americanism" in the country, if the agency has had the gumption of supporting the Afghan resistance against the US occupation, it would be credited with "yet another" coup.

Hamid Gul may also reap similar benefits thought at a much reduced scale. People here have a fairly good idea that his overt support to the Taliban notwithstanding, he has no wherewithal to covertly contribute.

-- Asad Durrani

(Photo Credit: State Department)

This post also appears at The Race for Iran.

Iranian Petroleum Minister Masoud Mirkazemi's visit to Turkey last week highlighted Turkey's multifarious equities vis-a-vis Iran.

A new article by Kadir Ustun, "Turkey's Iran Policy: Between Diplomacy and Sanctions" in the current issue of Insight Turkey offers a Turkish perspective on Ankara's relations with Tehran in the context of the nuclear issue and relations with the United States.

Several conclusions can be drawn from the piece.

First, while Ustun does not say this explicitly, he indicates that Turkey must keep some distance from the United States in order to maintain its credibility in the Middle East. During the Cold War, many Arab countries viewed Turkey with suspicion due to its close ties with the United States and Turkey has no interest in allowing anti-Americanism to prevent Ankara from exerting regional influence. This sentiment is understandably unpopular in Washington, but it is a fact of life for Turkey.

Second, Turkey sees itself as a natural candidate to mediate regional conflicts. Turkey's leaders relish this role both because they view the resolution of local conflicts as in Turkey's national interests and because mediation raises Turkey's international profile and is popular at home. Effective mediation requires maintaining positive relations with all sides. Therefore, Ustun says that "Turkey saw no choice but to vote 'no' to the sanctions [on Iran] in order to protect its reputation as an honest broker."

It is noteworthy that while Turkey has been (rightly) subjected to vehement criticism in Washington for its over-the-top reaction to the Gaza Flotilla crisis, many of those same people have criticized Ankara for seeking to maintain friendly relations with Tehran. The fact is that Turkey is most valuable as a partner when it enjoys friendly relations with all of the Middle East's major stakeholders.

With that goal in mind, Ustun's major theme is that Iran simply believes that diplomacy, rather than sanctions and threats, is the best way for the international community to engage the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is the crux of the problem between Turkey and the United States and will remain so until either the United States engages in more vigorous engagement or Turkey determines that diplomacy has failed and that a more confrontational policy is necessary.

-- Ben Katcher

General Curtis LeMay was a tough, often brilliant, pugnacious deployer of air power -- organizing the debilitating and destructive carpet bombing campaigns of Japan and later viewed by many as being a bit too trigger happy when it came to using nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Curtis LeMay as metaphor captures the likes of John Bolton, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Max Boot, Joshua Muravchik, Liz Cheney, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, and others who seem unable to resist hatching the next military conflict rather than thinking through first how to resuscitate American power in a turbulent world doubtful of America's abilities and designs. Most of these voices think we should have already bombed Iran -- or think we should have allowed Israel to prick the Iranians thus "tying our hands" and forcing America into yet another power-paralyzing quagmire.

Like many, I was surprised to see former National Security Agency Director and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Michael Hayden, now at the Chertoff Group, quoted as saying that a war with Iran was "inexorable."

Although he has his share of critics, this blogger has always found Hayden to be steady and balanced, a results-oriented pragmatist unaffected by the ideological currents that overwhelmed many in the Bush administration. He had a rough time in the debate over torture -- but as a serious national security strategist, Hayden is not one to carelessly suggest that America ought to put "bombing Iran" higher on its 'to do list'. Or so I thought.

His comments were surprising -- and thankfully, misquoted.

This in from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - In a July 25 story, The Associated Press reported that former CIA Director Michael Hayden told CNN's "State of the Union" that U.S. military action against Iran now "seems inexorable." A spokeswoman for Hayden responded that he made his reference to Iran's push toward acquiring a nuclear program and not to military action.

So, we at The Washington Note move retired USAF General Michael Hayden out of the "Curtis LeMay Today List" that we are beginning to compile -- and back on to the roster of reasonably sensible strategists.

-- Steve Clemons

(Moon Over Paris, photo credit: Ben Rosengart; click image to make larger)

Long-time TWN reader Ben Rosengart sent me three terrific shots this past week from three different windows he was housed in. I decided to post them one at a time.

Above is part three, taken in Paris. I love the moon in the sky and the antenna pointing at that moon.

The first two were taken in Brittany. This was part one. And then part two.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a really terrific segment by Jon Stewart on the WikiLeaks war diaries.

For fun, the Al Jazeera clip by Clayton Swisher of Afghan National Police taking bong hits before going on patrol shows up at the end of Stewart's comments.

It's important to note that the taping of the police smoking marijuana was actually filmed by soldiers in the 82nd Airborne and given to Swisher. Cool.

-- Steve Clemons

No matter how different observers have reacted to the massive dumping of classified documents by WikiLeaks on Sunday, one of the themes garnering the most attention was that of connections between the Taliban, al Qaeda, and Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). As many have pointed out since Sunday evening this is hardly news (though The Atlantic's James Fallows argues that, in fact, it is), it is startling to see primary source accounts of possible meetings and even operational planning and coordination between our ostensible ally and our enemies in South Asia.

Still, for the moment commentary from Pakistan has been limited, and nuanced interpretations of the data even more limited. One exception to this is Pakistani blogger Mosharraf Zaidi, who often provides a refreshingly honest, intelligent foil to much of the reporting on Pakistani issues in the Western press. Zaidi has an interesting take on what WikiLeaks does and does not reveal about Pakistan. This section in particular stood out to me:

Virtually no serious commentator or analyst anywhere, even those embedded deep in the armpit of the Pakistani establishment, claims that the Pakistani state was not instrumental in the creation, training and sustenance of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Given the nature of the relationship between the Pakistani state and the Afghan Taliban, one that goes right to the genetic core of the Taliban, it is hard to imagine that all ties can ever be severed. Again, for serious people, this is an issue that is done and dusted. Pakistan's state, and indeed, its society, had, has and will continue to have linkages with the Afghan Taliban. Moral judgments about these linkages are external to this fact.

These linkages do, however, deserve the scrutiny of the Pakistani parliament. If somehow, Pakistanis are involved in supporting any kind of violence against anyone, that kind of support had better be couched in a clear national security framework that articulates why it is okay for Pakistanis to underwrite such violence. Absent such a framework, the violence is illegal, and the space for speculation and innuendo about Pakistan is virtually infinite. It is that space that Pakistan's fiercest critics exploit when they generate massive headlines out of small nuggets of insignificant and stale information that implicates Pakistan in anti-US violence in Afghanistan (among other things).

This kind of statement has real policy consequences for the United States, and reinforces the need to understand the Pakistani government's attitude towards extremist groups and their utility. But it is equally necessary to understand the attitudes of average Pakistanis towards extremism, violence, how their government behaves, and even who Pakistanis perceive to be their real friends and adversaries. This kind of knowledge can inform our approach to Pakistan and South Asia as a whole, from how we deploy our military, to how we give aid, and how we communicate our policies to Pakistanis.

On Thursday July 29, the New America Foundation will host the public launch of the Pew Research Center's new Global Attitudes Project poll of Pakistani attitudes towards a wide variety of issues. The data will be presented by Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut, with a discussion to follow between Kohut and New America Foundation President Steve Coll. If you are in Washington and would like to attend, please RSVP here. The event will also be livestreamed here at The Washington Note.

-- Andrew Lebovich

One of the zingers from the WikiLeaks War Diaries -- some 92,000 classified reports on secret military hunting squads, on military encounters with the Taliban, unreported accidental killings of innocent civilians, and more -- is that there may be detailed logistics and financial support of the Afghanistan Taliban by Pakistan's ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence.

As some have commented, this is not necessarily a surprise -- but given frequent Pakistan denials coupled with US military and White House claims that it has confidence that Pakistan's national security chiefs are "with us" and "not with them" -- this kind of evidence, if true, is clarifying and troubling.

King's College London War Studies Professor and New America Foundation Senior Fellow Anatol Lieven captures well the strong linkages between Pakistan's military elite and the Afghan Taliban in this graph from a longer essay, "All Kayani's Men," that ran in the March/April 2008 edition of National Interest:

TNR Senior Editor Noam Scheiber thinks that Elizabeth Warren is confirmable if nominated and thinks that Obama wins by pushing this button.

Scheiber thinks the Dems will hold behind her for the most part -- and even with a defection or two, Grassley, Snowe, Collins and perhaps other Republican Senators have much to gain by supporting Elizabeth Warren as the head of a new consumer protection agency.

~~

The Fiscal Times has an interesting clip in an opinion piece titled: "Prime Numbers: Deficit Cuts A Priority for Americans":

A 2003 Federal Reserve study showed that each percentage point rise in the ratio of federal debt to GDP lifted long-term interest rates by four basis points, or 0.04 percent. Applying that relationship to the CBO's projections implies that borrowing costs ten years from now would be 1.4 percentage points higher than they would be at the 2009 debt-to-GDP level.

While the Fiscal Times tends to focus on the country's budget deficit, the nation's "jobs deficit" and "infrastructure deficit" are far more deleterious at this moment in time to the nation's future opportunities.

The article, written by James C. Cooper, makes clear that borrowing a decade from now may be 1.4% higher than rates that can be locked in today. America needs smart investment now -- not reckless investment with low returns to the economy. The key is to design an investment strategy that drives the economy towards high-wage job generation and innovation.

The US economy can lock in remarkably low rates for the next 30 years on monies that it borrows in the current economic climate.

America may forfeit its future to China, which is making huge comparative investments in its infrastructure and innovation base, if the US doesn't rewire itself for growth, for innovation, and job creation.

Just cutting deficits is not an economic strategy.

-- Steve Clemons

(Boats in Brittany, photo credit: Ben Rosengart; click image to make larger)

Long-time TWN reader Ben Rosengart sends in three views from three windows. I'm going to post them one at a time.

This is part two, taken in Brittany. This was part one. The next yet to come is Paris.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: PBS NewsHour)

My New America Foundation colleague Steve Coll, a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and one of the nation's leading national security and intelligence experts on Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, appeared on The PBS NewsHour yesterday evening along with NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown and journalist Philip Smucker to discuss the impact and significance of the massive dump of Afghanistan war logs at WikiLeaks.

While I think that RNC Chairman Michael Steele was pretty much on the money with his critique of the Afghanistan War, this is probably yet another wrong-headed landmine he's stepped on.

As TPMdc has revealed, Steele is organizing a party fundraising event at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles featuring Andrew Breitbart and others.

What does one do when its hard to outdo reality with things we'd otherwise make up?

-- Steve Clemons

A member of the 82nd Airborne Division recorded this clip above of Afghan National Police puffing on a marijuana pipe before going out on patrol.

In an interview with Al Jazeera correspondent Clayton Swisher, US soldiers don't feel as threatened by the drug-dazed ANP but find them "silly" and have a hard time getting them to be quiet and to focus.

This is the group that President Karzai says will be able to take over full responsibilities for security from ISAF soldiers by 2014.

These are also the units that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin has reported so much progress in US-led ISAF training and partnering programs. My respectful difference with Senator Levin is that the Afghan military and police drug use Swisher reports on is not anomalous and more the norm.

-- Steve Clemons

The editors of the Sun Herald, the leading paper for Biloxi-Gulfport and South Mississippi, certainly are able to see good sense through the war hype.

Here is some smart commentary about the "costs" of America's very full plate of wars:

Costly Endeavours

The United States is currently planning war games with South Korea, which would seem to indicate that the military option is on the table for that country. Saber-rattling is now getting louder against Iran with the Israelis saying that the United States military has planned targeted air strikes there and that a military option is now seriously considered. John Bolton in a TV interview said we have a new axis of evil consisting of Syria, Iran and Venezuela. We are going to have to find a lot of money to put all these ideas into action. It definitely feels like us against the world, and I for one do not believe we can afford it.

Time to rethink what our role in the world should be.

Listen up Washington. John Bolton is not selling like he used to.

-- Steve Clemons

I don't know if Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry has ever met Daniel Ellsberg or not, but with this statement -- which stands in stark contrast to the condemnatory comments from the White House about the WikiLeaks Afghanistan War Logs -- Kerry shows he has a respect for Pentagon Papers moments.

From John Kerry's office:

Statement By Chairman Kerry On Leaked Documents On Afghanistan And Pakistan

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) released the following statement this evening in response to the New York Times story on the leak of classified documents concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent."

-- Steve Clemons

I'm sympathetic to the Obama administration's view that Israel's blockade of Gaza in order to keep weapons from Hamas does not equate to starving and punishing the Gazan people.

Israel is relaxing some parts of its grip on the blockade -- and making some openings in the roster of banned items, but this is going to be a battle fought by public relations agents on each side for a while.

What I worry about is the tendency to escalate assaults on the blockade through celebrities. This report suggests that even Wimbledon champion and Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal may be considering joining Freedom Flotilla 2.

With all due respect to those celebrities who want to put themselves on the line for various global justice causes, this doesn't really change people's minds about the Gaza mess. This kind of antic tends to make people scream more loudly views that they already hold.

That is not progress -- and not a constructive use of a celebrity's 'celebrity'.

-- Steve Clemons

The extraordinary WikiLeaks dump of some 91,000 classified reports into the public sphere on America's war in Afghanistan may be the game-changer in American support for a war that continues to worsen.

This is the "Pentagon Papers moment" in this contemporary war, and it will force President Obama and his team to go back and review first principles about the objectives of this war.

LBJ escalated the Vietnam War that he felt politically unable to escape.

The question is whether President Obama has the backbone and temerity to reframe this engagement and stop the hemorrhaging of American lives and those of allies as well as the gross expenditure of funds for a war that shows a diminished America that is killing hundreds of innocent people and lying about it, of an enemy that is animated and funded in part by our supposed allies in Pakistan, and US tolerance for a staggering level of abuse, incompetence and corruption in our Afghan allies in the Karzai government.

These revelations confirm what the Afghan War skeptics have been arguing for some time -- and completely invalidate those who have been promulgating a rosier view of outcomes inside Afghanistan and trying to sell the false illusion that American partnership with Afghanistan is working. Regrettably, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin -- while formally opposed to the surge of combat forces into Afghanistan -- has been one most blind to the failures of US-Afghan partnering rather than the successes, of which he so often speaks.

Daniel Ellsberg once told me (see TWN entry for September 28, 2004) that he hoped that a bureaucrat or soldier or spy would eventually take out of his or her safe the several feet thick pile of classified files on America's 'war on terror' and put them out to the public. He said that this person -- whoever it might be -- would need enormous public support as the downside risks to one's career and life were staggering given the State's desire to squelch the nastier truths of war reaching the public.

Ellsberg's hope has now become a reality -- and when we eventually learn of the hero and/or heroes who brought this material to the public -- he or they will need society's thanks and support as the State will work to crush those that made this happen.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest note by Al Jazeera correspondent Clayton Swisher who is currently embedded with US troops fighting in Afghanistan. This essay originally ran on Al Jazeera's "The Asia Blog."

(The photo below is of 82nd Airborne soldiers in Arghandab; Photo by Tom Nicholson; reprinted with permission.)

Losing the Arghandab They Never Had

Last night we got a 0345 wakeup call from Spooky. For those of you who play Call of Duty-type video games, you'll know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, Spooky is the Vietnam-era call sign for the AC-130U Gunship, a massive airplane that blasts 105mm artillery and 40mm shells from its fuselage.

It was raining death and destruction on a position just a few kilometres from us across the Arghandab River. The Taliban have virtual free reign west of the river and have made a mockery of American forces setting up Forward Operating Bases in their midst.

There aren't too many Spooky Gunships here in this country. They are flying collateral damage machines, used by the Air Force Special Operations to support commandos on the ground. But their employment over the skies of Arghandab signals a reality that most soldiers here understand: that conventional army tactics have failed to wrest this real estate from the Taliban.

Fighting the Taliban in Arghandab - where much of its history is based - is like taking on the Crips in LA's Compton or the Italian Mafia in Sicily. As far as war goes in Afghanistan, the Arghandab and neighbouring Panjwaye and Zahri Districts remain the toughest areas of fighting. From Arghandab it is an easy ride to Kandahar, where insurgents stage and conduct attacks against the Afghan government and Isaf forces in the country's second largest city.

As I fell back asleep, I couldn't help but trust that the Taliban would have the final answer. Since we started this embed on July 14th, their attacks have been as harassing a presence as the blazing hot, 45 degree Celsius temperatures. Rocket launches during our check in at the Kandahar Airfield. Small arms fire at the Forward Operating Base once we arrived. The unmistakable sound of roadside bomb detonations - every day since we've been here - somewhere in the tangle of Arghandab's lush orchards and mud villages.

The soldiers getting hit the hardest are a replacement unit near our perch at Forward Operating Base Sarkari Bagh. A few kilometres across the river, at Combat Outpost Nolen, a platoon of men from the 101st Airborne have gone to "combat ineffective" after just weeks of being here. They arrived in Arghandab in early July with 17 men. Only 9 remain.

Thus the late night calls from Spooky. Though pummelling the villages around Western Arghandab will hardly bring a solution, however good the vengeance feels.

The unit we've embedded with, Delta Company of the US Army's 82nd Airborne, 2-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, seem to get that. They're short timers here in Arghandab.

They have just a few weeks left in their year-long deployment. They're not thinking much about policy discussions back in Washington over whether this country should split along the predominantly Pashtun South and more ethnically-mixed North. Soldiers we've joined out on patrol here have told me bluntly that as soon as the Isaf packs up "this country will go straight to civil war," which might anyhow bring that partitioned outcome, policymakers be damned.

For most US troops here, the goal is to get home alive, after so many dozens from their Regiment have been sent home crippled, or worse, from the Taliban's lethal tactics, supported by many here in the South.

This is a snapshot of the war being fought here in Arghandab. Men lacing up their boots to fulfil their required patrols, thankful to come back alive, falling asleep to the sound of exploding ordinance. They hope it's the Taliban blowing themselves up while seeding their bombs.

But oftentimes they learn the next day it is not. Whenever their Internet access is cut - which has been often, since summer fighting season began - they know the dead includes someone from within their unit, sprawled out in this area. It's a paltry measure aimed at preventing fellow members of their unit from emailing home about casualties before the families of the fallen have been formally and properly notified.

Thousands of miles away, no doubt Washington politicians and America's foreign policy elite are readying their minivans for August vacation or re-election campaigning.

The soldiers here feel out of sight-out of mind, and one has to wonder after visiting the Arghandab if they might be right.

From neighbouring barracks, the sombre metal lyrics have droned all day with Alice in Chains' "The Rooster." It aptly sums their sentiment, helping others either to sleep, or in this case, through one more night on patrol:

Ain't found a way to kill me yet

Eyes burn with stingin' sweat

Seems every path leads me to nowhere

Wife and kids, household pet

Army green was no safe bet

The bullets scream to me from somewhere

As we finish our day and settle down once again to sleep, the sound of Spooky returns. The bass shakes the ground as its cannons belch rounds. Bright orange chaff drops, as Spooky makes its slow left banking turn repeatedly while firing on the Arghandab villages. A full moon gives away the madness of it all.

Desperation, really, for a coalition that has little chance of winning after nine years of conflict.

-- Clayton Swisher

Update: This is a video report by Swisher from Arghandab as well.

(Arc-en-Ciel, photo credit: Ben Rosengart; click image to make larger)

Long-time TWN reader Ben Rosengart sends in three views from three windows. I'm going to post them one at a time during the day today.

This is part one, a rainbow, or l'arc-en-ciel. Two are from Brittany and one from Paris.

Beautiful shots. Thanks Ben.

-- Steve Clemons

One of the best investigative journalists who has been reporting on America's wars is Seymour Hersh. Hersh has been consistently ahead of the pack -- revealing hard-to-believe atrocities far before the political marketplace was often ready or willing to accept his reporting.

The extraordinary posting on WikiLeaks of more than 92,000 classified documents on America's military activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan confirms Hersh's claims of battlefield executions and death squads.

Besides Hersh, The New Yorker's key commentators on Afghanistan have been Steve Coll, George Packer, and Hendrick Hertzberg.

I am a big fan of all of these brilliant writers. However, although these generalizations may be unfair to them and may overstate, Coll, and Packer have been mostly in the camp of supporting the administration's general course in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- though there are exceptions in the portfolios of each. Hertzberg has been a cautious skeptic of the administration -- and Hersh has been the most dramatically revealing of America's self-deception about success in the Afghan War.

Given what has just been released in this disturbing dump of classified documents, we hope that The New Yorker encourages Hersh to get back on this beat and into the field soon on this stuff.

-- Steve Clemons

One of the strange realities of modern China is that Mao's image, which hangs over the main gate into the Forbidden City, is still evident in lots of places. The horrors of the Cultural Revolution are part of Mao's identity -- and yet there is still more reverence of him than I'd expect.

But the person who really launched the economically ascendant and powerful China is Deng Xiaoping, who has statues in some places, but is relatively invisible here compared to Mao. Everyone though knows how important Deng was to China's rise.

The pic above is the gate to the late Deng Xiaoping's compound.

A friend of mine knocked on one of the doors to the compound in 1990 because he wanted to meet Deng. He was met by intimidating soldiers with machine guns telling him to go away. Of course he was. I have no idea what my friend was thinking.

-- Steve Clemons

This new "forever plane" -- not quite like a forever stamp but still very cool -- has been designed by UK defense contractor QinetiQ.

This craft flew for 14 days, 21 minutes -- smashing all previous endurance for unmanned flights.

It's too bad that something as innovative and interesting as the Zephyr UAV finds its first real applications in military reconnaissance. But that is the way much technological advancement seems to happen -- sort of like porn and the internet.

-- Steve Clemons

Best yuan (about 15 cents) a tourist can spend in Beijing (particularly on a very hot muggy day) is on Bus No. 2 from Qianmen Gate, the ancient gate guarding the southern entry into Beijing's inner city and then running in a wide swing past many of Beijing's major landmarks -- including the Beijing Central Rail Station and the last bits of the original old wall of the city, up through the new modern developments to the Olympics Bird Nest.

It's a double decker bus -- and best seats are on top up front with a full glass view of the oncoming city and sites. All for $.15. Well, $.30 if you want to ride back after getting to the end of the line.

Met a bunch of cool people on the bus that seemed amused that I was having so much fun catching the sites this way.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest post by Charlie Wagner, a research intern at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

When Japan's asset bubble burst in 1990, Japan's real estate market - once the world's most expensive - collapsed. Trillions of dollars were wiped out with the fall of the stock and real estate markets; the Japanese economy has been stagnant ever since.

In a private meeting hosted by the Eurasia Group in Washington, D.C. this week, Tadao Yanase, the Director of the Industrial Revitalization Economy and Industry Policy Bureau of Japan presented Japan's proposed multi-pronged effort to revitalize its industrial competitiveness.

Yanase proposed a diverse approach to combat Japan's economic woes that included ending deflation, lowering corporate tax rates from their world high of 39.54%, drastically reforming childcare to increase Japan's stagnant birth rates, and a commitment to open up Japan's economy. This reformation of Japan's economy is predicated on domestic reform to promote free trade agreements, altering immigration policy to recruit foreigners to the work force, relaxing visa policies to attract tourists, securing greater foreign direct investment, and improving access to Japan by transforming the nation's airports to meet demand. Yanase thus wants to ensure Japan's future prosperity by not only addressing macro economic trends, but also diagnosing industry specific initiatives.

To the outside observer however, the road ahead looks unnerving: unfavorable demographics, a lack of skilled foreign immigrants, a clogged and bogged down banking system saddled with debt, an export-led economy over exposed to consumerism in America and Europe, and an astonishingly high debt to GDP ratio of 200%, all combine to paint a bleak image for Japan's economic outlook.

It is clear Japan desperately needs economic reform, but does the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have the political capital to push through the necessary reforms to revitalize the economy? Jeff Kingston wrote an interesting piece on the topic for Foreign Policy magazine. An excerpt from his article "Can Anyone Run Japan?" illustrates the daunting political situation in Japan. He writes:

What's happening to Japan is bigger than [Japanese Prime Minister Naoto] Kan the man. After a series of short-lived, ineffectual leaders, many are wondering if the country itself has become, in essence, ungovernable. Kan is an astute politician with considerable skills, and voters seem to like his tough-love message for kick-starting the economy. Many agree with him that the old policies of vast public-works spending and deregulation have not worked and have instead left the country saddled with debt amounting to a whopping 200 percent of the country's annual GDP. But voters are still skeptical that Kan can make real change. And what it boils down to is a loss of faith in political leaders after two decades of recession and growing social malaise. In an atmosphere where leaders are expected to fail, can anyone run Japan?

Superficial economic measures and political posturing cannot fix Japan's woes. The nation is in need of a concrete economic restructuring and opening that will take a great deal of political capital, which as TWN publisher Steve Clemons has pointed out, has been made more complicated by Japan's recent political upheaval. Unfortunately, despite the potential and desperate need for reform in Japan, it seems that Japan's domestic political quandaries will continue to limit the opportunities for a real restructuring of its economy.

-- Charlie Wagner

This piece originally ran in The Diplomat on 22 July, 2010.

BEIJING'S FRAGILE SWAGGER

Confucius said 'The superior man is firm in the right way, and not merely firm.'  From a Chinese perspective, the same can probably be said about other nations.

When Hillary Clinton was running for the US presidency, she encouraged then President George W. Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to signal US frustration over China's treatment of Tibet and lack of cooperation on Sudan.

Her posture, reversed since she became Secretary of State, was remarkably un-presidential as any serious geopolitical analyst would have noted that the United States needed China's support on virtually every one of its major international objectives--from redirecting Iran's nuclear aspirations to climate change to stabilizing a global financial system near meltdown.

Indeed, gratuitous gut punches simply raise the cost of China's support, underscoring the fact that Clinton's approach in the summer of 2008 was simply the wrong way to be 'firm.'

In September 2007, before the release of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, I wrote an article for Salon titled "Why Bush Won't Bomb Iran."

At the time, the belief that George Bush and Dick Cheney would take military action against Iran was palpable. When I wrote my piece which was based on a great number of discussions with intelligence analysts, military brass, and others in the national security bureaucracy, I was temporarily vilified by voices on the left and the neoconservative right for popping the bubble of their deterministic obsession that the US was on its way to bombing Iran.

While some of the terrain has changed in the nearly three years since that article was written, much has remained the same.

The many unknowables and unexpected consequences of adding another hot war to America's rather full plate of hot conflicts around the world remains the same. Iran, which clearly can dial up or dial down the activities of its transnational terrorist networks has them on low simmer at this point. An attack against Iran would probably blow this control valve off -- resulting in a terrorist superhighway running from Iran through Iraq into Jordan and Syria right toward Israel. This network would also unleash itself against allied Arab state governments in the region and also cause havoc against US forces and affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These problems were there three years ago and remain today.

(Commemorative Plaque of Dwight Eisenhower opening NBC Studios at 4000 Nebraska Avenue, NW on May 22, 1958; photo credit: Steve Clemons)

With the benefit of time, it's increasingly clear that Dwight Eisenhower was one of America's greatest Presidents.

Eisenhower maneuvered the US away from the collision course with the Soviet Union that his lead national security advisers and the top tier of the Republican Party wanted at that time and instead adopted a version of 'modified containment' of Soviet global ambitions.

He warned of an uncontrollable military industrial complex -- which we see today in spades in the military/intelligence industrial complex that the Washington Post's Dana Priest and William Arkin have profiled.

Today, I think Eisenhower would focus a substantial amount of his time on Israel-Arab peace, and on the Iran challenge. He would not approach the challenge weakly -- and would work hard to incentivize Iran away from its nuclear course.

He would see Afghanistan as a power-deflator, as he would the gridlock in Israel-Palestine negotiations, and he would cut his vulnerabilities in these areas as a way to shore up his capacity and tools to influence Iran.

Barack Obama should be doing the same.

-- Steve Clemons

President Barack Obama chats with Afghan President Hamid Karzai during the start of a dinner at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 28, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis in discussions on US policy towards Afghanistan separates the silly from the serious in those who can define a workable "end state" that the US is willing to work toward and pay for.

Missouri 8th Congressional District Democratic candidate Tommy Sowers, a former Green Beret and West Point professor, writes a particularly potent critique of Congress' dereliction of duty in defining a sustainable and workable end state in Afghanistan

This is a clip from Sowers' piece "Who Will Pay for the Afghan Army? The Question Congress Must Answer Now" at Huffington Post:

Victory in Afghanistan relies on building the Afghan National Army and police towards a day when Afghans lead and our troops finally come home. My experience as a Special Forces officer was in building a professional Iraqi military from scratch. No easy task, but my challenges in Iraq paled next to the challenges faced by our troops in Afghanistan: the second most corrupt nation in the world, millennia of history absent a strong central government or military, poor education and infrastructure, a tribal mentality and an illegitimate government and leader.

Afghanistan's specific challenges aside, the logistical question of the eventual size of the Afghan force is also problematic. History and General Petraeus' own U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine recommends a minimum force ratio of 1:50, or an Afghan policeman or solider to keep the peace for every 50 civilians. Afghanistan's current population is 29,121,000. Our doctrine dictates that to secure Afghanistan and bring our troops home will require training and arming, at minimum, 582,000 Afghans. This would be a force larger than the active U.S. Army.

Yet America' current strategy is not to train the minimum force of 582,000, but to double the number of Afghan security personnel to 400,000. This will cost significant American blood and treasure to achieve, but Afghan will and funds to maintain.

400,000 Afghan security personnel will cost Afghanistan at least 15% of its GDP, far and away the greatest percentage spent on the military by any nation in the world. While U.S. doctrine states that the future Afghan military will be too few to secure Afghanistan, logistics portend that the future Afghan military will be too many for Afghanistan to maintain.

The question Congress must answer now: Who will pay for the future Afghan Army? The Afghans can't. Our allies won't. And America's budget deficit and growing entitlements indicate America can't pay forever.

The Afghanistan War planners have given the U.S. an unworkable nightmare that is sapping American power and encouraging doubt among allies and ambitions among foes.

-- Steve Clemons

This was tougher to get than it should have been. I hope the unemployed who are victims of the financial shenanigans of Wall Street realize who delivered on this package of benefits -- and who tried to block it.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 22, 2010

Statement by the Press Secretary on H.R. 4213

On Thursday, July 22, 2010, the President signed into law:

H.R. 4213, the "Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010," which extends initial eligibility for emergency unemployment compensation and 100 percent Federal funding for extended unemployment insurance benefits through November 30, 2010.

-- Steve Clemons

This post, which originally appeared at The Havana Note, is a guest note by Tom Garofalo, a consultant for the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative.

Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, wrote this week that because ten of the Cuban political prisoners newly arrived in Spain signed a letter indicating their opposition to the European Union's lifting the Common Position, that should justify the continuation of the U.S. ban on travel to the island. Since 1996, the Common Position has guided E.U. policy on Cuba, seeking to use "constructive, result-oriented political dialogue" to encourage a transition to democracy. The ex-prisoners' letter calls for Europe to work "to secure for all Cubans the same rights that European citizens enjoy." Among those rights is the right to travel, which Cubans have long been denied by their government.

Diehl, in his effort to draw a hasty (PostPartisan is billed as "a quick take" by Post opinion writers on issues of the day) parallel between the disagreement over European policy with differences over our own, failed to note a great irony: here in the Land of the Free, we are also denied the right to travel - to Cuba. In fact, four of the signers of the letter to European foreign ministers signed a letter to the U.S. Congress about six weeks ago arguing that the the United States should lift its 50-year-old ban on travel to the island. The reason they have won the world's attention is because they've risked everything to champion the idea that, as the letter to Congress stated, "rights must be protected with rights." The Post's editors might be content, even happy, to trade away our rights in order to emerge victorious from the last conflict of the Cold War, but Cuba's democracy advocates understand that would be a defeat for everyone.

Diehl doesn't seem to be aware that a number of the E.U. letter signers also signed the letter to our Congress. In his "quick take" he'd rather use the E.U. letter as a bludgeon against those - he calls them "liberals" -- who are calling for an "unconditional lifting of the already loophole-ridden" embargo. (I suppose one of the loopholes Diehl is lamenting is that Congress allows American farmers to sell food to Cuba. But our freedom to make our own choices about visiting Cuba is not.)

But for better or worse, the only Cuba measure being considered by the Congress these days is not about lifting the embargo. The Travel Restriction Reform and Export Enhancement Act, H.R. 4645, would end the ban on travel by Americans to Cuba, and would make two small but significant changes in the ways that Cuba pays for the products it buys from American farmers. Its lead sponsors, Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jerry Moran of Kansas, can be called liberals only in the Enlightenment sense of the word (don't take my word for it - check their websites).

We've come to expect these kinds of strawmen from the advocates of the embargo. It is still a surprise to see them on the editorial page of the Washington Post.

-- Tom Garofalo

This kind of story needs to be getting less frequent -- not more prevalent.

Easy killing of unarmed people will undermine Israel, and it must turn this around.

Israel sets the temperature in its region. Israel is a superpower -- and is over-reacting to rock-throwing Palestinians.

While securing itself, Israel must also show magnanimity towards a people who will always be on its border.

-- Steve Clemons

Financial reform legislation has been signed by President Obama -- and whether some critics want to accept it or not, this is another huge success for the administration.

While President Obama's successes could have been bigger in my view, better sequenced, bolder, and done in such a way to boost American jobs and infrastructure -- and designed to enhance America's global position -- it is clear that his successes in health care, financial reform, and his nuclear summitry are important landmarks for a presidency trying to work its way out of the deep ruts left by the last administration.

Now that financial reform is enacted into law, the President must nominate a strong leader to run the new consumer protection bureau.

The Bob Rubin-raised and cultivated economic team surrounding President Obama that thinks that a job is a job, in contrast to what Leo Hindery has been saying -- high-wage jobs and manufacturing and innovation-related jobs matter more than cheap service sector jobs -- needs to be balanced with economic governance approaches that put America's working middle class first.

The best champion of American consumers and the American middle class on the scene today is clearly Elizabeth Warren.

Warren should be the head of this new consumer protection bureau.

I have just signed Senator Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) petition that his team sent me yesterday.

If you feel so inclined, feel free to add your name to the petition. If not, I respect those who see the situation differently -- but its about time that at minimum, the White House got a 'team of rivals' on economicy policy rather than just a 'Team of Rubins.'

-- Steve Clemons

In Beijing, where I am now, it is 94 degrees and super humid -- and I know we just won't have the smack of thunder and rain to break the mood like DC just had.

Seth Thomas' interesting blog, Like the Clock posted this great photo of Georgetown after a torrent of water and lightning and thunder rolled through.

The passage he posted with it is moving. Makes me fantasize about the possibility of that here in China.

-- Steve Clemons

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has backed up and apologized to the recently resigned/fired USDA Georgia Rural Development Director Shirley Sherrod.

And he's offered her a new job, in his words "a unique opportunity" -- the outlines of which have not yet been made public.

It would not be unreasonable to think that the job he has offered involves serving as a sort of USDA "Special Envoy" -- bridging misunderstandings, class differences, or race differences -- a sort of ombudsperson fixer -- among the USDA's constituents and within the Department.

If I was in the pickle that Vilsack was in, given that he probably still entertains visions of future political advancement, then I'd offer her some plum-sounding perch.

But note to Shirley Sherrod: KICK THE TIRES of the offer.

Call up any of the Special Envoys at the Department of State -- Farah Pandith who is a star performer for Hillary Clinton as the Secretary's Special Representative to Muslim Communities comes to mind -- and ask if they have a "budget" of their own. Almost uniformly, the nearly two dozen or so special envoys with unique tasks don't have funds to do anything with. They have jobs, and they have some staff -- but they have zero funds of their own to go out and seed programs. They must beg, borrow and steal from other parts of government for their budgets.

While much of the news from South Asia in the past few days has dealt with this week's Kabul conference on Afghanistan's future, the New York Times published a fascinating piece yesterday on the importance of water as a source of tension between Pakistan and India. In this case the point of contention is the Kishenganga Dam, currently being built in India on the Indus River, the same river that feeds Pakistan's most fertile farmland.

The construction of this dam serves both practical and political purposes for India; the dam's construction is legal under a 50-year old water-sharing treaty with Pakistan, and India is in desperate need of hydroelectric power. The article's authors Lydia Polgreen and Sabrina Tavernise explain that, "About 40 percent of India's population is off the power grid, and lack of electricity has hampered industry. The Kishanganga project is a crucial part of India's plans to close that gap." India's energy needs will only grow, New America Foundation/Smart Strategy Initiative Director Patrick Doherty noted in a recent op-ed, as India struggles to integrate 250 million people into its cities by 2030.

Yet for Pakistan the issue of water is serious. Due to an undeveloped irrigation system, Pakistan's agriculture is vulnerable to changes in water flow, and a change in the Indus' flow rate or a decision by India, motivated by electrical need or a political decision, could endanger an industry that supplies 25% of Pakistan's economy and employs 50% of its workers, as Polgreen and Tavernise point out. The mere possibility of India holding this power over Pakistan can only make a bad situation worse, as talks between India and Pakistan's foreign ministers ground to a halt last week over mutual recriminations on the subjects of terrorism and Kashmiri self-determination.

The ongoing fight over Kashmir is the 800-pound gorilla in the room in South Asia; Pakistan and India maintain huge forces along the Kashmiri even in "peaceful" times, allocating resources and people to watching each other across one of the most heavily-defended borders in the world.

Much of Pakistan's strategy in Afghanistan is designed not only to create a friendly or at least pliant Afghan government, but also to keep Indian influence out. Without a solution to the Kashmir dispute and a reduction of tensions with India, Pakistan will undoubtedly continue its support for militant groups in Afghanistan, Kashmir and increasingly outside of the region. But India has shown only limited willingness to discuss Kashmir, even in the abstract.

Embedded in this current energy crisis, however, is an opportunity for the United States not only to decrease tension in an important and seemingly intractable conflict, but also to develop India's economy and to help the country transition toward sustainable development.

India's immense energy needs are currently met in large part by coal and hydroelectric power, but the government has ambitious plans to increase its output from new technologies. For instance, India hopes to produce 200,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2050, in a country that currently produces 150,000 megawatts energy from all sectors. However, the country needs an estimated $154 billion in startup costs for such a plan, and has so far only allocated $18-$22 billion. The United States could help fill this gap, either by promoting investment or providing aid; the former helps American companies while spurring a need to further develop solar technologies, while the latter could be conditioned on a reduced dependency on hydropower broadly, and specifically reducing the use of hydropower driven by sensitive water sources, like the Indus river.

While something like a water or energy deal will not come close to solving the conflict over Kashmir or bring stability to South Asia, it can help remove yet another stumbling block and chip away at the mistrust that fuels anger between officials and helps justify militancy in Pakistan. More measures to build trust and an increased effort to build cross-border trade and other tie can help create favorable conditions for peace, while creating opportunities for American industry to grow.

-- Andrew Lebovich

I am a believer in strong relations with Great Britain -- which has been a key ally and partner of the US for many decades and with which America has deep historical and cultural connections.

But there is a point when the trappings that define a relationship look too frilly and antiquated to fit the modern world. UK-US relations need reinvention and need to be about something the world needs -- which is something like delivering for real on Israel-Palestine peace or, perhaps alternatively, creative revision of the world's global governance structures.

No two nations have been more important than the United Kingdom and the United States in defining the current world order and nearly all of its most vital global institutions. They built themselves in with stacked dacks of power -- and need to somehow cede that power in new arrangements without necessarily losing influence.

That is how to take US-UK relations and put them on a new and potentially vital course.

(This is the full rather than edited version of Shirley Sherrod's comments at a recent NAACP dinner)

I can't believe that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is taking even a moment to "reconsider" his intemperate and uninformed firing of Georgia State USDA rural development director Shirley Sherrod for 'alleged' racially-tinged remarks.

. . .try the single scoop of ultra "Awfully Chocolate" ice cream in a Chinese take out box. Expensive but still affordably exotic. I got this in the Raffles City Mall in Dongzhimen.

My time in Beijing this round is highly unscripted and not the sort of excursion in which I have sequenced priorities or established any order -- but I have seen some great sites and visited some great clubs and restaurants that just didn't use to exist in Beijing.

And what is really interesting is that these places are packed with Chinese, with an occasional foreigner here and there. What is growing here -- even though there is still spectacular poverty in China -- is an ultra modern, sleek Beijing that the Chinese want for themselves.

I hope that these links and some of this commentary about TWN's tracks in China are useful for others who visit.

Tomorrow morning, 8:00 am, Vice President Joe Biden will be meeting with his successor as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry.

Their meeting is closed to press - but I imagine that besides their low carb meals, they'll work through their angles on how to get the important START Treaty ratified and then may discuss America's slogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they get to Iran, which I hope they do, that will lead to the Israel-Palestine standoff and how weak America's hand there is right now.

On Foreign Policy's Middle East Channel today, George Washington University professor and Middle East Channel co-editor Marc Lynch has an incisive piece critiquing the recent surge in calls to bomb Iran or allow Israel to do so. While I think Lynch overplays the extent to which this push for war is new (it's never really gone away), Lynch does an admirable job of demonstrating how different the political situation is in the Middle East compared to when President Obama took office or even at the end of the Bush Administration, and describes particularly well the fact that Iran seems to be getting weaker without any outside attack.

Here are two key paragraphs from the post:

Why is the argument [to bomb Iran] weaker? Mainly because Iran is weaker. If you set aside the hype, it is pretty obvious that for all of the flaws in President Obama's strategy, Iran today is considerably weaker than it was when he took office. Go back to 2005-07, when the Bush administration was supposedly taking the Iranian threat seriously, with a regional diplomacy focused upon polarizing the region against Iran. In that period, Iranian "soft power" throughout the region rose rapidly, as it seized the mantle of the leader of the "resistance" camp which the U.S. eagerly granted it. Hezbollah and Hamas, viewed in Washington at least as Iranian proxies, were riding high both in their own arenas and in the broader Arab public arena. Iranian allies were in the driver's seat in Iraq. Arab leaders certainly feared and hated this rising Iranian power, whispering darkly to Bush officials about how badly they wanted the U.S. to confront it and flooding their state-backed media with anti-Iranian propaganda. But this did not translate to the popular level and did little to reverse Iran's strategic gains. The Bush administration's polarization strategy was very good to Iran...

...I suspect that the real reason for the new flood of commentary calling for attacks on Iran is simply that hawks hope to pocket their winnings from the long argument over sanctions, such as they are, and now push to the next stage in the confrontation they've long demanded. Hopefully, this pressure will not gain immediate traction. Congress can proudly demonstrate their sanctions-passingness, so the artificial Washington timeline should recede for a while. The Pentagon is now working closely with Israel, it's said, in order to reassure them and prevent their making a unilateral strike, which should hopefully push back another artificial clock. That should buy some time for the administration's strategy to unfold, for better or for worse. An attack on Iran would still be a disaster, unnecessary and counterproductive, and the White House knows that, and it's exceedingly unlikely that it will happen anytime soon. But the real risk is that the public discourse about an attack on Iran normalizes the idea and makes it seem plausible, if not inevitable, and that the administration talks itself into a political corner. That shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, who predicted that Israel would strike during the first six months of this year, offers four reasons to explain why nothing has happened (yet).

-- Andrew Lebovich

This is a guest note by Fadi Elsalameen, managing director of Palestine Note. Elsalameen shares this post with us from Ramallah where he is today.

Fayyadism is not Authoritarianism

In Nathan J. Brown's recent commentary published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brown accuses Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of authoritarianism and says his governance has failed to ensure democracy and institution building.

Brown argues that, "what Fayyad has managed to do is to maintain many of the institutions built earlier and make a few of them more efficient. But he has done so in an authoritarian context that robs the results of domestic legitimacy."

Brown describes disorder in the Bar Association and the Teachers Union as failures in two major institutional areas: the rule of law and the educational system. He concludes: what Fayyad's government claims to be institution building is in fact institution maintenance or revival.

So to follow Brown's logic, if the Bar Association and the Teachers Union's ills were cured, then Fayyad's work would be what Brown would call institution building.

From what I know, in order to cure a body from an illness, one's body needs "maintenance and revival," and since Brown's logic leads one to believe that if the "illness" is cured, institution building is accomplished, I can't help but point out the obvious: Brown's argument at best means Fayyad is in the middle of institution building, not at the end, and Fayyad himself never claimed that he has finished building Palestinian institutions.

Reading through the article, Brown fails to prove how Fayyad is an autocrat and in fact convinces me of the opposite. He shows that Salam Fayyad and his government have been steadily, if unevenly, building and maintaining Palestinian institutions and rule of the law.

Brown accuses Fayyad of not adding or naming a single new institution built under his government but rather maintained the institutions he inherited from Arafat and improved some of them. At the same time, Brown does not recommend or name one area where a new institution is needed.

Furthermore, Brown lays the blame on some vague structural problem that he does not name. But those problems have names, chief among them "occupation." Faced with underlying problems from Fatah party politics, the split with Hamas, and the ubiquitous Israeli occupation, I would argue that it has been independent Fayyad's leadership that has kept the Palestinian Authority functioning. Palestine is still in process, and Fayyad is working tirelessly to curtail corruption in the ministries to maintain the rule of law. Misuses and abuses are expected while the state is being built, but on the ground one can already see the fruits of Fayyad's labors.

In front of my own eyes today, a fight broke out between two large families in the south of Hebron in the West bank. One of the family members was a policeman who used his gun in the fight. Within minutes the entire town was full of police, intelligence, detectives and Preventative Forces, and all offending parties were arrested, including the policeman who used his service weapon illegally. The police were on the scene after one call from a town resident.

I asked one of the detectives if there were other policemen coming and his answer was "we are waiting for an Israeli approval to allow two more units to join us from a neighboring town." Brown never mentions the obstacles and difficulties posed by the Israeli occupation to Prime Minister Fayyad's institution building.

And contrary to Brown's argument of institutional rivalry, although representatives of each security apparatus were present at the fight, the police force took the lead in the investigation, and the rest acted as support. "There is no rivalry, everyone respects their role, if this was a terrorism issue, the Preventative Forces would take the lead in the investigation and the police would support," one of the security members told me.

Therefore, contrary to what Brown argues, Fayyadism has more to show than international respect; it has local, visible Palestinian respect.

He says that the Fayyad government has shown spotty success and that most of its tenure has been a failure, but in fact from what he shows, there has been spotty failures and an overwhelming success.

Brown discusses the lack of progress in certain areas of the educational system, and attributes it to Fayyad's governance. He fails to mention even once the enormous difficulties occupation puts in front of Palestinian education. I have known of teachers who were arrested by the Israelis from Area A and threatened with expulsion from the Palestinian Ministry of Education by alerting the Palestinian Authority that these individuals are posing a security risk and must be arrested.

Such Israeli actions undermine the legitimacy of any Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation and indicate that Israel can take advantage of the Palestinian split to undermine the Palestinian institution-building process.

To his credit, PM Fayyad personally answered a letter from a teacher in the southern Hebron area and issued instructions to the Ministry of Education to investigate a case where a school's headmaster complained that the Ministry of Education demoted him based on accusations that he was linked to Hamas and therefore posed a security risk. Immediately, Fayyad asked the Ministry of Education to form a committee where everyone from the teacher to the head of the regional office of the Ministry of Education was investigated. The head of the school was restored in his previous position and certain individuals in the Ministry of Education were reprimanded based on the investigation's results.

Contrary to Brown's study, Fayyad is not an authoritarian. Fayyad is building a state, despite all difficulties and engaging all avenues, and he is not yet finished.

-- Fadi Elsalameen

I was shocked to watch the sun rise this morning -- and actually saw the sun, not some gauzy, cotton candy like Beijing permanent haze.

And now we see lots of blue. This is rare I'm told at this time of year.

-- Steve Clemons

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Dana Priest and William Arkin have in the Washington Post blown the top of America's fear-fueled national intelligence complex that has grown so large and extensive that the government can't track redundancies, costs, personnel, and the like.

More later -- but read the series, which will continue during the next two days.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: lyng833's Photostream)

This is a guest note by Sean Kay, who is a professor of politics at Ohio Wesleyan University and an associate of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University. He is the author of Global Security in the Twenty-first Century: The Quest for Power and the Search for Peace (Rowman and Littlefield).

Over the past week, I visited Northern Ireland as part of a book I am writing on post-Celtic Tiger and post-peace process Ireland. If one were to tune into short media clips of riots in Belfast and gunshots in Derry, they might conclude that the peace process in Northern Ireland is coming unglued. Nothing could be further from the truth. Having walked the streets of Derry, and visited Ardoyne in Belfast on the morning after the last of three nights of rioting, it is important to report that the positive transformation of Northern Ireland remains on track - though it is a fragile one to be sure.

As has been increasingly the case, each 12th of July, parades by Orangemen honoring their sense of tradition are sources of sectarian tension. Last weeks' perpetrators, however, largely used the Orangemen as an excuse for violence that had nothing to do with Ireland's troubles. In fact, the violence by Catholics in the streets of Ardoyne and other areas of Belfast took place either after the Orangemen had long gone home - and in some cases where none had marched at all.

The primary target of Catholic street rioters was not Protestants, but rather the police - a force that is a vital symbol of growing success in Northern Ireland. In Belfast and Derry, shots were fired at police and in an horrific incident, a policewoman was severely injured when hit by a brick in the head. Rioters apparently continued to pelt her and her colleagues as rescuers sought to extract the wounded officer. In another major incident, a young man attempted to take over the Enterprise Train between Dublin and Belfast and was apparently quite willing to firebomb it and kill women and children. What is striking is the degree to which the police acted with restraint - refusing to take the bait of those spewing violence. Today the security services are part of the solution, not the problem - and their restraint has served to increase the confidence that this vital institution of peace building is playing.

Some Northern Ireland officials have been quick to say that dissident nationalist groups are behind the violence - while others seek to downplay this element to enhance a view of normalization setting in. While there may be a small number of these dissident characters behind the scenes, the images of the violence show a much more complicated scenario.

The areas of Belfast that historically reflected the Troubles such as Falls Road and Shankill are today quite calm. There is, however, as with many things on this island, a range of levels below the obvious and that is especially true in the complex back streets of some very small areas of Belfast. The key challenge to the peace process has much more to do with bottom up pressure from a small but growing population who has not reaped the benefits of peace. Right now, this is quite limited to a street by street tension, but has a serious risk of proliferating up into the political architecture on which the positive model for peace is being successfully consolidated.

Perhaps most significant is that in some areas of Belfast, there are small segments of Protestant society who feel they have been abandoned. They no longer dominate employment in major industry as much of traditional industry has left them behind. Meanwhile, increasing opportunities for Catholics in employment combined with a higher degree of emphasis on education have led to a growing sense of isolation and abandonment for these unionists. These people have felt no benefit at all from peace and feel more isolated than ever. Indeed, they have now lost the one thing they always clung to - an arrogant and uniformed sense of superiority over Catholics. Meanwhile, the Catholic population also suffers from a large group of disaffected youth who have not benefited from new opportunities and who continue to blame others for their own lot in life.

On a street-to-street level, disaffected Protestant and Catholic groups - both concentrated in public housing settings which remain segregated - suffer from the same kinds of problems that afflict most major urban populations - gangs, thugs, drugs, and crime. Only, in Belfast, one can label it political paint a mural and suddenly it takes on a broader and dangerous symbolism.

A major irony of the peace process is that it has left a vacuum in areas where in the past crime was dealt with by "street justice" - internal order provided by the nationalist and unionist paramilitary forces. Both sides' paramilitary forces historically were deeply involved in criminal activity and violence. Now that they have accepted peace and disarmed, they are no longer there to enforce order within their own populations. At the same time, as the economy spirals downward, an entire generation of youth is now coming of age that has no idea what the peace process was or the horrifying events that preceded it.

The "rioters" in the Ardoyne area of Belfast this past week were in fact largely children - teens, and some as young as eight years old. Some in the press characterized this as a "Disneyland of rioting" for these youth. It is likely that there are dissident republicans helping to coordinate these children - lining up petrol bombs and busing them around town. But the real message of these dissidents is not to the peace process. The message is to the former IRA leaders who are now involved in peace building that they no longer control the streets.

Significantly, the biggest failing of the peace process to date is that in both Protestant and Catholic communities in areas like Ardoyne and similar neighborhoods an entire generation of children is at risk of being lost. These young people do not have role models to aspire to. Their parents are grossly disengaged from child rearing. These young people see local organized crime figures as the main role models. Showing that they can throw bricks at police - is the best way they can show their "toughness" - while those behind the scenes stake out their territory street by street - mainly to sell drugs.

It is at this sub-level of social disconnect - driven not by Troubles of the past - but rather economic dislocation and class - that the peace process faces its most significant challenge. If the reconciled Protestant and Catholic political leaders feel increasingly pulled back into their core communities rather than building on the benefits of their growing political relationships, there could be a need to further posture back along nationalist and unionist political lines. If left unaddressed, then these bottom up security problems could proliferate upward into the larger peace process.

In reality, however, there has been a sea change in Northern Ireland. I saw this close up in Washington during St. Patrick's Day festivities when First and Second Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness demonstrated their clear desire to put the past far behind them. They were united on the need to promote investment and to advance economic development in their shared land.

More effort must be done to gain understanding around the July marching season requiring accommodation to Catholic sensitivities by the marching Orangemen. But crucially, in a time of economic crisis and tightening budgets, innovative and creative approaches to reaching out to this new generation of young, disaffected Catholics and Protestants must be achieved. Both communities share a similar problem on the streets of Belfast and it will take a society-wide effort to bring these lost children of peace along. If there is to be a new priority for American leadership in consolidating peace, it is here that low costs investment in education can create major long-term benefit.

Northern Ireland is doing well. One visiting would have to work hard to find the trouble brewing. Foreign direct investment is taking root and ironically, the historical ties to the United Kingdom have shielded it form the economic shocks being felt to the south in the Republic of Ireland. Former adversaries have reconciled into a good working government. No one wants a return to the past except those who either never experienced it or have another agenda.

-- Sean Kay

It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.

-- Deng Xiaoping

Li Zhaoxing, pictured to the left, on my new Capitol One credit card is a very cool diplomat. During part of the Cultural Revolution, he worked in China's Embassy in Kenya and learned Swahili.

Li, who is now a professor at Peking University and Honorable President of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs after having served both as China's Ambassador to the U.S. and recently as Foreign Minister of China, hopefully will be thrilled to be China's first ever Foreign Minister depicted on a credit card -- or at least I hope so.

I figured that since I have this picture of the two of us in my office, it's not too much of a leap to think it would be fine with everyone to carry the pic in my wallet -- and sort of like Deng Xiaoping said, the credit card thing is, well. . ."my cat".

I'm going to use this card next time I pay my visa fee at the Consulate.

For those interested, not only does Capital One permit you to put your own image on a credit card, but at this point, does not charge the 3% international transaction fee that most other bank cards impose.

-- Steve Clemons

(Shop along South Luogo Alley, Beijing; photo credit: Andrew Oros)

I have seen a lot of foreigners wearing this ObaMao shirt, but no Chinese yet.

What would converse be with Hu Jintao?

-- Steve Clemons

(Learning about Wuxi's New District Industrial Park; photo credit, Peter Pi)

So far, any slice of China and the Chinese people one wants to cut out is full of economic, cultural and intellectual diversity -- so I fear that it is very easy for an observer to see what he or she wants to see in this country. That in itself, though, seems to be a huge change from what this place was like 30, or even 20 years ago.

One of the behavioral characteristics many before me have seen in China is the well developed sense of self interest in China. Japanese citizens in contrast seem to me to be much more focused on their group, and clubs, and other vastly sprawling social networks. The Chinese want to do business, do projects, engage in hobbies, be pragmatic and get ahead.

In my encounters here, I don't get a sense from many people of deep concern for the common good, for the broad public welfare. They expect the government to see to these needs and to make the choices that promote public happiness and well-being, and when the government doesn't -- as many feel in environmental issues -- the public gets frustrated. Otherwise, the average citizen doesn't really ponder these larger issues and has mentally delegated them to the political order.

The one exception I have found to this in Beijing, Wuxi, Shenzhen, Shanghai and some other places in speaking both to municipal officials, Shanghai port designers and engineers, industrial park managers, and even military representatives is that the global financial crisis created the potential of an economic tsunami for China that might have wiped out not only a great deal of China's wealth -- but the state's ability to promulgate "hope" for a better economic future among its advancement-hungry citizens.

China takes jobs seriously -- hugely seriously. During the financial crisis, the country's provincial authorities and national government created incentives for firms to retain rather than layoff workers. They invested heavily in training and re-training programs with highly detailed job replacement support for those workers displaced during the crisis.

The kinds of programs China deployed are enormously expensive -- and in most capitalist societies, these programs are modest if not trivial, and often used more as fig leafs to seduce recalcitrant political parties, and occasionally labor unions, to accept economic arrangements that can have harsh displacement impact on, for example, American workers.

One could argue that it would have been more economically efficient for China to just let the hand of economic fate reorganize the Chinese political economy -- to reward the most competitive parts of China's economic base and to punish the parts that were too dependent on American and European consumption, or too costly and uncompetitive given new pressures from places like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

But China's national interest -- and sense of concern for average citizens in the group sense -- prompted these large scale supports in job retention, retraining, and new job creation.

It's not possible to observe what China has done without a significant amount of respect for its commitment to its workers -- which prompts the question of what tools does the U.S. government not have at its disposal to make similar efforts on behalf of U.S. citizens during a time of severe economic crisis.

The U.S. economy is back in wobbly territory -- and there is much that can be learned from China in my view in the way that the country here mixes individual economic self interest and national economic objectives.

America needs to be making substantially greater investments in high-wage job generating infrastructure development that can help generate for the US economy recurring returns over generations. That is what China is doing -- and there is no excuse that is rational for the U.S. not to be doing what it needs to do to leapfrog out of its current economic morass into a more dynamic, innovation-driven future.

-- Steve Clemons

When James and Deborah Fallows lived in Beijing, Jim regularly featured on his blog pictures of the weather -- well, the smog -- from his balcony.

This is not from my balcony but it does capture just how thick the smog is in Beijing right now. After several days here of living in a sunless, puffy, misty fluorescent haze, we finally caught a glimpse of the sun. We rejoiced.

When one engages in conversation with Chinese about how they see their country, the biggest area of concern for the future and criticism of the government targets environmental mismanagement. Given the amount of coverage that "green issues" get in the Chinese press -- on TV and in print journalism -- to some degree it seems like the government is inviting public criticism, or at least trying to give space for this frustration to vent.

Beijing -- which is a political city for the most part -- is pulsing with change and growth. The people I see are consuming and want more, and the city is being torn up and rebuilt with a peculiar mix of hard labor workers and machines.

I'm increasingly convinced that China is making enormous investments in green technologies and deployment at a level substantially greater than the United States is doing -- but it's dependence on carbon-based energy is erupting upward right along with China's renewable sectors.

China, it seems to me, will have a mix of every type of energy option built into its economic structure -- but the negative environmental consequences have no where to go but get worse.

-- Steve Clemons

On this trip to China, I haven't yet made it up to the Shanghai Expo, but I hope to go soon. China's Pavilion towers among the rest and is a testament to the fact that after a few hundred tough years, China is back.

Living in Washington, I'm used to seeing world leaders come through regularly -- most recently for the nuclear materials summit hosted by President Obama.

However, China keeps a dizzying pace of welcoming and sending off leaders -- at a rate comparable and possibly greater than what Washington receives today.

Right now German Chancellor Angela Merkel is doing the China thing -- and British Foreign Minister William Hague is in town. And in recent days, Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner was here.

Beijing is where the global game is moving to.

-- Steve Clemons

I've been in Beijing for a few days, but in contrast to most of my previous trips here, my schedule thus far has been driven more by happenstance and serendipity than planning.

My first evening, I attended a free lecture organized by Columbia University at Studio X on the subject of " Beijing: The Implications of Urban Aging in World Cities" with Michael Gusmano, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. I hesitated before going to this session as it didn't seem to be the sort of topic that would help me stay awake and fight jet lag, but Gusmano was excellent and shared much about the lethal side of social networks deficits of some elder citizens.

During the 2003 great heat wave in Europe for instance, Gusmano argues that there were 1200 "excess deaths" of older aged people in Paris -- most probably due to the fact that their relations and much of the population had gone South and that these folks were not checked up on -- in contrast to Rome which hired young people to bike around the city knocking on doors of older aged citizens and helping with water and other needs. I also learned that the world had 20 mega-cities today with populations greater than 20 million -- but that in coming decades we will have 23 mega-cities, with populations on average significantly older than the case today.

About 50 people attended the meeting -- a mix of mostly Chinese alums, some current Columbia undergrads in language programs here and some other notables including SIPA Professor Merit Janow and China expert Daniel Rosen.

On the second day in Beijing, I attended another networking gathering as the guest of a Beijing-based former New America Foundation research assistant Oliver Lough, an energy analyst.

One could just float from event to event in this city -- every day, lunch and dinner, often hosted with beer, not so good wine, and light pick up food by leading NGOs and other organizations trying to drill down and fasten themselves into what China is becoming.

The meeting I attended with Ollie Lough and attended by about 80 folks was organized by the Beijing Energy Network and started with a short presentation on an interesting web-based resource called ChinaFAQs -- an information network for climate-related and energy policy resources in China. The World Resources Institute is the sponsor of the site and had a few of its people comment on the legislative prospects for climate change legislation passing the US Congress this year.

Interesting material presented -- though I think that WRI Legislative Affairs Director Christina Deconcini was far more optimistic than I would have been about the prospects for any -- even utility industry focused -- climate related legislation passing this year. I hope I'm wrong. She made an interesting point that WRI was working to see what was 'achievable' through executive order and regulatory approaches to carbon emissions controls that didn't depend on legislative outcomes.

I asked DeConcini how far such an approach would get the US toward the climate goals Obama declared in Copenhagen -- and she unfortunately responded that WRI was not going to announce those figures to the group that had assembled that evening at the Beijing Energy Network and that the results were embargoed for another week. It would have been more interesting frankly to have a hint or some discussion on whether a regulatory approach would yield anything serious -- but that discussion was not to be had that night in lieu of a hoped for press splash.

But the key thing is that there was an excellent roster of folks at this meeting, which interestingly was held in English rather than Chinese -- and subsequently made me wonder if any such meetings of this sort were going on with Chinese language speakers who clearly are more at the core of national power structures here than those who have a facility in English.

I don't know the answer to that.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

In the wake of Barack Obama's election, the extent to which he has continued many Bush administration counterterrorism policies has surprised many, especially when looking not only at the continuation and expansion of tactics such as drone strikes, but also at the degree to which the administration has used tools such as the state secrets privilege to justify keeping many Bush administration practices out of the public eye.

An interesting foil to this is a lawsuit currently underway in the United Kingdom, where six former Guantanamo bay detainees have sued the government, and forced the release of a trove of documents, with the potential for hundreds of thousands more, dealing with government complicity in their rendition and abuse. The British press has been particularly aggressive in covering this process, and I just want to point quickly to an interesting passage from a recent Guardian article on the stance British courts and the new British government have taken when dealing with sensitive material related to terrorism:

The government has been responding to disclosure requests by maintaining that it has identified up to 500,000 documents that may be relevant, and says it has deployed 60 lawyers to scrutinise them, a process that it suggests could take until the end of the decade. It has failed to hand over many of the documents that the men's lawyers have asked for, and on Friday failed to meet a deadline imposed by the high court for the disclosure of the secret interrogation policy that governed MI5 and MI6 officers between 2004 and earlier this year.

So far just 900 papers have been disclosed, and these have included batches of press cuttings and copies of government reports that were published several years ago. However, a number of highly revealing documents are among the released papers, as well as fragments of heavily censored emails, memos and policy documents.

Some are difficult to decipher, but together they paint a picture of a government that was determined not only to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States as it embarked upon its programme of "extraordinary rendition" and torture of terrorism suspects in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but to actively participate in that programme.

In May, after the appeal court dismissed attempts to suppress evidence of complicity in their mistreatment, the government indicated that it would attempt to settle out of court.

Today the government failed in an attempt to bring a temporary halt to the proceedings that have resulted in the disclosure of the documents. Its lawyers argued that the case should be delayed while attempts were made to mediate with the six men, in the hope that their claims could be withdrawn in advance of the judicial inquiry. Lawyers for the former Guantánamo inmates said it was far from certain that mediation would succeed, and insisted the disclosure process continue.

In rejecting the government's application, the court said it had considered the need for its lawyers to press ahead with the task of processing the 500,000 documents in any event, as the cases of the six men are among those that will be considered by the inquiry headed by Sir Peter Gibson. Last week, in announcing the inquiry, Cameron told MPs: "This inquiry will be able to look at all the information relevant to its work, including secret information. It will have access to all relevant government papers - including those held by the intelligence services."

-- Andrew Lebovich

This is a guest note by Eric Schwartz, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration at the Department of State. Schwartz previously headed the Connect US Fund. He sends regular reports of his overseas work on humanitarian matters, and TWN is pleased to share them here.

Report from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

Between June 28 and July 1, I traveled to the Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to assess humanitarian response efforts in the wake of the horrific violence perpetrated in the south of Kyrgyzstan, primarily against the Uzbek community. Members of this community make up about fifteen percent of the population of Kyrgyzstan, and a much larger percentage of the population of the south.

As you know, the violence was characterized by coordinated attacks and destruction of thousands of homes in the Kyrgyz cities of Osh and Jalalabad; officials have also documented the deaths of several hundred people, although the actual number of deaths may have been much higher. And as many as 100,000 Kyrgyz citizens fled to neighboring Uzbekistan.

While those responsible for these attacks have yet to be identified, it seems clear that the violence was not a spontaneous manifestation of inter-ethnic conflict. Rather, the violence appears to have been orchestrated by individuals or groups bent on destabilizing the situation to achieve political or economic advantage.

I began my visit in Uzbekistan, where I met with government officials, representatives from international humanitarian organizations and members of civil society. The government of Uzbekistan acted quickly and constructively in response to the humanitarian crisis, providing food, water, shelter and medical assistance to some 100,000 refugees. Government officials also cooperated closely with UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and non-governmental organizations. These efforts helped many people in a time of dire need.

Although most refugees have now gone back to Kyrgyzstan, concerns have been raised about the circumstances of returns, and the situation in Kyrgyzstan remains fragile. Thus, I encouraged Uzbek officials to sustain their relationships and cooperation with international humanitarian organizations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. I also told my interlocutors that the United States believes it is important that the border stay open, and that any refugees who may still be in Uzbekistan and fear return have the option to remain temporarily. Anyone can appreciate the deep concerns of those who fear returning to the scene of such horrific violence, and it is thus important that returns be voluntary.

In Kyrgyzstan, I traveled to areas impacted by the violence, and conferred with government officials and representatives of non-governmental and international organizations. On June 30, I visited Osh, joined by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Gutteres, the U.S. Ambassador, Tatiana Gfoeller, and the Ambassador of the Russian Federation, Valentin Vlasov. We went with colleagues from the United Nations and from the Russian Federation to demonstrate our commitment to work closely and collaboratively with partners in supporting the reconciliation and recovery effort. In Bishkek on July 1, I met with Interim President Rosa Otunbayeva, with deputy head of the interim government, Almazbek Atambayev, as well as with representatives of a range of UN affiliated agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and others.

I first sought to express the strong solidarity of the citizens and the government of the United States with the people and the government of Kyrgyzstan in efforts to pursue national reconciliation and recovery, and, in particular, to express our profound sympathy and solidarity with the victims of the terrible attacks of last month. The United States is helping in a number of ways. First, on the whole, the U.S. is the largest donor to major international humanitarian organizations that are playing a leading role in Kyrgyzstan, such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Program and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In addition, the U.S. is providing some $30 million in new funding that will be focused on addressing the current crisis.

A UNHCR relief convoy enters Kyrgyzstan at the border with Uzbekistan. Since mid-June UNHCR has provided hundreds of tons of emergency relief to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. With most refugees having now returned to Kyrgyzstan the focus of help has shifted to the displaced populations in and around Osh and nearby Jalalabad. Photo courtesy of UNHCR/ S. Grigoryan

While the process of rebuilding the physical infrastructure will take great effort, the greater challenge of course is promoting reconciliation - and a future in which different communities in Kyrgyzstan live peacefully and cooperatively together. I discussed these issues at length with Kyrgyz officials, stressing that members of the Uzbek community should have a meaningful role in the critical decisions on recovery and reconstruction that will so impact their lives and well-being. The constitutional referendum, held peacefully on June 27, sends a signal of the government's commitment to constitutional development, but much more needs to be done to bring groups together.

I also discussed with President Otunbayeva and other officials the critical civilian protection concerns in the south, and welcomed Kyrgyz government support of proposals for a monitoring mission by the OSCE. A robust international presence in the south, including monitors, advisors, and relief workers can play a key role in building confidence and promoting peace and cooperation among communities who remain so seriously affected by the recent violence, and we are prepared to do what we can to help implement such proposals. With those objectives in mind, PRM will provide financial support for the monitoring and reporting efforts of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Finally, I discussed with officials the importance of an impartial international inquiry into the events of last month, as a complete accounting will serve not only the interests of justice, but also of reconciliation. The United States has supported such an inquiry, and we look forward to further discussion with officials on this issue in the days and weeks to come.

Best,

Eric Schwartz

To learn more about PRM's programs and activities, please visit our website.

(click image for larger version)

Jonathan Guyer is a program associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force and the official cartoonist of The Washington Note. He blogs at Mideast by Midwest. He has just returned from Tanzania.

Here's a cartoon I drew on BP's mess.

I sketched this one before I left for Tanzania last month and since I've returned that gusher is still gushing, already for 85 days. (maybe we got good news today that the well is capped -- but count me as a skeptic given all the other times they nearly had the gusher contained.)

For my money, the only solution is for BHO to take care of it himself -- roll up his sleeves, brush up on his SCUBA, and plug it himself. Hence, the TWN 'toon.

-- Jonathan Guyer

As I write this, it is 3:40 am in Buenos Aires where the Argentine Senate is debating a same sex marriage equality bill.

I am now in China, where President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is visiting -- and she has called a press conference here in which she issued one of the most eloquent and compelling defenses of same sex marriage equality that I have heard from a head of state.

-- Steve Clemons

Hat tip to Blabbeando.

Tom Toles (c) 2010 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

Pursuing al Qaeda, a.k.a. Moby Dick.

-- Steve Clemons

I write this as a political independent who finds strengths and weaknesses in both of America's major leading parties, but just as I observed during the battle against John Bolton's Senate confirmation vote to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations, Democrats often declare defeat when they are ahead, and Republicans declare victory even when they are badly losing.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stated what is obvious and increasingly probable: the Dems could lose the House in November. Charlie Cook called it first -- but Gibbs is not really supposed to be a truth-teller. He's got a team whose interests he needs to advance -- and acknowledging defeat too early becomes self-fulfilling.

President Barack Obama won an overwhelming mandate in my view -- the largest Democratic Party win since LBJ. But through his Presidency, Obama has operated as if he had the slimmest of margins.

Rather than getting kudos for trying to work across the aisle, the Republican opposition smelled weakness, indecision, and inchoateness among key players in the White House and overcame the GOP's own internal divisions to become monolithically opposed to assisting the White House succeed on nearly any front.

Contrast this with George W. Bush who did win by the slimmest of slim margins in 2000 -- and even that is still hotly debated -- but yet still performed as if he had won 70% of the vote. Dems, who had a healthy presence in the Congress, crumbled.

Nancy Pelosi has a point. Perception matters -- and recent history shows that in some cases, the assertion of strength (at home in America) gets you some yardage. Conceding early probably invites defeat.

-- Steve Clemons

You really think you can dance WIN THIS WAR??

-- Anthony H. Cordesman, the CSIS Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy (not really; just hypothetically)

Anthony Cordesman is not the warm and fuzzy type.

Jack Webb's Joe Friday in Dragnet was a barrel of laughs compared to CSIS's most severe, anti-glad handing war strategist.

I occasionally run into Cordesman at the BBC's studios, or CNN, or on some radio interview shows in which we have both been booked -- and Cordesman is as austere in real life as his reputation. But there is no one better in Washington today in terms of laying out the facts as they really are.

He is a nuts and bolts, cost and benefit guy.

Cordesman dissects military missions and analyzes resources, command structures, probabilities of success or failure in such granular detail that few can challenge his sobering analyses that cause many a headache in the Pentagon.

Cordesman has just issued a set of important powerpoints (pdf here) that give a picture of what is unfolding in Afghanistan -- and what the general odds of success or failure are now for General David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry.

I have just spent the last 90 minutes absorbing every power point in this package -- and to say that Cordesman's overall analysis is bleak understates things.

On a more frivolous note, I think it would be interesting to get rid of Senate and House hearings on the Hill and start a new game show titled So You Think You Can Win This War. (homage)

And Anthony Cordesman will play the more ruthless in real life than on TV central judge with other guest judges.

My recommendations: University of Chicago terrorism expert Robert Pape, former Middle East National Intelligence Council director Paul Pillar, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Charles Kupchan, Boston University military affairs scholar Andrew Bacevich, Princeton's G. John Ikenberry, Duke University's Bruce Jentleson, Columbia University senior researcher and former IMF staffer Graciana del Castillo, Harvard University professor and even better Foreign Policy blogger Stephen Walt, Cato Institute defense studies director Christopher Preble, Center for American Progress middle east affairs expert Brian Katulis, and National Defense University terrorism expert Audrey Kurth Cronin.

And for fun and to add to the creative tension, I'd occasionally bring on CNAS President John Nagl, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, Brookings' Martin Indyk, COIN and war chronicler and blogger Tom Ricks, The George W. Bush Institute's James Glassman, New America Foundation President Steve Coll, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Walter Russell Mead. And another, CNN's Fran Townsend. And David Frum too. And after this piece, Ann Coulter for at least one show.

That would be a cool show. Cordesman would be right up there with Jon Stewart before long.

Just the facts. No smiles. This is war.

-- Steve Clemons

At the Aspen Ideas Festival 2010, at which I had a terrific time and had some of my own perspectives on policy matters stretched in new directions, I met this fun, woods and water loving dog -- named Sugar Bear something-or-other.

She had just punctured a nice pink ball on the grounds at Aspen, and her owner and I were kicking around the destroyed toy with the pup. But this was in Jekyll & Hyde terms, Dr. Sugar Bear.

Mr. Kujo (or Hyde) is the dog that managed to get poison ivy or poison oak oil on my wrists, arms, and legs -- and now I'm in Beijing paying the price for my puppy addiction.

If anyone knows where to get some low-grade, poison ivy blister fixing steroids in Beijing -- drop me a line.

A former senior US diplomat at an institution I won't mention here today wrote me an extremely unhappy note the other day. He no doubt would take some pleasure in the fact that I'm tortured by this poison ivy stuff right now. I like this diplomat and respect him and his work, and as unhappy as he was -- at least one person in the world ought to get some joy from my current misery. (And for the person who knows him, yes -- you can share this.)

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

-- Mark Twain

What follows below is a note from Martin Longden, Press Secretary and Head of Communications at the British Embassy, who recently concocted along with UK Ambassador Nigel Sheinwald the quip tagged to the outcome of a recent Ambassador to Ambassador steak dinner bet on the UK-US soccer match: "the Ambassador takes his steak like American soccer victories - somewhat rare."

Longden was responding to my "term search" blog post about Obama's mention of various countries -- good nations and rogue -- as well as Britain's fall from the heights.

I had originally reported that the United Kingdom appeared in only 8 of Obama's major speeches, statements and media commentaries as organized by The Washington Post. The number really should be 12 -- as the UK has so many aliases -- "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", England, Great Britain, Henry's Place (been watching The Tudors again). . .are there more?

Former House Foreign Affairs Committee Senior Staffer Hillel Weinberg, a regular reader of TWN, told me that we needed to upgrade the UK from 8 to 12 -- which still makes my point -- that even with aliases, Britain is not on the President's roster as much as was true previously.

Longden responds -- brilliantly as he usually does. We share his comments in reaction to our earlier piece:

Dear Steve:

What good fun! Thanks for flagging.

On a point of fact, it's not quite true that the UK "recently pushed through a resolution that it was downgrading the "special relationship" with the US to an important relationship".

A parliamentary committee last year recommended that, given the British press get so excited about the "special relationship", and that the state of the bilateral relationship generates such febrile media speculation, British Ministers should not use the phrase. And in a fantastically ironic affirmation of the committee's point, all the British media then wrote up this recommendation as "Death of the Special Relationship"!

In fact British Ministers continue to use the phrase - and do regard the relationship as special. In terms of the intelligence, defence, diplomatic, economic, cultural and all the other links, I think it's pretty special too.

I'm not sure there is any other relationship between two countries that rivals the depth and breath of our co-operation. But those of us who deal with the Americans at the diplomatic coal-face have never really obsessed about labels: the relationship is what it is, and we can be comfortable that both sides recognise that.

I still like the Post's new tool. But I'd caution against drawing a correlation between the number of mentions a country clocks and the warmth or importance of the bilateral relationship. Pace Nile Gardiner's most recent blog in the Telegraph, I'm not sure we need conclude that the stats reveal "Obama's blatant lack of interest in the Anglo-American alliance".

Talking publicly about a country doesn't necessarily reflect an intimacy of relations - indeed sometimes quite the converse. Nazi Germany figured a lot in Churchill's speeches - but I'm not sure he got on too well with the Fuehrer!

Trust all is good with you,

Martin

Martin Longden
Head of Communication & Press Secretary
British Embassy
3100 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington DC

The relationship is still special to me, but even more so after notes like this from the UK's cleverest diplomats. (In contrast, I had a recent note from a former senior US diplomat that opted instead for the bomb and bulldoze approach.)

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest post by Anya Landau French, who directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

Guillermo Fariñas, who made news and fans around the world for his more than four month-long hunger strike seeking the release of 26 ailing Cuban political prisoners, has suspended his strike on the news that Cuba will release not only the 26, but 52 political prisoners (who comprise all of the 75 dissidents still in prison, who were jailed in 2003 for collaborating with a hostile foreign power - the United States). Seven prisoners arrived in Spain this week, as a result of ongoing negotiations opened by the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba and of the Spanish government with Raul Castro himself. Fariñas, who was on death's door in his fifth month of his hunger strike, now believes that "we have a window of opportunity of which we should take advantage." He's openly called on the U.S. to respond by lifting its travel ban to Cuba. He's not alone among Cuba's democratic activists: scores of Cuba's most notable dissidents called on Congress to lift the ban in a letter sent last month.

At the same time, a new poll of Cuban American attitudes conducted by the University of Miami shows that two-thirds of that community now supports lifting the travel ban as well. The poll, taken earlier this month, tracks previous poll trends, even though Cuban Americans now enjoy nearly unrestricted rights to travel to Cuba whenever they want. It also shows that the community is evenly split among Republicans, Independents and Democrats, a trend that could favor Governor Charlie Crist's Senate bid. Among all Americans, an earlier poll found 70% percent favor lifting the travel ban.

Add to these statistics, and the calls from within the Castro government's toughest critics on the island, intensifying pressure from influential local and national trade and agriculture groups (which you can read about in today's New York Times), as well as U.S. religious and human rights groups, all of whom want an end to U.S. travel restrictions, and you have to ask yourself, what reason exactly would any member of Congress have left to stick with an ineffective policy so firmly rooted in the Cold War?

-- Anya Landau French

(photo illustration by Kevin Van Aelst; reprinted with permission from the New York Times; used with Parag Khanna's article, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony")

The Washington Post recently posted an interesting search tool to scan President Barack Obama's key speeches, policy statements and media interviews.

What fun this can be, I (and we) thought.

We wondered which countries Obama talked about the most. Would China - which is key to just about every one of America's major international goals - get a lot of air time?

Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso was the first official guest of the White House and Japan Hillary Clinton's first overseas destination. Would Japan score well? How about Israel and Palestine? Is Cuba on the President's map?

How about failing states - not just Afghanistan and Somalia - but others like Burma and the nation of his father's birth, Kenya?

We did a quick and simple scan of nations in the Washington Post search tool.

In order to balance the ends of the development spectrum and our own parochial interests, we searched three groups: G20 members, nations from the recent Foreign Policy/Fund for Peace 2010 Failed States Index, and a handful of other nations (with one eventual state in purgatory: Palestine) that are significant challenges for the Obama administration.

The entire list of 45 nations plus Palestine follows at the end of this piece.

From January 1, 2009 until July 12, 2010, Barack Obama mentioned Afghanistan in 70 major speeches and commentaries. Afghanistan leads among all nations in the FP failed state index.

China follows with 58 mentions. Then Iraq from the failed states line-up with 54. India beats Iran with 46 mentions to 43. North Korea scored just 19 even though it has nukes, sank a South Korean ship, and tests more ballistic missiles than virtually any other country.

Pakistan, which also has nukes and ranked No. 10 on the FP Failed States Index, got 17 mentions.

Interestingly, Israel and Palestine had nearly the same number of tags in key speeches and comments - 19 for Israel and 17 for Palestine.

The United Kingdom, which recently pushed through a resolution that it was downgrading the "special relationship" with the US to an important relationship, also found its relative ranking downgraded by appearing in just 12* Obama speeches and media comments.

Cuba, which has frustrated many an American president and against which the United States maintains the only travel embargo that it imposes on its citizens traveling anywhere else in the world, only appears two times in Presidential speeches. This confirms my sense that the Obama administration doesn't realize that maintaining a Cold War-era fashioned embargo undermines its interests disproportionally, particularly given the relative disinterest of the US national security establishment in Cuba.

Other interesting points. Venezuela scored a single appearance in an Obama speech. Saudi Arabia, which is a vital strategic ally of the US, appeared just 6 times.

The BRICs are really rising though, compared to the rest. Brazil weighs in at 16. Russia 28. India 46. China, as mentioned previously, 58. Collectively, the BRICs are 148.

The G7, in comparison to the four BRICs countries, gets a score of 95.

Somalia and Yemen, which have been occupying an increasing share of the attention of those concerned about "safe havens" for al Qaeda and affiliates, are way down the list with Somalia at 5 and Yemen at 3.

This quick check of Obama statements shows a President and his team mostly focused on rising powers and key problematic powers.

Overall, there is still a systemic dearth of attention to the states that are doing the worst and sliding into failure.

The distraction of Afghanistan and Iraq is palpable - while the perceived need to manage US-China relations appears paramount.

The President doesn't make a false choice in the Middle East by mentioning Israel much more than Palestine.

And Cuba, which probably represents the lowest hanging fruit for constructive change in the global system with impact far greater than its population would normally warrant, languishes untended. President Obama would score some real points by finally putting an end to the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.

This tool is a great service. Thanks to the Washington Post for providing it.

Enjoy your own searches.

-- Steve Clemons

Number of Major Speeches, Statements, and Media Interviews by President Barack Obama between January 2009 and July 12, 2010 in Which These Nations Appear

G20 Member States

China 58
India 46
Russia 28
Germany 25
Mexico 25
South Korea 25
Canada 23
France 17
Japan 17
South Africa 17
Brazil 16
United Kingdom 12
Australia 6
Indonesia 6
Saudi Arabia 6
Italy 5
Turkey 5
Argentina 2

Other States (and Near States) of Interest

Iran 43
North Korea 19
Israel 19
Cuba 2
Palestine 17
Syria 3
Venezuela 1

Top 20 Nations from Foreign Policy Failed States Index

Afghanistan 70
Iraq 54
Pakistan 35
Haiti 17
Somalia 5
Kenya 5
Congo 3
Guinea 3
Yemen 3
Nigeria 2
Sudan 2
Zimbabwe 2
Burma 1
Cote d'Ivoire 1
Ethiopia 1
Niger 1
Central African Republic 0
Chad 0

*Editor's Update: Regular TWN reader and former House Foreign Affairs Committee senior staff member sent a very constructive note that I had short-changed our British friends. Given that the UK works with aliases -- Great Britain, England, Henry's Place (been re-watching "The Tudors") -- it turns out that the UK in substance appears in 12 Obama commentaries, rather than 8 -- though it doesn't change the UK's ranking or the basic point I made about the lessening of fervor in the "special relationship".

It's invite only, a small group, no subs -- but on the record.

At the Nixon Center, it will be Chas Freeman vs. Rob Satloff on the topic: "Israel: Strategic Asset or Liability?"

This is one of the few genuine debates on Israel-Middle East issues that I have seen organized in Washington, though I do want to tip my hat to the Hudson Institute for a program last year that had a range of speakers ranging from Meyrav Wurmser to Daniel Levy and lots of other credible Israel-Middle East voices across the spectrum. That was an excellent exchange, but that was last year.

The Nixon Center gets the "chutzpah award" for bringing in the big guns who won't pull their punches - and yet know how to be civil while trying to shove each other out of the ring.

Robert Satloff is Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy while Chas Freeman, Chairman of Projects International and a former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was up for a position as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration until many in the American Jewish community raised substantial concerns about Freeman's nomination. Retired four star General Chuck Boyd, who is now a Senior Fellow at the Nixon Center, will moderate the discussion.

This is a clip from the Nixon Center invitation:

President Obama's recent White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been portrayed as repairing a relationship damaged by major policy differences. Yet, as public discussion of U.S.-Israel ties grows, the meeting left many questions unanswered. How strong is the U.S.-Israel relationship? What is the relationship's basis? Is it truly "unbreakable" as described by President Obama?

Each of our speakers is widely regarded as an authority on the Middle East. Chas Freeman is a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs. He is currently Chairman of Projects International and President Emeritus of the Middle East Policy Council. Robert Satloff is Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a prominent commentator in the national media, and the author or editor of nine books and monographs on Middle East issues.

The meeting takes place on July 20th, a date I will be in Beijing - in no small part due to the efforts of Richard Nixon to change global gravity by normalizing relations during a time of great doubt about the US around the world.

In some ways, getting Israel/Palestine on a real, two state track as well as figuring out the Iran puzzle are the "Nixon Goes to China" opportunities for the Obama administration.

I am counting on one of my journalist/blogger friends who will make the Nixon Center's cut to send me the "audio file" of this meeting as soon as it is finished.

What a ticket!

-- Steve Clemons

I'm back from Germany, where I was participating in the Friedrich Naumann Foundation's Transatlantic Dialogues Program. It was an eye-opening, whirlwind experience. While in the beginning the trip focused on local politics and development, especially in the world of new technologies, the back part of the trip focused on a series of meetings with national political leaders and foreign policy-focused advisers and officials in Germany's Foreign Ministry, parliament, and Chancellery.

While the foreign policy conversations covered a wide variety of issues, the different people we spoke with listed a number of important foreign policy issues for Germany in the coming years, including trade issues in Europe, Africa and Asia, continuing (and increasingly frustrating) attempts to forge Middle East Peace, and dealing with the rise of new powers, especially China, India, Brazil. But when asked to name the main foreign policy issue facing Germany, they almost uniformly responded, "Afghanistan."

Germany presently has the third-largest force in Afghanistan, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has consistently repeated her support for Germany's continued presence in Afghanistan, and since January has increased Germany's troop total in the country from 4,500 to roughly 5,350, in the face of (or perhaps because of) criticism that the German army has allowed the country's once-peaceful north to slide towards instability.

But despite support not only from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party but from nearly every other major German political party, the German presence in Afghanistan is deeply unpopular; post-Second World War Germany is uneasy with the idea of their military engaging in combat abroad, and this unease has been exacerbated by several incidents where errors from German soldiers have resulted in the deaths of innocent Afghans. Germany's leaders have only recently begun referring to the country's presence in Afghanistan as a "war" rather than as an aid or peacekeeping operation, and former German President Horst Koehler resigned in May after making controversial comments that German troops were in Afghanistan in part to "protect our interests, such as ensuring free trade routes or preventing regional instabilities."

The officials my group spoke to reaffirmed Germany's commitment to Afghanistan, even as the German army transitions to more active operations in the country's increasingly violent north and elsewhere. They voiced concerns about stability in South Asia if the military forces left Afghanistan prematurely, spoke of the need to protect women's rights, and also expressed their concerns about Pakistan and a possible increase in terrorism not only in and from Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan. In particular, the German government is extremely worried about not only Pakistan's fight against terrorists, but also the increase in German converts to Islam going to Pakistan's tribal areas to fight and receive training from militant groups.

But at the same time the divide between political parties and the average person in Germany on the issue of Afghanistan was palpable in every foreign policy conversation we had, both formal and informal. I asked each official what will happen if Germany's increasingly active role in Afghanistan generates higher combat losses, and they almost uniformly said that what public support remains for the war will likely drop, and that the war--currently not an election issue--could easily become one.

-- Andrew Lebovich

This was an interesting session that got a lot of reaction at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

US News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman and I had a polite dust-up over US-Israel policy and about President Obama. Katty Kay, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, James Fallows and Elisabeth Bumiller were on the panel with Andrea Mitchell moderating.

One of the points that Zuckerman referred to was a statement made by UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba in an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that the UAE would advocate use of force against Iran if it remained undeterred from a nuclear weapons course. Otaiba's statement was reported widely.

Another part of Otaiba's statement was that the US compel Israel to settle a deal with the Arab League and Palestine -- and in result find its relations normalized with 57 other nations.

Andrea Mitchell commented that that part of Otaiba's statement was 'nothing new.' But that part of the statement is the crucial piece, and it would be a mistake to think that it is less important today than previously, or less important than the bravado about armed force against Iran. They are linked.

-- Steve Clemons

(click picture above to enlarge)

This is a nest currently occupied by three osprey in Chestertown, Maryland -- just in front of a house I frequently try to escape to.

Recently, I saw a couple of osprey fighting in mid-air with a bald eagle. While the Gulf doesn't have eagles and osprey, to my knowledge, there is plenty of wildlife there that is being blacked out. How does BP pay the world back for that?

-- Steve Clemons

Approximately 300,000 returning Iraq and Afghanistan war vets -- a number equivalent to nearly 25% of America's active duty military -- suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

While Veterans Administration Secretary Eric Shinseki has just announced streamlined procedures to help these veterans secure support services, this long term social "cost" is staggering.

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday, when I was at this meeting with Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Cheryl Benton, Benton asked me off camera if I followed the LeBron James stuff. I sheepishly had to say that I had thought LeBron James was a soccer player - and when I learned later that he was a baseball, oops, basketball player -- I felt even dumber than I should have on the subject.

While I don't know squat about sports -- I do watch the think tank all stars pretty closely.

For instance, Peter Orszag will not be going back to his home institution of Brookings after his role as OMB Director and is instead headed to the Council on Foreign Relations.

But Brookings is getting another prize.

Word has just reached us that Robert Kagan, currently Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is moving his franchise over to Brookings.

While Brookings President Strobe Talbott can staff himself on Russia, China and India -- three big stakes foreign policy challenges -- it seems that much of the foreign policy team -- particularly in Brookings Foreign Policy Chief Martin Indyk, Saban Center Director Ken Pollack and now Robert Kagan -- is hardening its capacity on the Israel/Iran front.

Kagan -- next to Francis Fukuyama, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Frum -- is one of the top tier serious intellectuals among neoconservatives, though it's clear that Frum and Fukuyama have distanced themselves from the broader movement to establish their own reformist franchises.

Kagan's move is important for Brookings as the institution has been working hard to get Haim Saban to give another large infusion of resources to his namesake unit, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at Brookings. Securing Kagan is one way that Brookings may have sweetened the pot for Saban who is according to one Brookings source "painfully flamboyant" about using his money to try and influence the DC establishment through think tanks and other vehicles to secure Israel-first, Israel-defending policies out of Washington.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: Enrique De La Osa/Reuters)

This post, which originally appeared at The Havana Note, is a guest note by Tom Garofalo, a consultant for the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative.

The end of Guillermo Fariñas hunger strike, precipitated as it was by Cuba's promise to release a third of its political prisoners, is a very significant development for him, his family, his supporters, and for Cuba.

According to the Washington Post, though, all this is marginal. The editors implore President Obama to condition any major changes in U.S. policy towards Cuba on more "significant" moves. They prefer change that isn't authored by a Castro, which implies that until the government falls and chaos reigns, the U.S. should simply continue its failed policies and keep its head in the sand. And for better or worse, the Post can probably rest easy: the United States has nothing to do with the very positive events playing out in Cuba this week.

Advocates for the status quo (or worse, if they can get it) claim that the negotiations are a help to the Cuban authorities because what is being negotiated is the forced exile of troublesome democracy advocates. But it is still not clear whether these prisoners will be forced to leave Cuba. Catholic Church sources indicate that the bishops are negotiating for the prisoners' right to determine for themselves where they live when released from jail. This is in keeping with their position, maintained for generations, that all Cubans have a role and a responsibility to remain to build a better Cuba. But we don't know yet. Time will tell.

That seems to be the watch word: time. Cubans are talking about Cuban issues. Americans are utterly uninvolved and quite unlikely to lift a finger on Cuba. It seems as if we don't actually want to hear about it. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did tell AP that the Cuban authorities' moves were "very welcome," but most of the statements in recent week from her administration colleagues have been right in line with the Post's viewpoint.

Even the U.S. bishops, who one might think would be interested to support the high-risk efforts of their brothers in Cuba, have been mum -- the president of the U.S. bishops conference, not one to eschew controversy, chartered a flight to Santiago and didn't make a peep about policy or politics. It may well be that the bishops believe that at this point, it is better to let the Cubans wrangle on this issue. In any case, we don't have to wait for a puff of white smoke to know what the U.S. bishops think. Just last week they reiterated their strong support of lifting the travel ban.

The fact that Fariñas has taken this step is significant in itself, no matter what the editors of Washington's paper of record may opine. But the long-term importance of this week's announcements will depend entirely on whether the Cuban Government upholds what the bishops have said is its end of the bargain, and continues to ease the pressure on political prisoners.

And for every step forward, there is always the possibility of a step back (the conga was invented in Cuba, after all). And as if to show that they remain vigilant on the things that really matter, the Cubans today trumpeted the extradition from Venezuela of Francisco Chavez Abarca, a Salvadoran and alleged recruiter of the bombers who committed terror attacks against Havana hotels in 1997.

-- Tom Garofalo

I've been in Germany for the better part of the last week, on a trip for young policy professionals sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung. This has been a really eye-opening experience, as we've had the opportunity to travel around the German state of Saxony and are now in Berlin, speaking with state and national political representatives about the challenges and future opportunities facing Germany.

Since coming here, I've been hugely impressed with the commitment to new technologies and in particular the search for new forms of energy at both the national and local levels of the German state. Saxony and in particular the Saxon capital city of Dresden is awash with high-tech corporations, from a huge Glaxo Smith Kline office to Volkswagon's stunning "Transparent Factory", where workers hand-assemble the Phaeton model, and it is impossible to come to Germany without seeing windmills everywhere, generating electricity.

We also toured the headquarters of Solar World, an innovative company producing every step of the solar energy process, turning silicon blocks into wafer-thin sheets that they then turn into photovoltaic cells, for use at home and export around the world (including on the roof of St. Peter's Cathedral in Vatican City). This commitment to new energy, heavily supported by government subsidies, is part of Germany's goal to reduce and even eliminate its dependence on nuclear and coal-fired power plants.

However, the search for energy is also emblematic of the challenges looming over Germany's horizon. While government intervention has helped shore up Germany's economy in tough times recently and has helped create and sustain the state-of-the-art solar industry in Germany, several officials we met with expressed concern about German government spending, at a time when they are attempting to overhaul Germany's century-old universal health care system, reshape Germany's universities to compete with others around the world, convert its army from a conscript army to a professional one, and continue to push for new energy solutions.

Despite their incredible technology, companies like Solar World likely could not exist or continue developing without heavy government assistance, assistance that seems likely to be reduced in the coming years as budgets grow tighter and different priorities compete for attention. How Germany deals with this looming crisis of interests will show whether or not the country can maintain its incredible edge and thirst for new technologies, or if these modern innovations will fall by the wayside.

-- Andrew Lebovich

For better or worse, the word most associated with President Obama's foreign policy is "engagement." Many in the United States and throughout the world perceived the Bush administration as heavy-handed, abrasive, and too unwilling to listen to other nations' hopes, fears, and perspectives.

President Obama was (is?) viewed as someone with the family background, humility, and empathy to show the world a difference face of America.

Engaging everyone - old allies, emerging powers, enemies, foreign publics, NGOs, corporations, Muslim communities - that, more than anything, is the Obama administration's "theory of the case" as it seeks to lead the world in the 21st century.

A significant aspect of this engagement strategy has been to use new media and public diplomacy to express more effectively what America is and why it is carrying out the policies that it does.

One outgrowth of this is the State Department's "Conversations with America" series. The series is designed to provide "an opportunity for [State Department officials] to discuss a range of issues, important issues with people within the United States and around the world."

Past conversations have featured Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Bob Blake, Center for Strategic and International Studies/South Asia Director Teresita Schaffer, World Affairs Councils of America Chairman Ambassador Marc Grossman, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

Today, Friday, July 9 from 11:15am - 12:00pm EST TWN Publisher and New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Director Steve Clemons will join Farah Pandith, the State Department's Special Representative to Muslim Communities, to discuss the United States' engagement with Muslim communities around the world.

The conversation will stream live here at The Washington Note, and the State Department's official blog,
DipNote.

Viewers can submit questions during the live chat at this link.

-- Ben Katcher

Some are saying that The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg's digital pen brought down CNN veteran Middle East editor Octavia Nasr. It's clear that Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings brought down Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal -- perhaps with a strong assist from this piece.

Now James Fallows may have helped play an assist in the ascendancy of General James Mattis, widely viewed as brusque and brilliant. Alternatively, all of the aforementioned writers, James Fallows and yours truly included, may have just had their moment as accurate calculators of power and inevitability.

On June 22nd of this year, Fallows wrote of Mattis, who has just been selected by President Obama as David Petraeus's successor as CENTCOM Commander:

First, the textbook point: if national strategy for a war rises or falls on one officer, that's a bad sign for the strategy. Banal point, but had to say it.

But the more useful corollary: as several military correspondents have observed today, there happens to be another widely respected warrior-commander who has first-hand experience in the CentCom area and is deeply steeped in the COIN strategy McChrystal has been trying to apply. This person is, of course, the four-star Marine Corps general James N. Mattis (Wikipedia photo at left). He was in the news last week for not being chosen as the next commandant of the Marine Corps. This could be serendipity, in making him available for other duty.

Relevant point when it comes to the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan: two years after the invasion of Iraq, Mattis was a leader, with David Petraeus, in the effort to develop a new military approach based on awareness of everything that had gone wrong in the invasion and its immediate aftermath. For accounts of that effort, see here and here. For the resulting Field Manual 3-24, the doctrinal Bible of COIN, you can get the 13MB PDF here.

Relevant point more generally: I have never met or interviewed Stanley McChrystal, but I have interviewed Mattis repeatedly over the years and have always been impressed by his intelligence and character. Tom Ricks testifies to that effect here. While he has made waves for his blunt-spokenness, it is hard for me to imagine him being as reckless as McChrystal has recently been.

I have only briefly met General Mattis on one occasion in Brussels and not long enough to form a real opinion -- but Fallows' endorsement is a strong and important one.

The one thing I will say is that the current CENTCOM Deputy Commander John Allen, who once served as Commandant of the Naval Academy and led the relief efforts after the Southeast Asia tsunami, is solid and sensible -- and gets both the Arab region and non-Arab Muslim region really well, far better than most other three stars or higher. It will be an interesting test to see if Mattis can live comfortably with someone of General Allen's talents.

-- Steve Clemons

As I wrote a few days ago, I was informed that alleged Russian spy Mikhail Semenko had my business card. Turns out I had his information as well in my personal lap top and had hoped to meet him before my next trip to China -- as his blog on the Chinese economy interested me.

There are rumors that Semenko applied for jobs at both the New America Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I've checked with New America's director of human resources, and there is no application -- so I can't confirm that he applied. He may have wanted to; New America is a cool place for youngish policy wonks.

But I met Semenko at a meeting I chaired with global strategic risk guru Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group, who was speaking about his best-selling new book, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?.

The fundamental thesis of Bremmer's fascinating book is that the biggest, most significant new feature of the global economy is the emergence of "state capitalism". Bremmer argues that his state capitalism -- as manifested in its most potent form in China -- threatens both firms and states that practice more traditional laissez-faire market capitalism.

This debate on Chinese vs. American approaches to capitalism is what the alleged handsome Russian agent Mikhail Semenko came to learn about when he visited the New America Foundation on May 27, 2010. Fascinating.

Above is a short clip of my exchange with Ian Bremer on that day -- and this is a link to the longer program. It would be interesting to see (I haven't had the chance to check) whether Semenko lodges any questions during the Q&A; session.

The Washington Post is reporting that all or most of the alleged Russian spies are going to plead guilty and be deported to Russia as early as tomorrow. I sort of hope that Mikhail Semenko keeps up his blog from Russia -- because "agent of influence" or not -- his interest in key questions on how the world organizes itself is something we should all be thinking about.

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, cosponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, I spoke on a panel focused on "Smart Power" with a heavy emphasis on the Afghanistan War.

My panel mates were Harvard scholar, former National Intelligence Council Chairman and JFK School of Goverment Dean Joseph Nye, former US Agency for International Development Administrator Henriette Fore, and Three Cups of Tea author and Afghan-embedded humanitarian Greg Mortenson. Congresswoman Jane Harman sat in the front row and participated significantly.

Booz Allen EVP Jack Mayer moderated the session -- which I think was excellent.

Main points I emphasized were the huge opportunity and real costs of America's Afghanistan engagement -- and that Smart Power couldn't exist in a strategic vacuum, which I think is the case today.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)

This is a guest post by Anya Landau French, who directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

In the days following the House Agriculture Committee action on Cuba last week, many Cuba analysts are wondering how far, and how fast, this bill could move. Will the bill have to move through two more House committees before heading to the House floor, or will those committees waive their right to amend the bill, and send the bill straight to the floor for possible amendment and passage?

Following the House Agriculture Committee's action, one of the bill's most influential champions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, left nothing to chance. Top lobbyist Bruce Josten sent personalized thank-you letters to every Member who voted yes, pointedly reminding each one that, "The Chamber believes that both the trade and travel aspects of this bill are important and encourages you to remain open to supporting the bill in its entirety for consideration and passage by the full House." As the Chamber's Senior Director of the Americas, Patrick Kilbride, wrote on the Hill's blog last week:

"It is a rare step for the Chamber to send this signal on a piece of legislation that is still in committee, and the move conveys two things: one, the strength of the U.S. Chamber's conviction regarding the transformative power of free enterprise and its promise for Cuba; and, two, the seriousness of purpose and sense of possibility that pervades this legislation at this moment -- a seminal moment for the U.S. and Cuba."

The Chamber's follow up letter to House Agriculture Committee members show it's seriously gearing up for floor consideration.

Consideration by the full House is exactly what Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a leading opponent of lifting the Cuba travel ban, is hoping to head off. Ros-Lehtinen exercises greater influence over Members in committee than she will in a House debate of 435 Members, and is therefore "insisting" that Chairman Berman bring the bill through Foreign Affairs first (the travel portion of the bill falls within his committee's jurisdiction, and so he has the right to consider it before it goes to the floor). Berman reiterated his support for the bill following the Agriculture Committee's vote last Wednesday: "It's time to trust our own people and restore their right to travel." But if he's leaning toward bringing the bill before his Committee, or sending it to the floor, he hasn't let on. (And we're not really talking about Barney Frank's claim on this bill, but then Ileana Ros-Lehtinen isn't his Ranking Member on the Financial Services Committee.)

On Friday, Congress Daily reported that "farm, business and humanitarian groups are urging leadership to bring the bill to the House floor." I tend to agree with them. While there is a certain poetry to Berman bringing the bill through a committee that had for years abdicated real, honest oversight and consideration of Cuba policy, I think those who oppose any change in the policy just want to run down the clock. And they hope to do that by insisting on moving the bill through as many committees as possible.

Besides, does anyone doubt that the amendment process in Foreign Affairs will be nothing short of a circus? It's unfortunate, really, but it's just impossible to have a civil debate on Cuba in the U.S. Congress. Defenders of the status quo understand that they're on borrowed time after fifty years of failure. All too often, that urgency to sustain the unsustainable drives these Members to resort to distortion and demagoguery, intimidating and name-calling Members who might otherwise try to engage in a thoughtful and honest debate on the merits of restricting the travel of U.S. citizens to Cuba.

-- Anya Landau French

(Photo Credit: Flickr)

Conflicts Forum Director Alastair Crooke recently wrote a strikingly original article in The Washington Quarterly on the Middle East's shifting strategic landscape.

In the article, "The Shifting Sands of State Power in the Middle East", Crooke argues that the Middle East's "northern tier" - which includes Turkey along with Iran, Qatar, Syria, and possibly Iraq and Lebanon - represents the nascent 'axis of influence' for the coming regional era, barring war."

He says:

Behind the northern tier's ascendancy in regional politics lies the perception that Syria and its allies have read the Middle Eastern ground better than the United States and its allies, especially since they Iran, Syria, and Turkey judged the Iraq war correctly from the perspective of the region, even though Washington viewed Syrian and Turkish opposition to the invasion as an unhelpful stance. Syria and Iran are also seen to be standing in a pivotal position to shape the future of Iraq. More importantly, all three are seen to have read the prospects for a Palestinian state more accurately than others. Hence, they are in a better position, especially due to their links with Hamas and other Palestinian groups, to be able to craft a comprehensive regional solution and change the present circumstances for the better.

Iran, Syria, and Turkey are, therefore, widely seen to be the coming influence in this new regional era.

Crooke's article shares similar themes with Stephen Kinzer's latest book, Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future, which argues that the United States should shift its alliances away from Saudi Arabia and Israel and toward Turkey and Iran. But rather than focusing on Turkey's and Iran's democratic traditions, as Kinzer does, Crooke's analysis centers on the political, economic and strategic trends unfolding throughout the region.

Perhaps the most disheartening of Crooke's insights relates to the apparent failure of all three pillars of the Olso accords: Israeli acceptance of the concept of land for peace, the belief that Israel's settlement process is reversible, and the notion that the United States can persuade Israel to retreat to its 1967 borders.

Crooke's article, which I originally found at The Race for Iran, can be read here.

-- Ben Katcher

The opening forum at the political celebrity and policy wonk packed Aspen Ideas Festival which opened yesterday was titled "The Financial Crisis: Will It Lead to America's Decline?" and featured historian Niall Ferguson, US News & World Report owner and real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, and presidential adviser David Gergen.

The discussion was interesting on a number of fronts -- mostly because Zuckerman, who is normally someone who has been making a strong case for more substantial infrastructure investment in the US (and to his credit, he did raise this in this session) and Ferguson decided to use their time in the Aspen sun to fear-monger about deficits and fiscal responsibility.

Ferguson argues that fiscal reform and austerity are the path America must take to reinvent itself, if it can. Zuckerman too hammered on the big spending of recent years, particularly the ineffectiveness of the stimulus when it came to infrastructure and job creation.

I agree with Ferguson that America's spending on two power-sapping wars is one of the major drivers of America's political and economic weakness today, but his policy prescriptions could move America right back where it was in 1937 -- when the US cut back its economic stimulus during the Depression thus deepening and lengthening America's economic mess then.

Gergen didn't call on me -- though you'll see me continue to put my hand up in the video above. But if he had, I would have asked "1937??"

Even center-right economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt, both fiscal conservatives, fear that the US should not cut back spending too much at the moment.

As Niall Ferguson was racing out -- mouthing from the stage to Pom and Fiji Water entrepreneur Lynda Resnick that he just couldn't do dinner with her and Barbra Streisand that night -- to get to London to give a talk at St. Paul's Cathedral titled "'Men, Money and Morality: How Can Trust in Banking Be Restored", I asked him whether he had any concern about a 1937 redux.

He responded by emphasizing that he wouldn't make "near term cuts." Fair enough.

But that point needs a lot more punctuation and Fergusonesque emphasis at a forum like this where many need to hear about what the consequences of a collapse in demand are for American workers and the American middle class.

If the government doesn't create that demand when private households are deleveraging, firms are holding back investment, and Europe is posturing itself as a global deflationary ball and chain around global growth, then America is heading back into recession.

That should have been a view represented more squarely -- and debated -- at the Aspen Ideas Festival which is sponsored jointly by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.

I should add that this ideas festival is an amazing experience -- eclectic participants, high quality debate and discussion. I'll be speaking on the "soft power" panel this morning along with Harvard scholar Joseph Nye and former US AID Administrator Henrietta Fore.

-- Steve Clemons

This terrific view was sent in this morning by TWN reader and communications diva Kate Brown from Minot Beach, Massachusetts.

Happy July 4th!

-- Steve Clemons

Michael Steele is right on Afghanistan.

The Republican National Committee Chairman, who is receiving a heap of scorn by war-hungry members of his party and by Democrats who want to puff up and act like the real defenders of the Pentagon faith, called the conflict in Afghanistan "a war of Obama's choosing."

Former George W. Bush administration national security official and current Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass wrote the same thing in August of 2009. And there are many more academics, Members of Congress, journalists, and average Americans who are discomfited by the deployment of military forces in Afghanistan at a cost of more than $100 billion/year in a country with a GDP of $14 billion.

Michael Steele has a habit of rounding corners in a way that gets him into trouble -- but on this issue, Steele reflects the views of a significant number of Americans in both political parties. While there is bipartisan support for the war, there is also bipartisan opposition to it.

The DNC needs to temper its "gotcha criticism" of Steele. Spokesman Brad Woodhouse said that Steele was "betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan."

This is a distortion of what Steele was proffering. But what concerns me about the DNC comments is the exploitation of the complex and challenging Afghanistan War as a measure of one's patriotism, or support the Pentagon -- in which the White House and Democrats desperately want to show they are better at than the Republicans.

That's not a smart national security posture. Embracing wars, deferring to generals, or giving the Pentagon everything it wants is the opposite of leadership.

Presidents and great leaders in the House and Senate sculpt the Pentagon and have made tough choices about what the U.S. military should be designed to do and what it should be held back from.

This knee-jerk criticism of Michael Steele is wrong-headed by the Dems -- and all too predictable from neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, who seem to thrive on escalating the number of US troops fighting abroad.

In many ways, Steele's comments were the more judicious because of the concern that the U.S. may be engaged in a war that breaks the military's back. The recklessness is Kristol's -- and the hubris the DNC's.

-- Steve Clemons

I learned today that recently arrested, alleged Russian spy Mikhail Semenko had my business card. "Really?!" I asked. "Really," I was told back.

I have a massive pile of business cards on my desk at the office, so I assume I have his also -- and then looked at my personal laptop contacts list, which is large -- but still select, limited only to people I have some interest in or connection with. I send folks on my email list an occasional article or event alert if it's something really interesting and which will stream live, as most of my list is comprised of people outside Washington.

Sure enough, Mikhail Semenko is in my personal database note as "Russia/China expert".

Semenko publishes (at least until June 24th of this year) the blog, Chinese Economy Today, which I have looked at before.

I didn't recall his name until I saw his picture today -- and now, I remember him well and was impressed by him when we met. He was knowledgeable about two countries that I have big projects in play with now -- Russia and China -- and he and I agreed that we should get together and chat some time. But never got to it.

In any case, spying is something countries do -- in good times and bad. They do it. We do it. The best of friends do it. Jonathan Pollard comes to mind.

But it feels odd today to have had a brush with someone very much in the news reminding many of the Cold War's high stakes drama. I remembered Semenko's awkward modesty at the time -- and now, after seeing the pic, I do recall him.

Any other folks of John LeCarre-ish habits running in my circles??

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz profiles reactions to Tea-Partyism today and notes that Senator Lindsey Graham, who once told me that his favorite film was Seven Days in May and that one of his biggest fears for the country was national security and military demagoguery, doesn't have much time for the Tea Party.

From Kurtz's good piece:

And then there's Lindsey Graham.

The South Carolina senator has already ticked off the right by being willing to negotiate deals with Democrats. He doesn't see bipartisanship as a dirty word.

Now he's turned his tart tongue on the tea types.

What's more, the New York Times Magazine brands him "This Year's Maverick"--which, given the source, is unlikely to boost his standing in some GOP circles.

Since it began posting articles online in midweek, the Times Magazine has boosted its impact to newsmagazine levels--and I expect this new piece by Robert Draper will be no exception:

" 'Everything I'm doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement's at,' Graham said. . . . On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was 'very, very contentious,' he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: ' 'What do you want to do? You take back your country -- and do what with it?'. . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.'

"In a previous conversation, Graham told me: 'The problem with the Tea Party, I think it's just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.' Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: 'We don't have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.' Chortling, he added, 'Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.' "

Yow. He's saying the tea party has no answers, and that his party has moved so far to the right that Reagan would be seen as a squishy moderate.

What Graham and Kurtz are reflecting on is really important.

Today's Republican Party is not a comfortable place for many classic Republicans -- including former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former G.W. Bush campaign co-chair in New York Rita Hauser, Ike granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, and former Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee and Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel.

But Reagan, Eisenhower, Ford, and even the ghost of Richard Nixon would feel out of place with the course of the Republican Party today. If the comments of George H.W. Bush best friend Brent Scowcroft about the Republicans today are any benchmark for the views of President #41, then add that President to the roster too.

All of this is why I don't see someone like General David Petraeus easily saddling up to the Republican Party in his post-military, post-Afghanistan Eisenhoweresque rise. I have watched Petraeus carefully in the last few years -- met him several times -- and there is simply nothing in his character that would allow him to stroke the egos of the modern equivalent of the Know Nothing Party.

Petraeus could find himself on a White House course one of either two ways -- and both involve knocking back the Tea Party movement.

Either President Obama, who is a shrewd neutralizer of political rivals, plays a wild card in the 2012 race and offer his VP slot for the next term neither to Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton but rather to General Petraeus -- thus robbing from the Republicans and the Tea Party movement someone who may be the best chance for a revival of 'America as Great Power, national security-oriented leadership'.

Alternatively, if Petraeus survives the real and political challenges of his new brief as military czar in Afghanistan, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin could play their best hand in 2012, get crushed in the election, and then have the Republican Party adopt a Petraeus-led new leadership after the Tea Party is lobotomized from the institution.

While I don't think that the Tea Party will win the White House or even make much headway in the two chambers of Congress, the net impact is that their actions will pull the Dems to the right. And Barack Obama's survivability in 2012 rises right along with the popularity of the Tea Party.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: Svenwerk's Photostream)

Ian Lesser's most recent "On Turkey" brief for the German Marshall Fund raises a number of important issues surrounding the United States' relationship with Turkey.

Most importantly, Lesser notes that those seeking to understand Turkey's emerging regional role should examine Turkey's internal political dynamics more closely.

The most significant risk to Turkey's ability to serve as a stabilizing influence in its neighborhood is not its support for a diplomatic track with Iran or its frayed relations with Israel (though the rhetoric concerning the latter case is concerning), but rather its fragile domestic political system and the threat of a vigorous Kurdish insurgency that could push Turkey back toward its isolationist posture of the 1990s.

As Lesser explains:

Turkey faces the prospect of renewed internal security challenges, and these will be consequential for Ankara's relations with the West. The upsurge in attacks by the PKK and related groups and the renewal of Turkish military operations against Kurdish guerillas in northern Iraq raise the specter of a return to the turmoil and conflict of the 1990s. This time around, the PKK will not have a sanctuary in Syria, and will have very insecure bases, at best, in Iran and Iraq. But recent attacks in Istanbul and elsewhere suggest that Turkey could face a new challenge of larger-scale urban terrorism.

Unlike the rural insurgency and counter-insurgency of past decades, an extension of Kurdish violence to urban areas could have more serious implications for a Turkish society and an economy increasingly dependent on foreign investment. Experience in many settings tells us that terrorism can have an isolating effect. In the worst case, urban violence could lead to something Turkey has so far been spared -- inter-communal conflict between Turks and Kurds. To be clear, this is an unlikely prospect, but no longer an inconceivable one.

Turkey's future impact on American interests in the Middle East will depend first and foremost on its ability to reach a stable political equilibrium between the AKP government and the secular elite led by the military, while at the same time crafting a political solution to the Kurdish problem.

Whether Turkey can resolve these internal issues will ultimately be much more significant for the United States than Turkey's present policies toward Iran and Israel.

-- Ben Katcher

This is a guest post from Anya Landau French, who directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, a conservative Democrat from Minnesota, is generally a soft-spoken, easy-going legislator who eschews demagoguery. But he sure knows how to move even the thorniest legislation.

Today, Peterson's House Agriculture Committee approved a bill that would lift the Cuba travel ban for all Americans, and eliminate several hurdles to humanitarian exports to the island. It's an historic moment: the first time Congress has taken a step toward full elimination of the travel ban (as opposed to the easier target of withholding enforcement funds) which keeps the vast majority of Americans from traveling to Cuba - with of course the very large exception of hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans who, thanks to the Obama administration now enjoy unlimited travel rights to the island.

But the historic victory didn't come without theatrics and a blind oppositional adherence to a talking point that goes something like this: "We can't lift the travel ban because it would help the Castro regime and abandon the Cuban democracy movement on the island." Nevermind that 74 of Cuba's best known human rights and democracy advocates, including former and current political prisoners, wrote to every member of Congress earlier this month arguing that the bill's benefits to the Cuban people outweigh any benefit to the Castro regime, and would not represent an abandonment of them or their cause. But perhaps most distressing was one member's willingness to hold his constituents' right to travel as a "bargaining chip" with the Cuban government.

Determined as they were to fight on the anachronistic Cold War turf with which they're most comfortable, travel ban supporters lost today's fight for one reason that trumps all reasons: Restoring freedom to travel serves America's interests. From the local farmers in Maryland's conservative Eastern Shore to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, members faced overwhelming pressure from constituent interests to put America first.

Now attention turns to whether and when the bill will be considered by the full House, and eventually reach the President's desk. Last fall, Speaker Pelosi said "I 've always been a supporter of lifting the travel ban to Cuba." And while Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a staunch Cuban American proponent of travel restrictions, was quick to promise a filibuster if his colleagues try to move similar legislation through the Senate, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) says he's already locked up the 60 votes he'd need to break a filibuster. So, where is the Obama Administration? Keeping its powder dry, for now. According to a State Department spokesman today, "Congress' addition to the robust discussion on the future of Cuba is healthy and an example of the democratic process that we would like to see in Cuba."

I'm not sure I'd call today's debate "healthy", but it shows that Congress is facing up to the failure of a Cuba policy for which it shares responsibility with the Executive Branch, and finally doing something about it.

-- Anya Landau French