Today, at 12:15 pm until about 1:30 pm, I will be live streaming an event I will be chairing with Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) who will be speaking about "Ending the Nonsense in American Foreign Policy."

Hagel will also be speaking about the themes in his important new book America: Our Next Chapter -- Tough Questions, Straight Answers.

If the feed is overloaded, two other sites that will live feed Hagel's remarks and questions with the audience are The American Strategist and the New America Foundation.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm assuming most TWN readers have seen this before:

Iraq is and will continue to be about 90 percent of the foreign policy conversation in this campaign (still not happy about that). And right now, much of the Iraq debate has revolved around redeployment details: who, how many, how fast, etc. It's a debate over tactics, albeit one with huge consequences, but it is not the kind of debate over the U.S. role in the world that the country needs.

John McCain's pronouncement that he'd be ok with a U.S. military presence in Iraq for 100 (1,000...10,000...etc.) years could change all that. So far, some of McCain's critics have tried to fit this comment into the narrow "withdrawal" debate, suggesting that what he really means is that he'd be fine with no redeployments and perpetual war. That's not what McCain said at this New Hampshire town hall meeting -- but then again, he may hold that belief since neither he nor anyone else has given us any reason to believe that things will change in Iraq if we "stay the course," so it's a fair inference on the part of these critics.

More important is what McCain actually did mean: that the U.S. should maintain a military presence in Iraq not only as long as it takes to end hostilities, but long after hostilities have ended. Iraq will not be anything like Japan, Germany or South Korea in the foreseeable future. Given the events of the past five years, the Iraqi population simply will not tolerate a permanent U.S. military presence, especially if large-scale violence has ended. McCain is seeing things through a 20th century prism that minimizes the costs and sometimes destabilizing effects of projecting U.S. military power around the world.

Democrats and moderate Republicans should engage on this point with every bit as much fervor as they engage on the withdrawal debate. The case needs to be made that there are costs to overdeploying the U.S. military and that alternative sources of power -- international laws, institutions and diplomacy -- can fill the gap. This is one answer -- though certainly not the only one -- to the question of how to make the Iraq debate about something bigger that I hope Matt Yglesias's book will help to address.

There's no need to use the "100 years" quote to paint the man into a corner and portray him as a proponent of perpetual war (even though he may in fact be one). His argument is wrong on its face and needs to be dealt with head on.

-- Scott Paul

I've been bumping into Huffington Post political editor Thomas Edsall in a number of places lately - including in long AMTRAK Acela train lines when traveling from New York to DC and then today at Harvard Square. He's always unassuming, enjoying the scene, and usually passes off some delectable political tidbit -- and did so today (but it's a secret).

Edsall was standing in front of "Charlie's Kitchen" reminiscing about the days when he would hang out there a few decades ago and would be able to pick up a couple of beers and burgers for one buck.

So, I thought it was a Kodak LG Verizon cell phone camera moment. Now at Logan preparing to fly home.

-- Steve Clemons

As if the mysteries surrounding Israel's raid on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility and subsequent revelations about North Korean complicity in a reported cash-for-reactor deal were not cloak-and-dagger enough, Chris Nelson - the uber insider political newsletter scribe behind The Nelson Report and whose contacts in the national security establishment are stellar - reports the rumor that the video showed by the CIA to Capitol Hill lawmakers may have been "doctored."

Some are arguing that there is a "pixel mismatch." Arghhh... You have to be kidding!

I'm visiting your great city and have just walked out in the chilly rain tonight along the Charles River.

For those of you in town and interested, I'm speaking tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon on the topic, "Blogging and Moving the Needle on US Foreign Policy Debates," at the Harvard University Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The meeting will take place at the Institute of Politics Conference Room, Littauer 166 at Harvard, and you are welcome to join if you like.

-- Steve Clemons

Kishore Mahbubani and G. John Ikenberry may not know it -- but they are squaring off to be the new top tier rival powerhouse intellectual combatants.

They each basically stand at the forefront of rival intellectual movements about the relative relevance of American power in the world -- Mahbubani heading the school that the West is in self-denial about its plummeting significance and Ikenberry heading those who think American power remains palpably larger than any other player and is still the key factor in driving international behavior for all other countries.

Mahbubani, who now serves as Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and was previously Singapore's Ambassador to the United Nations, has authored the new book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

There are many others engaged in this debate including this blogger -- but on the roster are Michael Lind, Parag Khanna, Fareed Zakaria, Richard Haass, Matthew Yglesias, Steven Weber, Bruce Jentleson, Charles Kupchan, Peter Trubowitz, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Anthony Lake, and a long list of others who either are thinking through the consequences of a "diminished America" and what that means for world affairs -- or a resurgent America who still stands out as the key sculptor of global trends and builder of international arrangements.

G. John Ikenberry is at Princeton University -- and would be my choice to follow in the footsteps of the intimidatingly smart Jessica Tuchman Mathews at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (if she one day moves). Carnegie is a unique place that tries to work through what I call the "horizontal issues" like non-proliferation, climate change, transnational disease, and other major international problems that aren't easily siloed into regional study or classic security programs. Ikenberry and Mathews are these type of horizontal issue thinkers who nonetheless have disciplined minds and don't chase their tales in circles like many in the emerging global justice community. Nonetheless, for all his brilliance, I think Ikenberry overstates American power in his recent work, though I see many strengths in his concept of a "liberal leviathan" arrangement between the U.S. and the international order.

Mahbubani, in contrast, sees no leviathan in the U.S. at all. In a recent Foreign Affairs article titled "The Case Against the West," he writes:

There is a fundamental flaw in the West's strategic thinking. In all its analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it is the source of the solutions to the world's key problems. In fact, however, the West is also a major source of these problems. Unless key Western policymakers learn to understand and deal with this reality, the world is headed for an even more troubled phase.

The West is understandably reluctant to accept that the era of its domination is ending and that the Asian century has come. No civilization cedes power easily, and the West's resistance to giving up control of key global institutions and processes is natural. Yet the West is engaging in an extraordinary act of self-deception by believing that it is open to change. In fact, the West has become the most powerful force preventing the emergence of a new wave of history, clinging to its privileged position in key global forums, such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states), and refusing to contemplate how the West will have to adjust to the Asian century.

Partly as a result of its growing insecurity, the West has also become increasingly incompetent in its handling of key global problems. Many Western commentators can readily identify specific failures, such as the Bush administration's botched invasion and occupation of Iraq. But few can see that this reflects a deeper structural problem: the West's inability to see that the world has entered a new era.

I could see a strange compromise between the two positions actually -- one in which the U.S. basically maintains a heavy load of power instruments or tools because the world decides it wants America to have them -- and in exchange America accedes to the rise of China and Asia and to new organizing methodologies and institutions in Asia. Think of a more slow and gradual evolution along the lines of how Britain handed off power to the U.S. just before and after World War II.

Ikenberry might argue that such a "negotiated" arrangement might maintain an edge for American power in many key arenas -- and that the East Asian establishment might acquiesce to this arrangement in order to consolidate and manage internal problems within its own reginal sphere of concern, within China itself and between culturally and historically disparate peoples in separate states around the Asian rim.

In any case, it's a fascinating 'possible' battle, sort of along the lines of the famous rivalries between Lester Thurow and Paul Krugman, or Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer. But it is a battle that has not yet broken out -- but it is one that I want to see in any case.

I'll call on G. John Ikenberry if he would like to share with us his views of Mahbubani's dismissal of the West. Ikenberry might want to respond to others as well like Parag Khanna's view that the U.S. is now one of three nodes of power -- next to Europe and China -- competing for the affection and support of other nations and regions which he calls the "second world" or Steven Weber and Bruce Jentleson's work that describes a global international future in which America is sidelined and mostly irrelevant.

The door is open for response from Ikenberry and others on his team thinking about America and international order.

For those in DC, I will be hosting Kishore Mahbubani for a talk at the New America Foundation today in Washington, DC at 3:30 pm. The talk will be taped and posted later on New America's website.

-- Steve Clemons

All around the country, there are people meeting with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain in cafes, meeting halls, churches, community colleges, and private homes. Occasionally, the media really press them to answer hard questions -- and other times not.

But some of you can ask them questions and report back to bloggers or other writers 'exactly' what the response was. Some of you can catch these exchanges with a flip video recorder and send the files our way.

Now and again, I'm going to post some questions that TWN readers would love to hear the candidates respond to. If these questions match your own, give it a go -- and ask Hillary, Barack, or John McCain the question and get back to us.

Question One: Specifically, which powers of the Presidency that the Bush administration has acquired for itself would you roll back and give up?

We really want to know. . .from all three.

Good luck.

-- Steve Clemons

A very smart senior policy advisor to one of the three extant presidential campaigns just sent in this picture of Larry's Lounge, a dive on the corner of 17th and R Streets in Dupont Circle. I used to hang out there until they spruced up the place and got plastic menus.

I sat there once when during a bad storm the branch of a huge weeping willow tree broke off and came through the bar's window. They trimmed the tree back and made it look respectable, but even that has now been removed in favor of a salmon pink patio.

Metaphorically, this picture and the history of this bar represent a lot about my own misgivings about the elevation of veneer over substance. I'll miss that willow tree.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest post on Japan's political scene by Mindy Kotler, Director of Asia Policy Point in Washington, D.C. Originally, TWN posted a pre-version of this piece that has since been adjusted. Kotler's prediction about Sunday's election outcome was dead on target.

On Sunday, April 27th, one of Japan's most conservative districts will hold a by-election for a seat in the House of Representatives (Lower House). This will be the first parliamentary election since Yasuo Fukuda became prime minister in September 2007. Polls indicate that the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will win. If true, then decades of issue-free elections and one-party rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are unraveling.

A victory will reflect not only the unpopularity of the Fukuda Administration, but also the inability of the ruling LDP to address fundamental concerns of Japan's voters. Seven years of greater engagement with the global economy, international regulations, and world security have not brought Japan greater peace or prosperity. North Korea and China are more threatening, and economic inequalities have widened.

Having attended the launch for Matt Yglesias's new book on foreign policy on Friday, I might have to break a rule of mine. I might have to read a book whose thesis I fundamentally agree with.

I made that rule after reading Jared Diamond's Collapse a few years ago. Like his groundbreaking Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse is thoroughly researched and convincing. But its conclusion -- environmental mismanagement threatens the survival of civilizations -- was a pretty easy sell for me and for that reason was less thrilling to read.

Ditto Yglesias's thesis in Heads in the Sand. To sum up: by shifting to the right and/or trying to change the subject from foreign policy to domestic issues, Democrats have tended to cede political and substantive ground on U.S. foreign policy to Republicans.

On its face, this seems to be the basic conventional wisdom of the left at the moment. But this book's thesis goes a step further in its prescription. Instead of merely calling for louder and more pronounced dovishness and restoration of sound/open governance (though these too are important), Yglesias calls for Democrats to more clearly articulate an alternative vision based on the principles of liberal internationalism.

Withdrawal from Iraq gives Democrats a politically easy way to be liberal on foreign policy since it touches people's lives and some people equate it with undoing the biggest foreign policy mistake in a generation (invading Iraq in the first place). But they've not yet incorporated withdrawal into a greater vision for the U.S. role in the world. I'm concerned that when the withdrawal is complete or mostly complete, and Democrats no longer have a widely agreed policy point to hammer home, they'll turn back to their old ways if they don't start talking big ideas now.

I don't really know if this is a direction Matt Yglesias is headed with his book, but I'm philosophically aligned enough with him that I may read it to get some ideas for how this problem might be resolved.

-- Scott Paul

Note: Despite the partisan approach to Yglesias's book and this post, there are some terrific and responsible Republican public officials offering smart foreign policy ideas. Steve regularly mentions Chuck Hagel; I'll call attention to Dick Lugar, all around decent guy and my organization's "Legislator for Global Solutions." Check out this link -- Lugar really did show some really incredible leadership on a number of fronts last year.

Excellent news. Faiza Saleh Ambah reports for the Washington Post that Fouad al-Farhan, one of Saudi Arabia's most popular bloggers, has been released.

When I recently visited Saudi Arabia, Fouad's name came up in many of our meetings -- as I and several of my colleagues on the trip were bloggers or involved in new media and interested in the state of Saudi blogging.

What was interesting is whether it was senior level academics or program directors at the impressive King Saud University or members of the Shura Council or even government ministry officials, all of them knew of Fouad al-Farhan's incarceration and none of them could say exactly why he was being held. The closest anyone came to speculating on charges against him was to suggest that he may have put online personal details of one of the security officials he was writing about.

And these senior officials and academics added that blogs were becoming the new media in Saudi Arabia and were eroding the cartel of information control that the state-managed media held. And they seemed happy about it -- and said that even King Abdullah knew that this liberalization of political discourse was coming and embraced it.

The intimidation and jailing of a blogger is not a sign of a healthy civil society -- but his release is a very positive move. This was the right move for the Saudi kingdom to take. Congrats to Fouad al-Farhan and his many readers.

-- Steve Clemons

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, conservative commentator George Will can generally be counted on to offer a stoic, offshore perspective of the internecine Democratic battles. Today, he made the point that Barack Obama has not won a single 'major' political contest against Hillary Clinton since Wisconsin on February 19th. He noted what many other observers have: Barack Obama's campaign is losing steam.

All hats off to those who correctly say that 'mathematically', it's very hard to see how Hillary Clinton shifts enough superdelegates to win -- but there is something afoot really trying to make this happen. As Maureen Dowd just said on Stephanopoulos' show, "Hillary Clinton has successfully repainted Obama from being incandescent to ineffectual."

In my own view, Hillary Clinton has run a sometimes terrible campaign and has lost a dramatic lead over her opponent, but what is beginning to happen very late in the process is that "gravity" is finally taking hold on the former gravity-defying campaign of Barack Obama.

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' DINNER

Tonight, the mega-insider dinner party for White House-tethered media -- and increasingly, bloggers, and their friends -- is being held at the Washington Hilton. TWN was slated to attend but the chief correspondent got waylaid by a really awful chest cold that he would not have wished on anyone -- not even those attending the dinner. This will be the LAST of President Bush's WHCA dinners. Something to toast?

CLINTON CHALLENGES OBAMA TO LINCOLN-DOUGLAS STYLE DEBATE

Hillary Clinton, hoping to shake up her rival's edge, has challenged Barack Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate with no moderators. After the furor after the ABC debate held last week and accusations that neither Charles Gibson nor George Stephanopoulos pushed the candidates hard on issues the public cared about. Obama's campaign is studying the proposal.

Update: Obama Campaign says no to Hillary -- an hour after TWN posted this item.

Obama's campaign stated:

"We have participated in 21 nationally televised debates, the most in primary history, including four exclusively with Senator Clinton. Senator Clinton refused an earlier invitation that had been accepted to debate in North Carolina. Over the next 10 days, we believe it's important to talk directly to the voters of Indiana and North Carolina about fixing our economy, cutting the cost of health care and ending a war in Iraq that never should have been authorized in the first place."

OBAMA AND COLLECTION AGENCIES?

No, he wasn't getting a dividend from them -- he was being chased by them, according to Michelle Obama.

The Obama campaign is doubling its efforts to remind voters of their candidate's humble roots given his failure to win over working-class voters in Pennsylvania. Michelle Obama, the daughter of a Chicago city pump operator, in a speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana yesterday described what it was like when she and newlywed husband Barrack used to get phone calls from collection agencies. "I remember those days clearly, sweating to get that mail. . .That collection agency, the loan debt people calling you telling you that you've got a few more days before you're in trouble."

At stake in Indidana are 72 delegates that the Clinton and Obama camps covet. Clinton is targeting the state's southern rural towns and the large auto plants in the central part of Hoosierland. Obama is depending on black voters in Indianapolis and Gary, as well as students in the college towns of Bloomington and West Lafayette.

LOOSE ENDS

. . .Three decades of archival materials from the Grateful Dead -- including business records to stage backdrops -- have been donated by the rock band to the University of California-Santa Cruz McHenry Library. The materials document the band's ascendance into one of world's most influential bands.

. . .When the Spanish government appointed a pregnant defense minister, the military establishment laughed. But now the Spanish military is furious that Defense Minister Carme Chacon's first act in office has been to ban the boys in uniform from watching websites featuring soccer or naked women.

. . .This week the Alabama state legislature killed a proposal to require the use of English in driver license exams, saying the ideas were as divisive as former Gov. George Wallace's l963 stand against desegregation.

-- TWN Staff

What follows is the transcript of the "background briefing" with Senior US officials on Syria's alleged nuclear program. (pdf here)

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Background Briefing with Senior U.S. Officials on Syria's Covert Nuclear Reactor and North Korea's Involvement April 24, 2008

SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL 1: Hello. My name is [Senior Intelligence Official 1]. And I have the start-off role. It's been a pretty busy morning and afternoon, as you might imagine. We've been on the Hill having dialogue with our committees.

What I want to do is just frame the issue. I read the press reporting coming out here. So I'm almost at the point of saying are there any questions. But just let me say that what we're going to discuss is a nuclear reactor. It was constructed by the Syrians in the eastern desert of Syria along the Euphrates River on the east side. The Syrians constructed this reactor for the production of plutonium with the assistance of the North Koreans.

Our evidence goes back an extended period of time. We have had insights to what was going on since very late '90s, early 2000, 2001 that something was happening. Our issue was pinning it down and being more precise. We had increasing appreciation for what was happening in the 2003, 2006 timeframe. But we still couldn't quite pin it down, as will become apparent to you when we show you more of the physical evidence that you'll see in just a moment.

In the spring of last year, we were able to obtain some additional information that made it conclusive. And so, we engaged in this policy process of now that we have the evidence, what do we do about it? The evidence concluded a nuclear reactor, as I mentioned, constructed by the Syrians, started probably in 2001, completed in the summer of 2007. And it was nearing operational capability.

So from that point of departure, I am joined by [Senior Intelligence Official 2] who will provide details on the intelligence and what we knew and so on. We will show you a video of the evidence - so give you a chance to ask questions about that. And then [a Senior Administration Official], seated to my right will be available for responding to any policy questions you might have. So with that, I'll turn it over to [Senior Intelligence Official 2].

Gallup says that Hillary Clinton's surge from the 40% level is primarily from undecided voters.

Obama's numbers seem steady -- not falling, but also not rising.

-- Steve Clemons

University of Maryland Professor Shibley Telhami presented this week results from the 2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll. This project was jointly undertaken by the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and Zogby International.

Here as a pdf file is the entire 110 page powerpoint presentation.

But the zinger graph is above. The views Arabs hold of Americans have little do with "values" -- or in other words, George Bush's assertion that "they hate us for our freedoms."

Arabs, like most in the world, judge America for our actions and policies -- which under this administration have been deplorable.

-- Steve Clemons

I have a few really cool opportunities for TWN readers. To attend the meetings in Washington, please RSVP with my colleague Ben Katcher at katcher@newamerica.net. On Tuesday, I'm up in Boston for an event at which I'm speaking, and there is no need to RSVP for that.

On Monday, 28 April, one of the most intelligent and provocative international thinkers I have had the privilege to know, Kishore Mahbubani, will be visiting Washington and speaking at the New America Foundation from 3:30 - 5:00 pm. I will be chairing and moderating the meeting.

His talk, "Asia vs. The West" will be based on his new book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

Mahbubani, who now serves as Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and was previously Singapore's Ambassador to the United Nations, also recently authored "The Case Against the West" in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. RSVP to Ben Katcher at katcher@newamerica.net.

On Tuesday, 29 April, I will be speaking at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy on the subject of "Blogging and Moving the Needle on US Foreign Policy Debates" from 12:30-1:30 pm at the Institute of Politics Conference Room, Littauer 166, Harvard University.

This meeting is free and open to the public for those of you ambling by Cambridge, Massachusetts next week.

On Wednesday, 30 April, I will be hosting Senator Chuck Hagel at the New America Foundation from 12 noon until 1:45 pm for an event titled "Ending the Nonsense in American Foreign Policy." He will also be reflecting on his new book (which is excellent), America -- Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers. This is the guy I think should have been running for president, and it will be a great meeting and discussion.

I've been trying to get "Obama Girl" to start wearing a Hagel tee-shirt and do a video with his book. Haven't succeeded yet -- but still working on it.

-- Steve Clemons

CHESTERTOWN MUTT STRUT

Tomorrow at 9 am, the colonial era town that the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed in 2007 as a top 10 place to visit -- Chestertown, Maryland -- will host the 11th Annual "Mutt Strut" benefit for the Humane Society of Kent County. The goal of organizers is a "100 Mutt Strut." Last year, 67 mutts participated. TWN will be covering the event.

CLINTON'S SMALL TOWN EDGE

As reported in the Charlotte Observer, the last time a U.S. president passed through Hillsborough, North Carolina, a small hamlet northwest of Durham, was sometime in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan cruised by in a train.

But last Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton hopped on to a platform at a baseball diamond behind an old high school in Hillsborough and gave one of his typical folksy stump speeches.

"The country rises and falls based on whether people like you can live their dreams," said Clinton. He then described how smaller communities were fueling his wife's presidential campaign. "That's what's carrying her on," Clinton said. "This is America; the future of our country is embodied in all these communities. I went to 47 towns like this in Pennsylvania, and I've already been to 20 in North Carolina."

After shaking hands with the locals, Clinton and Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess headed off to Elon, Asheboro, Thomasville and Statesville before the campaign day ended.

Campaign analysts say Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary because Sen. Obama fared worse than expected in Philadelphia's suburbs. But she also owes her victory to small towns throughout the Keystone state. Senator Clinton, her husband and daughter Chelsea, hit 44 different countries in Pennsylvania while Obama focused on the Philadelphia suburbs. Today and tomorrow Bill Clinton campaigns in these cities in Oregon -- North Bend, Junction City, Albany, Monmouth, McMinnville and Oregon City. And then on Sunday, he's back in Indiana -- Hartford City, New Castle, Shelbyville and Martinsville.

WHO DID ELIOT SPITZER IN?

The New York Post revealed yesterday that a second call girl has provided federal investigators with details of "Client-9's" sexual fetishes in graphic detail. So former Governor S