As my colleague Oliver Lough wrote on this blog yesterday, climate change is one of the foreign policy issues on which Europe has led the way for some time now. Try as they might, it has been difficult for Europeans to get their American friends to follow suit.

To discuss the state of global climate change negotiations and the role of the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program will host an event TODAY, Wednesday, September 30 from 3:30pm - 5:00pm.

The event will feature German Green Party Members of the European Parliament Reinhard Bütikofer and Claude Turmes.

Steve Clemons will moderate the forum, which will STREAM LIVE here at The Washington Note.

-- Ben Katcher

Politico's Mike Allen has the attendance roster for President Obama's big Afghan pow-wow today:

At 3 p.m., the President will participate in a THREE-HOUR meeting with his national security team on Afghanistan in the Situation Room. . .Expected manifest for today, with those overseas participating through the secure video teleconference system (SVTS): Vice President Biden; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command; General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan; Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence; CIA Director Leon Panetta; Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan; Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan; and General James Jones, National Security Advisor.

Despite the firepower in this Principals' Meeting -- there are other approaches the Obama team should consider.

General McChrystal's views are known. Joe Biden's alternative take on the Afghanistan situation is known.

However, what would be good for the President and the country is to have their views and a number of other serious approaches floated and thought through systematically -- much the way that President Dwight Eisenhower did when coming into the Presidency in what was called the "Solarium Exercise."

Eisenhower came in to office with a bunch of Republican hawks like John Foster Dulles and Curtis LeMay in his national security apparatus -- and the general view that Ike's advisers had was that "containment" of the Soviet Union as articulated by George Kennan and adopted by Harry Truman was a hybrid of weakness and appeasement.

Eisenhower, however, was more cautious and circumspect than his team.

Ike ordered a five week review of policy -- assigning three teams with very different perspectives on how to deal with the Soviet threat -- and compelled them to work through a total systems analysis of the long term costs and consequences of the policies each team proposed. In other words, they had to pay for their world views -- and had to put on the table the back end consequences of their actions.

In the end, Eisenhower presided over a session during which the three groups offered their findings before 80 national security officials, generals, and various policy advisers to the President. This meeting was classified for decades.

In the end, Eisenhower chose to continue a "containment strategy" -- but got in the open the policy alternatives to that and educated his entire team about the benefits and negatives of each approach.

Obama would be wise to consider a similar approach.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: White House Photostream)

While at home in Boston this past weekend, I found myself google-news-ing (is that a word yet?) Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett to get their take on the Obama administration's recent moves with regard to Iran and last week's revelations concerning the uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qum.

I expected the Leveretts to offer an alternative to the familiar "carrots and sticks" policy - and I was not disappointed.

In today's New York Times, the Leveretts take direct aim at the Obama administration's Iran policy - which they view for the most part as a continuation of the Bush administration's policy.

As the Leveretts have argued in the past and in detail, the chief goal of the United States with regard to Iran should be a strategic rapprochement a la Nixon's trip to China.

Here are the key graphs from today's piece:

Absent some agreement with Washington on its long-term goals, Iran's national security strategy will continue emphasizing "asymmetric" defense against perceived American encirclement. Over several years, officials in both the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami and the conservative Ahmadinejad administration have told us that this defensive strategy includes cultivating ties to political forces and militias in other states in the region, developing Iran's missile capacity (as underscored by this weekend's tests of medium-range missiles), and pushing the limits of Tehran's nonproliferation obligations to the point where it would be seen as having the ability and ingredients to make fission weapons. It seems hardly a coincidence that Iran is accused of having started the Qum lab in 2005 -- precisely when Tehran had concluded that suspending enrichment had failed to diminish American hostility.

American officials tend to play down Iranian concerns about American intentions, citing public messages from President Obama to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, as proof of the administration's diplomatic seriousness. But Tehran saw these messages as attempts to circumvent Iran's president -- another iteration, in a pattern dating from Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, of American administrations trying to create channels to Iranian "moderates" rather than dealing with the Islamic Republic as a system. President Ahmadinejad underscored this point to us by noting that Mr. Obama never responded to his congratulatory letter after the 2008 United States election -- which, he emphasized, was "unprecedented" and "not easy to get done" in Iran.

The Obama administration's lack of diplomatic seriousness goes beyond clumsy tactics; it reflects an inadequate understanding of the strategic necessity of constructive American-Iranian relations. If an American president believed that such a relationship was profoundly in our national interests -- as President Richard Nixon judged a diplomatic opening to China -- he would demonstrate acceptance of the Islamic Republic, even as problematic Iranian behavior continued in the near term.

While the Obama administration has offered to talk to the Iranians, the past week's events suggest that its goal remains the same: to treat Iran as an adversary and use carrots and sticks to influence its behavior. The problem with this approach is that it hasn't worked and is a recipe for endless conflict.

The Leveretts are advocating that the Obama administration set in motion a different strategy.

In their own words:

INSTEAD of pushing the falsehood that sanctions will give America leverage in Iranian decision-making -- a strategy that will end either in frustration or war -- the administration should seek a strategic realignment with Iran as thoroughgoing as that effected by Nixon with China. This would require Washington to take steps, up front, to assure Tehran that rapprochement would serve Iran's strategic needs.

On that basis, America and Iran would forge a comprehensive framework for security as well as economic cooperation -- something that Washington has never allowed the five-plus-one group to propose. Within that framework, the international community would work with Iran to develop its civil nuclear program, including fuel cycle activities on Iranian soil, in a transparent manner rather than demanding that Tehran prove a negative -- that it's not developing weapons. A cooperative approach would not demonize Iran for political relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah, but would elicit Tehran's commitment to work toward peaceful resolutions of regional conflicts.

In my view, the Leveretts have contributed to the policy discourse by providing an alternative strategy, when most everyone else in Washington has been arguing over tactical decisions like whether or not to "engage" (i.e. talk to) Iran.

Daniel Drezner obviously does not agree - and while I am sure the Leveretts could respond much more articulately than I can, I'm going to give it a shot. I want to be clear that I haven't discussed their article or this post with them, so the views below are entirely my own.

My aim below is to directly counter six points made by Drezner in his post at ForeignPolicy.com.

First, Drezner criticizes the Leveretts for pointing out back in June during the Iranian election controversy what has undoubtedly been proven true - that the regime would survive, American interests vis-a-vis Iran would not change, and the Obama administration should not let the election controversy get in the way of striking a game-changing deal with the Islamic Republic. While the article's title (Ahmadinejad won. Get over it) may have been unfortunate, the key arguments are sound.

Second, Drezner faults the Leveretts for citing Iranian officials while concluding that the Iranians will not concede to demands that they halt their nuclear program if such demands are made at the "five plus one" talks this week. Putting aside the issue of whether to believe the Iranian officials or not, does Drezner doubt the Leveretts key claim that the Iranians are not going to bow to an American ultimatum? The historical record certainly suggests that they will not.

Third, Drezner takes issue with the Leveretts' contention that the Obama administration must deal directly with President Ahmadinejad. While one can quibble with exactly who the United States should talk to inside the Iranian regime, the Leveretts' point must be understood in its larger context. The key is that engagement needs to be about constructing a better relationship, rather than merely offering carrots, wielding sticks, and delivering public speeches. It is sensible that Washington should respect Iran's institutions as part of an effort to engineer a positive relationship.

Fourth, Drezner mischaracterizes the Leveretts' fundamental assertion with regard to the Iranian elections. Their point is not that the Obama administration used the elections to try to topple the regime. The point is that the elections are not a game-changer when it comes to U.S.-Iranian relations. Instead of honestly addressing this argument, Drezner tries to take the Leveretts' use of the term "regime-toppling" out of context. They certainly do not assert, as Drezner insinuates they do, that the Obama administration "fomented" regime-toppling instability in the aftermath of the elections.

Fifth, Drezner says that if the United States can garner support from China and Russia for debilitating sanctions, then Iran might capitulate on its nuclear program. But this ignores the extreme likelihood that China and Russia will not go along with crippling sanctions. It also ignores the fact that sanctions rarely work as a means of changing state behavior. Iran is an enormously important country and will find its patrons.

Sixth, Drezner says that "What the Leveretts seem to be proposing is a multilateral move to bring Iran in from the cold -- which benefits Russia and China far more than it benefits the United States. In other words, I'm not sure how a Nixon strategy works in the P5 + 1 framework."

This last point is wrong for two more reasons. First, ending Iran's isolation in the context of better relations with Washington would bring enormous benefits to the United States. We, after all, are the ones with allies and security commitments in the Middle East - not to mention all of that oil and gas. Second, Drezner questions how this strategy would work in the P5 + 1 framework. But the P5 + 1 framework is not the Leveretts' idea - and they have long argued for a bilateral agreement.

Continuing down the road of isolation and threats paved by the Bush administration will not get our relations with Iran to a place where we want them to be. Difficult as it would be to pull off, at least the Leveretts are offering an alternative.

Even if the Iranians were to give up their nuclear program at our behest - a possibility that appears extremely unlikely - we will still find ourselves enemies with perhaps the most powerful country in the Middle East. One way or another, this will eventually lead to war.

Contrary to what Drezner and others are saying, it is rapprochement, not "engagement plus threats" that must be tried.

-- Ben Katcher

Sam Sherraden just returned from Berlin where he was on a study tour with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a think tank associated with Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP).

The Free Democrats (FDP) and the Christian Democrats (CDU) put together enough votes in Sunday's national election to form Germany's next coalition government. Since 2005, Germany was awkwardly governed by a "grand coalition" of the somewhat directionless Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the CDU led by Angela Merkel.

On Sunday, German voters showed their displeasure with the grand coalition by abandoning the SPD for other parties, or by simply staying at home on election day. An estimated 1.6 million SPD voters simply didn't show up to vote. The results were devastating for the party, which received fewer than a quarter of the votes, the worst result in SPD history. CDU, the other partner in the grand coalition, took a small hit and received 33.8% of the votes, 1.4% less than in 2005.

Germany was once a three party system, dominated by the SPD and the CDU. But recently, voters have moved away from the center and toward the left and the right. On the right, the FDP received 14.6% of the vote, 4.8% more than in 2005. The Left party received 12% of the vote, a 3.3% increase since 2005. The Greens also improved, receiving 10.7% of the vote, a 2.6% increase.

With the growing support of the FDP and its party chairman, Guido Westerwelle, Merkel will now be able to form her preferred CDU/FDP coalition government. On election night Merkel smiled from ear to ear at the prospects of the new coalition. The next day one headline in a German newspaper read, "FDP Saves Chancellor Merkel."

Merkel's new partners agree more with her politics, but the new coalition will unlikely lead to an overhaul of German policy. Much of the electorate remains to the left and parties like Die Linke, the Left, and the Greens are gaining popularity. While the economy finds its footing, it will be difficult for Merkel and Westerwelle to dramatically change course. This would also be contrary to Chancellor Merkel's leadership style, which is defined by continuity and stability.

One reform that the FDP must deliver is a tax cut. Before the election, one FDP official told me that his party would not enter a coaltion government that did not include a plan to cut taxes. While taxes are important to the German electorate, only 19% of those who were polled thought the FDP had a good tax plan. This will make tax reform difficult, particularly at a time when deficits are high. The FDP may agree to a plan to cut taxes in 2011 by combining it with cuts to social programs. This would allow the FDP to fulfill their election promise and would give them a boost before the election in four years.

While the FDP campaign focused on taxes, the public is most concerned with jobs, the economy, and education.

On employment, the new coalition has reason to worry. Germany's export-dependent economy will find it difficult to increase employment when the world struggles to create sustainable demand. Many also speculate that large German companies were under political pressure to avoid layoffs until after the election. This could create a post-election unemployment hangover that will make life difficult for the CDU/FDP coalition. The previous government also passed a measure to provide part-time employees full-time wages. If demand does not pick up, this program will come under pressure and some of the 1.3 million Germans enrolled in it may find themselves without a full-time income.

The major challenge for the center-right coalition will be to achieve a post-stimulus economy that gets back to exporting goods and creating jobs. The major threat will be weak foreign demand. Merkel and Westerwelle have little control over this, but regardless they will have to field criticisms from a growing group of parties on the left to keep their coalition together and build a case for their free-market platform.

-- Sam Sherraden

Oliver Lough is a research intern at the New America Foundation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, months of faintly superior-sounding European criticism of American intransigence on climate change has started to ruffle a few feathers. "It may be," retorts an exasperated U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, "that some people on the other side of the pond don't understand the system that well." This is unfair. European politicians are well aware of the intricacies of the "system", and it scares the living daylights out of them.

The source of much of this pressure from "the other side of the pond" is a slightly contradictory mix of political showboating and genuine concern. The E.U. is extremely pleased with what it sees as its shining record of climate change leadership - instrumental in driving through the Kyoto treaty, Europe is now seeking to blaze a path for others to follow towards the climate change summit at Copenhagen this December.

So far, its commitments are impressive, with a unilateral pledge to reduce its emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 topped with an annual €15 billion mitigation package to help developing countries de-carbonize their economies.

The lack of action by anyone else on the issue has allowed the E.U. a rare opportunity to don its superpower cap, and it has done so with all the relish of a theatrical understudy determined to make the most of a big break. But behind the smug tone of the regular swipes at "our dear American friends," there is a real and growing worry that hitherto promising US efforts to make up lost ground on the environment could end up going the way of the public option once they finally hit the Senate.

Despite its triumphalism, Europe knows that its 'success' is largely illusory, crafted at a time when the US was not even present at the negotiating table. It's been a good run, but at the end of the day it simply does not possess the necessary clout to galvanize the trust and commitment of developing big hitters like China and India in any meaningful way. What the Europeans (and everyone else) desperately need is US leadership.

Over the past year, E.U. policy makers have been casting about for a strategy which would help the US to assume some kind of leadership role while allowing it steer momentarily away from some of the thornier issues it faces.

Recognizing the fact that a substantial reduction in emissions could well over-stretch a US administration starting off at an 8-year disadvantage, the E.U. is starting to shift towards squeezing America for a major financial commitment on the issue of mitigation - placed by some at something in the region of $40 billion a year.

Stern has already sought to head off potential critics of mitigation schemes off at the pass, reminding the Senate that these payments to the developing world are absolutely "not charity."

But as NYT columnist Paul Krugman notes, with certain Senators already deriding mitigation proposals as little more than a "massive wealth transfer," we could be in for another bumpy ride.

All this and more will be discussed at the New America Foundation's upcoming event: What Does Europe Expect From Obama at Copenhagen? The event will feature presentations by European Union parliamentarians Reinhard Bütikofer and Claude Turmes.

This event will take place tomorrow, Wednesday September 30 from 3:30pm - 5:00pm and will stream live here at The Washington Note.

-- Oliver Lough

Jackie Northam of National Public Radio put this clip together in which I comment about the multiple views in the administration on America's Afghanistan strategy.

-- Steve Clemons

I just had a fascinating discussion with economist David Hale who thinks that the US economy may get a "dead cat bounce" in jobs created in 2010. Hale thinks this relatively optimistic scenario depends on the American consumer coming back to life.

Recently, the New America Foundation hosted a national policy forum focused on America's "private debt overhang." On this link from the New American Contract blog, there are some good powerpoints from the various speakers that may be useful in benchmarking US economic performance right now.

And in the video above, I chat for about seven minutes with economist James K. Galbraith who walks listeners through the limited wherewithal of American consumers to kickstart growth. Galbraith, son on John Kenneth Galbraith, is Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin.

-- Steve Clemons

Lawrence B. Wilkerson was chief of staff of the Department of State from 2001-2005 and served for 16 years as an aide to General Colin Powell.

Many people today are focused on former Vice President Dick Cheney's complicity in torture. That's all well and good since, in effect, he has admitted to it on Fox TV and now we'll see how the system works or doesn't work to hold him accountable. It's not torture that I want to discuss here, however. Here, I want to discuss Cheney's complicity in the rape, pillage, and plunder (all implied verbs) of our country's regulatory system.

Shirley Anne Warshaw, a political scientist at Gettysburg College, has documented in a first-blush sort of way Cheney's culpability in this regard in her new book The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney.

Whether oil, gas, forestry, mining, fisheries, national parks, clean air, pharmaceuticals, food, endangered species - you name it - Cheney was the kingpin in the dismantling of relevant oversight and regulation.

Cheney managed this principally by putting into the regulatory or oversight positions within the executive branch of our government, people who either hailed from long service in the industry or field they were overseeing or regulating, or who had lobbied for that industry or field for long years, or a combination of the two.

Professor Warshaw describes in some detail what these people did as she discusses the immense power that Cheney wielded. In brief, the people whom Cheney placed in the key regulatory and oversight positions, like wanton little boys, as Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, plucked the wings off the flies. They either intentionally failed to follow the regulations they were supposed to enforce, developed arcane legal opinions or inexpert science that obviated their enforcement (sound like torture, anyone?) or, when necessary and possible, amended or rescinded them in cooperation with their allies in the Congress.

Cheney is the person after all who, as Secretary of Defense in 1992, had asked Halliburton to study whether the Defense Department should outsource more of its activities and, when Halliburton completed its study and said - surprise, surprise - yes, the DOD should indeed outsource more functions, Cheney accelerated the process. He then stepped out the door in 1993 and became Halliburton's CEO and reaped the profits that his decision as Secretary of Defense had made possible. No dummy here, in other words.

So, as Vice President he set out essentially to do much the same, to "outsource to the market" all that previously had been seen as environmentally sensitive, too big not to be watched, too powerful not to be roped in with careful and precise regulation, or too monopolistic not to be kept under constant surveillance. And he largely succeeded.

The well-publicized scandals such as those surrounding the illegal activities of Jack Abramoff were manifestations of this governing environment that made it to the public eye and, subsequently, to some prosecutor for action. Most never did. Let's look at some of Professor Warshaw's examples.

On May 17, 2001 to set the stage for what was to come, Cheney's Energy Task Force gave its report to the President, with a cover letter signed by Cheney. The plan barely mentioned energy conservation or alternative energy - two hugely important areas of needed government emphasis. Instead, it focused on $33 billion in subsidies, tax credits, and incentives for the coal, oil, and nuclear industries and, of course, the recommendation to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This was corporate welfare on an unprecedented scale. It was made all the more egregious when, for example, ExxonMobil subsequently turned in such record profits that many Americans saw them as obscene, topping $40B in a single fiscal year..

Cheney then moved to ensure his work in the energy field would be appreciated within the bureaucracy. For example, to ensure the Environmental Protective Agency (EPA) did not get in his way - in fact, to ensure it helped him - he first packed the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) with his own people. As Professor Warshaw points out, "he chose lawyers, lobbyists, and energy executives who shared his passion for cutting regulation, especially for energy corporations." The CEQ chairman was James Connaughton, a man who, in Warshaw's description, "had spent much of [his] professional career fighting environmental regulations. As a corporate lobbyist with the large Washington, D.C. law firm of Sidley, Austin, Brown and Wood, Connaughton had fought the environmental regulations that he now oversaw. Connaughton had repeatedly sued the Clinton administration over its stringent environmental rules."

Next, Cheney approved Connaughton's choice for deputy, Philip Cooney. Cooney had been a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute which had led the oil industry's fight against legislative caps on greenhouse gases. (Cooney left the administration in 2005 for a senior position at ExxonMobil).

Just to demonstrate where the President of the United States was during this set-up by the Vice President, Professor Warshaw describes a conversation between then-President Bush and his EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman. She asked Bush for assurances that the CEQ would not dictate policy to her or to her agency. Bush responded: "What's CEQ?" As Warshaw points out, Whitman's fears were more than validated and she resigned two years later.

Warshaw states, "Nearly all who managed policy areas that involved energy and environmental regulations came from the industries subject to regulation." Moreover, "[f]rom that moment on, the Bush administration had free rein to rewrite regulations, because no one was watching."

Cheney had selected Gale Norton to be Secretary of the Interior. According to Warshaw, when Norton encountered former President Clinton's designation of five million acres of federal land as national monuments, she knew she could not reverse that decision. So, she simply created policies to allow commercial activities within those monuments. She then proceeded to give private interests the right to decide what commercial activities they wanted to manage within the monuments.

The U.S. Forest Service, manager of over 193 million acres of national forests, in Warshaw's words, "reframed its regulations to benefit certain industries, especially timber and energy industries." Its director, Mark Rey, "had been the chief lobbyist for the timber industry, working for the corporations he was now regulating. This was another case of putting a fox in charge of the hen house."

Perhaps one of the most damaging of Cheney's plunges into environmental regulations was his direct intervention in the proper use of the Endangered Species Act. I'm a bird hunter and a fly fisherman (as, supposedly, is Cheney), so such interventions by Cheney stand out for me as cruel, injudicious, and violating the spirit of conservation that another Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, brought to Washington in such a meaningful and sustained way. I find it hard to believe that Cheney is a genuine hunter or fisherman. I've known many such false "sportsmen" throughout my 55 years of hunting and fishing (and, incidentally, I've never shot anyone in that more than half century of hunting - and I have an iron-clad rule about alcohol and guns: never mix them and shun those who do).

Warshaw writes, "As so often happened during the Bush administration when environmental regulations threatened the economic interest of the business community, Cheney stepped in." (Such intervention on behalf of economic interests is high irony since today we know how some of those economic interests were ripping off the taxpayers in a wholesale way during the Bush-Cheney administration, from investment banks to mortgage issuers.)

As Warshaw describes, a huge salmon kill resulted from one such intervention. The Washington Post investigated and recorded on its pages: "...because of Cheney's intervention...the largest fish kill the West had ever seen [occurred], with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River."

In brief, Cheney's science reversed the experts' science and thus the fish-kill.

Not content to have CEQ, EPA, the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Interior at his beck and call, Cheney went after the real seat of executive power - the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The OMB was the ultimate reviewer of all proposed regulatory changes. Its director, Mitch Daniels, as Warshaw points out, was referred to as "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney." Daniels, coming from the huge pharmaceutical company Eli Lily, knew big business. Sean O'Keefe, another Cheney man, was OMB's deputy. And with John Graham and, later, Susan Dudley in the key regulatory positions at OMB, Cheney had a winning hand. Graham at Harvard and Dudley at George Mason University had both made names in risk management analysis concerning industrial pollution and corporate malfeasance that were shamefully full of holes but extremely pro-business.

In the case of Dudley, the analyses were underwritten by such sponsors as ExxonMobil and BP Amoco. From their positions in OMB's office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Graham and Dudley gave Cheney the ultimate power to oversee and check if necessary almost everyone in the bureaucracy concerned with regulation-writing.

Cheney, as documented by Warshaw, also captured White House policy on global climate change. That is to say, he made sure that for at least six long years no one in the U.S. government paid any attention to the central challenge confronting our planet. And of course for eight long years no one - not even a White House mouse - caused even a single action to occur with regard to energy conservation. In the end, the "end" that history writes on the Bush-Cheney administration, that may be the singular incompetence that is recorded as the most damaging to the nation.

There is more, much, much more; frankly, I don't believe Professor Warshaw has come close to exhausting the possibilities. For instance, as far as Dick Cheney is concerned, the U.S. Armed Forces are not in Iraq for non-existent WMD, to fight terrorists, or to spread freedom and democracy. And Cheney did not fight to keep his Energy Task Force papers out of the public's hands to protect executive privilege. I believe those papers, under careful scrutiny, would reveal his true motivation for the invasion of Iraq - a motivation carelessly intimated by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at an Asian security summit in Singapore in 2003: "Let's look at it simply", Wolfowitz told his audience. "The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." Dick Cheney wanted to get U.S military forces into that "sea of oil" - at the risk of mixing metaphors, into the lands where the second largest oil reserves in the world were known to exist. What is not so well-documented, however, is Cheney's motivation for hanging around in Afghanistan even if his administration did seem to relegate that theater to secondary status once its focus shifted to Iraq in late November 2002.

That motivation has more to do with TAPI than with Osama bin Laden. TAPI is the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. Without a stable "A" and "P" in that acronym, there will be no pipeline to our newest strategic ally, India. Moreover, the Russians, already threatening to corner the gas market in Europe, will step into the wake of TAPI's failure and provide their own substitute. That is why we lingered in Afghanistan under Dick Cheney's vice presidency. The significant question in my mind at this moment is, does our new president realize this was Cheney's strategic purpose and agree or disagree with it?

In her "Epilogue", Professor Warshaw reminds her readers that Vice President Joe Biden, before he became vice president, called Dick Cheney "the most dangerous vice president in history." That judgment fails to consider, in my view, Aaron Burr. But that's about all that's deficient about it.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

German exit poll results are in.

Looks like Germany may have its first out gay German Foreign Minister in Guido Westerwelle, who I think will do an excellent job in the role. Can't wait until he meets Iran's President Ahmadinejad in his official duties.

The CDU and FDP will have 320 seats together in a Black Yellow coalition, and they may actually have 324 seats given the peculiarities of the German election system of adding seats to the Parliament because of what are called overhang seats.

The approximate results in % terms are CDU 33.5%, SPD 22.5%, FDP 15.0%, Linke 12.5%, Greens 10.5%, Pirates 2.0%, Other parties 4%

That's right. Pirates. These are the anti party political party who generally oppose government. 2.0%

But the change factor is important and fascinating.

The Social Democrats have fallen 11.7%. The CDU under Merkel has fallen only 1.7%.

The FDP has surged 5.2% since last elections, and the Greens are up 2.4% while the former Communists Linke Party is also up 3.8%. And the Pirates were at zero last time and are now up 2.0% in the strange collectiveäs debut.

The Grand Coalition is over.

Steve Clemons

(photo courtesy of the Battle for the Bundestag 2009 Blog of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies)

Voting started this morning in Germany, and polls will close at noon EST and 6:00 pm in Berlin.

Georgetown's Eric Langenbacher has been doing some of the most fun, often riveting blogging at the German Elections Blog of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.

There may be other good blogs out there covering -- but I'll leave those to commenters to suggest.

A couple of things I am interested in today is how far the Social Democrats have fallen in the sympthies of Germans; whether or not the CDU under Angela Merkel can put together a government with the liberal (in a European sense) Free Democrats -- making party leader Guido Westerwelle the next likely German Foreign Minister; and whether Green Party Cem Oezdemir wins a direct vote seat -- which would be historic.

I'll be watching results today courtesy of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Washington.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I very much hope that the Clinton Global Initiative posts a video link to the outstanding gala dinner celebrating its Global Citizen Awards.

It was a stunning event and made even a cynical realist like me feel good about the value of high octane humanitarian gestures made by others.

Listening to Bill Clinton confess his shame about his own cynicism and occasional self pity while recounting how Rwanda President Paul Kagame was able to take his people out of their hell and into a place of real hope and a vision of the future is a pretty overpowering experience. I was there. Bill Clinton was predictably amazing.

The 2009 CGI Global Citizen Award recipients include Asha Hagi Elmi Amin, Chairperson, Save Somali Women and Children; Ruchira Gupta, President, Apne Aap Women Worldwide; Peter Bakker, Chief Executive Officer, TNT; Quincy Jones, Founder, Quincy Jones Foundation; His Excellency Paul Kagame; President of the Republic of Rwanda; and Dr. Rola Dashti, Parliament Member, State of Kuwait.

And there was an amazing and diverse audience. Those I saw included Barbra Streisand & James Brolin, Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley & Smith Bagley, Hani Masri, Ben Stiller, Juanes & Alicia Keys (both of whom gave incredible performances), former Saudi Ambassador to the US HRH Prince Turki al-Faisal, Huda Farouki, General Wesley Clark, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, environmental wiz kid PJ Simmons, Quincy Jones, John Bryant, Sidney & Jackie Blumenthal, former Senator and UN Foundation President Timothy Wirth, former USIA chief Joe Duffey, John Podesta, Bracken Hendricks, Inter American Development Bank Luis Alberto Moreno, and a thousand others.

But this brings me -- oddly -- to the photo above. Barbra Streisand and James Brolin were seated with the Bagleys and some other folks I don't know at the table next to mine.

I "think" that she left her sunglasses at the dinner. Otherwise they are the lady's that sat just next to her.

I tried to give them to some Clinton Global Initiative staff members to get up to her at a private, more exclusive event with President Clinton upstairs in the Sheraton. But I could tell that the staffers were confused and didn't feel comfortable taking them. I thought of giving them to the hotel staff, but the concierge/guest services folks at the Sheraton had been under siege for days from all the traffic at the conference and were pretty rude and abrupt when I tried to leave the glasses with them.

I mean these are/might be Barbra Streisand's sunglasses!

So, I am going to post this in the hope that her crowd, or someone higher up the command chain of the Clinton Global Initiative can reach me if she really wants these back. I have them.

And I am going to confess that I am a fan of Barbra -- and I am part of the "Barbra Streisand Community email list." Feel free to sign up as well at her official site.

If these glasses belong to the lady who sat next to Ms. Streisand -- zap me an email as well.

-- Steve Clemons

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is a favorite of mine among the nation's governors.

He is serious about policy and curious about both domestic and international matters. I have had an opportunity to participate in one "policy salon" that he hosted at the Governor's Mansion in Annapolis and was impressed with O'Malley's grasp of detail about climate policy issues. On another occasion, O'Malley took a meeting with my then colleague and friend Nir Rosen to learn more about what was happening at dirt level in Iraq.

Governor O'Malley used to be an advance man during the presidential campaign of former Senator Gary Hart -- and remains close to Hart. He's also pals with Greta van Susteren, who ought to have her Democratic governor friend on her show Fox's On the Record to ask O'Malley why he won't stop by a community-valued mental health center scheduled for closure but will be stopping by a ritzy fundraiser at a colonial era town-centerpiece mansion in colonial era Chestertown, Maryland -- Widehall.

That's just a bad visual -- and may be a bad choice for the Governor.

I'm in Chestertown, Maryland today -- sitting at Play It Again Sam coffee shop in the center of town -- and there are signs everywhere in the windows of business establishments about this mental health center. People are talking about it. I've just asked seven different folks -- independent of one another -- if they have any views on the closure of the Upper Shore Community Mental Health Center, and everyone -- Republican and Democrat -- opposes its closure. But beyond that, folks are blaming O'Malley personally.

The front page of the Kent County News, above the fold, has run a line: "Governor has not yet responded to invitation to tour the facility but will be in Kent for fundraiser." (Kent refers to Kent County).

Frankly, I don't know whether the health center should remain open or close. I have no idea how its patient load and impact compare with other institutions and don't know how the State of Maryland might address the community's health needs through other institutions.

But I can say that the political temperature here is pretty hot. Republicans and Democrats don't often agree on much in Chestertown and when they do, that's not good for incumbents -- though Frank Kratovil, the Member in the House, may become the casualty ultimately despite the anger brewing here at the Governor.

Martin O'Malley may need to support his State's decision to close the mental health facility no matter the local uproar.

But he should seriously consider visiting the facility and demonstrating that he is aware of the hard choices that government has to make in this time and that these choices needed to be weighed against other important community equities.

Even if he has to go to the mental health center in a tux, he should stop in and show that he's interested and informed no matter the eventual fate of the institution.

Then he can hit the ritzy fundraiser at the Widehall Mansion in Chestertown.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Craig O'Donnell of the Kent County News reports that Governor O'Malley will stop in at the Upper Shore Community Mental Health Center on Saturday when he is in Chestertown, Maryland attending the $1,000/ticket fundraiser at real estate developer Roy Kirby's Widehall mansion.

This is the right move by the Governor.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note: Recently, retired 4-star General Anthony Zinni critiqued what he perceives to be an inability of the Department of State and US AID to change their operational dynamics to confront the realities of state-building in conflict areas and to embrace 'smart power' in substance rather than rhetoric. There is both a short clip of a conversation I had with General Zinni -- as well as a longer video clip of the event he did at the New America Foundation.

The Department of State has officially responded here to General Zinni which The Washington Note is pleased to present. -- Steve Clemons

Responding to General Anthony Zinni: Civilian Approach to National Security Problem Solving

This is a guest "note" approved by the Department of State and offered by Jeffrey Stacey, a Franklin Fellow in the Department of State's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction & Stabilization. He is a professor at Tulane University, where he teaches Political Science and International Relations. Dr. Stacey previously worked for the British government and the European Union, before returning to the U.S. to obtain his PhD from Columbia University.

I am a relative newcomer to the State Department. I have previous government experience but have logged a similar number of years more recently as an academic. Upon arriving at State at the beginning of this administration, this experience allowed me to plunge right in.

And in a world of 40+ failed states, there has been no shortage of work to be done. While I am technically still an outsider, having observed the newest office at State close up, sweated out long hours, and represented the U.S. government abroad, for the rest of this post I will use "we" instead of "I".

In his September 1, 2009 speech at the New America Foundation, General Anthony Zinni spoke about his proposal for a new partnership effort between the Defense and other departments like State, and recognized that post-conflict work around the world will remain necessary for the U.S. and its allies.

In order to achieve stability once the fighting phase is concluded, rapid progress on the political, social, and economic fronts is required. In fact, this smart power concept is already being avidly pursued in a full-fledged interagency effort across the U.S. government, albeit under a slightly different guise.

Whereas General Zinni calls for creating a new military command with DOD playing the lead, something similar to the 1947-style sea change he advocates is already taking place--only with State and USAID in partnership with DOD, as along with the Departments of Homeland Security, Treasury, Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services.

Several years ago Congress created a new office in the State Department--the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS)--and tasked it with spearheading a massive collaborative effort not only with DOD, but also including the major domestic policymaking agencies. Thus, a so-called "whole of government" approach to post-conflict stabilization efforts was born. And with eight major agencies involved, it is an impressive thing to behold. At the working level of the U.S. government, this form of U.S. foreign policymaking is doing just that: working.

Here is where recent developments are moving fast and might not be visible to those outside of the U.S. Government. Far beyond merely "throwing money and people at a problem" from "a little office in the State Department," as General Zinni put it, this whole of government effort is taking root.

In Washington, it's essential to have three things in order to be effective: mandate, money, and people. S/CRS has been established in law by Congress, given a substantial stand-alone budget, and has developed a highly professional cadre of personnel. The sizable staff consists of a central headquarters office focused on planning and preparation of civilian capabilities and networks of officials from our interagency partners who work with S/CRS regularly, including DOD.

And most importantly, S/CRS and its partners are building the Civilian Response Corps, which has already been funded to include 250 new hires. The Corps is designed as a civilian expeditionary force primarily for deploying to conflict zones, to accomplish tasks more suited to civilian experts than to our armed forces.

Civilian Response Corps hiring and training is well underway. 120 civilian experts will be onboard and trained to deploy abroad by this spring, and the full complement of 250 is expected in 2011. The sum of the three components--Active, Standby, and Reserve--will eventually swell to over 4000 personnel (once congress funds the Reserve component). Our DOD colleagues have greatly encouraged our efforts in S/CRS and have gone so far as to provide operational funds for S/CRS and our interagency partners.

General Zinni calls for a capability that involves a serious planning capability, comprehensive training, specific plans of engagement, regular assessment, and yearly practice (aka exercising), and claims that only the military can carry this off.

In fact, S/CRS and its partners have introduced precisely these elements, to such a degree that a major change in organizational culture--the very kind General Zinni advocates--is now evident. Beyond any reasonable doubt, we are beyond "saluting problems with band-aids." The idea of a novel capability for tackling the problems presented by the world's failed states is already coming to fruition.

For example, this past spring S/CRS and U.S. Government agency partners ran an exercise on planning with and deploying the Civilian Response Corps alongside the military, specifically our European combatant command. A phalanx of EUCOM planners at the level of Colonel were sent to plan this exercise with S/CRS. At the conclusion of this process, our military counterparts could not have been more impressed; moreover, one of the consultants commented that he had never seen anything like it in his twenty-five years in the private sector. The exercise itself was a success, with the troublesome parts functioning as teachable moments. We are planning future exercises of a similar sort for next year.

Nevertheless, while the demand for the Civilian Response Corps is unmistakably clear, one significant question remains: Will the Corps be deployed as designed? The challenge here is to overcome a considerable knowledge gap about the Corps and how it relates to the broader system within which it is intended to operate.

Consider this: Every time the U.S. makes a major commitment to a country in peril we end up reinventing the wheel at great cost to both policymakers and the American taxpayers.

The first thing we do is name a high profile official Special Envoy or Representative. Whether it's Thomas Pickering on Colombia, Robert Gelbard on Kosovo, or James Dobbins on any of a number of hot potatoes handed to him, once this official is named there is no set process by which s/he gathers a team together, no set of tried and true procedures to follow, no staff already allocated to work on the country in question.

Instead, this official starts grabbing staff from all over the place and is essentially forced to wing it, setting off turf wars, interrupting policy streams, and busting budgets all across various bureaus and agencies.

S/CRS and its partners have designed a new system for handling crisis countries to use those lessons learned. In effect, the system within which the Civilian Response Corps operates is as simple as it is important. When country X asks for our assistance, under this system two things happen: 1) A team gets set up in Washington, headed by an official picked by cabinet level officials, and 2) a second team heads out to the U.S. embassy in country X, to assist the ambassador in place. Team 1 is the staff for the key decision making group for the crisis, coordinating closely with Team 2 in country. A third much smaller coordination team will head to the HQ of the military's combatant command in the region.

The difference here is the staff come largely from S/CRS and interagency partners who are trained and ready for precisely this scenario, who operate according to a set of procedures that allow for efficiency and effectiveness, and who know how to both plan and operate once deployed. Team 2 does a conflict assessment and, with the embassy staff, the local government, and any international partners also operating in country, devises a strategic plan.

Then, for implementation purposes, additional smaller teams arrive in country loaded with civ-mil expertise for stabilizing pre- or post-conflict situations. These small teams in effect are advanced Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), much more civilian than military, and better prepared to transform conflict than the PRTs of today. This system is ready for use in the next major crisis.

So, why reinvent the wheel at such great cost? S/CRS and its partners have already handled numerous small-scale deployments around the world in 25 hot spots, with a team of 20 currently in Afghanistan, and others in and out of places like Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

They have already conducted serious planning efforts in Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Kosovo. The training we put our personnel through is rigorous, with heavy emphasis on planning, deploying, and operating in unsecure environments. We can operate with the military or without it, as the aim is to deploy in whatever capacity is suited to the conflict at hand. We have also begun working with allied governments who have built similar capacities; in addition we are actively working with NATO, the EU, and the UN.

The wholesale change in government culture General Zinni has called for is palpable. As our DOD colleagues have noted, with trained civilians ready to do the post-conflict stabilization, the U.S. military can remain focused on doing what it does better than anyone: fighting and winning wars. Together, these hard and soft tools make up the key elements of America's new smart power toolbox. There are some conflicts abroad our leadership may choose not to become involved in, but where the U.S. seeks to protect its interests and aid friends in need, S/CRS and its interagency partners are up to the task.

-- Jeffrey Stacey

Al Jazeera has just run a provocative but important clip capturing some public attitudes of Israeli Jewish views toward Obama. One of those questioned -- an otherwise seemingly reasonable young man said that he would harm the President if he had the chance and others had no problem furthering the fabrication that he is an Arab or that he is a Muslim.

Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, did a similar experiment earlier this year around the time of Israel's elections and found plenty of young and inebriated Israelis to publicly say some outrageous things about Barack Obama. Clayton Swisher's subjects are not drunk but are offering their comments while sober and during the day.

If one did a similar set of interviews in any number of Arab countries, I think it would be easy to find many who would say pretty awful anti-Semitic things about Israeli Jews, so there is no path to moral superiority on one side of the Arab/Israeli line over the other.

However, there is a question of whether more Jews in Israel -- who feel threatened because of what the media has been feeding them or feel threatened by the prospects of Obama seriously pursuing a peace plan -- are diverging from American Jewish views or not in their perspective about the President.

This video clip is not scientific and can't really answer that question -- but my own sense of leaders in the American Jewish community, whether from AIPAC leaders or from the American Jewish Committee, is that they would strongly protest the kind of statements that people in the Swisher/Al Jazeera video are making.

What is more disconcerting, however, is the seeming absence of criticism of this kind of threatening and racist commentary by leading Israeli government officials.

Over the last few years, until the healthy national shift represented in the election of the Democratic Party of Japan, I wrote now and then about the growth of a strident, dark, pugnacious nationalism in Japan in which violence -- threatened and real -- was more and more a part of the tool kit of Japan's far right nationalists. They intimidated leading elected and civil service officials and their families for expressing what they believed were unacceptable views on China, on the imperial system, or Japan's past historical deeds. What was disconcerting was the reluctance of both Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his successor Prime Minister Abe to criticize this violence and to speak out against Japan's growing thuggery.

Today, what is more worrisome than the views on the street that Al Jazeera was able to record is the absence of national condemnation of those views.

I remember when former Deputy Spokesman of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gideon Meir once told me that Israel's diaspora -- including AIPAC -- often try to help so much that it hurts, that Israel's view of the world sometimes were different and less dire and certainly more complicated than the diaspora groups could comprehend.

Well, in this case, I think it is the American Jewish community that has a far greater fix on appropriate conduct with regard to Barack Obama than some of the rank and file citizens of Israel. This is a time when listening to the diaspora voices would be important.

And reversing the obvious ignorance of many in Israel about Barack Obama's faith and background is long overdue.

-- Steve Clemons

Today, the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force is hosting PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi to offer a Palestinian perspective on how this week's trilateral meeting in New York might be leveraged to get at the core strategic issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dr. Ashrawi's views are particularly important because the Executive Committee on which she sits will be ultimately responsible for carrying out final status negotiations with Israel.

This event will take place from 11:00am - 12:15pm at the New America Foundation and will STREAM LIVE here at The Washington Note.

Steve Clemons is still in New York and will be watching live from there as he is still at the Clinton Global Initiative. Amjad Atallah, co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation wlll moderate today's meeting.

-- Ben Katcher

Alexandra Taylor is a Research Intern with the New America Foundation.

The rocket fire from a southern Lebanese village into Israel a little over a week ago by a relatively unknown militant group, the Ziad Jarrah Division of the Abdullah Azzam Brigade, is the most recent reminder of the tenuous peace across the Blue Line.

Hezbollah quickly denied any responsibility for the rocket attack, a fact that some have taken to indicate that Hezbollah does not exert as much control over its territory as previously believed. World Politics Review columnist, Frida Ghitis, also warns of a growing competition between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda elements in Lebanon, emphasizing that the implications of the recent attack are to "undercut the perception that Hezbollah is the only real power in southern Lebanon."

Yet it is premature to claim Hezbollah has lost control of its territory. Instability and a lack of external control are not new and, rather, characterize Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

In October 2007, violence broke out between militants from Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Armed Forces in the Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp north of Tripoli. And since the end of hostilities in 2006, there have been sporadic rockets fired at Israel from Hezbollah's territory within Lebanon; these incidents have mainly been attributed to Palestinian militant groups, especially during Israel's operation in Gaza last winter.

According to this 2009 International Crisis Group report: "Lebanon's weak central state, combined with the camp's institutional, security and political vacuum," created conditions that have allowed the camps to serve as both "a safe haven for fugitives and a travel agency for jihadi volunteers."

Indeed, these attacks are isolated incidents, and do not represent an erosion of Hezbollah's power. The power relationship between Hezbollah and these actors better resembles the situation in Gaza between Salafist groups and Hamas.

An important indication of Hezbollah's undiminished status is actually the Israeli response to last Friday's events. Israel returned fire, but hostilities did not escalate further despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's statements that Israel would hold the Lebanese government as a whole responsible for any aggression originating from Lebanese territory. This shows that small militant groups, such as the Ziad Jarrah Division, do not alone have the power to provoke Israel and Lebanon into a war.

We should not assume that Hezbollah's power is diminishing just because they neither launched nor prevented the rocket attack. Reportedly, Hezbollah's weapons caches and capabilities are only growing. Hezbollah's ability to flout the arms ban established by Resolution 1701, despite the efforts of UNIFIL, indicates that Hezbollah retains firm control of the south.

The role of Hezbollah is still crucial, especially against the backdrop of a governance crisis in Lebanon. As the Council on Foreign Relation's Mohamad Bazzi argues in a recent article, the inability of PM designate (yet again) Saad Hariri to overcome wrangling with opposition leaders and form a government since the June elections reveals the opposite problem: the existence of a Hezbollah "shadow government." Bazzi writes that, "This political vacuum gives Hezbollah free rein to continue building up its military and escalating its rhetoric of war. In the absence of a strong central state, Hezbollah will remain the most powerful force in Lebanon -- and its weapons will guarantee its dominance."

-- Alexandra Taylor

This morning, President Barack Obama will chair a head of state-level meeting of the UN Security Council on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament. The United States currently holds the Presidency of the Council.

I'm up at the UN now, in the chambers getting ready to cover the meeting.

One interesting tidbit is that President Obama invited former US Secretary of State George P. Schultz to attend this Security Council session. A Reagan administration cabinet member, Schultz is a strong proponent of global nuclear arms reduction and is also a supporter of American engagement in the United Nations.

During John Bolton's assaults on the UN, both before he became Ambassador and during his tenure, Schultz was a healthy voice of heavyweight support for the institution.

Another interesting tidbit off topic is that I learned that Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cancelled a firmed up interview with Al Jazeera - with Al Jazeera management being told that President Ahmadinejad "expected more from Al Jazeera" in its coverage of Iran's election. Iran's current government did protest Al Jazeera's coverage of the election protests and threatened the network with expulsion -- but this interview at the United Nations was set and confirmed -- and then cancelled at the last minute.

All part of the drama here at the world's annual international political circus.

-- Steve Clemons

Riz Khan anchors the Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera English. This "Note" is part of a series of posts that personalities from Al Jazeera covering the international events in New York and Pittsburgh will be sharing with readers of The Washington Note).

One part I really enjoy about being in international journalism is the people I get to meet... and where else but the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York could I sit in a room with a dozen heads of state - Presidents and Prime Ministers from around the world?!

It's going to be a challenge though. I'm moderating an hour-long panel on Maternal, Newborn and Child Healthcare - a global initiative that aims to save the millions of mothers and children dying every year from preventable diseases. It's actually heartbreaking to know how bad the situation is... literally the equivalent to thousands of natural disasters all put together every year - year after year.

That's why I'm glad to be involved in the awareness that this kind of gathering brings. By the way, the challenge I refer to is giving every world leader, and other heavily-involved parties in that room, only two minutes to speak before moving on to the next person! A politician speak for only two minutes?!! Exactly! Now you know what I mean.

The issue is a crucial one, though, and was meant to be the subject of my television show on Al Jazeera English today - but unfortunately, my two guests - supermodels, Christy Turlington and Liya Kebede, have pulled out to attend some crucial meetings.

It's hard to get upset at supermodels (!), but as I write this, my team and I are scrambling to find either alternative guests or an alternative topic for today.

I'm lucky that I have a good amount of time - with a half-hour daily live show - to tackle these sorts of issues... ones that the news often have to shift aside for hard-hitting coverage of conflicts and disasters. But as I say, with millions dying from preventable diseases - usually the most vulnerable people in the developing world - the scale of the problem can't be ignored.

If we do change topics, I want to make sure that we get back to the issue of maternal and child healthcare as soon as possible. Too many lives depend on it!

Whatever we end up doing though, I do encourage everyone to watch and participate actively with my show at 4:30PM EST each day, either on your TV if Al Jazeera English is available in your area (in Washington, D.C. on Comcast channel 275, Cox channel 474, and Verizon FIOS channel 457) or streaming live and for free at www.livestation.com/aje. The show is broadcast live and allows viewers from around the world to question world leaders, newsmakers and celebrities directly via phone, email, SMS, video-mail and fax, and now by participating in the LiveStation chatroom.

I hope to hear from you!

-- Riz Khan

CNN.com's Reggie Acqi hosted a terrific discussion with four bloggers -- Adam Kushner of Newsweek; Omid Memarian from Human Rights Watch; Fausta Wertz of Faustasblog.com, and myself from The Washington Note -- on the subject of American engagement with problematic countries and leaders, like Libya's Qaddafi and Iran's Ahmadinejad, during the United Nations General Assembly.

Qaddafi really did make me chuckle when he said that the UN should be moved out of New York because of his jet lag -- and that he thanked President Obama for hosting him for his first ever UN General Assembly visit, commenting that President Obama should be President for life.

As much as Colonel Qaddafi can frustrate folks as the UN's court jester this week, we need to remember that in the realm of serious nuclear non-proliferation matters, Libya is a success story. Iran is not. I would be happy to tolerate all sorts of lesser problems with Libya in part exchange for getting off the rogue nation track. People need to keep that in mind as they ridicule Libya's leader. I found that he made this week here much more dynamic and interesting - and he added some creative drama.

I also spoke about the Israel/Palestine meeting that President Obama organized yesterday, and the President's home run speech today.

In my comments on CNN, I also got to reference that President Obama will be chairing tomorrow morning a head of state-level meeting of the UN Security Council on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament, though I said US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was chairing. Small goof, but Ambassador Rice is the key scripter of tomorrow's historic meeting and also had major input into the President's UN General Assembly speech today.

As a side note, I want to give a shout out to Basel Hamdan, a producer for Michael Moore. I had not met Basel until today, but he was kind enough to abandon the paparazzi-followed Moore for a moment in the Time Warner Building in New York and walk over to me and ask if I might be "the blogger."

Basel has followed TWN for a long time -- and I too am a big fan of Michael Moore's provocative documentaries (and can't wait to see Capitalism: A Love Story). And then Basel introduced me to Michael Moore who was gracious enough to say that he too had looked at the blog -- made my day (!)....and got me hooked on his next film even before I've seen it.

Here's the trailer to make it easy for you.

Moore has been saying he is going to give up making documentaries as the Dems got in and not a lot has changed. He wants to make some fiction. I want him to keep doing what he is doing.

So, enjoy the exchange posted above, but also -- those of you who admire the iconoclastic Michael Moore like I do -- ask him to stay in the business of holding a mirror squished against the American face. And if you aren't into Michael Moore, well...keep it to yourself today.

-- Steve Clemons

David Shorr is a program officer at the Stanley Foundation and co-editor of Powers and Principles: International Leadership In A Shrinking World.

Parag Khanna and I have the opposite worries about the future of the G-20.

Parag warns against expecting too much of the G-20; I worry about aiming too low. We actually have fairly similar ideas about holding the G-20 accountable for meaningful action, but where Parag sees constraints, I see comparative advantage. Where he sees a need for leaders to conserve their political will, I see a need to expend it. There are a lot of questions still to be figured out regarding how 21st century diplomacy and geopolitics will work, but the chief aim must be serious action on today's international challenges.

The paradox of summit diplomacy and the G groupings is that they convene top decision makers for discussions that don't actually make decisions as traditional inter-governmental organizations do. This poses a serious, yet by no means insoluble, practical problem. Leaders have to choose what kinds of commitments to make, with an eye toward implementation by their own governments, persuasion of other countries (the G-172), and links to more formal multilateral bodies.

Closely intertwined with this question is the matter of what issues should be on the G-20 agenda? My answer is that the G-20 leaders (or alternative G-8 successor - what we call "G-X") should deal with issues that cry out for the political impetus that only they can provide. Notwithstanding the G-20's lack of formal or legal authority, it nonetheless represents an impressive aggregation of global power and influence, which I view as a precious commodity.

The G-7 is often described as a coalition of the like-minded (read Western). The value of a G-X is to have closer cooperation among the un-like minded. As outlined in my organization's summit reform guidelines, its agenda should focus on issues which have been fraught by deep but bridgeable divisions (particularly North-South) that have impeded progress on urgent problems. Parag has nominated agricultural subsidies and dispersal of green technology, and those are strong candidates indeed.

I also agree with Parag about the need for greater transparency and follow-through on leaders' summit commitments and avoiding getting caught up in flavor-of-the-month issues. In the end, it will come down to policy making discipline.

The fact that summit communiques can run to over 100 pages is a clear indicator of the remaining room for improvement. I'm sure that the sherpas that work on this process -- and the leaders on whose behalf they negotiate -- would be gratified to put their efforts toward maximum effect. Unlike Parag, though, I don't think the demands on leaders for follow-through serves as a constraint on the agenda to the same degree as the work of identifying common ground in the first place.

Here's another test. Looking at current challenges of non-proliferation, climate change, and economic development, how do we foresee problems worsening absent significant action and progress in the next two, three, or five years? Basically, it's a test of leadership. How will leading nations lead?

-- David Shorr

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

For the last 24 hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was basking in the glow of patriotic support by his most ardent right wing supporters for standing up to the United States at yesterday's trilateral meeting. Prior to his meeting with President Obama and President Abbas, Netanyahu's aides were bragging that he would tell both leaders to their face that he had no intention of implementing a settlement freeze.

Minutes ago, the glow ended.

President Obama just gave his speech before the world at the United Nations General Assembly and he made at least four things clear as far as Middle East peace is concerned.

1. The United States joins the rest of the world in rejecting Israeli settlement activity.

2. The United States will insist on the re-launching of permanent status negotiations, without preconditions, on security for both Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees, and Jerusalem in order to end the occupation that began in 1967 and create a Palestinian state.

3. The United States seeks peace on ALL fronts and will conduct bilateral negotiations side by side with multi-lateral negotiations.

4. The United States views Israeli and Palestinian state rights in the same light, and views Israeli and Palestinian lives on the same moral plane.

Second-guessing in Israel will begin now, but it is too late. The President has just articulated United States' goals to the world -- goals consistent with those of almost every other nation -- within the context of a speech reintroducing the United States as a global leader.

Time for the Israelis and Palestinians to begin dusting off all their permanent status plans that have been gathering dust for more than a decade.

Judge for yourself, I've pasted the excerpt here:

I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world. Yesterday, I had a constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. We have made some progress. Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians. As a result of these efforts by both sides, the economy in the West Bank has begun to grow. But more progress is needed. We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

The time has come to re-launch negotiations - without preconditions - that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem. The goal is clear: two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. As we pursue this goal, we will also pursue peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and a broader peace between Israel and its many neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, we will develop regional initiatives with multilateral participation, alongside bilateral negotiations.

I am not naïve. I know this will be difficult. But all of us must decide whether we are serious about peace, or whether we only lend it lip-service. To break the old patterns - to break the cycle of insecurity and despair - all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private. The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. And nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks over a constructive willingness to recognize Israel's legitimacy, and its right to exist in peace and security.

We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It is paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the night. It is paid by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are God's children. And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. That is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land. And that is why - even though there will be setbacks, and false starts, and tough days - I will not waiver in my pursuit of peace.

-- Amjad Atallah

Oliver Lough is a research intern at the New America Foundation.

Seeing Barack Obama and Hu Jintao deliver their respective climate change spiels at New York yesterday was a bit like watching a couple of boxers circle each other warily at the beginning of a long bout. With the make-or-break summit at Copenhagen only 75 days away, this is not the most encouraging of sights.

Delivering a solid but not spectacular speech, Obama was always going to be constrained on what he could bring to the table by the fact that Senate deliberations on America's own bill to reduce its emissions are woefully behind schedule, delayed by wrangling over healthcare and, farcically, by Sen. Kerry's hip operation.

Still, the man is clearly doing his best. Sensibly, the President seems to have elected to cut his losses on charming his rather stone-faced audience, and focused instead on trying to bring wavering domestic support into line. While his assertions on how American families and businesses stand to benefit from a low-carbon economy may have struck a slightly odd note in a room filled with international heads of state, these are definitely the groups he needs to be buttering up if he wants to avoid the Waxman-Markey bill being flayed by the Senate.

But at least we weren't expecting that much of him. By comparison, Hu's widely anticipated speech was a spectacularly unimpressive misfire. Pulling back from outlining any concrete numbers on China's emissions targets (as Reuters had hinted he might), the best he could come up with was a 'notable' reduction in carbon intensity by 2015.

His commitment to up the share of renewables in China's energy mix is already common knowledge, while the millions and billions of hectares of new forests he pledged were a prime example of the typical Chinese strategy of hurling meaningless figures about the place in an attempt to impress.

Keith Johnson at the Wall Street Journal's environmental capital blog has been grumbling over the UN's apparent decision to re-cast China as the good guy in all this. While Johnson's panda-thumping here is a little one-sided, it's hard to disagree with him on this particular point: although Hu's speech is certainly a sign that China is starting to take these negotiations seriously, it was hardly the "very important statement and commitment" that Ban Ki moon hailed it to be.

In the midst of all of this equivocation, the modest, humorous address by Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed was by far and away the highlight of the morning. Hamming it up to great effect, Nasheed (who is by now rather good at this kind of thing) began by apologizing for his presence on the stand. "The Maldives has developed something of a habit," he blushed. "[every time we stand here] we warn you that our homeland will disappear beneath the rising see...even though deep down, we know you're not really listening."

Unfortunately for the Maldives, it seems like this morning has been a predictable case of business as usual.

-- Oliver Lough

(Matt Damon speaking about expanding the activities of Water.org to Haiti in the opening plenary meeting of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative.)

Bummer.

I listened to the Clinton Global Initiative media/press volunteers and left my comfortable spot in the press room (that took me two hours to get through the security lines and credentials process to get in) to go upstairs to interview some of the leading Middle East personalities attending this year's CGI meetings. And then when I ventured back, there was no more room in the inn for Steve Clemons and The Washington Note.

The volunteers are great -- but all they could say after I had been misled was, "Shucks, I'm sorry." He really did say "shucks."

But the place is packed, and they can't wave a magic wand and invent seats -- but I'm not going to go through this again. Huge waste of time when I can just watch on line. You can too -- and the sessions are worth the time. I saw Joe Klein get in -- and thought about sneaking in line with his trail. . .but that's not appropriate at something like this (besides given the armed-to-the-teeth security in NY that Riz Khan references below, don't want to find myself an accidental statistic).

So, unlike what I wrote before -- I am missing the "live session" with Bill Clinton, Kevin Rudd of Australia, President Obama and a fun panel of others -- but am watching the session over the web here (but could have done that in Kansas!)

Damn. Watching here -- I see I'm missing Matt Damon too. (small surge of anger at self and CGI staff for telling me I didn't have to worry about getting in)

My hat is still off to President Clinton for investing his time and focus in working to solve many enormous global problems.

This is an impressive assembly -- and I've seen some of the best international do-gooders in the lobby of the Sheraton here, and I'm in awe of these hard working people helping to leverage resources to give those who don't have much a chance at something better.

-- Steve Clemons

(Riz Khan anchors the Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera English. This "Note" is part of a series of posts that personalities from Al Jazeera covering the international events in New York and Pittsburgh will be sharing with readers of The Washington Note).

My face saved me.

For once I was grateful. It was quite simple really. I wanted to cross 2nd Avenue to get to the United Nations Headquarters so I could collect my U.N. media pass for the UN General Assembly (UNGA!!) meetings taking place all week.

Security here has been VERY high - far more than previous years, from what I could tell - to the point that it extended one block further than usual into Manhattan. I faced one of those almost comical Catch 22 situations where I couldn't cross the security barrier because I didn't have a pass... and I couldn't get the pass until I was on the other side of the security barrier!

That's when my face saved me.

From what I could tell, the security guy in the light blue outfit was Swiss. A good sign. At least he was "neutral" in his attitude to me. I had done the usual British equivalent of protesting with Mr. U.N. Security - which largely consisted of asking politely what alternatives I had, and nodding in acquiescence when told there were no real alternatives. Fortunately, the Swiss and Brits share some commonality when it comes to not making a fuss, so when another person - with a valid pass - witnessed what was happening to me, they said to the guard, "He's Riz Khan - don't you know him?!"

(I would like to categorically point out that never in my life, have I ever said, "Do you know who I am?" to anyone!)

The guard didn't seem too phased by the information, but was then at least willing to hear me out a bit more - and then allow me to pass, having established that I was not a threat to security, courtesy of Mr. Valid Pass.

The guard even wished me good luck. I love the Swiss!

I should point out that I had originally tried to get my U.N. pass the evening before - prior to 2nd Avenue being closed off - but balked at the 2-hour-long line at the Media Accreditation tent. I was in no mood to spend two hours in a long line at the end of a long day, having just interviewed the new NATO Secretary-General on my show for Al Jazeera English (which had some great participation from our viewers around the world who sent in questions and called in live during the show).

Pass issues aside, the UNGA week in NY is actually a lot of fun. There's a buzz in the air. The world is in town - pretty much every world leader, at least... and even the cordoned-off streets, and constant blaring of police sirens create an atmosphere of something special happening in town.

The storylines this week will be plentiful. From Obama's Israel-Palestine meeting, to Gaddafi's first ever visit to the US, to the top heads of state sitting down together to tackle climate change, I can only hope that Americans will be fully engaged in the debates and events as they happen this week.

For some reporters, the UNGA is a highlight of their journalistic year - travelling in from some far-flung place to be among the journalistic glitterati, political personae, and somewhat eclectic New Yorkers.

During this week, the streets around the U.N. HQ are filled with an even greater interesting mix of international faces, limos with blacked-out windows, and burly, dark-sunglasses-wearing, cropped-haired security guards with grim expressions.

Looking at them, I don't feel my face could save me.

Thank goodness for the Swiss!

-- Riz Khan

Word has leaked out that going into his "trilateral" with Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama was flustered and upset with their lack of progress with each other.

Obama is -- angry -- in a somewhat cool-headed Obamaesque way.

He just chastised both in his statement -- saying that neither side had done enough to move final status negotiations forward.

What is clear is well is that Barack Obama did not get the settlement freeze he called for from Netanyahu.

Via excellent reporting from Laura Rozen, here is a clip of President Obama's statement:

I have just concluded frank and productive bilateral meetings with both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. And I want to thank them both for appearing here today. I am now looking forward to this opportunity to hold the first meeting among the three of us since we took office.

As I said throughout my campaign and at the beginning of my administration, the United States is committed to a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East. That includes a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that results in two states, Israel and Palestine, in which both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people can live in peace and security and realize their aspirations for a better life for their children.

That is why my Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and my Special Envoy George Mitchell have worked tirelessly to create the context for permanent status negotiations. And we have made progress since I took office in January and since Israelis -- Israel's government took office in April. But we still have much further to go.

Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security, but they need to do more to stop incitement and to move forward with negotiations. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians and have discussed important steps to restrain settlement activity. But they need to translate these discussions into real action on this and other issues. And it remains important for the Arab states to take concrete steps to promote peace.

Simply put it is past time to talk about starting negotiations -- it is time to move forward. It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that's necessary to achieve our goals. Permanent status negotiations must begin and begin soon. And more importantly, we must give those negotiations the opportunity to succeed.

And so my message to these two leaders is clear. Despite all the obstacles, despite all the history, despite all the mistrust, we have to find a way forward. We have to summon the will to break the deadlock that has trapped generations of Israelis and Palestinians in an endless cycle of conflict and suffering. We cannot continue the same pattern of taking tentative steps forward and then stepping back. Success depends on all sides acting with a sense of urgency. And that is why I have asked Secretary Clinton and Senator Mitchell to carry forward the work that we do here today.

Senator Mitchell will meet with the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators next week. I've asked the Prime Minister and the President to continue these intensive discussions by sending their teams back to Washington next week. And I've asked the Secretary of State to report to me on the status of these negotiations in mid-October.

All of us know this will not be easy. But we are here today because it is the right thing to do. I look forward to speaking with my colleagues. I'm committed to pressing ahead in the weeks and months and years to come, because it is absolutely critical that we get this issue resolved. It's not just critical for the Israelis and the Palestinians, it's critical for the world, it is in the interests of the United State. And we are going to work as hard as necessary to accomplish our goals. Thanks.

Barack Obama must have hated making this statement.

It shows that despite all their efforts, his team has not moved the game forward, and he really doesn't like putting lipstick on a pig.

-- Steve Clemons

After a very long security sweep of the Sheraton Hotel & Towers conference space, I finally made my way in to get credentialed for the Clinton Global Initiative, opening this afternoon with a powerhouse panel chaired by the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

At the opening of this policy-star studded event, Clinton will host a powerhouse panel of the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama; Chile President Michelle Bachelet; Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Wal-Mart Stores President & CEO Mike Duke; and Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent.

The schedule lists Obama first -- then Clinton, offering deference to the incumbent -- but it also looks like Obama will actually participate in a panel format. I won't fully believe that until I see it -- but if Obama did sit up there with these other global leaders and CEOs, that would be a gesture of creative humility. Though it begs the next question of why corporate CEOs only? Could we not have had a major labor federation chief on stage, or an NGO that was also working hard to sculpt the world into a better place?

Coke. Wal-Mart. Obama.

I should stop nit-picking. It's not President Obama's conference. But a labor leader would have been good.

We have three hours yet -- perhaps they'll add someone?

Putting criticism of the veneer of things aside, I think Bill Clinton's conference has become ground zero for much of the global problems industry. Key global private sector and public leaders struggling with global health, education, energy and climate change, female trafficking, economic empowerment, post-conflict social investment, and more and more are here -- and I think President Clinton should be applauded for continuing to underscore the importance of issues that are vital but not always at the top of the news cycle or American consciousness.

If this annual Clinton issues gala didn't exist -- someone would have to invent it, but no one else would have the rolodex and draw. It's impressive.

I'll be covering the opening plenary which I'm eager for. Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is one of my favorite global leaders not only for his taste in RJ Williams boots but because he is a complex global strategist -- one of the few I think who could rival Bill Clinton's understanding of complex international affairs in both their economic and political/security dimensions.

For those interested in the Obama-Clinton-Rudd panel with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and the CEOs of Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola, a webcast will be available here after 4 pm EST.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

My chat tonight on America's Afghanistan engagement and General McChrystal's plea for a new strategy or more troops with Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

Bottom line -- Things are not well in Kabul or 1600 Pennsylvania.

-- Steve Clemons

She is tactful about it, but in the exchange below between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and The News Hour correspondent Margaret Warner, Clinton suggests that McChrystal is only one of several voices on Afghanistan strategy but that his views are not definitive, and that there are many other decision points. She is respectful that this is his view -- but she is not on board with what the commanding general in the field suggests as of yet.

She makes clear that the President will not be rushed into a decision by the McChrystal report and also emphasizes that the outcome of the Afghan election is not yet decided (wow. . .really?)

Here is the fascinating exchange between Margaret Warner and Hillary Clinton that will appear on The News Hour tonight (to watch video, click here):

MARGARET WARNER: Madam Secretary, thanks for doing this.

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: Well thank you very much for talking with me today, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: Now you are a key advisor to President Obama as Secretary of State, as he's reviewing this whole Afghan strategy. What is your reaction to General McChrystal's assessment?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well first let me put it into context. I mean one of the points that the President has made continuously since taking office is that we're going to be assessing, both our strategy and its implementation constantly. We're not going to make a decision and then just let it go on autopilot. We think that it's much better to be very open and robust in our deliberations. So what General McChrystal has done is to take a look from his perspective. He's a new commander and he was asked to please give his best judgment. His memo is what's called a classified pre-decisional assessment but it goes into the process. We have a really vigorous process through the NSC and the White House where we make our contributions and then of course decisions go to the president. I think the President said very well yesterday on his marathon talk show appearances that you know we need to have a clear view of the strategy and its implementation before we get to resources, and that's the process we're engaged in right now.

MARGARET WARNER: General McChrystal was very blunt saying if you want to do counter-insurgency, he needs more resources or the whole war will, quote, "likely result in failure." Now is there anyone better positioned to give at least that kind of assessment than the commander you sent out there, or the president sent out there to do just that?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, but, without referencing General McChrystal's report because it is classified, let me just say that we know, including our military colleagues that good governance is key to whether or not what we do has positive results. We know that getting it right in Pakistan and along the border is critical. So there's not just one decision point -- number of troops. It is part of a broader understanding of what are our true goals, how best can we move toward achieving them? We have a clear and critical objective of trying to disrupt and dismantle and defeat al-Qaida and their extremist allies and prevent a return to safe haven, and every piece of this has to fit together. We don't even know yet who will be the president of Afghanistan so it's, it's not in any way to say that what General McChrystal, based on his expertise is presenting or asking for is not important. It's critically important but it's a part of the overall process and there are many other considerations that we have to take into account.

MARGARET WARNER: In it he goes to the point you raise about governance. And he says that the Karzai government, he said given the widespread corruption and I'm just going to quote, he said, "gives Afghans little reason to support their government." Do you see it that way? I mean you have people on the ground there, that there's something pretty fundamentally flawed about this national government and the way it's regarded by its own people at a time in which part of the strategy was to stand up a stable and secure national government.

HILLARY CLINTON: Well I see it certainly as a problem. You know corruption, I have labeled a national security threat. But I think we have to take a step back which is why this analysis is so important, and we're not going to jump to a snap judgment. We're going to take this very deliberately.

First of all holding any election in a war time setting is very difficult to do. The fact that this election went forward despite the flaws and the alleged irregularities is not surprising. It's a question of whether at the end of the process, and remember there is both an Afghan independent election commission and an international election commission, if at the end of the process after sorting through everything that they have to look at, they conclude that there was a victor in this first round, or they conclude that you have to go to a second round, I think that will give a certain reassurance to the people of Afghanistan. The real question, however, is not so much who gets elected, but what do they do once they are elected? How do they built the confidence of their own people that they're a government that cares about the Afghan people, that they are delivering services, that they are combating corruption, improving governance, all of that, and that's what we have to work on.

MARGARET WARNER: But do you think that President Karzai, I mean he's been in that job for five years, the U.S. has been saying all those things for five years, maybe not as emphatically as you all have, do you have any confidence that he has the political will, the capability, the background to do any of that?

HILLARY CLINTON: I don't think he was really tested in the prior administration. I think that there was such an intense immediate effort that was totally understandable, to go after the Taliban, to try to insofar as possible chase down al-Qaida, that governance was important but it wasn't understood to be central to our military strategic goals. So what I believe is that there's a lot of good that has come for the Afghan people over the last years. There hasn't been a history of you know really strong functioning central governments, but more people are in school, particularly more girls than women. There are advances being made that we have now worked on over the last eight months to deal with the poppy trade, to focus on agriculture so that we actually bring assets to the people where they live and what their livelihood is, so I think there are some positive changes going on. Is it enough? Is it moving at a pace that I prefer? No, but I want to look at this very objectively. I can see the problems and I can see, you know, the positives and then we want to move more to the positive side of the ledger.

MARGARET WARNER: So how fundamental is this review that President Obama and you all are doing? How long is it going to take?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well it is fundamental because it is part of the way we're approaching these issues. I mean we constantly are saying what's working, what's not working, so it is both fundamental and it is thorough and thoughtful. We're not going to make any decisions of any significance until we know the outcome of this election. I mean because we have to know who our counterparts are, and we have to make it clear that in return for X, we expect Y.

MARGARET WARNER: So is a real change in strategy, at least an alternative, which is not trying to build up or, or create capacity in a strong central government, but going to a different model. Doing a more classic counter-terrorism campaign, attacking al-Qaida leaders and having fewer combat forces on the ground? Are you actually reassessing whether counterinsurgency is the way to go here?

HILLARY CLINTON: You know I think it's fair to say, Margaret, that we have an open mind to any argument that is made. Now I'm sure each of us is entering into this process with our own points of view and our own base of understanding what will or will not work. And what General McChrystal has done is to provide his assessment. We will get assessments from others as well. And then we will hash it out in the National Security Council team and then we will present our best recommendations to the president. But at the end of the day it's the president's decision and I think what we heard the president saying yesterday is look, you're going to have to convince me that whatever decision, is it classic counter-insurgency with additional troops? Is it counter-insurgency at the same troop level? Is it a different mix of troops? Is it a counter terrorism strategy?

MARGARET WARNER: Fewer troops?

HILLARY CLINTON: Who knows? I mean what we're looking at though are the goals that we have. Our goal is to protect the United States of America, our allies, our friends around the world from what is the epicenter of terrorism, namely the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. I mean just today we have this announcement in New York about a very important terrorism investigation involving people from Afghanistan. Some people say, "well al-Qaida's no longer in Afghanistan." If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can't tell you how fast al-Qaida would be back in Afghanistan. So we have to be really clear-eyed about this, and what I'm very grateful for is that we're not coming in with any ideological, you know, presuppositions. We're not coming in wedded to the past. What we try to do in this administration is to sort out all of the different factors and come to the resolution based on the best information we have, and then as soon as we do that we keep going at it. We don't say, "OK, fine, now we're set for the next five years." That's not the way the president works, that's not the way that any of us work.

MARGARET WARNER: Getting back to General McChrystal's memo though, he conveys a great sense of urgency. I mean there's one line in there in which he says, "failure to gain the initiative," and he's talking about in the near term, while we wait for say the Afghan security forces to really get able to handle this. He said, "risks and outcome where defeating the insurgency's no longer possible." So he is strongly suggesting that there aren't months and months to come to a decision here.

HILLARY CLINTON: Well and I respect that because clearly he is the commander on the ground, but I can only tell you there are other assessments from, you know, very expert military analysts who have worked in counter insurgencies that are the exact opposite. So what our goal is, is to take all of this incoming data and sort it out. And I don't think anybody is going to push to a conclusion for the sake of a conclusion. I think you've seen that this president acts and thinks very deliberatively which I believe is a preferable way to proceed when you're talking about the lives of young American men and women, the lives of the young soldiers of our allies who are part of the international security force, when you're talking about lives of Afghans. You want to be sure that the approach that we are pursuing maximizes success. There is no guarantee. There is absolutely no guarantee, but what we do know is that this remains vital to America's national security interests, so how do we best define our approach to protecting the interests and the values that are at stake?

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, turning to U.N. GA week, U.N. General Assembly week here, Iran's not formally on the agenda, but it's clearly an important subtext. What would you like to get out of this week that would strengthen the hand of the U.S. and its partners in restraining Iran's nuclear program?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, Iran may not be formally on the agenda but it's on everyone's mind and the upcoming meeting of the permanent members of the security council, plus Germany on October 1st, is a very important milestone. The United States had not formerly participated in these meetings before. We will be at the table. We've made it very clear to Iran that they may have issues they wish to discuss with this group, but this group has one issue to discuss with them and that is, you know, their nuclear program. As I've said many times, we're going to give the Iranians a choice. They have a choice that they are facing now. They have flaunted the international community. They have refused to allow the kind of inspections and follow-up that they are obligated to do so, and we want to make it very clear what their options are going forward.

MARGARET WARNER: The supreme leader, Khamenei, this weekend decried, I think was the verb used, the reshaping of the missile defense system for Europe that the Obama administration did last week. Was that intended as a signal to Iran?

HILLARY CLINTON: Yes, and his decrying it is probably the strongest endorsement that we have of the change in policy that has been adopted in this administration.

MARGARET WARNER: What kind of signal?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well we have said from the very beginning that missile defense in Europe was about Iran. And it was about their missile capacity. Based on our analysis we determined that they were much further along in short term and medium ballistic missiles than in the intercontinental ballistic missiles. So we adapted this, we adopted this new approach and if you look at the map, we will protect all of Europe plus much of the caucuses, our troops, NATO troops, and we've been sending a message. I have repeatedly made clear to the Iranians that if part of their calculation in pursuing nuclear weapons that are deliverable on missiles, is that they will be able to better dominate their region and beyond, they are making an inaccurate calculation.

MARGARET WARNER: And will you also be protecting Israel and the Gulf states?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well we are in discussions with other friends and allies in the region.

MARGARET WARNER: Madam Secretary, thank you for being with us.

HILLARY CLINTON: Thank you, very much, Margaret.

I will be discussing America's Afghanistan problems with Keith Olbermann on Countdown tonight from the MSNBC Studio at 30 Rock.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I am heading up to New York now to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative and to check up on the UN General Assembly drama.

Tonight, I will be appearing on Countdown with Keith Olbermann chatting about the implications of the leaked McChrystal report on Afghanistan and his call for a new strategy and significantly upgraded resources.

What McChrystal's report doesn't make clear and should is that we aren't just fighting and ferreting out Arab jihadists tied to al Qaeda. We are getting deeply engaged -- as America has done in other societies in its past -- on one side of an uncomfortable civil war, and even with great resources and a "protection strategy" of those we are allied with, McChrystal doesn't make a broader case for "roll back" of the enemy -- at least in what I have seen.

The scale of resources needed to hug tightly a nation that doesn't fully trust American intentions and capabilities is staggering -- and may pull the nation into a set of obligations that truly do break the back of America's national security machinery.

And of course, while the U.S. looks so bogged down and without momentum in Afghanistan -- with desperate pleas coming from military leaders and just as passionate resistance from leading members of Congress like Senator Carl Levin and Representative Jane Harman -- Iran simply won't move.

Iran doesn't need to shift as it remains unconvinced that America has the ability to achieve its objectives in the international system today.

That is why "not" getting bogged down in Afghanistan was so important -- and why Obama should not have allowed himself to be dangerously misled by advisers. That is why outcomes on Israel/Palestine this week in New York need to be more than photo-ops that look like efforts to "put lipstick on a pig." We need real outcomes that push the policy needle into positive territory.

America under Obama's leadership has generated new opportunities with China and Russia, opened up some opportunities for ending the Cold War with Cuba, done some good work in stabilizing the international economy, and has set important horizons on climate change and nuclear non-proliferation -- but there are many defining challenges still lurking that could still sink this administration and keep the nation's power very constrained.

-- Steve Clemons

Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global Competition in the 21st Century.

Many Americans will struggle this week to sort out all of the summits that have become the hallmark of the late September news landscape. Particularly New Yorkers have gotten used to the annual pageantry of the United Nations General Assembly, and more recently the cross-town Clinton Global Initiative, both of which involve heads of state, celebrities, tight security, and grand declarations - and a lot of traffic jams.

The latest entrant in the game of diplomatic musical chairs to shape the chaotic new world order is the Group of 20, whose summit is also taking place this week in Pittsburgh. G20 members represent 80 percent of the world's population and 80 percent of its economy; half its members are wealthy economies, and half are developing.

It's been almost one year since the G20 was thrust into the spotlight after Wall Street's meltdown which threatened to take much of the global economy down with it. The G20 moved to coordinate about $5 trillion in stimulus funding to salvage globalization as we knew it. Over the past year the G20 has also agreed to jointly tackle fair trade, aggressively pursue tax havens, halt creeping protectionism, toughen banking regulation, and equitably reform institutions like the International Monetary Fund. All of this sounds great - except that it repeats a long history of high-table biting off more than it can chew and failing.

The G20's record is already quite mixed: some tax havens are scared and are playing along, but in other areas G20 members haven't walked the walk. A month ago its finance ministers declared in London that the world economy is rebounding and they would begin a coordinated phasing out of stimulus packages. Yet some countries like India never really implemented them to begin with - nor has global consumer demand picked up enough to justify the end of intervention to shore up economies in recession.

Additionally, despite siren calls to avoid both trade and financial protectionism, murky measures like the "Buy America" policy and tariffs on emerging market goods are growing - right now most G20 members are coming up with any excuse they can to mark-up Chinese imports.

Finally, French President Nicholas Sarkozy insists on a cap on CEO bonuses, demanding they also be paid out over multiple years, but it's more likely that other countries will take advantage of him by stealing businesses from France than that the U.S. or Great Britain would go along with such socialist regulations.

For a group that has no legal or treaty basis of any kind, expectations of the G20 are far too high. It is not, as some call it, the "steering committee for the world." Its great strength is that it is representative, making it in some ways more legitimate than even the United Nations Security Council in which international law is vested, and that it is flexible, able to rapidly convene over an array of issues including the financial crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But its only weapon to ensure compliance is peer pressure and naming-and-shaming.

As with any diplomatic forum, the G20 has begun to rotate around and around, changing host countries in alphabetical order and staging summits and photo-ops (that can waste about two hours of a one-day summit) once or twice a year. Yet so long as the G20 focuses on flavor-of-the-month issues like executive compensation, and attempts to tackle more issues at once than it can handle, it will prove no better than the UN at harmonizing a world of divergent great powers like America, China, Russia, Brazil and India.

If the G20 wants to succeed where its predecessors like the G7 have failed, it needs to focus on issues that matter to most of its members such as food security, migration, and development finance. The G20s "Sherpas" - the diplomats who pre-negotiate declarations behind the scenes - should be working round the clock on a deal where currency-reserve rich countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Korea contribute to the IMF, but the IMF ushers in a new global reserve currency to replace the debt-saddled U.S. dollar.

America and the European Union should cut farm subsidies so poor countries can boost agricultural exports, but also reduce wasteful development aid at the same time. On the environment, Western nations should contribute to a climate adaptation fund, while emerging mega-emitters like India must pledge to use that cash to purchase subsidized clean technology to reduce their emissions.

All responsible and influential nations should also contribute troops to a standing international stabilization force which would work alongside the African Union and NATO to create the conditions for failing states to become safe havens for foreign investment rather than terrorists. The key is that a coalition of leading states - from both within and outside the G20 - takes ownership of each of these issues on an ongoing basis rather than waiting for the next summit and resulting vague declaration.

These are the deep, structural challenges that require constant diplomatic focus rather than constantly shifting priorities based on the reigning political whims in G20 members' capital cities. The G20, as well as private conveners like the World Economic Forum, have joined the UN in the landscape of global governance. But unless their summits show action on updating the underpinnings of global order, no busy New Yorker should be subjected to their diplomatic traffic jams.

(Photo Credit: White House Photo/Pete Souza)

-- Parag Khanna

I won't pull a Joe Wilson in response -- but I will suggest that President Obama either doesn't understand how Nikita Khrushchev "defined" JFK at the beginning of his term or he is stretching things to sidestep an interesting question on the networks this morning.

From my perspective, then Soviet premier Khrushchev pushed Kennedy hard, highlighting doubts about Kennedy's international commitments and creating a perception of weakness that was reversed only by a nail-biting escalation that nearly resulted in global thermonuclear exchange .

Today on This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked the interesting question of whether any world leader had run circles around President Obama and really surprised him -- compelling him to "step up his game."

I wrote some time ago that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is Obama's Khrushchev -- and Netanyahu, the head of government of a key American ally, remains the leader who has thus far most challenged Obama and is trying to show the limits of Obama's international strength.

Strange for an ally to do this -- but that is what Israel has done by fighting President Obama, Jim Jones, Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, and George Mitchell on their collective call for a definitive end to settlement expansion as part of a renewed Israel-Palestine peace process.

We aren't on the edge of a nuclear escalation like Kennedy eventually found himself, but the stakes for Obama of failing to achieve any breakthroughs in the Israel-Palestine mess, a challenge that he chose as one vital to his administration, are very high and could have serious broader Middle East and global consequences.

So, Obama may not want to acknowledge it -- and the contest, sort of a Sumo match, between them is ongoing, but Barack Obama's Khrushchev moment is with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama will be meeting Netanyahu and Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas on September 22nd in New York for a "trilateral meeting" which most believe is substanceless -- but could yet be another opportunity for Obama to show that he is either being muscled around by Netanyahu or that Obama is applying some of his own moves.

-- Steve Clemons

This morning, Barack Obama appeared on five different networks -- speaking about the economy, health care, and Afghanistan.

But in his exchange on CNN's "State of the Union with John King", President Obama articulated a softness on the imperative of job creation that is disconcerting.

From a CNN report:

Obama even suggested that the national unemployment rate, which is hovering at just under 10 percent, could climb higher in the near future.

"I want to be clear, that probably the jobs picture is not going to improve considerably -- and it could even get a little bit worse -- over the next couple of months," the president told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, "And we're probably not going to start seeing enough job creation to deal with the -- a rising population until some time next year."

Obama added that he thought the economy would be creating jobs throughout the end of 2009 -- but not enough to keep pace with population growth and to make up for steep losses in employment that occurred earlier this year.

"I think we'll be adding jobs, but you need 150,000 additional jobs each month just to keep pace with a growing population. So if we're only adding 50,000 jobs, that's a great reversal from losing 700,000 jobs [a month] early this year -- but, you know, it means that we've still got a ways to go."

In January and February of this year, the President committed himself to a jobs creation plan of approximately four million jobs in created or saved jobs by 2011. We are no where near on that course. In February, Paul Krugman warned that the so-called economic recovery plan tweaks were already reducing the job-creating element of the stimulus package by between 600,000 and 1.2 million jobs.

The economy is in lousy shape still -- though we are going to see robust third and fourth quarter upswings in the GDP -- but this is GDP growth without job growth. . .and that is what economic advisers to Obama who are Wall Street-centric have scripted.

Lawrence Summers needs to get out of the White House more -- and get to something other than fancy DC parties where folks fawn over him. He needs to go to heavily impacted communities where foreclosures and joblessness are high and needs to deal with the fact that the reflation of Wall Street has come at the expense of generating balance in the lives of average Americans.

A GDP recovery, which we are going to get -- is something that the President of the United States should be apologizing for and for which he should be holding his economic team accountable. An uptick in GDP without growth in employment should not be treated as positive news.

The outcome we are getting on a no-jobs recovery was a "policy choice" - and we need to make better choices from this point forward.

-- Steve Clemons

Just received this release from the White House -- which is quite relevant to my immediate post below this one on the role of Hillary Clinton.

Statement from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs

On Tuesday, September 22, President Obama will host a trilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The trilateral meeting will be immediately preceded by bilateral meetings between President Obama and the two leaders. These meetings will continue the efforts of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Special Envoy George Mitchell to lay the groundwork for the relaunch of negotiations, and to create a positive context for those negotiations so that they can succeed.

"It is another sign of the President's deep commitment to comprehensive peace that he wants to personally engage at this juncture, as we continue our efforts to encourage all sides to take responsibility for peace and to create a positive context for the resumption of negotiations," said Special Envoy Mitchell.

-- Steve Clemons

Glenn Kessler has written an excellent front page profile of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton titled "A Team Player Who Stands Apart" in today's Washington Post.

I generally agree with Kessler that Hillary Clinton has shown that she can be an effective team player in Obama's cabinet -- but I'm not sure I am on the same page as Kessler that she is out of the picture on Afghanistan, Iran, and Israel/Palestine.

Kessler writes:

[Clinton] has been prone to making pronouncements and blunt comments that have put her ahead of, or out of sync with, the rest of the administration. She maintains a robust public persona -- her lengthy overseas trips are filled with town hall meetings and softball television interviews -- but she is largely invisible on the big issues that dominate the foreign policy agenda, including the war in Afghanistan, the attempt to engage Iran and efforts to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The very nature of point person envoys -- which we have in Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell, and Dennis Ross -- obscures the background role that other administration officials are playing in the crafting of policy.

Hillary Clinton is regularly briefed on all of these policy areas -- and contributes at the Principals meeting to the policy discussion. The envoys brief Clinton as does Deputy Secretary of State for Policy James Steinberg - who is constantly coordinating and working well with the National Security Council's Deputy Tom Donilon.

Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton hosted a small dinner of Iran experts organized by Policy Planning Staff Director Anne-Marie Slaughter. Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns participated in the dinner with a number of outside experts who were queried by Clinton and others in what was essentially a roundtable briefing for the Secretary. Slaughter has done a number of such briefing dinners, including one on Afghanistan/Pakistan.

So while Glenn Kessler is right that Clinton's hand may not be as visible in these hot policy areas, her hand is definitely in the mix of those influencing policy and framing the challenges in discussions with President Obama.

Also, with regards to Israel/Palestine, I was pleased by Clinton's statement last May, which Kessler reports:

In an interview with al-Jazeera in May, Clinton said about Israel: "We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth -- any kind of settlement activity." Some experts have questioned whether the position should have remained private, since it led to such a breach in relations with Israel.

Whether the statement should have been kept private or stated in public, Clinton helped define one of the key stress points between the United States and Israel about the upcoming negotiations process -- and rather than having the issue of settlements lurk in the background, her candor put it out bluntly and boldly. Few would have predicted that Hillary Clinton would have done this given the perception that she tilted more toward Israel interests and less to the Arab region while serving as a New York Senator.

And on this page, there are highlighted short audio clips from Glenn Kessler's interview with Clinton in which she says that while not being ready to announce where we have ended up in efforts to relaunch Israel-Palestine talks, she predicts that "we will end up in a place where no Israeli government has gone before." (here is full transcript)

That peek at what may be coming next on Israel/Palestine from Clinton is heartening and shows an awareness of the policy issue -- and in my view active policy involvement as well.

-- Steve Clemons

Irving Kristol has died at 89.

Kristol is the primary intellectual godfather of the neoconservative movement -- which his son Bill Kristol helped transform into a major political force.

Kristol and his wife, Gertrude Himmelfarb, were and are respectively profoundly significant intellectuals whose work and public commentary had an enormous impact on Washington's political culture.

But what now will be interesting to watch is the race between those who want to inherit Irving Kristol's mantle as the "real neoconservative" and who will take the movement into a new generation.

This title will not automatically go to his son, Bill Kristol, who committed a great sin in the eyes of many neocons by animating the political pretensions of the anti-intellectual populist former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.

When neoconservative scholar and author Francis Fukuyama was once venting his frustration about the neoconservatives who were driving America into the wreckage of the Iraq War and defending himself from attacks by Charles Krauthammer, he once shared at a public meeting at the Nixon Center, paraphrasing, that he had grown up at the knee of Irving Kristol and was one of just a few in an original group who participated in the salons and discussions in the Kristol household.

Fukuyama said, as I recall, that he didn't need lessons from Krauthammer on what neoconservatism was all about. In fact, Fukuyama felt that what Krauthammer and some others were writing and speaking about Iraq contradicted neoconservative perspectives. He said that he and other neocons used to criticize government's hubris for thinking it could change school test scores in Anacostia -- and now some of these same people were arguing that America could easily generate social outcomes in Baghdad.

In other words, Fukuyama was intimating that the Iraq escapade was a violation of everything Irving Kristol taught him and stood for.

This vignette is important because I think that a number of leading neoconservatives -- including Fukuyama and David Frum as well as others like Kenneth Adelman -- never really left neoconservatism as much as the modern variant left them.

This leads me to suspect that in the wake of Irving Kristol's passing, there may be an effort to redefine an alternative version of neoconservative thinking and perspective than that which Bill Kristol and his close ally, Robert Kagan, have fashioned.

The church split with Fukuyama, but the neoconservative church may split yet again, and again.

-- Steve Clemons

Indian border troops in Kashmir.

In his remarks yesterday at the launch of the AfPak Channel, the new joint project between the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine, New America President Steve Coll defined US interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan as going beyond the standard aim of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda.

Coll stated that our other paramount interest is to ensure "a stable, modernizing South Asia, particularly including Pakistan, but not limited to Pakistan, that is not in danger of being captured by Islamist militants, the Taliban, or others. And the development of a sustainable, self-governing, modernizing, pluralistic, constitutionally-governed region is the interest, the overriding US national security interest that takes you to the problem of the Taliban."

However, the Obama administration's metrics for measuring success in Pakistan and Afghanistan ignore a large part of the puzzle in South Asia. Objective 2c calls for involving the international community in guaranteeing Pakistan's stability. To evaluate this involvement, the administration will measure "[s]upport from allies, international organizations, and other key players, including China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and UAE." These countries can all help secure Pakistan's future. But the metrics fail to acknowledge the tremendous impact on South Asia of the mutual fear and distrust that has animated relations between India and Pakistan since their founding.

Sameer Lalwani, a PhD student at MIT and Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, has just released a richly-detailed analysis of Pakistan's counterinsurgency challenges and capabilities, one that illuminates the many challenges to and opportunities faced by Pakistan in their fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, holed up in the tribal west. It is worth a thorough read for anyone with AfPak issues on the brain.

I know -- not the best headline and easily misunderstood as a cheap shot, which I don't intend. . .but it needs to be noted today that had Senator McCain won the election, this White House statement probably would never have been made:

Statement by the Press Secretary on the visit of President Zapatero of Spain to the White House

President Obama will welcome President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain to the White House on Tuesday, October 13. Spain and the United States enjoy strong bilateral relations and partner together around the world to promote peace, and prosperity. Spain, a NATO ally and holder of the EU Presidency in the first half of 2010, is a strong contributor to the NATO mission in Afghanistan as we fight together against Al Qaeda and its extremist allies.

The President looks forward to consulting with President Zapatero on a broad range of strategic issues of mutual concern, including implementing our shared strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, working together to promote the global economic recovery and food security, and advancing our goals with regard to Iran, Middle East peace efforts, and climate change.

I had a fun chat one day short of exactly one year ago with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann about McCain and Spain, and thought it would be fun to remember this past encounter:

Where in the world is Spain?

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Jon Weinberg is a research intern at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.

The UN fact-finding mission investigating human rights and humanitarian law violations during Israel's December 2008-January 2009 incursion into Gaza has finally published its long-awaited report.

As expected, the Israeli government - which refused to cooperate with the mission from the outset - has reflexively lashed out against the UN, the Human Rights Council, and the mission's head, Justice Richard Goldstone. Israeli officials cite the Human Rights Council's lack of response to Hamas' firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli targets since 2002, as well as the Council's history of focusing on Israel while ignoring other countries with similar or worse human rights records.

The report has generally received a more welcoming reception among Palestinians, but Hamas has also expressed criticism, complaining that it does not adequately distinguish between the victim and the aggressor.

Goldstone has handled himself admirably amidst the intense media firestorm. This isn't terribly surprising considering that he has served as chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Suffice it to say that he knows what he's talking about. In both his interview last night with PBS' Gwen Iffel and his op-ed in today's New York Times, Goldstone consistently emphasized that both Israel and Hamas could have eliminated the need for the investigation if either side (or both) provided the international community with a more credible self-assessment.

Nine Israeli human rights organization agree with this observation, and published a letter on Tuesday in which they declare that they "believe that the State of Israel must conduct an independent and impartial investigation into these suspicions and to cooperate with an international monitoring mechanism that would guarantee both the independence of that investigation and the implementation of its conclusions."

Neither Hamas nor, more importantly, Israel has taken this suggestion to heart. Gideon Levy hit the nail on the head in his incredibly well-written article from today's Haaretz: "So far they have focused on the messengers, not their messages: the researcher for Human Rights Watch collects Nazi memorabilia, Breaking the Silence is a business and Amnesty International is anti-Semitic. All cheap propaganda."

Nonetheless, not all of Israel's defensive arguments are, like these accusations, cheap propaganda. Currently, Israel's most persuasive arguments against the legitimacy of the mission's findings rest on comparing Israel to the rest of the world: no other country would tolerate cross-border rocket attacks on civilian areas; no other country would cooperate with an investigation that could tarnish its reputation or incriminate its leaders; America would never allow such a mission on Iraq or Afghanistan; other countries have better security and could never fully appreciate the motivation behind Israel's actions in Gaza; and the list goes on.

To some extent these arguments are convincing. They allow us non-Israelis to empathize with Israel's truly ominous security situation - to better understand decisions that are made under conditions of constant existential threat. What these arguments do not do, however, is to render a justification for planning "collective punishment," for prioritizing damaging infrastructure over seeking out individual militants, and for denying the unnecessary use of weapons containing tungsten and white phosphorous in urban areas.

Sure, other countries also do terrible things. Yes, Israel's security challenges are far more serious than those of nearly every other developed country. And of course, within living memory, many countries have committed atrocities far, far worse than anything Israel did last winter in Gaza.

This is not a question of whether Israel is a democracy: It is. Nor is it a question of whether Israel must defend itself: It must. Nor is this a question of whether Hamas fights fairly: It doesn't. Rather, this is a question of whether Israel, an economically developed democracy, fights fairly. If Israel truly wishes to prove its moral exceptionality, it should stop comparing its own mistakes to those of others and stop questioning the legitimacy of those who question Israel's accountability.

-- Jon Weinberg

NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams ran an excellent clip last night on the "unfairness" of some Americans being allowed to travel to Cuba while others are blocked. "Relatives" of foreign nationals living in Cuba get a green light to fly from Miami to Cuba -- while most others do not.

161 Members of Congress and 33 US Senators have co-sponsored a Freedom to Travel to Cuba bill that says this is wrong -- and more Members are jumping on board each week.

The show last night reported that 159 House Members and 29 Senators had cosponsored the bill -- but numbers have increased to the 161 in the House and 33 Senators I have reported. Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA-10) and Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have shown great leadership on the travel issue in collaboration with many key Republican leaders and Democratic Party colleagues.

At a recent meeting of the National Foreign Trade Council/USA Engage -- an organization populated mostly by moderate Republicans who believe in global engagement, global trade and who can see through the fallacy of unilateral sanctions which the US maintains against Cuba -- Democrat House Member Jim Moran (D-VA-8) said regarding removing the Obama administration's restrictions on American travel, "we are going to get this done. . ." He meant he and his colleagues were going to get the Cuba travel bill through Congress.

Americans can go to North Korea today.

Think about that. If the Communist, nuclear-weapons toting government headed by Kim Jong Il, to quote David Rothkopf, says you can go to North Korea, you can go.

But not Cuba.

This is ridiculous. Democracies are not generally in the business of telling their citizens where they can and can't go, but Miami's Castro-obsessed political machine has warped the way political gravity operates. In its zeal to try to destabilize Castro these past many decades, the Cuban-American community leadership has endorsed and engaged in behaviors completely inconsistent with democratic practice and human rights.

The Cold War was used to justify various kinds of national and personal sacrifices by Americans -- but restricting human rights, restricting human travel -- was something done more by our enemies in the Cold War and rarely done by democracies.

The Cold War is over. Obama needs to move more boldly and past the diminishing portion of the Cuban American exile community opposed to progress -- and look to the interests and rights of ALL Americans.

-- Steve Clemons

Today, the New America Foundation is hosting an important event on America's war in Afghanistan, featuring my New America Foundation colleagues Peter Bergen and Steve Coll, as well as Washington Post standout journalists Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung.

The event will run from 12:15 pm - 1:45 pm and will stream live here at The Washington Note.

As the debate in Washington heats up about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, I think it is important to provide a variety of perspectives to my readers - and these four are among Washington's most knowledgeable commentators on this topic.

Today's event will also serve as the formal launch of the AfPak Channel, a New America Foundation/Foreign Policy Magazine project.

As I have written on this blog, I am personally increasingly disturbed by the Obama administration's approach to Afghanistan - a position that I articulated in a letter to President Obama that I signed on to earlier this week. On the skeptical side, I also recommend reading Paul Pillar's op-ed from yesterday that questions whether preventing a terrorist "safe haven" in Afghanistan is really worth the blood and treasure it will cost.

-- Steve Clemons

Former CIA Counterterrorism official Paul Pillar has an important op-ed in today's Washington Post that questions whether terrorists really need "safe havens" after all.

Pillar challenges one of the key assumptions underpinning the escalation of America's involvement in Afghanistan - the notion that preventing a "safe haven" for terrorists in Afghanistan is one of the best ways to prevent future attacks on the American homeland.

From Pillar's piece:

Instead, the issue is whether preventing such a haven would reduce the terrorist threat to the United States enough from what it otherwise would be to offset the required expenditure of blood and treasure and the barriers to success in Afghanistan, including an ineffective regime and sagging support from the population. Thwarting the creation of a physical haven also would have to offset any boost to anti-U.S. terrorism stemming from perceptions that the United States had become an occupier rather than a defender of Afghanistan.

Among the many parallels being offered between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War, one of the most disturbing concerns inadequate examination of core assumptions. The Johnson administration was just as meticulous as the Obama administration is being in examining counterinsurgent strategies and the forces required to execute them. But most American discourse about Vietnam in the early and mid-1960s took for granted the key -- and flawed -- assumptions underlying the whole effort: that a loss of Vietnam would mean that other Asian countries would fall like dominoes to communism, and that a retreat from the commitment to Vietnam would gravely harm U.S. credibility.

The Obama administration and other participants in the debate about expanding the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan can still avoid comparable error. But this would require not merely invoking Sept. 11 and taking for granted that a haven in Afghanistan would mean the difference between repeating and not repeating that horror. It would instead mean presenting a convincing case about how such a haven would significantly increase the terrorist danger to the United States. That case has not yet been made.

Clearly, preventing terrorist attacks on the American homeland should be a priority of the U.S. government. Terrorist attacks kill innocent civilians and spread fear that is harmful to our nation's economic and psychological well-being.

But we need to have a sober, fear-free, post-post-9/11 discussion about the best ways to use our limited resources to prevent terrorist attacks while pursuing our other national objectives.

I think Pillar's piece raises an important element of that conversation.

You can read the entire article here.

-- Ben Katcher

I am up this morning in Pittsburgh speaking in a forum sponsored by the RAND Corporation and the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh about the political context of next week's G-20 meeting. We've just gone through one morning panel, and I will be in the next segment that starts at 9:45 am.

I'm still sorting out what I'm going to say ten minutes from now (I'm basically pretty cynical about this upcoming meeting) -- but if you want to tune in, I am embedding the World Affairs Council's webcast above now.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo courtesy of Atlantic Council of the United States)

Barack Obama has invited Colin Powell in to see him today -- and knowing General Powell's respect for the Office of the President, whether occupied by Barack Obama or George W. Bush, we aren't going to have a fully informed read of what transpires in this meeting for some time, if ever.

As Laura Rozen notes, Defense Secretary Gates will be meeting with the President two and a half hours after the chat with Powell.

But while not knowing whether Barack Obama is meeting with Powell to get a tutorial on what to do about the growing challenges in Afghanistan, or getting the General's views on an Iran strategy, or perhaps kicking Powell's tires about taking on some kind of national role -- perhaps as a presidential emissary for public service or as yet another super-czar focused on the Middle East or becoming the President's lever in rolling back Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- I think Powell should take the opportunity to convey some Powell-isms to Barack Obama.

The eight pillars of the Powell Doctrine, which means achieving victory by applying overwhelming assets to a clearly defined challenge, are worth working through -- whether in considering a build-up on Afghanistan or hatching another war:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7. Is the action supported by the American people?

8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Barack Obama's "good war" on Afghanistan does not fare well when viewed through Powell's portals.

George W. Bush, at the beginning of his presidency, had several tutorials from journalist and national security expert Robert Kaplan on how to conduct foreign policy decisions in a world in which Bush believed American power was on the ascendancy.

Colin Powell will hopefully be given the opportunity by Obama to teach the President a few things about the cultivation and deployment of power in a world that doubts America's ability to achieve its objectives.

-- Steve Clemons

Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the country, sees the Democratic camp diverging in three directions -- loyal Obamites, Liberal purists, and skeptics.

Charlie doesn't even get into the questions of national security policy and the Vietnam-like stumble into something bigger in Afghanistan, but his template fits the foreign policy world pretty well too.

I am told that tonight on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer:, the reputationally hawkish Congresswoman and national intelligence expert Jane Harman talks about the growing unease among Congresssional democrats about what is happening in Afghanistan. Her bottom line approximately:

No more US troops to Afghanistan unless they clean up the corruption there.

Well, that means for the moment the White House can't count Harman it its corner on increasing US troop deployments.

As Harman writes in a recent oped on Afghanistan, she sees the nation as somewhat as a cesspool of corruption in which American national security resources are pouring into a black hole with no hope -- unless corruption is addressed -- of achieving America's national objectives or achieving a stable and healthy Afghanistan.

In response to the Democratic Party's tripartite disarray, the Republicans have not marshalled anything coherent in response.

The Republicans are divided into a bunch of camps as well -- probably far more than three -- and the sensible pragmatists with whom I feel most comfortable are barely in the party any longer.

Charlie Cook writes in his "Cook Report" in National Journal:

In assessing the severity of their current problems, Democrats have split into three distinct camps.

The first, the Loyal Obamaites, is made up of those most committed to President Obama, whether or not they're on his payroll. They stress that it is a long time until November 2010 and that their party's problems are primarily driven by the economy.

In their view, if the economy turns around over the next year, the president's fortunes and those of his party will improve. If the economy fails to improve, Democrats are pretty much screwed no matter what they do, the Loyalists continue. They maintain that tackling health care reform would be tough in any year, that candidate Obama promised to take on this challenge, and that he cannot back down. Some Democrats in this camp sound as if they would not mind if a dozen or so "Blue Dogs" lost next year, since on tough votes these moderate-to-conservative Democrats are not with the president and their party's House leadership anyway.

The second Democratic camp, the Purists, is chiefly composed of liberal activists and bloggers who see the current problems of the president and the party as the result of their being insufficiently liberal and of not sticking with their convictions. Purists see compromise as weakness or appeasement. And on health care they view anything short of a full-blown public option as a rejection of core Democratic principles. Oddly, universal coverage is not where they draw their line in the sand.

(Without weighing in on the validity of the liberal Purists' arguments, I would like the record to show that when conservatives made a similar argument -- that Republicans lost the 2006 and 2008 elections because they had veered away from conservative principles -- liberals laughed hysterically.)

Finally, there are the Skeptics, those Democrats who have concluded that this is not the cruise they signed up for. They worry that the problems facing Obama and their party's congressional leadership stem from something deeper than just the recession and that major strategic mistakes have been made. They can't see how this trajectory doesn't take their party to a bad place by November 2010. The Skeptics think that the rapid and unprecedented expansion of government -- under both Presidents Bush and Obama -- since last year's collapse of Lehman Brothers has gone too far and that costly health care proposals and cap-and-trade legislation are the straws breaking the camel's back.

My own hunch is that the Skeptics are right that the Democrats' problems are bigger than the recession: Purple America is reacting to the growth of government with emotions ranging from dubiousness to outright hostility. So, the rebound for which almost everyone is praying won't necessarily fix the Democrats' problems.

Americans may have replaced a housing bubble with an Obama bubble -- but hopefully the President's team can keep some air in it for some time. Bubbles can be good and bad. The good part is when you have time, resources and mystique to rework how a nation moves and feels.

The bad part about bubbles, particularly political bubbles, is that gravity hurts when all the air is gone.

-- Steve Clemons

Politico's Ben Smith got the scoop on a letter today drafted and signed by a number of realist-tilting scholars and commentators raising many of the key questions and concerns about growing US presence in Afghanistan that were Obama's concerns about Iraq.

I have signed this letter along with a number of others I respect including Robert Jervis, Christopher Preble, Rajan Menon, Andrew Bacevich, Jack Snyder, David Rieff, Gordon Adams, Jonathan Clarke, Michael Desch, Stephen Walt, Eugene Gholz, Sean Kay, Scott McConnell, Barry Posen, and many others. The list will be added to in coming days.

The letter is important as I think it captures well the views of an important wing of the foreign policy establishment that is arguing that it is unconvinced by the White House's depiction of objectives and the rationale for deployed resources in the Afghanistan conflict.

A key line of the letter reads:

Today, we are concerned that the war in Afghanistan is growing increasingly detached from considerations of length, cost, and consequences. Its rationale is becoming murkier and both domestic and international support for it is waning. Respectfully, we urge you to focus U.S. strategy more clearly on al Qaeda instead of expanding the mission into an ambitious experiment in state building.

The letter is signed by individuals and not institutions -- and I happen to work with some of the nation's leading authorities on AfPak issues such as Steve Coll and Peter Bergen who each have compelling perspectives on the Afghanistan situation that deserve to be scrutinized closely as well. The New America Foundation also co-manages and co-hosts the AfPak Channel with Foreign Policy magazine that has become a must-read for anyone following the evolving challenges in South Asia.

On the New America Foundation front, there is an AfPak Channel focused event titled "Covering Afghanistan" this Thursday featuring Steve Coll and Peter Bergen of New America, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post, and Susan Glasser of Foreign Policy.

And soon, I will be working with my colleagues to organize a very large conference on America's engagement in the region that assembles advocates, semi-skeptics, and foes of the President's current Afghanistan course.

The letter comes after the jump.

Big conference on America's debt mess today. I'm moderating a big chunk.

Here is the rundown of a very interesting symposium thinking through the challenges of private debt overhang and the public debt debate.

The bursting of the housing and credit bubbles has left the United States with a huge debt overhang. Can we grow our way out of debt without setting off inflation? How can households reduce their debt levels without killing off demand? Does the debt pose a threat to the dollar?

Dealing with America's Debt Overhang
Growth or Austerity, and Other Policy Choices

Introductory Remarks
9:00-9:15 am

Bernard L. Schwartz
CEO, BLS Investments, LLC

Steve Coll
President, New America Foundation
Staff Writer, New Yorker

Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation

Session 1: How serious is the debt overhang, what does it mean, and can we grow our way out of it?
9:15-10:15 a.m.

James K. Galbraith
Lloyd M. Bentsen Junior Chair in Government-Business Relations
Professor of Government, University of Texas

Thomas Palley
Schwartz Economic Growth Fellow, New America Foundation
Former Chief Economist, China Economic and Security Review Commission

Carmen Reinhart
Professor of Economics at the School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics, University of Maryland

Sherle R. Schwenninger
Director, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation

moderator
Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation

Session 2: Alternatives to Austerity: Growth, Debt Relief or Reflation
10:15-11:30 am

Liaquat Ahamed
Author, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Jim Jubak
Columnist, MSN Money

Christopher Hayes
Washington, DC Editor, The Nation
Fellow, New America Foundation

Rob Johnson
Director of the Economic Policy Initiative, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
Former Managing Director, Soros Fund Management

Michael Lind
Policy Director, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation

moderator
Sherle R. Schwenninger
Director, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation

Session 3: America's Debt, the Dollar, and the Global Economy
11:30 am-12:45 pm

Joerg Bibow
Professor of Economics, Skidmore College, and Research Scholar, Levy Institute

Zachary Karabell
President, River Twice Research
CNBC Contributor

Douglas Rediker
Director, Global Strategic Finance Initiative, New America Foundation

Arvind Subramanian
Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute and Center for Global Development
Senior Research Professor, Johns Hopkins University

moderator
Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation

-- Steve Clemons

President Obama has missed yet another chance to pressure Congress to end the self-inflicted damage of a "unilateral embargo" against Cuba and to take American foreign policy writ large in a new, more constructive direction.

Today, the President officially extended the trade embargo against Cuba for another year -- putting the US at odds again with roughly 183 nations that vote against the embargo each year in the United Nations.

The President's global mystique has been based on a perception that he would shift the Bush era gravitational forces in more constructive directions -- that he would support engagement and exchange as tools of American foreign policy in order to try and get better outcomes in international affairs.

But by continuing an embargo that undermines American interests and even US national security, he chooses the continuity of failure over the opportunity for change and over his own principles.

By arguing that "he will not lift the embargo until Cuba undertakes democratic and economic reforms", Obama is perpetuating a fallacy that conditionality produces results in Cuba's domestic internal affairs. That approach has failed for decades -- and needs to be dropped.

The President has made some progress on Cuba -- but its mostly progress that the most hawkish, right wing elements of the Cuban-American community desired, not progress that was based on the interests of the nation as a whole.

Obama needs to fix his course on Cuba, or despite the modest creep forward recently -- helping a single class of ethnic Americans access Cuba but keeping up prohibitions on other American citizens, he will be added to a long roster of Presidents who maintained a Cold War in the America's backyard that is, as David Rothkopf called it, "the edsel" of US foreign policy.

-- Steve Clemons

I just finished reading the Independent Committee on Turkey's report on Turkey's EU accession negotiations. The Committee consists of European elder statesman who support Turkey's membership and are alarmed by the "vicious circle" of events that is jeopardizing Turkey's EU prospects.

The term "vicious circle" is meant to capture how European opposition to Turkey's membership has led to a slowdown in Turkey's reform program, which in turn has led to further opposition within Europe.

Overall, the report makes a compelling, balanced case for why it is in Europe's interests to do everything it can to move the negotiations along and eventually accept Turkey's full membership.

The Committee demonstrates the hollowness of French and German calls for a "privileged partnership," noting the fact that Turkey is already as integrated with Europe as any other non-member, and thus already enjoys a privileged partnership.

The report also correctly identifies the Cyprus, Kurdish, and Armenian conflicts - along with the ongoing struggle to reform Turkey's democratic institutions - as the primary obstacles to Turkey's membership.

Missing from the report, however, is a compelling, imaginative vision of what Europe is likely to look like in 15-20 years, and how incorporating Turkey's young population, dynamic economy, access to energy resources, and large, professional army will strengthen Europe's position. The authors make each of these points separately, but I would have liked to have read a concluding chapter that paints the picture a bit more clearly.

Another quibble is that the report does not mention the Turkish army, save for in the context of Turkey's domestic political struggle. Turkey possesses the second largest army in NATO, a fact that should not be overlooked when making the strategic case for Turkey's EU membership.

I understand that the European Union likes to think it makes its decisions based on democratic principles rather than strategic calculation - but Paris and Berlin think strategically, and it is Sarkozy and Merkel who are Turkey's most significant opponents.

The essential point that the authors certainly understand - but that must be made explicitly - is the fact that Europe is stuck with Turkey no matter what. Whether or not the accession process moves forward, Turkey will be a large, influential country on Europe's borders. Europe's best chance to shape Turkey's trajectory is to keep the negotiation process alive.

-- Ben Katcher

In today's New York Times, Ronald Asmus provides a useful summary of the German Marshall Fund's recently released Transatlantic Trends report.

The report indicates that support for American foreign policy has risen dramatically in Western Europe, but not in Eastern Europe or Turkey. It also notes that Europeans and Americans remain at odds over the issues of the day, including whether to use force in Afghanistan and Iran.

Two additional points related to the report:

1. Western European attitudes toward the United States have improved because the Obama administration has not asked Europe for much yet. As George Friedman remarked back in April, "Europe and Obama loved each other [during Obama's campaign], but for very different reasons. The Europeans thought that the United States under Obama would ask less, while Obama thought the Europeans would give more." The truth of Friedman's statement will become more apparent as Obama asks for more on Iran, Afghanistan, and financial reform.

2. While increased popular support in Europe is nice, it won't mean anything for America's strategic interests if the Obama administration cannot restore our credibility.

The Bush administration squandered two kinds of American credibility. The first relates to other governments' perceptions of whether the United States can achieve the goals that it sets out for itself. As Steve Clemons has noted on this blog, the Iraq war demonstrated America's limits in dramatic, devastating fashion.

And as Steve pointed out yesterday, the same thing may be happening in Afghanistan, as we escalate our commitment there. The best thing Obama could do to restore American credibility would be to score a big win on some international issue of consequence - something he has yet to do.

The second kind of American credibility relates to whether the United States tells the truth. The "Weapons of Mass Destruction" mess tarnished America's credibility in this area as well. Whether foreign capitals accept the Obama administration's statement yesterday that Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make a nuclear weapon may indicate whether America's credibility has rebounded in this area.

-- Ben Katcher

Does anyone even remember that this was supposed to be about Osama bin Laden? How did we get into a full on war with the Taliban and thus in the middle of an Afghan Civil War in which neither side likes us much?

The Obama administration has made a major mistake in allowing a sleight-of-hand shift in its overall framing of challenges in Afghanistan.

Rather than focusing on al Qaeda and Arab jihadists as "the threat" the US is trying to quash, the Taliban now seems to be the overwhelming focus.

The Taliban and al Qaeda are now used interchangeably -- and frankly, we are hearing the words "al Qaeda" less and less. We now seem to be fully at war with the Taliban -- a now huge indigenous group embedded in Afghan society.

Is America's objective to quash al Qaeda? If so, then it would seem that there are many ways other than full scale war with the Taliban to possibly achieve that objective.

Is it to annihilate the Taliban? to contain the Taliban? If so, what are the compelling national security reasons to do so? The case has not been clearly made. What is the alternative if this goal is not reachable?

And is Karzai -- the likely winner of the Afghan elections fraudulent or not -- a friend or foe? How does our relationship with him fit with any of the other objectives above? Or is our goal in Afghanistan a functioning ballotocracy of corruption-free elections?

One really can't tell what our overall goal is at this point -- and the calls by some, like Brian Vogt at Across the Aisle, that we not do Afghanistan "on the cheap" make little sense when we ought not to be neck deep in problems of this sort without knowing why we are there and what constitutes failure and success.

Afghanistan, like Iraq, is sending the impression to the rest of the world that America is at a "limit" point in its military and power capabilities. This prompts allies not to count on us as much as they did previously and prompts foes to move their agendas.

Limits are very, very, very bad in the great power game -- and Afghanistan is yet again, an exposer of monumental limits on American power.

-- Steve Clemons

The Obama administration today lightened travel and remittance restrictions for US-based relatives of Cuban citizens residing in Cuba.

The limit on relatives is noted at "second cousins."

Hooray! -- not.

OK -- it's some progress. But this is progress that the Cuban-American right wing wanted.

What I and other sensible national security strategists wanted was for President Obama to stand by his moral and ethical fiber that engagement is good, that people to people exchange makes sense, that the Cold War is over, and show some understanding today that Cuba is exporting not revolution and arms today -- but doctors.

I remember very well during the height of the Cold War how my father -- who was a US Air Force service man -- used to comment on all the things that the Soviet Union would do to constrain and control the lives of its citizens.

I remember well how he said everyone was required to carry "their papers" and how they couldn't travel without government permission.

It is outrageous and simply unacceptable that Barack Obama, the first ethnic mix of any sort who wonderfully defies categorization residing in the White House, is creating a class of opportunity and privilege for one class of ethnic Americans and perpetuating an anti-American, anti-human rights restriction by the US government on the movement of non-qualified US citizens.

The travel restrictions on Americans have always been wrong -- and have been more consistent with a totalitarian, Communist government than they have been with a traditional American democracy.

Obama and his team should find a way to step back and realize that while they have made progress on Cuba -- this is embarrassing progress, ridiculous progress -- that is anti-American in spirit and at its core.

-- Steve Clemons

The way that the nuclear weapons world works today is that if you are "trusted" by the US and Europe -- you can overtly or covertly hold on to your nukes, particularly if a nation is not part of the non-proliferation regime.

But if you aren't trusted, you can't have them under any circumstances.

But Israel is a complicated case -- and a provocative Al Jazeera show is going to delve into this and thought I'd share:

7 September 2009, Monday, 4:30 pm EST

RIZ KHAN - NUCLEAR ISRAEL

Watch live here

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will meet Monday to discuss Iran's nuclear capabilities just as Israel accused the monitoring body of holding back on its most recent report on Iran. Israel says it "expects the international community to take substantive and prompt steps to halt Iran's military nuclear program." But what about Israel's nuclear arsenal?

It's a well-known secret that Israel not only has nuclear capabilities but has nuclear weapons. Officially, Israel has a policy of not confirming or denying its nuclear capabilities. Whenever the U.S. raises its concerns about proliferation, Israel is not mentioned. Experts and anti-nuclear activists argue that the way in which the West deals with Israel's programme sets a dangerous double-standard that makes it impossible to stem the tide of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East or anywhere else. Breaking with past precedent, a U.S. State Department official recently said that they would like Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but a White House official went on to note that the Israeli and Iranian programmes were unrelated "apples and oranges".

On Monday's "Riz Khan" we discuss Israel's nuclear programme and ask "When will Israel bring its nuclear weapons out of the shadows and could an open and honest discussion of its capabilities pave the way for a nuclear-free Middle East?" Joining our discussion will be Dr. Avner Cohen author of "Israel and the Bomb" and Israeli journalist and human rights activist Gideon Spiro.

Definitely a 'hot' topic.

-- Steve Clemons

I haven't read Max Blumenthal's new book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, just yet -- but I had a good laugh when I just got these "early reviews" from The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg and Ann Coulter -- yes, that Ann.

From Hertzberg:

"With scarcely more than a pith helmet, a notebook, and a tattered copy of Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm's great study of authoritarian psychology, the dauntless Max Blumenthal set forth years ago to explore the dank forests of American Christianism. Now he has returned to civilization, bringing back a fine collection of shrunken heads and a riveting account of a religio-political subculture that's even weirder than you thought it was. Republican Gomorrah is an irresistible combination of anthropology and psychopathology that exerts the queasy fascination of (let's face it) something very like pornography."

- Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker

From Ms. Coulter:

"A good-looking fella."

- Ann Coulter

Coulter's and Hertsberg's enthusiastic endorsement is more than enough to get me to read what Max has put together.

I'll never forget Max Blumenthal's very helpful photo sent to me in the midst of the John Bolton battle -- or his research into "Sarah Palin and the Witch-Fighting Pentecostalist."

Thanks for the great work, Max.

-- Steve Clemons

I really enjoyed participating in this Schieffer series panel discussion titled "Understanding Japan's Elections: What the Elections Mean for Asia and the United States" moderated by CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer.

The panel featured Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and CSIS Senior Adviser and Japan Chair Michael Green and myself. Mike Green also previously served during the Bush administration as Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

The meeting was organized in a monthly series of dialogues sponsored by the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I think you'll find the discussion interesting.

-- Steve Clemons

Cato Institute foreign policy program Christopher Preble has a smart piece on the Partnership for a Secure America blog "Across the Aisle" today correctly noting that there is no bipartisan divide on US strategy in Afghanistan. Instead, there is a divide between "two bipartisan consensuses."

Preble writes:

In keeping with the PSA's charter, we're seeing bipartisan consensus emerging around U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The bad news? There are actually two bipartisan consensuses.

Technically, that is impossible. Consensus means "general agreement" or "a view reached by a group as a whole" so there can't really be more than one.

And that is the problem. So long as the right is fighting the right, and others on the left are fighting the left, policymakers will be inclined to focus on other policy issues, content to let Afghan policy drift, and hope for a miraculous turnaround (e.g. Karzai becomes less corrupt and more competent; the Afghan economy begins to produce something other than opium; the Pashtuns decide to make common cause with the Tajiks, Turkmen and Hazara; Afghan men decide that Afghan women should have rights, etc).

Our men and women in uniform, engaged increasingly in armed social work are caught in the middle while the pointy-heads pull on their respective chins.

Certain leading voices on the right agree with others on the left that we must redefine our ends in Afghanistan, and begin exploring ways to draw down the military presence there.

I'm with those that think that "Surge Envy" is not a strategy - and that the inflation of America's commitment to a different order in Afghanistan is outrunning reasonable deployment of resources and any ability to sustain a stable national outcome that Americans will be able to support.

Preble is author of The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous and Less Free.

Preble and I were also founding board members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy -- which we established during the Iraq War and which we are considering resuscitating to address our concerns about the war in Afghanistan.

-- Steve Clemons

This is an eight minute exchange with retired 4-star General and former CENTCOM Commander and Israel/Palestine presidential envoy Anthony Zinni. It's well worth watching.

Among the interesting zingers offered by General Zinni, he suggests (1) that the Obama administration needs to issue its "National Security Strategy" which by law it is supposed to do within 150 days of the administration; (2) that the "smart power" functions of our global security agenda would be better served by taking the 'civil affairs' functions out of the military units in which they operate and stand them up as a separate and distinct Pentagon command -- which would coordinate with the State Department and US AID; and (3) that the envoy process is disruptive, distracting, and usually disappointing.

Zinni's proposals are provocative and substantive. I have asked someone at the Department of State about possibly responding. Hopefully this will happen in the near term.

Anthony Zinni, Chairman of the Board of BAE Systems, is author of Leading the Charge: Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield to the Boardroom.

-- Steve Clemons

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is one of the leading voices who warned early of the impending housing bubble -- and his economic analysis, as measured by forecasts and then results, has been extremely impressive over the years. TWN asked if it could repost this obviously dense but lucid review of America's latest employment figures.

Unemployment Jumps to 9.7 Percent, as Economy Loses Another 216,000 Jobs

The job situation may be improving.

That is hard to say in a month where you lose 216,000 jobs (plus upward revisions of 49,000 in the prior two months), but it is true. We are still likely to lose jobs through the rest of the year and the unemployment rate is virtually certain to cross 10.0 percent.

The unemployment rate hit 9.7 percent in August, up from 9.4 percent in July. According to the establishment survey the economy shed 216,000 jobs in August. In addition, the job loss numbers for June and July were revised up by 49,000. This puts the average rate of job loss over the last three months at 318,000 per month.

The rise in unemployment in August was disproportionately among men, with the unemployment rate for adult men rising to 10.1 percent. By comparison, the unemployment rate for adult women is 7.6 percent. Before the recession, the unemployment rates for men and women were essentially equal. The 10.1 percent unemployment rate for adult men is equal to its previous post-war high in December of 1982.

Underemployment also rose in August, with another 298,000 workers involuntarily working part-time. This number now stands at 8,945,000, or 5.8 percent of the labor force. This is the same rate as the prior peak in January of 2003. Most of the other data in the household survey is consistent with a labor market that is still weakening. The percentage of unemployment attributable to voluntary quits dropped to 5.5 percent, another record low. The number of discouraged workers is almost exactly the double the August 2008 number. And, the U-6 measure of labor market slack rose to 16.8 percent, 0.3 percentage points above the 16.5 percent peak hit in June.

The slower rate of job loss is the result of further moderation in the pace of job loss in the sectors that had been the biggest job losers. Construction lost 65,000 jobs in August, down from 119,000 per month between October and March. Most of this job loss is now coming from the non-residential sector. This is not surprising since residential construction has stabilized in the last couple of months, while a glut in the non-residential market is leading to a sharp contraction in this sector. Stimulus related jobs will be an offsetting factor.

Manufacturing lost 63,000 jobs in August. Job loss in the sector had averaged 181,000 a month between October and March. Some of this job loss was a fluke of seasonal adjustment, as the July employment levels in the auto industry were almost certainly overstated, leading to a reported loss of 14,800 jobs this month. Employment in the auto sector is likely to be stable or up slightly through the rest of the year.

Retail trade lost just 9,600 jobs in August, compared to a 69,000 monthly rate of job loss last winter. Auto dealers actually added 5,200 jobs to deal with the Cash for Clunkers program. Employment services shed 10,500 jobs in August, down from an 84,000 monthly rate earlier in the year.

It is worth noting that the number of jobs imputed into the data for new firms continues to exceed the number for the corresponding months of 2008. The total difference over the last three months has been 53,000. It seems unlikely that new firms would be adding more jobs this year than last year.

Health care continues to add jobs at a rapid pace, with employment increasing by 27,900 in August. On the other side, state and local governments lost 13,000 jobs, as the negative effect of their huge budget shortfalls outweighed the positive impact of the stimulus.

One bright spot in the report was a 0.3 percent increase in the average hourly wage. Over the last quarter, hourly wages have risen at a 1.7 percent annual rate. This is somewhat of an uptick from prior months in which nominal wage growth had virtually stopped. The rise in the minimum wage was likely a factor with the average wage in retail rising by 1.0 percent in August. If wage growth is sustained, then it can help boost consumption going forward.

This report, like the prior three reports, shows a slowing pace of job loss. It is important to recognize that this rate of job loss, especially when adding in the upward revisions, would be considered disastrous at any other time. The labor market is still deteriorating, albeit less rapidly.

The 10.1 percent unemployment rate for adult men equals the prior post-war high.

-- Dean Baker

The Economist has a helpful analysis of the troubled accession negotiations between Turkey and the European Union.

One important point made in the article is that Europe requires Turkey to adopt all of the European Union reforms before it is granted membership. Turks are understandably hesitant to make politically difficult and costly reforms without guarantees that enacting those reforms will eventually lead to EU membership. Despite the opening of negotiations in 2005, the French and German governments are currently opposed to Turkey ever joining the EU.

One solution to this problem might be to require certain reforms to be in place before membership, while allowing others to take effect once membership is granted. Certainly, Europe is correct that Turkey must enact reforms related to basic issues of democracy and human rights - such as judiciary reform, constitutional reform, and press freedom - before a membership offer is granted. These principles are at the heart of the the very character of the European Union and it is in both Turkey's and Europe's interest that these reforms take place before the carrot of EU membership is awarded.

On the other hand, issues such as opening Turkey's $60 billion public-procurement market to European firms and allowing free movement of goods and services to and from Europe can wait until Turkey gains membership. These issues are less about principle than about equity among Europe's member states. It is entirely reasonable for Turkey to lay the legal groundwork for these reforms, but to wait until membership is granted before putting them into practice.

I'll have more on this after former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari's commission publishes its progress report next week.

-- Ben Katcher

Anatol Lieven has a provocative piece over at the National Interest Online on what he calls the "meaningless" Afghan elections and U.S. strategy going forward.

I know very little about Afghanistan, but Lieven's analysis strikes me as a nuanced argument that avoids the abstract, binary "stay the course/leave now" debate that is emerging among Washington pundits.

For Lieven, the crux of the Afghanistan nut is incorporating the Taliban into the political process. Lieven's prescriptive recommendations for how to do this are difficult to summarize, but the passage below gives you an idea:

The Taliban should be actively encouraged to form a political wing and to take part in [parliamentary elections next year] along the lines of the bizarre, but in the end very helpful, system in Northern Ireland, where even at the height of the British campaign against the IRA, its political wing, Sinn Fein, remained a legal party and stood for election.

Negotiations should be opened with the Taliban high command on a peace settlement in Afghanistan, the offer on the U.S. side being the promise of an American military withdrawal within a long but fixed timetable, conditional on progressive Taliban ceasefires across increasing areas of the country. Where the Taliban does not agree to a ceasefire, military operations should continue. Pakistan should be used as an intermediary between the United States and the Taliban leadership.

In other words, the United States should pursue a strategy of talking and fighting at the same time. The goal would not be an early peace settlement or an early American and Western military withdrawal, since the first is impossible and the second would be disastrous. Rather, this strategy would recognise that it is to a great extent the Western military presence that is driving support for the Taliban in many of the Pashtun areas.

I'm not sure whether our war in Afghanistan makes sense at all - but if the Obama administration is committed to maintaining a large troop presence there for several years, then we need to entertain tactical arguments like this about how we will eventually extricate ourselves.

You can read Lieven's article here.

-- Ben Katcher

There are lots of folks who are frustrated with Montana Senator and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus at the moment -- mostly on health care issues. One of the odd bottom lines for Max, however, is that the more frustrated Dems are with him on policy matters, the more solid his support is in Montana.

But I want to raise another issue that is not about policy -- and is about abuse of power and pushing the investigatory part of "advice and consent" in presidential nominations to outrageous levels.

According to multiple sources, there is a staffer on the minority side of the Finance Committee who is going to absurd levels investigating the financial backgrounds of Obama administration nominees who fall under the jurisdiction of the committee.

Why is Max Baucus not confronting ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley and this particular staffer with a direct confrontation about the absurdities and abuse that are now leaking out of the Committee?

Baucus is Chairman. He has real power. Is he using it? Is he afraid of Grassley and this staffer for some reason?

What I have learned is that a senior Obama administration official who has been languishing for some time in the Committee process -- and who this country really does need in his/her job because of the consequential portfolio that needs management now -- has had to put up with some of the most abusive and invasive investigations into financial matters of which I have ever heard.

This Committee staffer, in one example, wanted to see if the reporting of a "home office" on tax forms was legitimate. On the respective nominees, tax forms -- a square footage and percentage of house allocated to the office were designated. So, the staffer actually sent someone to the nominee's home to "measure" whether the square footage reporting was accurate or not. That's right. . .they went out to "measure" the house.

But wait, it gets better.

Then the staffer challenged the "valuation" of the home -- and the nominee showed the Committee staff the local government valuation and assessment of the home -- which is a legal record.

The staffer subjectively asserted that the valuation was too high -- and thus the deduction thus too high -- and ordered that a new valuation of the home be done.

What in the hell is this? They disregarded official government valuations of a house?

And why are we taxpayers not only paying for the absurd abuse of power of a Congressional staffer who has so gone beyond any reasonable mandate that he should be seriously counseled (I won't say terminated) but also losing out because this ridiculous process is holding up a key appointment that actually does matter for the affairs and interests of the United States.

Having been a Senate staffer, I don't often want to be out there challenging staffers in Congress as they generally work hard, do great -- often unrecognized -- work for the nation, always in the names of their "bosses."

But in this case, either Max Baucus has not figured out that he has the power to shut down and expose this abuse being done by staff, who minority or not, are still in his jurisdiction -- or Chuck Grassley is derelict in his duty to hold his own staff to credible standards of performance.

Fix this problem -- or some of us are going to start doing a lot more investigating of the so-called investigators. What I have learned over the last few days about Finance Committee investigations is really outrageous and deserves some serious investigative journalist sniffing.

-- Steve Clemons

You can watch this event LIVE at http://wmedia.csis.org/.

Last week's elections in Japan were an important moment for Japanese democracy - and there are questions on whether or not this transition will lead to significant changes in Japan's national security posture.

Times have changed, and while the U.S.-Japan alliance may have once been the most significant bilateral relationship in the world, that distinction now belongs to the United States and China.

It is time for a new post-post-World War II U.S.-Japan alliance in which Japan exercises more independence and bears more of the responsibilities of great power stakeholdership. Changes to the U.S.-Japan alliance will take place gradually, but I think when historians look back they will see the election as an important catalyst for the reorientation of the relationship.

To discuss the Japanese election and its likely implications for Asia and the United States, I will be participating in a CSIS Schieffer Policy Forum on "Understanding Japan's Elections: What the Elections Mean for Asia and the United States" tonight at 5:30 pm at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent and "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer will moderate a panel discussion among Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, CSIS Japan Chair and Former Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council Michael Green, and yours truly.

I am told that the event is full to capacity, but you can watch it live over the net on the event's web page.

-- Steve Clemons

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on Rajon Menon's paper, "The China-Russia Relationship, What it Involves, Where It Is Headed, and How It Matters for the United States." While I titled that post "The China-Russia Strategic Relationship," I think the title of this post more accurately reflects where the relationship stands today.

To help us understand the relationship between Moscow and Beijing, Stephen Kotkin recently published a review in Foreign Affairs of Bobo Lo's new book Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics. Lo directs the Russia and China programs at the Centre for European Reform.

Kotkin's basic conclusion is similar to Menon's. He says that "In many ways, the China-Russian relationship today resembles that which first emerged in the seventeenth century: a rivalry for influence in Central Asia alongside attempts to expand bilateral commercial ties, with China in the catbird seat." Another way of framing the relationship would be to say that it is at bottom a tactical exchange of Russian weapons and energy for Chinese cash, with a dose of Russian hedging against American hegemony on top.

A few points from Kotkin's article caught my attention:

-Under the terms of a major energy deal agreed to in February, China will receive 300,000 barrels oil a day from 2011-2030 (a total of 2.2 billion barrels) and will pay less than $20 per barrel! While the price of oil in 2030 is anybody's guess, $20 per barrel certainly seems like a good deal for the Chinese. The unbalanced terms of the deal are an indication = not only the asymmetrical nature of the Chinese-Russian relationship but also of Russia's "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" perspective with regard to China and the United States.

-Kotkin also points out that - in stark contrast to the United States - China bends over backwards to appear gracious and respectful toward Russia at all times. The clearest manifestation of this is China's terming of the relationship with Russia as a "strategic partnership." Failing to treat the Russians with respect during the 1990s dooms the U.S.-Russian relationship to this day.

-Kotkin quotes Russian political analyst Yuri Federov who says that Russia is "doomed to be a junior partner to everyone," and Kotkin's article lends weight to Federov's pessimism. Indeed, after reading Kotkin's article, it is difficult to avoid agreeing with the substance of Vice President Biden's remarks with regard to Russia's medium to long-run future. Russia has sustained its international position in large part due to its friendly relations with China.

But it is likely that Chinese and Russian interests will diverge more sharply as Chinese power increases. For instance, China will eventually develop its own arms industry to a point where it will no longer be as dependent on Russia. Furthermore, as Beijing becomes a more assertive diplomatic player, it will have an interest in limiting Moscow's international decision-making role.

I found Kotkin's entire review informative, and look forward to getting my hands on Lo's book.

-- Ben Katcher