The Washington Note

Romney vs Obama on Afghanistan, Terrorism, & bin Laden

2012-05-02T14:39:22Z

photo credit: Reuters

The anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death has spiked public interest in the foreign policy positions of President Obama and Mitt Romney -- particularly with regards to fighting terrorism and the war in Afghanistan. Over the last couple of days, I have done a number of shows across the networks -- but mostly have the clips from Current TV and MSNBC and want to post here (on next page).

I argue that Barack Obama deserves enormous credit (and political bragging rights) for the decision he made to send the Navy SEAL Team 6 in to get bin Laden. He would have owned the disaster had things gone badly. Mitt Romney's views -- or those he held previously criticizing the resources Obama was expending tracking down bin Laden -- are not shameful or unpresidential. Those views were held by some around the President; some felt the risks were just too high to invade Pakistan's territory and attack the secret bin Laden compound. President Obama overruled those on his team who conveyed their doubts.

The Bush/Cheney team took its eye off the bin Laden ball and turned attention and resources away from attacking bin Laden and al Qaeda and went after Saddam Hussein and later Iraqi insurgent forces instead. Al Qaeda metastasized globally during that period - and Obama's national security team which meets every morning with him has been working one by one through the key al Qaeda commanders and plot integrators and attacking them. The President has been at the helm of this process -- guided essentially by the work and focus of John Brennan, Denis McDonough, and NSC Advisor Tom Donilon.

Finally, Obama is connecting the anniversary of bin Laden's death to a pivot point in America's engagement with Afghanistan. In other words, America -- completing substantially its strategic goal of decimating al Qaeda -- is now framing the enstate of its presence in Afghanistan.

The strategic deal signed yesterday by Hamid Karzai and President Obama is binding but unspecific. Lots can go wrong with the vaguely constructed document which essentially promises that the United States will not abandon Afghanistan after combat troops fully end their mission in 2014. But the President achieved what he wanted which was to fasten Obama's death and the general collapse of the core al Qaeda movement to a strategic shift for the United States.

Presidents find it very hard to end wars -- but Obama seems well on his way to ending America's overextension in Afghanistan as he did in Iraq.

On the following page are some video clips of conversations I have had with Chris Jansing, Eliot Spitzer, Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Andrea Mitchell and Rachel Maddow on this arenas of bin Laden-related and US-Afghanistan issues.
]]> MSNBC Jansing & Co.:

The Atlantic's Steve Clemons discussing Obama vs Mitt Romney on Osama bin Laden raid.

MSNBC Politics Nation with Al Sharpton:

Talking with The Atlantic's Steve Clemons on Osama bin Laden, presidential leadership, and the Obama-Romney tussle over who would make the tough calls.

Current TV Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer:

[Oops -- Seems that Spitzer's team has not posted video though it was a good show. If someone finds, please send me embed code.]

MSNBC The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell:

Speaking to Krystal Ball, Steve Kornacki, and Steve Clemons on politicization of bin Laden raid.

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews (and Andrea Mitchell):

Chris Matthews talks with The Atlantic's Steve Clemons and NBC's Andrea Mitchell about Obama's performance rolling back al Qaeda network.

MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show:

Rachel Maddow speaks with Atlantic editor at large Steve Clemons on President Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Obama Punctuates End of Afghan Conflict

2012-05-01T23:54:31Z

On the one year anniversary of President Obama ordering a Navy SEAL team to "go in and get Bin Laden and if he not there, to get out", the President has given a speech tonight framing what America's post-Afghanistan game will look like.

In a relatively brief 1,540 word statement offered at Bagram Air Base in a surprise trip to Afghanistan, President Obama opened the door to what the elements of an endstate will be -- moving in 2013 to a full support role of an Afghan security and police force now standing at more than 352,000 personnel. The full transition of roles and responsibility would be fully complete by the end of 2014.

Today, President Obama signed a binding agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledging an ongoing responsibility and strategic relationship between the US and Afghanistan after the combat mission of US forces today ended. The so-called 'next' strategic relationship remains subject to speculation -- with caveats that a SOFA, or Status of Forces Agreement, governing the conditions under which US soldiers would be treated still had to be negotiated; that the US Congress would still have to agree annually to budget to cover the ongoing expenses of this important relationship; and that the number of residual, non-combat troops left inside Afghanistan had not been determined. Most believe that number will be in the 15,000-20,000 range.

Tonight, Barack Obama delivered a powerful message reminding Americans and the world that the invasion of Afghanistan was triggered by al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The killing of bin Laden and the decimation of the top tier of the al Qaeda network -- the President stating "We devastated al Qaeda's leadership, taking out over 20 of their top 30 leaders" -- has given the President a key opportunity to not only take credit for being an effective anti-terrorist occupant of the White House but allows him to check off the box in Afghanistan and shift US military and economic resources away from what has been a troubling and costly exercise that was not amplifying American power around the world but leading many nations to conclude that the US was military overstretched and so financially beleaguered that it could not support its allies in times of need.

In 2009, a senior White House official told me that if President Obama failed to "deliver justice to Osama bin Laden, then John McCain would ultimately win as we would be in a never-ending global war against terror and bin Laden." The capture and/or killing of Osama bin Laden was a requirement to an exit from Afghanistan.

Obama in his speech tonight though also escapes the cries from many on the right and the left that the President wants fully out -- that yet again America would leave Afghanistan to rot and erode and become vulnerable to hijacking by radical Islamic forces. By indicating that there would be some sort of minimalist after-life, or next-life of American engagement in the nation, he is saying 'we will not abandon Afghanistan' while at the same time telegraphing that the US would also not be responsible for all that happens in Afghanistan.

If the residual force that Obama is helping to frame and set up with the US-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership is in the rumored 15-20,000 person range, then that gives the US enough firepower to help deter the overthrow of the government in Kabul and gives the US a significant role over some factors inside Afghanistan -- even though various warlords and forces animated by the Taliban, Iran, Pakistan, and India may also play larger roles throughout the country.

Obama tonight indicated the pathway out of the current conflict -- and Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman who have argued that America should essentially never draw down, or at least not in the near to mid term, may be livid.

By connecting the withdrawal and transition to a new 'end state' to the strategic objective of destroying al Qaeda, Obama goes down in history and helps America's stock value rise with the fact that he has shown, finally, that America is actually completing something it told its citizens and the rest of the world it would do.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Anti-Gay Advocates Win: Grenell Resigns from Romney Campaign

2012-05-01T20:08:35Z

Richard Grenell, recently hired by the Mitt Romney for President campaign to serve as the GOP presidential contender's national security spokesman, has resigned.

His statement:

I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman.
While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama's foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign.

I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

This is as wrong for the Romney team to do as it was for the Obama team to fire Obama campaign Muslim American outreach director Mazen Asbahi for distant acquaintances from years previous that were stirring up anti-Obama, anti-Islamic agitants in the US.

Allowing Grenell to resign, and the same is true of Asbahi, just fuels the confidence and status of bigots who undermine big tent, inclusive democracy.

I was just telling Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt this weekend how impressed I was with hyper-conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin's statements on Ric Grenell, the GOP, and the party's anti-gay bigotry. I have almost never agreed with Rubin on her world view but on this, I salute her and think that she was dead on target.

Her kicker line in the essay was important:

It would be a positive thing for the [Republican] party and our country if it was crystal clear there is no place in civil discourse for those fanning the flames of hatred toward gays and egging on fellow conservatives to discriminate against gays in hiring. Unfortunately, not everyone on the right agrees.

When Steve Clemons and Jennifer Rubin actually agree on something, but the GOP gives in to the rants of American Family Association policy director Bryan Fischer and his ilk -- one gets a sense of how really tumorous and distorted certain powerful wings of the Republican Party have become.

The Republican Party needs to re-center itself, recapture the core values it used to believe in, and bring in the likes of Richard Grenell to create a much healthier party. That is probably a long way off but it needs to happen not only so conservatives can be taken seriously again but because democracy needs sound alternatives.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Will Romney Squash Republican Anti-Gay Bigotry?

2012-04-21T18:55:42Z

Right wing, and anti-gay provocateur Bryan Fischer, Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, wrote in early 2011 that Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee were just carrying too much baggage to win the GOP nomination and run for the presidency in 2012.

So, he said a second tier of candidates would probably break through -- listing "Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, John Thune, John Bolton, Mike Pence, and a possible "dark horse" (his term, not mine), Herman Cain."

Ultimately, Fischer said that in the end it would be a hard choice between Herman Cain and Mike Pence. He never gave a thought to Rick Santorum. And as we now know, Mitt Romney is the presumptive nominee -- though Newt Gingrich hasn't tucked it in yet.

About John Bolton, Fischer wrote in January 2011:

John Bolton belongs in the next conservative administration, but not as president. He will be needed in the areas of national security and intelligence, and is a pretty smart fella when it comes to all that. But most of the American people have no idea who he is, and nobody knows where he stands on almost the entire range of domestic issues.

Perhaps Fischer just wasn't tuned in when John Bolton made clear in September 2010 that he 'could live with' gay marriage -- and said this on Don't Ask Don't Tell:

"I don't think there is any good answer to the question why shouldn't gays and lesbians who want to serve their country be allowed to do it."

I have significant differences with John Bolton's international affairs views but I give him great credit for not being the kind of bizarre cookie cutter hard right zealot that Bryan Fischer is. Bolton has not only supported the rights agenda of gay and lesbian Americans, he has been a great boss and mentor to a number of gay people -- including the very capable and doggedly results-focused Richard "Ric" Grenell who served Bolton as spokesman during Bolton's tenure as a recess-appointed Ambassador at the United Nations; his long-time aide in many incarnations Mark Groombridge; and others.

Bolton gets my respect for this -- and I have little patience for those who disparage the competency or qualifications of anyone based on any other issue than merit.

Bryan Fischer's anti-gay bigotry, coughed up of late on Romney for hiring Richard Grenell deserves widespread repudiation and scorn by sensible folks on the right and left. Fischer tweeted yesterday:

Romney picks out & loud gay as a spokesman. If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead

Fischer didn't say the same about John Bolton who was already quite "out" about his support of gay Americans -- and if Fischer scooted through his roster of Republican possibilities, he'd see that nearly all of them had high level, plugged-in, highly competent gay and lesbian staff.

It's Fischer who is the odd man out in American politics; probably irritated that Mitt Romney punched through Fischer's incorrect political analysis of last year. One hopes that Romney stands strong -- and stand by the competence and capacity of people like Grenell -- and that we spend our time battling each other over issues that really matter to the nation.

There I have many differences with Romney, as well as Obama -- but today, Romney gets a salute from me for hiring Grenell.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Moby Dick Airlines and Newt

2012-04-21T11:44:17Z

Huffpost's Paul Blumenthal has an extensive piece out on Newt Gingrich's campaign debt problems. I loved this graf:

The campaign's most absurd unpaid expenses were more than $1 million to the private jet company Moby Dick Airways, nearly $450,000 to a security firm, and more than $500,000 in travel reimbursements and other payments to individual staffers and consultants.

When life imitates absurd movies. . .well, I just love the notion of Newt, Ahab, and Moby Dick.

Can't find much on the airline, but there is a Moby Dick Airways facebook page and a clip or two out there on Newt/Ahab's debts to Moby.

-- Steve Clemons

Romney Ups his Foreign Policy Stock Valuation

2012-04-21T11:35:45Z

Last night I joined Rachel Maddow to talk about Mitt Romney's evolving views on Afghanistan. At various times, Romney has said we needed to get out of the Afghanistan mess, agreeing for the most part at the time of early GOP debates with House Representative and then presidential candidate Michele Bachmann until shifting to a harder-line posture on staying in Afghanistan.

Romney, who has endorsed the general time frame of closing down most of the US mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014 has been critical of Obama's decision to drawdown the committed surge forces and bringing levels to 68,000. Obama -- acting like a Commander-in-Chief should listened to the advice of 'the generals' and then made a decision based on larger strategic factors and ordered that the surge troops be drawn out. Romney has implied that Obama should not only 'listen to the generals' but should do what they tell him.

Romney might want to go back and read testimony given by former ISAF Commander General David Petraeus about Afghanistan before Congress in which Petraeus said that the recommendations he was making were based on factors inside and related to Afghanistan alone -- but were not taking into account the larger "strategic situation." Petraeus shied away from giving a strategic assessment of the value of Afghanistan in relation to other matters like America's posture with Iran, with the broader Middle East, with stability dynamics in South Asia -- particularly with Pakistan and India.

Obama and his national security team lead by Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough have committed to a strategic rebalancing of US forces and long-term commitments. They are working to downsize America's vulnerability to the instability and challenges in the Middle East and South Asia which are sapping American resources and power and deploy to where global economic growth is shifting: Asia.

If Mitt Romney re-reads his Citadel speech and checks out the Asia sections, he agrees that Asia needs more attention.

The clip of my discussion with Rachel Maddow follows below:

Rachel Maddow talks to Atlantic editor-at-large Steve Clemons about whether John McCain is pushing Mitt Romney into more hawkish, never leave Afghanistan position

While I have largely dismissed the foreign policy competence and coherence of Mitt Romney's strategic vision in the past, I'm seeing Romney up his game in a few hires he has made.

First of all, the Romney team has brought on board former Department of State Under Secretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky to play a lead role on shaping his national security and foreign policy agenda and positions. Dobriansky, who until recently was a senior executive with ThomsonReuters and once was Vice President and Director of the Washington operations for the Council on Foreign Relations, is a formidable and creative public intellectual. I'm not sure she wrote the piece, but one could sense a different hand -- probably Paula Dobriansky's by my guess -- behind the interesting Mitt Romney Foreign Policy magazine oped, "Bowing to the Kremlin", in which he challenged Obama's caught-on-mic comments to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on ballistic missile defense.

The essay was tough-minded, internally consistent and coherent, and a real contrast to other Romney foreign policy commentary.

The next big hire that I mentioned to Rachel Maddow last evening was that Ric Grenell, a long time communications expert who served as spokesman for four US Ambassadors to the United Nations, is now Romney's national security spokesman. Grenell worked for former Senator Jack Danforth at the UN; then John Negroponte; then the affable John Bolton; and finally Zalmay Khalilzad. During the long battle over John Bolton's Senate confirmation vote which he never received, Grenell was a tireless, tenacious, tough advocate for Bolton with the media. I was one of those skeptical of John Bolton's UN confirmation, but I give Grenell credit for being fair-minded and serious with me.

Foreign policy pundits and analysts are now going to have to reconsider Romney on foreign policy and national security and consider his positions more seriously.

Presidents aren't just people -- they are franchises. And with Dobriansky and Grenell, Romney has upped the stock value of his foreign policy operation.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Daddy's Home

2012-04-20T11:14:30Z

Daddy has been traveling a lot lately -- Silicon Valley, Berlin for the Institute for New Economic Thinking conference, Istanbul, Doha, Dubai, New York -- and now back to D.C.

-- Steve Clemons

The Meaning of Omar Suleiman

2012-04-16T12:45:42Z

photo credit: Reuters

Egypt's Presidential Election Commission has deemed ten candidates unqualified for the upcoming election battle to succeed the toppled Hosni Mubarak. They include the surprise candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater; the more radical Islamist Hazem Salah Abu Ismail; and Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's long time spymaster.

Egyptian citizens are massing in Tahrir Square protesting anti-democratic manipulation by the Commission as well as protesting in various pockets of the square this or that candidate on the roster -- or, as it were, not on the roster.

Of those in the current public glare, however, Omar Suleiman is the person I find most fascinating and perhaps consequential.

First of all, last September I was told by a well connected Arab associate of mine that the military would put Suleiman up to stand for the presidency but would act as if he was separate from them. I was also told that a secret deal had been made with the Muslim Brotherhood to 'acquiesce' to Suleiman, who despite having served for decades as a powerful head of intelligence in the previous regime was known not to be corrupt.

This was very hard to believe.

I did not write about what I learned at the time as i could not get anyone from the Muslim Brotherhood or anyone in or close to the military to confirm this fantastical idea.

What I did was share what I learned with some at senior levels of the State Department, White House, Pentagon and CIA -- hoping for some feedback or traded information that might help confirm what I had heard about Suleiman, who had been after all a key ally and supporter of US interests for many years but particularly since 9/11.

In each case, the individual from the Obama administration or diplomatic/national security bureaucracy I spoke to simply thanked me for the information and never came back with anything. This doesn't imply complicity; perhaps my administration contacts were as incredulous as I was that the military would put forward someone like Suleiman. I don't know.

What I do know now is that Suleiman did not come out as a candidate at the last minute in some tactical game being played by the Commission and the Army to block and disqualify the Islamist candidates. Gehad El-Haddad, steering committee member for the Muslim Brotherhood's Renaissance Project, has said "We have a strong understanding that Suleiman came to the scene just (so he could) be removed with Shater and Abu Ismail to afford the decision a higher level of legitimacy."

With due respect to El-Haddad, this was not the case as Suleiman's candidacy had been hatched eight months earlier -- and some of El-Haddad's brothers may have known he was coming down the pike.

In the final days of the month of January 2012, protestors and revelers massed in Tahir to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution and to protest the slowness of political reforms. What was interesting during these events was that many of the regime's lead personalities -- not just the Mubaraks but many Ministers of state and security chiefs -- were targeted and lambasted in the protests as enemies of Egypt and of Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood organized many of these protests and identified and created the Mubarak-era human targets around which to rally.

Omar Suleiman, the long time head of intelligence who had participated in many US and European intel confabs to target, render, and occasionally torture Islamists in the wake of 9-11 and who was selected by Mubarak to be his Vice President in the wobbly moments before Mubarak fell from power, was never mentioned or protested against during these January-February 2012 rallies.

For me, this was circumstantially supportive of the still seemingly bizarre notion that Suleiman would be put forward as a candidate for Egypt's presidency.

I don't know what undid the alleged secret deal between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army-supported Ruling Council in Egypt, but the entry into the race of the popular Salafist Abu Ismail seems to have triggered the decision for the more 'moderate' Muslim Brotherhood to break its pledge not to enter a candidate and push forward businessman Khairat al-Shater.

Suleiman, who as I wrote some time ago was doing US bidding in both pretending to be a broker promoting reunification talks between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas parties and yet the principal saboteur of the process, entered the race so that the Ruling Council had their option in -- though Suleiman has publicly disavowed any connection to Egypt's current rulers and the Army.

It's nearly inconceivable that the three candidates whose support comes from the strongest factions of Egyptian society will remain out of the race. If the ruling stands, violence will likely increase -- or puppet candidates will be put forward with these strong men and their institutions behind them.

But don't count Suleiman out. He is the phoenix who seems to keep rising out of the ashes of deals gone bad and broken regimes.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Soros: If Germany Persists, Europe is Over

2012-04-14T16:35:55Z

George Soros has gone to Berlin to tell the Germans that their policies are leading to the disintegration of not just the Euro, but Europe itself.

Yesterday in a panel on the "Future of Europe" at a conference organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Soros said:

The Euro has really broken down. It has sprung defects, some of which could have been anticipated and some were anticipated. But some actually couldn't. Effectively, heavily indebted countries [in Europe] have ended up in the position of a third world country that is heavily indebted in a foreign currency. And that is only one of the unanticipated results of how things worked out [with the Euro].

Soros went on to say that Europe is simultaneously suffering from a Euro Crisis, a sovereign debt crisis, a balance of payments crisis, a banking crisis, a competitiveness crisis and suffering from other serious structural defects.

Bottom line. Soros thinks Europe is over unless Germany immediately changes course and develops a policy framework that is far more flexible and pragmatic than it is forcing now.

Here is the clip of George Soros on the "Future of Europe" panel:

More on the INET meeting in Berlin soon.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

New Economic Thinking vs Ordnungspolitik

2012-04-13T10:17:51Z

photo credit: Reuters

German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble in his welcome note to an Institute of New Economic Thinking convening of some of the world's leading economic theorists and practitioners in Berlin this week wrote:

I would also like to point out that it is not just new thinking that we need. Rather, it is often equally important to recall older ideas and approaches that may have fallen out of the limelight in the meantime. For example, we in Germany have sharpened our focus on the necessity of pursuing economic and fiscal policies that are consistent with the principles of markets and competition -- what we call Ordnungspolitik. This approach can make crucial contributions to the concrete design of policies and especially institutions. In my view, Germany's "debt brake" is an institution that lays the groundwork for reliable long-term policymaking and that by itself can counteract undesriable fiscal and economic developments.

Ordnungspolitik seems to roughly translate into a government debt-averse, laissez-faire approach to economic policy that runs along similar lines to what Republican House Budget Committee Paul Ryan is promoting.

What is frightening many in Europe today is that Schäuble's views are mainstream in Germany, a current account surplus national oasis in a world plagued by debt desertification.

In other words, Germany is not only unwilling to extend a real lifeline to other sinking economies in Europe, it's using this moment in history to promote an ideological austerity that it wants to compel other nations -- when their economies are reeling -- to do the same as the price for German support.

George Soros, anchor speaker among many luminaries at this INET conference, has offered contrarian views to those of Schäuble and published this oped in yesterday's Financial Times, "Europe's Future Not up to Bundesbank." However, in the side chatter here, most believe that the gap between Germany's economic prescriptions and floundering European siblings won't be bridged.

There is sort of a feeling among many here that the European titanic is sinking and that Germany has control of all the life boats and won't let them out.

In a way, developing 'new economic thinking' is similar to researching and promoting use of renewable energy sources -- vital but it takes a long time and major investment to retrofit a world organized around traditional energy.

Soros and some others at this conference have been arguing that the very foundation of equilibrium-driven economics is wrong, that markets are instead prone to bubbles and collapse and require constant regulatory involvement.

But just as the gap between Germany on one side and Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and others on the other is growing -- so too is the gap between market fundamentalists like German Finance Minister Schäuble and 'new economic thinking' market skeptics.

While millions of other-than-German Europeans may sink given Germany's tenaciousness about a debt brake for all and a conservative Ordnungspolitik, also hit hard could be President Obama's reelection aspirations. Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

Japan Heading for Energy Death Spiral?

2012-03-30T14:33:50Z

photo credit: Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk

Nobuo Tanaka's hair is on fire. The immediate past executive director of the International Energy Agency is on a mission attempting to alert officials in the United States, Japan, Europe, China and elsewhere that post-Fukushima Japan may be approaching an energy death spiral.

Tanaka's argument is mathematical at its core. He argues that if Japan does not find a way to 'turn on' its now shuttered nuclear energy reactors, not only will Japan's already sluggish economic condition be crushed with much larger oil and gas imports from Russia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East -- but because of the costs and risk uncertainty -- Japan's powerful manufacturing base may begin pulling out of the world's third largest economy. In a morning meeting with me last week, Nobuo Tanaka said that if Japan didn't get its domestic energy production back on line soon, Japan would experience serious 'deindustrialization.'

Tanaka explained that at current levels, Japan consumes about 5 million barrels of oil a day. Without domestically produced nuclear energy -- for which Japan has stockpiled for decades the world's largest non-weaponized highly processed plutonium reserves -- Japan falls about 10% or half a million barrels of oil short of what it must have.

Japan has 54 nuclear energy reactors -- only two of which are running at the moment and both of which are scheduled for regular check ups and will shut down either late this month or in early May 2012. As regular maintenance has required shutting down plant after plant, none of Japan's governors has allowed the nuclear energy plants to be returned to operation.

On top of the post-Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, global tensions with Iran are threatening Japan's dependence on Iranian oil exports, which Japan's share amounts to about 300,000 barrels a day.

This makes Japan's current potential daily energy deficit about 800,000 barrels per day.

Tanaka, who after leaving the International Energy Agency is biding his time now as Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics, acknowledges that the Saudis have offered Japan, Europe and others who are jittery about the growing tensions with Iran more of its own domestic capacity, which most put at about 2 million barrels a day. Tanaka says the problem is that that's just not enough to manage global shortfalls if there is a strike on Iran and oil flows are interrupted -- and he believes that the Saudis will favor European needs over Japan's.

On top of the gloom about nuclear energy supply doldrums in Japan, the hard consequences of tensions with Iran, there is a third area of concern Tanaka has: the weather. He said that if Japan has a very hot summer -- which some are projecting -- Japan will run another 10% short of supplies on top of the shortages it already projects.

But even all this is not the end of the squeeze.

Japan's other partial energy option is the importation of liquified natural gas (LNG) -- which it imports from Malaysia, Brunei, Qatar, UAE, Indonesia and Australia. Japan needs to further boost imports if it can but prices for LNG are surging. The combined energy deficit Japan is facing would require a net increase, according to Tanaka, of LNG and oil that would run about $40 billion a year -- wiping out completely Japan's trade surpluses and more.

In meetings hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this past week, Nobuo Tanaka made an appeal for the US to export some of its cheap LNG supply to Japan. The price of LNG in Japan is currently four times the price in the United States.

However, House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward Markey has over the last several months been agitating in speeches and correspondence with Energy Secretary for the US to restrict LNG exports -- thus keeping prices low in the United States and leaving key strategic allies like Japan vulnerable to surging global LNG prices and to the geostrategic flirtations from Russia. Tanaka said that with Russia, about which the US has increasing concerns about its mercantilist global energy behavior, Japan may be forced to build new grid and pipeline infrastructure with Russia given the cold shoulder the US is thus far showing Japan.

Tanaka told me that one high-ranking Chinese official recently approached him asking if and when Japan would turn its nuclear reactors back on -- as Japan's massive energy needs now were disrupting supply patterns and costs and could affect China's energy investment picture if Japan's needs were to become structurally permanent.

To some degree, without the Pulitzer and best-selling energy reality books to his name, Nobuo Tanaka is the Daniel Yergin of Japan and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the patterns and vectors of energy production and consumption by all the major global energy actors. His warnings matter -- and yet Japan's political leaders, he believes, have not honestly talked with the Japanese public about the hard choices it faces and a possible economic unraveling that comes with the status quo national nuclear energy allergy.

Tanaka thinks that the U.S. could play a constructive role in helping Japan weather its challenges -- not just in exporting cheaper LNG but it helping bridge the 'trust gap' between Japanese citizens and their government.

The former senior Japan Ministry of Economy Trade & Industry official joked that the only place in the world where an elected legislature may be less popular with its citizens that the US Congress is Japan -- where government incompetence and false statements made during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters have collapsed Japanese trust in their officials. And trust wasn't high before these incidents.

Tanaka realizes that there is a legitimate debate to be had about the safety and management of Japan's nuclear energy facilities and that standards need to be improved and a national conversation has to take place -- but that a total rejection of nuclear energy will send Japan over a cliff as deindustrialization is triggered by energy shocks.

One solution he thinks is for former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners and other US-based, respected nuclear energy experts form an ad hoc commission designed to consult with the Japanese nuclear energy industry and political authorities -- and to create what would be a bilateral, or perhaps even an international, peer review structure. This might allow Japanese citizens to possibly fasten their trust in the international Commission even if doubtful about the solvency of their own business, political, and energy leaders.

It's an interesting proposal -- one that gets to the core issue of trust and lurking uncertainties about nuclear energy in Japan. Some critics could argue that creating such a US-Japan or international commission would allow Japan to push this needed debate under the rug and cover up dangers lurking in Japan's energy system.

Maybe so -- but it also seems that Nobuo Tanaka could be right that Japan's economic future further unravels if it doesn't figure out some way to get safe nuclear energy back online.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

David Ignatius: A National Security Wonk's National Security Wonk

2012-03-19T15:48:22Z

Politico's Dylan Byers has written one of the fairest, most earnest reviews of another journalist's work that I've read in some time, particularly when it is about a writer who enjoys enviably high degrees of access at the White House, CIA, State Department and Pentagon. There is none of the cheap shot snark that invades too much of today's punditry.

I am referring to Byers' piece that just appeared today profiling the work of David Ignatius, who recently was given some insider access to Osama bin Laden files taken during the Navy SEAL Team 6 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad; and in general has been a valuable lead in the journalistic corps digging out detail on the Obama administration's course that many others have been unable to do.

Just today, Ignatius continues his exclusive reporting on the bin Laden files in the Washington Post with a piece titled "A Lion in Winter." Here is an interesting excerpt from Ignatius article highlighting bin Laden's lament about al Qaeda's situation and fears about the state of his movement and the deaths of his key followers:

Bin Laden wanted to save what remained of his network by evacuating it from the free-fire zone of Pakistan's tribal areas. He noted "the importance of the exit from Waziristan of the brother leaders. .?.?. Choose distant locations to which to move them, away from aircraft photography and bombardment."
This evacuation order comes in the most revealing document I was shown, which is a voluminous 48-page directive to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who served, in effect, as bin Laden's chief of staff. Throughout this document, bin Laden pondered the likelihood that al-Qaeda had failed in its mission of jihad.
Bin Laden begins by recalling the glory days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when his al-Qaeda mujaheddin were "the vanguard and standard-bearers of the Islamic community in fighting the Crusader-Zionist alliance."
But the al-Qaeda leader turns immediately to a bitter reflection on mistakes made by his followers -- especially their killing of Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere. The result, he said, "would lead us to winning several battles while losing the war at the end." Bin Laden ruminated on the "extremely great damage" caused by these overzealous jihadists. Not only is the organization's reputation being damaged, he noted, but "tens of thousands are being arrested" in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

I was pleased to see that Sally Quinn, wife of legendary Washington Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee and editor-in-chief and co-founder with Jon Meacham of On Faith, credits the book America and the World: Conversations on the Future of US Foreign Policy with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft as a pivot point helping to trigger Ignatius' recent three year ascent to the top of national security columnists.

Ignatius was the 'interviewer' in this book -- which I put together with then Basic Books editor (now editor at Yale University Press) William Frucht as part of the New America Foundation/Basic Books series. This book, which I think is still highly relevant to today's geostrategic challenges was selected in 2008 as among New York Times book review editor Michiko Kakutani's top ten favorite books of the year.

From Dylan Byers' article:

But it is in the past three years, during the Obama administration, that Ignatius has really earned his reputation as perhaps the most important media voice in national security circles, particularly related to the Middle East.
Quinn, who says Ignatius is "at the pinnacle" of his career, believes he began to take off in 2008 with the publication of "America and the World," a book of conversations between Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft moderated by Ignatius.
Clemons, who commissioned the book, agrees and recalls the book party in Sen. John Kerry's backyard that marked a watershed moment in Ignatius's career. "When Chuck Hagel and John Kerry did the book launch for us at John Kerry's home, and Ignatius interviewed Scowcroft and Brzezinki in Kerry's backyard, it was a signal to the national security community that David Ignatius had broadened his portfolio significantly."
Ignatius is also respected among White House officials because of his nonideological approach to national security, which puts him at odds with the Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt.
"Fred sees himself as a liberal interventionist, which David definitely is not," Clemons said. "David has a moral spine, but he is fundamentally a realist." (Hiatt told POLITICO he wasn't "big on labels," but acknowledged his support for a foreign policy "founded on ideals, helping those who are striving for freedom and human rights.")

During the George W. Bush administration, Ignatius wrote a piece profiling the then hardly-reported-on David Addington, titled "Cheney's Cheney." He wrote this piece after an off-the-record salon dinner the New America Foundation had hosted with former top National Security Council lawyer and then Counselor to the Secretary of State John Bellinger -- in which battles between Bellinger and Addington inside the administration about the legality and course of the Bush/Cheney's anti-terror measures were beginning to surface. It was a very important article at the time as Addington had largely escaped any media interest in his activities until then.

It's in that spirit that I title today's response to Dylan Byers' good essay, "David Ignatius: A National Security Wonk's National Security Wonk."

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

photo credit: Charlie Rose Show

Did Obama Administration Resuscitate Corrupt Banking System?

2012-03-18T13:55:56Z

The New York Times editors nail it today in a piece ridiculing the settlement between too-big-to-fail banks and states designed to assist anti-foreclosure efforts and underwater home mortgage victims.

Although the Obama administration did get some financial sector reforms through, like Dodd-Frank, the result seems to have been not a rewiring of the system to change the balance of power between economic stakeholders, particularly consumers and workers, but rather a resuscitation of the old system with some fig leafs (like this $26 billion foreclosure settlement) designed to cover up the corruption.

The editors write:

When it comes to helping homeowners, banks are treated as if they still need to be protected from drains on their capital. But when it comes to rewarding executives and other bank shareholders, paying out capital is the name of the game.

And at a time of economic weakness, using bank capital for investor payouts leaves the banks more exposed to shocks. So homeowners are still bearing the brunt of the mortgage debacle. Taxpayers are still supporting too-big-to-fail banks. And banks are still not being held accountable.

National Journal Chief Correspondent Michael Hirsh concurs, writing along these lines a few days ago, "Has Wall Street Really Changed?" as well as his "A Tale of Two Financial Heroes" which pivots off The Atlantic's Economy Summit that brought together the likes of Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin, Sheila Bair, Lawrence Lindsey, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Lawrence Summers, Gene Sperling, Laura Tyson, Allan Meltzer and others.

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

photo credit: Reuters

O'Biden & St. Patty's Day

2012-03-18T01:04:01Z

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. I'm not really all that into this festive day but I can be dragged along to get into the fun now and then. That said, A friend has been wearing this O'Bama shirt all day today.

And what it makes me think of is Sarah Palin as depicted in the film Game Change repeatedly saying "O'Biden."

I really, really want a green O'Biden shirt, coffee mug, refrigerator magnet, bumper sticker. . .And to be totally balanced, I'd enjoy some O'Romney paraphernalia too. Someone get Cafe Press on it.

Happy St. Patrick's to all of the O'Bidens and all of you!

-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

UPDATE:

A reader sends in this note that is well informed about the abbreviation battles sounding St. Patrick's Day:

This was always St. Paddy's day (short for Padraic or Padraig) until recently, when it turned into St. Patty's Day for reasons I don't understand. I thought that you would be interested in this clarification, complete with the rolling Twitter feed at the bottom.

http://paddynotpatty.com/

Richard Branson Dissing the Drug War: Streaming Live

2012-03-15T12:25:15Z

This morning, starting at 9:15 am EST, I'll be having a discussion with Virgin Group founder Richard Branson on his new campaign to decriminalize drug possession and to generally knock out the rationale of the so-called Global War on Drugs.

Also joining us will be Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann who will forever be remembered for the zinger line to Bill Maher: "Pot is the new gay."

Feel free to join us -- starting in less than an hour.

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Live broadcast by Ustream
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons