Hillary's State: Huge expectations, big egos, turf wars: Is Clinton's State Department just like her campaign?
Michael Crowley - New Republic: "What she doesn't have is foreign policy experience--a reminder of how alien Hillary's hard-edged political machine is to the diplomatic realm of the State Department. … Fortunately, there are signs that Hillary is paying better attention to management principles than she did when running for president."

Gaza war changes Middle East equation at Israel's expense
Alain Gresh
Le Monde Diplomatique
February 19, 2009 - 12:00am
http://mondediplo.com/2009/02/02gazawar

"They're still living in the War of Independence (1948) and the Sinai campaign (1956). With them, it's all about tanks, about controlling territories or controlled territories, holding this or that hill. But these things are worthless. (…) The Lebanon war (2006) will go down in history as the first war in which the military leadership understood that classical warfare has become obsolete" (1).

This view, expressed in September 2008, comes not from an Israeli pacifist but the country's prime minister, Ehud Olmert. It would take a highly sophisticated analyst to fathom the subconscious of this politician, who is responsible both for the catastrophic war in Lebanon in 2006 and the recent offensive in Gaza, and who at the same time claims his country needs to abandon its narrow vision of security.

He and the majority of those who govern Israel probably share the view bluntly expressed in 2002 by Israel's then chief of staff, general Moshe Yaalon: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people" (2). With each new war comes the same old refrain from Israel's leaders: the Arabs only understand force; teach them a lesson and peace will at last be possible. "We're going to keep our finger on the trigger" (3) was how foreign minister Tzipi Livni put it. Olmert and his government are in favour of peace in the same way that the US government in the 19th century was in favour of the peace ?they decided to impose on the Native American tribes.

The shelling of Gaza came to a provisional halt on 18 January. The Israeli government wanted its troops out of Gaza before Barack Obama was sworn in and Hamas gave Israel a week to withdraw its soldiers and reopen crossing points with Gaza. Beyond the deliberate destruction of vital infrastructure – which includes ministry buildings and fire stations, the parliament and the university – the human cost shown on TV screens the world over has been overwhelming. Even the French media, which has previously been very timid, hasn't been able to obscure the extent of the catastrophe. Leaving to one side a moral reckoning and the crimes which may mean that Israeli leaders one day face an international tribunal, how has the fighting changed the political landscape at local and regional level?

The prime objective of the Israeli government was to permanently weaken Hamas politically and militarily. It claims to have succeeded in this and taught the "terrorists" a lesson. But is it that simple? The tactic of massive bombardments and avoidance of close combat limited Israeli army losses – the third phase of the operation, which was never put into action, would have been an infantry assault of towns – but hasn't broken up the military core of Hamas, which comprises between three and five thousand fighters. Like Hizbullah in 2006, Hamas was able to keep firing rockets until the very last moment and its arms supply lines held up, albeit at a reduced level.

Whatever the criticisms of Hamas's strategy, including their rocket attacks on civilian targets, the vast majority of the Palestinian population holds the Israeli government responsible for the destruction. As Elena Qleibo, a Gaza-based aid worker from Oxfam and an ex-Costa Rican ambassador to Israel says: "People are extremely angry, and the level of hate against Israel is very high. I have lived and worked in Gaza for many years, and I have never seen such hatred from the population" (4).

The Palestinians also resent the Palestinian Authority's passivity during the war. The internal crisis in Fatah, which was already factionalised, has deepened, in spite of the call for unity and resistance made by Marwan Barghouti from prison. President Mahmoud Abbas, who is himself weakened and marginalised, has called for the creation of a government of national unity. So the Gaza of tomorrow will either remain under Hamas control or will be governed by a national authority in which Hamas plays a central role. Surely not what Israel wanted.
The next phase

The focus of the next phase will be the reconstruction of Gaza, which the Israeli government wants to control tightly. No project will be accepted and not a dollar will reach Gaza without their agreement, according to Israeli officials. In addition, Hamas are to be prevented from claiming this aid. Israel has gained support on this from the EU commissioner for external affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner (5), but as there is no other authority in Gaza but Hamas, reconstruction risks being limited to humanitarian aid. All the conditions for renewed hostilities against Israel will once again be met; the Israeli blockade was one of the principal causes for the last escalation.

The war has profoundly altered the regional order, too, though not in the way that Israel wished. First, it has confirmed the isolation of the Palestinian Authority. It has encouraged the consolidation of a resistance front based in Qatar (site of the biggest US base in the region) and Syria. This alliance was made concrete at a meeting in Doha, in which 12 Arab countries took part (among them Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Iraq, America's supposed ally) along with Senegal (which holds the presidency of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference), Turkey, Indonesia, Venezuela and Iran. Mauritania has suspended diplomatic relations with Israel and Qatar has broken off economic links. Venezuela and Bolivia have also severed their diplomatic relations.

A few days later, on 19 and 20 January, the Arab summit in Kuwait brought a fragile reconciliation even if it didn't remove differences of opinion. This was made easier by Israel's refusal to negotiate a ceasefire as proposed by president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Angered by this rebuff and by the signing of a separate US-Israeli agreement to combat arms imports to Gaza (and therefore control the border with Egypt), Mubarak toughened his stance.

Turkey, Israel's traditional ally, has confirmed its growing importance on the regional stage. Like Mubarak, Turkey's prime minister, Recip Erdogan felt humiliated by Olmert, who kept quiet about his intentions regarding Gaza when he saw his Turkish counterpart during a visit to Ankara on 22 and 23 December. The day after the offensive was launched on 27 December, Erdogan said: "This attack, coming while we are making such efforts for peace, is a blow against peace" (6). Not only did Turkey, the mediator which had brought Israel and Syria to the verge of resuming direct negotiations, suspend its efforts, it also called for Israel's suspension from the UN the day after it fired on UN buildings in Gaza.

During the crisis, Turkey has strengthened its relations with Hamas and is hoping to mediate between it and the Palestinian Authority. And Turkish popular opinion has translated into demonstrations in which several million people have taken to the streets in Turkish towns and villages.

Iran has also seen its regional position strengthened. It has extended its alliances in the Arab and Islamic world. Its radical discourse has been increasingly echoed within the region and it is now in a position of strength vis-à-vis the new US administration. However, Tehran has shown restraint in the crisis. Iranian supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei has even declared that "our hands are tied on that terrain" (7). The firing of rockets from Lebanon prompted fears that a second front might open up. Although this didn't happen, the incident can be taken as a warning: Iran has told the Egyptian government through diplomatic channels that it will not allow Hamas to be crushed.
Contempt for Arab opinion

Western governments have nothing but contempt for Arab popular opinion. This was clear when they challenged Hamas's victory in the democratic elections held in Palestine in 2006. They simply shrugged when in a communiqué on 12 January the Saudi government condemned the "racist genocide" in Gaza. They ignore the extent of protest in the Arab and Muslim world, especially in Egypt (despite the state of near-siege in Cairo) and in Afghanistan. Yet which Arab government would now be willing to sit down to peace talks with Israel? The Saudi king has announced that the 2002 Arab initiative for a comprehensive peace between the Arab world and Israel in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state on territory occupied by Israel in 1967 won't remain on the table for much longer.

Meanwhile, on Sunday 18 January, while Western journalists broadcast images of Gaza's lunar landscape, prime minster Olmert was to be seen expressing his pleasure to six European leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, over their "extraordinary support for the state of Israel and their concern about its security". More than in any other conflict since 1967, the European position, especially that of France, has been aligned with the Israeli government's (see "A people abandoned"). In retrospect, the upgrading of relations between the EU and Israel in early December 2008 looks like a green light to the operation in Gaza. In spite of the Israeli offensive, the EU (and France) will strengthen their bilateral relations with Tel Aviv (8).

This Western alliance engaged in the fight against "Islamic terrorism" has more than a hint of the crusades about it. Without going as far as Silvio Berlusconi, who explained in Jerusalem: "When I heard about the rocket fire at Israel, I felt that it was a danger to Italy, and to the entire West" (9), or the director of L'Express, who wrote that the Israeli army was fighting "for our peace" (10) – some on the right used to explain in the 1980s that the apartheid government was fighting "for us" in southern Africa, against communism, the Soviet Union and Cuba – president Sarkozy has explained on many occasions that Hamas bore a heavy responsibility for this war as it had broken the truce, which is untrue (see "Reasons for war: lies, lies and more lies ", opposite).

In spite of Sarkozy's flying around on numerous foreign trips, France has lost a great deal of credit, as demonstrated by the unprecedented attacks on it in the Arab press, including in moderate countries, where it is now bracketed with the US of George Bush. The Saudi daily Al Watan wrote on 11 January "all the great powers have supported Israel's position, including France, which has thus far been the symbol of balance in regional causes". And France's decision to fight against smuggled arms in Gaza can only be construed as an operation to protect an occupying power: no one has called upon Israel to stop re-arming itself.

"A pointless war has led to a moral defeat for Israel" – so ran the headline in the British Sunday paper, the Observer on 18 January. The majority of moral barriers have crumbled in Israel during the Gaza offensive. A phrase sums up this vision: baal habayit histhtageya ("the boss has gone mad"). Its essence is captured by Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser: "If our civilians are attacked by you, we are not going to respond in proportion, but will use all means we have to cause you such damages that you will think twice in the future" (11).

This tactic was used in Lebanon in 2006 and was referred to as the Dahiya doctrine, after the district in south Beirut where Hizbullah was based. The aim is to destroy an entire district or village as soon as it is believed to harbour terrorists who are firing on Israel. It was employed again in Gaza and constitutes what international law recognises as a war crime. Yet it is now openly demanded in Israel. In a letter to prime minster Olmert in 2007, the former Sephardic grand rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu explained "there is absolutely no moral prohibition against indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launching" (12). The longer the occupation, the more it corrupts the occupier. One can only imagine what liberties would have been taken by France in Algeria if the war had gone on for 40 years.

The South African government, showing more determination than most, has condemned Israeli aggression against Gaza. The long experience of fighting the apartheid regime taught ANC leaders all about the hypocrisy of western rhetoric on violence and terrorism. Writing about his negotiations with the white South African government and its demands for the end to violence, Nelson Mandela said: "I responded that the state was responsible for the violence and that it is always the oppressor, not the oppressed, who dictates the form of the struggle. If the oppressor uses violence, the oppressed have no alternative but to respond violently. In our case, it was simply a legitimate form of self-defence" (13).

Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate
George Perkovich and James Acton, Carnegie Report
Abolishing Nuclear Weapons by George Perkovich and James Acton was first published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies as an Adelphi Paper in September 2008. The paper sought to jump-start a broad international debate about how to achieve the immensely important and equally difficult goal of nuclear disarmament.

The present volume takes the next step. A distinguished group of experts—current and former officials, respected analysts and authors—from thirteen countries critique the Adelphi Paper, which is reprinted here. Their diverse views explore pathways around obstacles to nuclear disarmament and sharpen questions requiring further deliberation. The volume concludes with an essay by Perkovich and Acton that works through some of the key questions and dilemmas raised by the critiques.

Japan, Australia Urge U.S. to Cut Nuclear Threats
Shaun Waterman, United Press International The Obama administration is planning a series of "game-changing" moves on global nuclear disarmament, according to members of a commission sponsored by Japan and Australia.

Nuclear: Latin American Revival
Sharon Squassoni, Americas Quarterly Nuclear power, long on the outs, is fashionable again—this time as an antidote to energy insecurity and global climate change. In Latin America, the current plans for nuclear expansion are ambitious. Argentina and Brazil may seek to double or triple existing nuclear capacity. Mexico may build as many as eight more reactors by 2025. Chile, Venezuela and Uruguay are similarly caught up in the enthusiasm for nuclear energy.

Iran's Power in Context
Shahram Chubin, Survival Iran-US relations – strained at the best of times since the 1979 Iranian revolution – have never been worse than during the past six years, due to the much more intense interaction between the two states since the revelations about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the United States' invasion of Iraq.

Japan Firms Played into Khan's Nuclear Hands
Kyodo News Japanese companies played a key role in supplying equipment used for Pakistan's nuclear arms program, investigations by Kyodo News in Islamabad and Tokyo have revealed in recent days.

Learning Not to Love the Bomb
Philip Taubman, The New York Times The Obama administration seems ready to resuscitate relations with Russia, including by renewing nuclear-arms-reduction talks. Even before the inaugural parade wound down, the White House Web site offered up a list of ambitious nuclear policy goals, with everything from making bomb-making materials more secure to the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

NKorea Running Secret Nuclear Plant: Report
Agence France-Presse North Korea is operating a secret underground plant to make nuclear bombs from highly enriched uranium (HEU) despite denying that such a programme exists, a South Korean newspaper said Wednesday.

Analysis: IAEA Candidates a Study in Contrasts
George Jahn, Associated Press Key member states plan in the coming weeks to elect a new leader of the U.N. agency charged with probing Iran's nuclear program, pressing Syria to reveal its atomic secrets and thwarting terrorists from getting the bomb.

The Worst of the Worst… …were never at Guantanamo Bay. They were in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the White House:

Recent interviews with troops from the early days at Guantanamo confirm that the “worst of the worst” charge was suspect from the very first encounters with the detainees. There wasn’t any reliable vetting. Although the first troops on the ground at Guantanamo were led to believe that they would be receiving the “worst of the worst,” the detainees themselves seemed from the start to be far from the dangerous men they had expected — symbolically, individuals who, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, were capable of chewing through hydraulic cables on board the transport planes but who it turned out arrived with rotting teeth and weakened physiques. Overall, the U.S. military was blindsided by who they received at Gitmo and by the condition in which the detainees arrived. Arriving dehydrated, and startlingly thin, the detainees were mostly not only small and weak, but did not even speak the languages which the troops on the ground had been told to expect. Many came from countries outside of the Afghanistan/Pakistan area. Some did not even seem capable of any dire acts.

Among the earliest arrivals, one was apparently an octogenarian; another was over ninety. One was a diagnosed schizophrenic. However possible the danger quotient of these first arrivals, the inclusion of these cases made the team at Gitmo suspect that the vetting process had been haphazard at best.

Later investigations have shown that most of the detainees were not captured directly by U.S. troops. Instead, the U.S. paid bounties to, or otherwise received the prisoners from, Pakistani boarder guards and Northern Alliance troops. There was no single profile for the detainees; instead they seemed like a ragtag and miscellaneous group. Nor did they arrive with information.

The pocket litter that detainees were carrying when captured – materials that trained police would have carefully preserved and labeled for use during interrogation – came stuffed randomly into bags but was often not separated per individual. Doubts about the identities of the detainees were registered by visiting Congresspersons and by members of the Bush Administration, but these doubts never seemed to go anywhere.

Thus began the story of defending a mission that seemed in part fraudulent from the start. As the general in charge has noted in retrospect, it took a petty officer to put a detainee on the plane to Guantanamo and an order signed by the President of the United States to get him out.

Iraq's Kurds Lose Again




It appears increasingly likely that the Kurdish cause will be the latest American casualty in Iraq.

Kurdistan, an autonomous region in Iraq's northeast, is governed by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). Whether Kurdistan remains viable as an autonomous region depends on whether it can incorporate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as its capital. The Kurds likely constitute a plurality of the city's population, but the Arabs and Turkmen each claim the city as their own.

According to Article 140 of the 2005 Constitution, a referendum to decide Kirkuk's status was supposed to be held by December 31, 2007. That deadline and others have passed because the city's Arabs and Turkmen have resisted, afraid that a vote would result in a Kurdish victory.

Neither the central government in Baghdad nor the KRG can compromise on Kirkuk. The KRG needs the power base that Kirkuk provides to maintain its autonomy and the government in Baghdad "could [not] give Kirkuk to the Kurds and hope to survive, in view of broad popular opposition in Arab Iraq," according to the International Crisis Group.

Over the past several months, Prime Minister al-Maliki has sent "support councils" (read: government militias) into Kurdish areas. The councils are clearly meant to challenge the KRGs security forces, known as the peshmerga. Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani has pleaded with the United States to intervene to avoid what could become a civil war.

But despite its earlier support, the U.S. government has made clear that it will not become involved. Back in October, the military commander responsible for Kirkuk and the Kurdish regions, Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, told the [i]New York Times[/i] that If the Kurdish and Iraqi government forces fight, the American military will "step aside," rather than "have United States servicemen get killed trying to play peacemaker."

State Department Spokesman Robert Wood struck the same note earlier this week. He said that Iraqi citizens have to rely on the country's democratic system to work out their differences, not the United States. "There are ways for people in Iraq to bring the concerns that they have to the levers of power. It's a democracy, and it's not really up to the United States to reassure anyone."

Every occupying force chooses winners and losers on its way out. And while questions remain as to who the "winners" in Iraq will be, it is becoming clear that the Kurds, the world's largest ethnic group without a state to call their own, will again find themselves among the losers.

--Ben Katcher

Will Obama Try to Untie the Syrian-Iranian Alliance?
Al-Sijill 02/19/09
In spring 2002, a US diplomat made a strong, albeit off-the-record case for closer relations between Washington and Damascus. Syria's deeply rooted secularism, she told me, was a strong foundation for a strategic relationship that could greatly enhance Washington's position in the Middle East.



"We shouldn't be antagonizing the Syrian people," the diplomat said. "This country is pluralist in nature. We used to have a saying in Saudi Arabia about how America had shared interests with the Saudis but different values. Here we have shared values but different interests. This society is the one we want to work with."

It was a rhetorical plea, of course. The Second Intifada was less than eight months old and Syrian President Hafez Al Assad had been dead for nearly a year. A week earlier, Colin Powell, the then-US Secretary of State had called for an end to Israel's siege on Palestinian cities and for Palestinian extremists to stop their suicide attacks on Israelis. A few days later, he eased off the Israelis, reaffirming Washington's long-standing support of the Jewish state's right to protect itself.



Today, US-Syrian relations are at an all-time low, just another deficit in Barack Obama's dubious presidential inheritance. The US ambassador to Damascus, recalled after the 2005 killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has yet to be replaced. In the fall, after a US raid on Syrian targets by Iraq-based gunships, Damascus shut down the American School and the US embassy's language center. Repairing the relationship will be as challenging as it is urgent, so it is refreshing to see Democratic leaders in Washington taking tentative steps to do just that.



Last week, the State Department confirmed it would allow Boeing to export spare parts to Syria, a rare exemption to the sanctions regime imposed on the country by the Bush administration. The move follows a recent visit to Damascus by House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi, where she met with President Bashir Al Assad. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a proponent of closer US-Syrian ties, is due to arrive in Damascus this week. Howard Berman, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is also expected to visit Syria soon.



This diplomatic pilgrimage, which is being coordinated with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggests a revival of the rigorous US-Syria track nurtured by James Baker when he was the top American diplomat under the sage George H.W. Bush. Israel's chilling lurch rightward and the Palestinian Authority's ongoing power struggle will make progress on the Israel-Palestine front all but impossible until the second half the Obama administration. Even if President Obama can establish some breathing room by stabilizing the economy within a year – a big "if" – he'll then have mid-term elections to consider. Already, leading Republicans like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, are firing warning shots across the White House bow about "aiding an unrepentant regime." Yawn.



For anyone prepared to do something about America's hapless position in the Middle East, however, Syria is the key. Six years ago, an isolated Damascus appeared to be on the brink of an economic crisis and Bush administration officials were talking gleefully about Mr. Assad as the next Baathist leader in the Pentagon's cross-hairs. The fall of Saddam Hussein and the end of the United Nations-led oil-for-food program deprived Syria of subsidized Iraqi petroleum. The Hariri killing threatened to deepen Damascus's isolation and its subsequent withdrawal from Lebanon denied it a major source of black market funding.



Now, Syria is an important regional player. Its non-oil gross domestic product has grown by 34 percent since 2004 thanks to aggressive deregulation, and it is growing closer to the European Union commercially. Syrian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas have survived bloody wars with Israel with their prestige intact. With the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the emirates discredited on the Arab street by their initial support of Fatah during Israel's onslaught against Hamas, Mr. Assad has emerged as the authentic Arab voice of resistance against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its incarceration of Gaza.



Then there is Iran. Having jousted during the Democratic primary about the virtue of talking with Tehran, both Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton are ready to deal directly with Iran, although not before elections in June. A workmanlike dialogue between the US and Syria will give Iranian voters – perhaps even supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – something to think about. While Mr. Khamenei supports hardline presidential incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, he has done nothing to stop moderate challenger and ex-president Mohammad Khatami. Assuming Mr. Khamenei believes he has something to gain from stable relations with the Great Satan – certainly a lot of Iranian merchants and businessmen do; unlike Syria, the Iranian economy is a mess – he'd have an easier time of it with a reformer like Mr. Khatami at the helm. If Mr. Obama can woo Damascus away from its pas de deux with Tehran while cajoling Russia and China to cooperate as good-faith negotiators, an acceptable compromise over Iran's nuclear ambitions might actually be attainable. (Mrs. Clinton's conciliatory remarks about China prior to her departure for Asia last week were particularly encouraging.)



Mr. Obama, whose energies have been consumed almost exclusively by the economic crisis, has had a tough first month in office. It will take time before the contours of his Middle East strategy are fully formed. Though an opening with Syria appears likely, there are obstacles ahead beyond the predictable attacks from the pro-Israel right wing. He must be sensitive to the concerns of Lebanon that its hard-won independence from Damascus will not become a bargaining chip in talks with Mr. Assad, for example. But the new president clearly has an instinct for putting his adversaries on the defensive – not with military might but with something far more effective: charm.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45838 Obama Nixed Full Surge After Quizzing Brass
Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (IPS) - President Barack Obama decided to approve only 17,000 of the 30,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander, after McKiernan was unable to tell him how they would be used, according to White House sources.

But Obama is likely to be pressured by McKiernan and the Joint Chiefs to approve the remaining 13,000 troops requested after the completion of an Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review next month.

Obama's decision to approve just over half the full troop request for Afghanistan recalls a similar decision by President Lyndon B. Johnson to approve only part of the request for U.S. troop deployments in a parallel situation in the Vietnam War in April 1965 at a comparable stage of that war. Johnson reluctantly went along with the request for additional troops within weeks under pressure from both the field commander and the Joint Chief of Staff.

The request for 30,000 additional troops, which would bring the U.S. troop level in Afghanistan to more than 60,000, had been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as by Defence Secretary Robert Gates before Obama's inauguration. A front-page story in the Washington Post Jan. 13 reported that Obama was ready to "sign off" on the deployment request.

On Jan. 30 Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said between 20,000 and 30,000 more troops would "probably" be sent to Afghanistan and the figure would "tend toward the higher number of those two".

But on Feb. 9, Mullen indicated that the Pentagon would soon announce that three brigades, or about 16,000 troops, would be deployed to Afghanistan in the coming months.

What had changed in the nine days between those two statements, according to a White House source, was that Obama had called McKiernan directly and asked how he planned to use the 30,000 troops, but got no coherent answer to the question.

It was after that conversation that Obama withdrew his support for the full request.

The unsatisfactory response from McKiernan had been preceded by another military non-answer to an Obama question. At his meeting with Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon Jan. 28, Obama asked the Joint Chiefs, "What is the end game?" in Afghanistan, and was told, "Frankly, we don't have one," according to a Feb. 4 report by NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski.

Obama had also learned by early February that earlier assurances from Petraeus of an accord with Kyrygistan on use of the base at Manas had been premature, and that the U.S. ability to supply troops in Afghanistan would be dependent on political accommodations with Russia and Iran.

The rationale from the military leadership for doubling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, even without a strategy or a concept of how the war could end, had been to "buy time" for an effort to build up Afghan security forces, as indicated by Mullen's Jan. 30 remarks.

The 17,000 troops, on the other hand, presented the upper limit of what Obama had pledged to add in Afghanistan during the campaign, according to Lawrence Korb of the Centre for American Progress, who was an adviser to Obama.

Korb told IPS that Obama's decision not to wait until the key strategic questions were clarified before sending any more troops was based on the belief that he had to signal both Afghans and Pakistanis that the United States was not getting out of Afghanistan, according to Korb. "There are a lot of people in both countries hedging their bets," said Korb.

McKiernan reminded reporters Wednesday that the 17,000 troops represent only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested. That complaint suggested that he had been given no assurance that the remainder of the troops would be approved after the policy review.

The Wall Street Journal quoted an administration official Wednesday as saying that the troop authorisation addresses the "urgent near-term security needs on the ground," but "does not prejudge or limit the options of what the [Afghanistan] review may recommend when it's completed."

Obama may have become more wary of getting mired down in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, despite his strong commitment to increasing troops to Afghanistan during the campaign.

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, on whom Obama has reportedly relied for advice on foreign policy, told Sam Stein of the Huffington Post Wednesday, "We have to decide more precisely what is the objective of our involvement. Because we are increasingly running the risk of getting bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in pursuit of objectives which we are lacking the power to reach."

Brezinzski said the administration needed "very specific, narrow objectives".

Korb told IPS that the policy review will deal with political-diplomatic as well as military policy issues, including the option of seeking to incorporate at least elements of the insurgents into the government through negotiations. He recalled that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been advocating negotiations with the Taliban for two years.

Both Obama's decision to agree to just over half of his field commander's request for additional troops and the broader strategic situation offer striking parallels with the decision by President Lyndon B. Johnson in April 1965 to approve 36,000 out of a 49,000 troop request for Vietnam.

Johnson's decision, like Obama's, was made against a background of rapid deterioration in the security situation, worry that the war would soon be lost if more U.S. troops were not deployed, and an unresolved debate over how the troops would be employed in South Vietnam. Some of Johnson's advisers still favoured a strategy of protecting the key population centres, whereas the field commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, was calling for a more aggressive strategy of seeking out enemy forces.

Another parallel between the two situations is high-level concern that too many U.S. troops would provoke anti-U.S. sentiment. That was the primary worry of some of Johnson's advisers about the effect of deploying three divisions in South Vietnam.

Similarly, Gates said Dec. 14 he would be "very concerned" about deploying more than the 30,000 troops requested by McKiernan, because, "At a certain point, we get such a big footprint, we begin to look like an occupier." Gates repeated that point in Congressional testimony Jan. 27, in which he again stressed the failure of the Soviet Union with 120,000 troops.

McKiernan, on the other hand, said Wednesday, "There's always an inclination to relate what we're doing with previous nations," he said, adding, "I think that's a very unhealthy comparison."

Johnson was worried about sliding into an open-ended commitment to a war that could not be won. But two months later he gave in, against his better judgment, to a request from Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander in Vietnam, for "urgent reinforcements". The escalation of the war continued for another two years.

Obama now faces the prospect that the Joint Chiefs will renew their support for McKiernan's request for the remaining 13,000 troops next month. And if the full 30,000 troop increase proves to be insufficient, he is likely to face further requests later on for "urgent reinforcements."

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. .AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink { height: 1px; width: 1px; overflow: hidden; } .AOLWebSuite a {color:blue; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer} .AOLWebSuite a.hsSig {cursor: default}

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Clinton trip puts Asia back on US agenda – International Relations Articles:

“Washington's disregard and strategic neglect of Asia - epitomised by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's repeated absence from high-level ministerial meetings - gave China an opportunity to launch a diplomatic 'charm offensive' and gain political capital among regional allies. Clinton's trip signifies an appreciation of Asia's diplomatic culture, which values face-time and presence, and will be crucial to fostering a more balanced US foreign policy. … One of the many lessons learned from the Bush administration is that military force alone is insufficient to counter terrorists and their radical ideology. Clinton's decision to go to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, underscores how serious Obama is about enhancing US public diplomacy and outreach efforts in the Muslim world.” Photo from Huffington Post

Amazing Appointment — Chas Freeman as NIC Chairman – Jim Lobe, LobeLog.com: “[I]t appears that Chas Freeman has been appointed chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the body that is charged by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with synthesizing the analyses of the entire U.S. intelligence community and producing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) … .

For a taste of both his rhetorical style and his politics, see, for example, this speech he gave to the U.S. Information Agency Alumni Association two years ago or, better yet, this one to the Pacific Council on International Policy in October 2007 in which he says: … ‘Israel and the United States each have our reasons for what we are doing, but no amount of public diplomacy can persuade the victims of our policies that their suffering is justified, or spin away their anger, or assuage their desire for reprisal and revenge.’”

The Axis of Upheaval - Niall Ferguson, Foreign Policy:

Forget Iran, Iraq, and North Korea -- Bush’s “Axis of Evil.” As economic calamity meets political and social turmoil, the world’s worst problems may come from countries like Somalia, Russia, and Mexico. And they’re just the beginning.

China, taking advantage of global recession, goes on a buying spree
China's government is bargain-hunting internationally as the financial crisis pushes down prices of energy resources and assets.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the February 21, 2009 edition

Beijing - General Motors is doing it. The world's second-largest mining group is doing it. Russia, Brazil and Venezuela are doing it. And China is loving it.

Squeezed between falling profits and the credit crunch, a growing number of troubled corporations and countries are turning to cash-rich China for a bailout. And with foreign assets cheaper than they have been for years, Beijing is going on an international spending spree.

"The international financial crisis ... is equally a challenge and an opportunity," China's energy czar, Zhang Guobao, wrote recently in the official newspaper People's Daily. "The slowdown ... has reduced the price of international energy resources and assets and favors our search for overseas resources."

So far, the government has concentrated on natural-resource deals, securing supplies of oil and minerals in return for large amounts of cash. But private Chinese firms are also taking advantage of the crisis in other sectors: Diesel-engine giant Weichai Power is expected to buy a French plant that GM is selling off in its struggle to survive.

Though the Chinese economy has also been hit by the crisis, cutting growth by almost half, "what sets China apart is that Chinese banks have not been so badly hurt, and the policy banks still seem ready to lend" in support of key government objectives, says Erika Downs, a China energy specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The China Development Bank, for example, is financing China's biggest-ever foreign investment – a $19.5 billion bid by the mostly state-owned Aluminum Corp. of China for an 18 percent slice of Rio Tinto. The Australian mining company desperately needs the cash in order to pay off $19 billion in debt over the next two years.

That deal, still to be approved by Australian regulators, is seen here as a pathfinder. "It illustrates Chinese state business's strong capacity ... and gathered experience for state-owned firms to operate abroad in the future," explained an article published earlier this month in People's Daily.

Other recent multibillion-dollar deals include the purchase by China Petrochemical Corp., the country's second-largest oil producer, of Canada's Tanganyika Oil, which works in Syria, and the bid that China Minmetals has made for OZ Minerals, an Australian zinc producer on the verge of bankruptcy.

"The amount of money coming out of Beijing suggests they are confident that we are at the bottom of the market," says Paul Cavey, an analyst with Macquarie Bank. And with China's trade surplus still wide, since imports have fallen even faster than exports, "they still have a lot of money to play with," he adds.

Last week the Chinese government sank $39 billion of that money in three separate deals to secure future oil supplies from Russia, Brazil, and Venezuela.

A $25 billion loan to Russia, whose economy is reeling from plummeting oil prices, won a promise to supply 290,000 barrels per day for the next quarter-century and to build a pipeline into China.

"The slowdown in the Russian economy, declining crude prices, and production and the credit crunch have lent the Chinese far better bargaining power," wrote Gordon Kwan, head of China energy research at CLSA brokerage, in a research note last week.

A $10 billion loan to Brazil, announced during a visit to the country by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, secured a similar pledge to provide up to 160,000 barrels of crude a day, while Mr. Xi also signed a deal with Venezuela for up to 1 million barrels per day by 2015 in return for another $4 billion from China to top up an existing development fund.

"More than anything else, China always wants security of resources going into the future," says Mr. Cavey. The crisis, and falling asset prices, "open up a significant part of the world," he adds. "China will think of investing pretty much anywhere there are resources, not just the places that other countries don't want to go."

Few expect Beijing to invest in the troubled financial sector, however, despite the hopes some foreign banks have harbored of attracting Chinese money. "Natural resources are so strategic for a country, they can justify investments there, but they can't justify another financial sector deal," says Andy Xie, an independent economist.

China's sovereign wealth fund has lost between half and two-thirds of investments it made over the past two years in Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, and Barclays, Mr. Xie points out.

As China begins to move again on the international scene, taking advantage of low prices, it remains to be seen how much political resistance its bids will provoke.

In 2005, political pressure in Washington forced China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) to withdraw its bid for the US oil firm Unocal, even though the Chinese firm offered more money than its rival, Chevron.

"The situation is so bad that there is a desperation now to get money," says Cavey. "But it will still be a difficult political balance to strike" for the state-owned firms that are expected to be most active abroad.

Especially touchy will be the question of state assistance for Chinese firms, potentially giving them an advantage over Western competitors. The China National Petroleum Corp.'s website last week carried a report on the government's yet-unpublished oil and gas development plan, which suggested such assistance is foreseen.

"China will encourage enterprises to develop the exploration and acquisition of overseas resources and will offer low-interest loans and preferential lending rates for major overseas energy investment projects," the report said.

"With low oil prices, we may see Chinese banks playing a bigger role" in funding acquisitions, says Dr. Downs at Brookings. "And if it is known that Chinese companies are getting money from state banks at low interest rates, we will see concern that this support creates a playing field that is not level."

What Kind of War?
William Pfaff

Paris, February 19, 2009 – Except for the brief NATO intervention in Kosovo and Serbia in 1999, all of the wars or significant military expeditions fought by the United States since
the cold war have been with Asians, and it has lost nearly all of them (two – Iraq and Afghanistan -- hang in the balance at this moment).

These wars started out with real armies or armed movements struggling over the fate of Europe, industrially destined to be one of the two centers of the postwar world.

The cold war originated in the attempts of Soviet and western intelligence and political agencies at the end of the second world war to control as large a part of Europe as possible (a continuation of the pre-war Comintern effort in Europe, and especially in the Spanish civil war: but that's another age and another subject).

In 1943-45 the Soviet army drove the Germans out of Eastern Europe, and despite the resistance of certain groups in the Baltic states and the clandestine Polish Home Army organized during the war, the Soviets were successful in imposing governments usually composed of pre-war Communists who had taken wartime refuge in Moscow.

The western limits of Soviet military occupation, following the fighting and then as negotiated among the Allies, lay in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, and this is where the political struggle mainly took place, together with France and Italy where large pre-war Communist labor and political organizations played a major wartime role as partisans and as auxiliaries of regular Allied armies in the final months.

The Russians and the western Allies divided Germany and Austria into zones. The political struggles in France and Italy continued, but Stalin recognized that the American, British and Free French armies would fight attempted coups in those countries. So that froze the West European cold war.

Stage two of the cold war had both political and military aspects in Eastern and Southern Europe. The U.S. and Britain continued airdrops and other military assistance to anti-Communist partisan groups inside what again had been declared Soviet territory. Communist partisans, supported from Tito's Yugoslavia, fought for control of northwestern Greece.

Allied intelligence initiated an operation to liberate Albania from its Communist-installed government, which seemed an easy target as Tito's Yugoslav forces had blocked the Russian army from both countries, and in 1948 Stalin and Tito quarreled. That cut off the Greek Communists, and the Albanian resistance was betrayed by the British traitor Kim Philby.

Stage three of the cold war opened, ominously, in Asia, but again had to do with ideology. The U.S. tried ineffectually to help Chiang Kai-shek against the Chinese Communists, but Chiang was driven to refuge in what then was known as Formosa.

In June 1950, after Soviet Occupation troops had left northern Korea, and only a small detachment of the U.S 24th Infantry Division remained in the South, Stalin apparently authorized the provisional North Korean Communist government to attack the south to unify the country, in which it very nearly succeeded. In the end Korea was left divided, as it remains.

By this time a new war emerged, which we continue to fight today. Nationalist, or national-Communist, movements were attacking, with success, the remaining British, French and Dutch colonial regimes in the region, and by 1947 the Partition of India into Muslim and secular states was agreed. Communism proved a decisive issue only in Vietnam, as Americans have no need of being reminded.

However the cold war now was left behind and needed a replacement. These struggles in Asia exploited Communist sympathy and political and military support in what fundamentally were national liberation struggles. None ended with the Communists in power except Vietnam (and its Laotian satellite), but Indochinese Communism had become a
wholly indigenous affair.

By this time the Soviet Union and China were collapsing as Communist states. Washington's attention, fed by its energy needs and Israel's demand for protection of the Palestine territories it had annexed, was turning to the Middle East.

From that came Palestinian attacks on U.S. forces abroad, U.S. expulsion from Iran, the Iran-Iraq war, and then the first`Gulf War against Iraq, al Qaeda's entrance upon the scene, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the return to Afghanistan, a problem which President Barack Obama is mulling over these very days.

What now is this war about? Territory? Afghanistan is a poor country without resources. Who rules it cannot be of serious consequence to the world's sole superpower. Pakistan has several nuclear weapons, but these are not intended for the U.S. (or Israel, and couldn't reach either if they were); they are reserved for India, in theory).

What do Afghanistan and Pakistan have that so disturbs Americans that Washington will fight a new war because of it? The answer is that they harbor the prophets of a new, politicized religious sect, which says the world can be saved if everyone is converted to Islam, and scrupulously follows its laws, as interpreted by certain Pushtoon tribal groups in Pakistan's North West Frontier Territory.

This seems to be what Washington fears. We have come a long way from Allied and Soviet armies in industrialized Central Europe. But what need drives the United States from one war to the next?

© Copyright 2009 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.



This article comes from William PFAFF
http://www.williampfaff.com
The URL for this article is:http://www.williampfaff.

February 23, 2009
Dr. James J. Zogby ©
President
Arab American Institute



Israeli Paralysis Calls for Arab Action


Some elections serve as clarifying moments in a nation's
history, others resolve little and serve only as a reflection of
internal division. The former provide direction, the latter create
paralysis.

The recently completed Israeli elections and ongoing
deliberations over to the shape of the next government serve to
demonstrate the profound divisions that exist in Israel and the
dysfunctional state of its political system.

As is widely known, the current governing coalition lost
its mandate. The lead party, Kadima led by Tzipi Livni, a centrist
configuration (by Israeli calculations), was comprised of an amalgam
of individuals spun-off from Likud and Labor. They declined from 29 to
28 seats. Kadima's coalition partner, Labor, dropped from 19 seats to
13. And Meretz, a more leftist party (not in the coalition but
supportive of peace efforts), lost support, going from 5 to a mere 3
seats.

This gives the Zionist center-left a total of 44 seats -
far short of the 61 needed to form a government. But this is only part
of the story. Post-election analysis suggests suggested that while
Kadima was initially seen as Likud-lite (after all, its founder was
Ariel Sharon), it was viewed by voters in this election as a horse of
a different color. It is estimated that about 70% of the last-minute
support garnered by Livni's grouping came from Labor and Meretz voters
hoping to block a Netanyahu victory. All this may be academic, but is
still useful in order to understand the constraints that this will
impose on Livni and the strong push that will be made to merge Kadima
and Labor as an opposition bloc.

The right won, to be sure, but not without complications
of their own. Netanyahu's Likud won 27 seats, with some of his party's
most extreme members in leadership roles. Next in line was Avigdor
Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party with 15 seats. Lieberman, a former
Likudnik, launched Yisrael Beiteinu to exploit the resentments of
Israel's sizable Russian immigrant community. Shas, a religious party
of Sephardic Jews garnered 11 seats, followed by a number of smaller
groupings representing hard-line nationalist and religious parties
which will hold a combined 12 seats.

The Arab parties and Hadash - a coalition of communists
and Israeli-Arab leftist groups (the communists once serving as a
substitute nationalist party for Israel's Arabs) garnered 11 seats.

Israel's problem is both political and demographic. The
"Jewish State" isn't just Jewish, nor is it in agreement on what it
means to be Jewish, with deep divisions between the ultra-orthodox and
the nationalists. And demographically speaking, with 20% Arabs, 20%
Russians, and 20% Orthodox, you have the makings of a dysfunctional
brew.

So Netanyahu won, but what exactly did he win? And how
does he govern, given the difficult choices he must face in forming a
coalition.

Since right-wing parties hold 65 seats, it might appear
easy to cobble together a government of the like-minded. But the
religious-secular divide is deep and, at times, ugly. The orthodox
will make demands for special consideration by the state that
Lieberman and other ultra-nationalists will reject.

At the same time, Netanyahu, though a hard-line
nationalist, is a savvy (some say dissembling) political leader,
keenly aware of Israel's international standing and image. He knows
that the Obama Administration has committed itself, as George Mitchell
has recently noted, not to a "process," but to the realization of a
two-state solution, and so will not countenance obstructionist
behavior. Nor will the European Union. Netanyahu, therefore, might
prefer a coalition with Yisrael Beiteinu and Kadima - choosing the
latter for political cover in much the same manner that Ariel Sharon
used Shimon Peres. Such a coalition would do little and be, itself,
dysfunctional (though for different reasons) than the coalition of the
right.

No matter how you add it up, the numbers aren't going to
yield either a majority for a clear direction, or peace.

All of this should move the Arabs to act. Instead of
accepting this Israeli paralysis and dysfunctionality as a
justification for their own, Arab leadership can seize the high ground
and establish themselves as the partners for peace, pushing Israel and
the U.S. to make the next moves.

Given Mitchell's recent indication that the Obama
Administration would, unlike its predecessor, work with a Palestinian
government of national unity, efforts must be made to move in that
direction. Hamas' leadership should be pressed (and shamed) into
joining such a unity effort on its well-known terms - forswearing
violence and accepting agreements already entered into by the
Palestinian Authority.

Such an agreement would put Netanyahu on a difficult
course with Washington over such issues as: ending the blockade of
Gaza, stopping West Bank settlement expansion and land confiscations,
and being asked to make the same commitments to honor past agreements
and forswear violence, while entering into good-faith negotiations on
"land for peace."

Given Netanyahu's penchant for attempting to change the
debate, as in the 90s he worked to shift the discussion he 90s it was
from "land for peace" to "security and combating incitement." now he
intends to substitute "economic growth" for making peace. He will want
to obfuscate and stall Mitchell's efforts - complaining of his own
government's paralysis. And under cover of this obfuscation, he will
continue to take unilateral measures that will solidify Israeli
control over Palestinian lands and lives.
This is a moment Arabs can seize, and an opportunity to
take control of the debate. This opportunity should not be missed.

A new, uncertain trumpet

Arnaud de Borchgrave
Monday, February 23, 2009

COMMENTARY:

While President Obama signed orders to deploy 17,000 additional U.S.
troops to Afghanistan, including 8,000 Marines, his thinking on the
Afghan war has changed significantly. It's no longer the gung-ho view
of a surge-type operation routing al Qaeda's terrorists.

The reinforcements also fall shy of the 30,000 troops requested by
Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan,
which would have doubled current U.S. force levels in a country of 35
million the size of France. Juggling troop requirements between two
wars leaves one theater shortchanged. "Even with these additional
forces," warned Gen. McKiernan, "I have to tell you that 2009 is going
to be a tough year."

Al Qaeda is in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), those
seven tribal agencies under Pakistani sovereignty on the Afghan
border, not in Afghanistan. But the more the United States keeps
bombing al Qaeda's safe havens in FATA by remote-controlled, unmanned
Predators, the more civilians get killed, and the more Taliban's
politico-religious fanatics boost their stock in Pakistan proper.

Mr. Obama faced his first foreign hurdle on open-ended NATO
commitments in Afghanistan when he made his first foreign visit to
Canada this week. But when the moment of truth arrived, he punted. "I
certainly did not press the prime minister on any additional
commitments beyond the ones that have already been made," he said
later.

The Canadian Parliament had already voted to pull out its 2,800
troops by 2011, and both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign
Minister Lawrence Cannon made clear only another vote in a hostile
Parliament could change that.

The only other two nations authorized to fight in Afghanistan -
Britain and the Netherlands - are also under parliamentary pressure to
wrap up their kinetic contributions by the end of 2011.

Centcom commander Gen. David H. Petraeus believes the British will
stick it out with the United States as long as it takes. Prime
Minister Gordon Brown's entourage does not share Gen. Petraeus'
confidence.

President Obama is also asking the other NATO allies with kinetically
impaired troops whose parliaments voted to keep them out of harm's
way, to contribute more soldiers. France, Germany and Spain have
declined. Italy, under conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi, has
agreed to boost its Afghan contingent from 2,300 troops to 2,800. They
are based near Herat close to the Iranian border and will only be
allowed to open fire against Taliban if the G-8 summit of major
industrial nations next July, on the island of La Maddalena, between
Corsica and Sardinia, agrees. Not exactly an Italian call to action.

President Obama's main Afghan concern now is to avoid going into
negotiations with "moderate" Taliban elements from a position of
weakness. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. prior
to his one-day visit to Ottawa, Mr. Obama indicated a shift in his
Afghan strategy when he made clear diplomacy will now play a bigger
role in U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. "I am absolutely convinced," the
president explained, "that you cannot solve the problem of
Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region
solely through military means. ... We're going to have to use
diplomacy. We're going to have to use development."

An immediate worry is the ability to defend Kabul, the Afghan
capital, with NATO troops that are not authorized to fight. The first
3,000 U.S. reinforcements will be deployed around the city to thwart
Taliban's plans to stage a Tet-type offensive, which was when Viet
Cong guerrillas infiltrated major Vietnamese cities in 1968. Even
though defeated, the Viet Cong scored a major psychological victory
that demoralized America's home front.

President Hamid Karzai keeps complaining about U.S. troops he says
are turning the population against them by breaking into homes looking
for Taliban guns and ammo, and killing any civilian who resists. "They
will get plenty of flowers and gratitude when we send them safely back
home," Mr. Karzai opined sarcastically.

After reading up on Afghan briefing papers, Mr. Obama concluded
Defense Secretary Robert Gates was only partly correct when he said
"there needs to be a three- to five-year plan for re-establishing
control in certain areas, providing security for the population, going
after al Qaeda, preventing establishment of terrorism, better
performance in terms of delivery of services to the people." This
tends to co-mingle Taliban and al Qaeda. For Mr. Obama, they are two
separate entities and the split should be encouraged.

When they take place, negotiations will be with Taliban, not with al
Qaeda. As for the $32 billion in U.S. economic aid to rebuild the
country, there are still major cities with only two hours of
electricity daily. But there are still powerful elements, both
civilian and military, adamantly opposed to negotiations. They say
that we should be prepared to stick it out another 10 years if
necessary.

But are the American people willing to go along? And doesn't the
current financial and economic upheaval put a bit of a crimp on
grandiloquent expressions of open-ended bravura? The next big debate
will be about Taliban "reconcilable."


Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times and
for United Press International.

.AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink { height: 1px; width: 1px; overflow: hidden; } .AOLWebSuite a {color:blue; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer} .AOLWebSuite a.hsSig {cursor: default}

Clinton presides over State Department 2.0 - Chris Lefkow, France24, France: “The former first lady has taken to digital diplomacy with a vengeance, contributing to DipNote, the slick State Department blog, and soliciting questions from the public online, a feature called 'Ask the Secretary.' She also has her aides firing off updates -- more than 1,000 so far -- on the @dipnote feed on micro-blogging service Twitter and posting photos on the State Department Flickr page at flickr.com/photos/statephotos/. In addition to longstanding websites State.gov and America.gov, there is an official State Department YouTube channel at youtube.com/statevideo and a State Department Facebook page which instead of friends has 'fans.' Clinton is not just using the Web for public diplomacy. One of her first acts after taking office was to create an internal State Department website, 'The Sounding Board,' to solicit feedback from department staff, who have the option of posting anonymously if they prefer.”

An Iconic Artist Of The Moment: The Creator Of The Most Famous Poster Of Campaign '08 Takes His Street Art In New Directions - Rita Braver, CBS: The man behind the iconic poster of the Obama campaign is turning a corner, and then some.

A guerilla street artist not so long ago, Shepard Fairey is now being honored with his own museum show. has a portrait of the artist. Fairey is also a proud capitalist. He employs 20 people, producing not only fine art but also album covers, book jackets and movie posters (like "Walk the Line," left). His studio just created a new advertising campaign for Saks Fifth Ave. Married and the father of two, he dismisses critics who say he has sold.

The Axis of Upheaval
By Niall Ferguson
Forget Iran, Iraq, and North Korea -- Bush's "Axis of Evil." Today's most dangerous countries are the places where economic calamity meets political and social turmoil.



FP profiles four countries on the edge:

The Most Dangerous Place in the World By Jeffrey Gettleman
Somalia is a state governed only by anarchy. A graveyard of foreign-policy failures, it has known just six months of peace in the past two decades. Now, as the country’s endless chaos threatens to engulf an entire region, the world again simply watches it burn.

Reversal of Fortune By Arkady Ostrovsky
Vladimir Putin’s social contract has been premised on an authoritarian state delivering rising incomes and resurgent power. But the economic crisis is unraveling all that. And what comes next in Russia might be even worse.

State of War By Sam Quinones
Mexico’s hillbilly drug smugglers have morphed into a raging insurgency. Violence claimed more lives there last year alone than all the Americans killed in Iraq. And there’s no end in sight.

The Well Runs Dry By Gregory D. Johnsen and Christopher Boucek
Yemen has long been a basket case. But with oil revenues and water resources fast evaporating and al Qaeda on the loose, Arabia’s southern outpost could be headed for total collapse.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/18588/asses..._in_tehran.html

Assessing Motives in Tehran

Author:
Frank Procida, National Intelligence Fellow

February 23, 2009

Analysts of all political stripes, including, most importantly, members of
the new U.S. president's foreign policy team, seem to agree that Iran is
striving to build the bomb. Why else would a state risk further economic
isolation, or worse, to develop nuclear-related technologies whose output
it could pursue more cheaply and easily on the open market? But as the
foreign policy cognoscenti argue the merits of enhanced sanctions
packages, grand bargains, and military options in changing Tehran's
behavior, it is worth reconsidering the question of whether Iran even
plans to develop nuclear weapons, and how certain anyone outside of
Iranian decision-making circles can be of that answer.

The controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that
Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years earlier, appears to
have been all but forgotten. Regardless, more instructive is the inverse
of that report's central point; in order to halt a program it must first
exist, a fact that suggests the intelligence community has significant
evidence that Tehran, at one point at least, authorized the development of
nuclear weapons.

Beyond the estimate, all that is known publicly is that Iran has a history
of hiding sensitive nuclear sites from the International Atomic Energy
Agency and that Tehran has yet to answer the agency's questions on what
are known as the "alleged studies"--documents said to indicate Iran
attempted to develop a ballistic missile re-entry vehicle capable of
carrying a nuclear warhead. This lack of transparency has fueled the
charges of those who dismiss Tehran's denials of wrongdoing. The IAEA's
latest report is a case in point, revealing that Tehran understated by
about one-third the amount of bomb quality uranium it has enriched,
meaning it could very likely produce a bomb with current stocks if it
chose.

"An unexpected reasoning might exist for Iran¢s seemingly self-destructive
behavior today."

Still, probably more important to most observers than uncertain
intelligence and games of cat and mouse is simple logic; all experts agree
that Iran's desire to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel makes little
sense from an economic or energy perspective. Russia has agreed to provide
enriched uranium for Iran's only existing, and not yet operational, power
plant, and fuel for any future plants could be similarly acquired on the
open market. Indeed, the EU-led overtures to Iran have included such
guarantees. Moreover, Iran's efforts to produce this fuel are not only
premature but are costly and inefficient, wiping away the economic
benefits Tehran supposedly hopes to reap by developing nuclear power
plants in the first place. Adding the negative economic and political
consequences of sanctions to the mix only makes Iran's nuclear policy more
senseless unless the program is meant as a cover or hedge for weapons
development.

As tempting as it may be to accept such wisdom, the West's experience in
assessing the motives behind Iraq's behavior under sanctions should give
pause; sometimes actions that appear irrational--say, enduring crippling
economic sanctions and inviting a war to uphold the veneer of a WMD
capability--have a rationale that is unrecognizable to outsiders. It was
not tales of mobile biological labs and mistaken assessments of aluminum
tubes that led to the Bush administration's excessive confidence in Iraq's
guilt--although these collection and analytic lapses certainly did not
help. Rather, it was a gut feeling that Iraq's intransigence, and its
ensuing costs and risks, only made sense if Baghdad was harboring weapons
it felt it needed to ensure its survival. In reality, Saddam did view such
weapons as vital, so much so that his regime risked everything to maintain
the mirage it still possessed them. While Saddam's calculation was
wrong--in fact the ploy brought on the outcome he hoped it would
prevent--the thinking at least becomes understandable when viewed from the
Iraqi perspective.

Similarly, an unexpected reasoning might exist for Iran's seemingly
self-destructive behavior today. Investing in nuclear technology for
energy production does make some sense for Iran, a country with a growing
population that imports more than 40 percent of its refined petroleum.
Diversifying its energy needs also could, in theory at least, free up
crude oil for Iran to export. After all, no credible analyst is
questioning the United Arab Emirates' motives in seeking nuclear plants,
despite ranking sixth worldwide in proven oil reserves. Citing Iran's
massive reserves to prove the absurdity of an Iranian nuclear energy
program is therefore pointless.

There may even be a legitimate motive behind Iran's dogged pursuit of a
domestic enrichment capability, a much more alarming policy. While it is
true that the West has offered fuel guarantees that would negate the need
for a costly enrichment program, Tehran would have reason to doubt the
sanctity of such promises. The nuclear dispute is but one of many areas of
contention between Iran and the West, and it would not be unreasonable for
Tehran to expect nuclear-related deals to dissipate in the event of future
flare-ups involving Hezbollah. Given how sanctions have crippled other
important industries in Iran, why leave something as essential as energy
production vulnerable to outside suppliers?

"It might be worth spending a bit of time contemplating whether the
unbearable outcome the West is desperately trying to prevent even exists
as an option in the minds of Iranian decision-makers."

Domestic politics also should not be dismissed as a driver of Tehran's
nuclear policy. Iran remains autocratic, but even its recent election
results support the maxim that all politics is local. Although it would be
foolish to grant them too much credibility, most published poll results
show that a large majority of Iranians support the nuclear program and are
opposed to compromise. The issue appears to have become one of national
pride, with the ordinary Iranian, regardless of his or her opinion of the
ruling regime, viewing Western efforts to constrain its nuclear
development as hypocritical at best and malicious at worst. The already
unpopular mullahs could fear further backlash if they were seen as
abandoning technological development because of outside pressure. It would
be short-sighted to expect Iranian leaders to share the West's assumptions
that its promises are reliable, and raw domestic political calculations
could have a greater influence over Iranian policymaking than generic
concerns about the country's overall economic health.

The lack of any serious debate on the question of Iran's intentions is
somewhat stunning, given that the United States remains mired in a war
caused in part by the failure to accurately forecast Iraq's weapons
capabilities. President Bush himself has expressed disappointment at his
administration's failures regarding the Iraqi WMD case, and the U.S.
intelligence community, judging by the tone of the 2007 NIE, appears to be
similarly chastened. All the more surprising then that outside analysts,
even those opposed to the more hawkish options being floated to deal with
the problem, appear willing to assume the worst when it comes to Iran's
intentions.

The consequences of a deepening rift with Iran are unknown but scary--an
unleashed Hezbollah, further Iranian meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan,
potential missile attacks against U.S. allies in the region, and
skyrocketing oil prices. Some observers believe that if Iran acquired a
nuclear "guarantee" it would become even more mischievous than it is today
and for that reason alone the country must not be allowed to cross the
nuclear threshold. Others argue that whatever plans Tehran now has for its
nuclear program are irrelevant, since intentions are subject to change. In
such a view, capabilities are all that matter. But before risking such
costly consequences, it might be worth spending a bit of time
contemplating whether the unbearable outcome the West is desperately
trying to prevent even exists as an option in the minds of Iranian
decision-makers.

The writer is the National Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations.

Saving Capitalist Banking from Itself
By Paul McCulley
At its core, capitalism is all about risk taking. One form of risk taking is leverage. Indeed, without leverage, capitalism could not prosper. Usually, we think of this imperative in terms of entrepreneurs being able to lever their equity so as to grow. And indeed, this is the case.

But more elementally, economies – both capitalist and socialist – require leverage because savers for very logical reasons do not want to have one hundred percent of their stock of wealth in equity investments. Rather, they logically want a portion of their portfolios in a fixed-commitment instrument that is senior to equity.

And savers want some portion of that fixed-commitment allocation in literal money, defined as a government-guaranteed obligation that always trades at par. If you have any doubt about this, put your hands into your pockets and you will find just such an instrument. It's called currency, a zero-interest, perpetual liability of the Federal Reserve, itself a levered entity, capitalized by its Congressionally-legislated monopoly over the creation of money.

As a practical matter, of course, you don't hold all of your always-trades-at-par liquidity in currency. You most likely have a demand deposit, also known as a checking account, as well as shares in a money market mutual fund, which is putatively supposed to always trade "at the buck." You probably also have some longer-dated bank deposits, such as certificates of deposits, or CDs, which don't necessarily trade at par in real time, but are guaranteed to do so at maturity.


The Nature of Fractional Reserve Banking
The public's demand for at-par liquidity inherently creates the raw material for leverage in the economy. Indeed, from time immemorial, fractional reserve banking has been built on the simple proposition that the public's collective ex ante demand for at-par liquidity is greater than the public's collective ex post demand for such liquidity.

Accordingly, the genius of banking¹, if you want to call it that, has always been simple: A bank can take more risk on the asset side of its balance sheet than the liability side can notionally support, because a goodly portion of the liability side, notably deposits, is de facto of perpetual maturity, although it is de jure of finite maturity, as short as one day in the case of demand deposits.

Thus, the business of banking is inherently about maturity and credit quality transformation: banks can hold assets that are longer and riskier than their liabilities, because their deposit liabilities are sticky. Depositors sleep well knowing that they can always get their money at par, but because they do, they don't actually ask for their money, affording bankers the opportunity to redeploy that money into longer, riskier, higher-yielding assets that don't have to trade at par.


Enter the Government
A key reason that depositors sleep well at night is the fact that since 1913 here in the United States, banks have had access to the Federal Reserve's discount window, where assets can be posted for loans to redeem flighty depositors. A second sleep-well governmental safety net was introduced in 1933: deposit insurance, in which the federal government insures that deposits – up to a limit – will always trade at par, regardless of how foolish bankers may be on the other side of their balance sheets.

Thus, the genius of modern day banking, again if you want to call it that, has always been about exploiting the positive spread between the public's ex ante and ex post demand for liquidity at par, in the context of levering the two safety nets – the central bank's discount window and deposit insurance underwritten by taxpayers – which provide comfort to depositors that they can always get their money at par, even if their bankers are foolish lenders and investors.

Yes, I know that sounds harsh. But it really is how the banking world works. In turn, banks can be very profitable enterprises, because the yield on their risky assets is greater than the yield on their less-risky liabilities. And that net interest margin can be particularly sweet when recomputed as a return on equity, given that banks are very levered institutions (recall, banks must hold only 8% of liabilities in the form of Tier 1 capital).

Put differently, equity investors in banks can lose only 8% of a bank's footings, but they earn the net interest margin on 100% of those footings, so long as they don't make so many dodgy loans and investments, destroying capital, that the providers of the two government safety nets cut them off.

Thus, it has always been somewhat of an oxymoron, at least to me, to think of banks as strictly private sector enterprises. To be sure, they have private shareholders. And, yes, those shareholders get all the upside of the net interest margin intrinsic to the alchemy of maturity and risk transformation. But the whole enterprise itself depends on the governmental safety nets. That's why banks are regulated.

Conceptually, as is the case in socialist countries, banks could be – and usually are – simply owned by the government, the ultimate form of regulation. Such an arrangement has the benefit of the taxpayer sharing in the upside, not just the downside. Such an arrangement also has the cost of putting the government in the lending and investing business, with little regard for the pursuit of profit, picking winners and losers on the basis of political clout.

Thus, capitalist economies usually want their banking systems owned by the private sector, where loans and investments are made on commercial terms, in the pursuit of profit. But also in the context of prudential regulation, so as to minimize the downside to taxpayers of the moral hazard inherent in the two safety nets for depositors.


The Mae West Doctrine
But as is the wont of capitalists, they love levering the sovereign's safety nets with minimal prudential regulation. This does not make them immoral, merely capitalists. And over the last decade or so, the way for bankers to maximally lever the inherent banking model has been to become non-bank bankers, or as I dubbed them a couple years ago, shadow bankers.

The way to do this has been to run levered-up lending and investment institutions – be they investment banks, conduits, structured investment vehicles, hedge funds, et al – by raising funding in the non-deposit markets, notably: unsecured debt, especially interbank borrowings and commercial paper; and secured borrowings, notably reverse repo and asset-backed commercial paper. And usually – but not always! – such shadow banks relied on conventional banks with access to the central bank's discount window as backstop liquidity providers.

Structured accordingly, without explicit access or use of the government's safety nets, shadow banks essentially avoided regulation, notably on the amount of leverage they could use, the size of their liquidity buffers and the type of lending and investing they could do.

To be sure, Shadow Banking needed some seal of approval, so that providers of short-dated funding could convince themselves that their claims were de facto "just as good" as deposits at banks with access to the government's liquidity safety nets. Conveniently, the rating agencies, paid by the shadow bankers, stood at the ready to provide such seals of approval.

And it was all grand while ever-larger application of leverage put upward pressure on asset prices. There is nothing like a bull market to make geniuses out of levered dunces. Call it the Mae West Doctrine, where if a little fun is good and more is better, then way too much is just about right.

Also call it the Forward Minsky Journey,² where stability begets ever riskier debt arrangements, until they have produced a bubble in asset prices. And then the bubble bursts, in something called a Minsky Moment, followed by a Reverse Minsky Journey, characterized by ever-tighter terms and conditions on the availability of credit, inducing asset price deflation and its fellow traveler, debt price deflation.


This dynamic is inherently self-feeding, begetting the Paradox of Deleveraging,³ where private sector bankers – conventional bankers and shadow bankers alike – all move to the offer side of both asset markets and bank capital markets, trying to reduce their leverage ratios by selling assets and paying off debt, and/or issuing more equity. But by definition, if everybody tries to do it at the same time, as has been the case over the last 18 months or so, it simply can't be done.

What is needed is for the government to take the other side of the trade, effectively becoming the bid side, (1) buying assets, (2) guaranteeing assets, (3) providing cheap funding for assets, and (4) buying bank equity securities (of both conventional banks and shadow banks that are permitted to become conventional banks after the fact).


Government Goes All In⁴
And indeed, all four of these techniques have been put into play since the fateful decision to let Lehman Brothers fall into disorderly bankruptcy. Put more bluntly, the hybrid character of banking – always a joint venture between private capital and governmental liquidity safety nets – is morphing more and more towards government-sponsored banking. Yes, I know that is harsh, but sometimes the truth is harsh. Capitalism and banking may not be divorced, but certainly are engaged in some form of trial separation.

The Treasury, the FDIC and the Fed – the big three – are caught in the middle, serving both as mediators as well as deep pockets to the estranged parties. It's not wholesale nationalization. And it's not likely to become that. But only because the big three are committed to doing whatever it takes to prevent that outcome. Along the way, the big three would also like – need! – to restart the engines of credit creation, so as to pull the economy out of its gaping hole of insufficient aggregate demand for goods and services, also known as a recession.

Will it work? Judging from the markets' collective reaction to Treasury Secretary Geithner's announcement last week of the new administration triage plans, there is room for doubt. I do not, however, take one-week swings in the markets as indicative as to where this game will end. And a key reason is actually the special powers of the Fed and the FDIC, which can lever the taxpayer monies that Congress provides for the Treasury.

As evidenced in recent months, the Fed has two incredibly powerful tools:

• Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act of 1932, which permits the Fed, upon declaration of "unusual and exigent circumstances" to lend to anybody against collateral it deems adequate, and
• Total freedom to expand its balance sheet, essentially creating liabilities against itself that trade at par – also called printing money – so long as the Fed is willing to surrender control over the Fed funds rate, letting it trade at zero, or thereabouts.

The Fed has used both of these tools vigorously in recent months, expanding its lending programs mightily, to both conventional banks and shadow banks (i.e., investment banks who have re-chartered as banks, as well as primary dealers), while also doubling the size of its balance sheet, as it let the Fed funds rate fall to effectively zero.

The FDIC also has an incredibly powerful tool: the so-called Systemic Risk Exception under the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991, which allows the FDIC to forgo using the "lowest cost" solution to dealing with troubled banks if using such a solution "would have serious adverse effects on economic conditions or financial stability" and if bypassing the least cost method would "avoid or mitigate such adverse effects."

It's actually not an easy clause for the FDIC to invoke, unlike Section 13(3) for the Fed, which can be invoked simply by a supermajority of the Board of Governors. For the FDIC, the Systemic Risk Exception must be deemed necessary by two-thirds of both the Board of Directors of the FDIC and the Fed's Board of Governors, as well as by the Secretary of the Treasury, who must first consult and get agreement from the President of the United States.

But where there is a will, there is a way, and the FDIC is now living firmly in the land of the Systemic Risk Exception, legally allowed to guarantee unsecured debt of banks as well as to put itself at risk in guaranteeing banks' dodgy assets.


Bottom Line
The United States government now has both the tools and the will to save the private banking system, and more importantly, the real economy, from its own debt-deflationary pathologies. Not that it will be easy. But it can be done, notwithstanding the catcalls that greeted Secretary Geithner last week.

And the essential game plan is clear: use the power of the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury to create government-sponsored shadow banks, such as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility (the TALF) and the Public-Private Investment Fund (the P-PIF).

The formula? Take a small dollop of the Treasury's free-to-spend taxpayer money (there is still $350 billion left) to serve as the equity in a government sponsored shadow bank, and then lever the daylights out of it with loans from the Federal Reserve, funded with the printing press. That's the formula for the TALF, to provide leverage, with no recourse after a haircut, to restart the securitization markets.

The same formula applies for the P-PIF, with the addition of FDIC stop out loss protection for dodgy bank assets that private sector players might buy. With such goodies, such players, it is hoped, will be able to pay a sufficiently high price for those assets to avoid bankrupting the seller bank.

Unfortunately, Secretary Geithner hasn't laid out the precise parameters of how to mix these three ingredients, which is driving the markets up the wall. But make no mistake, these are the ingredients, along with continued direct capital infusions into banks where necessary.

Uncle Sam has the ability to substitute itself – not himself or herself! – for the broken conventional bank system, levering up and risking up as the conventional banking system does the exact opposite.

Yes, there will be subsidies involved, sometimes huge ones. And yes, the process will seem arbitrary and capricious at times, reeking of inequities. Such is the nature of government rescue schemes for broken banking systems, while maintaining them as privately owned.

You might not like it. I don't like it, because regulators should never have let bankers, both conventional bankers and shadow bankers, run amok. But they did.

So it's now time to hold the nose and do what must be done, however stinky it smells, not because it's pleasant but because it is necessary.

Only with the full force of the sovereign's balance sheet can the Paradox of Deleveraging be broken.

Paul McCulley

Managing Director¹ "The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken," Global Central Bank Focus, November 2008. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2008/Global+Central+Bank+Focus+11-08+McCulley+Paradox+of+Deleveraging+Will+Be+Broken.htm ² "Comments Before the Money Marketeers Club, Minsky and Neutral:Forward and in Reverse," Global Central Bank Focus, December 2007. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2007/GCBF+Dec+2007.htm

³ "The Paradox of Deleveraging," Global Central Bank Focus, July 2008. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2008/GCBF+July+2008.htm

⁴ "All In," Global Central Bank Focus, December 2008/January 2009. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2008/GCB+December+2008+McCulley+All+In.htm

And now to Paul Volker's speech:

Paul Volcker is the former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman, and is now a member of President Barack Obama's advisory team on the economy. He recently gave a speech in Toronto on the extent of the U.S. economic crisis.

Here is the speech in full:

I really feel a sense of profound disappointment coming up here. We are having a great financial problem around the world. And finance doesn't work without some sense of trust and confidence and people meaning what they say. You take their oral word and their written word as a sign that their intentions will be carried out.

The letter of invitation I had to this affair indicated that there would be about 40 people here, people with whom I could have an intimate conversation. So I feel a bit betrayed this evening. Forty has swelled to I don't know how many, and I don't know how intimate our conversation can be. But I will, at the very least, be informal.

There is a certain interest in what's going on in the financial world. And I will disappoint you by saying I don't know all the answers. But I know something about the problem. Let me just sketch it out a little bit and suggest where we may be going. There is a lot of talk about how we get out of this, but I think it's worth remembering, or analyzing, how this all started.

This is not an ordinary recession. I have never, in my lifetime, seen a financial problem of this sort. It has the makings of something much more serious than an ordinary recession where you go down for a while and then you bounce up and it's partly a monetary – but a self-correcting – phenomenon. The ordinary recession does not bring into question the stability and the solidity of the whole financial system. Why is it that this is so much more profound a crisis? I'm not saying it's going to get anywhere as serious as the Great Depression, but that was not an ordinary business cycle either.

This phenomenon can be traced back at least five or six years. We had, at that time, a major underlying imbalance in the world economy. The American proclivity to consume was in full force. Our consumption rate was about 5% higher, relative to our GNP or what our production normally is. Our spending – consumption, investment, government — was running about 5% or more above our production, even though we were more or less at full employment.

You had the opposite in China and Asia, generally, where the Chinese were consuming maybe 40% of their GNP – we consumed 70% of our GNP. They had a lot of surplus dollars because they had a lot of exports. Their exports were feeding our consumption and they were financing it very nicely with very cheap money. That was a very convenient but unsustainable situation. The money was so easy, funds were so easily available that there was, in effect, a kind of incentive to finding ways to spend it.

When we finished with the ordinary ways of spending it – with the help of our new profession of financial engineering – we developed ways of making weaker and weaker mortgages. The biggest investment in the economy was residential housing. And we developed a technique of manufacturing class D mortgages but putting them in packages which the financial engineers said were class A.

So there was an enormous incentive to take advantage of this bit of arbitrage – cheap money, poor mortgages but saleable mortgages. A lot of people made money through this process. I won't go over all the details, but you had then a normal business cycle on top of it. It was a period of enthusiasm. Everybody was feeling exuberant. They wanted to invest and spend.

You had a bubble first in the stock market and then in the housing market. You had a big increase in housing prices in the United States, held up by these new mortgages. It was true in other countries as well, but particularly in the United States. It was all fine for a while, but of course, eventually, the house prices levelled off and began going down. At some point people began getting nervous and the whole process stopped because they realized these mortgages were no good.

You might ask how it went on as long as it did. The grading agencies didn't do their job and the banks didn't do their job and the accountants went haywire. I have my own take on this. There were two things that were particularly contributory and very simple. Compensation practices had gotten totally out of hand and spurred financial people to aim for a lot of short-term money without worrying about the eventual consequences. And then there was this obscure financial engineering that none of them understood, but all their mathematical experts were telling them to trust. These two things carried us over the brink.

One of the saddest days of my life was when my grandson – and he's a particularly brilliant grandson – went to college. He was good at mathematics. And after he had been at college for a year or two I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a financial engineer." My heart sank. Why was he going to waste his life on this profession?

A year or so ago, my daughter had seen something in the paper, some disparaging remarks I had made about financial engineering. She sent it to my grandson, who normally didn't communicate with me very much. He sent me an email, "Grandpa, don't blame it on us! We were just following the orders we were getting from our bosses." The only thing I could do was send him back an email, "I will not accept the Nuremberg excuse."

There was so much opaqueness, so many complications and misunderstandings involved in very complex financial engineering by people who, in my opinion, did not know financial markets. They knew mathematics. They thought financial markets obeyed mathematical laws. They have found out differently now. You know, they all said these events only happen once every hundred years. But we have "once every hundred years" events happening every year or two, which tells me something is the matter with the analysis.

So I think we have a problem which is not an ordinary business cycle problem. It is much more difficult to get out of and it has shaken the foundations of our financial institutions. The system is broken. I'm not going to linger over what to do about it. It is very difficult. It is going to take a lot of money and a lot of losses in the banking system. It is not unique to the United States. It is probably worse in the UK and it is just about as bad in Europe and it has infected other economies as well. Canada is relatively less infected, for reasons that are consistent with the direction in which I think the financial markets and financial institutions should go.

So I'll jump over the short-term process, which is how we get out of the mess, and consider what we should be aiming for when we get out of the mess. That, in turn, might help instruct the kind of action we should be taking in the interim to get out of it.

In the United States, in the UK, as well – and potentially elsewhere – things are partly being held together by totally extraordinary actions by a central bank. In the United States, it's the Federal Reserve, in London, the Bank of England. They are providing direct credit to markets in massive volume, in a way that contradicts all the traditions and laws that have governed central banking behaviour for a hundred years.

So what are we aiming for? I mention this because I recently chaired a report on this. It was part of the so-called Group of 30, which has got some attention. It's a long and rather turgid report but let me simplify what the conclusion is, which I will state more boldly than the report itself does.

In the future, we are going to need a financial system which is not going to be so prone to crisis and certainly will not be prone to the severity of a crisis of this sort. Financial systems always fluctuate and go up and down and have crises, but let's not have a big crisis that undermines the whole economy. And if that's the kind of financial system we want and should have, it's going to be different from the financial system that has developed in the last 20 years.

What do I mean by different? I think a primary characteristic of the system ought to be a strong, traditional, commercial banking-type system. Probably we ought to have some very large institutions – or at least that's the way the market is going – whose primary purpose is a kind of fiduciary responsibility to service consumers, individuals, businesses and governments by providing outlets for their money and by providing credit. They ought to be the core of the credit and financial system.

This kind of system was in place in the United States thirty years ago and is still in place in Canada, and may have provided support for the Canadian system during this particularly difficult time. I'm not arguing that you need an oligopoly to the extent you have one in Canada, but you do know by experience that these big commercial banking institutions will be protected by the government, de facto. No government has been willing to permit these institutions, or the creditors and depositors to these institutions, to be damaged. They recognize that the damage to the economy would be too great.

What has happened recently just underscores that. And I think we're at the point where we can no longer fool ourselves by saying that is not the case. The government will support these institutions, which in turn implies a closer supervision and regulation of those institutions, a more effective regulation than we've had, at least in the United States, in the recent past. And that may involve a lot of different agencies and so forth. I won't get into that.

But I think it does say that those institutions should not engage in highly risky entrepreneurial activity. That's not their job because it brings into question the stability of the institution. They may make a lot of money and they may have a lot of fun, in the short run. It may encourage pursuit of a profit in the short run. But it is not consistent with the stability that those institutions should be about. It's not consistent at all with avoiding conflict of interest.

These institutions that have arisen in the United States and the UK that combine hedge funds, equity funds, large proprietary trading with commercial banks, have enormous conflicts of interest. And I think the conflicts of interest contribute to their instability. So I would say let's get rid of that. Let's have big and small commercial banks and protect them – it's the service part of the financial system.

And then we have the other part, which I'll call the capital market system, which by and large isn't directly dealing with customers. They're dealing with each other. They're trading. They're about hedge funds and equity funds. And they have a function in providing fluid markets and innovating and providing some flexibility, and I don't think they need to be so highly regulated. They're not at the core of the system, unless they get really big. If they get really big then you have to regulate them, too. But I don't think we need to have close regulation of every peewee hedge fund in the world.

So you have this bifurcated – in a sense – financial system that implies a lot about regulation and national governments. If you're going to have an open system, you have got to get much more cooperation and coordination from different countries. I think that's possible, given what we're going through. You've got to do something about the infrastructure of the system and you have to worry about the credit rating agencies.

These banks were relying on credit rating agencies while putting these big packages of securities together and selling them. They had practically – they would never admit this – given up credit departments in their own institutions that were sophisticated and well-developed. That was a cost centre – why do we need it, they thought. Obviously that hasn't worked out very well.

We have to look at the accounting system. We have to look at the system for dealing with derivatives and how they're settled. So there are a lot of systemic issues. The main point I'm making is that we want to emerge from this with a more stable system. It will be less exciting for many people, but it will not warrant – I don't think the present system does, either — $50 million dollar paydays in that central part of the system. Or even $25 or $100 million dollar paydays. If somebody can go out and gamble and make that money, okay. But don't gamble with the public's money. And that's an important distinction.

It's interesting that what I'm arguing for looks more like the Canadian system than the American system. When we delivered this report in a press conference, people said, "Oh you mean, banks won't be able to have hedge funds? What are you talking about?" That same day, Citigroup announced, "We want to get rid of all that stuff. We now realize it was a mistake. We want to go back to our roots and be a real commercial bank." I don't know whether they'll do that or not. But the fact that one of the leading proponents of the other system basically said, "We give up. It's not the right system," is interesting.

So let me just leave it at that. We've got more than 40 people here but they're permitted to ask questions, is that the deal?

An article by former Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams from the Weekly Standard. Not only does Abrams put the entire burden on the Palestinians shoulders for building institutions, he also asks zero positive moves from the Israelis (absolutely no mention of settlements or Jerusalem), and ends the article by arguing against a Palestinian state, suggesting instead control by Egypt and Jordan. He also takes a swipe at Annapolis and, implicitly, Condi Rice.

The Path of Realism or the Path of Failure
Laying a foundation for peace in Palestine.
by Elliott Abrams
03/02/2009, Volume 014, Issue 23

Repetition of failed experiments is not a sign of mental health or a
path to scientific progress, nor is it a formula for
Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yet that is the road we may again take,
unless the lessons of the Bush years are learned.

As an official of the Bush administration I made three dozen visits to
the Middle East in the last eight years, and in February, as Israelis
voted, I made my first visit as a private citizen in nearly a decade.
After lengthy discussions with Israelis and Palestinians, it seems to
me obvious that it is time to face certain facts, facts that President
Bush actually saw clearly during his first term: We are not on the
verge of Israeli-Palestinian peace; a Palestinian state cannot come
into being in the near future; and the focus should be on building the
institutions that will allow for real Palestinian progress in the
medium or longer term.

In a historic speech on June 24, 2002, President Bush said, "My vision
is two states, living side by side, in peace and security." How were
we to get there? He was specific:

There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight
terror. Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so
that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people
to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon
them to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty.

If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the
world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people
meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and
Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.
And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and
new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of
America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose
borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional
until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East. .  .
. A Palestinian state will never be created by terror. It will be
built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change or
a veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require
entirely new political and economic institutions based on democracy,
market economics and action against terrorism.

This was the announcement that the United States was breaking totally
with Yasser Arafat--the single most frequent foreign visitor to the
Clinton White House--and would henceforth consider him a terrorist
rather than a negotiating partner. Six months later the "Roadmap," a
plan for progress toward these goals, was drafted. Even its formal
name, "A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," suggested its conformity to
President Bush's speech. Its preamble stated in part, "A two-state
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved
through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people
have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and
able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty."

The Roadmap did not call for leaping directly from the status quo--the
Palestinian Authority, or PA, established after Oslo--to statehood.
Instead it called for an interim phase "focused on the option of
creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and
attributes of sovereignty, based on the new constitution, as a way
station to a permanent status settlement." The text here reiterated
the need for Palestinian leaders "acting decisively against terror,
willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance
and liberty."

After Arafat's death in November 2004, his lieutenant Mahmoud Abbas
became president of the PA, and efforts to achieve some of these
required reforms began. But there began as well a distancing by the
United States and the international "Quartet" that had sponsored the
Roadmap (the United States, United Nations, European Union, and
Russia) from the tough and clear standards that had been set out. It
is as if those standards were meant to record disgust with Arafat, but
with his passing the familiar insistence on rapid progress--and more
Israeli concessions--returned.

More and more speeches, including American speeches, called for rapid
agreement on a Palestinian state, for a final status agreement, for
elimination altogether of that interim phase. Worse yet, at the
Annapolis Conference, announced in July 2007 and convened that
November, the president announced that the goal was a final status
agreement by the end of 2008. This left only 13 months, which was
itself astonishing for a problem as old and complex as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seemed to ignore the June 2007 Hamas
takeover of Gaza, and, as the end of 2008 coincided with the end of
the president's own term, it seemed to substitute the American
political calendar for a realistic assessment of facts on the ground,
just as the Clinton administration had done.

And it failed. Those of us within the Bush administration who had
protested the Annapolis plan and the announcement of the 2008 goal
were sadly proved right. Historians may puzzle over the causes of the
failure, and perhaps more so over what led the president to turn away
from the tough-minded realism toward this conflict that he showed
during his first term. But the lesson for 2009, for the new
administration, must be that there are actually only two alternatives:
realism and failure.

Judging by the standards set forth in President Bush's still
remarkable 2002 speech, the PA has made some genuine progress. Under
U.S. tutelage, training of Palestinian security forces has begun
largely under the radar, at a training center in Jordan. But it is
working: Sixteen hundred police from the West Bank have gone through
the course, and there are plans to double that number. The newly
trained forces are not exactly crack troops, but they are a far cry
from the divided and ineffective gangs created by Yasser Arafat. Their
success was visible during the recent Gaza war, when they acted in
parallel, and sometimes in concert, with Israeli forces to prevent
Hamas violence and terrorism in the West Bank. Order was maintained.

Much of the credit goes to PA prime minister Salam Fayyad, a
U.S.-trained economist whose integrity, candor, and effective
administration of the PA have made him a favorite of the United States
and all other donors. Fayyad, a former finance minister (who brought
order from chaos in the PA's finances and continues to fight PA
corruption), has presided over continuing economic growth in the West
Bank and maintains a working if unfriendly relationship with Israeli
officials. Fayyad is well aware of the history of his sometime
partner, sometime foe in Jerusalem, the government of Israel, and
indeed of the history of the entire Zionist enterprise: Institutions
were built over long decades to prepare for Israel's independence
despite the uncertainty of when it would arrive. The Zionists
struggled to be ready, hoping thereby also to bring the day closer.
That is Fayyad's task for the Palestinian people, as he appears to see
it.

He gets remarkably little help, from either Arab states or the West.
The willingness of oil-rich Arab leaders to supply Palestinians with
endless amounts of rhetoric and precious little cash is not new,
though the high oil prices of recent years made it all the more
obscene. But Fayyad has also had less help from the West than one
might expect. The shift away from realistic efforts to build
Palestinian institutions and toward international conferences like
Annapolis put President Abbas in the limelight, not the pragmatic work
of Fayyad and his ministers. So Abbas traveled from capital to
capital, as he continues to do, safely removed from the difficult work
of building the basis for an independent Palestine. If the West Bank
had a factory with a thousand jobs for every such trip, for every
photo op with a smiling foreign leader, and for every international
conference, the Palestinians there would be thriving.

What are the chances that such meetings will produce a final status
agreement in 2009? None. Despite the pressures for progress after
Annapolis, little progress was made in 2008, and if anything
conditions are worse now. In 2008, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
were frequent at two levels: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with
President Abbas, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with Palestinian
chief negotiators Ahmed Qurei ("Abu Ala") and Saeb Erekat. I am
unaware of the achievement of any actual agreement on any important
issue on either track.

On the toughest issues, such as Jerusalem and refugees, there was,
unsurprisingly, no meeting of the minds. It is unlikely negotiators
will do better this year. It has been true for decades that the most
Israel can offer the Palestinians is quite evidently less than any
Palestinian politician is prepared to accept. Those who say "the
outlines of an agreement are well known" and thereby suggest that an
agreement is close are precisely wrong: Is it not evident that to the
extent that such outlines are "well known," they are unacceptable to
both sides or they would have led to a deal long ago? In addition, any
possible deal would take years to implement: Israel would need that
time to remove settlers from lands that would become part of
Palestine, while the Palestinians would need to win the fight against
terrorism. So any deal would be a so-called shelf agreement, where
Palestinian leaders would be compromising on Jerusalem, borders, and
refugee claims in exchange not for a state, but for an Israeli promise
of a state at some indeterminate future date. No Palestinian leader
jumped at that in 2007 or 2008, and none will in 2009.

Meanwhile, whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the PA as an
institution, Fatah as a party is moribund. Its reputation for
incompetence and corruption remains what it was when Arafat was alive,
for there has been no party reform despite endless promises. At one
point in 2008, when Ahmed Qurei--one of Arafat's closest cronies,
famed for permitting corruption, renowned for opposing the rise of any
newer and younger leaders in Fatah--was formally charged with
organizing and implementing party reform, tragedy gave way to farce.
But if democracy is impossible without democratic parties, the
collapse of Fatah is no joke; it suggests that a future independent
Palestine would either be run by Hamas and other extremists and
terrorists or become a one-party "republic" on the model of Tunisia or
Egypt.

There is more. Prime Minister Olmert, who was intent on trying for an
agreement by the end of President Bush's term, will be gone, and his
successor will not be as enthusiastic to make the concessions Olmert
reportedly offered the Palestinians. President Obama has not committed
himself to achieve an agreement in 2009 in the way that President Bush
did in 2007 and 2008. The Palestinian political leadership under
President Abbas and his Fatah party is weak, even increasingly
illegitimate as the presidential election date prescribed in the
Palestinian law was ignored and Abbas's term in office extended. And,
of course, it is impossible to see how a comprehensive final status
agreement between Israel and the PA can be reached when the PA itself
has now lost control of 40 percent of the Palestinian population, the
1.4 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

First, there is the question of who can actually negotiate with Israel
on behalf of the Palestinian people. The Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) is still recognized by the Arab League and the
United Nations as the "sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian
people" though it never won a free election to attain that status.
Israel's past negotiations, in the Oslo Accords of 1993 and ever
since, have all been with the PLO--not formally with the PA, which was
created at Oslo to exercise certain governmental functions in the
Palestinian territories. When Israel negotiates with Abbas, it is in
his capacity as chairman of the PLO, not in his role as president of
the PA. But now the PA governs only one part of Palestinian territory.
Hamas governs the other part--and Hamas is not a member of the PLO. In
the 2006 elections 44 percent of Palestinians voted for Hamas,
moreover, and it maintains a majority in the Palestinian parliament (a
possible problem should that body ever meet). So, for which
Palestinians do Abbas, the PA, and the PLO actually speak? While
Israel rightly refuses to negotiate with a terrorist group like Hamas,
or with the PA or PLO should it include Hamas in its ranks, it remains
true that the PA and PLO no longer have a strong claim to represent
all Palestinians and may now lack the ability to enforce any deal with
Israel they sign.

Second, the lesson of Gaza to Israelis is identical to the lesson of
south Lebanon, and a cautionary tale regarding withdrawal from the
West Bank: "Land for peace" concessions have failed and become "land
for terrorism." Until there is far better security in the West Bank,
few Israelis would risk withdrawing the Israel Defense Forces and Shin
Bet from operating there.

And third, the terrorist groups Israel is dealing with, such as Hamas
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used to be local; now those groups have
the full backing of Iran, both directly and through Syria and
Hezbollah. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader
struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli
withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian
terrorists but to Iranian proxies. How could Israelis, or Palestinians
for that matter, take such a risk--especially when the new American
administration has not defined its policy toward Iran, except for some
vague and (to Arabs and Israelis alike) worrying phrases about
outreached hands and sitting across negotiating tables, and the U.S.
military option is invisible?

Taken together, these factors suggest that a final status agreement is
not now a real-world goal. What is? A return to the realistic
assessments and policies that marked Bush's first term. In practice,
this suggests an intense concentration on building Palestinian
institutions in the West Bank.

There is much to build on, with security force improvements well under
way, the economy in decent shape, and a reliable and trustworthy
leader in Prime Minister Fayyad. Neither the United States nor Israel
has done nearly as much as it can to promote progress on the ground,
allowing Palestinians in the West Bank freer movement and helping
create more jobs and a better standard of living. After the Gaza war,
Israel appears prepared to do more, and should be asked to do so;
Israel has a strategic interest in the success of the Palestinian
Authority in the West Bank and of moderate forces in Palestinian
society more generally. Arab states should be pressured intensely to
provide the funds needed to meet the PA payroll and undertake sensible
investment projects, for example in housing and agriculture. The
United States and the Quartet should take some time away from endless
meetings and speeches and resolutions calling for immediate
negotiations over final status issues, and turn instead to making real
life in the West Bank better and more secure. If there is ever to be a
Palestinian state, it will be the product of such activities, not of
formulaic pronouncements about the need for Palestinian statehood now.

It is also time to rethink the recent commitment to leaping all at
once to full independence for the Palestinians, and even to break the
taboo and rethink that ultimate goal itself. Immediate and total
independence was not the plan when the Roadmap was written in 2002 and
released in 2003. Then, it was understood that "an independent
Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of
sovereignty" was a necessary way-station. Given Hamas control over
Gaza, which makes a united independent Palestine impossible for now
anyway, a West Bank-only state with provisional borders and only some
of the attributes of sovereignty makes far more sense as a medium-term
goal. It might also allow postponing compromises on Jerusalem and
refugee claims that no Palestinian politician could now make, for
those issues could be left aside for another day, while the delays are
blamed on Hamas and its rebellion in Gaza.

How that episode will end is entirely unclear, given Israel's
reluctance to reoccupy and rule Gaza, and Egypt's reluctance to
enforce strict controls on the smuggling of weapons. One Israeli
official told me that Egypt had agreed to stop the smuggling through
the tunnels. But will they really do it? I asked him. Oh, he replied,
"now you are asking if we can get an agreement to implement the
agreement. That's different." While Iran is able to sustain the Hamas
terrorist regime in Gaza, negotiations over a full final status
agreement are little more than staking territorial claims to a mirage.

But one is free to wonder as well whether Palestinian "statehood" is
the best and most sensible goal for Palestinians. When I served under
Secretary of State George Shultz in the Reagan administration, we were
expressly opposed to that outcome and favored some links to Egypt and
Jordan. On security and economic grounds, such links are no less
reasonable now; indeed, given Hamas control of Gaza and the Iranian
threat to moderate Arab states as well as to Israel, they may be even
more compelling. As we've seen, President Bush in 2002 stated that the
Palestinians should "reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan
on security and other arrangements for independence."

Now, even the mention of Egyptian and Jordanian involvement will evoke
loud protests, not least in Amman and Ramallah, and perhaps U.S.
policymakers should think but not speak about such an outcome. There
are many and varied possible relationships between a Palestinian
entity in the West Bank and the Hashemite monarchy, and if none can be
embraced today, none should be discarded either. One Arab statesman
told me when I asked him about a Jordanian role that there "must
absolutely be an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank--if
only for 15 minutes," and then they could decide on some form of
federation or at least a Jordanian security role for the area. If the
greatest Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptian fears are of terrorism,
disorder, and Iranian inroads in a Palestinian West Bank state, a
Jordanian role is a practical means of addressing those fears.

Israel's next government, which Israel's president has asked Benjamin
Netanyahu to form, must soon take up these matters with the
Palestinians, Arab neighbors, the EU, and above all with the United
States. The new Obama administration has not yet worked out a policy
toward Iran or toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but that may be
a hopeful sign. Thinking is better than assuming or reacting or
misjudging. As the new team reviews the playing field, it would be
well advised to look not only at what its predecessors did in the
second Bush term, but also at what they did in the first term--when a
gritty realism prevailed over visions, dreams, and endless
conferences. For, again, it seems to me there are at present only two
paths forward--the path of realism and the path of failure.

Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for the Middle East at the Council on
Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser in the Bush
administration.

Hornberger’s Blog

LOS ANGELES TIMES 2/22/09

Obama's Iran Strategy

Doyle McManus

President Obama is working against time to untangle 30 years of enmity and prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, but even his own advisors know the chance of success is slim.

So they also have been working on Plan B: What do we do if Iran gets the bomb?

Today, the Obama administration is debating its Iran policy behind closed doors. Last year, however, four of its key appointees wrote about the issue as private citizens, and their writings suggest they are already planning for how to handle a nuclear Iran.

Dennis Ross, the former Middle East peace negotiator who is expected to be named as Obama's top Iran advisor, argued for giving diplomacy a chance to work but suggested that containment might have to be the future course of U.S. policy.
"Maybe, even if we engage the Iranians, we will find that however we do so and whatever we try, the engagement simply does not work," Ross wrote in a September report published by the Center for a New American Security, a think tank that has supplied several appointees to the new administration. "We will need to hedge bets and set the stage for alternative policies either designed to prevent Iran from going nuclear or to blunt the impact if they do."

If diplomacy fails, another Obama advisor wrote in the same report, the alternative "is a strategy of containment and punishment." That was the conclusion of Ashton B. Carter, Obama's reported choice as an undersecretary of Defense, who also warned: "The challenge of containing Iranian ambitions and hubris would be as large as containing its nuclear arsenal."

Most (and maybe all) of Obama's advisors see the costs of attacking Iran as outweighing the benefits. If Iran gets closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, they've warned, military action won't look any more appetizing than it did under George W. Bush.

But that doesn't mean the United States would do nothing. Instead, Obama aides suggested in their writings, the U.S. should pursue a Persian Gulf version of the containment strategy used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
What would that mean? For starters, a nuclear-capable Iran would face continued, serious pressure from the United States and its allies to dismantle whatever it had built. Obama might declare that a nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the U.S. homeland. And the U.S. military would act to bolster Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states against conventional-warfare threats from an emboldened Iranian regime.

And there is some optimism among administration officials that a nuclear Iran would practice restraint. Gary Samore, Obama's top advisor on nuclear proliferation, and Bruce Riedel, who is running Obama's review of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote last year that a nuclear-capable Iran, while undesirable, would not be the end of the world. For example, they argued, it seems unlikely that Tehran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists.

"If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is likely to behave like other nuclear weapons states, trying to intimidate its foes, but not recklessly using its weapons," Samore and Riedel wrote in a report for the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations. "As such, Iran will be subject to the same deterrence system that other nuclear weapons states have accommodated themselves to since 1945."

None of this thinking means Obama has abandoned hope in negotiations to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. At this point, one official said, the administration is focusing on Plan A, not Plan B. But it's welcome evidence that behind the slogan of hope lies a realistic appraisal of the possible outcomes.

During his presidential campaign, Obama called the idea of a nuclear Iran "unacceptable," and offered to meet with the Tehran regime without precondition to persuade it to change course. And his advisors agree that there's still a window for diplomacy.

Samore and Riedel forecast that Iran is "at least two or three years away" from being capable of building a nuclear weapon, and note that there are several stages between capability and deploying a bomb -- stages at which the United States could still work to freeze the program and contain Iran's behavior.

The first step, Ross wrote, would be to gather support from Europe, China and Russia. (Undersecretary of State Bill Burns is working on that already.) Next, Obama would seek direct, comprehensive talks with Tehran -- with a tangible threat of tougher economic sanctions if the Iranians don't cooperate, and the promise of rich rewards if they do.

So what should we expect? The contacts with Iran might start with secret talks in Europe between special envoys on both sides, but they're unlikely to begin before Iran's presidential election in June. To pave the way, Obama and his aides have toned down their rhetoric on Iran and talk mostly of outstretched hands and mutual respect. (They are learning to live without the phrase "carrots and sticks," which Iranians say should be used only when talking about donkeys.)
Negotiations won't be easy, and they won't be fast. It's not even clear whether the faction-ridden Tehran government will be able to agree on a coherent negotiating position.

Still, Obama has two advantages his predecessor didn't. First, he has sent unambiguous signals that he's ready to talk with Iran and recognize its legitimacy. That gives Tehran no clear reason to walk away, and Russia and China no easy excuse for opposing tougher sanctions.

Second, with oil revenues tanking, Iran's mullahs are likely to be feeling more vulnerable -- perhaps the only silver lining in the global financial crisis. Russia, Iran's biggest arms supplier, and China, Iran's biggest nonmilitary trading partner, will have less to lose from joining in sanctions if Iran is cutting back on foreign purchases.

Ross, Carter, Samore and Riedel all declined to talk last week when asked if they wanted to expand on what they wrote last year. But their work on Iran before they joined the government adds up to this forecast: Negotiations with Iran are worth trying, but they're not likely to succeed.

If talks fail and Iran moves closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States and its allies will have three options: more sanctions, even though they haven't worked; containment, including a stronger security commitment to Israel; or war.
And of those three unpalatable choices, containment -- with all its uncertainties -- will look like the middle way.

Posted: 24 Feb 2009 11:19 AM PST

"'Creative' is by a very wide margin the most boring, most generic and most predictable of all place positionings in the world today…”

Just Words Who Cares What Hillary Clinton Says To China's Leaders About Human Rights? - Anne Applebaum, Slate: “Many nations overthrow dictatorships, and many become more democratic, or at least more open, as a result. In the past, we have sometimes helped this process along. The Obama administration, if it starts now, can do so again—though it needn't start by lecturing the foreign minister of China. Certainly, we can help by using small, even tiny, amounts of money directed at the people who promote debate, not armed rebellion, inside repressive countries.

One can argue that the pennies we spent funding Radio Free Europe or anti-Communist magazines like now-defunct Encounter during the Cold War were far more effective than the billions we spent on military equipment. … We can also use traditional tools of public diplomacy to greater effect. Instead of appointing cronies and fundraisers to ambassadorships, Obama could, over the next few months, appoint people with the talent to act as real spokesmen for U.S. policy—on local television, speaking the local language, writing in the local press. For that matter, Obama himself could directly address the Chinese or the North Koreans, if not on local television then on CNN and the BBC. It might indeed be pointless to bargain over human rights with the Chinese government, but public statements about democracy and human rights—of the sort Clinton herself made in Indonesia last week—will be heard, if not by all then by some.” Image from

Clinton's winning road trip – Editorial, Los Angeles Times: ”Clinton used President Obama's popularity and the force of her personality to try to restore America's standing abroad.”

White House Announced Internet Team - Matt Armstrong, MountainRunner: “President Obama announced the 'White House Internet Team' on Monday…. I doubt they’ll have the same limited agility as State's various 'Internet teams', from America.gov to DipNote to Digital Outreach and beyond. Speaking of agility, it would be nice to have State’s R, the public diplomacy bureau, not alternating between sitting with palms down on the desk and chasing their tails while wondering if they have a future and if so, what that future will be.“

Transparency at the Pentagon – Editorial, Boston Globe:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has the emphasis right when he says it's time to review the ban on press photographs of flag-draped coffins of soldiers returning to Dover Air Force Base and other military facilities.

“A big part of ‘public’ diplomacy really is just showing up,

versus manning a phone in DC a la Colin Powell.”

--JM Hane, in a comment on “Showing Up,” JustOneMinute: We are all Joe the Plumber now

Avigdor Lieberman's Chutzpah: The right to return cannot confer the right to expel.

Christopher Hitchens Slate February 23, 2009
http://www.slate.com/id/2211915?nav=wp

A reliable friend and colleague swears that he saw the following incident in the Israeli-occupied territories a couple of years ago. A Palestinian physician, in urgent need of permission to travel, was trying to persuade a soldier at a roadblock to allow him to hurry on to the next town. He first tried the stone-faced guard in Hebrew, in which many Arabs are fluent, but he received no response. He then made an attempt in English, which is something of a local lingua franca, yet he fared no better. After an unpleasant interval of mutual noncommunication, it transpired that the only word the Israeli soldier knew was no, and the only language in which he could speak it was Russian.

The words occupation and dispossession are flung around pretty freely, but I invite you to picture a life under occupation in which your unfriendly neighborhood cop did not even speak the language of the state that he served, let alone any tongue known to you. There is, by the way, a fair likelihood that the soldier was not even Jewish; it's an open secret in Israel that tens of thousands of Russian immigrants used forged papers as a means of exiting their country of birth, pretending to exercise the "right of return." So here is yet another insult to heap on those whose great-great-grandparents were born in Palestine yet are treated as if they live there only on sufferance.

Yet if you are a former bouncer born in former Soviet Moldova, like Avigdor Lieberman, you can come to live in the Holy Land as of right and become the leader of a party that proposes to institute a "loyalty oath" not just to the Arab citizens of the state of Israel but to all Jewish members of religious Orthodox sects that do not declare themselves Zionist. And this grotesque party, named Israel Beiteinu or "Israel Is Our Home," is now the power broker, and its leader is the kingmaker in the Israeli electoral process.

In his early days as an immigrant in Israel, Lieberman was briefly a member of Kach, the hysterical group led by Rabbi Meir Kahane that was morbidly obsessed with the sex lives of Arabs and that yelled for their mass expulsion or—to employ the common euphemism—"transfer." He has now somewhat refined his position, calling for an exchange of territories and people that would more nearly approximate partition or even a two-state solution. But as with every such proposal, this still leaves a large number of Arabs under Israeli sovereignty, either on the West Bank or in Israel "proper." I doubt that Lieberman is really serious about any "land for peace" negotiations—he quarreled even with Ariel Sharon about disengagement from Gaza, so if it were up to him, there would presumably still be Israeli settlers in the strip. He has changed the whole tone of the argument by deciding to question the presence of Israeli Arabs who, unlike their cousins under occupation, enjoy the right of citizenship and voting as well as the privilege of living under the Israeli flag.

The best book about this highly interesting and neglected community was written by the Israeli novelist David Grossman in 1993 and is called Sleeping on a Wire. It contains micro-flashes of illumination (such as the probability that more Israeli Arabs than American Jews speak Hebrew) and also some memorable reflections on language and its relationship to literature and culture. We all remember that Maimonides wrote in fluent Arabic, but it's perhaps less well-known that:

The everyday conversation of Palestinian Israelis sparkles with expressions from the Bible and the Talmud, from Bialik and Rabbi Yehuda Halevy and Agnon. Poet Naim Araideh effuses: "Do you know what it means for me to write in Hebrew? Do you know what it's like to write in the language in which the world was created?"

One might not wish to go that far, but it remains the case that the Israeli-Arab Marxist Emile Habibi, author of the classic novel The Pessoptimist (sometimes called The Opsimist) was once awarded the annual Israeli prize for best Hebrew writing.

One might add that the rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah fall upon these people, too, in Jaffa and other towns, just as they fall upon the Israeli Druze and Armenians. The threads and imbrications that bind and layer the discrepant claimants to the land of Palestine are strong as well as subtle, ancient as well as modern. This is why Grossman was so depressed to discover, at the end of his book, that the memory of 1948 was still vivid among even the most successful and prosperous Israeli Arabs and that all of them felt unsafe and secretly feared a renewal of the demand for their expulsion. In 1993, he felt able to some extent to reassure them about this.

Now we have to watch the rise of a thug and a demagogue who has called with relish for the execution of elected Arab members of Israel's parliament if they meet with Hamas, who has demanded the drowning of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, whose supporters chant "Death to the Arabs" at their rallies, and who has materialized the worst fears of those Arabs who have made the longest-lasting accommodation with the Jewish state. Avigdor Lieberman's essentially totalitarian and Inquisitionist style, though, may be even more manifest in his insistence that non-Zionist haredim, or pious Jews, also either take an oath of loyalty or forfeit their citizenship. This takes the ax to the root of the idea that Jews have a presence in Jerusalem from time immemorial and that their resulting rights are not derived from, or dependent on, any state or any ideology. Shame on Benjamin Netanyahu if he makes even a temporary alliance with Lieberman. As questionable as the "right to return" may already be, it certainly cannot confer the right to expel.

INFORMED COMMENT

2/24/09

US To Offer Nearly $1 bn. for Gaza Reconstruction

Juan Cole

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce at the Gaza donor's conference next week that the US will give $900 million to help rebuild the Gaza Strip. That is about a billion dollars.

It is obvious why Clinton is making this gesture. The United States's name is mud in much of the Muslim world because Washington supported to the hilt Ehud Olmert's brutal assault on the people and civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Gaza was already a blockaded and abused slum before the war, where 15% of the children were undernourished. Bush urged Olmert on, and Obama has been silent.

So at least the US can spend some money to restore to the Gazans the basic prerequisites for a decent life.

Moreover, the US has increasing competition for influence in the area.The Gulf oil states are planning out the rebuilding of Gaza, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already pledged $1.25 billion. Qatar stole thunder in Lebanon last spring when it negotiated a peace deal between Hizbullah and the Lebanese government that brought Hizbullah into the government. The Saudis have been trying to bring Fatah and Hamas together. The US has been irrelevant, because under Bush Washington was just a ventriloquist dummy for the Israeli Rightwing. You can only have leverage as a good faith broker if you aren't completely identified with one side of a dispute.
So people are asking where the US government is going to get a billion dollars to give to the Gazans. That's easy. The US should take it out of the over $3 billion a year it gives to Israel. Israel aggressively launched that war, which it planned out for six months beforehand, even while Olmert was ostensibly indirectly negotiating a truce with Hamas. The war was fruitless and accomplished none of its goals. There is no reason for the US government to be giving the Israelis, who have a per capita income of $17,000 a year, money in the first place. But it certainly makes no sense to reward them for bad behavior, especially given that we are living through the great crash and incipient depression of 2009.

Amnesty International is going further and urging that the UN institute a weapons ban on both Israel and the militant Palestinian factions.

http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_c...k,view/id,5299/

Afghanistan and Pakistan on the Brink: Framing U.S. Policy Options - Frederick Barton, Karin von Hippel, Mark Irvine, Thomas Patterson, and Mehlaqa Samdani; Center for Strategic and International Studies

Dramatic changes are needed in order to succeed in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost daily, the people of the region experience deteriorating security and a worsening economic situation. At the same time, Afghans and Pakistanis will both be making tough political choices in the coming months, and the United States and major allies are in the midst of multiple policy reviews. The appointment of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke should provide the opportunity to transform the current approach into one that has clear goals and a compelling narrative.

Afghanistan and Pakistan on the Brink is the result of a 200 person conference, held on November 21, 2008 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and co-organized by the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University (NDU). The event included participants from all parts of the U.S. government. (See agenda in Appendix A and participants in Appendix .

The report is divided into three sections: 1) Policy Challenges; 2) Assumptions; and 3) Recommendations and Policy Options.

The IAEA Should Call for a Special Inspection in Syria
James Acton, Mark Fitzpatrick, and Pierre Goldschmidt, Proliferation Analysis

When the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors meets next week, Syria's case will be high on its agenda. Syria is suspected of building, at a site known as Dair Alzour, an undeclared nuclear reactor that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September 2007. The IAEA has found strong evidence to support this accusation but, as yet, no proof. It has repeatedly asked Syria for greater access on a voluntary basis. Syria has repeatedly refused. It is now time for the IAEA to move beyond such voluntary requests and invoke its most powerful inspection provision, the "special inspection," to make its requests for access legally binding. If Syria refuses then the Board should make a formal finding of "non-compliance."

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publicati...p&proj=znpp

Syria Says Disputed Site Has Missiles
David Crawford, The Wall Street Journal A suspected Syrian nuclear site bombed by Israel has been converted to a military installation for firing missiles, a Syrian delegate told diplomats in Vienna at a Tuesday meeting of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123550357624561941.html

Iran Denies Nuclear Slowdown, Sets Big Expansion
Hossein Jaseb, Reuters Iran said on Wednesday it plans a nearly 10-fold expansion of its uranium enrichment capacity in the next five years, denying a U.N. report which said its nuclear activities had slowed.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/i...P63169620090225

EU Trio Targets Tougher List of Iran Sanctions
Guy Dinmore, Najmeh Bozorgmehr, and Alex Barker, Financial Times France, Germany and the UK - the so-called EU3 - are proposing a tough list of additional sanctions to be imposed against Iran in order to give the Obama administration more muscle in its expected engagement of the Islamic republic.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fd266b06-03a5-11...?nclick_check=1

Nuclear Options
Hans Blix, The Guardian Should we be worried? The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that the Iranians' uranium enrichment programme is proceeding, though perhaps at a slower pace. Iran is not answering questions raised by western intelligence. The IAEA cannot exclude the possibility that the Iranian programme has military aspects. So, yes, there should be concern, but there is even more reason to be distressed that this has been going on for years in full view, yet has not been met with effective diplomacy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...nuclear-weapons

All's well that ends well. After much huffing and puffing by the neocons -- from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to blog pontification at the Weekly Standard, the Middle East Forum, and elsewhere on Planet Perle -- the appointment of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council is a done deal.

Here's the text of a release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

"Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair has selected Charles W. Freeman, Jr. to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). As Chairman, Ambassador Freeman will be responsible for overseeing the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) and other Intelligence Community (IC) analytic products. 'Ambassador Freeman is a distinguished public servant who brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in defense, diplomacy and intelligence that are absolutely critical to understanding today's threats and how to address them,' Director Blair said. 'The country is fortunate that Ambassador Freeman has agreed to return to public service and contribute his remarkable skills toward further strengthening the Intelligence Community's analytical process.' As a former United States negotiator, Freeman has worked with more than 100 foreign governments in East and South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and both Western and Eastern Europe. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affaires in Bangkok and Beijing, Director of Chinese Affairs at U.S. State Department, and Distinguished Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and the Institute of National Security Studies. Freeman received his J.D. from the Harvard School of Law. Ambassador Freeman will report to DNI Blair and the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Dr. Peter Lavoy."

As many of you know, the campaign against Freeman was both ignorant and unrelenting. I posted an account of the controversy at my web site:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/41...c_lots_at_stake

Some highlights:

1. Gabriel Schoenfeld, in the Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123552619980465801.html

2. Rumblings from Steve Rosen, the indicted-for-espionage ex-AIPAC official, in this blog entitled "Obama Mideast Monitor," which is hosted by Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum, and which also hosts the Middle East Quarterly, edited by Michael Rubin of AEI.
(a) http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-...at-the-cia.html
( http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-...as-freeman.html
© http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-...eading-nic.html
(d) http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-...as-freeman.html
and finally (e) http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-...ntensifies.html

3. Fox News (naturally)
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/23...eman-nic-chair/

At the Weekly Standard and elsewhere, there was a copious amount of tut-tutting, too.

Aghast, the Weekly Standard finally surrended to the news, but called it "a disgrace," in a moronic article entitled "It's Official: Saudi Puppet to Head NIC." (And I thought that the Saudis were OUR puppets!)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSF...ppet_to_h_1.asp

It's nice to win one, now and then.
Bob Dreyfuss

Uri Avnery

21.2.09

The Great Gamble

“IACTA ALEA EST” – the die is cast – said Julius Caesar and crossed the River Rubicon on his way to conquer Rome. That was the end of Roman democracy.

We don’t have a Julius Caesar. But we do have an Avigdor Liberman. When he announced his support the other day for the setting up of a government headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, that was the crossing of his Rubicon.

I hope that this is not the beginning of the end of Israeli democracy.


UNTIL THE last moment, Liberman held the Israeli public in suspense. Will he join Netanyahu? Will he join Tzipi Livni?

Those who participated in the guessing game were divided in their view of Liberman.

Some of them said: Liberman is indeed what he pretends to be: an extreme nationalist racist. His aim is really to turn Israel into a Jewish state cleansed of Arabs – Araberrein, in German. He has only contempt for democracy, both in the country and in his own party, which consists of yesmen and yeswomen devoid of any identity of their own. Like similar parties in the past, it is based on a cult of (his) personality, the worship of brute force, contempt for democracy and disdain for the judicial system. In other countries this is called fascism.

Others say: that is all a façade. Liberman is no Israeli Fuehrer, because he is nothing but a cheat and a cynic. The police investigations against him and his business dealings with Palestinians show him to be a corrupt opportunist. He is also a friend of Tzipi. He cultivates a fascist image in order to pave his way to power. He will sell all his slogans for a piece of government.

The first Liberman would support the setting up of an extreme Right government by Netanyahu. The second Liberman could support a Livni government. For a whole week he juggled the balls. Now he has decided: he is indeed an extreme nationalist racist. As the Americans say: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

For appearances’ sake he told the President that his proposal to entrust Netanyahu with the setting up of a government applies only to a broad-based coalition encompassing Likud, Kadima and his own party. But that is just a gimmick: probably such a government will not come into being, and the next government will be a coalition of Likud, Liberman, the disciples of Meir Kahane and the religious parties.


SOME ON the Left say: Excellent. The voters will get exactly what they deserve. At long last, there will be an exclusively rightist government.

One of the proponents of this attitude is Gideon Levy, a consistent advocate of peace, democracy and civil equality.

He and those who think like him say: Israel simply has to pass through this phase before it can recover. The Right must get unlimited power to realize its program, without the pretext of being hindered by leftist or centrist members of the coalition. Let them try, in full view of the world, to pursue a policy of war, the overthrow of Hamas in Gaza, the avoidance of any peace negotiations, unfettered settlement, spitting in the face of world public opinion and collision with the United States.

In this view, such a government cannot last for long. The new American administration of Barack Obama will not allow it. The world will boycott it. American Jewry will be shocked. And if Netanyahu strays – even slightly – from the Right and narrow path, his government will fall apart. The Kahanists, up to then his full partners, will divorce him on the spot. After all, the last Netanyahu government was overthrown ten years ago by the extreme right after he sat down with Yasser Arafat and signed an agreement that gave (pro forma) a part of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority.

After the fall of the government, according to this prognosis, the public will understand that there is no rightist option, that the slogans of the Right are nothing but nonsense. Only thus will they arrive at the conclusion that there is no alternative to the path of peace. The voters will elect a government that will end the occupation, clear the way for a free Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and withdraw to the Green Line borders (with slight, mutually acceptable, adjustments).

For the public to accept this, a shock is needed. The fall of the deep-Right government can supply such a shock. According to a saying attributed (mistakenly, it appears) to Lenin: The worse, the better. Or, put in another way: it must become much worse before it can get any better.


THIS IS a seductive theory. But it is also very frightening.

How can we be sure that the Obama administration will indeed put irresistible pressure on Netanyahu? That is possible. Let’s hope that it happens. But it is not certain at all.

Obama has not yet passed a real test on any issue. It is already clear that there is a marked difference between what he promised in the election campaign and what he is doing in practice. In several matters he is continuing the policies of George Bush with slight alterations. That was, of course, to be expected. But Obama has not yet shown how he would act under real pressure. When Netanyahu mobilizes the full might of the pro-Israel lobby, will Obama surrender, like all preceding presidents?

And world public opinion – how united will it be? How much pressure can it exert? When Netanyahu declares that all criticism of his government is “anti-Semitic” and that every boycott call is an echo of the Nazi slogan “Kauft nicht bei Juden” (“Don’t buy from Jews”) – how many of the critics will stand up to the pressure? How much courage will Merkel, Sarkozy, Berlusconi et al be able to muster? And on the other side: will a world-wide boycott not intensify the paranoia in Israel and push all the Israeli public into the arms of the extreme Right, under the time-worn slogan ”All the World is against us?”


IN THE best of circumstances, if all the pressures materialize and have a maximum impact – how long will it take? What disasters can such a government bring about before the pressure starts to take effect? How many human beings will be killed and injured in attacks and acts of revenge by both sides? Such a government would be dominated by the settlers. How many new settlements will spring up? How many existing settlements will be extended at a hectic pace? And in the meantime, won’t the settlers intensify their harassment of the Palestinian population with the aim of bringing about ethnic cleansing?

The components of the Rightist coalition have already declared that they do not agree to a cease-fire in Gaza because it would consolidate the rule of Hamas there. They seek to renew the Gaza War under an even more brutal leadership, to re-conquer the Strip and to return the settlers there.

Netanyahu’s talk about an “economic peace” is complete nonsense, because no economy can develop under an occupation regime and hundreds of roadblocks. Any peace process – real or virtual – will grind to a halt. The result: the Palestinian authority will collapse. Out of desperation, the West Bank population will turn further towards Hamas, or the Fatah movement will become Hamas 2.

Inside Israel, the government will have to confront the deepening depression and perhaps cause economic chaos. All the sections of the government are united in their hatred of the Supreme Court, and the crazy manipulations of Justice Minister Daniel Friedman will give way to even crazier ones. Under the catchy slogan of “regime change”, targeted assaults against the democratic system will take place.

All these things are possible. One or two years of a Bibi-Liberman-Kahane government can cause irreparable damage to Israel’s standing in the world, Israeli-American relations, the judicial system, Israeli democracy, national morale and national sanity.


THE POSITIVE side of this situation is that the Knesset will once again include a large opposition. Perhaps even an effective opposition.

Kadima came into being as a government party. It will not be easy for it to adapt to the role of opposition. That will require an emotional and intellectual transformation. For ten years I myself conducted an uncompromising oppositional struggle in the Knesset, and I know how difficult it is. But if Kadima manages to undergo such a transformation successfully – which is very doubtful – it may become an effective opposition. The necessity to present a clear alternative to the rightist government may lead it to discover unsuspected strengths within itself. Tzipi Livni’s games with the Palestinians may turn into a serious program for a Two-State solution, a program that will be strengthened and deepened by the daily parliamentary struggle vis-à-vis a government with an opposite program.

Labor, too, will have to undergo a profound transformation. Ehud Barak is certainly not the person to wage an oppositional fight – especially as he will not be the “head of the opposition”, a title officially conferred by law on the leader of the largest opposition faction. He will be second fiddle even in opposition. Labor will have to compete, and perhaps-perhaps this will lead to its recovery. The Bible tells us of the miracle of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37).

That is true even more for Meretz. It will have to compete with both Kadima and Labor to justify its place in the struggle for peace and social recovery.

A real optimist can even hope for the narrowing of the gap between the “Jewish Left” and the “Arab parties”, which the Left has until now boycotted and left out of all coalition calculations. The common struggle and the joint votes in the Knesset may bring about a positive development there too.

And beyond the parliamentary arena, the government of the extreme Right may change the atmosphere in the country and stimulate many well-intentioned people to leave the security of their ivory towers and start a process of intellectual rejuvenation in the circles from which a new, open and different Left must spring.


ALL THESE are theoretical possibilities. What will happen in reality? What will be the consequences of a “pure” rightist regime, if Tzipi Livni maintains her determination not to join a Netanyahu government? Will Israel set off down a suicidal road from which there is no return, or will this be a passing phase before the wake-up call?

It is a great gamble, and like every gamble, it arouses both fear and hope.


_______________________________________________

Posted: 01 Mar 2009 01:57 PM PST


“The world today can be much better understood if you think of it from the perspective of regions and not states.”

--Gen. Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Major_RAND_study...istan,_Nov_2008

Pentagon Papers II? Major RAND study with 300 interviews: Intelligence Operations and Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nov 2008

Enough of Everything but Dollars

The Money Party at Work

by Michael Collins / March 2nd, 2009

The government bailout of failed financial institutions locks you into years of debt payments in behalf of the large private banks, debts that you did not create.

By all appearances, it also locks the country into years of a weak economy. That means unemployment, underemployment, and more suffering for those willing to work, but left out of the job market. It means lowered opportunities for those who do work and troubles for dependants and indigents. Vital national priorities including affordable health care and the massive effort required to save everyone form calamitous environmental catastrophes are now on hold or under funded.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/enou...ng-but-dollars/

ABU AARDVARK 2/28/09

Obama gets it right on Iraq

Marc Lynch

I thought Obama's speech on Iraq this afternoon was outstanding. It laid out a powerful rationale for the new policy, sent a very clear signal to Iraqis about American intentions, placed American policy firmly within the context of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated with the Iraqi government, and embedded the policy effectively into its wider regional context. I know that some on the left are worried about the 50,000 figure for the residual force and about the timeline, but I think those concerns are overblown.The plan Obama laid out today is entirely consistent with his campaign promises and -- more important -- is the right strategy for today's Iraq.[/color]

Here's what I liked:

The very clear signal. "The drawdown of our military should send a clear signal that Iraq’s future is now its own responsibility."Obama stressed repeatedly and clearly that he was bringing the war to an end -- "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end" -- and that all troops would leave Iraq in accord with the SOFA by December 31, 2011. Everything I've written over the last year has emphasized the importance of the clarity of this signal. This is more important than the specifics of the pace or number of troop withdrawals -- which are better handled by the military commanders and diplomats on the ground -- because it gets to shaping the political calculations of Iraqis and Iraq's neighbors. Obama did this extremely well today, taking pains to reiterate and to flag his signaling so that it could not be misinterpreted.

Iraqi responsibility. Obama also did an outstanding job of framing the U.S. drawdown in terms of a shift to Iraqi responsibility: "The drawdown of our military should send a clear signal that Iraq’s future is now its own responsibility. The long-term success of the Iraqi nation will depend upon decisions made by Iraq’s leaders and the fortitude of the Iraqi people." This emphasis throughout the speech on the agency of Iraqis deserves particular attention and praise. Gone is the assumption that what happens in Iraq is all about America, that only the force of American will and material commitment matters.The future of Iraq is for Iraqis to decide, not Americans.

Public diplomacy. Obama's decision to speak directly to the Iraqi people -- and not only to Iraqi leaders -- was brilliantly conceived and executed. His very clear statement that the U.S. had no aspirations on Iraqi territory or resources -- no permanent bases -- was pitch perfect. And I just really liked this frank, direct, respectful talk:

So to the Iraqi people, let me be clear about America’s intentions. The United States pursues no claim on your territory or your resources. We respect your sovereignty and the tremendous sacrifices you have made for your country. We seek a full transition to Iraqi responsibility for the security of your country. And going forward, we can build a lasting relationship founded upon mutual interests and mutual respect as Iraq takes its rightful place in the community of nations."

Realistic goals. Last September Brian Katulis and I argued[color="black"] that "the United States will have to distinguish between those outcomes that are truly catastrophic and those that are simply suboptimal." Obama did so clearly today: "What we will not do is let the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals." This, combined with the emphasis on Iraqi responsibility, demonstrates a very healthy realism about the enterprise which has too often been lacking from American rhetoric.

Respecting the SOFA. Obama referred repeatedly to the Status of Forces Agreement, which others have preferred to ignore or wish away.

Regional context. He correctly placed Iraq within its wider regional context: "America can no longer afford to see Iraq in isolation from other priorities".His commitment to direct engagement with all Iraq's neighbors -- including Syria and Iran, singled out -- and higher expectations for their positive contributions fits well within his strategic vision for the region. With the Arab states unifying their ranks ahead of next month's Doha Summit, and Kuwait's Foreign Minister paying a historic visit to Baghdad today, I expect significant movement here in the near term.

Refugees. I was heartened to hear Obama put such prominence on the issue of Iraq's displaced and refugees, and to define their plight as both a strategic interest and a moral responsibility for the United States.

No plan is perfect. I would like to have heard more about the pace of troop withdrawals, particularly in the early going. The role of the residual force could have been better explained. But I must say that I am far less concerned about the size of the residual forces than are others on the Left. Such a residual force was always a part of Obama's campaign platform, and -- more importantly -- is perfectly consistent with the Status of Forces Agreement, which does not require U.S. troops to leave until the end of 2011. Their mission will change, and they will play an important role in training and support for the Iraqi government and security forces. Nor am I at all bothered by the two month difference between the campaign promise and the timeline in the speech -- and can't imagine that anybody else is either.

Obama's speech today was all that I had hoped, especially after yesterday's conflicting reports. It very closely follows his campaign commitments.It maintains a clear timeline for withdrawal, and sends the clear, unambiguous signal that Iraqis and the region needed to hear while re-emphasizing America's commitment to engagement with the region. It puts Iraqis first and defines a normal, positive future relationship between governments and peoples. And it does this with a frank recognition of Iraq's continuing fragility and plethora of unresolved political fissures, and the tough road ahead. And most remarkable of all, he may even succeed in commanding a bipartisan and inter-agency consensus in support of this policy at home.

This speech is something for which I and many, many others have been waiting -- and working -- for a long, long time. There's much hard work to come, but the die is cast and the signal is clear.

.AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink { height: 1px; width: 1px; overflow: hidden; } .AOLWebSuite a {color:blue; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer} .AOLWebSuite a.hsSig {cursor: default}

The battle of Chas Freeman isn't over, it seems. Not only are small-minded people such as The New Republic's Jon Chait after him, but key members of Congress -- including Republicans John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Democrat Steve Israel -- are calling for an investigation of Freeman's ties to Saudi Arabia. (I can see the headline: "Israel Wants Investigation of Saudi Arabia.") You can read a summary of the latest news here, at my blog: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/41...n_idiots_attack You can also read Arnaud de Borchgrave's defense of Freeman here: http://www.upi.com/Emerging_Threats/2009/03/04/Commentary_The_ICs_analyst_in_chief/UPI-75561236181639/ --Bob Dreyfuss

Evidence Mounts of Syrian Nuclear Cover-Up: U.S.
Mark Heinrich, Reuters
Obama

The United States said on Wednesday that U.N. inspectors had found growing evidence of covert nuclear activity in Syria, and European allies said a lack of Syrian transparency demanded utmost scrutiny.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is looking into U.S. intelligence reports that Syria had almost built a North Korean-designed, nuclear reactor meant to yield bomb-grade plutonium before Israel bombed it in 2007.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/id...E5234N220090304

Iran: Israeli Nuclear Sites Within Missile Range
Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Iran's military chief warned Israel Wednesday that its nuclear facilities are within range of Iranian missiles, the latest message from Tehran that it will strike back if attacked.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...8U-rbQD96NCI400

Russia Rejects US Move on Missiles
Charles Clover, Daniel Dombey, Tobias Buck, The Financial Times
Russia and the US yesterday both hardened their position over Washington's missile defence plans for central Europe after reports that President Barack Obama had sent President Dmitry Medvedev a letter suggesting a deal on the issue.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74338576-085b-11...?nclick_check=1

Task Force Urges Broader Role for Nuclear Labs
Walter Pincus, The Washington Post The nation's nuclear weapons laboratories would be spun out of the Energy Department and become the center of an independent Agency for National Security Applications under a proposal to be released today by a bipartisan task force formed by the Stimson Center, a research organization devoted to security issues.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9030403614.html

PRC Scholar: Lack of Bottom Line Mires US in Predicament on Korean Nuclear Issue
CPP20090304710008 Beijing Huanqiu Shibao Online in Chinese 03 Mar 09

[Article by Zhang Liangui, professor at the Institute of International Strategic Studies of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee: "Lack of Bottom Line Mires United States in Korean Nuclear Predicament"]

Since it tried in vain to attend Barack Obama's inauguration, North Korea has made a series of moves called the "New Year offensive." Its toughness took the world by surprise. On 13 January North Korea published its terms for "nuclear abandonment"; on the 17^th, it declared a state of "total confrontation" with South Korea; on the 30^th, it further unilaterally announced the nullification of all agreements concluded with South Korea on stopping political and military confrontation and said it was on the "brink of war" with South Korea. In recent days it was stepping up preparations for launching a satellite to carry out "space exploration." By making these moves, North Korea precisely is taking advantage of the opportunity, where the Obama administration has not yet firmly established itself and had a clear "bottom line" on the nuclear issue, to implement a new stratagem of "taking two steps forward and one back."

North Korea's basic stratagem of winning security, time, and funds for its nuclear program through diplomacy precisely is a stratagem of "taking two steps forward and one back." That is to say North Korea would, by making full use of the United States and other countries' fatal weakness of not having set an untouchable bottom line for the nuclear issue, first push the issue to the extreme through big steps and then get everything it wants in return for going back a small step.

In his recently published book, The Legacy, a reporter of The New York Times says: Bush lost to Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il] by the score of 0-8. In the confrontation between the United States, which advocates safeguarding non-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and North Korea, which insists on developing nuclear weapons, the latter has done and gotten everything it wanted: it set off its nuclear weapons, declared itself a nuclear state, and received energy, food, and even large sums of money as "rewards." What about the United States? For all the time, energy, and US dollars it put in, it has gained nothing.

Technically speaking, there were two reasons why the Bush administration failed: 1. It held an absolute advantage in morality and strength on the issue of opposing nuclear proliferation but it failed to set a bottom line, thus leaving the proposition to which it adhered bereft of goals and principles and itself in "appeasement." 2. By wishful thinking, it framed a supposition that North Korea could be lured, by way of a buyout, into abandoning the nuclear program and made this illusory supposition its basis for the six-party talks. As a result, it was led by the nose by North Korea and caught in "opportunism" in the talks.

After the Korean nuclear issue became apparent, particularly following the formation in 2002 of the second Korean nuclear crisis, the United States and other relevant countries declared in all sincerity and seriousness that they were going to safeguard non-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. At that time many thought that now that these powers claiming to be responsible to the international community had made such a declaration, nuclear possession by North Korea must be their bottom line on this issue. Yet, when North Korea in February 2005 announced that it already possessed nuclear weapons, there was no special reaction from the United States. With this encouragement, North Korea flagrantly conducted a nuclear test in October of the next year, dealing a fatal blow to the proposition of non-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula; but there was still not much substantial reaction from the United States and other countries. Although the UN Security Council later adopted Resolution No. 1718 on implementing sanctions against North Korea, restrictions were attached in the resolution to "further sanctions," thus rendering it ineffective. Only by then did people realize that the United States actually had no untouchable bottom line on the Korean nuclear issue.

The six-party talks are the best way to bring about non-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Even so, the talks are still a tool and means to pursue the aim and are not the aim in themselves. Anyone would know a tool would be changed during work if it were tested to be unhandy. The six-party talks have gone on for nearly six years now since they started in August 2003 but they rarely produced concrete results in safeguarding non-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. On the contrary, North Korea made full use of these six years to vigorously advance its nuclear program, finally turning into a nuclear weapon state from a non-nuclear weapon state; it also developed its missile arsenal. Notwithstanding this, the United States has no intention of bravely declaring the six-party talks a failure. Although we do not know whether or not the United States intends to talk for another 50 years, we can see it has no bottom line in the negotiations with regard to time. The United States acts this way because, on the one hand, North Korea has applied the technique of diplomatic fishing by setting up a bait that seems so close yet is forever so elusive and enticing the United States into a pursuit and, on the other, the Americans are innocent and arrogant. The Americans think Western countries' experience that bread is always more important than a cannon likewise applies to North Korea. They think those in power in North Korea, which is economically underdeveloped and short of energy and foreign exchange and has a ill-fed populace, will be happy to give up nuclear weapons for economic development provided sufficient material benefits are offered to its government.

The United States subjectively believes that whether or not North Korea abandons its nuclear program no longer seems an issue facing the six-party talks and that the task of the talks is to find a deal price for the exchange of nuclear abandonment for "compensation." There are even people who believe the six-party talks have been difficult because the "compensations" are not enticing enough. They are not at all aware that what North Korea pursues really is not the outcome of the six-party talks but the value of the process. This line of thought fully reflects the United States' unfamiliarity with North Korea.

By summing up historical experiences, one can see North Korea's objective of taking the path of owning nuclear weapons and becoming a nuclear weapon state has always been firm and unshakable over the past few decades. Neither the signing with South Korea in 1992 of the Joint Declaration on Non-Nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula nor the signing with the United States in 1994 of the Framework Agreement nor even its participation in the six-party talks that started in 2003 has had any impact on North Korea's advancement of its nuclear program. The bottom line set by North Korea for these diplomatic activities is that they must not adversely affect the security of its nuclear program. On the other hand, North Korea requires that diplomacy serve its nuclear program by, first, winning security and time for the program and, second, securing energy, funds, food, etc. to facilitate its advancement.

Faced with the Obama administration, furthermore, North Korea has set its new best, second-best, and third-best goals. Its best goal is to establish diplomatic relations with the United States while keeping and advancing its nuclear program; its second-best goal is to improve relations with the United States under the precondition of keeping the existing nuclear weapons; and its third-best goal is to keep the six-party talks going, in an intermittent manner, for another 20 years until they end up with nothing settled and others have no choice but to accept its status as a nuclear state. Whether these stratagems will prove effective and how the Obama administration is going to respond will both directly affect the future situation on the Korean peninsula.



[Description of Source: Beijing Huanqiu Shibao (Global Times) Online in Chinese -- Website of a newspaper sponsored by Renmin Ribao, that updates daily and focuses on international issues and foreign reaction to developments in the PRC; URL: http://www.huanqiu.com]

The Only Way to Avoid Wasting Many Billions More: Take Over the Banks
Joseph Stiglitz, The Nation
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: American banks have polluted the economy; it's a matter of equity and efficiency that they now be forced to clean it up.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/130535/t...over_the_banks/

Middle East Peacemaking Has Failed
Nathan Brown
Foreign Policy - March, 2009
Rather than chasing an elusive peace, George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, should focus on stretching a short-term cease-fire into a medium-term armistice -- a modus vivendi in which Israelis and Palestinians live without hurting each other for five to 10 years. An armistice will have to codify a situation that both sides find tolerable for a while. Hamas could operate freely and govern; Israel could live free from rocket fire and other attacks on civilians. Neither side could be allowed to use the period to impose permanent changes: Israel would have to accept a real settlement freeze, and Hamas would have to live with an internationally patrolled arms embargo.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4734