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 Spitzer liked to keep his socks on during sex and had a penchant for props. But who set him up?

While private investigators in New York City and Washington D.C. can't prove it, they are pointing the finger at insurance executive Hank Greenberg, among other one time high-profile targets of Spitzer. It should be noted that those being pointed at are crying foul and denying any role in Spitzer's fall.

Rumors abound that John McCain and Hillary Clinton's campaigns have had investigators churning every aspect of Obama's life -- and while Obama's people recently decided not to make Hillary's team scramble on any scandals in Bill Clinton's staggering 2007 income, word is that McCain's chief henchmen think that they have toxic stuff in their arsenal. One wonders though what more could possibly be out there on Obama when some suggest he has overstated his past misdeeds to garner street credibility.

WHITE HOUSE FURIOUS AT MUSHARRAF

A new Pakistani government overture to terrorists in the Taliban-controlled South Waziristan region of Pakistan that would remove Islamabad's army from this area and free some militants now in custody has infuriated the White House.

The prospect of a peace deal has raised concerns in Washington that the area will become a haven where terrorists can regroup and intensify their attacks in Afghanistan. Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino said yesterday that "we are concerned about it, and what we encourage them to do is to continue to fight against the terrorists and to not disrupt any security or military operations that are ongoing in order to help prevent a safe haven for terrorists there."

Irritation with Islamabad may explain why NATO troops have entered into Pakistan in recent days and shot up locals in pursuit of Taliban forces.

On the Afghanistan front a shameful debate (from the viewpoint of TWN) has surfaced in Canada on how much a dead, innocent Afghan is worth? The Canadian government has been paying between $2,000 and $9,000 to relatives of Afghani civilians who are accidentally killed by their soldiers. The average Afghani makes about $350 a year. The Canadians are spending a billion a year to support their troops in Afghanistan.

Perhaps America's crusades in the Middle East would diminish if the liability to Coalition forces for the death of innocents were jacked up much higher.

CHINESE SURFERS

More than 16 percent of the Chinese people surfed the internet last year. BDA, a Chinese technology company estimates that China's web population will grow by about 18 per cent a year, putting the total at 490 million users by 2012.

CAMPAIGN 2008 NEWS

According to the Charlotte Observer, Senator Obama's supporters raised more than $600,000 from North Carolinians in March, as opposed to just over $200,000 for Hillary Clinton. Obama raked in big bucks from the Triangle, particularly in Chapel Hill and Durham. Meanwhile, Californians are urging Senator John McCain to consider former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, as a potential running mate. In recent weeks, Fiorina has served as a McCain surrogate on economic issues, appearing on cable talk shows and joining the Arizona senator on the road this week to discuss economic revitalization in some of the nation's poorest towns.

But do her advocates remember this?

-- TWN Staff

Daily Show host Jon Stewart and Comedy Central Senior Military Analyst Rob Riggle had a mention-worthy chat last night about an important new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the badly named 'war on terror.'

The GAO report is titled "Combating Terrorism: The United States lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federal Administered Tribal Areas". (pdf here)

The Daily Show clip is here:

But here's the cool part. . .

Rob Riggle: "In 2001, there was a memo -- Bin Laden determined to attack United States from a safe haven in Afghanistan. . .

Now 7 years and $700 billion later, we get a new memo saying Bin Landen determined to attack United States from a safe haven somewhere around Afghanistan. . .

We are right back where we started. We could have gotten here by doing nothing."

I am acquainted with GAO staff member Edward George who had a major hand in writing this report, which is provocative, candid, and substantially dismissive of the Bush administration's anti-terror efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

-- Steve Clemons

The concert of democracies idea has been bandied about for quite a while in both liberal internationalist and neoconservative circles. (There is perhaps a reason for that as Professor Tony Smith has argued). But recently it's been taken up by Sen. John McCain.

Some of his supporters of his like Charles Krauthammer are excited by this idea because they believe it's the very Trojan horse they have been seeking to undermine the United Nations system, and with it the fanciful notions of internationalism. Somehow I missed this video ThinkProgress posted last month. Krauthammer states:

Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it's got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it's all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you'd hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can't say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

Krauthammer's strike against the UN (in the guise of a purportedly liberal internationalist proposal) is worrisome for its cynical intentions and actual anti-internationalist sentiment -- especially at a time when a host of writers, pollsters, and strategists argue that greater internationalism will not only be critical to the US image, but will be the currency of US power and influence.

Additionally, Michael Lind has pointed out that the concert of democracies proposal is equally troubling for its assault on the principles of sovereignty, a critical stabilizing organizing principle in the post-WWII international security order. That's why, despite the best intentions, it easily falls prey to the pugnacious nationalist and neoconservative agenda that continues to harbor unrealistic ambitions of American primacy.

No doubt a consensus is solidifying that the UN Security Council's formal structures are out of touch with the new geopolitical realities and thus something must be mended or created to bridge this gap. But instead of a concert of democracies, Lind has proposed a flexible, informal Great Global Power Council modeled on the G8 as well as regional concerts of power to manage respective security demands.

While recognizing the UN model is antiquated, rather than kill it, this move seeks to supplement it and bolster a reinvigorated internationalist regime. Decoupling great power security decisions from the UN might prove a useful, complementary multi-lateralist model.

The UN general assembly and security council, serve invaluable functions but are not necessarily suited for rapid decision making on issues of global security. The demands of global geopolitics will not be best served by another international government camp where everyone gets to play and have a role. Instead we need a more effective and efficient decision making process that is populated by the real global power brokers of the 21st century, not 1945.

--Sameer Lalwani

Demetri Sevastopulo of the Financial Times is one of the best intelligence/national security journalists in the business -- and by the tone of this article, "North Korea 'Helped Syria Build N-Plant'", which will appear as the top, front page lead in tomorrow's FT, he sounds as if he is convinced that the North Koreans were helping Syria to build a nuclear reactor.

Last year, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times -- also one of the best young investigative journalists in town -- also ran some pieces that argued this point compellingly. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, nuclear proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, and Arms Control Wonk publisher Jeffrey Lewis have been in the skeptics camp.

I too have been hanging out with the skeptics -- but when this bombing raid occurred on 6 September 2007, I was amazed at the pace of flow of what might have been highly classified information from high level Israeli intelligence officials and compartments within the US intelligence community to people like John Bolton.

PALESTINIANS IN GEORGETOWN

There's been a lull lately in the conflict between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. But it probably won't remain that way for long. Yet, given the way Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his large delegation have been living it up at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Georgetown since yesterday, one could conclude Hamas surrendered, Abbas was in complete control of all Palestinians and the Israelis had cut a deal with him. Spirits were high, to say the least, among the Palestinian delegation.

Abbas and crowd are in D.C. for separate meetings with President Bush and Secretary of State Rice today. The core issues on their plate are the same as usual: final borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of Jerusalem, disputed Israeli settlements, water, refugees an future relations between the two states.

Last night, Abbas gave the keynote address at the annual Kahlil Gibran "Spirt of Humanity" Awards Gala at the J.W. Marriott organized by James Zogby and the Arab American Institute.

TWN publisher Steve Clemons had a conflict and could not attend the AAI dinner but was across the street at Butterfield 9 with Martin Walker and an assembled group under the auspices of the AT Kearney Global Business Policy Council. Clemons reports that when he jogged from the restaurant to his car to get a file he forgot, a sniper -- no doubt on site to protect President Abbas' entourage -- marked him with a laser. Clemons stated that he saw the red laser on him and in front of him from 14th and F Streets all the way up to H Street.

President Abbas' meetings are a prelude to President Bush's trip to Israel next month to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of that country. Bush will also visit Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He met with Jordan's King Abduallah II yesterday at the White House for breakfast. The meeting lasted 50 minutes. Meanwhile, former President Jimmy Carter is claiming no one in the Bush administration asked him to avoid his recent meetings with Hamas officials.

PETRAEUS' CENTCOM APPOINTMENT

The nomination of General David Petraeus to take charge of a region that includes Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan -- pending congressional approval -- is great news for Vice-President Dick Cheney. Since Petraeus will commence his new assignment in late summer or early autumn, it will give the Bush administration greater flexibility to exploit the option of an air attack against Iran before its time in office expires. Petraeus has proven to be an obedient appendage for the administration, forever willing to cooperate closely with the White House on Iraq and Iran. As for his effectiveness, people forget that on his second tour of duty in Iraq, Petraeus served as commander of training Iraqi security forces; a job yet completed.

ASSAD'S MEMOIRS??

At a seminar in Damascus last weekend, Syrian President Assad recalled how former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to get Syria to refuse to give asylum to Iraqi scientists fleeing the country after the U.S invasion of that country in 2003. TWN should note that it has no confirmation from Colin Powell that Assad's assertion is true.

Assad said it was the first time his country realized the Bush administration was targeting scientists. He said Iraqi scientists were given a choice: either go to the United States or be killed in Iraq. While there is no way to confirm Assad's claim, it's likely the Bush administration wanted to unhinge Iraq's scientific and technological elite.

DEBATE WARS: CLINTON vs. OBAMA

The Clinton campaign is proposing an hour long debate with Senator Obama in Indiana. The debate will focus only on the economy. No word yet on any response from the Obama campaign.

Meanwhile, there were discussions yesterday within Obama's operation in Chicago whether or not to go big time negative against Sen. Clinton; specifically to focus heavily on her family's finances. But the idea was apparently vetoed because the Obama campaign feels it would preempt Senator Clinton's stated commitment to be a vigorous advocate of Obama's in September.

ZIMBABWE NIGHTMARE

The word from Zimbabwe these days is that unless the international community takes stronger measures to undercut President Mugabe and his cronies, the world may soon be witnessing genocidal trends similar to what was evolving in Kenya and and played out in Rwanda.

Existing sanctions are believed to be a joke. But three cheers for South African naval intelligence for resisting and blocking entry of an arms shipment transporting weapons to Zimbabwe from China. The arms ship was blocked in Durban, then headed to Angola, but Washington asked Angola, Mozambique and Nambia not to permit it to dock.

THIRD WORLD LOS ANGELES

A study released today by the Migration Policy Institute reveals that a half of the city's workforce is comprised of immigrants. But a third of those immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60 percent do not speak English fluently. According to the U.S. Census by 2050 minorities will account for half of all residents in the U.S.

GREEN-FRIENDLY RAILROADS MAKING A COMEBACK

Writing on the comeback of railroads, Frank Ahrens offers this startling, energy-friendly data point about rails vs. trucks:

A train can haul a ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel, about a 3-to-1 fuel efficiency advantage over 18-wheelers, and the railroad industry is increasingly touting itself as an eco-friendly alternative. Trucking firms also use the rail lines; UPS is the railroad industry's biggest customer.

Damn impressive -- and we have too many trucks on the roads in any case.

-- TWN Staff

Even after all of this time and President Bush's own abandonment of the WMD theme, Vice President Richard Cheney is still convinced that there are hidden WMDs in the Middle East that bear Saddam Hussein's product mark. A source reported to me yesterday that in the last two weeks, Cheney held forth at a meeting on Iraq WMDs and insisted that they were real and still out there.

Cheney believes that Syria has them -- and has been watching closely intelligence streams from a secret "black SIGINT base" that the US has placed in the mountains near the intersection of the Syrian, Turkish, and Iraqi borders.

Cheney's minions are pushing Congress to sponge up Israeli intelligence assessments about purported Syria-North Korea cooperation on a now destroyed, alleged nuclear site. There are many who doubt Israel's assessments in the U.S. intelligence community. A consensus has built that North Korea and Syria were cooperating on some machine tool operation to retrofit increasingly sophisticated short range missiles with new capacity, perhaps air burst capacity that could potentially deliver biological or chemical agents.

One of the real puzzles that few seem to have the answer to is exactly why Syria would want a Yongbyon-style nuclear reactor and reprocessing facility even if it could have one. As reported on TWN yesterday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has stated to Western visitors that "his engineers are so incompetent that if they tried to build a nuclear facility it would become another Chernobyl."

Whether al-Assad is being truthful or not, I suspect there is some grit in his statement that ought not to be casually shrugged off. Nuclear mishaps in one's own neighborhood aren't trivial.

Furthermore, the more dangerous application of a Yongbyon-like facility would plutonium, which can't be hidden from easy detection. Uranium is tougher to track, but also requires levels of work and capacity-building that the Syrians could never hope to hide. At least for the time being, I'm with Seymour Hersh on the Syria nuke debate.

Nonetheless, there is an effort underway via North Korea nuclear discussions to ferret out what if anything the North Koreans were up to with Syria -- particularly on the nuclear front. Arms Control Wonk has a very useful slice up of the North Korea gambit at the moment.

While I think it's important to sort out the North Korea-Syria dance, I still find it amusing and alarming that Cheney's frame of reference on Iraq is a mad quest for nonexistent WMDs.

-- Steve Clemons

The Obama campaign sent me this very useful delegate distribution chart.

-- Steve Clemons

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are escalating an immature tit-for-tat exchange on who their blocks of supporters would go to if not to each of them respectively.

Obama has said "I have no doubt ... that I can get her votes; the question is, can she get mine?"

Most don't doubt Obama's high-flying vision. Those who doubt him question his political maturity and federal level experience. Some used to doubt his ability to organize a large scale election machine -- but on that front, he's definitively proved himself. Nonetheless, Obama's glib dismissal of Clinton is pretty much hard core "hubris".

Clinton has been doing much of the same.

Here are the numbers MSNBC flashed about who voters would go to second if not for their first choice:

43% of Clinton supporters won't vote for Obama if he's the nominee.

29% of Obama supporters won't vote for Clinton if she's the nominee.

Frankly, Democratic voters if they care about the future of this country will change their minds at the polls and not vote for McCain as their alternative. But this trend runs along the same lines of how many in the non-voting international world think. When I polled folks in Israel, those who wanted Hillary Clinton wanted McCain as the alternative. Those who preferred Obama wanted McCain as second choice as well.

If Obama had really beaten Hillary Clinton by this point and had offered the Clinton clan an olive branch, this fight between Obama and Clinton fanatics would not be raging.

But Obama has failed to beat Clinton -- and she has not beaten him either. The politically mature and, in my view, the shrewd thing to do is to begin negotiating a joint ticket, or the Dems will tear themselves apart.

I'm missing Chuck Hagel in this presidential race more and more each day.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: For more on this line of thinking, see Shaun Halper's piece on an Obama-Clinton ticket.

Riddle me this: why is coal "the dirtiest fuel on earth" when Europe burns it but a potential global warming and "energy independence" solution here at home?

Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in the New York Times:

"At a time when the world's top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy's major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth."

"Clean coal" will probably be cost-effective at some point. It's worth spending big money on research to make it so. But right now it is not.

Whenever coal industry execs push for incentives for new plants now in the U.S. on the strength of "clean coal technology" that is not yet available for large-scale commercial use, media outlets should display the same kind of candor that NYT is exhibiting in its European coverage.

For the time being, coal is dirty -- no matter where it is burned.

-- Scott Paul

Bush is provoking the military establishment with lessons regarding reward and punishment by appointing General David Petraeus to serve as William Fallon's successor as Commander of Central Command, or CentCom.

Petraeus is on track for a 2012 presidential run possibility -- even though he has stated he "will never run." The New York Times and The Washington Note discussed this possibility recently.

More on this breaking news in a bit.

-- Steve Clemons

THEY AUTHORIZED TORTURE. . .AND THEN WATCHED

Cheney chief of staff David Addington -- author of one of the key "torture memos" -- actually went to Guantanamo to see torture harsh interrogation techniques applied to Guantanamo prisoners.

Accompanying him were Alberto Gonzales and Department of Defense General Counsel Jim Haynes.

All of this is described in a forthcoming book by a friend and colleague Philippe Sands titled Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law.

Phillippe Sands, Lawrence Wilkerson, and Steve Clemons will be speaking on "The Torturers" on Tuesday, 6 May, 3:30-5:00 pm at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.

SYRIAN NUKES???

In a closed congressional session tomorrow, Israeli intelligence officers will provide Members of Congress with details regarding Israel's air raid last September on an alleged nuclear installation Syria was constructing with North Korean assistance. However, there is no solid evidence to date that Syria was actually building a nuclear facility, according to highly-placed U.S. intelligence officials.

CIA analysts suggest the Syrians might have been building some kind of air missile facility. But the Bush administration is keen on darkening Syria's image, as are the Israelis, so they must promote the nuclear line. President Assad of Syria has joked to Western visitors that his engineers are so incompetent that if they tried to build a nuclear facility it would become another Chernobyl.

Vice-President Dick Cheney continues to tell associates that the Syrians were constructing a chemical weapons plant. At the time of the attack, UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei accused the Israelis of taking "the law into their own hands" and demanded more information about what was hit. To date, the IAEA chief has received no such briefing.......

NO DNC DEBATE IN NORTH CAROLINA

Clintonistas are furious at DNC chairman Howard Dean for interceding and canceling a planned debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that was scheduled to take place in North Carolina before the May 6th primary there. But the NC state democratic party says that both candidates have agreed to speak at a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Raleigh on May 2nd.

LOW ROAD TO VICTORY?

For the New York Times to publish a lead editorial attack on Hillary Clinton for running a "low road" campaign in Pennsylvania, as it did in today's paper, is quite astonishing . But will such an editorial persuade the Clinton or McCain campaigns from doing whatever they can to uncover Obama's "black nationalist roots"? No chance. We have learned that McCain and Clinton investigators are on the ground in Chicago looking into Farrakhanism and any connections to Barack Obama's machine.

TROUBLE IN BOLIVIA?

Bolivia is a big topic in the cafeteria at the CIA these days; specifically regarding the planned referendum that President Evo Morales will hold on May 4th.

The referendum will consist of two questions. It will let voters decide between 5,000 and 10,000 hectares as the maximum size for an estate. Secondly, the referendum will ask voters whether they approve of a newly drafted constitution that says the government should have ownership of all natural resources.

The crisis between the government of Bolivia and the country's wealthiest estates is palpable. In a little covered speech at the UN earlier this week, Morales denounced the rich in his country for trying to stop his social programs and foreign companies which put their products before people's lives. So why is the CIA so interested in what happens in Bolivia on May 4th? Why are there so many American agents scurrying around La Paz these days?

BEIRUT'S EMPTY HOTELS

Beirut is one of the world's great cosmopolitan cities. But the political stand-off between the American-backed government and the Syrian-backed opposition is keeping tourists away. The occupancy rate in Beirut hotels was 35 percent in 2007, down from 50 percent in 2006, according to a recently released annual survey of the Middle East hotel market by Ernst and Young. The occupancy rate in Beirut was the lowest among 19 markets in the region last year.

-- TWN Staff

On Monday evening, I heard Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen speak at the annual Atlantic Council gala dinner, following Rupert Murdoch, Jim Jones, Brent Scowcroft, Tony Blair, and Colin Powell. I've been a fairly strong fan of Mullen since he ascended to his most recent post, but last night knocked him down a few notches.

Without offering more than assertion -- and certainly going farther than Defense Secretary Robert Gates has gone as of late, Mullen stated that Iran is responsible for coalition soldier deaths. After CentCom Commander William "Fox" Fallon's departure, this kind of heightening of rhetoric may be designed more for Ayatollah Khamenei's handlers than the seven hundred people at the Ritz Carlton last night.

Mullen stated:

We also live in a time where Iran routinely pushes its way into more and more realms of instability. And I, for one, think it is important that we deal with that instability that they create, whether it is Hezbollah, Hamas.

Recent operations in Southern Iraq, recent combat operations in Southern Iraq in Basra highlighted yet again Iran's activities in ways that very specifically pointed to activities which, in fact, resulted in the deaths of coalition soldiers. And I think for the ability to create stability in that part of the world that not just this alliance, but those who are allied, will have to deal with Iran in the very near future.

More on this later.

-- Steve Clemons

Hillary Clinton's campaign reports that since the race was called in favor of Clinton tonight by the major networks, more than $2.5 million has flowed in.

No report from the Obama campaign, but they are still way ahead on cash in hand.

-- Steve Clemons

Chelsea Clinton, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, and director Rob Reiner did a Philadelphia "gay bar pub crawl" Friday night until well past 1:00 a.m. on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Novel idea. This is true retail politics -- between 8-10% of the population, and gay Americans vote.

Not sure the Obama team has done this. Barack has affinity groups though many of the social networking sites -- but I haven't seen anything yet at gay.com or manhunt.net.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Hillary Clinton won by about 10 points tonight against Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, but you all know that.

From Indiana, Barack Obama just said, "she ran a terrific race."

My main point about this fascinating contest remains as sound as when I previously wrote it: neither side is vanquishing the other. Barack Obama might have ended this in Pennsylvania had he beat Clinton, but that didn't happen. Hillary Clinton won by a sizable margin -- though not something that really clobbered Obama. Of course, I don't think that there was any outcome tonight that could have ended his campaign.

There is another contest afoot that few are paying attention to. While other primaries have been held, the state by state polling stats are shifting with the various positions that Obama and Clinton have taken. Some super delegates may swing in surprising ways -- particularly after various comments that the candidates have made about trade, the Iraq War, the economy, and small town Americans.

And in Kentucky -- whose primary is May 20th -- one of the more recent polls has Clinton at 62% vs. Obama at 26%. Each race is affecting not only future primaries, but also nudging public attitudes in races already held -- which could affect super delegates.

The tilt is still clearly with Obama, but Hillary Clinton is hanging in there in an impressive way. My gut reaction is that she is waiting for him to make mistakes.

If he doesn't, he will probably win -- but at the end of the day, if he doesn't seduce the Clinton campaign over to his team, this will feel a lot like an outcome after the 2000 Florida chad controversy.

-- Steve Clemons

I really, really like this Joe Garcia political ad.

Democrat Joe Garcia, himself a former and now reformed chief spear-carrier of the Cuban American National Foundation, is challenging Mario Diaz-Balart for Florida's 25th district -- and he's making huge inroads.

Diaz-Balart has built a large political franchise out of anti-Castroism and blocked any common sense progress in US-Cuba relations. It's time for that to change.

-- Steve Clemons

Jimmy Carter's entrepreneurship has moved some Hamas leaders to offer Israel a ten-year truce. Hamas has offered such a deal before, and Israel rejected it with the Likud and political right arguing that such a truce would only provide time for the Muslim fundamentalist movement to further dig in and establish a base for more virulent rejectionism of Israel. Israelis -- to the tune of 64% in recent polls -- want a ceasefire with Hamas and want the Palestinians to resolve their internal tension and do a credible peace deal.

Carter is a long way from success, not withstanding the opposition to his work from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. But Carter has done something important in his meeting with the Hamas leadership. He has shown his ability to go where many other American leaders -- including Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Thomas Pickering, Carla Hills, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, Theodore Sorensen, Paul Volcker, Eric Shinseki -- have advocated going but have not had the ability to do. And Carter is also showing that the recalcitrant voices in the State Department, White House, and hopeful future candidates can be decisively ignored -- and some progress still achieved.

Word has reached TWN that entrenched Democratic political machines in Philadelphia may have held discussions in recent days about what could be done to throw some speed bumps into the voting process for heavily African-American communities.

Misplacing voting roles, not assigning enough poll workers, on-the-fritz voting machines and other tools were possibly discussed as a way to help generate long lines for mostly African-American voters and to discourage them from voting. Incredible if true. My source -- unconfirmed -- suggested that this discussion was among those loyal to Philadelphia's mayor and thus hoping to help the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Well. . .George W. Bush, Google co-founder Sergey Brin are still on the star-studded party list that Israel President Shimon Peres has assembled for the May 13 festivities celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary. But Barbra Streisand won't be singing.

She gave no reason for her cancellation -- but those who know her tell me that she's disturbed by Israel's complicity in the worsening problems with Gaza and with the failure to move towards some kind of a credible Palestinian state solution. Ultimately, if Israel doesn't move towards a two-state arrangement, the 60-year old state "will either lose its 'Jewish character' or will cease to be a democracy" -- as directly stated to me by Israel Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon.

Last night at the pretty spectacular mega-hundred person attended Atlantic Council annual gala dinner at the Ritz Carlton which punctuated the revival of what was a nearly dead organization, Spanish newspaper El Mundo Washington Bureau Chief Pablo Pardo had the chance to talk to Henry Kissinger who was on his way out of the ballroom. Pardo queried Kissinger on what political issues he felt were the most important in the current presidential campaign. Kissinger gruffly said that he wasn't going to comment on that kind of thing. And then Kissinger said, "I support John McCain." Pablo Pardo responded back, "But why exactly do you support Senator McCain?"

Kissinger's reply, "Because I have known him for 20 years." No policy parameters surfaced.

Clearly, Kissinger the realist has become a sentimentalist and has discovered 'unconditional love affection'.

I had a three and a half hour long dinner with a Saudi notable in Jeddah the week before last. I asked him whether the liberalization I felt I was witnessing in various academic, NGO, and government arenas in Riyadh was a function of the King's own unique vision for the country or whether the King, or the "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" as he is formally referred to, was triangulating between the contending forces of conservatives and progressives in his country, with the trend moving in the progressive direction.

My host said that it was a bit of both -- and more. He said, one needs to listen to the King's own words, to hear him in Arabic and to answer the question not through the filter of handlers and public relations personnel but to the off the cuff remarks the King often made but which Westerners rarely if ever listened to. But my host didn't answer my question about the King's relationship to liberalization.

By numerous accounts, the King is a very blunt person.

I've been blogging and reading this morning at Columbus Circle in New York -- and a TWN reader said hi to me at 7 a.m. there. It's become a strange thing to run into people in parks, on the street, on planes who read this blog. I love it, but it's still unusual.

I keep wondering whether the next person who says hello will be POA.

I saw Candide at the New York City Opera last night. Fun, but not what I expected.

The performances of Richard Kind as Voltaire/Dr. Pangloss, Lauren Worsham as Cunegonde, and Daniel Reichard as Candide were fantastic. The voice work that Worsham and Reichard managed was the most memorable thing for me in this weird musical which is supposed to be an assault on naive hope.

Given my own tilt towards realism generally, I thought I'd gravitate to the show's themes, but Leonard Bernstein who apparently fought with Lillian Hellman and others during a tug-of-war creative process that birthed Candide prevailed in creating a too frilly, unsubtle satire of optimism. I would have done it differently and would have made allusions to today's great political challenge: semi-realist experience that produce the wrong decisions vs. powerful currents of hope and an alternative vision that could be all talk and no walk.

Meet Buddy, the newest in the clan. Buddy on the left, cuddling with his new brother, Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner.

Little Annie girl is in the foreground.

-- Steve Clemons

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has begun to cultivate a reputation as a young, thoughtful, and charismatic diplomat amidst more seasoned but less dynamic peers. When he spoke to the Young Atlanticists two weeks ago in Bucharest, he seemed to enjoy playing to this persona. In contrast to every major leader and head of state who addressed the Young Atlanticist Summit, Miliband stood out by doffing his jacket the moment he sat down, rolling his eyes at the reading of his official biography, opting to sit in the platform in front of the speakers dias to make it a more intimate conversation with the young atlanticists, and initially leading off with a mention of his blog of assorted commentary on policymaking, foreign affairs, and football. (He also promised a post on our discussion, on which he delivered).

His brief opening remarks also broke from traditional transatlantic talking points by outlining four major discontinuities that warranted a reconfiguration of NATO in terms of geographic boundaries, non-military functions, and partnerships -- particularly but not limited to the UN and the EU.

But noticeably absent from Miliband's insightful remarks was the word "China" or more specifically any mention of how the evolving geopolitical challenges for NATO and the transatlantic partnership would contend with or accommodate for China's growth, not as an individual state but something between an imperial power (as Parag Khanna has argued) and an anchor for a new international order (as Steven Weber has argued).

The central basis for the transatlantic partnership Miliband expressed was that of "shared values" but how can the partnership and NATO adapt to these new geopolitical realities where the central challenge is that of states and systems do not share those values. I asked this of Miliband who's response (see the clip below) I found intriguing, but more aspirational rather than realistic about what we could extract from China.

I've been engaged in an interesting debate with New Republic Deputy Editor Richard Just about the Beijing Olympics and what posture America's Commander-in-Chief should take regarding the games.

Hillary Clinton has been nudging George W. Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies. Barack Obama reports that he is of "two minds on the issue."

I have filed my first entry, which Richard responded to. And then my response back is up at the New Republic site now. Richard Just will get the last word, which I haven't seen yet (probably up later today).

In the second piece I mention a vignette about Wesley Clark and a trip I made with him in China as part of a McKinsey-sponsored US-China Partnership Forum conference which has not been previously reported. Some folks may find it interesting to know that China's leadership was very worried about Taiwan exploiting China's Olympics moment. They were wrong about the region that would take advantage of the world spotlight being focused on China's leaders -- but not about the prospect that some actors would move this direction, as independence-advocates in Tibet did.

I also published a piece on the same subject titled "Clinton has Strategic Blind Spot on China" in today's Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo for those who want more on this subject.

-- Steve Clemons

Traveling through Chestertown, Maryland up to Wilimington, Delaware and then on up to New York was roughly the route that George Washington used to take when making the journey from his home at Mt. Vernon up to Manhattan. That's what I'm doing this morning -- and part of it in the car, where I've been listening to post-debate reactions on various Pennsylvania radio stations.

I didn't get the debate turned on until 8:30 pm. Quick reactions. I thought that what I saw of Hillary Clinton last night was extremely impressive. She really knows her issues -- and I've begun to develop a knee-jerk negative reaction to Barack Obama's response style in debates. The contrast between his brilliant oratory in speeches and his ability to respond to questions clearly is profound and depressing. But that's just me perhaps.

And how strange it was to hear Obama make the statement that "Israel's security is paramount" while in contrast Hillary Clinton rode to the rescue of the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the UAE, and other states in the region if confronted by increasing Iranian bellicosity and aggression. Hillary gave the "no false choice" response -- and that used to be turf that I thought Obama basically owned, at least until recently.

Obama seemed on the defensive to me in the parts of the debate I saw -- and the Hillary Clinton that performed last night seemed refreshed, serious, studied. This Hillary hasn't been on display for a bit.

I know it's increasingly less and less likely -- but as I think that Barack Obama is going to pull off the nomination, I really think his team needs to either offer Clinton the VP slot, even if she rejects it, and then put Durbin and Schumer on hold and offer Hillary the Senate Majority leader slot.

I don't see a real pathway for Hillary Clinton to win given the numbers we are seeing in the Pennsylvania and other races -- but what is absolutely clear is that Obama's possible win will not be one in which Clinton was vanquished.

He is going to have to accomodate her franchise in some important way -- and his team had better be thinking about that, or they will probably suffer a very serious political insurgency that undermines them in the coming battle with John McCain.

I'm off to New York now on the AMTRAK to New York to moderate an evening book party and reception for my colleague Parag Khanna and his new book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. The Washington Note is supporting this reception tonight -- and if any readers would like to attend, zap me an email at steve@thewashingtonnote.com and I'll send you the attendance information. I need full name and affiliation (if any) for the building security folks.

-- Steve Clemons

In recent weeks, I have met very senior advisors for the Obama, Clinton, and McCain camps. In each case, the senior presidential aide was quite aware of critiques I had offered regarding a variety of foreign policy issues.

In the case of Obama, I've been critical of his recent triangulation on Israel/Palestine issues and his unwillingness to embrace at least the Bush administration 2001-2004 "status quo" in US-Cuba policy.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, I have been critical of her Cuba stand, her failure to mention Israel-Palestine in what her staff called Clinton's definitive foreign policy vision statement, and critical of her stand on the Beijing-hosted Olympic Games and her views about how to pursue better human rights conditions for people inside China, Tibet, and Darfur.

In the case of John McCain, whom I have admired and written positive treatments on many occasions on this blog, I part company on his approach to the inevitability of more wars in the Middle East, his glib embrace of bombing Iran, and his stand on a long-term deployment in Iraq.

John McCain's national security vision -- as it stands now -- will either require substantial tax increases to cover the military commitments he seems unable to extract his thinking from -- or a new military draft. Both will harm confidence of citizens in America and its future -- and hasten America's decline economically, politically, and strategically.

What has been quite strange is that in certain micro-policy areas, whether its Cuba, Israel-Palestine, or knocking back the Cheney wing of John McCain's divided foreign policy advisers, these senior political aides I spoke to all said, practically verbatim:

You are pushing us in the direction we need to go.

I'm still trying to get my head around the implications of this.

To some degree, it means that the campaigns -- and perhaps the candidates themselves -- aren't accepting full responsibility for his or her views. They perhaps want to be pushed. They want gaiatsu, a Japanese term meaning "external pressure".

During US-Japan trade dispute days, Japan frequently worked behind the scenes to solicit American trade negotiators to pressure the Japanese government to concede on some respective trade policy issue -- so that Japanese politicians could use the 'excuse' of American pressure to explain the seeming concession to its public. The fact is that Japanese politicians usually actually wanted to go in the direction that we were pressuring them; it was in their interests -- but politicians did not want to shoulder the responsibility.

To some degree, the franchises of diverse opinion that surround each candidate are going to be looking for outside agitants, ideologues and validaters to help bolster the internal policy case they are making to the potential president. For a refresher on the internal divide problem inside the campaigns, please read "Agonizing Over the Candidates and Who They Really Are."

When top tier advisers are looking for excuses for positions that they need to take -- then it raises serious questions about authenticity of the rhetoric we are hearing from all three -- Obama, Clinton and John McCain.

-- Steve Clemons

For those interested, I have done a two-part exchange, a debate really, with New Republic deputy editor Richard Just over the issue of how an American President should approach the question of the Olympic Games with respect to ongoing human rights conditions in China.

The first part is up -- and the second should be up later today. . .I think.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

The slew of stories on the fallout from rising food prices have primarily concentrated on the immediate political effects of riots and social upheaval mostly in developing nations. But the long term political effects -- especially if high prices endure as some reporting and expertise suggests -- could follow the "energy security" trend and pose real implications for balance-of-power politics.

The lesser reported story is that the spike in food prices has precipitated interesting deals and swaps between nations -- not simply in exchange for food stuffs but for more strategic assets and commodities (e.g. land and gas). Yesterday's Wall Street Journal page one coverage of the food crisis seemed to hint at this emerging effect producing some odd-couple partnerships:

With the international financial institutions working on a slow track, countries have been cutting their own deals. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on Tuesday that he had agreed to let Libya grow wheat on 247,000 acres of land in the Ukraine. In exchange, Libya promised to include the former Soviet republic in construction and gas deals.

Brazil recently invited Egypt's minister of commerce to discuss a possible trade deal which would have a strong agriculture component. China also cut its first free-trade deal with a rich country, picking New Zealand, a major food exporter, and is talking about a pact with Australia, another big agricultural producer.

Meanwhile, Uganda plans to sell more coffee, milk and bananas to India. "Our problem is too much food and little market," Uganda President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni told reporters, according to news reports.

This trend makes make one curious whether food will also follow the path of energy products -- like the rise of the national oil company -- steered by national interests towards less open markets to be wielded as the next geopolitical asset or weapon.

If OPEC is globally recognized as a cartel that has produced inordinate gains and influence for otherwise less than ordinary nation states, it should come as no surprise that leaders seeking to maximize national self-interest and unhindered by moral scruples will soon use food to that same end.

These vulnerabilities could even be magnified if this food crisis turns out to be a result of something more structural in nature than the global food stock -- namely the global food supply chain.

-- Sameer Lalwani

I have a magnificent view this morning of the Arkansas River out my hotel window and just snapped this pic. I'll be speaking to the Arkansas Committee on Foreign Relations this afternoon -- and back to DC tonight.

-- Steve Clemons

When I was thinking about launching a civil society battle over John Bolton's nomination to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations and planned to do what I could to block his Senate confirmation, I talked to a few Senators about it -- on both sides of the aisle. One prominent Senator told me:

Steve, I don't like John Bolton any more than you do, but he's an obscure bureaucrat going for a job nobody cares about.

Unless someone creates the political space and turns him into a household name, there's nothing we can do to stop this.

Well, we created the political space, turned John Bolton into a household name, and stopped his Senate confirmation.

But he's doing just fine in book sales, keynote conference roles, and speech fees. He may not want to admit it, but TWN played a role in helping him get known. . .a small price to pay we think for moving him out of the United Nations.

As the Washington Post writes:

Those who can get Senate confirmation, do; those who can't . . . keynote? John R. Bolton, who never got the chamber's approval to become ambassador to the United Nations, will deliver the spotlight speech at today's launch of Global Governance Watch, a joint project of the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Just got back to Washington from the Middle East, or what I called the Middle West when I lived in Japan. I'm tuckered out -- but may be back on later.

For those in Arkansas, I'll be down in Little Rock on Tuesday speaking at noon for the Arkansas Committee on Foreign Relations. My event doesn't seem to be up on the ACFR's website -- but I will be there.

Thursday and Friday, I will be in New York. I'm serving as master of ceremonies for an event with Parag Khanna on Thursday evening, the 17th, in Manhattan. If there are TWN readers who might want to attend, email me and I'll forward an invite. Khanna will be talking about his book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.

In other updates, the Financial Times' Edward Luce picked up my commentary on Obama's less than inspiring position on continuing an isolation strategy with Hamas.

More later -- and consider this an open thread.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest post by Richard Vague, a Republican business person concerned about the economic consequences of the Iraq War. Richard Vague is Chairman of "American Respect" and authored Terrorism: A Brief for Americans.

In George Soros's new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means, you get three short "books" interwoven into one. The most central is an enhanced statement of his reflexivity investment theory, the second is an analysis of our current financial crisis complete with investment recommendations, and the third is a brief but vivid history of postwar financial markets intertwined with Soros's own story. This book ranges widely, from the origin of conglomerates to a discussion of Enlightenment philosophy, with doctrines of falsifiability and radical fallibility mixed in for good measure, but is lively at every point along the way.

Soros calls his central economic theory the concept of reflexivity, and contrasts it against the rational expectations theory that he contends is utilized by most economists--as well as by most investment valuation models and synthetic investment instruments. In rational expectations theory, the economy can be studied like a natural science, inputs have predictable outcomes, markets are self-correcting and tend toward equilibrium.

Soros views this rational expectations theory as dangerous, primarily because of the certainty it presumes--and sees it as part of the reason we find ourselves with our current economic crisis. Soros instead states that investors' perceptions and behaviors change outcomes and therefore have an inherent circularity, with the result that markets are often wrong and outcomes are always uncertain. Two examples: 1) people buy stocks in anticipation of future share prices, but those prices are contingent on their expectations, 2) lenders extend credit based on a belief in the value of underlying collateral, but the act of lending itself can diminish the value of that collateral.

Arab American Institute President James Zogby just included me tonight on the distribution of his 14 April 2008 Washington Watch report titled "The Disconnect: How Arabs and Americans See 2008".

I had to post this report tonight because he is just returning from Egypt and Kuwait to Washington -- and has encountered the same intense interest and anxiety in our American election process there that I have found densely to be the case in Saudi Arabia -- in both Riyadh and Jeddah.

Zogby's comments about the substantial dismay that this part of the world has about America's abilities to achieve its objectives is also exactly what I have found.

I hear that there are about 500 of them here, and many Saudi officials -- from advisers to the King to Members of the Shura Council -- say that blogs are undermining official media and breaking up cartels of media control. They say that for the most part, the Kingdom is acquiescing to this, though incrementally.

Many Saudi government officials read blogs -- and some even read The Washington Note on a regular basis.

I hear that Falsafat is one of the good blogs in Saudi political and social life. It's in Arabic, and I can't read it -- but others have vouched for it. He has posted a provocative, somewhat disturbing, video treatment in response to the controversial Dutch film about Islam.

Also, many in government do think that the police may be feeling real social pressure to release the detained and as yet uncharged Saudi blogger Fuad al-Farhan. His detention was raised in many of my meetings here in Riyadh and Jeddah.

More on that later.

-- Steve Clemons

James Pethokoukis of US News & World Report has just published an interesting article titled, "The Return of Big Government."

He suggests that there is no way for either a Republican or Democratic administration to come in without spending a lot of money to deal with everything from climate change to the Iraq War to housing and health care.

My colleague Sherle Schwenninger, who directs New America's Economic Growth Program, is quoted that national infrastructure alone needs $150 billion/year to deal credibly with the collapse of internal road and bridge infrastructure in addition to next generation infrastructure platforms that the nation needs to regain its footing for economic growth and innovation.

Others suggest that we are digging ourselves into bigger deficits and we need to cut it all.

There is no "political optimism" possible if the next administration is compelled to strangle down much needed infrastructure investment after the reckless war spending that the Bush administration has brought us.

And did anyone hear Andrea Mitchell say the other day that America's spending on Iraq was not affecting the economy? She may be married to Alan Greenspan -- but that is a seriously out of touch comment.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm still in Saudi Arabia and haven't had the time to absorb everything that has been churning this last week with the Petraeus/Crocker hearings and other Senator Foreign Relations Committee meetings focused on Iraq that Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar have called.

I have seen two pieces though that rip a hole into the official "take" on America's position in Iraq. These are from National Interest senior editor Jacob Heilbrunn and my colleague and friend Nir Rosen who gave testimony in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

First Jacob Heilbrunn, a clip from "Tell Me How This Ends":

(Gas pipeline map from The Economist, Jan. 24, 2008)

One of the leads for this week's Economist emphasizes the role of energy security for Europe, and in particular, pipeline diversification over missile defense. It was the subject of much interest last week at NATO's summit in Bucharest, so much so, that the parallel Young Atlanticist Summit held a six hour NATO simulation exercise focused exclusively on drafting a NATO position paper on energy security.

As part of the simulation set in 2012, NATO now contains 35 member states including Russia, and has to draft a communique by consensus on energy security. In my second role as a blogger at the conference, I interviewed a Russian delegate before the simulation began about their national position. His glib, tongue and check answer turned out to be, in a way, remarkably accurate:

(In case my low-tech recording is unclear, below is the transcription).

Ben Smith of Politico points out that Barack Obama has "drawn a line" regarding which of the world's problematic bad guys should be met by Presidents like himself -- and Jimmy Carter. He thinks Carter should not meet any Hamas leaders.

I guess isolation works for some and not others -- but ah, just when does one know in Obama's play book?

Apparently, he's OK meeting Israeli leaders because they disavow terrorism -- but still they protect and establish illegal settlements and have installed more roadblocks and inhibitions to Palestinian mobility than was the case since the November 2007 Annapolis Summit. And while knocking Carter's efforts, Obama fails to articulate how any negotiation that does not include in some way a wrestling match and attempt at a negotiation with Hamas will be stable enough to believe in.

A leading Knesset Member in Israel who strongly favors Senator Obama if he had the chance to vote in the U.S. elections told me recently that his one fear about Obama is that in his quest for the White House, he will ultimately have to shed his pragmatic approach to problem solving and demonstrate to critics "that he will be more Israeli than the Israelis."

To establish a context, look at this roster of great Americans -- all national foreign policy leaders, military leaders, former government officials, and public intellectuals -- who have been able to go where Barack Obama seems unable.

This picture, which found its way into my inbox today, is a pretty good reflection of the trajectory of U.S. versus Russian influence at the moment. Don't get it? Look closely -- there's a second Head of State in the background.

-- Scott Paul

Laura Rozen has penned a fascinating piece on the bumpy ride that hyper-conservative "Freedom's Watch" has had thus far in its emergence as a conservative challenger to MoveOn.org.

She notes that Israeli settlements supporter Sheldon Adelson is just not the George Soros type and is getting so much in the way of the efficient operation of the organization, that many senior staff have already come and gone in the life of the very young outfit.

Speaking of Soros, the conference call I hosted the other day with Soros on his new book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means can be listened to here.

It was so successful that we are organizing two international conference calls for the media, press, and policy-focused bloggers. I can't open the lines to the public because there aren'e enough lines to cover the demand, but I (and the New America Foundation) will be hosting these conference calls from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The first conference call primarily for media in Europe and the Middle East will be 9 am EST Wednesday morning, April 9 (1300 GMT). The second conference call will be 10:00 pm EST Wednesday, April 9, which is 11:00 am in Tokyo. I'll be on both calls.

If you are a policy blogger or member of the media, you are welcome to join us -- but you must send your information -- name and press/blog information -- to my colleague Samuel Sherraden at sherraden@newamerica.net. He'll credential and send call-in information to the journalists and bloggers that we can handle.

I should add that this conference call will focus on George Soros' concerns about the global financial crisis and how we should be thinking differently about the framework of regulatory involvement. He suggests that what we are seeing now is the bursting of two bubbles simultaneously -- one the housing bubble and two, a "super bubble" of synthetic instruments that have driven the creation of credit to highly unstable levels.

Soros also offers his own outlook for 2008. I've just finished reading the entire book, which is being distributed electronically in order to speed dissemination -- and it provides important, fascinating insights into global markets, regulatory problems, and Soros himself.

-- Steve Clemons

Frank Luntz comments on the thread below regarding his appearance at USUN. And anyone who takes the time to comment on a post concerning him or her deserves some front page attention in my book.

This is Frank Luntz here. Just for the record, I was invited to speak because I have conducted instant response dial sessions at every Democratic and Republican debate over the past year -- roughly 40 in all. And I only said yes because it is a non-partisan forum where we would discuss issues and voter attitudes without having to score partisan points.

This has nothing to do with neo-cons, attitudes towards the UN, or John Bolton. It is a briefing for the foreign press about election 08. I plan to highlight Obama's success and why he is likely to be the next president ... unless you all object. So top [sic] whining.

-- Scott Paul

Hillary Clinton is making a wrong-headed play in her call to President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.

After the collision of an American EP-3 spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter in April 2001, neoconservative high priest Richard Perle advocated preempting China's bid to host the 2008 Olympics. He felt that keeping China from being able to enjoy the prestige of hosting the Olympic games was the best way to punish China for the transgression of harassing an American military plane that may have been in its air space.

On CNN's Crossfire, I debated Perle on this issue and suggested that the approach he advocated was ultimately harmful to American interests and would seriously harm our ability to generate a broad array of contacts with China in different spheres through which we could hopefully constructively influence and encourage what Robert Zoellick coined a "responsible stakeholder" track.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations is hosting a briefing on the 2008 presidential elections later this week. The three speakers are Former Rep. David Bonior from the Edwards campaign, Former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey from the Romney campaign, and Frank Luntz.

It's the appearance by Luntz, the architect of the Bush administration's fear and terror frames, that caught my attention. First, Luntz's inclusion tips the balance of the panel in favor of conservatives/Republicans over progressives/Democrats -- but I'm not too nitpicky about these sorts of ratios. More importantly, Luntz has had no formal involvement in the election. His claim to credibility on this topic is rooted in his exploits as a pollster, which have earned him reprimands from the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the National Council on Public Polls for two separate infractions.

That this event is taking place at the United Nations adds irony to the story. Just over eighteen months ago, Luntz participated in a UN bash-o-rama coordinated by the Hudson Institute in New York. There, he released new polling data that, according to him, shows that the UN had emerged as a wedge issue that could decide a presidential election and that Americans were "one scandal away from washing their hands" of the UN. Even a cursory look at secondhand reports of the polling reveals bias in the language of the questions (and, more importantly, recent, credible polling arrives at opposite conclusions).

It seems to me that Frank Luntz is the least appropriate person to speak at this forum. Well...John Bolton could probably give him a run for his money. But there's no good reason to give Luntz this platform.

-- Scott Paul

It was announced a short bit ago that Mark Penn is stepping down (well, has been fired) as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign. My colleague and friend Mark Schmitt was the first to really nail the problem that Penn had in serving union-busting clients and foreign governments on trade deals while co-heading a presidential campaign that was sending love notes to unions and promising to rip up trade treaties.

On another front, I speculated a while back that General David Petraeus may be a Wes Clark in the making for the Republicans -- particularly for the 2012 presidential race.

The possibility of seeing a new General turn President emerge was focused on in the New York Times over the weekend with a nice nod in an article, "Generally Speaking" by Steven Lee Myers to the original piece I wrote. And I stand by it. I do think that much of the country is looking for a new Eisenhower.

-- Steve Clemons

As we were driving in from the airport into the heart of Riyadh, I saw a beautiful building with a hole in it called the "Kingdom Centre," built by the well-known global investor Prince Alwaleed.

I left my hotel to look for it and to get a picture for all of you -- but I couldn't find it.

It turns out, much to my embarrassment, that we were staying in the building. I was just walking around it I guess and didn't get enough perspective to see it above me.

More later -- I have been here only for a few hours and it has been a fascinating, eye-opening trip already.

-- Steve Clemons

I grew up mostly attending Department of Defense schools around the world and the U.S. -- and The Ten Commandments seemed like it aired on our TV's at least once a month -- but certainly at Easter and Christmas. I loved watching it -- have to admit.

Charlton Heston, a scion of Hollywood's small but strident right wing, has passed away at 84.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I ran into Charlton Heston now and then but have nothing significant to report -- except one really interesting phone encounter.

Just arrived in Riyadh. This is the view from my window at my hotel -- an overcast day.

Things start up at 12:30 pm, two hours from now on Sunday here. Traveling with me are New America Foundation colleagues and friends Tim Golden who has been a senior correspondent for the New York Times on leave now to do a book, Nicholas Schmidle who just joined my American Strategy Program group along with Tim Golden at the New America Foundation, Flynt Leverett who directs New America's Geopolitics of Energy Initiative, New America Foundation Senior Fellow and BloggingHeads creator Robert Wright, and one of my director's council members Richard Vague, who wrote the monograph Terrorism: A Brief for Americans.

More later -- need sleep.

-- Steve Clemons

I am sitting at JFK Airport preparing to depart for Saudi Arabia in a couple of hours -- and thought I'd post this picture I took of myself last week, standing next to Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel -- the grand establishment where Aldrich Ames took his first $50,000 from the Soviets launching his notorious spying career.

Room 871 was the rendezvous point for New York Governor Eliot Spitzer when he last met a hired playmate.

For some reason, while I really am not that animated one way or the other by the Spitzer sex scandal, the room itself represents to me 'hubris'.

It reflects how I feel about Hillary Clinton's Bosnia sniper story -- or Barack Obama's claims that he will stop climate change, end American dependence on foreign oil. Room 871 reminds me of John McCain's walk through an Iraqi marketplace in a flak jacket and several squads of protective sniper and police forces. It reminds me of the Clinton's $109 million take in eight years -- and Hillary's feigned surprise yesterday that her husband really could make money when he left public service. The room reminds of Obama getting a stage and sound crew to produce a tape -- with echo effects and all -- re-creating his October 2002 opposition to the Iraq War.

I think Barack Obama is going to win the Democratic primary in the end, but none of these folks deserves an easy win. I think it's going to be a close race between McCain and the Dem nominee that is punctuated by bubbles of overstatement, hyperbole, just going too far with gravity-defying platitudes and rhetoric, and then busts when reality punctures the silliness.

More later -- but I wanted to let DC visitors know that anyone can go up to the 8th Floor of the Mayflower at this point and snap a quick shot next to a symbol of political hubris.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm leaving very early in the morning to spend a week in Saudi Arabia. I'll be weighing in on matters from the road.

Sameer Lalwani and others will be helping to cover -- but wanted to keep the TWN loyalists informed.

-- Steve Clemons

Today I organized a media/blogger conference call with George Soros to discuss his concerns about the current financial crisis, which he thinks is the worst America has experienced since the 1930s.

It was a fascinating discussion of his new book, distributed electronically, titled The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means -- and his outlook for 2008.

Matt Stoller captured much of the discussion today. Devin Stewart blogged about the Soros reference to the bursting of a "super bubble" here. And also Foreign Policy's "Passport" Blog. And. . .The American Strategist.

And the mp3 of the New America Foundation/Soros Conference Call is here.

-- Steve Clemons

Friday morning (tomorrow) I will be hosting a media/blogger conference call with financier and philanthropist George Soros at 10 am EST.

In a new book released today, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means, as well as a Financial Times oped that also appeared today, Soros shares his thinking on the current financial crisis -- which he argues is "the most severe since the 1930s."

In order to speed up distribution, Soros has published the book electronically. He also presents his outlook for the global economy in 2008 (which I bet moves markets a bit).

For those who are into this -- bloggers, opinion writers and/or media -- the conference will begin at 10 a.m. EST. I must send the call-in information to you after you RSVP to steve@thewashingtonnote.com. We have a domestic U.S. number to call -- and a number for non-US based journalists and bloggers to call.

I wish I could open this to the entire public -- but we don't have enough lines. I will post the recording of the call for public airing after the meeting is completed.

Here are some lines from the book. . .

For the early birds on the east coast (or the late night blog readers on the west coast), President Hamid Karzai will address the Young Atlanticist delegation in Bucharest along with students at the University of Kabul via a video teleconference link - which you can tune into live by going to the Young Atlanticist homepage (for those who miss it, I will eventually post links to where the recordings are saved).

Karzai might also face a tough crowd, particularly from the University of Kabul students, like Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer faced yesterday as my fellow Bucharest blogger Alex Dobrota reported.

Afghanistan is perhaps the centerpiece of the NATO summit (though expansion rates a close second) as it is the first intensive out-of-theater deployment for NATO in its 59 year history. And it has not been easy. One of the reasons for regress and a resurgent Taliban that has been cited by many during this NATO summit in Bucharest is the lack of a coordinating mechanism or actor to harmonize tactical operations with civilian efforts at reconstruction through the PRTs, and the morass of development aid that is tethered to different national objectives and time lines.

A couple weeks ago, Zalmay Khalilzad wrote an op-ed throwing strong U.S. support behind the United Nations to take on that role of coordination in Afghanistan.

There is only one way to end the confusion: the United Nations must take on the primary coordination role, and donors must show a willingness to be coordinated. The new resolution allows this to happen in a number of ways.

First, Mr. Eide will need to oversee the coordination of civilian assistance with military efforts of the two military organizations operating in Afghanistan, NATO and the International Security Assistance Force. While it's promising that those two organizations are meeting in Bucharest, Romania, next month to discuss better integrating their efforts, success against the insurgency will require efforts to ensure that military actions to secure areas from the enemy are coordinated with civilian efforts to establish good governance and economic development.

Second, Mr. Eide must coordinate the efforts of the international community to support the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year plan agreed upon in 2006 by the government of Afghanistan, the United Nations and the international community that requires Afghan leaders to take steps in reform and institution-building in exchange for commitments of sustained support. The United Nations must have a stronger role in overseeing the increasing capacity of Afghan ministries and their anti-corruption efforts.

Third, the new United Nations special representative should help the leaders and people of key donor countries understand achievements and challenges. This is the only way that the friends of Afghanistan can fully appreciate the return on their investments.

Last, Mr. Eide will have a mandate to engage Afghanistan's neighbors to help stabilize the country. In the aftermath of 9/11, regional powers came together to support the so-called Bonn agreement, which enabled Afghans to freely choose their own government. Reclaiming the spirit of Bonn must be a priority.

The United States is fully behind the United Nations in the mission. Afghanistan is important not only because it was the origin of the attacks of 9/11 but also because it is the keystone of the geopolitical stability of Central and South Asia. Moreover, success in Afghanistan will be a major step in helping to create security, stability and progress in the broader Middle East, which is the defining challenge of our time.

Initially Paddy Ashdown had been nominated but was vetoed by President Karzai, some suggested because Karzai believed Ashdown's presence might impinge on his governing autonomy and discretion. So now Kai Eide is being slated as the man for the job. I suspect Karzai will comment on how this coordinating mechanism/agent interacts with Afghan sovereignty.

Yesterday provided an excellent but gruelling set of sessions with President Bush in the morning, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe General John Craddock, Estonian President Toomas Ilves, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende (who apparently has been likened to Harry Potter - though he's not the first as Blake Hounshell noted last fall).

Because we attended President Bush's speech in the morning, I was advised not to bring my laptop for the delays it might cause in the intensive security screenings. In hindsight this turned out not to be the case but as a result of not having a laptop the whole day, I'm still transcribing my hand written notes into blog posts that I hope to post today between the session with Karzai, the Albanian Prime Minster, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and a NATO energy crisis simulation.

-- Sameer Lalwani

(This piece was cross posted at the Young Atlanticist Blog).

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves's refreshingly wry sense of humor and sharp wit provided welcome relief from an intenisve Young Atlanticist Summit day of speeches, lectures, and meetings (especially for those of us who were still sleepless from jetlag, fretting over lost baggage, and breaking in an assemblage of borrowed attire that was one bolo tie away from saying "Dont Mess with Texas").

Bow-tie clad Ilves spliced in his acerbic humor to complement a tough but well-articulated set of posiions on NATO issues that amounted to soft-jabs at Russia. For instance, he suggested that cyber-terrororism -- like the kind exhibited on Estonia in April of 2007 and linked back to Russia -- should be treated like the terrorism that targets physical infrastructure and consequently, perhaps even trigger NATO action in acordance with Article 5.

President Ilves bluntly criticized his neighbor's ruthlless exercise of energy as a foreign policy tool (though hardly the only one as Flynt Leverett has argued) citing a figure that Russia has employed energy shut-offs forty-one times since the 1990s as a source of geopolitical leverage. However, he made no mention of why, if this was the case, Europe continued to imprudently expose itself to such market vulnerabilities and energy chokepoints. It is unclear whether he was just miffed by Russia's clever use of energy realpolitik or whether he believed it ought to be somehow challeneged on legal grounds.

But the most entertaining line of the day came when a member of the Ukrainian delegation asked Ilves for some pearls of wisdom based on Estonia's experience seeking NATO membership. President Ilves cut right to the chase: "Don't be a Marxist" he said, "and by that I mean Groucho Marx-ist". He reminded the audience of the scene where Groucho Marx walks into a bank with a gun to his head claiming that he'll take his life unless they give him all their money. The analogy drew laughter but captured an essential truth.

Ilves went on to explain that countries attempting to wield the threat of internal upheavel, civil war or political collapse to leverage entrance into NATO would likely fall short or undermine their own case for membership. "Don't say you're owed anything" he argued. Rather, prospective countries needed to make the case on their own merits -- that they are on par with other admits and have made domestic reforms that warrant entrance. Overall, he argued that entrance needed to be sought for the sake of the country, for the citizens of the nation.

Though I found the argument convincing, it seemed to reveal perhaps why Germany (amongst others) feels Ukraine is in fact not ready for entrance into NATO. The deep political divides in Ukraine loom large, with a large chunk of its population still opposed to NATO entrance and politicians wielding the promise (or threat) of NATO accession as a political gambit to shore up power rather than to act on the will of their people. This seems more Groucho Marx-ist with these pro-NATO politicians threatening the life of their country with a potential split over the issue in order to enter an alliance that might consolidate their party's power.

A Ukrainian colleague pointed out to me that the people in Eastern Ukraine who are pro-Russian and against joining NATO are essentially being manipulated by elites (a non-unique event in democratic politics, even in the paragons of democracy - e.g. soft money in U.S. politics) and Russian propaganda tethered to cash payments to oppose an organization they know nothing about. But nevertheless, it would be completely rational from the perspective of these Ukrainian voters to oppose a process that would, in their minds, offer them nothing tangible yet threaten the supply of these cash handouts (let alone, as Anatol Lieven has pointed out, discounted energy prices and the remittances sent home from Ukrainian workers in Russia) which function like crude forms of politically targetted development aid. That is, until they are sufficiently convinced in larger margins that the payoff NATO brings to their lives is worth the cost (a case the proponents of NATO need to resoundingly win rather than gloss over en route to entrance into the military alliance).

So I agree with the Estonian President -- Ukrainian leaders should not act like Marx-ists but rather take the time necessary (years maybe) to engage in the internal public debate needed to reach a consensus rather than proceed down this path of political brinksmanship that could tear their country apart.

-- Sameer Lalwani

(This piece is cross-posted at the Young Atlanticist Blog where the author will continue to blog live from Bucharest during the NATO summit).

I've asked Leo Hindery to spend some time with us at the New America Foundation today. It's a brown bag deal -- but I'll provide the sodas and cookies (though I'm on a diet).

Hindery was the most quoted voice after a major forum we recently held that drew together economic advisers from the Clinton, Obama, McCain, and Edwards campaigns. He is intriguing because he's a telecom executive and used to serve as CEO of AT&T Broadband and headed the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network -- but he believes in a stakeholder approach to modern capitalism, not the winner-takes-all mania that is producing super-winners and super-losers, undermining America's middle class, and wrecking the present and future economy.

Hindery was the Senior Economic Adviser to John Edwards during his presidential run. Hindery has now signed on to the Obama campaign -- and has represented Obama a number of times -- but today he is not speaking on behalf of any campaign. . .just himself.

In my view, we are seeing two bubbles burst on the global economic stage at the same time -- one is housing and the other is the world of complex financial instruments and derivatives.

We are going to have a discussion about these economic challenges today and how to focus on the "real economy" rather than the "delusional economy" -- while Bernanke is doing the same (at the same time) over at the Joint Economic Committee in Congress. I will be speaking as well in addition to Sherle Schwenninger who heads the New America Foundation Economic Growth Program and Bruce Stokes, economics columnist at National Journal. We are starting at noon sharp for locals and ending exactly at 1:30 pm.

More later -- but I thought that there were a number of bloggers and thinkers in DC today that might find this fun to participate in. For those not in DC, I'd be happy to get a link of the digital video/audio sent to you directly by my colleagues. Just email me.

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday, I had coffee with a former three-star general who has outed himself as a political conservative in his post-military life. Joining us was a former conservative member of Congress, a conservative CEO, a top tier conservative organizer, and a conservative pundit. I discussed the Iraq War, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan/Pakistan, nukes, and Cuba with them.

The anger among the serious strategic-thinking conservatives about the state of the country, its foreign policy position, the value of the dollar, and the beleaguered military is serious -- and John McCain seems to have no idea how much frustration is boiling among conservative patriots with his saber-rattling about hundred year deployments and more wars in the "Koran-zone."

But one of the really interesting lines from the general and heartily agreed to by the conservative organizer and also the pundit was:

No one serious can support our policy towards Cuba. Fifty years of failure. We need to engage those people. Commerce and travel, exchange between their people and our people. . .well, you know what I mean. Cuba is an easy fix. Castro's brother, Raul, is lifting all sorts of restrictions on his public, and we're doing squat. If we want to steal Hugo Chavez's thunder in Latin America, then open up to Cubans and see where the currents take us. Can't get worse than the "zero" we have achieved thus far.

If serious conservatives can say this, why can't the serious Dems running for the White House?