Patrick Doherty directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative.

I encourage everyone to read Julia Sweig's latest article that is coming out this weekend in the Outlook section of the Washington Post.

Julia, the diva of Latin America policy, has been visiting Cuba for more than 25 years (which of course makes her first trip at the tender age of four) and knows the people and the policies better than just about anyone in this town.

In this piece, entitled, "Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba", Julia sets her sights on the U.S. military base that is now synonymous with torture but which for the last 50 years has been the location of the most frequent and meaningful official engagement between the United States and Cuba.

At the invitation of the U.S. Southern Command Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, Julia went down to, as she writes, see what was happening at the base beyond the detainee facility (which she visited as well) and begin to imagine what might be possible with this extraordinary piece of property.

President Obama, of course, has promised to close Guantanamo's detainee facility by January of next year. What will happen to the base? Sweig thinks it's a good place to create a new hemispheric public health institution--a great idea made all the more relevant with the current outbreak of swine flu.

Will it happen any time soon? Don't hold your breath. But with serious people like Admiral Stavridis' predecessor General Barry McCaffrey calling for an outright end to the embargo, it may happen sooner than you think.

-- Patrick Doherty

Barack Obama's press conference last night punctuating the ritualistic 100-day review of new presidencies showed this President at his best I think -- thoughtful, human, willing to take quite a roster of questions, and well. . .wonky.

But Guardian US editor at large Michael Tomasky found a pretty significant error in Obama's commentary last night. It's always sort of exciting to be able to correct a President.

I had this chance when listening to Barack Obama's Inaugural Address and heard:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

Well, because Grover Cleveland gave the oath twice, there were really just 43 Americans. It interests me that this historical inaccuracy will live forever in Obama's inaugural text -- and there seems like there is nothing one can do about it.

But Tomasky's catch is far more significant.

Obama recounted how he had read that even at the height of the blitz, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused to allow German prisoners to be tortured.

Well, Tomasky counters with the facts. Regrettably and sadly, even the Brits tortured.

When reality punctures the myths we hope are true, it's not really something to be too glad about -- particularly in this case.

-- Steve Clemons

Patrick Doherty directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative.

Speaking before the US House of Representatives' Comittee on Oversight and Government Reform's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, General Barry McCaffrey, former commander, US Southern Command, called on the US to do three things:

1. Lift the embargo and let all US citizens travel to the island; 2. Formalize coordination on law enforcement efforts to stem narcotics and human trafficking; 3. End opposition to Cuban participation in regional intergovernmental fora, such as the Organization of American States.

General McCaffrey said that though he welcomes President Obama's initiatives so far on Cuba policy, he believes it is time for more "dramatic and sudden" initiatives toward Cuba.

General McCaffrey's comments come two weeks after he joined twelve other retired senior military officers to urge President Obama to embrace efforts to end the travel ban to Cuba and engage the Cuban government on important, shared regional security issues.

The importance of the General's call to end the embargo is hard to understate. The momentum is building to decisively shift US policy toward Cuba - away from fifty years of failure. President Obama's openness to exploring talks has moved the debate forward and Congress is picking it up and running with it.

-- Patrick Doherty

Wow. The Democrats -- if they ever bring in Al Franken -- will control 60 seats in the US Senate fair and square.

According to CNN and reports from the Washington Post, Senator Arlen Specter has just announced that he is going to join the Democratic Party and run again for his Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2010 as a Dem.

This is huge news. I spoke with Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska last night at "The Week Awards Dinner" hosted by Margaret Carlson and Sir Harold Evans about the rough storms he often faces as a radical centrist Senator in an otherwise highly partisan Senate Chamber -- and was impressed with how he articulated to me strong, informed support of President Obama's general policy course and particularly Obama's excellent foreign policy work.

I asked Senator Nelson, who often throws his own party off his back, how the Obama White House was treating him as I remember how the Bush White House lost then Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords because of rude and diffident treatment.

Nelson said that he had excellent relations with Obama's team -- and that the Republican loss of Jim Jeffords was a "monumental mistake" of the Bush White House.

And now. . .the Repubs have lost Arlen Specter.

So, on a great number of issues, 'the filibuster' will be lurking in the shadows.

-- Steve Clemons

Note: Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns will deliver remarks at approximately 12:45 pm. His remarks will be on the record. I will then moderate an off the record Q&A session with Secretary Burns, during which time this LIVE STREAM will cut out. We will then return at approximately 2:00 pm for our third panel discussion.

Today, I am co-charing a major national policy forum on US-Saudi economic and strategic perspectives on the Middle East and global economic and security system.

We have quite a line-up which I'll share below. C-Span will be airing parts of the conference, but the entire program will run live here on The Washington Note -- and video will be posted here for later viewing.

The event is full beyond capacity -- so watching the streaming on the internet may be most comfortable for folks.

The entire program is here:

The New America Foundation and the Committee for International Trade cordially invite you to a major national policy forum

US-SAUDI RELATIONS IN A WORLD WITHOUT EQUILIBRIUM

Monday, 27 April 2009

The Four Seasons Hotel
2800 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC

8:00 am
Registration & Coffee

8:45 am
Welcoming Remarks

9:00 am
A Forward Projection of What the Saudi-US Relationship Should Look Like and Needs to Achieve

The Honorable Chuck Hagel
Former United States Senator
Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance, Georgetown University
Chairman, Atlantic Council of the United States

His Excellency HRH Turki Al-Faisal
Chairman, King Faisal Center for Research & Islamic Studies
Former Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States
Former Director, Saudi Arabia Intelligence Services

Rita E. Hauser
Chairperson, International Peace Institute
Chair, Director's Council, New America Foundation

The Honorable Zbigniew Brzezinski
Trustee & Counselor, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Chair, Center for Middle East Public Policy, RAND Corporation
Former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter
Co-Author, America and the World: Conversations on the Future of US Foreign Policy

The Honorable Abdulla Alireza
Minister of Commerce, Saudi Arabia

moderator
Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, The Washington Note

10:30 am
Economics as a National Security Imperative: Challenges for Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

The Honorable Ibrahim Al-Assaf
Minister of Finance, Saudi Arabia

Brad Bourland
Chief Economist, Jadwa Investments
Former Chief Economist, Samba Financial Group

The Honorable Muhammad Al-Jasser
Governor, Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority

Heidi Crebo-Rediker
Chief, International Finance and Economics
Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Flynt Leverett
Director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative, New America Foundation
Former Senior Director for the Middle East, National Security Council

moderator
Jane Sasseen
Washington Bureau Chief, BusinessWeek

12:00 pm
Blackberry Break

12:15 pm
Luncheon and Address

America's Strategic Choices and Challenges in the Arabian Gulf and Beyond

The Honorable William J. Burns
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
Former US Ambassador to Russia

1:45 pm
Blackberry Break

2:00 pm
Through Saudi Arabia's Window and Other Lenses: Middle East Dynamics and Stakeholder Challenges

The Honorable Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director of Policy Planning, Department of State
Former Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University

His Excellency Nigel Sheinwald
Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the United States
Former Foreign Policy and Defense Adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair

The Honorable Abdulrahman Al-Saeed
Director General, Specialized Studies Center/Riyadh
Advisor to the Royal Court

The Honorable Wyche Fowler
Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Former United States Senator

Joseph McMillan
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs
Department of Defense

His Excellency Pierre Vimont
Ambassador of France to the United States
Former Chief of Staff to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of France

moderator
Edward Luce
Washington Bureau Chief, Financial Times

3:30 pm
Closing Comments and Adjournment

Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
and Publisher, The Washington Note

The Honorable Abdulrahman Al-Saeed
Director General, Specialized Studies Center/Riyadh
Advisor to the Royal Court

-- Steve Clemons

I have had a couple of overwhelming weeks and haven't been able to post until now what I would have preferred on this debate about George W. Bush administration torture policy accountability.

I have told quite a number of media outlets this last week that despite his best intentions, President Obama cannot impose a psychological equilibrium on the nation when it comes to sorting out the moral travesty of what we saw unleashed during the Bush administration in the management of combat detainees.

People being interrogated -- held under our direct control -- were killed, psychologically harmed, abused. . .yes, tortured.

That is what the Soviets and the Chinese under Mao and the Pol Pot regime were supposed to have as part of their MO -- not the United States of America.

A society's basic norms and values don't really matter when it is easy to wear them.

They matter at times of high stress -- and we as a nation have to deal with the fact that under stress, we empowered the likes of Richard Cheney and David Addington to take the nation to what they call "the dark side" -- and to me, this is one of the great outrages of our time.

Remind yourself of one corner of this nightmare by watching again Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, or reading Jane Mayer's excellent book of nearly the same name, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.

We need something like a truth commission in this country to explore how and why America became a nation that embraced torture at the highest levels of political office. We need to understand the routenization and systematization of detainee management policies that violated the Geneva Conventions in far more than the law -- but in the most profound sense of the spirit and meaning of what these conventions were supposed to prevent.

Two men waterboarded 266 times in one month? Even if Geneva needed to be modified and modernized to deal with a different kind of war today -- there is no excuse for this in my book.

But we need institutions that will help the nation understand -- and hopefully not forget -- and never do such things again.

What Barack Obama has done is simply not enough. We need many things to happen to move us forward to deal with this blight on our nation's reputation -- including serious Congressional hearings, serious legal investigations -- and fewer prescriptions of politically contrived outcomes that satisfy neither the torture-embracing Cheney wing of the national security establishment nor the parts of American society who despise them for undermining this nation's position as the world's leading democracy.

I support the establishment of an independent, non-partisan commission to look into torture policy accountability -- and Amnesty International, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Carter Center, the Constitution Project, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Institute of Military Justice, the Open Society Institute, and numerous other organizations are calling for the establishment of such a commission.

From the website, CommissionOnAccountability.org:

We call on the President of the United States to establish an independent, non-partisan commission to examine and report publicly on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in the period since September 11, 2001.

The commission, comparable in stature to the 9/11 Commission, should look into the facts and circumstances of such abuses, report on lessons learned, and recommend measures that would prevent any future abuses.

We believe that the commission is necessary to reaffirm America 's commitment to the Constitution, international treaty obligations, and human rights. The report issued by the commission will strengthen U.S. national security and help to re-establish America's standing in the world.

I have sent this site out to a number of my friends -- and I hope you will sign up and forward to others who care about this issue as well.

We need numbers on this, and I hope those of you so inclined will help.

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Note's actual image has made it on to Rachel Maddow's terrific MSNBC show, been highlighted on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, and has popped up on Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room on CNN, and George StephanopoulosThis Week. . .but there is a new first for TWN.

The DC political media thriller and newly released feature film, State of Play, starring Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe and directed by Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald, shows The Washington Note for a 'brief second' in the string of blogs writing about the death of an aide to Pennsylvania Congressman Stephen Collins (played by Affleck).

Here is a slightly larger image than the one above.

The film is interesting -- though I think it doesn't do justice to the increasingly high caliber of blog journalism and political commentary in the U.S. and around the world. After all, the Pulitzer committee just opened its competition this year for the first time to online news. The film basically disses blogs -- but when one hears the Washington Globe (aka Washington Post) blogger pine for "ink on the hands" for her and Russell Crowe's big scandal story -- one knows that this is really the last gasp of pulp dependent journalism.

Some DC journalists and bloggers -- including Bob Woodard, Bob Schieffer, Margaret Carlson, and myself -- made a cameo appearance at the press conference where Congressional wife Robin Wright Penn made a tearful, heartfelt plea to all of us to allow their family time to heal and to stay out of her and Congressman Collins' private life. That segment -- which was actually filmed within days of Elliot Spitzer's wife offering the same kind of public comment -- is on the proverbial cutting room floor.

Nonetheless, it was cool to briefly see TWN for a moment in the film. Though film guys -- why no acknowledgment at the end of the film with all the other artists, newspapers, and musicians thanked?? TWN doesn't appear at all in the credits or acknowledgments.

Headline: Blogger (Accidentally?) Dissed Again. . .

Journalist Cody Shearer was a consultant for this film -- and one thing I have to say is that Russell Crowe's style, language, posture, everything -- just had to be modeled on Cody Shearer. Pretty amazing portrayal actually.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

On Monday, 27 April, I will be co-chairing a major national policy forum on US-Saudi economic and strategic perspectives on the Middle East and global economic and security system.

We have quite a line-up which I'll share below. C-Span will be airing parts of the conference, but the entire program will run live here on The Washington Note -- and video will be posted here for later viewing.

This weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Israel and Iraq. There are as yet unsubstantiated rumors that she may drop in on some other countries as well -- but we do know that State Department Special Advisor for The Gulf and Southwest Asia Dennis Ross will be in Saudi Arabia on Monday and Presidential special envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell will be in Saudi Arabia this next week as well. All of this is happening while we are holding this US-Saudi policy forum in Washington, DC.

Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir has been called back to the Saudi Kingdom yesterday to advise the King in the meeting with Dennis Ross and other as yet unannounced officials.

Other members of the Obama national security team are traveling as well -- to points not announced, but my guess is that we have a large chunk of our national security and diplomatic representatives focused on affairs in the region this weekend and next week.

So, big stuff is up.

A source in the White House has shared with me that there is a lot underway right now with Saudi Arabia -- and things are "sensitive." I have no idea what is sensitive -- but I do know that the US-Saudi relationship lies at the nexus of many key issues in the region -- from the solvency of King Abdullah's Arab Peace Initiative given trends in Israel and Palestine, to potential opportunities with Syria, to dealing with Iran's transnational meddling in the affairs inside other countries in the region, to Iraq's stability, and perhaps most vital at the moment -- to figuring out a stabilization scheme for Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Saudi Arabia has significant influence.

I think Secretary of State Clinton and members of the Obama administration's diplomatic team are working hard on all of these policy fronts in the region. But that said, I believe that the administration is still not as serious as it should be or could be in giving the US-Saudi relationship the attention and respect it deserves -- inside Washington, DC.

Because of cultural dissimilarities and almost a purposeful "remoteness" that has become institutionalized in the US-Saudi relationship, except when behind closed doors -- or perhaps in the privacy of the oval office or big estates here or there, or in Riyadh -- the US-Saudi relationship remains "overly exotic" -- and is not acted out in public view to the degree it should be.

The conference that follows below will hopefully become a starting point for a more regular, public exchange of views on the key strategic and economic challenges that face the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the broader Middle East and international system.

Whether many Americans want to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the US-Saudi relationship is vital to America's geostrategic and geoeconomic interests today -- and like all diplomatic frameworks between key geostrategic players, this relationship as seen from both the American and the Saudi sides has warts and shortcomings. Nonetheless, it is not healthy to allow a vital relationship to be perceived and discussed through only very narrow lenses.

What we have coming up on Monday is pretty significant in my view, and I am grateful to officials in the Obama administration and in the Saudi Kingdom -- as well as other private sector speakers -- for supporting the kind of open encounter we are promoting in this meeting.

Everyone speaking at this forum -- which has been organized jointly by the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program and the Committee for International Trade of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce -- is important, but some of the headliners are:

Under Secretary of State WILLIAM BURNS Former Saudi Ambassador to US Prince TURKI AL-FAISAL International Peace Institute Chair RITA HAUSER Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief EDWARD LUCE Saudi Minister of Finance IBRAHIM AL-ASSAF Former National Security Advisor ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI Former National Security Advisor BRENT SCOWCROFT State Department Policy Planning Director ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER UK Ambassador to the US NIGEL SHEINWALD Former CIA, State, and National Security Council Senior Official FLYNT LEVERETT French Ambassador to the US PIERRE VIMONT Saudi Minister of Commerce ABDULLAH ALIREZA BusinessWeek Washington Bureau Chief JANE SASSEEN Saudi Monetary Agency Governor MUHAMMAD AL-JASSER Senate Foreign Relations Committee International Economics Chief HEIDI CREBO-REDIKER Former US Senator and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia WYCHE FOWLER Jadwa Investments Chief Economist BRAD BOURLAND New America Foundation Geopolitics of Energy Initiative Director and former National Security Council Senior Director for the Middle East FLYNT LEVERETT Saudi Royal Court Advisor ABDULRAHMAN AL-SAEED Department of Defense Principal Deputy Asst for International Security Affairs JOSEPH McMILLAN

. . .and others

The public part of the conference starts at 8:30 am on Monday, 27 April at the Georgetown Four Seasons Hotel but will be aired here live.

The event is already full beyond capacity -- so watching the streaming on the internet may be most comfortable for folks.

(Credit: Jonathan Guyer)

Jonathan Guyer is a Research Associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.

I dropped by Obama @ 100: A Progress Report from The Nation yesterday to hear The Nation's editors discuss the best and worst of Obama's first 100 days, during which the President's vast array of actions, statements, and policy reviews have cluttered the political scene in Washington.

Here's a brief recap of The Nation's take on these first seminal days:

• Washington Editor Chris Hayes noted that "Obama is nothing but a deft politician, constantly calculating battles of interest." As such, Obama gives the American public the good with the bad: the President releases torture memos and then speaks at the CIA the same day. In almost obsessively offering something on the one hand and then something else with the other, Obama leaves the American public to determine which action is sincere and which is meant to cover his back.

• William Greider, author of a new article called "Testicular Politics: Obama and the Big Dogs" about Obama's relationship with Wall Street, claimed that the bailout reflects old time politics. Greider was tough on Obama and Geithner and asserted that Americans would find out over the course of the next several months whether Obama has the courage to take on the bankers.

• Looking at Obama's social policy, Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, lauded Obama's efforts to repair the safety net for the country's neediest. Although Obama has already proposed the largest public expenditure on anti-poverty programs in 40 years, Bhargava argued that due to the severity of the financial crisis, low income families would be worse off in spite of increased spending, and he predicted 20% unemployment among African Americans in the coming years.

• Ari Melber analyzed the nature of transparency in Obama's first 100 days, asserting that the administration received good marks with regard to sharing information with the public and had even been somewhat open to the press. But with regard to the other two branches of government, Melber argued, the administration deserves an "F" for maintaining the Bush administration's use of the state secrets privilege, which limits third branch oversight just as his predecessor did.

• Katrina vanden Huevel, the magazine's Editor and Publisher, offered a more optimistic appraisal of Obama's first one hundred days. She praised Obama's message of re-engagement, which has America back in a leadership role across the globe. But she warned that military escalation in Afghanistan might tarnish America's image in the Muslim world and lamented that problems inherited from the Bush administration would continue to frame Obama's policy agenda over the next 100 days.

But the worst part for Huevel? Richard Holbrooke and Larry Summers are back.

• Congresswoman Donna Edwards, a Maryland Democrat and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, noted that "We have an open opportunity for this administration in a similar way as we have another open opportunity with, for example, Cuba. We have an open opportunity saying we have to maybe engage in a conversation, a dialogue, with Syria that doesn't have so many absolute conditions that Syria could never come to the table - and I'm actually looking forward to that."

Concerning the investigation of torture that happened on Bush's watch, Representative Edwards' message was clear, "Moving forward requires us to look back."

• Ralph Nader posed a question to the panel: "Are there levers that progressives have to influence this administration beyond being in cheerleader mode?" - but the panelists could not agree on a common strategy.

To cap off the panel, Nichols gave each of the panelists a minute to sum up the highlights and lowlights of the first 100 days - a task which seemed impossible given all that the President has done thus far. Like the president himself, the panel found it difficult to keep their priorities straight - straining to find a voice of criticism while leaving space to agree with the President's early accomplishments.

-- Jonathan Guyer

To discuss tomorrow's elections in South Africa, the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program is hosting Financial Times World News Editor Alec Russell, who will discuss his new book, Bring Me My Machine Gun: The Battle For The Soul of South Africa, From Mandela to Zuma.

Russell has spent the past several years reporting from South Africa - and I am looking forward to his impressions as Jacob Zuma becomes the most powerful man in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This event will STREAM LIVE bright and early tomorrow morning at 9am right here at The Washington Note.

-- Steve Clemons

(Matt Wuerker, Politico, reprinted with permission)

Matt Wuerker, who was just announced yesterday as a Pulitzer finalist, did this great sketch of the Cuba embargo "wall" that America has built around itself. It's brilliant.

Enjoy Matt's "Wuerking Drawings" at Politico.

-- Steve Clemons

Anne-Marie Slaughter had one of the coolest jobs that met at the nexus of public policy and academia.

She was Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

There are only two other jobs that are practically as cool in my view -- one is heading the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which Jessica Tuchman Mathews now does and the other is Directing the Policy Planning operation at the State Department.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is now the 26th Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State.

George Kennan was the first. Other notables have been Paul Nitze, Walt Rostow, Mitchell Reiss, James Steinberg, Richard Haass, Paul Wolfowitz, Winston Lord, Anthony Lake, Stephen Bosworth, Richard Solomon, Peter Rodman, Gregory Craig -- who now serves as President Obama's White House Counsel, David Gordon, and Dennis Ross -- who is rumored to be coordinating (i.e., complaining about Iran) with the Saudis in Riyadh on the day of my big US-Saudi conference in Washington next Monday.

And participants in the forthcoming "US-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium" conference can hear her views on broad dynamics in the Middle East on the afternoon panel of the forum.

Slaughter's most recent high profile article appeared in Foreign Affairs and is titled "America's Edge: Power in the Networked Century."

The conference will STREAM LIVE here at The Washington Note.

-- Steve Clemons

A loyal TWN reader sent in these pics he took yesterday of a pretty handsome bald eagle. They were taken at Washoe Lake in Carson City, Nevada -- a place I hang out from time to time.

-- Steve Clemons

Barack Obama continues to throw off his political rivals by doing the unexpected -- and posturing with a handshake and smile does much to win hearts and minds around the world regardless of how troublesome Hugo Chavez is.

-- Steve Clemons

Tonight at about 8:15 pm EST, I will be discussing with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's Countdown all the ballyhoo about Barack Obama's suprisingly bright moments with Venezuela President Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad & Tobago.

My bottom line -- well, I'll share that on the show first and add here later.

But seriously, was John Bolton's behavior so infecting that everyone thinks that huff-and-puff grump theatrics are how President Obama should treat some of our more complicated global rivals??

I'll post the MSNBC video clip here at The Washington Note as soon as it is ready.

This should be kind of fun -- and yet, serious too.

-- Steve Clemons

Representative Jane Harman denies that she agreed to lobby on behalf of two AIPAC employees facing espionage-related charges in exchanging for AIPAC lobbying Nancy Pelosi to allow Harman to assume the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

But there's growing clamor over an National Security Agency intercept that, if true, seems to call into question Representative Harman's insistence that she would not do this -- even if she didn't.

What is on the tape is on the tape -- and several officials are reporting off the record that they heard the tape and Jane Harman's comments. If this is true, I hope that Representative Harman will put the entire truth out there.

I have always been aware of Jane Harman's closeness to AIPAC -- but that said, I also know that Jane Harman gave a "no false choice" speech at a New America Foundation/National Iranian American Council conference a few years ago that strongly endorsed an engagement strategy with Iran. During that conference at at other meetings I have had with Representative Harman, she boldly admitted that she was wrong on key aspects of the Iraq War, on trusting the administration on the WMD intelligence, and on other fronts.

And thus despite this uncomfortable news about the Lawrence Franklin, Steve Rosen, and Keith Weissman espionage case -- that really does need more attention and needs to proceed in the courts -- I think that Harman is a leading national security Democrat who was willing to see the folly and destructiveness of the zero-sum game approach that American presidential administrations and Middle East negotiators have been applying in the Middle East.

But this is serious stuff -- and I look forward to Jane Harman's statements as this tape controversy unfolds.

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Note is supporting the first DC premier screening of the new film, OUTRAGE -- an expose on the secret lives of gay politicians.

The film opens in selected theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC on Friday, May 8th -- but I am supporting a screening in Washington at the Landmark E Street Cinemas on Tuesday, April 28th at 7 pm.

Michael Rogers, who was the first to lay the groundwork for outing former Idaho Senator Larry Craig, figures heavily in the film with his work in exposing politicians who have consistently voted against the civil rights and in favor of legislation that discriminates against gays and lesbians.

Others interviewed are US Representatives Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, former Congressman Jim Kolbe, activist Larry Kramer, former US Ambassador to Romania and Council for Global Equality senior adviser Michael Guest, radio personality Michelangelo Signorile, and myself.

If any regular -- lurking -- or even closeted -- TWN readers would like to join me for this premier screening and to meet Director Kirby Dick, who was nominated for an academy award for his film, This Film is Not Yet Rated, send me a note. I'd be happy to provide tickets for readers -- but don't fail to show up.

And. . .very cool. . .I just learned that Washington Life magazine will be covering the event.

-- Steve Clemons

George Stephanopoulos of ABC's This Week pushed House Republican Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH-08) who gave an astonishingly rejectionist response on the significance of contemporary climate change trends.

My hunch is that Boehner is positioning himself to be vice presidential running mate material for Sarah Palin in 2012 -- as these answers were the sort she'd give.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos
18 April 2009, interview with Rep. John Boehner, House Republican Leader:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you then about energy. We showed your statement on the president's decision through the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Also, you've come out against the president's proposal to cap-and-trade carbon emissions.

So what is the Republican answer to climate change? Is it a problem? Do you have a plan to address it?

BOEHNER: George, we believe that our -- all of the above energy strategy from last year continues to be the right approach on energy. That we ought to make sure that we have new sources of energy, green energy, but we need nuclear energy, we need other types of alternatives, and, yes, we need American-made oil and gas.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that doesn't do anything when it comes to emissions, sir.

BOEHNER: When it comes to the issue of climate change, George, it's pretty clear that if we don't work with other industrialized nations around the world, what's going to happen is that we're going to ship millions of American jobs overseas. We have to deal with this in a responsible way.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide. And so I think it's clear...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you don't believe that greenhouse gases are a problem in creating climate change?

BOEHNER: ... we've had climate change over the last 100 years -- listen, it's clear we've had change in our climate. The question is how much does man have to do with it, and what is the proper way to deal with this? We can't do it alone as one nation. If we got India, China and other industrialized countries not working with us, all we're going to do is ship millions of American jobs overseas.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it sounds like from what you're saying that you don't believe that Republicans need to come up with a plan to control carbon emissions? You're suggesting it's not that big of a problem, even though the scientific consensus is that it has contributed to the climate change.

BOEHNER: I think it is -- I think it is an issue. The question is, what is the proper answer and the responsible answer?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And what is the answer? That's what I'm trying to get at.

BOEHNER: George, I think everyone in America is looking for the proper answer. We don't want to raise taxes, $1.5 to $2 trillion like the administration is proposing, and we don't want to ship millions of American jobs overseas. And so we've got to find ways to work toward this solution to this problem without risking the future for our kids and grandkids.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are committed to coming up with a plan?

BOEHNER: I think you'll see a plan from us. Just like you've seen a plan from us on the stimulus bill and a better plan on the budget.

You heard it here first (or at least early). . .Palin-Boehner in 2012.

Obama would have a lot of fun with that pair.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times)

James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times has an interesting clip on abundant students in journalism schools while their job prospects go into the tank.

Ken Hively took the photo adjoining the picture -- which includes Council on Foreign Relations Latin America Program Director and Senior Fellow Julia Sweig speaking at our recent US-Cuba conference titled "Is It Time to End the Cold War in Latin America?"

The C-Span clip of the event is here, and kudos to C-Span and the impressive upgrades to the video archiving and search functions on this great public service site.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Democratic Party of Japan President (and now Vice President) and a likely Minister of Foreign Affairs or Minister of Defense in a future DPJ-led government Seiji Maehara gave a long but still fascinating speech at Smith & Wollensky's in Washington Thursday evening. The organizers were Japan's Ocean Policy Research Foundation and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

While the jingle of the OPRF may be to "promote co-existence between man and the ocean," my sense after attending this big dinner is that that's true as long as it involves maintaining a very large, high edge naval fleet.

I found Maehara, who is a genuine Japanese political star today, to be very well informed and not as dogmatic as I expected on issues like Japan's emotionalism over abductees in North Korea vs. responsible participation in the Six Party Talks.

But after listening to Maehara refer a number of times to Japan's leadership in nuclear non-proliferation efforts around the world, I asked a question about what he thought Japan should be doing, if anything, about responding to nations like Iran and other potential nuclear break-out nations down the chain who privately say that they don't want nuclear weapons (which Iran still claims) but that they want a full fuel-cycle nuclear capacity within their borders -- like Japan's.

My sense is that Japan has been quiet about the fact that its plutonium reserve profile is unlike any other nation in the world -- and that it is a bit of an outlier when it comes to thinking through a global system of nuclear energy supply through international management structures for nuclear power nations.

Apparently I hit a nerve -- not with Maehara who had a smart and detailed answer -- but with others in the room as a rather gruff defense industry contractor and long term Navy guy blustered and peppered me rudely during Maehara's comments with questions about where my funding came from and where I developed the basis for my question. He said that in his 40 years in this business, he had never heard anyone shape a question the way I did and believed that I had to be a "plant" for some other interest group.

LOL -- this was just too funny not to share.

Well, to tell the full truth -- this question evolved from my own reading of an MIT report some years ago that I came by during my very first meeting with the then-MIT based Paul Krugman. The report, authored by a different MIT scholar, Eugene Skolnikoff, and commissioned by the Japanese government suggested that Japan's nuclear energy program had a dual use profile that would only make sense if also trying to maintain a potential weapons capacity. I first saw this report in about 1996.

Then, a senior ranking Governmet of Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry official spoke to me privately during the George W. Bush administration that he worried that efforts to create new international rules regarding nuclear energy and fuel -- in order to deal with Iran and other potential nuclear powers -- would undermine Japan's system.

So, with all due respect to the huffy contractor -- either begin thinking beyond the talking points being fed to you by your DoD handlers. . .or get out a bit more.

But then Seiji Maehara gave a quite intriguing response to my question.

Maehara said that he visited in Japan three nuclear facilities and was surprised to see that all of them were under IAEA supervision, that there were parts of the facilities that were completely off limits to Japanese staff, and that there were seals and inspection systems that they monitored throughout the facility.

Maehara continued that Japan would support the spread of nuclear capacity and nuclear production -- modeled in the same way Japan's nuclear template was organized -- if the same protocols of IAEA inspection and management were embedded in the system.

Fascinating. So, what we heard from the person who may very well be a next, or next/next Minister of Defense or Foreign Affairs -- and who I think will one day be Prime Minister -- is a flexibility that would allow Iran to continue a nuclear program, maintain domestic plutonium feeds of its own, as long as it made inspections the law of the land.

This is exactly what former Iran President Mohammed Khatami suggested we initiate with the Iranian government a few years ago -- though Khatami suggested that we propose limiting Iran's reprocessing program to "experimental level" and not "industrial."

One attendee at the Japan dinner -- an unnamed Japanese official who I like a lot and respect -- scribbled a funny note to me in response to my question:

Nobody knows. . .

We [Japan] may become like Iran.

We don't have to as long as the US gives us good deterrence though!

The number of syllables are off -- but it's almost haiku.

-- Steve Clemons

Three big additions to our upcoming US-Saudi National Policy Forum -- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and former National Security Advisor and almost regular on Morning Joe, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel, who is now Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance, Georgetown University and Chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States, has agreed to help open the US-Saudi conference that my team at the New America Foundation has been working hard to organize in recent weeks.

Senator Hagel, nearly three years back, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution that was chaired by outgoing Brookings foreign policy programs chief and probable next US Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual. In that speech, Hagel argued that America could not afford to pursue false choices.

I still find that speech relevant today and this clip in particular:

America's approach to the Middle East must be consistent and sustained, and must understand the history, interests and perspectives of our regional friends and allies.

The United States will remain committed to defending Israel. Our relationship with Israel is a special and historic one. But, it need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships. That is an irresponsible and dangerous false choice. Achieving a lasting resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is as much in Israel's interest as any other country in the world.

Unending war will continually drain Israel of its human capital, resources, and energy as it fights for its survival. The United States and Israel must understand that it is not in their long-term interests to allow themselves to become isolated in the Middle East and the world. Neither can allow themselves to drift into an "us against the world" global optic or zero-sum game. That would marginalize America's global leadership, trust and influence, further isolate Israel, and prove to be disastrous for both countries as well as the region.

It is in Israel's interest, as much as ours, that the United States be seen by all states in the Middle East as fair. This is the currency of trust.

Joining Senator Hagel as well as previously confirmed speakers General Brent Scowcroft, former Saudi Ambassador to the US and long-time head of Saudi Intelligence HRH Prince Turki Al-Faisal, and Saudi Minister of Finance Ibrahim Al-Assaf will be former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and CSIS Trustee and Counselor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski somewhat recently had this exchange with Joe Scarborough and his daughter Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC's Morning Joe. It's a spectacular clip in which Brzezinski spells out TABA: "T. . .A. . .B. . .A. Look it up Joe. You might learn something."

Zbigniew Brzezinski and Chuck Hagel will both help open the conference at the Georgetown Four Seasons Hotel -- and Brzezinski no doubt will give a tour de force review of American and Saudi national security challenges in the region.

As one interesting side bit, I learned that yesterday at 12:33 GMT, a 27 minute long interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski ran on TV Tehran. Brzezinski agreed to do the interview if not one word in his commentary was changed -- and the clip he did was exactly 27 minutes, and that is what ran on Iranian television.

In the clip, Brzezinski outlined some of the things that Iran could do -- as well as the US -- if "serious" about changing the course of their rivalrous and non-existent relationship. According to one source, the interviewer kept asking Brzezinski about the difference between words and "deeds" and what "deeds" did America need to demonstrate. Brzezinski knocked the nudge back somewhat by suggesting that neither side should get distracted by a meaningless escalation in what counted as a "deed" -- after all, what deeds could Iran put on the table.

While Kim Jong Il recently had a couple of Christian rock bands over for the celebration of his father's birthday -- as Rachel Maddow and I discussed the other day -- Zbigniew Brzezinski "un-cut" on Iranian television is perhaps more newsworthy and potentially consequential.

At lunch at the conference on Monday, the 27th of April, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns will offer his own thoughts on international economic and security challenges facing Saudi Arabia, the United States, and their relationship.

Burns, who is a well-respected strategist, previously served as US Ambassador to Russia -- and is rumored during the first part of the Bush administration to have been working hard along with then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw (whose son has just finished a very productive stint in the international economics shop of the John Podesta-led Center for American Progress) to get Syria out of the international dog house on to a Libya-like track. Interestingly, the provocative then Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control John Bolton may have been the saboteur who then undid that progress.

In my view, Under Secretary William Burns is one of the most capable potential architects of an entirely new global arrangement between the United States and other key stakeholder powers. My sense is that Burns shares a similar world view about what is possible geostrategically with White House national security council foreign policy advisor to President Obama Denis McDonough. James Steinberg at State and Tom Donilon who serves as Deputy Director of the National Security Council are also, in my book, very competent pragmatic realists. But Burns has a vision of national security possibilities between the great powers and also with regard to setting a new equilibrium in the Middle East that the Obama team is hopefully studying up on.

This conference will STREAM LIVE on The Washington Note from 8:45 am until 4:00 pm on Monday, 27 April.

The conference is by invitation only, but if TWN readers are interested in attending, you can send me a note at steve@thewashigtonnote.com. No promises. It will be very full house.

-- Steve Clemons

New America Foundation foreign policy programs director Steve Clemons and Ambassador of Syria to the United States Imad Moustapha (photo credit: Zain Ali Shah)

Yesterday evening, I wanted to pay my respects to a fellow blogger and lover of the arts, Imad Moustapha - who also happens to be the Ambassador of Syria to Washington.

I got a snapshot at that Mandarin Hotel party of what incredible impact Barack Obama has had in Washington.

In a Harry Potter sense, Syria has for nearly a decade been "the nation whose name could not be spoken." We have had walls dividing our diplomatic efforts within Washington -- and in my view it's time that we re-read Barack Obama's tremdendous campaign-presented speech "A World Without Walls" and try to live that sort of reality within Washington itself.

And it's beginning to happen.

Wolf Blitzer, anchor of CNN's Situation Room, stayed for a great long time and met not only Moustapha and his entourage but many others at the party. And then -- punctuating the change in the DC game -- Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and former US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman was there, along with State Department Middle East watcher Nicole Shampaine and Frederic Hof -- who is staffing George Mitchell's Middle East efforts.

Amazing actually. This is a dramatic change in tone and posture since the departure of the George W. Bush administration.

Others at the party were the Boston Globe's Farah Stockman, CNN's Elise Labott, Ambassador of Yemen to the US Abdulwahab Abdulla Al-Hajjri, Middle East Institute President and former US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain, Algerian Ambassador to the US Abdallah Baali, New School professor Alon Ben-Muir, former Colin Powell State Department Advisor and now AAAS International Programs czar Norman Neuriter and his AAAS international policy colleague Vaughn Turekian, and many other interesting journalists, think tank types, and then those trade association, lawyers and consultants looking to cash in on the rapidly changing Syria-US tone.

Also enjoying the scene were the Ambassadors of Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Quatar, Oman, Malta and Lybia, as well as Charge D'affairs of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note: Friday Lunch Club has more.

Saudi Minister of Finance Ibrahim Al-Assaf has just agreed to appear in a major national policy forum that the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program is helping to organize on Monday, the 27th of April in Washington, DC.

I previously announced that former Saudi Ambassador to the US and former Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal as well as former Ford and George H.W. Bush National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft were on the list of headliners for this conference, which will take place in Georgetown.

The meeting is titled "US-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium."

Finance Minister Al-Assaf will be attending the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and participating in follow-on discussions from the London G-20 Summit about broadening the resources of the IMF for financially-weakened developing economies.

This meeting was initiated by a group I run at the New America Foundation and is being co-organized by the Comittee on International Trade of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce.

One of my personal objectives in asking various Saudi government officials to speak at this conference is to begin to bring the US-Saudi relationship more into the active mainstream of discussion in Washington policy circles. There is a tendency to hide the importance of the US-Saudi relationship because of discomfort with cultural dissimilarity, frustration with oil dependence, and real differences between the countries on many fronts. However, there is also a long history of Saudi support of the US and its foreign policy and economic objectives in the world, a long history of Saudi youth studying at American schools and universities, and other bridges as well.

There are strengths and weakness to any relationship -- and given the fact that the world and how it organizes itself has become more wobbly than used to be the case -- the behavior, objectives, and strategies of most significant global players -- including the US and Saudi Arabia have changed. It's time in my view to have more open discussion about the policy challenges facing the countries -- in bilateral, regional/Middle East, and global terms.

This conference will STREAM LIVE on the internet here at The Washington Note from 8:45 am until approximately 4:00 pm EST. I hope many of you can join us.

More on the rest of the line-up and general schedule soon,.

-- Steve Clemons

Today is a big day for Mexico City. President Obama's overnight stay is the first visit from a U.S. President since Clinton's two-day stopover in 1997. Really; it's been twelve years since the President of the United States has visited the capital of Mexico. It's no wonder the new administration has to work overtime to mend this special relationship. While I understand that President Bush was quite occupied with major events on the other side of the world, a neighborly visit would have been nice (and convenient from Crawford, Texas). I acknowledge the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America is less than stellar; at times appalling. So being ignored by President Bush has been considered a positive by many in Latin America, but I propose that we needn't choose between a bad relationship with Mexico and a non-existent one. Obama's challenge is to create an entirely new framework for U.S.-Mexican relations specifically and Latin America in general.

The Obama administration has approached the U.S.-Mexican relationship and the crisis affecting our shared border with an appropriate sense of urgency. Secretary of State Clinton laid the groundwork for real cooperation in her visit last month. She verbalized what few U.S. politicians have previously been willing to say, that U.S. drug use and demand are significantly to blame for Mexico's current drug crisis. Clinton declared that the United States shared a co-responsibility for the drug war and vowed to stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Mexico in defeating the drug lords. Her words represent a new approach toward Mexico that I see as an excellent step in addressing the crisis. Mexico City is not in a position to beat the drug lords on their own and the U.S. cannot influence this fight without a posture of cooperation.

Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano followed Clinton's vows for partnership and action by appointing Alan Bersin to the position of Border Czar. Bersin is responsible for coordinating the U.S. and joint response to illegal arms and drug flows, as well as curbing the flow of illegal immigrants. Napolitano has also taken swift action in beefing up security along the border to stem the north and south flow of illegal traffic.

The agenda for Obama's visit is relatively simple: demonstrate support for the Mexican Government. There is much negotiating to take place between the U.S. and Mexico on NAFTA, immigration, and the economy, but thanks to the leg work provided by his diplomatic and national security teams, President Obama can use this visit to strengthen this important bilateral relationship. And Obama's Mexico visit is a cornerstone of his ambition to reconnect the United States with Latin America in a mutually beneficial way.

For further reading on the dysfunctional relationship between the U.S. and Mexico I recommend a series of articles released this week by The New America Foundation and Slate Magazine.

-- Faith Smith

Roger Morris has an entertaining post about President Nixon's Inaugural trip to Europe.over at the New York Times' 100 Days blog.

Plenty of fun historical nuggets for those who like that sort of thing.

-- Ben Katcher

Tom Kutsch is a Research Associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.

At a recent event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Rob Malley aired a very sly caution for the Obama administration on Israel-Palestine: "the Bush administration has left a doubly harmful legacy: It did the wrong things poorly, which creates the illusion that somehow they can be done well."

A particular case in point is the ongoing reluctance of the new administration (and Western governments more broadly) to jettison the Bush-era policy toward Islamist groups like Hamas.

The current administration surely recognizes the folly the Bush administration made in encouraging Palestinian elections in 2006 and then refusing to deal with Hamas after its stunning electoral victory, but it has yet to replace the old policy.

Many Middle East watchers (see, for instance, the recent bipartisan statement shepherded by the U.S./Middle East Project) have come to the realization that continuing the Bush administration's policy of isolation vis a vis Hamas does little to address the question of how to put the Palestinian "Humpty-Dumpty" back together again.

Think it's a tactical mistake to deal with Hamas? Fine. But that begs a larger strategic question: how, exactly, can any reconciliation between a fractured Palestinian polity between Gaza and the West Bank (essential for future agreements) not somehow involve the group that is actually ruling the former.

And remember, recognizing the Hamas reality is not synonymous with direct American negotiation; it just means the U.S. shouldn't actively attempt to obstruct ongoing reconciliation attempts between Hamas and Fatah.

Nor would a change in policy somehow constitute a mealy-mouthed, weak-kneed capitulation to "Islamofascism" as some commentators seem to insinuate when on the topic of negotiating with one's enemies. Even if Hamas turns out to be bluffing on its past indications of a pragmatic policy toward Israel, the track record of foreign policy absolutism in dealing with the reality of this Islamist movement in the last 8 years doesn't exactly inspire confidence for the future.

Thus far, the current administration has been unwilling to engage with the Hamas reality. It instead favors the Bush-inherited "three no's contingency": that the Islamist group, if it is to be viewed as a legitimate actor, must reverse its trifecta of not recognizing Israel, not abiding by past PLO agreements, and not pledging to cease violent means to achieve its goals.

Given the increasing disrepute among Palestinians with which many in Fatah have fallen, it's unclear exactly how such a status quo policy caveat will achieve the national security interests of America (let alone those of Israel or the Palestinians).

This is surely one illusion that, good intentions not withstanding, the Obama administration would do well to reconsider.

To flesh out these and other issues related to Islamist movements in the Middle East, the New America Foundation is hosting an event TODAY from 12:15 to 1:45pm EST with Alastair Crooke, Founder and Director of Conflicts Forum.

He will be discussing the theme of his new book, Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which explores what he calls the "Islamist Revolution" in the Middle East, offering some strategic insights into the origins and logic of Islamist groups which have adopted military resistance as a tactic, and how this impacts American and European policy options in the Middle East.

Joining him as moderator and respondent respectively, will be Middle East Task Force Co-Directors Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah.

-- Tom Kutsch

In politics, we are often told, we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That's why so much of what comes out of our policy-making process ends up as politically-driven compromise. In Washington, splitting the baby is often considered better than no baby at all.

But, as the financial crisis brings the worlds of finance and politics into increasingly overlapping orbits, we need to take note that what may be acceptable compromise in politics can be dangerous ambiguity when applied to finance.

Today, many banks are faced with openly ambiguous mandates that border on outright conflict.

On the one hand, these publicly-listed banks are expected to pursue their business models and to respect their fiduciary obligations to maximize return for their shareholders. These days any financial institution worth its salt is assessing how to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the current financial crisis - especially the hyper-generous financing being provided by the US Government.

At the same time, many of these same players have been deemed "systemic" and "too big to fail". That often means that their businesses are being heavily subsidized, directly or indirectly, by the federal government to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

In return for these subsidies, banks are being poked, pushed and prodded so as to further public policy goals, respond to (understandable) populist pressures to reduce compensation, restart credit markets, "lend like crazy" and, in some cases, to eschew the very opportunities that many talented financial professionals are champing at the bit to pursue. (It doesn't get much better than 93% US Government financing, folks.) All this, so as to bring order and stability to the financial system as a whole.

This inherent conflict is why, in spite of my general skepticism about the health of the financial sector, semi-secret stress tests and the accounting gimmickry surrounding the banks' first quarter results, I was pleased to hear that Goldman Sachs intends to pay back its TARP funds as soon as possible and that JP Morgan hopes to do so as well.

I am not a cheerleader for Goldman. But I am glad that they resisted reported pressure from the Government to refrain from taking advantage of a relative sweet spot in the equity markets to raise private capital and pay back TARP funds. Had they failed to do so, they would have been effectively handing the US Government a major seat at their management table, potentially at the expense of their public shareholders. Their decision to remove this ambiguity about who the bank's management really reports to was the right thing to do.

I would have thought that last year's implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have raised major red flags that we need to be especially careful to avoid ambiguity when blending the realms of policy and finance.

Fannie Mae is a particularly illuminating case in point. For the first thirty years of its existence, when completely controlled by the US Government, Fannie was enormously successful in using financial tools and market mechanisms to advance public policy goals. It was only when it was privatized for budgetary reasons, that messages became mixed and things got complicated. It was at that point that, with an ambiguous mandate to serve both the interests of its public shareholders and to further the policy directives of its government masters, its sad fate was effectively sealed.

Similarly, as applied to today's US banking system, various government plans and financing schemes, combined with efforts to resist taking ownership stakes in these entities, have led to the creation of dangerous ambiguities through the financial system. While well-intentioned, and perhaps politically necessary, the current banking landscape appears to be the result of a desire to preserve the status quo of the financial system, to remain true to our free market ideology and to avoid seeking additional funds from Congress to address the underlying weakness in the banks' balance sheets.

This has led to the creation of programs, like the Public-Private investment Program ("PPIP"), which have the risk of "conflict" written all over them.

Shortly after the PPIP was announced, the press started running stories in which they "uncovered" what I would have thought was obvious - that many of the major institutions currently receiving billions of TARP funds were preparing plans for how to take advantage of the PPIP - and the very generous leverage and terms that it provides. These banks are not only in the business of making money for their shareholders and employees, but are also holders of much of the "private capital" that the PPIP hopes to mobilize to jump start the financial sector itself. So expecting them to refrain from taking advantage of the program, whose goal is to help these very same institutions, would be to fundamentally misunderstand how big banks operate. Sound confusing? That's because it is. That's my point.

It remains unclear to me whether the government plan considers these large financial institutions to be sick patients in need of urgent medical help, or conversely, highly experienced medical professionals, whose private capital and expertise are being encouraged (through generous financing packages) to come to the aid of those very same patients. Or both.

Unfortunately, a financial crisis that compels significant government intervention is bound to be handcuffed by political considerations - thereby making ambiguity almost inevitable. One of the reasons that historically these banking crises have ultimately been solved by "nationalization" or good bank/bad bank schemes is that they are clear cut and free of ambiguities.

While politically necessary perhaps in the short run, the longer these ambiguities exist in the financial system, the more confused and at risk the system may ultimately be. Unlike in politics, in finance today, as in King Solomon's time, most people understand that in the end, you have to make a choice - because a split baby isn't really much good to anyone after all.

-- Douglas Rediker

Fun clip on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show tonight.

But the serious part is that we really don't need a replay of North Korea mismanagement at the beginning of the Obama administration like we had at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Chriistopher Hill did a great job pushing forward a complex array of promising initiatives in the Six Party Talks -- and since he resigned and began the process of getting himself over to Iraq as America's new ambassador there, things have gone down hill.

It's time to get the rumored long enough nominee Kurt Campbell, who was the Founding CEO of the Center for a New American Security, officially appointed as Hill's successor and confirmed.

-- Steve Clemons

(pictured to left: New America Foundation foreign policy programs director Steve Clemons and then Saudi Ambassador to the US HRH Prince Turki Al-Faisal)

On the 27th of April, less than two weeks from now, the New America Foundation and Committee for International Trade of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce will be presenting a significant national policy forum titled "US-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium."

I have long been a fan of the "no false choice" framing that Senators like Chuck Hagel, (then Senator and now Vice President) Joe Biden, John Kerry, Richard Lugar and others apply to complex issues like Israeli-Arab relations, NATO-Russia issues, China-Japan complexities and so on. Most serious strategic challenges cannot be met with binary responses or simple zero sum games.

But the truth is that in Washington, DC there are not enough forums that allow open, candid discussion about the geostrategic challenges facing the United States and other global stakeholders -- whether or not their system of government approximates our own.

And in this basket, i think that some of the most significant global actors today are China, Russia, Germany, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, Pakistan, India, and perhaps a few others.

Saudi Arabia, in any serious accounting, is fundamental on a great number of levels -- but Washington too frequently tries to sidestep or to indirectly use winks and nods to manage a vital strategic alliance in the Middle East that not only has relevance to global oil and energy realities, but impacts the ecosystem within which Israel exists, in which other Arab states are evolving, and Iran's regional aspirations are given some counter-weight. On top of this, Saudi Arabia is now being called on to help significantly enhance the resources of the IMF during this major global financial crisis.

This conference will be part public and part private -- with the public part streaming live on The Washington Note and New America Foundation websites from 8:30 am EST on Monday, 27 April until approximately 3:30 pm EST on the same day.

The kickoff speaker for this major conference at a private dinner on Sunday evening, the 26th of April, will be former National Security Adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, General Brent Scowcroft.

The speaker and participant roster is quite impressive in my view -- and I believe that we will generate a constructive discussion about challenges that have yet to be met in the bilateral relationship, in economic coordination, and in the broader Middle East.

The former Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.S. and the more than two decade Director of Saudi intelligence HRH Prince Turki Al-Faisal will also be appearing in this national policy forum.

In coming days, I will announce other speakers and parts of the schedule -- but I wanted to give an early alert of this forum now -- as well as acknowledge the participation of General Scowcroft and Prince Turki.

-- Steve Clemons

Daniel Levy served as the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative and directs the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.

Israel's preeminent Syria expert, Moshe Ma'oz, famously dubbed that country's former leader Hafaz al-Assad "the Sphinx of Damascus" in his political biography of that title, an inscrutable man, impossible to decipher.

Almost ten years into office, his son and successor Bashar al-Assad has yet to have collected too many nick-names but his ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, was anything but sphinx-like in openly embracing the peace process and setting forth a challenge to both the new Israeli and America governments on Fareed Zakaria's GPS show yesterday. Zakaria's hour of thoughtful policy discourse on CNN has become for me one of the few things worth watching on a Sunday.

Ambassador Moustapha surprised many yesterday and made headlines in Israel when he countered Fareed Zakaria's skepticism that progress on peace would be possible given the new Likud-Lieberman government in Jerusalem by suggesting that, "It's better to deal with someone like Lieberman than someone like Livni - Lieberman is candid and says what he believes," which he contrasted to Livni and colleagues talking peace while making war, notably in Gaza.

This is an interesting position to take not least from a senior Syrian representative and contrasts with what many others in the Arab world have been arguing - it also seems to me more realistic and constructive especially given the lead peacemaking role that Moustapha penciled in for the Obama administration.

Perhaps even subconsciously, Syria seems to be sending the message - you want to make peace, deal with the bad guys, whichever side they are on (and that might as much be a self-reflective comment as it is a critique of Israel's new leadership).

Ambassador Moustapha did not have an easy time in Washington for the last years of the Bush administration. He would sometimes joke that he was the closest thing DC had to an ambassador of the Axis of Evil and was treated as such. But he stuck around and reached out to whoever was willing to listen, notably to some of the key players in Congress on both the Democrat and Republican sides, a number of whom have visited Damascus in recent years.

Judging by his performance yesterday, Moustapha seems to be suggesting that now is the time to shift Syrian public diplomacy toward the US up by several gears. In response to Zakaria's question about Obama's election victory and how it was received in Syria, the ambassador stressed that, "America has vindicated herself... after eight terrible years," describing how the ordinary Syrian was, "overjoyed."

The ambassador's headline-generating readiness, even eagerness, to negotiate peace with a Likud-Lieberman government and his preference for them as a negotiating partner over Livni and co. is something that one can understand and even partially agree with. Again, the implicit message at least is almost to be saying - 'everyone always criticizes our regime, while the Israeli side are no teddy bears either, so let's just get over it, take a hard look at everyone's key interests, including America's, and get on with the serious business of getting a deal.'

Indeed, Avigdor Lieberman and what he represents is not really Syria's problem or even America's - he is primarily Israel's problem (although given that the America-Israel relationship is to some degree based on shared values, a Lieberman reality in Israel is not a simple or comfortable thing).

There is of course also the argument that Netanyahu is in a stronger position to deliver on a deal than the center-left would be and as PM in the late-90's, sent his personal envoy (former US ambassador Ronald Lauder) to convey messages to the Syrians of Bibi's willingness to withdraw from the Golan .

Imad Moustapha told Zakaria that Syria would be ready for a similar peace deal that Israel has with Egypt and Jordan (i.e. land for security and cold peace) but would prefer for a comprehensive peace to prevail, in other words, for the Palestinian track to also be addressed thereby creating new dynamics and opportunities for relations in the region.

This contrasts with the positions that have begun to be articulated by some of the PA leadership in Ramallah and other US allies including Egypt. In public statements and op-eds, some of the Fatah-PA seems to be delighting in appearing to be the reasonable party set along-side the recalcitrant new bosses in Israel. They are suggesting that Israel meet preconditions (acknowledge two states and past agreements, freeze settlements) before negotiations can resume, and they are egging on a fight between Washington and Jerusalem.

While all that may sound fun, have a self-righteousness to it, and play well on CNN, I fail to see how it actually helps accomplish anything or how it advances an end of occupation and peace and security for both peoples. The last Israeli government continued building settlements, including in East Jerusalem, and maintained checkpoints and closures but that did not stop the Palestinians from negotiating. And even if Netanyahu, or even Lieberman for that matter, were to say those magic words - "two states" - as their predecessors have done, then would it actually bring such a reality any closer?

We seem then to be in a situation where both the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships' strategies lead to a dead-end. The PA-Ramallah leadership appears eager to score points, avoid internal reconciliation, and to get back to the meaningless roadmap and Annapolis process - a path to nowhere if ever there was one. The Likud-Lieberman government thinks that economic projects can deliver a happy occupied people and be a substitute for getting to grips with the basic political realities of territory and occupation - as if this approach has not been tried and stunningly failed for the last fifteen years.

The Syrian Ambassador, and here I agree with him, seems to be suggesting something very different - no preconditions, don't be squeamish about who you talk to, a comprehensive regional peace, and most of all, get the Americans to lead and drive the process (as he put it, "a vigorous, creative role in brokering peace between Arabs and Israelis... Israel will be very careful not to say no to the American president").

This won't be easy but it seems like the right way to go given the current constellation of actors and our historical experience of the failed previous efforts that were over-reliant on bilateral negotiations. Rather than expend political capital on an argument with Netanyahu over the words "two states" or over a settlement developments in far flung corners of the West Bank, the Obama capital would be better invested in driving home a plan for peace.

The US should also allow for constructive progress in the US-Syria bilateral relationship even if the Israel-Syria track is in question, and that might already be happening given the visit of senior officials Jeffrey Feltman and Dan Shapiro to Damascus (even the US-Syria track will not be simple, not least given the Hariri tribunal as Jay Solomon points out but Syrian cooperation is important for American efforts in the region and there is always the Libya compromise precedent).

Two camps seem to be emerging. One is spoiling for a public spat between the new Israeli government and the Obama administration. The other is urging the Obama administration to act early and decisively to deliver a new land-for-peace deal and equilibrium in the Israeli-Arab arena that will be essential for broader regional stability. The former might tickle some people's fancy but it's the latter that is needed.

-- Daniel Levy

Yesterday, the New America Foundation and the National Security Network delivered the following letter to the White House, signed by some of the most respected former senior officers of the United States Armed Forces.

In the document pasted above and offered in text below, these senior officers urge the President to go beyond his initial statement, issued yesterday, repeal the full travel ban on all Americans and engage the Cuban government in dialogue on key bi-lateral security issues.

Click here to view the letter in pdf format.

From:
General James T. Hill (Ret.)
General Barry R. McCaffrey (Ret.)
General Johnnie E. Wilson (Ret.)
Lieutenant General John G. Castellaw (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Daniel W. Christman (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy (Ret.)
Major General Paul D. Eaton (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter (Ret.)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret.)
Brigadier General John Adams (Ret.)
Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson (Ret.)

To:
The Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States

As former senior officers of the United States armed forces, we are writing today to encourage you to support the Congressional initiatives to end the ban on travel to Cuba for all Americans.

The current policy of isolating Cuba has failed, patently, to achieve our ends. Cuba ceased to be a military threat decades ago. At the same time, Cuba has intensified its global diplomatic and economic relations with nations as diverse as China, Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, and members of the European Union. It is hard to characterize such global engagement as isolation.

Though economically weak, the Castro government has kept the broad support of its people by responding to economic shocks and providing universal access to health care and education. There will be no counter-revolution any time soon.
Instead, the current embargo serves more to prop up the Castro regime and shows no sign of triggering a popular uprising against the communist government it runs. When hard times fall on the Cuban people, inevitably, the Cuban government blames the U.S. ―bloqueo‖ for the suffering. And the people, with a strong sense of national sovereignty, rally to their flag.

Even worse, the embargo has inspired a significant diplomatic movement against U.S. policy. As military professionals, we understand that America's interests are best served when the United States is able to attract the support of other nations to our cause. When world leaders overwhelmingly cast their vote in the United Nations against the embargo and visit Havana to denounce American policy, it is time to change the policy, especially after 50 years of failure in attaining our goals.

The congressional initiative to lift the travel ban for all Americans is an important first step toward lifting the embargo, a policy more likely to bring change to Cuba. It begins to move the United States in an unambiguous direction toward the kind of policy--based on principled engagement and proportional and discriminate action that was the hallmark of your presidential campaign. Combined with renewed engagement with Havana on key security issues such as narcotics trafficking, immigration, airspace and Caribbean security, we believe the U.S. will be on a path to rid ourselves of the dysfunctional policy your administration has inherited.

It is a clear cut case. During the Cold War, the U.S. encouraged Americans to travel to the Soviet bloc resulting in more information, more contact, and more freedom for captive peoples, and ultimately the end of the Berlin Wall and the Cold War itself. This idea of engagement underlies our current policies toward Iran, Syria and North Korea all much graver concerns to the United States - where Americans are currently free to travel. By sending our best ambassadors--the American people--to engage their Cuban neighbors, we have a much better chance of influencing the eventual course of Cuban affairs. Broader economic engagement with the island through additional commercial and people-to-people contacts will in time promote a more pluralist and open society. And, by actually striking down an element of the embargo, that signal will be sent to the government in Havana.

Mr. President, around the world, leaders are calling for a real policy shift that delivers on the hope you inspired in your campaign. Cuba offers the lowest-hanging fruit for such a shift and would be a move that would register deeply in the minds of our partners and competitors around the world.

-- Patrick Doherty

Yesterday, President Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs and National Security Council Director for Latin America Dan Restrepo unveiled the administration's pre-Summit of the Americas opening move on US-Cuba relations.

In the package, travel and remittance restrictions on Cuban-Americans are completely waived. Japanese-Americans, Scotch-Irish types, Jewish-Americans, non-Cuban descended African-Americans, non-Cuban descended Latinos, and those from Iceland who have naturalized as US citizens are not covered under the Obama plan -- along with a lot of other Americans.

Nonetheless, opening up travel and engagement for any group is some progress -- just not nearly enough.

Obama also eased humanitarian aid levels and perhaps most interestingly -- in a move that not only allows cell phone options for visiting Cuban Americans to Cuba but also matches a similar electronics liberalization step taken six months ago by Raul Castro -- the administration is allowing US telecommunications firms to work out communications deals and arrangements with Cuban firms. This is important because it will broaden the ability of Cubans themselves to communicate with the outside world and prevents a potential fiberoptic and communications monopoly from going to Venezuela.

Today at 9:00 am in Washington, DC, I will be chairing a morning conference on US-Cuba relations with a great panel of commentators who will be addressing the upcoming Summit of the Americas and US-Cuba relations.

This event will be "taped" by C-Span and air later -- but you can watch live on line here at The Washington Note.

Here is our morning schedule for the program, "Is It Time to End the Cold War in Latin America? America's National Interests, the Summit of the Americas, and a New Look at US-Cuba Relations"

9:00am
Welcoming Remarks

Steve Coll
President, New America Foundation
Former Managing Editor, Washington Post
Washington Staff Writer, The New Yorker

9:10 am
What Would an Interest-Driven Relationship Between the U.S. and Latin America Look Like if It Existed? Where do US-Cuba Relations Fit In?

Carl Meacham
Senior Policy Advisor for Latin America to Senator Richard Lugar
Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson (USA, Ret)
Former Chief of Staff, Department of State
Chairman, US-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative, New America Foundation
Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor, College of William & Mary

Michael Lind
Whitehead Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
Author, The American Way of Strategy: US Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life
Former Executive Editor, The National Interest

Julia Sweig
Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies
and Director of Latin Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Author, Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century

David Rothkopf
President & CEO, Garten Rothkopf
Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Author, Running the World: The Inside Story of the NSC and the Architects of American Power
National Security Blogger, Foreign Policy

Tom Omestead
Senior Writer & Diplomatic Correspondent, US News & World Report
Former Associate Editor, Foreign Policy

The Hon. William A. Reinsch
President, National Foreign Trade Council
Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration

moderator and provocateur
Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, The Washington Note

10:30 am
Adjournment

Should be an interesting session.

-- Steve Clemons

Big announcement made today via White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs and National Security Council Latin America Director Dan Restrepo on the new parameters of America's "Cuba Policy."

So. . .let's get the easy part of this comment out of the way.

Applause, applause, applause. . .for a decent set of humanitarian gestures in the US-Cuba relationship that don't actually make things worse. Obama and his team have moved us in the right direction -- and moving in the right direction on Cuba is something that rarely happens when Presidents and their advisers look at electoral maps and get nervous about South Florida. So, bravo for a bit of good news.

The Obama administration today lifted restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans and eased restrictions on US telecommunications firms entering into network agreements with Cuban telecom firms in a broad range of communications services as well as easing restrictions on humanitarian donations to Cubans.

Only problem with today's announcement -- beyond the very friendly nudge about Dan Restrepo's impressive Castilian accent that may not play too well to many in the Cuban-American community -- is that it is not "a lot of good news."

I have always disliked over-tilting to any class of "other nationality-Americans" when it came to dealing with political and economic policies dealing with their home, or preceding, countries of origin. Ethnic politics are a reality in this country -- but all people in this nation regardless of origin have as much right to argue about the terms of US foreign policy writ large. And I feel that no voices should be privileged over others.

Our President and our Congress should be crafting foreign policies with other sovereign states that fit the preferences and interests of most Americans, not a sub-class of them.

But today, remarkably, our nation's first African-American President has just issued executive orders that create preferences and opportunities for a specific class of ethnic Americans. Even if a good step on one level, at a macro level, this sort of cynical gaming of domestic politics at the expense of broader national interests is fundamentally wrong.

President Obama inherited the perverse economic and political realities created by fifty years of a dysfunctional US-Cuba relationship and failed embargo and has to deal within the confines of the Helms-Burton Act and other legislation that is not his fault.

But what was interesting in today's announcement was the fact that his envoys for making today's announcement -- Gibbs and Dan Restrepo -- gave no indication that the President felt uneasy issuing executive orders removing all restrictions for Cuban-Americans but not addressing the travel rights of all other classes of American citizens.

I want to give credit to Dan Restrepo saying that today's policy was a starting point -- before Gibbs cut him off.

So, applause for the Cuban-American oriented efforts. Better than nothing -- but not nearly enough. And the precedent is worrisome and disconcerting.

We did not open up relations with Vietnam by restricting travel to Vietnamese-Americans. We really should not be doing this with Cuba either.

What is happening is that Barack Obama has started the ball moving forward -- and is opening up something he knows many will find completely unacceptable and discriminatory.

Separate is not equal -- and that is what Barack Obama's team has just moved forward.

On the much more positive side, President Obama is easing restrictions on telecommunications providers to allow roaming service agreements for cell phone calls and other transmissions. This matches some of the liberalization on cell phone and other video and dvd equipment liberalization that Raul Castro has already enacted.

Obama has also eased up restrictions on humanitarian gifts and packages to Cuba -- which was really needed after the recent devastating hurricanes this past year. Humanitarian relief has been something we should have eased long ago -- and this was a good step.

Now, my hunch is that Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod see that they have "done enough" to check off the boxes for what they have promised the right wing, moderates, and even left wing of the Cuban-American community that felt collectively strangled by the tightness of the Bush administration restrictions.

What Obama foreign policy strategists Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert are probably thinking -- and I have reason to suspect that McDonough in particular has had leverage and significant involvement in the just released policy -- is that they have now started something that Congress and others are going to have to vigorously fight to move forward.

The Obama administration never intended to carry all of the water on completely changing the US-Cuba relationship into something that makes 21st century sense -- but they are telegraphing -- or Denis McDonough is in my view -- that the White House is perhaps willing to work with Congress to move this into territory that Obama has not yet committed to and did not express support for during the campaign.

McDonough, if I am reading this correctly, is smart in unveiling America's Cuba strategy this way. He has probably given his assent to Rahm Emanuel's south Florida pandering as a first step in a broader struggle -- and hopefully a somewhat slippery slide -- into a more rational national security position with Latin America.

Obama has made his "first move" in what is essentially a negotiation with both Congress and the Cuban government and Latin American region.

No political players offer everything they have in their first move, but for a start, what we heard today is really not all that bad.

But as Restrepo tried to intimate in today's press conference, it is probably a mistake to think that this policy is now fixed in concrete and is our new permanent status quo.

For those interested in reactions at a conference we are organizing tomorrow titled "Is It Time to End the Cold War In Latin America?", join former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, Council on Foreign Relations Latin America diva Julia Sweig, New America Foundation president and New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senior Latin America Advisor to Senator Lugar Carl Meacham, New America Foundation Whitehouse Senior Fellow Michael Lind, Foreign Policy magazine blogger and Garten Rothkof CEO David Rothkopf, US News & World Report Diplomatic Correspondent Tom Omestad, and National Foreign Trade Council President William Reinsch.

The conference will STREAM LIVE here at The Washington Note.

And we have a major announcement on a letter that has gone to Barack Obama from a whole bunch of military brass on US-Cuba relations. More on that tomorrow.

-- Steve Clemons

Remember. . .this exchange I had with Center for Security Policy President and leading neocon force in Washington Frank Gaffney was done for charity to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society -- probably the only thing that Frank Gaffney and I basically agree on.

If you are inclined to support this cause and the good work of one of our great New America Foundation staff members, Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini, please donate online here.

Some of you will find it interesting, and others will go a bit crazy over it. One person who watched the exchange live online wrote to me that he liked the debate a lot -- but wish we had had one genuinely "left" person in the mix. I agree generally -- but I think that the distinctions between my views and Frank Gaffney's are stark enough and capture the differences between pragmatic, progressive realism and ideological fundamentalism.

But it was interesting and a challenge. Our moderator was Foreign Policy executive editor and former Washington Post Outlook page editor Susan Glasser.

I hope you are enjoying a holiday weekend, whether spiritually connected -- or just one self-designed.

-- Steve Clemons

Latin America policy uber diva Julia Sweig chaired a news-making gathering at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington yesterday morning. It was excellent, and the CFR has audio of the entire event here.

In response to a question I posed to Sweig's panel, Obama administration Summit of the Americas point man Jeffrey Davidow fell back on droopy anachronisms while Foreign Policy magazine blogger and best-selling writer and geostrategic interpreter David Rothkopf hit the ball out of the park with his statement:

"US-Cuba policy is the Edsel of American foreign policy."

The full line-up on Sweig's panel included Jeffrey Davidow, White House Adviser for the Summit of the Americas and former US Ambassador to Mexico; Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank; and David J. Rothkopf, President and CEO, Garten Rothkopf and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Summit of the Americas, which President Obama is attending, will convene in Trinidad & Tobago from April 17-19.

After Davidow successfully avoided mentioning the word "Cuba" in his primary remarks on the Obama administration's game plan for the Summit of the Americas, the former US Ambassador to Mexico finally offered in his penultimate exhale an acknowledgement that "Cuba might come up" in the meeting.

And then he finished stating that other "flamboyant personalities may 'flambay'" -- a clear nod to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

When I had a chance to pose a question, I pressed Davidow pretty hard on what he tried to avoid.

The exchange between Ambassador Davidow, David Rothkopf, and myself follows below.

What is interesting and disconcerting is that Barack Obama's point guy on this upcoming Summit gave the unreconstructed, neoconservative-friendly, ideologically vapid, 'unchastened by five decades of embargo failure' answer to my question on Cuba.

Has Obama read the brief that his people are preparing for him on Cuba?

Davidow embraced one of the worst single editorials I have read in years in the Washington Post titled "Coddling Cuba."

And Rothkopf did his part to say that on US-Cuba policy, the American position has no clothes -- and has become completely illegitimate in the eyes of the world and undermines America's own, parochial national interests.

Here is the exchange in full between Sweig, Davidow, Rothkopf, and myself:

Council on Foreign Relations - Washington, DC April 9, 2009

Perspectives on the Fifth Summit of the Americas: Cooperation on Development, Energy, and the Environment

Speakers:
Jeffrey Davidow, White House Adviser for the Summit of the Americas
Luis Alberto Moreno, President, Inter-American Development Bank
David J. Rothkopf, President and CEO, Garten Rothkopf

Presider:
Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

Partial Transcript of Q&A Exchange

STEVE CLEMONS, Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation and Publisher, The Washington Note

I would like to just start with what David Rothkopf said about the Cuban embargo, "the beginning of the end" and ask Ambassador Davidow if you would agree with David's perspective on that, or perhaps his assertion.

It's very odd right now when one looks at Senator Richard Lugar and his statements on Cuba that seem to be running politically left of the President. Brent Scowcroft has said recently that Cuba makes no sense at all as a foreign policy problem. Russia's lack of patronage of Cuba has shown that we can't starve Cuba.

So, part of the question is if Barack Obama is the change agent he said, is Cuba more than Cuba? Is it a place where the steps you take there are so symbolic that they can have echo effects geostrategically on other parts of the world?

Or are we leaving this in the same arena where Senator Martinez and others would like to have it which is we are going to create opportunities for a class of ethnic Americans but not look at the broader geostrategic equation?

JULIA SWEIG, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

Ambassador Davidow? It's the "four letter word" - not Peru - that you are asked to address now.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY DAVIDOW, White House Adviser for the Summit of the Americas

I will try to answer that question. . .

JULIA SWEIG, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

And other panelists can chime in . . .

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY DAVIDOW

Yes, why don't they!

Look it's obviously a highly contentious issue. From my perspective, a few points to make.

From my perspective, I think it would be unfortunate to lose the opportunity for this hemisphere, at the beginning of the Obama administration, to set down some guidelines and make some progress jointly by getting distracted by the Cuban issue.

Cuba is not an issue for discussion at the Summit if one reads the Summit declaration and the documents on all the past year of negotiation. However, having said that, and given what we are reading in the press, it is probable that it will come up in some way.

The one point that I would respond to in Steve's question specifically is, "Is Cuba something larger than itself?" and the answer is 'yes, it is'.

And I think that whatever the reasons have been in the 1960s for initiation of elements of our Cuban policy, the fact is in today's Hemisphere, Cuba is the odd man out.

Keep in mind that this meeting in Trinidad is a meeting of 34 democratic states.

If we had been talking about a meeting of the hemisphere as little as twenty years ago, it would have been cast in a different light.

There has been a remarkable historical transformation in this hemisphere, and a laudable one, toward democratically elected governments.

We may have difficulty with some of the governments that have been democratically elected, of course, but this Summit is a reunion of countries and presidents, every one of which has been elected by their populations.

There is not one government represented at this Summit whose population would willingly accept the kind of restrictions on their civil, political and human rights that are commonplace in Cuba - and that remain commonplace.

So, I think as we talk about Cuba and talk about how we as a government deal with it and so forth, let's keep in mind that it is something larger than itself, it is in a way a memory of that which existed in the past and a caution of what may exist in the future unless we are totally committed to the question of democracy, human rights and representation of people.

And lest you think, and I'm sure some of you do, that I am some sort of ideologue on this, take a look at the lead editorial in today's Washington Post. Maybe you think they are a bunch of ideologues as well, but I think they say it much better than I do.

So, we have been struggling with Cuba as a nation for close to half a century and there is a real focus on what we should be doing, but to answer the question, it is an important place beyond a small island 90 miles off our shore

DAVID J. ROTHKOPF, President and CEO, Garten Rothkopf

If I may make a couple of brief comments on this- and I am unconstrained by affiliation with the United States government right now - so perhaps they will be in a slightly different direction.

The editorial in today's Washington Post was absurd.

The position of the Florida contingent on this is Paleolithic.

The policy is indefensible on any grounds,

The reality is that Cuba may be special, but you have to ask yourself why it's therefore easier to travel to or do business with the Stalinist, nuclear weapon-toting North Koreans, or whether it's more comfortable for us to be totally economically integrated with the Saudi royal family and their depredations, or if we are concerned about human rights, why are we so integrated with and why are we the sole supporter of a government in Afghanistan that has just made rape in marriage legal and denies women the right to go outside without the approval of their husbands?

So this notion that some how democracy alone is the only criteria that we should use in defining the nature of relationship doesn't stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever, and the reality is that only one country that has successfully been isolated by this fifty year embargo, and that is the United States of America.

Our [US-Cuba] policy dates back to the Edsel.

It is the Edsel of American foreign policy.

[END]

David Rothkopf is absolutely right.

Barack Obama has given few indications thus far that he is willing to move a five decade failed relationship forward in a meaningful sense -- with the single exception that he may ironically codify "relaxation" for a class of ethnic Americans in a way that crudely discriminates against all other Americans.

We did not open Vietnam by relaxing travel and remittances for Vietnamese-Americans.

And Obama's team -- for all of the ballyhoo about democracy promotion -- is promoting a policy of the United States government that restricts the American right of free travel anywhere.

I thought that we lived in a real democracy -- and that it was supposed to be Communist governments -- not democracies -- that restricted the travel rights of their citizens.

President Obama is a busy man, but he better take a look at the brief that his team is preparing for him -- otherwise he'll learn too late that he's driving "an Edsel" to the Summit of the Americas.

-- Steve Clemons

(Sorry for late notice on this -- just learned we could do it. will get video up for later viewing tomorrow.)

UNDER GROUND PUNDIT CAGE-FIGHTING (UPC) Threatens Very Fabric of DC's Foreign Policy Community

For One Night Only, General Public To Be Given Glimpse of What Happens When Diplomacy Stops Being Polite and Starts Getting Realist

Washington D.C. -- Illegal prostitution across state lines? So gubernatorial, so 2008. The current intrigue burning up the Beltway has the potential to change the fates of nations and the lives of millions.

D.C.'s dark obsession with "Underground Pundit Cage-fighting" (UPC) dates back to the days of Hamilton and Burr.

Long hidden behind the op-eds and the green screens of mainstream media, the UPC surfaced nationally after allegations of performance enhancing simile-use led a prominent talk show host to abort a planned run for a Mid-Atlantic Senate seat.

Now for the first time, the raw rhetoric and pure, no holds barred policy thuggery of foreign affairs gladiators will be available live to the general public, Thursday, April 9, 2009.

For one, all too short hour, 5-6 pm, the 4th floor of the New America Foundation at 1899 L St. NW (map) will host two real warriors of geo-strategic analysis for a far-ranging debate on "The Future of American Foreign Policy."

In one corner, Steve Clemons, the punishing publisher of progressive realism on The Washington Note and devastatingly effective director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

In the other, Frank Gaffney, the veteran neocon's neocon looking for a shot at the title with the Center for Security Policy, of which he is both president and co-founder. Rumor has it that Clemons and Gaffney last sparred years ago on an MSNBC exchange where Steve dubbed his hawkish rival, Frank "nuke 'em now and get it over with" Gaffney. Gaffney has been smouldering since.

Tomorrow's faceoff will be the first in person UPC meeting in years between two experts that differ on just about every diplomatic and national security issue imaginable. Opposites understates the case.

For years, the Council on Foreign Relations had banned such an event, fearing the clash of titans would fundamentally alter the fabric of foreign policy civility in Washington--violating the PBS protocols of the Geneva Convention mandating that policy debates be neither entertaining nor insightful.

The clash was only made possible by a cause that transcends partisan politics: the fight to cure leukemia, lymphoma and other blood related cancers.

All proceeds from tomorrow's event will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, thanks to the efforts Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini. The tireless debate promoter and future marathon runner is raising money for LLS through the organization's Team in Training program. TNT is a charity sports training program that has raised millions of dollars for the research and patient services provided by LLS.

The event will be moderated by Foreign Policy magazine's executive editor and former national news editor at the Washington Post Susan Glasser.

Refreshments will be served, and a webcast will be available after the event.

You can also make a tax-free donation at this secure fundraising webpage.

Or you can make a check payable to:

"The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society"
In memo line: "Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini, TNT-DC Chapter"

Or send to:

Leukemia/Lymphoma Clemons-Gaffney Scuffle
New America Foundation
1899 L Street, NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20036

-- Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini, Paul Testa and Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: Army.mil's photostream)

For those who missed it, New America Foundation Senior Fellow Anatol Lieven's column in yesterday's Financial Times is an excellent summary of the United States' strategic challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Among Lieven's most important insights is that a democratic Pakistan simply cannot give the United States the kind of support that it wants against the Taliban.

To continue to push and push and to send more and more aid will not fix the underlying problem that the vast majority of Pakistanis are opposed to this kind of mission.

Second, Lieven points out that an effective exit strategy must involve engaging regional stakeholders - like Iran - who share our interest in a stable Afghanistan and possess the will and capacity to help mange the ongoing conflict within that country that will likely persist for years to come.

Finally, Lieven reminds us that the United States' most important long-term strategic interests lie in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. This means that rather than trying to figure out how to get Pakistan to help us fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, we need to make sure that our efforts in Afghanistan do not undermine our long-term interests in Pakistan.

-- Ben Katcher

Mutlilateralism may be back?

In the past week alone, the Obama administration has agreed to restart arms control negotiations with the Russians, work with the G-20 to develop a new global financial regulatory architecture, and join Europe's negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

But under what conditions can multilateralism and negotiations be effective?

That is the subject of an event that the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program will host today featuring J.P. Singh, Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University and author of Negotation and the Global Information Economy.

This event will take place TODAY at the New America Foundation's new offices at 1899 L Street - 4th Floor - and will stream live here at The Washington Note.

-- Steve Clemons

The New York Times and Bloggingheads ran this fascinating short clip of New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force Director Daniel Levy and Nuh Yilmaz, a Washington staff member of the Turkey-based SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research. (The longer exchange is embedded above).

Levy thinks Obama's trip is validating of Turkey simultaneously furthering its role as a key strategic ally of Israel while at the same time expressing strong objections to the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian territories.

Levy believes that this is the right balance -- not putting Israel into an existentialist, defensive mode about all countries in the world but also having those countries tell Israel that its behavior with Palestinians is not only disgusting and a violation of human rights and territorial obligations but that this stance is undermining its long term security and eroding its relationships with allies.

Yilmaz also offered an interesting tidbit saying that while Obama is appropriately giving "a bear hug" to turkey -- he should also squeeze turkey to abaondon its anti-semitism. .

Yilmaz also offered the interesting assertion that the way he sees it, George Mitchell's view of the Israeli problem is closer to Turkey's than any other country in the region.

Fascinating if true.

-- Steve Clemons

While it is unclear how or when the world will emerge from this dramatic economic slowdown, one thing is for certain. The balance of power is shifting away from markets and toward governments. Manic-neoliberalism is dead, and that means that understanding the interests and constituencies that drive state behavior will becoming increasingly important to investors and strategists.

To discuss the rise of global political risk, the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program is hosting an event featuring Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group and blogger at ForeignPolicy.com.

This event will take place TODAY at the New America Foundation's new offices at 1899 L Street - 4th Floor - and will stream live here at The Washington Note.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is the clip from my chat with Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown last night. I thought it was a very good exchange -- though I was more long-winded than usual (. . .I know, that's not such an unusual thing).

One thing I had hoped to get into but we ran out of time was to talk about how valuable it really is to have both Barack and Michelle Obama out connecting with various of the world communities in the way they are doing. Early on, I was a bit dismissive of the impact of an "Obama Bubble" -- and the celebritization of the President.

But looking at this, one of the things that George W. Bush undermined with his high swagger approach to much of our diplomacy was the belief that America could be greater. The Bush administration punctured the mystique of America in the world by showing limits and real faults in our economic, military, and moral capabilities and position -- but mystique is more than just substance actually.

And it is going to take a while to rebuild the kind of global trust that average people around the world had in us. I think that Obama -- and his wife Michelle -- are doing a lot to get us out of the red in terms of global expectations of the country.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note and Update: Last night I helped host a dinner featuring former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and international law expert and Chair of the UN-affiliated International Peace Institute Rita Hauser. The dinner was entirely off the record, but I can't urge the Obama administration enough to spend time with these two thoughtful strategists. Both of them disagreed to some degree on what America's priorities in the Midele East should be -- but when pushed hard (by me in one case), Rita Hauser -- who is a hard core realist but believes in progressive international objectives -- outlined a serious plan for Israel/Palestine possibilities that was quite impressive. Brzezinski should be George Mitchell's secret secret envoy in my view -- or at least one of several.

On other fronts, today I am joining a small lunch with the foreign minister of the UAE -- which I'm sure will be on background, and I will be unfortunately missing this interesting meeting, "The Rise of Global Political Risk" at the New America Foundation with global economic strategist Ian Bremmer on his new book The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing.

Ian Bremmer is one of the smartest futurists I have run across. He has a knack for conceptualizing social and political trends and turning them into probabilities and equations that are not only valuable for "investors" but also help give strategists new layers of onion skin that can be peeled back when visioning future geopolitical scenarios. I have known Bremmer for years now and am a fan of his and his team's cutting edge work. It is interesting that David Gordon -- who used to serve as Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council and was the immediate past Director of Policy Planning at the State Department -- is also now part of Ian Bremmer's Eurasia Group.

The program with Ian Bremmer will stream live on this blog between 12:15 and 1:45 pm EST time today. Folks in DC are welcome to attend as it is free and open to the public. Information here.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I will be discussing with Keith Olbermann tonight on MSNBC's Countdown Barack Obama's foreign policy scorecard after a pretty staggering week for him in Europe, Turkey, and as of today, Iraq.

I think overall the week was a stunning public relations success for President Obama -- but comes up with more mixed results when one takes a look at the policy wins and losses.

I am considering whether to write a longer piece on this subject soon -- comparing Obama's well-crafted, uplifting, genuinely historically significant speeches which he has offered this last week in Europe and Turkey with the speech he gave in Kenya in August 2006.

I think that one can see how Obama has matured since 2006 and developed a shrewder sense of impact and an understanding of the consequences of his words.

Others may want to jump into this as well -- and where my marker is (I think) is that the University of Nairobi speech while uplifting and lofty was reckless and showed a naivety about foreign policy realities that Obama today should receive credit for overcoming.

I should be on at about 8:15 pm EST and then again at 10:15 pm EST for those interested.

I will also post the video clip here on the blog after it airs for later viewing.

-- Steve Clemons

I just received a powerpoint from a Naval War College instructor that I think captures rather well one informed person's perceptions of the Obama administration's course on defense allocations.

It was prepared by Professor Tom Fedyszyn.

This briefing, in my view, stoically outlines some dimensions of the administration's evolving new grand strategy, constraints on attention and resources, the shifting quality and composition of threats facing the US, and the potential real security costs of this transition. The briefing materials reflect the exclusive views of Professor Fedyszyn and not the Naval War College or any part of the U.S. government.

The powerpoint is here and hope you find it useful.

My thanks to Professor Fedyszyn for producing a clear-headed narrative and giving me permission to share this material with the public.

I think it's a useful document no matter what the particular political or policy tilt may be of the reader.

-- Steve Clemons

Seven U.S. Congressmen are in Havana and met with Cuban President Raul Castro among other leading Cuban politicians.

What I found most interesting in the Associated Press report on their trip was a comment made by Representative Mel Watt about something he had read of Fidel Castro's.

From the AP article:

Lawmakers in both houses of the U.S. Congress have proposed a measure that would prohibit the president from barring Americans from traveling to Cuba except in extreme cases, effectively lifting a travel ban that is a key component of the embargo.

[Barbara] Lee has said that many of the representatives, who arrived in Cuba on Friday and are scheduled to leave Tuesday, support the travel legislation.

Democratic Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina said Monday that Fidel Castro's column made it "clear that both countries can exist without either dialogue or adversity to each other."

"But wouldn't it be so wonderful," he added, "if we struck a dialogue and found the things that were mutually advantageous and mutually of interest to our two countries and stopped the historical divisions that have separated us (though we are) so close geographically?"

This reminds me of General Brent Scowcroft's comment to me some time ago in a short interview he gave me at the time I was helping to organize a book on US foreign policy by Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius.

Scowcroft said:

My answer on Cuba is Cuba is not a foreign policy question.

Cuba is a domestic issue.

In foreign policy, the embargo makes no sense.

It doesn't do anything.

It's quite clear we can not starve Cuba to death.

We learned that when the Soviet stopped subsidizing Cuba and they didn't collapse.

It's a domestic issue.

I think it's time to realize that we need to move Cuba out of the domestic political box back into the geostrategic context where it belongs.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Jon-Christopher Bua)

Susan Eisenhower and I were interviewed outdoors today atop a building overlooking the Capitol by Sky News on the subject of Obama's trip to the London G-20 Summit, the EU Summit and the NATO Summit -- followed by a significant trip to Turkey.

Eisenhower, granddaughter of the late President, is an expert on Russia and Europe and helped animate the "Republicans for Obama" movement.

Her comments today on Sky were important as she stated that she saw the "restart" in US-Russian relations as something crafted by Obama and Medvedev -- not Vladimir Putin. She said that there may be a power struggle underway in Moscow between the President and Prime Minister -- and that the President seemed to have the upper hand in the recent warming of relations with the West, but things remain fragile and tentative.

She warned that Obama had to be careful not to close down foreign policy options and not box himself into a position. She generally agreed with my views on North Korea, suggesting that the President and Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice need a more complex, nuanced response to the missile launch than the binary one they seemed to be embracing.

She applauded Obama's ability to get Europeans, Turks, and others from around the world to suspend their anger at the US for triggering a global financial crisis and to talk about broader challenges that need attention and to improve in their eyes America's standing.

Eisenhower really should be asked to serve as an Obama administration ambassador to a leading nation. These are my views -- not hers -- but she really has tremendous insights into statecraft and our nation's foreign policy challenges in a way that would enhance the chances of success for the Obama administration in world affairs.

I'm not sure she'd take a position as a diplomat at a top tier country -- but Obama's team should ask, and I hope she'd accept.

-- Steve Clemons

Steve will be joining the Ron Reagan Show on Air America tonight at 6:15 PM EST. He will be talking about North Korea's missile launch and the international reaction to it.

Steve has called on President Obama to adopt a nuanced response that aims to support elements within North Korea that would like to take the country on a different path.

-- Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: Dutchmetal's photostream)

Amjad Atallah co-directs the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force .

President Obama quoted this Turkish aphorism toward the end of his 27 minute speech before the Turkish Parliament. It was, in essence, a summation of his rejection of the policies of the previous eight years. The president provided a comprehensive overview of Middle East and Caucus politics that showed us a little bit of how he views the conflicts in the region.

And perhaps of more lasting import, Obama noted that the US is not and will not ever be at war with Islam, finally laying to rest the bastardization of the conflict of civilizations thesis promoted by so many neo-cons.

The President didn't only rely on metaphors - he offered a concrete analysis of conflict from Cyprus and Israel/Palestine in the west to Nagarno-Karabakh and Pakistan in the east. And he admitted US weaknesses before he gently chided his hosts on their own.

First a little about that last point. Everyone hates hypocrisy - children are particularly good at noticing it in adults. Nations tend to be like that too. The President seemed to grasp that in his speech without letting anyone off the hook.

It has always seemed hypocritical in many nations around the world for the US to criticize a lack of democracy in one country while embracing it in another. Hard to criticize Turkey for not coming to terms with the 1915 killing of Armenians without admitting that the US has not come to terms with the full horrors of slavery and of the annihilation of native American nations.

On conflicts, the President tied, perhaps unconsciously, four ethnic conflicts over territory: Kurdish activity in Turkey and Iraq, the Armenian-Azeri ethnic dispute in Nagarno-Karabakh, Cypriot talks to re-unite the country into a "bi-communal federation" (as the president put it), and the US effort to partition Israeli control over both its own state and the Palestinian territory into two states "Israel and Palestine."

On this last ethnic/territorial conflict in particular, the President seemed to want to do what few in his administration have so far been willing to - put an exclamation point on the differences between US and international interests and those in Israel who want to maintain the occupation.

He made a point of sounding fair - "The United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," he said. "Both Israelis and Palestinians must take the steps that are necessary to build confidence. Both must live up to the commitments they have made."

But he also used the future tense - noting that the creation of two states is a goal that "I will actively pursue." For those who have noted the lack of a new implementation policy so far, that may have offered hope that one will be announced soon.

The President also tied in his now standard outreach to Iran emphasizing that Iran had a choice between seeking a weapon or economic integration. As the Financial Times noted today, this may be part of a shift in emphasis to preventing Iran's weaponizing of its nuclear program rather than attempts to freeze its industrial (including nuclear) development.

On Iraq, he noted that the US was leaving soon and that everyone had to help to make sure that Iraq was secure and united (but he pointedly did not comment on how democratic it would have to be).

On al-Qaeda, he noted Turkey's help in Afghanistan and emphasized the necessity of preventing the terrorist group a "safe haven" in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

This was not Obama's "Muslim speech" we are told. But it was a good (and maybe precedent making?) speech to give in the Muslim country that has most entrenched its ties with the West while maintaining an Islamist modernizing government.

It was a pleasant juxtaposition with the embarrassing performance in Doha last week of the Arab League which applauded itself on feting Sudan's indicted president Omar al-Bashir.

-- Amjad Atallah

The pin-pricks, as Brent Scowcroft calls them, have started. North Korea is testing Obama's resolve and strategic skills.

North Korea's ballistic missile test masked as a satellite launch violates agreements that the United States, Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan negotiated with North Korea in order to bring it back into compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Set aside for the moment that despite the missile succeeding in covering more than 1,900 miles -- doubling the distances achieved by earlier North Korea tests -- the North Koreans failed to put anything into orbit, though state news agencies are reporting the satellite launch to be a success.

My friend Jeffrey Lewis who blogs at Arms Control Wonk wondered out loud on his facebook profile "What happens to North Korean rocket scientists after failed launches?" I wonder if these scientists are really in any jeopardy for failing when the State is calling their work a major success.

But Barack Obama in a well-crafted speech in Prague calling for a return to serious work on constraining the spread of weapons of mass destruction has ratcheted up the decibel level of his protest of the North Korea launch -- saying that there must be consequences.

The problem is that China and Russia, which actually deployed warships and fighters to the region of the launch, believe that the world must not overreact to North Korea's provocation. These two countries have thus far blocked the issuance of any statement from the United Nations Security Council, which met last evening (Sunday) for an emergency session.

North Korea seems to be demanding that it not fall too far down the Obama priority list -- and it has engineered one of the first of many probable global crises designed to test the resolve and strategic course of the Obama administration. Joe Biden warned during the campaign that this would happen, and he was absolutely right.

North Korea is already the target of some of the world's most stringent sanctions. And maintaining them -- and even adding some categories of sanctions -- does send a signal, but it is a soft one that the North Koreans may not care about or respect.

If this provocation was designed primarily "to get attention," then the Obama administration should be asking what can be done to give North Korea "more" attention. Attention itself is not a strategic commodity -- or something that a great nation should withhold if there is a chance of securing strategically significant successes over the ability of North Korea to further enhance its nuclear weapon systems capacity.

Giving North Korea more attention will be pilloried as appeasement by voices such as John Bolton and Frank Gaffney who think that there is little else but expedited regime change and military collision that will change North Korea's course.

But what I have learned watching North Korea's engagement with the US over the years is that North Korea does not move behaviorally in straight lines. But after all is said and done, when one looks back, one sees that North Korea is moving generally in a direction that the West may eventually be able to accept.

North Korea may be a rogue state -- but it is not the kind of transnational, undeterrable threat that al Qaeda represents. North Korea's leadership is a shrewdly self-interested, rational, calculating tyranny and as awful as dealing with such regimes may be -- there are many options that can move the regime that are short of war.

Thus, in my view, Obama should not put himself into a box when it comes to a tough-edged response to North Korea. Give North Korea the attention it craves -- and set up benchmarks for behavior.

And some of Obama's responses may indeed have to be harder edged -- but we need to be sure that the US isn't giving the most thuggish part of North Korea's leadership structure the excuses needed to undermine progressive movement inside the country.

At the same time, we simply need more alternatives and allies -- and the best I can think of is to work with Japan, South Korea, and China in not calling for withdrawing engagement and toughening sanctions but rather crafting how to strategically enhance engagement with particular forces inside North Korea that we want to cultivate.

It's time for a Nixonian approach that would enrich some of North Korea's potential robber barons against the interests of others inside the regime. We need to try to unleash opportunities for some and not others. This is risky and could itself be destabilizing -- but we need a strategic course that ultimately improves the leverage of other of North Korea's neighbors over its conduct.

Bluster will not work and is not respected. Force actually is respected by the North Koreans but can easily escalate beyond control.

North Korea is not monolithic. It would be prudent to try to generate some leverage on the competing factions around Kim Jong Il.

But hitting North Korea hard now may undermine any chance of teasing out these factions and of generating other more promising scenarios. At the minimum, if this was all about "attention" -- then that is something America can give at low cost.

If North Korea doesn't get off this new provocative course, then we have to consider some options that change the game.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest post by Joshua Meah. Meah is a former research intern with the New America Foundation's "American Strategy Program." He is writing from Mumbai, India.

Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women, an Indian film by Manish Jha, is one of the most intense, thought-provoking, heart-wrenching and brutally honest cinematic experiences of my lifetime. Imagine the American science-fiction hit "Children of Men," but set in a small village in rural India. Then, imagine that the problem isn't that no one is capable of pregnancy; rather, there are no women. Of any age, no girls or women have been seen in a village for fifteen years. They've all, minus one young girl discovered later in the movie, been killed off.

This is the premise of the movie. The film goes on to skillfully raise questions of great importance related to gender, caste, class, violence, and the Indian family.

Such a scenario is the logical end-point of even some current village practices, which lends the film its stark brilliance and credibility. At the film's conclusion, it is noted that, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and UNFPA, over the past century thirty-five million women have disappeared due to acts related to gender discrimination. Many of the disappearances are linked to the dowry practice, which requires the family of the bride to pay a substantial contribution (money, cows, etc.) to the family of the groom. In a village where the average income is half of the United Nation's marker used to indicate "poverty," such a practice is often unfeasible. Parents, in anticipation of an impending dowry payment, would kill female infants immediately after birth.

Domestic violence also claims a substantial number of victims and lives. On the rooftop of a small NGO-funded school in Veranasi, India, the Hindu religious capital of the world and home to the River Ganges, I sat with a group of twenty students, ages eight through sixteen, from the surrounding basti (slum). I asked them (this conversation as in Hindi), "What are the greatest problems faced by Veranasi today?" The children's unified response on one issue was unnerving and illuminating, shining light on what is possibly India's most sensitive topic aside from caste. Family.

They said "Each night, the men go out and drink. Then they come home and beat their children and wives. The wives, in fear and often in the real belief that they themselves have done something horrible to deserve their treatment, will then light themselves on fire. Some will die."

As I learned from further study and interviews, the alcohol consumed is not actually alcohol. It's a petroleum-based substance laced with other narcotics that pass through the heart of the city. A good "high" costs no more than 10 cents USD. Like crack in the inner-cities of America, this drug rips through Veranasi's slums, shattering families in the process. The drug is too cheap, the rage byproduct too strong, and the use of violence against women is just too easy. In other locations of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, I've found similar stories of violence, though not all are necessarily linked to drugs.

India n. (perhaps it has potential as an adjective as well?): the land where the opposite of everything is always at least a little bit true. This is the same country that has produced a great number of enormously powerful female politicians long before America even honestly broached the subject - Indira Gandhi being the case in point. Even now, the head of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and the home to 130 million people, is headed by a woman of dalit origin (India's lowest caste). The progress of India's democracy in terms of its movement toward social equality has in some ways been as breathtaking as it is heartbreaking.

With Indian elections, perhaps truly the greatest "show on earth," coming up in less than a month and a half, election observers would do well to hold a movie like Matrubhoomi close to their hearts. One goal of India's democracy, as is written by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus on the general subject of poverty, should be to relegate the sharp kernel of truth within this movie to nowhere else in human civilization except museums.

-- Joshua Meah

I will be arriving in Berlin on Monday, the 11th of May -- and I am appealing to German border authorities to detain me for an hour or so -- to make amends for the treatment that a German political leader (and probably many other unnamed victims of passport screening) received at Dulles Airport.

I think that any American should feel embarrassed by the treatment important guests of the United States received this past week at the hands of US Customs and Border Protection officials at Dulles International Airport.

And frankly, when important political leaders from nations allied with the United States are treated poorly when entering the country, one knows that there must be a much longer line of others who can't garner headlines about their cases that are detained in similar or worse ways.

Former German State Minister for Police Cem Oezdemir, who was the first ever Turkish-German Member of the German Bundestag and then became a Member of the European Parliament and is today the Co-Chair of the German Green Party, was detained by officials at Dulles Airport earlier this week and given no reason.

I met Oezdemir and his wife, radio personality Pia Castro, shortly after their detainment and heard that what frustrated him most about the incident was the unwillingness of the officials to tell him anything about what was going on. A border control official just told him in a loud, aggressively confrontational voice to sit, to be quiet and wait to be called. The problem was that the officials didn't have his passport or name.

Oezdemir, who had an official of the German Embassy in Washington, DC there to help expedite him through customs, had to go up to the intimidating official and say to him that there was no way Oezdemir would be called from a roster as no one had taken his name or passport yet. So, Oezdemir handed it to them.

The process was, according to Oezdemir and his wife who both frequently visit the US, dehumanizing, excessively rude, and characterized by total lack of information being provided to those who are detained.

Being detained without instruction or comments from the authorities creates fear, tension and uncertainty for those stopped in this way -- and one can only imagine how people who barely speak English react to such treatment. Oezdemir and his wife are fully fluent in English and still the border authorities made little effort to communicate -- and were rude at the end of the process when whatever concerns about him were obviously cleared.

This kind of treatment of people -- anyone, important politically or not -- undermines the American brand.

According to some reports, it is believed that Oezdemir was stopped by the official because his name "did not sound German."

If that kind of profiling is going on, then the US Customs and Border Protection operation should be investigated and challenged by the US Congress, the media and the American public. It is simply outrageous that individuals would be stopped because of their name or what they ate on a plane.

These stories percolate back and undermine confidence abroad in the U.S. itself. The treatment of Oezdemir and his wife -- who know this country well and know its strengths and warts -- has already been broadcast all over the German and the Turkish media.

I recognize that some people on occasion will be detained and will feel like they are being manhandled by a process they don't understand at America's borders -- but the rudeness of the treatment, the lack of human tact, the lack of information provided to those detained is out of line and needs to be remedied.

I know that the US Customs and Border Protection public affairs office will read this note. Apologizing to Oezdemir and his wife is not a remedy.

What is a remedy is a statement that the Department of Homeland Security must unfortunately detain -- for a variety of reasons -- people who enter the US about whom red flags are raised. However, you should state that US Customs and Border Protection directors will review policies regarding communication with detainees and the "posture" overall of officers through the process. Those who are cleared should be treated as "innocents" and respected -- and told that America regrets this process but that any officers involved hope to convey as much respect, reasonableness, and humanity as possible in processing through any concerns about specific visitors.

And then -- get your people at Dulles more cultural training.

I wonder if our former US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, the highest ranking Muslim in the Bush administration, ever gets the Oezdemir treatment at our borders now that he doesn't have his official passport.

Fix this problem -- seriously.

You are harming the nation, and there is no reason at all that can explain the poor behavior of officials when people are detained. I've seen it personally -- and heard too many stories like this one for there not to be a broader review.

-- Steve Clemons

My friend Jon Ward who blogs at Potus Notes for the Washington Times is traveling in the press pool with President Obama in Europe now. He just showed how good a journalist he is.

Ward attended the conference my colleagues and I helped organize last week on the subject of global economic imbalances and how the world would recover if it deals with the probable reality that Americans will not return to irrational levels of personal consumption.

Jon Ward got the opportunity to put a question to both President Obama and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel about global imbalances -- knowing full well that both have pulled in different directions on this one.

I'm so proud of Ward for asking exactly the right question at the right time and was mostly pleased with Obama's response -- though its clear that the Germans need work.

The one thing President Obama needs to understand that in this time of crisis he needs to steward a new era of major, deep infrastructure investment in the United States that not only triggers job creation in the near to mid term but helps generate recurring benefits to the economy over future generations. We have a major "infrastructure deficit" today that should not be left to future generations -- and the plans he has outlined thus far don't go as far as they should.

But overall, Obama's response to Ward was excellent.

And as Financial Times uber-pessimist economics commentator Martin Wolf said the other day in Washington, Germany does not realize its vital hegemonic responsibilities within the Euro Zone, and I think Wolf's observation is clear in the Chancellor's response.

Here is the exchange:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Jon Ward.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to read my question; I hope that's not too much of a breach in protocol here. I have a question about surplus and deficit countries and trade imbalances. Mr. President, you said in London that the world may not be able to rely any longer on the U.S. as a "voracious consumer market." Did you talk with Chancellor Merkel about Germany's enormous trade surplus and its impact on the global economy going forward?

And, Madam Chancellor, some say that Wall Street -- Wall Street's excess was fueled by easy money, supplied from surplus countries such as yourself, and another large bubble and bust is inevitable if Germany and China and others do not move closer to balance. What is your response to that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, Jon, I do think that even as we are trying to solve the immediate crisis we've got to learn some lessons from the previous years to figure out how do we avoid another crisis. And if you look at the U.S. economy, what we've seen is a series of bubbles and then busts, much of it having to do with huge flows of capital into speculative sectors of the economy.

Part of the problem that we saw was a lack of regulatory oversight, and so we're moving very aggressively on that front. And in the short term, my biggest concern is how do I just make sure that people get back to work? So our stimulus package, our efforts to stabilize the housing market, our efforts to remove the toxic assets from the banks so that banks start lending more effectively and businesses can open, people can get hired again -- all that is focused on my top priority right now, which is making sure that we're no longer hemorrhaging jobs and we start creating jobs.

As we emerge from the crisis, though, we're going to have to take a look at how do we ensure -- a term that Chancellor Merkel spoke quite a bit about at the summit, and that is sustainable economic growth. And in order for growth to be sustainable it can't be based on speculation, it can't be based on overheated financial markets or overheated housing markets, or U.S. consumers maxing out on their credit cards, or us sustaining nonstop deficit spending as far as the eye can see.

So once we stabilize the economy, we're going to have to start bringing these huge deficits that our government is running, we're going to have to start bringing those down.

Families are going to have to start making more prudent decisions about spending, and increasing their savings rate. Businesses are going to be making investments, and we want to spur as much investment as possible, but the whole point is to move from a borrow-and-spend economy to a save-and-invest economy.

Now, the U.S. will remain the largest consumer market, and we are going to make sure that it's open. One of the principles that we very clearly affirmed in London was that protectionism is not the answer. It's not the Germans' fault that they make good products that the United States wants to buy. And we want to make sure that we're making good products that Germans want to buy. But if you look overall, there is probably going to need to be a rebalancing of who's spending, who's saving, what are the overall trade patterns.

And it, by the way, it doesn't just include developed economies like Germany and the United States; it also means we want to encourage emerging markets to consume more. If you start seeing China and India improve the living standards of its people, now those are huge markets where we can sell. And that's why the last few days that I've spent talking about the international economy relates directly to the jobs that are being lost in the United States.

I know this was a long answer but it was a big question. The bottom line is that as long as the United States and Germany are keeping our open trading relationship, as long as our approach to currency is one that ensures fairness -- which generally speaking, the relationship between the United States and European central banks has been very cooperative and very solid -- as long as we have proper rule of the road and regulatory frameworks in place, then the key is to have friendly economic competition, the United States making the best products, making the best decisions, making the best investments, and Germany doing the same, and then all of us can do well together.

CHANCELLOR MERKEL: Well, we love competition. We love competition for the best possible products. And I don't think we're in such a bad position. And that is what drives us. That is what drives markets, economies -- to have good ideas, bright ideas that turn into good products that you can actually sell.

What we -- what all of this is about, we need to combat this crisis. We need to fight it resolutely. And I think we've done something very good in London. We tried to lend a helping hand to those who are not strong enough to, out of their own resources, combat this crisis. And that we can do this, that we still have a certain leeway to do that, shows how strong our countries really are.

But we have to do whatever we can in order to prevent such a crisis from ever occurring again. And this is what I mean very seriously. I mean, this was a great disturbance. Ever since the '30s, we haven't seen this without purpose -- such a crisis hasn't occurred.

So we have to take a very clear look at whether the economy is actually driving our politics and politicians, or do politicians still have the power to shape global economics. And I think we have to regain the ground that we have lost. That was a very important step to prove this to our people. And this is something that we cannot do nationally; we can only do this together and in concert.

If you look at the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, where we have a tremendous demographic change, this is a super -- aged society, people getting older. So can we actually afford to incur so much debt? Do we have in a few years' time really the power to innovate? We are paying an enormous amount of interest on each and every cent that we spend, and at some point in time, if the burden of debt becomes too big, then we lose innovative power.

And standards, for example, that, too, is important for us. Is it really so -- that is really necessary, not losing sight of the future and innovation, and research and development.

But we have to emerge from this crisis as quickly as possible, which is why we actually pursued this on two parallel tracks in London. And we have every interest in not only seeing our own country get back on its feet again, the United States getting back on its feet again, but the whole of the world -- emerging countries, Africa, Latin American countries. And this is why we will offer to them our help so that this happens time and again [sic].

We're grateful for the fact that each and every one around the table assured us that we will not resort to protectionist measures. That is something that we were at one about. And this only will make it possible, incidentally, to emerge from this crisis. The fact that this wasn't done in the '30s was one of the big mistakes that was made then and that we don't want to repeat.

Fascinating, important exchange.

I hope the other members of the press corps construct questions with as much weight.

-- Steve Clemons

Rachel Maddow opens her interesting interview with General Colin Powell who served as Secretary of State during the George W. Bush administration with comments by his former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson that senior administration officials knew the consequences of sending untrained staff to Guantanamo and that there were many in Guantanamo who were innocent.

Powell's response essentially validates in substance and emotion Colonel Wilkerson's views -- particularly when you watch General Powell's expression when he speaks of the detention of teenagers and a 93-year old man.

Then, Rachel Maddow gets into the question of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", the policy that permits gay Americans to serve in the military as long as soldiers hide their sexual identity. . .completely. If they don't, then they can be and usually, will be discharged. Barack Obama has signaled his intention to eventually change this policy. Powell's response was fairly bureaucratic -- open to change if it can be shown that the "quality of the force" would not be adversely affected.

Powell is tilting in a constructive and progressive direction, but I still find myself disappointed by the lack of principle he feels in this case with regard to discrimination against gay people. The "quality of the force" has clearly been adversely affected by the discharge of highly qualified soldiers, technical experts, and translators because they were gay and we allowed bigotry to undermine American national security interests.

But beyond the question of soldiering efficacy is the question of whether the U.S. military should look like American society -- or not. And in my view, discriminatory standards and codes are as abhorrent when applied to race as to sexual identity. I think Colin Powell knows this -- and have reason to believe that he is more than ready to accept and support gays in the military. But it is clear that he is not going to be the leader that calls for change.

-- Steve Clemons

This post on the G-20 was originally published on the New American Contract blog, Value Added:

After watching Gordon Brown on the live webcast of the London G-20 Summit, it appears that leaders have made some serious headway on one of the two major criteria laid out by Martin Wolf at the New America Foundation last week - a significant increase in resources to help developing countries.

Specific measures they agreed on total $1 trillion and include: tripling the IMF's usable resources, selling $50 billion in IMF gold (the proceeds of which will go to developing countries), and issuing $250 billion in SDR. The proposal for SDR issuance was strongly supported by speakers at New America Foundation last week including in this interview with Martin Wolf and in this speech by George Soros.

On the second major issue facing the G-20 - boosting fiscal stimulus in surplus countries - the G-20 has failed to reach consensus. Knowing that this would be an area of interest at the press conference, Gordon Brown was armed with the statistic that $5 trillion new dollars have been set aside by countries around the world.

Brown's estimate of the fiscal stimulus is a gross exaggeration. The only way he could have reached that figure is if he included international measures to stabilize the financial system.

If one looks exclusively at the fiscal expansion, as this IMF paper does, stimulus in the nine largest economies (who have born the brunt of the stimulus efforts) have averaged .5%, 1.6% and 1.3% of GDP in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively. If every economy was stimulating at the same rate as China, US, Germany, and France (which they aren't) the global stimulus would only equal $2.1 trillion for the years 2008-2010. Even this $2.1 trillion figure is an exaggeration. Smaller economies are stimulating far less, even as a percent of GDP, than the major economies of the world.

My largest concern with the G-20 meetings was born out. Merkel and others who resisted stimulus largely for domestic political reasons, did not allow President Obama to set the agenda for the summit. As a result, deficit countries will lead stimulus efforts and continue to spend and borrow, and surplus countries will inadequately stimulate their economies and continue to save and accumulate reserves. For those who believe that macroeconomic imbalances were a principal cause of the crisis, the failure for this G-20 to get surplus countries to stimulate is a serious concern.

-- Sam Sherraden

Reps. Delahunt, Flake, and McGovern (photo credit: The Washington Post)

Patrick Doherty directs the U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

It's been a bad few weeks for Senator Menendez.

First Senator Lugar releases a report calling for a sea change in U.S.-Cuba relations. Then the Congress passes and the president signs legislation easing travel restrictions on Cuban Americans and easing the payment process for agricultural exports to Cuba. Then, this week, Senators Dorgan and Enzi announce their legislation to end the travel ban to Cuba so that all Americans can travel freely to the island.

Then today, The Washington Post reports that Senator Lugar released a letter sent directly to the President calling for direct talks with Cuba. Here's the money quote:

"...I ask that you also consider the designation of a special envoy for Cuba who would report directly to Secretary of State Clinton....This Special Envoy's responsibilities would begin with the initiation of direct talks with the Cuban Government..."

And the House, in a few moments, is set to announce its companion legislation to end the travel ban.

For those interested, Representatives Delahunt and Flake will be holding a press conference today with leading Cuban Americans who are supporting their legislation. Whereas the Senate showed strong farm state and business support for the bill, Representative Delahunt has reached out to leading Cuban Americans, who are also calling for an end to the travel ban and an end to the embargo.

The speakers will be: Reps Delahunt (D), Flake (R), Emerson (R), McGovern (D), DeLauro (D), Snyder (D), Berry (D), Chaffetz (R), Donna Edwards (D) and Barbara Lee (D). In addition, I heard that Representative Delahunt plans to place a call to a human rights activist in Havana who wanted her voice to be heard supporting the change that this kind of legislation represents.

The location of the press conference, for those of you in the neighborhood, is Rayburn 2255 at 11am today.

Below the fold, you can find the statement by Miriam Leiva and Oscar Espinoza Chepe, two human rights activists in Havana who understand that continuing the failed policy of isolation will not further the cause of human rights and freedom in Cuba.

Amnesty International agrees with them.

The list of outside supporters of this legislation is impressive. Click here to see the full list of statements of support.

The U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops is also backing the legislation.

Poor Senator Menendez. It's not all gloom, though. On the bright side, playing a major role keeping U.S. policy static on any issue for 50 years is quite an accomplishment.

Now it's time to move on.

Barack Obama and G-20 leaders will probably emerge from the sessions that start today with (1) commitments on international financial regulatory reform, (2) non-binding commitments to various (mostly modest) stimulus strategies within their own economies, (3) a commitment to significantly enhance the resources of the International Monetary Fund and (4) a joint commitment to "resist protectionism" in their countries.

But the major benchmark of whether this G-20 Summit matters or not will be the degree to which the surplus countries of China, Japan and Germany commit to a plan to rewire their economies to derive more of their growth from domestic consumption as opposed to export led growth.

For well over a decade, overall global growth and these surplus countries in particular have depended on the economic narcotic of an American consumer that vastly overconsumed in comparison to what he and she produced. In contrast, Germany, China and Japan chronically underconsume in relation to their exports and production.

Obama seems to get this, but it remains unclear how hard he will push other major global stakeholders to wake up and recognize their responsibilities in driving a greater share of global consumption than they have in the past. Germany is strongly resisting the Obama administration's nudges. China has taken steps forward. Japan, which continues to amass surpluses, seems to have lost a great deal of its ability to control the course of its economy.

The subject of "What Will Replace the American Consumer?" was the topic of this forum organized by the New America Foundation/Economic Growth Program last Thursday and featuring such voices as Martin Wolf, George Soros, Laura Tyson, Bernard Schwartz, Mark Zandi, Leo Hindery, Richard Vague, Clyde Prestowitz and others. A resource page of charts, graphis, and other materials prepared to educate about the subject matter being discussed by the G-20 is available here at the new site, New American Contract.

But as Martin Wolf says in his Financial Times essay yesterday -- and in the video interview I do with him above -- we must get the surplus counties to kickstart their consumption. . .on a much more massive scale than they are engaged in. Otherwise, despite the pleasant optics and generally chummy atmosphere, this Summit will be an unfortunate bust.

-- Steve Clemons

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, much less visible than any other personalities on the Obama national security team roster, is playing the role of "steady hand" on the President's team.

Gates has demonstrated this by keeping his own profile down while his national security colleagues, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden in particular, chase the spotlight to a greater degree and seemingly crave visibility and credit for various moves and shifts that the Obama administration has made. The way they are playing their roles is natural.

Gates hangs back in contrast, advising, lurking -- and laying the groundwork for change with Russia, China, even perhaps Iran.

Gates has momentarily come out of the shadows and made two key statements that are particularly important and show him to be a steadying influence and stabilizer on the Obama team.

First, he has pushed back against military command requests for more troops and a larger "military footprint" in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus made clear in testimony yesterday that commanders were seeking 10,000 more troops than those already requested by President Obama -- but Gates is publicly expressing his discomfort with this course and thinks that the current troop levels committed and new strategy needed to be field tested before considering pouring more combat forces into the Afghanistan-Pakistan equation.

Secondly, as Demetri Sevastopulo has just written in an important Financial Times piece, Gates is pushing newly sworn in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back on Iran.

In a report by the Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg, Netanyahu bluntly stated that Israel would take care of Iran if the United States did not.

Gates, in the Sevastopulo interview, essentially knocks Netanyahu back by suggesting that he thinks we are not close to any "red line" action against Iran. Joint Chiefs of Staff Commander Michael Mullen has similarly emphasized that the Middle East is already unstable enough at the moment -- and more instability would not be welcome.

Demetri Sevastopulo writes:

Robert Gates, US defence secretary, has said Israel is unlikely to attack Iran this year to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Gates said there was still enough time to persuade Iran to abandon what is widely perceived to be a nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Gates said he does not expect Israel - which believes the US estimate for when Iran could develop a nuclear weapon is too sanguine - to take military action this year.

"I guess I would say I would be surprised...if they did act this year," said Mr Gates.

As he was sworn in as the new Israeli prime minister this week, Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the greatest danger to Israel was Iran's attempt to develop nuclear weapons. But asked whether Iran would cross a nuclear "red line" this year, Mr Gates said: "I don't know, I would guess probably not".

"I think we have more time than that. How much more time I don't know," said Mr Gates. "It is a year, two years, three years. It is somewhere in that window."

Israel raised the spectre of war last year by conducting a large scale military exercise that some experts saw as a practice run for an attack on Iran. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs, later delivered an unusual public warning following a visit to Israel, saying "this is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need it to be more unstable".

From what we know at this moment, Robert Gates deserves credit on a number of fronts. These include de-colonizing the intelligence bureaucracy that Donald Rumsfeld aggrandized around the Department of Defense that then undermined much of the intelligence reform that was part of establishing a new Directorate of National Intelligence.

Gates has also been an impressive lead proponent in trying to lessen -- on a relative basis -- the military dimensions of America's response to international security problems and has called for far greater resources for our diplomatic efforts, aid efforts, at overall State Department resources.

Like Vice President Biden, Gates seems cautious about advocating much larger US troop deployments and a bigger "military footprint" than already exist in Afghanistan -- and now he is making himself the personal "offset" for Netanyahu's strident commentary about Iran.

Gates is setting an example in how to manage the complex challenges facing the Obama team that others would be wise to follow. He seems focused on strategy and generating the outcomes America needs -- and seems reluctant to support reckless deployments of power abroad, which was more characteristic of the last President he served, and thinks that the real bridge-building and strategic shifts America needs will combine behind the scenes type work like he is doing followed by the photo-ops that he leaves to his administration comrades.

Obama would be smart to encourage similar steadiness -- and to a certain degree, selflessness, among those executing his policies.

National Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers comes to mind as someone who should sign up for lessons from the lurking but constructive Defense Secretary.

-- Steve Clemons

Greetings to TWN readers. I apologize for being a bit AWOL in last few days as I've been absorbing a flood of information on President Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy and very involved in some of the back end efforts trying to affect the agenda of the G-20 Summit in London. SDRs have been high on that agenda.

I will soon have some "think pieces" up that move beyond the quick hit reactions that I see abounding in the media and blogosphere. I think that serious observers need to take a step back and do a more serious job sorting through the strengths and weaknesses of President Obama's recent economic policy moves and his national security course.

But for those who are awake, I will be talking about some of this -- particularly General David Petraeus' comments during hearings today about a troop increase request, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and more -- tomorrow morning with anchor Robb Harleston on C-Span's Washington Journal.

My segment will start at about 7:30 am EST.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: Army.mil's photosream)

Michael Cohen co-directs the New America Foundation/Privatization of Foreign Policy Initiative.

As I've written before, I'm not much of a fan of counter-insurgency doctrine and two events over the past several days lend compelling evidence as to why. Quite simply, it's the politics, stupid.

First comes word from Baghdad of an outbreak of fighting between US-supported Sunni "Awakening" fighters and the Iraqi government. According to Brian Katulis, "This weekend's incident was the first crack in a shaky foundation constructed by the 2007 surge of U.S. troops--a foundation that largely glossed over long-standing political rivalries." This is not meant to criticize the "surge" but simply it is a recognition that for a counter-insurgency effort to succeed it requires not only a significant number of troops, it needs a long-standing time commitment to ensure that this type of violence doesn't turn into a larger conflict. And it also relies on genuine political reconciliation, which can of course take generations.

Next we have President Obama's recent announcement of his Administration's new policy for Afghanistan, which Fred Kaplan calls "CT-plus." The focus on counter-terrorism versus the broad counter-insurgency strategy advocated by the so-called COIN-dinastas is as Kaplan argues a reflection that following the latter course "could require too many troops, too much money, and way too much time--more of all three than the United States and NATO could muster--and that the insurgents might still win anyway. Better to focus U.S. efforts more narrowly on simply fighting the insurgents themselves, especially in the border areas with Pakistan."

Now I could offer you plenty of reasons why I think a counter-insurgency doctrine is a bad idea; it doesn't fit with the comparative advantage of the US military; its not applicable to the threats America will face in the future; its an example of fighting the last war and as Andrew Bacevich brilliantly and pithily puts it, "If counterinsurgency is useful chiefly for digging ourselves out of holes we shouldn't be in, then why not simply avoid the holes? Why play al-Qaeda's game? Why persist in waging the Long War when that war makes no sense?"

But let me offer another reason why counter-insurgency is the wrong approach; and its one borne out by the experience in Iraq and now Afghanistan - there is simply no domestic political support for the sort of long-standing political, military and financial commitments that are required for counter-insurgency to succeed. There wasn't that type of commitment in 2003 (and I'll get to that issue in a second) but after 7 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is absolutely no desire among policymakers to go down this road today.

One of the architects of the military's COIN strategy in Iraq, David Kilcullen, argues that counter-insurgency in Afghanistan means a five to ten year commitment aimed at "building a resilient Afghan state and civil society" and extending "an effective, legitimate government presence into Afghanistan's 40,020 villages." That is the sort of commitment that very few US politicians are going to be willing to countenance. So not only are the COIN-dinastas preparing for war that we are unlikely to face, but they are preparing for one that the country is unlikely to be willing to fight.

It's worth remembering that the adoption of COIN strategy in Iraq was not a willful choice by US policymakers; it was a move of desperation by an Administration and a military caught flat-footed by a vibrant insurgency in Iraq. Indeed, it is worth also remembering that the Bush Administration assiduously avoided any discussion of a long commitment to Iraq and aggressively pushed back on anyone who asserted that more not less troops would be needed to pacify the country. The reason was clear: the American people and Congress would never have gone along with such a commitment.

Counter-insurgency only made sense as a strategy once, to paraphrase Bacevich, we had dug a very big hole in Iraq. And as we are seeing in Iraq right now, the surge has been only temporarily effective. We are still in that hole and even with the outbreak in violence one is hard pressed to find any US political leaders calling for more troops to be sent to Iraq. What happens in Iraq, going forward, will be determined by Iraqis, which by the way is the other flaw in COIN strategy - it presupposes a sovereign government is willing to go along with the long-term stationing of US troops in their country. Even if US troops wanted to stay in Iraq, the Iraqi government is not going to go along . . no matter what Tom Ricks says. (This is not to mention the fact that it's hard to see why it is in the national interest for the US to get in the middle of a civil war between rival Iraqi militias).

With that in mind, it should hardly be surprising that the Obama Administration rejected the COIN approach. And while there are elements of counter-insurgency strategy in the President's Afghanistan plan this is primarily a counter-terrorism effort. Let's put it this way, if Afghan security services are up to speed in two years and Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been sufficiently degraded the United States will not be sticking around to make sure Afghanistan's democracy is vibrant and robust. We're just going to go home. If you don't believe me; ask the Iraqis.

The choice made by President Obama represents the fundamental flaw being made by COIN-advocates. It's a fundamental flaw made also by supporters of bank nationalization; or those who would push for a single-payer health bill - a failure to reflect domestic political constraints. If the Obama Administration can't convince the American people to go along with a broad counter-insurgency strategy (and won't even try) in a country where we already have troops and where the 9/11 attacks were hatched what makes people think that this or any other Administration will be able to convince Americans that they should go along with a COIN-strategy in a country we haven't even invaded and occupied yet? And a military strategy that has no relation to domestic politics isn't going to be of much use.

Now I realize my example is sort of a straw man, but then not really.

The fact is, COIN-strategy is presupposed on the notion that the US will be getting into intractable conflicts that will necessitate the same sort of tactics used in Iraq over the past 5 years. As an observer of the American political scene, something tells me that simply ain't going to happen.

What has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past week is only further evidence that COIN is simply not a realistic or easily applicable military doctrine.

-- Michael Cohen

Katherine Tiedemann is a program associate at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

President Obama has shown his willingness to continue President Bush's method for combating militancy on the Pakistani side of the Afghan/Pakistan border, ordering CIA-piloted QM-1 Predator drones to strike militant targets in Pakistan approximately once a week since he took office.

While releasing his newly-announced Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy review last Friday, Obama commented that, "Pakistan needs our help in going after al Qaeda....[and] we will insist that action be taken -- one way or another -- when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets in Pakistan."

This morning's airstrike in Pakistan's Orakzai Agency marks a significant departure from President Obama's previous policy of hunting extremists only inside Waziristan, Bajaur, and the NWFP.

While no Taliban or al Qaeda leaders were killed today, between ten and twelve militants died in the strike. It has also been rumored that the program might stretch into Baluchistan, another base of power for the Taliban in the country, but we've yet to see any strikes there.

The expansion of geographic targets and acceleration of the pace of the strikes indicates that Obama is deadly serious about eradicating the scourge of Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Maybe, just maybe, coupling this military tactic with the increase in economic and development aid put forth in the strategy review will help create a safer, more stable region--probably not anytime soon, but someday.

(Photo credit: BBC)

-- Katherine Tiedemann

I spoke with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Countdown yesterday evening about Obama's popularity as he goes into a set of meetings in Europe with world leaders. I'll be writing more on this later today.

And for those who are up and about this morning, I will be appearing on The Diane Rehm Show between 10 and 11 am EST on the subjects of the London G-20 Summit and NATO Summit. The show takes call-in comments and questions, and the number is 1-800-433-8850.

Hope some TWN readers join the program.

-- Steve Clemons