I'm just getting my feet back on the ground after a long weekend in Maine. When I left DC, we were just starting to feel the shockwaves of the Democratic debate. Five days later, it feels like they've only gotten stronger. The Obama and Clinton PR machines are still trying to get a boost (or contain the damage) from last week's 90-second argument over diplomacy with rival countries.

I did some reflecting on what all this means when I was in Acadia National Park, one of the country's most beautiful places (I thought about posting a picture of Clinton or Obama, but this shot of Acadia's Otter Point is a much more refreshing sight in the midst of the long campaign season).

I was in a bit of a news vacuum and didn't get to read what others were saying. So it was a nice surprise when, upon my return, much of my views were already reflected here on this blog. Steve makes two important points: first, that Clinton must not leave the impression that she won't deal with "bad guys"; and second, that what Clinton actually said leaves a lot of room for high-level engagement with hostile countries. Sameer rightly points out that Obama never "promised" to meet with anyone, as some of his rivals have suggested.

This furor started a week ago, so part of me is tempted to let Steve's and Sameer's insightful comments to speak for themselves and move on. Weighing in now only contributes to the outrageous media maelstrom that currently surrounds electoral politics.

But this is one of those rare moments in which the ongoing media storm actually serves the country well. If it gets big enough, both candidates will have to make moves. For both candidates, the right moves politically are the right moves policy-wise, too.

Clinton probably got the better of the CNN debate exchange, appearing both prudent and cautious. However, her subsequent attacks on Obama have left the impression that she's cool on diplomacy. There's a way she can bolster her reputation as the seasoned, experienced candidate and still emphasize her commitment to diplomacy: she can outline (perhaps in an op-ed) her strategy for the U.S. to proactively start talks with some or all of the governments of Syria, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.

Primary voters don't need Clinton to promise that she'll meet every Head of State personally. They need to be reassured that a Clinton administration will come to the table instead of holding out and setting preconditions for negotiations.

For his part, Obama hasn't yet decided how ambitious his agenda is. One moment he's invoking the spirit of Ronald Reagan, suggesting that negotiating with adversaries has always been commonsense; the next moment, his campaign is about "turning a page."

The Reagan/Kennedy invocations work for Obama to set the frame and he should keep using them. But let's be honest: no presidential candidate has ever campaigned on a platform of direct, high-level talks with hostile nations.

Obama's campaign seems to be hard-wired to avoid risk and to project moderation, but the candidate needs to resist that push and instead embrace the boldness of his idea. An "Axis of Frank Dialogue" tour would signify far more than even "turning a page." It would mean writing a new chapter in the most progressive, revolutionary way.

What matters most to me in this skirmish is that both candidates are prepared to go to the negotiating table at some level without arrogantly suggesting that others need to ante up first, as the current administration does.

Both candidates have an opportunity to make that point in ways that reinforce their respective identities. Whether it's Clinton's experienced leadership or Obama's future-oriented optimism is of secondary importance to me for the time being. What matters is that we start talking.

-- Scott Paul

I have just returned from a quick weekend trip to London which I will write about soon I hope, but am catching up with the drama of DC debates about Iraq, Iran, the Middle East in general.

One of the pieces that has attracted a lot of attention this weekend is an article written by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack in the New York Times suggesting that things are much better than we all think they are in Iraq.

O'Hanlan and Pollack saw what they saw and sensed morale among the US military to be what they felt it to be -- but I have my own network back there, and I just don't get the same read.

I also feel compelled to remind readers of a 2004 Washington Post article that I thought was brave and smart about America's deteriorated position in Iraq. The article was co-authored by former Deputy National Security advisor James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon and called for US withdrawal from Iraq.

I think that the foundation of this 2004 Steinberg/O'Hanlon piece remains true today -- and I know Steinberg has not changed his views -- whereas O'Hanlon has not only become an advocate of keeping American troops in Iraq but thinks things are going swimmingly on the military front.

I'm with Steinberg and just about every other long-time Iraq observer on this one.

-- Steve Clemons

A former "comfort woman" in South Korea

Mindy Kotler is director of Asia Policy Point a Washington nonprofit research center that studies the U.S. policy relationship with Japan and Northeast Asia.

Thank you Steve for this opportunity to guest blog about Asia on TWN. Like Steve, I lament the many missteps and poor decisions made by the Bush Administration. U.S. policy toward Asia is no exception. Although relations with Japan are believed to be going well, they are built upon a fragile base that masks a multitude of contradictions.

Today, July 30th, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Rep Mike Honda (D-CA) on January 31 asking the Government of Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II." The necessity of this resolution illustrates well the inadequacies of the Administration's Asia policy.

What the House of Representatives saw as an important step toward encouraging historical reconciliation in Asia, the Japanese government believed was affront to their national honor. The Bush Administration, although fearful the resolution would provoke right-wing anti-Americanism in Japan derailing alliance building, found itself unable to speak out against it. The Abe Administration's denial of the internationally accepted comfort women history was simply too embarrassing to a White House intent on promoting the U.S.-Japan Alliance as based on shared values. The resolution too easily exposed the current effort to shape a new U.S.-Japan relationship is at cross-purposes with other American foreign policy goals.

The resolution, H, Res. 121, was the fifth time Congress has considered legislation suggesting that Japan apologize for perpetrating the comfort women tragedy during its Pacific War. It is the second time the resolution was reported out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee positively (once under the Republicans and now under the Democrats). The success of this bipartisan resolution can be attributed to a number of factors, none that outweighed the other.

Unique to this Comfort Woman resolution was that a select, international group of scholars advised congressional staff on Japanese history and political process. These scholars advised on how the resolution would be perceived in Japan and prepared briefing papers that carefully explained and documented how and why the government of Japan had never given an official apology to the Comfort Women. They were also available to respond to Embassy of Japan's lobbying statements, to answer staffers' specific questions, and to explain the nuances of the Japanese language of apology. (My organization spearheaded this effort and many of these briefing papers can be found on our website.)

Members of Congress and their staff learned that Japanese governmental statements of policy, such as an important diplomatic apology to the Comfort Women, must either be approved by a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) or a Diet resolution to be considered official. Thus far, no Japanese apology to the Comfort Women meets either of these criteria. Moreover, it is the Cabinet not the prime minister that is constitutionally the chief executive of Japan. Without a Cabinet Decision backing up a prime minister's policy statement, he is only expressing his personal views. It was a lesson with implications far beyond that of Japan's historical responsibility.

The effort also demonstrated the growing political maturity of the Asian American community, especially Korean American. Asian American volunteers and the human rights groups, coordinated by two young Korean American Washington lobbyists, were able to bring the message to individual congressman and sign up a record 168 co-sponsors. The professionalism, energy, and experience of these lobbyists were critical for the Asian Americans to understand the legislative process and how to get its voice heard.

Groups as diverse as the College Shiks to Korean American dentists to Filipinos of Florida joined together on this issue. The work of international organizations such as Amnesty International and Polaris was also built upon and incorporated in the campaign. The issue was internationalized and recognized as more than an historical injustice between Korea and Japan.

Most important, the issue had become appealing. The victimization of women during conflict and the transnational crime of human trafficking are bipartisan causes on Capitol Hill. They are the "new" human rights issues. A February 15th hearing at the Asia, Pacific and Global Environment Subcommittee featuring three former Comfort Women -- two Korean and one Dutch -- provided an all too vivid picture of what it was like to be a sex slave for Imperial Japan. Their accounts of their rape echoed ones of those in contemporary Rwanda, Bosnia, and Burma. Their ordeal in Imperial Japan's state-sponsored system of rape camps resembled the degradations suffering by current victims of human trafficking.

In addition, the Congress believes in the importance of the U.S. Japan alliance to help maintain stability in East Asia. With a wary eye on a rising China and a newly nuclear North Korea, both sides of the aisle doubted Bush Administration abilities to keep the regional peace. During Bush's watch, China's influence expanded in Asia and its military budget expanded; North Korea acquired the bomb, South Korea leaned toward China, and Pacific maritime threats grew. In this fast changing environment remained old historic injustices that continued to keep our allies distant and wary of cooperating with Japan.

To address security in Asia, to counter a rising China and a nuclear North Korea, the only option the White House offered was a closer alliance with Japan, a country that had a constitutional restriction against active military cooperation and a poor history with its neighbors, especially China and Korea. To remilitarize Japan, the Administration allied itself with political forces in Japan that not only believed in a closer U.S.-Japan alliance, a strong Japanese military, and constitutional change, but also in a host of retrogressive notions of what it means to be Japanese, not the least being that the Pacific War was one of liberation against white colonialism.

Last September, Shinzo Abe became prime minister pledging to boost Japan's global security profile and rewrite its pacifist constitution. Those changes were welcome and encouraged by the Bush White House, who hoped to shape Japan into America's closest ally. This emphasis, however, ignored both the opinions of the Japanese people who did not put a priority on foreign affairs and the realities of unresolved historical injustices that perpetuated tensions between other US allies in the region and Japan. Abe's conservative nationalist agenda, while presenting a picture of a tough, prideful, even prickly Japan, also excite regional suspicions and hindered regional security cooperation.

Essentially, Japan as the linchpin of Asian regional security was a quick fix that clashed with the growing importance of issues of human dignity and social justice in global foreign relations. The lessons of Iraq, Darfur, Bosnia and countless other contemporary conflicts demonstrated that "hard" and "soft" power could not be separated. And in Asia, it seems that the history issues need to be resolved before security could be advanced. Thus the Comfort Woman resolution resonates with many members of Congress in several different ways.

On June 26, members of the House Foreign Relations Committee voted 39-2 to approve the resolution. No one disputed the facts that Japan had never officially apologized to the women (and men) that Imperial Japan enslaved them to work in its frontline brothels. The few congressional objections centered on whether it was a job of the U.S. Congress to question of policies of another country. Japan's massive, multi-million dollar lobbying to defeat the resolution's passage focused on an interpretation of the "facts."

These facts depended upon the source: the Embassy focused on the number of unofficial apologies, and the conservative Japanese groups, who on June 14 took an ad in the Washington Post, calling the Comfort Women paid prostitutes and chastising Congress for not having the "facts."

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) said at the Committee vote, "The true strength of a nation is tested when it is forced to confront the darkest chapters in its history. Will it have the courage to face up to the truth of its past, or will it hide from those truths in the desperate and foolish hope they will fade with time?" And House Speaker Pelosi responded to the vote by issuing an unprecedented Press Release supporting the resolution and saying, "They [the Comfort Women] have waited far too long [for an apology], but it is not too late to recognize their courage."

Reconciliation and regional peace in Asia are at the heart of Mr. Honda's resolution. Long overdue justice and respect for the Comfort Women are one of the elements needed to achieve this peace. There was wide, bipartisan support for H.Res.121 in Congress.

The resolution projects U.S. leadership and attention to the important--but currently unresolved--issues dividing America's Asian allies and exacerbating differences between countries in Asia. It is also good for our very close ally Japan, as its government seeks long-overdue recognition of Japan's 60-year history of constructive, responsible and resolutely peaceful membership in the modern world community.

-- Mindy Kotler

Sameer Lalwani is a policy analyst in the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program

The upside of this latest tiff between Senators Clinton and Obama is that it is starting to force candidates, and hopefully the broader public, to start thinking about what a new foreign policy should look like, and further, if we support diplomacy, what the sound byte of "vigorous diplomacy" should contain.

Lest we forget, the Bush administration in their heyday of unilateralism characterized their Iraq efforts as diplomacy when in it was clear from a number of vantage points, that they had already made up their mind to invade.

Even former Ambassador John Bolton suggested the US was pursuing maximum diplomatic efforts with regards to Iran at exactly the same time the administration chose to reject the now-famous offer made by Iran in May 2003. The transcript of the Radio Sawa interview reads:

So we are hoping that the example of Iraq divested of its weapons of mass destruction would be persuasive to a number of other states in the Middle East, and we certainly intend to exert a maximum diplomatic effort to persuade other states like Syria, Libya and Iran among others to give up their pursuit of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and long range ballistic missile delivery systems. [emphasis added]

Bolton also expressed commitments to diplomacy in the announcement of his nomination, his testimony, and interviews throughout, but they rang hollow when faced with his actions which were roundly criticized for their very undiplomatic nature.

The fact is, for years the administration ran roughshod over the meaning of diplomacy and turned it into a political sound byte rather than a serious effort to secure our own interests. So committing to diplomacy is not enough, defining its contents and fleshing out its meaning are what counts.

To that end, Senator Obama tries to counter the Bush administration's brand of thin-diplomacy (sometimes unilateralism cloaked in the garb of diplomacy) by evincing a willingness to meet leaders of all stripes, even the ones we don't like, in order achieve strategic ends.

(Since several TWN comments have challenged Steve on his read of this, if we're going to have a close textual reading of the debate transcript, its important to note the question asked about a "willingness" to meet with leaders that somehow metamorphosed into a "promise" to meet with them--the reframing in absolutist terms allows the respondent to describe what they wouldn't do and evade articulation of a positive foreign policy vision).

Ironically, while Sen. Clinton didn't want to be used as propaganda for dictators, she finds herself--much to her chagrin--to be the heroine of neo-con extraordinaire Charles Krauthammer's column this morning. With the Krauthammers of the country praising Sen. Clinton for her tough-sounding rhetoric, it probably doesn't do much for her defense against the Bush/Cheney-lite charge.

One canard Krauthammer offers in defense of Senator Clinton's statement is that meeting and talking somehow rewards leaders and dictators we don't like. I'd like to know what reward Russian President Vladimir Putin received when President Bush met with him a month ago in Maine. Were we congratulating him for his opposition to our intended missile defense deployment or his threats to withdraw from the CFE or INF treaties? I certainly didn't see Krauthammer opposing that meeting. The reason is because at some point we have to face-up to the realities around us and some of those are odious leaderships we don't particularly like.

According to Freedom House's rankings of countries in the world (which I don't fully subscribe to but is generally referenced and praised by the Krauthammer types) nearly all the countries mentioned in the debate's diplomacy question fall into the same category as Russia, while Venezuela actually ranks slightly higher. All five countries mentioned rank higher than Russia on the Economist Intelligence Unit's newly established Global Peace Index. Base on these metrics, Russia appears as bad or worse than the countries we refuse to talk to. So if we're willing to stomach our disdain and meet with Russian leadership for strategic objectives, why not the other leaders?

Russia is no geopolitical wallflower, yet President Bush met with Putin because Russia has been disruptive to our interests and we'd rather they play a more responsible stewardship role in their part of the world. We have little use for meetings with effusive, well-intentioned leaders of countries that can't deliver anything and pose little consequence to global stability.

A willingness to meet thuggish leaders is a matter of cold, calculating self-interest whether to express displeasure and redlines, clarify miscommunications, or attempt some deal making. This isn't a promise to meet on a dictator's whim. It means maintaining the option, the strategic flexibility to talk and cut deals that further our own objectives--like flipping Syria to disrupt Iranian power projection across the Middle East, or luring Cuba into our economic orbit to deflate Venezuela's control of Latin America.

But meeting with leaders is only one element of a diplomatic strategy that needs to be rounded out with more innovative ideas. Steve Clemons has decried the proposals by both Sen. Clinton and Obama to beef up our armed forces as a play to look tough without actually increasing what he terms "security deliverables." In fact, his charge of an "over-militarized engagement with the world" has been substantiated by a December 2006 report commissioned by then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Lugar. It details the overinvestment in and overdependence on our military to achieve security when in fact an critical but neglected civilian capacity carries out essential day-to-day operations to win the hearts and minds of the world primarily through the State Department and USAID. The report goes on to suggest a rapid expansion of these capacities to fulfill their mandates and prevent a military scope-creep that could undermine our efforts to win over local populations.

Rather than trading political punches and punch lines, both Senators could stand to read the report's recommendations and adopt more robust visions for the role of our civilian and diplomatic capacities in US national security policy.

--Sameer Lalwani

(photo credit: James Fallows)

I just received a short note from Atlantic Monthly national correspondent James Fallows who is living (and coughing a lot because of the ridiculously high levels of pollution) in China this year.

He shared these two blog posts -- first and second -- that I want to pass on.

I was in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olymics and know that in anticipation of them, L.A. did much to correct what was then a surging air quality problem. Beijing clearly has some work to do.

I'm a fan of marathons -- and would not want to see anyone have to run for a tough 26.2 miles breathing that miserably dismal quality of air.

-- Steve Clemons

Several good friends close to Senator Clinton were surprised by my post suggesting a "Nixon-Lite Strategy" as a guiding direction for some of her foreign policy thinking. To be fair, when I wrote a critique of Senator Obama's first major foreign policy address, I got similar nudges from his team.

But I do want to be fair as I like much of what Hillary Clinton says and stands for. I view a major presidential candidacy like I do any presidential administration -- as a lesson in schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. There are some dominant personalities and others that are subordinate -- and they shift.

It is my view that some of Hillary's foreign policy advisors see value in highlighting the world's bad guys and using general disdain for them as a way to rally support. This was a tactic of PNAC. It's part of the "high fear", "we live in a dangerous world", "watch out for terrorists" motif that organizations like "Family Security Matters" exploit on the political right.

But the fact is that these so-called bad guys and thugs are the same kind of thugs America has had to deal with for decades. In fact, until 9/11 and the Bush administration's wrong-headed and counterproductive invasion of Iraq as the key feature of its "global war on terror," America and the West had a pretty good "thug management system" in place.

The interesting, unspoken reality about Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that they are all rational actors. They are each unique in their own way and have different concerns but most of them have to do with power or security.

Mancur Olson, one of the leading proponents of rational choice theory, found dictatorships to provide useful metaphors to explain to lay audiences the dynamics of self-interested, rational, utility-maximization in a political system.

To deal with any of these people and their governments, rationality and predictability as well as carrots and credible sticks are needed.

To satisfy various supporters of Senator Clinton, let me reprint what exactly she said during the YouTube/CNN debate:

CLINTON: Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are.

I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don't want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration.

And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy.

And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

There is a "cautious calculation" in Hillary Clinton's response that any president should make a constant feature of his or her decision-making process. However, there is a need for a rational, clear-headed assessment of where America is in the world today and how we are going to use this time of upheaval and instability to leap into a new global framework that is both good for American interests and good for global interests and stability.

Hillary Clinton did talk about the importance of diplomacy, and that is great. But the zinger that everyone on both sides of this debate is focusing on is whether we should talk to the world's problematic leaders or not. Even in her response yesterday to John King on CNN, she emphasized the names of the various leaders that give her pause. This is part of a "I'll be tough on them" framing of this issue that some of Hillary Clinton's advisers have been advocating.

As an example, I've been waiting to hear from Senator Clinton how her strategy on Cuba would differ from a long line of administrations who have failed to achieve any of their objectives in achieving regime change in Cuba. My sense is that we are long overdue for a major overhaul in US-Cuba relations that puts American interests overall ahead of any political cartels inside the US who have controlled that relationship for far too long and at great detriment to American interests. Regime change efforts that America has engaged in have backfired over and over and over again -- but regime change remains the official position of the United States toward Cuba and remains the unofficial policy of the US towards Iran.

Opening up travel and some trade to Cuba -- a nation that is now exporting doctors rather than guns and revolution -- may have numerous positive affects. The mere fact that the Soviet bloc fell and stopped supporting Cuba has had an enormous impact on the minds and lives of Cubans -- and as they see China's global ascension and the manner in which China has increasingly absorbed market capitalism, they are reconsidering their own national growth strategies. Cuba's economy grew by about 10% last year -- and virtually none of that growth benefited the US.

Changing the dynamics with Cuba could have a very good impact on Latin America as a whole that frankly is not too thrilled with the bravado and bluster from Hugo Chavez. Take Cuba from him and his pretensions and Latin American nations will also find ways to resist Chavez's revolutionary charms. But we should still meet with Chavez and negotiate with him.

Diplomacy -- which Hillary Clinton says she supports -- is knowing what battles to lose so that the major wars can be won. It is not a binary process.

Clinton is right to not necessarily sign on to unconditional meetings with all of these leaders -- but she should have said that it would be a high priority for her to meet them, to communicate America's views and positions, to see where opportunities might be exploited, and when a tougher edged policy was called for.

This whole debate would be different if she had said that meeting with the world's thugs is important and should be made the kind of priority that it is not in this administration. Shunning and isolating our enemies is in character for the Jesse Helms/Richard Cheney wing of Republican national security circles. It should not be a dominant feature of Hillary Clinton's profile.

More on Obama later. I'm glad that he is willing to meet those in the world who are working vigorously against American interests. But we still have yet to hear from him a "hard choices" speech on the multiple prongs of a strategy he'd deploy to get America's national security portfolio back in shape.

Both Obama and Hillary Clinton support the growth of the size of the military by another 92,000 personnel -- and in my mind, that just compounds the problems they are supposed to be fixing. We already have an over-militarized engagement with the world and we need something different. And when a nation spends as much money on defense and security as America does and still does not feel safe, the problem is not the number of troops -- it is "bad management."

That is something that Obama and Clinton, as well as the other candidates, might reflect on as well.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Clinton's press office sent this note out today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- July 26, 2007

Clinton/CNN Interview to Air this Afternoon

Senator Clinton taped an interview with CNN's John King this afternoon where she was asked to react to Barack Obama referring to her as "Bush-Cheney Lite."

The following is what Senator Clinton said (the interview will air later this afternoon on CNN):

SEN. CLINTON: "Well, this is getting kind of silly. I've been called a lot of things in my life but I've never been called George Bush or Dick Cheney certainly.

We have to ask what's ever happened to the politics of hope?

I have been saying consistently for a number of years now, we have to end the Bush era of ignoring problems, ignoring enemies and adversaries. And I have been absolutely clear that we've got to return to robust and effective diplomacy.

But I don't want to see the power and prestige of the United States President put at risk by rushing into meetings with the likes of Chavez, and Castro, and Ahmadinejad."

With all due respect to the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race, Hillary Clinton is wrong on this issue.

America has overdosed on the kind of pugnacious leadership that rejects talking to rivals and, yes, even enemies. Both Clinton and her debate rival Barack Obama know that any serious benchmark of American status, prestige, and moral credibility in the world has fallen precipitously under this administration and needs to be addressed.

Talking to rivals is not acquiescing to them, or appeasing them. Talking to our rivals is in America's own self interest. I'm not talking about a global feel good session -- but rather getting our own portfolio of interests back in some kind of reasonable shape. To do that, we need to be 'engaged' with those trying to take advantage of our eroding and eroded global position.

The right answer to the question posed in the YouTube/CNN debates would have been that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have become empowered by the high price of oil. They are trying to expand their interests regionally and need to be dealt with. Iran's growing pretensions were entirely predictable and were a natural consequence of the United States deposing Saddam Hussein and puncturing the mystique of American power with a "war of choice" in Iraq that is now a tragic morass.

Chavez also senses a void of American attentions in Latin America and is competing to fill that space as well as to inherit the mantle of lead revolutionary and American antagonizer from Fidel Castro.

But Castro, both brothers, are a different case. Whether one organized a meeting with Fidel or Raul Castro or not -- decades of a failed embargo policy against Cuba have not yielded any of the objectives of US foreign policy there. The travel restrictions on Cuban American families themselves essentially compel citizens to choose whether they want to attend their father's funeral or their mother's.

Republican House Member Jeff Flake has had the courage to state that if he is going to have his travel restricted anywhere in the world, he'd rather have a Communist government blocking him than his own government in the United States of America.

Hillary Clinton should be honest with Americans about her own direct knowledge that US policy towards Cuba has entirely and utterly failed -- and that the perpetuation of an anachronistic Cold War-fashioned policy towards an island nation just off our coast shows an "absence of strategy" and common sense.

Clinton herself has traveled to the land of 1.2 billion communists, the Peoples' Republic of China, and been an advocate of feminist exchanges and other people to people encounters as examples of the kind of liberalizing currents that can help empower citizens and promote a culture of self-determination. Cuba deserves no less.

IN FACT Senator Clinton, opening up the travel restrictions to Cuba and incrementally lifting the economic embargo may rob Cuba from Hugo Chavez's own Latin American delusions of grandeur. Chavez is trying to spread his influence in the region by providing much needed oil and cash transfer payments to Cuba and allying himself with the mystique of Castro. I believe that Cubans want to make their own way and not be particularly dependent on any great patron -- but ending key aspects of the embargo will enhance America's weight inside Cuba and diminish Chavez's.

The same exact logic applies to Syria and Iran. If one wanted to put a speed bump in the way of Iran's growing influence in the Middle East, then America should start creating a Libya-like track to get Syria back into fully normalized relations with the US and the West -- as well as with Israel.

There are clearly problems and hurdles with what I am suggesting -- but that kind of maneuvering between the US president and foreign bad guys is called "strategy". And we need a new strategy of constructive, self-interested, tough-minded engagement with world leaders who are consequential to our well-being and interests.

So, yes -- Obama is right that Hillary Clinton articulated a Bush-lite strategy.

Even the surprising, burgeoning realists Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ari Berman at The Nation agree with this view and have knocked back their own Hillary-leaning David Corn.

Let's hope that we may be able to nudge Senator Clinton and her foreign policy team away from a policy that seems laced with elements of a John Bolton-style, Jesse Helmsian pugnacious nationalism and towards a more Nixon-lite approach -- which in my book would demonstrate real 21st century style leadership.

Nixon went to China and negotiated arms deals with the Soviets. Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Gorbachev ended the Cold War.

Will it be Hillary that changes the world and goes to Cuba? to Iran? to Syria?

Or will it be Obama?

-- Steve Clemons

Last night, I got a phone call from New York Sun writer Eli Lake, a thoughtful and serious writer who is more hawkish than I am and closely associated with neoconservatives (though I don't consider him to be one -- he's too empirical for that), about Colin Powell speaking at a huge motivational conference in September along with Sugar Ray Leonard, Steve Forbes, Robert Schuller, and Zig Ziglar.

Lake got me at a good time as I had just seen the giant full page ad for the Verizon Center conference and thought it really odd -- and just something not quite fitting Colin Powell's stature. I offered a quote, and Eli Lake got what I said right though I think that the comments said something more about me than they did Powell. I was snobbish and shouldn't have been.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I admire Secretary Powell. He did much to clean up messes behind the scenes early in the tenure of this administration. He helped squash what could have been an incredibly destructive escalation with China in April 2001. He oversaw Armitage's efforts in defusing a potential nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India.

Powell gave his North Korea-focused diplomats who began in earnest working on the current North Korea deal protection from Cheney's wing of the national security establishment. He put John Bolton in a "box" when Bolton agitated as Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control. Powell has called for Guantanamo to be shut down. He has made another brave, true statement that the Quartet envoy Tony Blair is going to have to find a way to communicate with Hamas.

I have no doubt that many of my readers are going to share alternative views that Secretary Powell could have done more to shut down the Cheney-Rumsfeld machine, or have exposed details from inside the Bush White House that might have prevented a worsening of the debacle in Iraq, or could have said more about how he was seriously misled by George Tenet and other parts of the government before his address to the United Nations in early 2003 on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities and assets. But I stand by my support of Powell -- and feel that things would have been even worse than they are today had Powell and his team not been in the administration from the beginning.

There are things I wish Powell would do and say -- but that responsibility and burden is for him to carry -- and I think that Powell weighs in on matters like Guantanamo and Hamas when he thinks it will provide a "tilt" and matter.

So, back to my regretted snobbishness. The fact is that I am of two minds about the whole speaker fee issue.

When I was in the very early stages of helping to establish the Nixon Center in 1993 and was then working at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, I was contacted by a representative of one of Japan's largest economy-focused newspapers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, who felt that I knew a lot of political folks and wanted to use me as an intermediary to invite former President George H.W. Bush to Japan.

This kind of invite was a sensitive political issue because the Reagans had accepted a trip to Japan financed by Fujianskei Communications which cost the firm somewhere between $8 and $10 million -- with a substantial chunk of that going as compensation to the former President.

I contacted President Bush then who was then working with a single staff member in a new Texas office -- and got him on the phone. He was very sensitive to appearances and did not want a repeat of the Reagan's situation -- and thought that there was a way to go to Japan for a decent fee, but not so substantial as to seem inappropriate. That particular deal never came through because the newspaper group simply wanted to have the former President appear at multiple functions around Japan charging people to attend -- and it just seemed well, unseemly.

I admired the current President Bush's father for that kind of sensitivity.

I got to know the elder Harry Walker via President Bush who handles many of the top political talent in the country -- and at one point thought about doing more to help line up talent for Japan venues. But in the end, I didn't have the interest and financial deals have never been my motivator.

The point for this back story is that I have thought about the issue of audiences, speakers, fees, and the like before -- and I do believe that it is essential for smart leaders to get out into the country and meet normal Americans who don't have the benefit (or curse) of being exposed to high octane politics 24/7. In the case of Bush the elder, that case was not about motivating Americans, or trying to connect with people who weren't political junkies.

I should not have "looked down my nose" at Colin Powell's decision to speak to thousands of people who do not normally have the opportunity to rub shoulders with people like him. They get to pay a small fee -- and perhaps they take members of their family who need some motivational kick-start. If I had the opportunity to speak to 10,000 people, I'd do it because it's an opportunity to try and instill some of the realities of "hard choices" that this town has to struggle with frequently and which many in the country don't have connection with.

So, Eli Lake got my snobbish comments correct. I do think that I erred in offering them because I should have said that while the ad glitz was just not my kind of thing, that doesn't matter. What matters is that someone like Colin Powell is going to connect with a sizable number of Americans who are probably not as informed as they might be on matters of national importance today -- and that it is good for the barriers of inside the beltway and outside to be blurred a bit.

I should probably even go and see what this Zig Ziglar and motivational scene is all about in any case. Maybe they'll give me a blogger's discount.

-- Steve Clemons

Sameer Lalwani is a policy analyst in the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program

Last night, the New America Foundation co-hosted a dinner with The American Prospect around their June "Middle East issue" that featured a number of important pieces by my American Strategy Program colleagues. While the special issue centered on the broader strategic questions emerging out of the Middle East including our options for dealing with Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, the evening's discussion narrowed in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "Ten Commandments for Mideast Peace" co-authored by former negotiators Daniel Levy (Israel), Ghaith al-Omari (Palestine), and Rob Malley (U.S.). Levy and al-Omari are currently both fellows at New America, Malley is the International Crisis Group Middle East Director.

Unfortunately Ghaith al-Omari had to undergo a last minute dental procedure and Steve Clemons, who was scheduled to host and moderate the event, was stranded on a tarmac in Providence due to inclement weather (a recurring event for Clemons). So Flynt Leverett--who also had an excellent memo laying out our options in the June issue titled "To the Incoming President: On Iraq"--stepped in along with Bob Kuttner, to host the evening.

The timing of the dinner couldn't have been better as it followed on the heels of the Bush administration's proposal last Monday to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and PM Salam Fayyad's government by renewing financial assistance, offering security assistance, working with Israel to release prisoners and ease its chokehold of checkpoints, and, most significantly, creating a political horizon with a regional conference scheduled for the fall.

Malley and Levy started off the evening sketching out the terrain of the post-Palestinian-split environment and whether the administration's recent proposal was both serious and substantial enough to change the dynamic in the region. Though the meeting of regional actors on the peace process, proposed for the fall, has been likened to the 1991 Madrid conference, Malley pointed out the significant differences in this climate--the fragmentation of the Palestinians, the polarization of the Middle East, the interconnectedness of regional problems increasing the propensity for interference, the collapse of US credibility, and the absence of a shared vision--shatters the analogy.

Levy underscored that the absence of a substantive, not merely nominal, referee in the process has had a devastating impact on calculating risk. The Winograd Commission interim report reveals that a number of ministers, who signed on to the bombing campaign against Lebanon last summer, had the assumption of US intervention after 48-96 hours built-in to their decision-making process. Without the US reining everyone in, Israel was locked into a downward spiral of escalation.

The general strike against the administration's strategy of isolating Hamas and bolstering Fatah in the West Bank is that no one has a real strategy for the day after, for "retaking Gaza," which suggests the complete isolation of Hamas will not be possible indefinitely. Former Secretary of State Powell stated less than a week ago that the US needed to find some way of talking to Hamas:

I think you'd have to find some way to talk to Hamas. I don't want to insert myself into what Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice is doing or what the president is doing. But they are not going to go away. And we have to remember that they enjoy considerable support among the Palestinian people. They won an election that we insisted upon having. And so, as unpleasant a group as they may be, and as distasteful as I find some of their positions, I think that through the [Middle East Quartet, which consists of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations] or through some means, Hamas has to be engaged. I dont think you can just cast them into outer darkness and try to find a solution to the problems of the region without taking into account the standing that Hamas has in the Palestinian community.

In order to navigate this and talk to Hamas, Levy proposed some innovative diplomatic tricks to have Hamas represented without formally being at the table. For instance, in '91, the Palestinians had to be brought in as part of the Jordanian delegation allowing them to claim their own seat at the table while Israeli negotiators were able to defend this to a domestic polity. But like former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin's firewall between the peace process and combating terrorism (an effective policy to prevent spoilers from derailing the peace process), this dual-delegation strategy would require a political willingness and strength that most agree is a largely absent.

The skepticism of the speakers was rivaled only by the attendees of the dinner (composed largely of journalists). But despite their doubts, the former negotiators actually suggested some possibilities for taking advantage of the President's speech to build up a real expectation of a regional conference. Some options being considered by Israel that might bolster the process included addressing the re-launch of the Arab peace initiative with some early deliverables or even another plan for "convergence" and removal of West Bank settlements.

In a departure from Steve Clemons who has derided Tony Blair's appointment as Middle East envoy, Levy and Malley offered cautious support for Blair because of his achievements in Northern Ireland bringing together the hardliners of both sides, which was attributed his keen sense of timing and the politics. Blair has a slightly different take on the direness of the situation yesterday expressing a "sense of possibility" and a confidence in his ability to extend beyond his economic portfolio to advance peace talks. Another former negotiator has mentioned to me that Blair's stature and closeness to Bush can be real assets that enable him to bypass the President's gatekeepers, some who may impede serious efforts to restart a peace process.

As Levy and Malley struggled to present possible upsides to what one of them described as the administration's plan to "push the accelerator on a failed policy," it seemed as if they were reaching deep into a hat to extract a rabbit that just wasn't there.

Towards the end of the evening, facing continued questions on the perpetual impasse (Israel's demand for a real partner to begin negotiations and Palestinians' demand for an easing of harsh conditions to preface negotiations), Levy proposed a path breaking action--if Israel issued a decisive statement of intent that they wished to return to the 1967 borders with negotiated adjustments, that they saw "no future in the occupied territories," it would have a dramatic impact on the Palestinian dynamic and the Arab world's willingness to see this process through. (It is rumored earlier drafts of President Bush's speech with more State Department input referenced the magic numbers "67" but they were scrubbed away in successive drafts).

Perhaps because the US referee Israel once counted on to cue their "next move" has since disappeared, Israel may begin to take a long hard look at its options and decide this '67 declaration is just the Gordian knot maneuver it needs to begin normalizing ties with the Arab world.

--Sameer Lalwani

David Wurmser, one of the Vice President's most dedicated neoconservative spear-carriers, is leaving the administration to start a risk assessment consulting firm.

A close friend of his who still works for President Bush shared with me that Wurmser has been looking for a new position for quite a while -- which is what actually led him to share some of this information that I reported and the New York Times, Time's Joe Klein and others helped substantiate. Ironically, the New York Times article, according to this source, made it more difficult for a consulting shop or firm to acquire Wurmser.

But several people tell me that Wurmser has wanted to leave for some time and that his departure now was consistent with what he wanted to do before disclosures about policy tension between contending teams in the White House over Iran policy.

-- Steve Clemons

When I first tuned into the Democratic debate tonight, I started taking copious notes on who was saying what. Then I stopped. Most Americans will be going more on general impressions than word-by-word analysis, so I should too.

On policy, the most important takeaway, for me, anyway, is Gov. Richardson's support for a permanent UN peacekeeping force. That bodes extremely well for a better thought out and more politically viable proposal to establish the UN Emergency Peace Service, that I've been working hard to build momentum for over the past few months. This is an idea that's going from zero to 60 and is all of a sudden squarely in the policy mainstream.

Tonight's debate is the first Democratic debate that I've recapped. I was disappointed that few if any of the questions touched on America's declining influence in the world or the importance of cooperating with others in an interconnected world.

On the flip side, I'm very happy with the Democratic slate of candidates. Nearly all of them would make fine Presidents and most of them are solid candidates, too.

Without further ado, my impressions:

Hillary Clinton: Clearly the most polished and effective debater, Clinton came off extremely well tonight. Her message is tight, her knowledge of policy is deep, and she played to her strengths at every turn. Still, primary voters wondering how committed she is to ending the conflict in Iraq will come away unsatisfied. And more importantly, half a year into the campaign, I'm still not sure what her campaign is fundamentally about. Clinton's rhetoric is very safe and generic, highlighting the "need for change," for example. She still hasn't communicated clearly what's fueling her desire to be President. Until she does, she'll remain vulnerable to allegations that she's driven by raw ambition and puts politics ahead of principle. All that notwithstanding, Clinton's effort tonight substantially helped her cause.

Barack Obama: A mixed performance. Obama's cerebral disposition, careful use of language to highlight nuance, and ability to connect hot-button issues with more fundamental questions has made him a talk-show darling, but it's not winning him points in a debate. Interesting to note: Obama has started lashing out at those ubiquitous special interests. I haven't heard him do it before. My guess is that someone advised him that if you're not going to bash Republicans, you've got to find another villain. Generally, Obama is going to need to answer questions more directly; I think his reluctance to say Americans in Iraq have not died in vain could leave potential voters with a bad taste in their mouths. That said, Obama started hitting the mark in the second half of the debate and by the end of the night, his responses were extremely compelling.

John Edwards: I think Edwards gained ground tonight. He clearly came off as an action-oriented candidate on poverty, health care, Iraq, and stuck to his populist, anti-special interests message. He was put on defense more than most other candidates and did reasonably well. The one question that put a chink in John's armor, I think, was whether or not he stands by Elizabeth's contention that he'd be a better President for women than Clinton. Then again, that's not an easy one to parry. Edwards's supporters will be happy with his performance on the whole.

Bill Richardson: Since he stated his support for something like UNEPS (but even more bold), I would love to say Richardson made gains. I really would. But Richardson seemed a bit scatterbrained tonight. He showcased his accomplishments and depth of knowledge effectively. But Richardson didn't get to answer questions in his strongest areas, energy and diplomacy. And his comments were chock full of wonk-speak. He's going to have to remember how to explain complex issues to voters on their terms. I should also note that Richardson's YouTube ad (all candidates were asked to submit one), a reprise of one of his Presidential job search spot, is the winner in my book:

Chris Dodd: Dodd didn't have many memorable moments tonight, good or bad. His understanding of complex issues, his boldness on energy policy, and his views - especially on diplomacy and foreign policy - are second to none. But Dodd comes off as a New England intellectual. He's not as boring as Gore in 2000 or as wooden as Kerry in '04, but so far, he's no more accessible than either. My guess is he gains ground in the Northeast and in university communities but loses ground elsewhere.

Joe Biden: Biden's trying to emerge as the straight-talk candidate for the Dems, and for the most part, it's working. He's avoided longwinded answers and stayed on message. His understanding of how a withdrawal from Iraq would work - coupled with his plan for federalism there - was impressive, whether or not one agrees with him on the merits of his argument (I'm sure that some who are itching for a quicker withdrawal would take issue with his position). But Biden lost big time points with me by suggesting that we need to send American troops to Darfur and, more importantly, that those who favor other options were being soft and tolerant of genocide. As Clinton, Gravel, and Richardson pointed out, there's no way American troops could perform a peace operation as well as a robust UN force could in Darfur. American forces aren't trained primarily for peace enforcement and nation-building and they're stretched thin as is, thanks to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, people in the region are very wary of American intervention - even the good guys who are pushing hard to end the atrocities in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic. They don't want American personnel on the ground; they want American diplomacy and logistical support to pave the way for African and Muslim personnel to successfully intervene through a UN mission. Biden knows better.

Dennis Kucinich: This was hands down the best debate performance I've seen from Kucinich. He was articulate, on point, and activist in the best possible way. He also showed a lot of discipline and foresight by articulating and repeating a message point that concisely explains his world view: "Strength Through Peace." It's a good one, and it will help Americans figure out what he's about. Kucinich explained well the need for international cooperation, and his indictment of Congress's failure to de-fund the war is clearly making the frontrunners uncomfortable. On the negative side, there were a few eyeball rollers, most notably his unconvincing effort to connect Iraq, Iran, and energy. The connection is there, but it can't be explained in 100 words or less and isn't as simple as Kucinich would have voters believe.

Mike Gravel: Gravel had trouble putting together coherent ideas. I often had a tough time understanding the basic gist of his arguments. His brand of righteous anger is getting old.

Anderson Cooper: Didn't talk much - so good job.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out tomorrow.

-- Scott Paul

When I worked in Russia in 2003 for the Moscow Helsinki Group the government has already begun limiting press freedoms and buying up independent media outlets, but civil society was becoming broader, more representative, and more active. That was the simple version of my assessment, which left me with a generally positive outlook on the trajectory of Russian democracy.

The developments of the past few years have made me reconsider my optimism. President Putin has tightened his grip over the media, the energy sector, and the civil society groups in whom I had invested so much hope.

Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Godmother of the human rights movement in Russia, suggests there's still much to be positive about. I noticed my former colleague's interview with Novye Izvestia this morning during my daily read of the invaluable Johnson's Russia List. I have a great deal of respect for Alekseyeva, a true human rights giant, a big picture thinker whose perspective is informed by six decades of activism, and someone who has walked the walk at every stage of her career.

For you Russian speakers, find the full interview here. Since I don't have rights to reproduce my translation of it, I'll paste a hopeful and interesting excerpt below and encourage TWN readers to subscribe to Johnson's Russia List so you don't miss interesting tidbits like this anymore.

Question: How is present-day Russia different from the country for which you fought the Soviet government?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: You know, back in those days I often used to say that all I wanted was this: that the kind of rights protection work we were doing should not be grounds for sending people to prison, labor camps, or psychiatric hospitals. And people are not imprisoned for these activities nowadays. When we started the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1976, it was the one and only independent rights protection organization in the whole USSR - but now we have colleagues and partners in every Russian region.

Question: Do you think the next two years will be like what Solzhenitsyn said about Russia's tangents - soaring toward freedom, then plunging back into dictatorship?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: I don't think it will happen this time. Ten or 15 years from now, our country will be a democracy: not because we elect an angel as president next year, but because civil society will be strong enough by then to prevent any ruler from treating people like cattle.

Question: Where will this civil society come from?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: It will grow of its own accord. Not like a garden weed, but once there are enough people willing to fight for it.

Question: Are there any such people in Russia now?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: Yes. That's why I believe that it will take us 10-15 years. Those who hold power in democracies aren't angels either, but they don't dare treat their people like our leaders treat us. And we'll learn not to let them.

-- Scott Paul