I must confess that in the past I too have signed a couple of letters promulgated by the Project for the New American Century. These particular letters focused on Hong Kong's efforts to maintain as much of a democracy as possible despite quite anti-democratic landlords. I could rationalize my signing tbese because of discussions I had had with Hong Kong's Solicitor General who seemed to be practically pleading for such attention from Americans or marshall any of a number of other great rationales.

However, PNAC's position as chief ideological organ of the Bush administration's neoconservative team has changed the significance of its signature-building ritual. PNAC has become an indefatigable powerhouse advocating a long list of de-thugging operations around the world (here is the roster just after 9/11) and a significant advocate of an ever larger military force to service America's global democratization crusade.

On Friday, a group assembled by PNAC wrote to Senators Reid and Frist and Representatives Hastert and Pelosi:

The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. Those responsibilities are real and important. They are not going away. The United States will not and should not become less engaged in the world in the years to come. But our national security, global peace and stability, and the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world require a larger military force than we have today. The administration has unfortunately resisted increasing our ground forces to the size needed to meet today's (and tomorrow's) missions and challenges.

So we write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. While estimates vary about just how large an increase is required, and Congress will make its own determination as to size and structure, it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.

Check out the list of signatories on your own, but here are just some of the luminaries who caught my eye: Peter Beinart, Max Boot, Ivo Daalder, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Robert Kagan, Craig Kennedy, William Kristol, Will Marshall, Clifford May, Barry McCaffrey, Michael O'Hanlon, Danielle Pletka, James Steinberg.

My first reaction was "Wait, where are Jim Woolsey and David Frum?" Woolsey must be traveling or not paying attention to his email requests from PNAC, and I'm really not sure whether Frum signs letters. He might not.

My second reaction was "What an odd crowd this would be to have sitting around the dinner table together." Some of these folks are friends of mine -- full disclosure -- but the gathering of public intellectuals on this letter signifies some important new fault lines in the debate about American defense and foreign policy.

First of all, the neocons have hijacked (or have created a collusive strategic partnership with) an important wing of the Democratic Party. I have felt for some time that the left had its own neocons -- those foreign policy players who felt that American values, as opposed to American interests, ought to drive a significant part of our foreign policy calculus -- and giving this a military edge might not be a bad thing.

The ouster of Milosevic and his being tried by the International Criminal Court is perceived to be the height of success by some who served in the Clinton administration. Saddam Hussein, to many of these Clintonites, was an equally appropriate target -- and their opposition if any to Bush's approach is procedural and cosmetic, not a debate about end goals.

It has become increasingly clear -- but this letter seals the reality -- that both political parties have some real convulsions ahead among those who want to control the helm of foreign policy. The Dems have a version of neocon-lite, and the Republicans have neocon-heavies -- and they can work together when need be.

The realists and classic liberal internationalists are at odds with these policy/political machines and feel uncomfortable that America is cementing its position in the world through a rough-edged attempt at military dominance of the global system. Realists see that financial, political, and other logistical constraints will frustrate American efforts to subordinate the world this way. And liberal internationalists see this as antithetical to the kind of institution building that inspired high degrees of collaboration among nations who ended up pursuing largely U.S.-directed policies.

I feel that it is wrong-headed to solicit an increase of 25,000 (or any number of) troops a year until we step back and ask what is broken in our military/defense system.

America spends roughly the equivalent dollar amount on defense as all other nations in the entire world. It seems remarkable that given that enormous expenditure, the security deliverables seem so dismal and paltry. Americans don't feel safe. Shouldn't we be getting more bang for the buck? (or, maybe it is less bang if pursuing stability and peace...)

We need to review what contingencies of the future we should be preparing for -- and ask ourselves to what degree the Pentagon can deliver on these. My sense is that we have no clue -- and we tend to throw more money and missions at a military that is good at attacking things, but not really good at building nations or establishing civil society abroad.

I admire for their attempts to build a new bold foreign policy for Democrats -- Peter Beinart, Will Marshall, Jim Steinberg, Craig Kennedy and some of the others on the list of signatories -- but I believe that they have fallen into a trap of confusing "toughness" and "bigness" with effectiveness. Whereas a larger army might look tougher and more sizeable, there is absolutely nothing about size that makes the military better at confronting assymetric threats, or better at the cultivation of stable civil societies abroad, or even at fighting some kinds of war.

There is a great deal of inertia built into our current military structure -- and enormous waste. We spend about $30 billion on our entire foreign policy efforts outside the Pentagon budget -- and that is a rounding error for what the Department of Defense receives eacy year.

The very last thing we should be doing is throwing not only money but also human lives into a military complex that has not been held to account for its questionable performance.

In my view, PNAC's letter evades the great questions of the day of what we as a nation are all about and how we should organize to fulfill our goals. The letter notes "the dangers of continued federal deficits, and the fiscal difficulty of increasing the number of troops," but it does not deal with what the real trade-offs are. It has not advocated a reversal of the Bush tax cuts or argued that we ought to stop pumping tax dollars into Bush's pet faith-based initiatives project and many other budget items.

This letter implies that America can do it all alone -- that our problems abroad would be solved after an incremental increase in troops of 25,000 a year (none should be gay though remember). Some are trying to make this a battle between Rumsfeld's notion of a "smart soldier" or "smart military unit" that is more flexible, informed by intelligence, lighter, moves quickly vs. General Shinseki's big military solution.

The answer is that neither of these are the right solution. We need a military -- and one capable of dealing with those who are hostile to our interests. But nation-building is not a competency of the military -- and not a competency of our government as currently structured. Francis Fukuyama has pointed this out. But the biggest deficit in our thinking is that America has got to get beyond the hubris of its "multicultural man's burden" and instead realize that occupation and neo-colonial like activities undermine our brand globally.

If there are not clear forces on the ground prepared to pursue their justice (perhaps with our or Europe's advice) that are identical to the cultural and ethnic make-up of the government under attack, the the right answer is to not invade and not occupy until the circumstances are right.

More later on the Iraq elections. I would like to know whether anyone has solid numbers on the Sunni turnout.

-- Steve Clemons

If one wanted to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt about his sermon-ish and idealistic inaugural address, then one of the first fronts of reform in U.S. foreign policy must be our relations with Uzbekistan and Islam Karimov, one of the true monstrous cretins at the helm of a government today.

America gave Uzbekistan $500 million to secure basing rights in this country -- and much of that money is allegedly being siponed into the private accounts of Karimov's thuggish allies. We have evidence that Karimov killed several, if not many more, of his political adversaries by boiling them alive in water. (Here is some evidence -- but do not look at these if disturbed by graphic images; these are pretty disturbing.) He is a dictator of gross proportions -- but he is still an ally of the United States in the war against terror.

According to this report, Karimov is now applying extra-territorial penalties on human rights and aid groups for 'his perception' of their activities in Georgia and Ukraine.

From the AP report:

Uzbek president Islam Karimov on Friday threatened to restrict the activities of Western aid groups that he alleged had helped stage public protests in Georgia and Ukraine, and voiced hope that the neighboring Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan would avoid such events in its election year.

"Examination of some Western aid groups has shown that their activity goes far beyond declared programs and it aims at certain goals," Karimov said in a speech before the newly elected parliament.

"We have enough power to curb the aid groups that violate our laws, I hope those sitting at the balcony understand that," Karimov said, pointing to the place where Western diplomats sit.

Last year, the Uzbek authorities accused U.S. aid groups of interfering in the country's internal affairs by helping banned opposition organizations, and they tightened restrictions on foreign aid groups, shutting the office of American philanthropist George Soros' Open Society Institute for alleged anticonstitutional activity.

The Karimov government does not allow free press or independent political opposition to operate in Uzbekistan.

Here is my note to TWN readers -- particularly any U.S. military stationed in Uzbekistan -- as well as aid workers and NGO employees who work in the country.

I would really like to know the true extent of our aid and involvement with Uzbekistan. Post a note and share what you know -- or better yet, send me an email at steve@thewashingtonnote.com.

I have tried to do some quick scans of DoD and government websites, and it seems that in some cases we have programs with Uzbekistan, but the news sometimes indicates that some of this is on hold.

Karimov is the kind of character that Saddam Hussein was a couple of decades ago -- someone whom the U.S. knew was a criminal thug but helped build up anyway because it appeared to be in our short-term interests. Karimov could be a real problem for us down the road -- and we will find that we armed him and made his party bosses rich.

Even one of our flagship U.S. firms, Coca-Cola, is in cahoots with Karimov. Check out this strange and bizarre story that involves the ex-son-in-law of Karimov and his ownership of a Coca-Cola operation. I imagine that anyone that makes it up the ladder in that country must be used to operating and prevailing in a place where the norm is to destroy your enemies. But Coca-Cola dumped the owner and became the lap dog of Karimov and his goons in one night.

While this story came out in August 2001 -- I checked, and it's still raging. So, I would like to hear some arguments from reasonable people why America should not cut off Karimov totally -- and whether we ought not to hold firms like Coca-Cola accountable for their role in enriching the world's thugs.

-- Steve Clemons

Remember the EP-3 spy plane incident with China? That is the time I got to debate Richard Perle on Crossfire about U.S.-China relations. We were spying on China from the air, testing their radar systems as well -- something all major nations do.

But while spying, and testing of defense systems, is a normal, humdrum fact of a world with too many military systems aimed at each other -- testing a potential foe's systems very aggressively can trigger war quickly.

Apparently, Hersh's story on our preparation for war with Iran is dead on target. Speaking of targets, the USAF is aggressively testing Iran's air defense capabilities in a "dangerous game of cat and mouse" according to this UPI story.

Here are the first grafs:

The U.S. Air Force is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Iran's ayatollahs, flying American combat aircraft into Iranian airspace in an attempt to lure Tehran into turning on air defense radars, thus allowing U.S. pilots to grid the system for use in future targeting data, administration officials said.

"We have to know which targets to attack and how to attack them," said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The flights, which have been going on for weeks, are being launched from sites in Afghanistan and Iraq and are part of Bush administration attempts collect badly needed intelligence on Iran's possible nuclear weapons development sites, these sources said, speaking on condition of strict anonymity.

"These Iranian air defense positions are not just being observed, they're being 'templated,'" an administration official said, explaining that the flights are part of a U.S. effort to develop "an electronic order of battle for Iran" in case of actual conflict.

In the event of an actual clash, Iran's air defense radars would be targeted for destruction by air-fired U.S. anti-radiation or ARM missiles, he said.

I'm off to Montreal to hear what the Canadians think of the military exploits of its big neighbor to the south.

-- Steve Clemons

I ran across two very interesting articles today. The first is titled "As Green as a Neocon: Why Iraq Hawks are Driving Priuses."

Read the piece, but in it author Robert Bryce notes that super-neocons James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney are born-again advocates of fuel efficiency in cars (Woolsey now drives a 58 mile-per-gallon Prius) and plant-based bio fuels.

My former New America Foundation colleague Ricardo Bayon made the link between America's SUV culture, ravenous oil consumption and terrorism some time ago in this Atlantic Monthly article, but lots of others have made the exact same case. Almost all of them, however, are progressive, pro-environment types. Woolsey, Gaffney & Co. are certainly odd bedfellows.

Then, I read this Wall Street Journal article (which I cannot link) titled "Oil, Oil, Everywhere. . ." by authors of a new oil book The Bottomless Well Peter Huber and Mark Mills on the cost and politics of oil extraction.

Here are the opening grafs:

The price of oil remains high only because the cost of oil remains so low. We remain dependent on oil from the Mideast not because the planet is running out of buried hydrocarbons, but because extracting oil from the deserts of the Persian Gulf is so easy and cheap that it's risky to invest capital to extract somewhat more stubborn oil from far larger deposits in Alberta.

The cost of oil comes down to the cost of finding, and then lifting or extracting. First, you have to decide where to dig. Exploration costs currently run under $3 per barrel in much of the Mideast, and below $7 for oil hidden deep under the ocean. But these costs have been falling, not rising, because imaging technology that lets geologists peer through miles of water and rock improves faster than supplies recede. Many lower-grade deposits require no new looking at all.

To be crude (pardon the pun), they and I think that the problem is clearly cheap oil. Cheap oil inhibits the search for alternative fuel sources.

I recently heard a superb lecture at a semi-secret leadership retreat of Sandia National Weapons Laboratories in New Mexico (they watch over the nation's nuclear stockpile) given by Cal Tech professor and Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil author David Goodstein in which he said flatly, "America has an oil crisis problem -- not because it is too expensive, but because it is too cheap." He said, "The Perrier in your refrigerator is more expensive than oil." Goodstein's book, by the way, is an amazing read -- highly recommend it.

I am not an expert on the politics or the economics of oil extraction, refinement and distribution -- but I have sat through countless meetings on the subject and feel that some core realities are seeping in to my consciousness about the subject.

And I guess that at some level I have been of the view that oil has been cheap for a very long time -- and that access to below 'real market cost' oil and gas by American firms and consumers have built vested interests, stifled innovation, and made us all a bit lazy and complacent about the subject.

Europe and Japan operate their economies with a price of consumed gas at the pump that is three to four times the cost here in the U.S. When I was last in London, a gallon of gas was $8.00. Most of the cost of gas in Japan and Europe is an enormous tax -- but still, these economies have self-imposed a harsher energy consumption cost on themselves and are still growing pretty soundly.

This all brings me to a dinner discussion hosted by the Heinrich Boell Foundation here in Washington a couple of months ago. The Boell Foundation is a political foundation based in Germany, with offices around the world -- including Washington, and it is affiliated with the Green Party in Germany. All of Germany's leading political parties have such foundations, and they perform similar work in civil society building as their American counterparts, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute.

The dinner speaker that evening at Restaurant Nora (known for high-end organic cuisine) was a Member of the German Bundestag one of the founders and former Chairpersons of the Green Party, Fritz Kuhn. Kuhn is a thoughtful, very smart guy.

That night though, we politely wrestled over the topic of the cost of oil. He argued that America and the world had a problem: the cost of oil was too high.

Since the cost of oil was too high, as he put it, he argued that we needed to move more expeditiously on alternative fuel source development -- and made a lot of suggestions -- and said that we bore a moral responsibility to developing nations to keep the price of oil low. Otherwise, these developing nations would be unable to build their economies, and accumulate wealth to drag themselves out of poverty.

I asked Kuhn a genuine question (that I really did not ask rhetorically, or as if I already knew the answer. . .which I didn't); I asked him whether he had the oil cost problem reversed. I said that by keeping the price of oil low, every user's dependency on oil is maintained with little real incentive to move to alternatives. Raising the price of oil would increase the investment and interest in renewables and alternative fuel and energy sources if access to oil were squeezed.

Furthermore, the developing world needs to know that the infrastructure investment costs required in an oil economy vs. a hydrogen economy or vs. some other energy generating source can be enormous and can kill flexibility. I asked Kuhn why we were helping to addict China and India to cheap oil consumption, rather than raising the price and access so as to get these economies to build a new 21st century energy infrastructure.

Thirdly, I noted that Europe was already operating from such a base rate for the cost of oil to consumers and firms that it could easily absorb a serious price rise by decreasing taxes in tandem with the rise -- and America, on the other hand, would be compelled to adjust.

It seemed to me that the only negative downside to this was that higher oil prices now would put more money in the hands of feudal chieftains and terrorists in the Middle East, which Woolsey, Gaffney, and Ricardo Bayon think is bad.

I encouraged Kuhn to think more creatively about this and said that the Green Party movement could have a huge positive environmental impact if it could find a way to acquire oil leases and future contracts, forcing a squeeze on them, and drive global prices significantly higher.

Fritz Kuhn didn't buy my logic -- but didn't convince me I was wrong either. I think he didn't see the disconnect I saw between low oil prices on one hand and changed consumption habits on the other.

I know that there are probably a ton of problems with my formulation -- and feel free to throw critiques (constructive ones) my way. But if the problem with oil-dependency is real, then one way to get progressives and neocons to think differently about alternative sources of fuel is to drive the price up.

And in the end -- developing economies, our environment, and our geopolitical dysfunction with the Middle East could be improved.

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. For those of you interested, I will be meandering through Montreal for the next several days with lots of students who are at McGill University for an annual Model United Nations fest. It's interesting to see so many young people -- conservatives, centrists, and liberals -- get into the United Nations as a hobby.

I will be back in time to join a panel discussion on Monday afternoon -- sponsored by the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies -- on "Transatlantic Relations after the Inauguration." Details here on the website of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

-- Steve Clemons

I was just invited to John Ashcroft's "Farewell Heritage Lecture" scheduled for Tuesday, 1 February, 11 a.m. at the Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium.

The title of Ashcroft's talk: True Faith and Allegiance.

The meeting host is Edwin Meese III, Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy, and Chairman, Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Heritage Foundation (and of course former Attorney General).

Here is the pitch paragraph that came with the announcement:

This nation's fundamental commitment to the rule of law, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution, has promoted unparalleled liberty and equality, and prosperity and justice -- not to mention the safety and happiness of the American people -- for more than two centuries.

It has always been the case, but especially now in a time of war, that sustaining these fundamental precepts demands our eternal vigilance. There is no more critical defender of these principles than the Attorney General of the United States. As he concludes his tenure in that office, Attorney General Ashcroft will share with us his reflections on the state of our Constitution, the rule of law, and the crucial importance of our mutual work to support and defend the principles that will always make America a beacon of liberty at home and throughout the world.

What can one say, or ask, that is not obvious? I'm sure that Heritage would want a large turn-out for this event, and I don't believe in disrupting other organization's programs and don't want anyone reading this to attend with the purpose of disrupting the meeting. However, I hope someone asks where Guantanamo, military tribunals, torture memos, visa entry horror stories, and other White House approved behaviors that seem totally at odds with "his nation's fundamental commitment to the rule of law" fit into Ashcroft's mental road map.

And how does Ashcroft square Gonzales's disregard for treaties and covenants of law that seem to have been regularly sidestepped by him -- in Austin and Washington?

Here is the RSVP number: (202) 675-1752.

Asking questions of those in power is a public duty. Make your questions simple.

-- Steve Clemons

Photo credit: USHMM Photo Archives

Mark Leon Goldberg has just published a provocative and important snippet in the latest American Prospect, which I am reprinting in its entirety with permission.

Goldberg (who used to be just 'Mark Goldberg' when he was my brilliant research assistant but now has become 'Mark Leon Goldberg' as his fame advances) exposes the censorship obsessions of Alabama State Senator Gerald Allen who not only wants to block same-sex marriages (something unfortunately not all that controversial) but wants to bury all extant copies of The Color Purple and Cat on a Hat Tin Roof.

This kind of intolerant bigotry and anti-intellectualism anywhere in America is dangerous and reminds one of Nazi book-burnings or Mao's horrifying cultural revolution.

Unlike Teresa Heinz-Kerry who didn't remember (for a moment) that George W. Bush's wife was a librarian, loves books, and allegedly loves knowledge -- I do. Bush should embrace his wife's love of culture and tell his base that they are undermining their nation and are not real Americans if they persist with their censorship obsessions.

Diane Ravitch, one of my board members and a prominent innovator and policy thinker in education, wrote one of the most important books on the pervasive censorship that already exists in America's educational ecosystem. It is called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.

Here is Mark Leon Goldberg's excellent snippet today:

American Prospect
Burying Tennessee by Mark Leon Goldberg

No one doubts Alabama state Representative Gerald Allen's sincerity when he says he wants to protect Americans from an insidious homosexual plot to redesign our nation's social fabric. One year ago, in February 2004, when constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage were just becoming trendy, Allen beat his colleagues in the Statehouse to the punch and introduced a bill that would amend the Alabama Constitution to define marriage as "a unique relationship between a man and a woman."

Allen's bill is pending committee action in Alabama's lower house. Clearly emboldened, however, by the success of anti-gay-marriage initiatives on last November's ballots, Allen has prefiled a new bill for the 2005 legislative session, beginning February 1, that would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle."

Under Allen's bill, such works as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Color Purple would fall under the embargo. After all, they contain protagonists who are either gay or of a somewhat ambiguous sexuality. On the December 3 Hannity & Colmes show, Allen warned that these two particular works were dangerous precisely because they blur the boundaries of acceptable behavior. "We have got to draw the line somewhere," Allen averred, "because the family and marriages -- it's coming apart."

For Allen, merely banning these books doesn't deliver the kick he's after. What he'd really like to do, he said, would be to "dig a big hole, dump them in, and bury them."

Of course, Tennessee Williams isn't the only writer who blurred sexual boundaries. If Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is suggestive, how about that Old Testament? After all, 1 Samuel 18:1-4 notes rather coyly that David and Jonathan were more than just, ahem, friends. Sayeth the text: "After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father's house. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt."

So if you see some guy in Alabama burying 1 Samuel, the smart money says it's Gerald Allen.
(end)

Thanks for the good piece, Mark.

-- Steve Clemons

postscript
This and this just sent in from newly appointed legal advisor to The Washington Note, Brian Greer, which hits some of the same buttons as Goldberg's article above in the battle over language as American culture finds itself increasingly hijacked by anti-intellectual and intolerant religious zealots.

-- Steve Clemons

This news just out of Iraq about the death of 31 Marines when a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter went down. No word yet as to whether this was an accident, or whether it was brought down by hostile fire.

Fox News and other stations are already asking whether or not our armed forces have equipment good enough to support their safe presence in Iraq.

I don't buy the line from some on the left that these soldiers made their own calls regarding military service and should suffer quietly the consequences of their enrollment as spear-carriers for American empire. Those whose criminal negligence led us into this botched war in Iraq are not the soldiers -- but rather those in civilian leadership.

If we have not armed our soldier's vehicles with appropriate armor, if we are transporting them in 'ancient helicopters' as one commentator just said on Fox, then America is yet again showing the world -- friends and enemies alike -- our LIMITS.

This is such a mistake because other powerful players will not be able to resist their ambitions and will move to secure territory, dominance over ethnic minorities within their borders, the ingredients to a wide variety of WMDs, and many other nasty goals because America has knotted up its attention and military capacity in Iraq.

Friends will not trust our ability to deliver on our commitments -- and foes will be more cavalier in their goals, thinking that America, while it talks a tough line, simply has too many self-inflicted constraints on its actions.

It shouldn't be this way. I feel badly for these killed Marines and their families -- and for the many other victims of this war.

John Kerry was right when he said that our engagement in Iraq was the "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," but was wrong to not throw it back in Bush's face when the President kept taunting him with these words.

Kerry should have stood his ground. Rahm Emanuel should be bolder. Howard Dean, who may be the next Chair of the DNC, never had to evolve to this position.

Democrats, in their efforts to adopt a new toughness in their foreign policy as Peter Beinart has suggested, need to avoid being seduced by the cosmetics of "toughness" which confuses attitude with effectiveness. The smart thing to do was to hide the boundary lines of American military and financial capacity. Bush and those who supported his decision made a stupid and ill-informed choice because American interests have been terribly undermined by showing all our limits. American power is deflating because of these unwise decisions.

And more than 1,300 Americans are dead, more than 10,000 wounded -- and with deaths and casualties on the Iraq side two orders of magnitude greater.

So, I salute those Marines who died. They should not have been there -- not under the terms they are there now.

But the Dems are rolling over, with lots of theatricism and cat-calls about the war and its proponents, but they still give the President everything he wants -- including Condi Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State this morning.

-- Steve Clemons

My colleague Michael Lind has a compelling commentary piece in today's Financial Times that clearly articulates the stark and bitter gap between American pretensions as expressed last Thursday by President Bush and the realities of global disdain for and rejection of America's current foreign policy behavior.

The importance of Lind's piece is that he points to a new global rejectionism of American policy and leadership in the world. Charles Kupchan predicted that this would happen; and G. John Ikenberry saw the potential of what Lind writes about in his formulation of the "Liberal Leviathian." I think that America is intoxicated by the notion of its powerful position in the world and is unaware that its circumstances are rapidly eroding.

The article is so good that I am going to reprint in its entirety here. (Normally I italicize articles or long quotes, but I won't today to make it easier to read.)

Financial Times, 25 January 2005
How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation
by Michael Lind

In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.

Consider Asean Plus Three (APT), which unites the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea. This group has the potential to be the world's largest trade bloc, dwarfing the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. The deepening ties of the APT member states represent a major diplomatic defeat for the US, which hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum to limit the growth of Asian economic regionalism at American expense. In the same way, recent moves by South American countries to bolster an economic community represent a clear rejection of US aims to dominate a western-hemisphere free trade zone.

Consider, as well, the EU's rapid progress toward military independence. American protests failed to prevent the EU establishing its own military planning agency, independent of the Nato alliance (and thus of Washington). Europe is building up its own rapid reaction force. And despite US resistance, the EU is developing Galileo, its own satellite network, which will break the monopoly of the US global positioning satellite system.

The participation of China in Europe's Galileo project has alarmed the US military. But China shares an interest with other aspiring space powers in preventing American control of space for military and commercial uses. Even while collaborating with Europe on Galileo, China is partnering Brazil to launch satellites. And in an unprecedented move, China recently agreed to host Russian forces for joint Russo-Chinese military exercises.

The US is being sidelined even in the area that Mr Bush identified in last week's address as America's mission: the promotion of democracy and human rights. The EU has devoted far more resources to consolidating democracy in post-communist Europe than has the US. By contrast, under Mr Bush, the US hypocritically uses the promotion of democracy as the rationale for campaigns against states it opposes for strategic reasons. Washington denounces tyranny in Iran but tolerates it in Pakistan. In Iraq, the goal of democratisation was invoked only after the invasion, which was justified earlier by claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was collaborating with al-Qaeda.

Nor is American democracy a shining example to mankind. The present one-party rule in the US has been produced in part by the artificial redrawing of political districts to favour Republicans, reinforcing the domination of money in American politics. America's judges -- many of whom will be appointed by Mr Bush -- increasingly behave as partisan political activists in black robes. America's antiquated winner-take-all electoral system has been abandoned by most other democracies for more inclusive versions of proportional representation.

In other areas of global moral and institutional reform, the US today is a follower rather than a leader. Human rights? Europe has banned the death penalty and torture, while the US is a leading practitioner of execution. Under Mr Bush, the US has constructed an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently occurred. The international rule of law? For generations, promoting international law in collaboration with other nations was a US goal. But the neoconservatives who dominate Washington today mock the very idea of international law. The next US attorney general will be the White House counsel who scorned the Geneva Conventions as obsolete.

A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere -- from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.

It is true that the US remains the only country capable of projecting military power throughout the world. But unipolarity in the military sphere, narrowly defined, is not preventing the rapid development of multipolarity in the geopolitical and economic arenas -- far from it. And the other great powers are content to let the US waste blood and treasure on its doomed attempt to recreate the post-first world war British imperium in the Middle East.

That the rest of the world is building institutions and alliances that shut out the US should come as no surprise. The view that American leaders can be trusted to use a monopoly of military and economic power for the good of humanity has never been widely shared outside of the US. The trend toward multipolarity has probably been accelerated by the truculent unilateralism of the Bush administration, whose motto seems to be that of the Hollywood mogul: "Include me out."

In recent memory, nothing could be done without the US. Today, however, practically all new international institution-building of any long-term importance in global diplomacy and trade occurs without American participation.

In 1998 Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, said of the U.S.: "We are the indispensable nation." By backfiring, the unilateralism of Mr Bush has proven her wrong. The US, it turns out, is a dispensable nation.

Europe, China, Russia, Latin America and other regions and nations are quietly taking measures whose effect if not sole purpose will be to cut America down to size.

Ironically, the US, having won the cold war, is adopting the strategy that led the Soviet Union to lose it: hoping that raw military power will be sufficient to intimidate other great powers alienated by its belligerence. To compound the irony, these other great powers are drafting the blueprints for new international institutions and alliances. That is what the US did during and after the second world war.

But that was a different America, led by wise and constructive statesmen like Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who wrote of being "present at the creation." The bullying approach of the Bush administration has ensured that the US will not be invited to take part in designing the international architecture of Europe and Asia in the 21st century. This time, the US is absent at the creation.

The writer is senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC

My colleague lays out the 'real' reality of things today. Zbigniew Brzezinski has been saying that we shouldn't get too worked up about the President's inaugural comments, particularly since we can't afford the agenda he articulated and because it played more like a Sunday sermon than an articulation of national strategy.

Zbig thinks we should just ignore Bush and get to real issues. I tend to agree but think that Bush's words are the sort that ought to feel like cold water tossed on a dazed person's face.

I think Mike Lind's contribution today gives us our place on the map -- but it is remarkable that Lind's commentary seems so unique today. Given the the pervasive subscription to myth and mystique of false American leadership in the world by many in the White House and much of Washington, I guess I should not be surprised.

-- Steve Clemons

Michael Powell, in my view, has not only been an unmitigated disaster as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he has presided over the gutting and flattening of broadband and IT innovation in the country, that may only just barely survive his stewardship.

The economic cost of lost jobs, diminished rates of investment, and the monopolistic nightmare of empowered regional Baby Bells hostile to new competition will mean that for years forward a "Michael Powell Effect" will mean a big, fat drag on the information technology sector, the broad economy and nation.

Here is an editorial that ran in yesterday's Boston Herald. I am convinced that it must be facetious praise for the Secretary of State's son. But on the other hand, it may be earnest applause. If so, it is still hilarious.

I love the last two grafs:

"I'm a big believer in the First Amendment," Powell has said, "but often I'm incredibly uneasy about lines we have to draw. No one takes pleasure in trying to decide whether this potty-mouth word or that potty-mouth word is a violation of the law."

Finding a replacement with Powell's intellect and sense of balance will be a real challenge for President Bush's second term.

But here is the entire piece:

Boston Herald
Editorial -- FCC chair's shoes huge ones to fill
22 January 2005

Finding a replacement with Powell's intellect and sense of balance will be a real challenge for President Bush's second term.

Powell will be on the prowl now for his next gig -- and serving on corporate boards is a frequent next step for someone in his situation. Let's watch and see where he goes first, second, and third. I want to see which Baby Bells jump for him first.

If this happens, the true corruption behind some of his decisions will be evident.

To be fair to Powell, he denies he is on the job hunt. This was reported in yesterday's Washington Times:

Mr. Powell declined to discuss his plans, although he is believed to be interested in the presidency of his alma mater, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., a job that will open when the current president, Timothy J. Sullivan, retires June 30.

"I really want to work until my very last day here, so it's really not appropriate for me to be job searching," he said.

I'm more worried about the job "positioning" he was doing at earlier points in his tenure -- but I'll be pleasantly surprised if Powell avoids the allure of Baby Bell enticements given all the favorable, anti-competition decisions he helped generate for them.

-- Steve Clemons

I just received a tongue-in-cheek email from Jim Pinkerton who offers "You'd never get the idea that we are seeking to influence the course of Iraqi democracy -- and that's the good news here: the Iraqis won't notice such favoritism, either" and then attached the following pic and link.

We all know that Iraq is a mess -- but seriously -- why are we flying Allawi around on military aircraft? This is outrageous. Even if I found it myself to overlook the thuggishness of Allawi's past, it is inappropriate and anti-democratic for us to be offering such "soft money" support to Allawi's campaign.

Someone call John McCain and his campaign reform knights of the roundtable Rick Davis and Trevor Potter. Looks like we need a campain finance reform initiative that blocks Department of Defense soft money contributions.

U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters fly over Baghdad as they carry Iraq's Prime Minister lyad Allawi to meet with residents in the northern city of Tikrit, Saturday, Jan. 15, 2005.

Allawi acknowledged last week there were parts of Iraq that would be too unsafe for voting in a January 30 election, as guerrillas killed 20 people in attacks. Allawi promised to spend $2 billion to beef up Iraq's security forces to combat insurgents trying to derail the vote. (AP Photo/Faleh Kheiber, Pool)

-- Steve Clemons

Sebastian Mallaby, editorial writer and economics columnist at the Washington Post and a former economics correspondent for the Economist, is a radical centrist. He is someone who strongly believes in the benefits of neoliberalism -- but knows that nations at the lower end of the globe's economic ladder have been repeatedly screwed by those at the top and are frequently and inhumanely forced to grovel for even the simplest tools to move their economies forward.

Mallaby has written compellingly and passionately about the crime of farm subsidies in Europe and the U.S. as well as the inhumanity of not doing more to help those in the worse off nations afford the drugs to help set their people on a more healthy foundation.

Sebastian Mallaby is no doubt the author of the Washington Post editorial today about the race to head the World Bank. Some people viscerally dislike 'The Bank,' but as Mallaby (whom we suppose deserved the byline) writes:

It matters who takes over the World Bank, because the institution is both powerful and fragile. It is powerful because it pumps out around $20 billion in commercial loans, subsidized credits and grants each year and because its 10,000-strong staff represents the strongest concentration of development expertise anywhere. The combination of financial and technical muscle has given the bank a lead role in many ventures that affect American interests, from reconstruction in the Balkans and Afghanistan to the campaign against AIDS to the refining of development theory.

Interestingly, outgoing World Bank President James Wolfensohn wanted to stay in his job -- but his hopes for that may have been dashed by Sebastian Mallaby's biographic volume that portrayed both Wolfensohn's larger-than-life brilliance and monstrousness, intertwined in a complex way that Mallaby argues ultimately served the bank and the cause of global development well.

But Wolfensohn -- whom I have heard from several sources -- thought that Mallaby's book would lionize him and set him up for a third term then thought that Mallaby's book destroyed his candidacy. The irony of all this is that I think that Wolfensohn's immature and childish hostility to Mallaby after the book was published may have reinforced in the minds of World Bank watchers at the White House and Treasury that Wolfensohn was too mercurial and "volcanic" and had to go.

It is quite a trick to have both the head of the World Bank irritated at you as well as the NGOs who also critique Wolfensohn and the Bank skeptical. I guess that's what makes Mallaby the radical centrist I think he is. NGOs have called some of the impact of Mallaby's commentary on World Bank projects and the NGO community the "Mallaby Effect."

Back to the races. Colin Powell and U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick were early favorites to succeed Wolfensohn, but Zoellick is now pledged to serve as Condi Rice's Deputy at State. That leaves Powell, whom the editorial today endorses for the job:

Departing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell passes them (the tests of being an experienced manager familiar with complex public-sector organizations, a persuasive communicator, and must understand development), but his appetite for the job is uncertain. If Mr. Powell is not interested, the Bush administration should think outside the box.

The candidates whom Mallaby thinks do not pass the test, which he notes in the Post editorial are Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Treasury Undersecretary John B. Taylor, and State Department Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias.

I agree with Mallaby that these three don't cut the profile of a Wolfensohn successor -- and one World Bank official I had dinner with last night tells me that the Europeans may decide to go to war with us if we push Taylor. They really hate him (which may improve his chances with Bush).

But outside the box -- two other candidates that have been floated in other World Bank commentary are Bill Clinton and former New Jersey Governor and EPA Chief Christine Todd Whitman. Whitman has just writte a new book titled It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America.

There must be some stuff in Whitman's book that will give the Bush administration some heartburn; otherwise the book won't sell. I think that she passes Mallaby's test. I need to acknowledge that Christine Whitman has just joined my board at the New America Foundation.

The World Bank and the world beyond American shores would love to see Bill Clinton take the job -- but I don't think he'll do it. My World Bank friend here last night said that Bush might be motivated to make the offer to Clinton so as to get him out of Bush's hair and occupy him with issues of low priority to the White House. The other upside for Bush would be that Clinton's potential World Bank role would weaken Hillary Clinton's political linkages with New York and compete with her opportunities of pursuing the presidency.

But I'm intrigued. Giving Clinton another big organization, a bully pulpit even. . .If Bush and Clinton are seriously considering this -- I think Clinton could use the World Bank in many ways that would upend the White House. But as my friend last night said, the Bank would be forced to cancel its intern program.

But I am with Mallaby on this and think that who runs this important institution matters. Let's hope that Powell, Whitman, or some other out of the box candidate gets the nod.

-- Steve Clemons

As some of my readers know, I used to be a wannabe Politburo watcher and specialist on Soviet strategy and weapons systems.

There are some times when I wish the late Andrei Gromyko, former Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs and Politburo member, was around to give lessons in just saying "No." He is remembered semi-fondly by historians as "Mr. Nyet."

Some of our leading Democratic voices, Rahm Emanuel the latest, seem to have to dissemble every time the subject of the Iraq War comes up -- particularly on whether the respective politico would have supported the war given knowledge today that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's control.

Here is what Emanuel said on Tim Russert's Meet the Press last weekend (you can actually watch the segment here):

MR. RUSSERT: You voted--you said you would have voted for the war if you had been in Congress.

MR. RUSSERT: This is the way Democrats are talking in 2005. But back when they were voting for the war, and three-fourths of both houses of Congress voted to authorize the president to go to war, as a candidate you said you would.

Note to Rahm:

Rahm, the Iraq War -- whether one adored or detested Saddam Hussein -- was a reckless gamble by the United States that has punctured the mystique of American power in the world and shown our would-be enemies our limits, financial and military. The right answer is that this battle with Hussein, which was distinct from the real-and-present-danger posed by bin Laden and al Qaeda, should have been pursued when the strategic circumstances before, during and after an Iraq-focused military effort were clearly and overwhelmingly in our favor.

That assessment of interest was never clearly calculated by the Bush administation and support from Congress was blind. Knee-jerk, emotional impulses drove us into this mess in Iraq with little accountability (yet) for those neoconservatives and their followers who led us into this quagmire.

How could you say you would not produce a different decision?

Here is what I wrote when John Kerry dissembled in similar fashion. I should really acknowledge that you and Kerry did not dissemble. You fairly clearly acknowledge that you follow Bush's logic and support his ultimate decision -- and would have done the same even when informed with empirical information that would least most rational beings to change course.

This "Zell Miller Light" strategy seems problematic to me if this is the way you hope to get more Democrats elected as the new head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

I think you are brilliant, by the way -- one of the very smartest Members of Congress in fact. But in the spirit of a "fair and balanced" critique, I hope you'll consider this alternative take on your position.

For those of you interested in more commentary on this, Arianna Huffington addresses Rahm Emanuel's comments as well and makes some broader suggestions regarding our engagement in Iraq.

Can we organize some "Just Say No" practice sessions?

-- Steve Clemons