Taking the bait, here are a few predictions for the Western Hemisphere. In brief, South America as a region is already recovering economically, based on its growing exports to China and other Asian nations. Mexico and the Central American and Caribbean nations, which depend overwhelmingly on the US market and also remittances and tourism, will take much longer. President Chavez' popularity is correlated to the price of oil; his behaviour in 2010 will become increasingly strident and erratic as Copenhagen showed. Yet he will continue to consolidate power, as will several of his regional supporters including Bolivia's Morales, just elected overwhelmingly to a second term, and Nicaragua's Ortega, who is busy trying to game the system to allow his own indefinite tenure. Mexico's all out war on drugs and crime is a strong effort which was made worse through delay. But now that the government is fully engaged with US support, progress will continue to be made. It would help if we really did stop the flow of weapons south to Mexico from the United States. Even so, it will be a long and chillingly bloody fight and will continue long after President Calderon leaves office in 2012. Chile will remain stable, no matter which of the two candidates wins the run-off, but a win by the center-right Pinera will be a departure in the post-Pinochet era nonetheless. Fidel and Raul will remain in power in Cuba; the only thing that could change that would be Fidel's death (or, presumately, younger Raul's death), but nobody has ever won a wager predicting the imminent demise of Fidel and I'm not going to, either. Brazil's elections toward the end of the year will be important but the general course of the country set by Presidents Cardoso and Lula will continue, the main question is how fast growth will occur, and whether the new president will decide, a la our own president, to take on some very difficult domestic issues such as tax and pension reform in his or her first year. Nonetheless, Brazil will continue to feel its oats internationally, which will lead to a certain frustration among Washington policy-makers. Peru will continue to grow, but strains are emerging from the indegenous population and also the possible re-emergence of the Moaist Sendero Luminoso and the 2011 elections will be critical for that country. Argentina is all about the Kirchners; institutions could use a boost but that won't happen in 2010. In Colombia, President Uribe remains very popular and has done a solid job as president. In the end, for the broader good of the country and to show that Colombia is no Venezuela, he'll decide not to run for a third term. But he'll string out the decision for so long that it will crimp the ability of others to run to replace him. Finally, in terms of US policy, the focus will continue to be on development. Unfortunately, our means to achieve these ends are limited for political reasons. Trade will remain a dead letter. Despite all its advantages, the agreement with Colombia will continue to languish, as will Panama unless someone in the WH can get Congress to agree that an "easy win" on the Panama FTA will help burnish otherwise deteriorating trade credentials. New trade initiatives for the hemisphere will not be contemplated in 2010; even a promising trade effort launched at the end of the last US administration, the Partnership for Prosperity, has been diluted. And, aid will continue to be minimal. If the US economy improves and immigration reform really does take off in 2010, remittances will increase and that will be a positive development. But dealing with immigration reform prior to the mid-terms is no sure thing and will require a massive political effort in addition to everything else going on.

Our predictions’ round has taken, happily, a somewhat meditative turn, with Brian Michael Jenkins offering some apt musings on what might be called an occupational tendency towards gloom: “Those who worry about national security as a profession, in or out of government, are inclined by attitude and habit toward pessimism. The challenge is to avoid sliding from proper recognition of an always complicated and often scary world into forecasts of inevitable defeat and doom.” Speaking for myself, I sometimes find it helpful to turn away from the news pages, the radio and TV shows, the Web maw and all other such ‘current’ sources and search for perspective in other, less ephemeral, realms. At this time of the year, I like to dip into W.H. Auden’s “New Year Letter,” of January 1, 1940, for insight, and I am never disappointed. If we think that today’s times are bleak, imagine the landscape that engaged Auden, an Englishman writing from New York, four months after the Nazi invasion of Poland. One quality of mind that comes across is humility: “How hard it is to set aside/Terror, concupiscence and pride,/Learn who and where and how we are,/The children of a modest star,/Frail, backward, clinging to the granite/Skirts of a sensible old planet…”

I am curious how others search for analytical calm amidst the storms; feel free to share stories… And as we approach year’s end, feel free, too, to share any ‘bests.’ I’ll start:

Best book read: Crowds and Power, by Elias Canetti. This book from 1960 is outrageously politically incorrect, circa 2009—and that is just one of its many recommendations. Nobody seems to write books like this anymore—a hodge podge of history, anthropology, political science and philosophy, driven by Canetti’s unquenchable curiosity about the multitudinous forms that crowds can take. His chapter on “The Pack and Religion” has plenty of contemporary relevance, and he seems to arrive effortlessly at original comparisons and contrasts: “A ruler collects men…A celebrity collects a chorus of voices.”

Best tipple: A 1971 Mouton Rothschild, with the Kandinsky label, from my father’s cellar and shared, more or less equally, between Dad, my wife, her mother, and yours truly. Totally, totally mellow.

Happy New Year!

One of the things that is easily predictable about the new year, like the recent past, is phony reform being recommended in the many parts of our system that need the real thing. A particularly poorly informed piece about reforming the US Senate in last weekend's Washington Post Outlook section prompted me to write a response. It follows:

Pointing out the obvious can sometimes be useful if you have a big enough megaphone. Washington Post staff reporter Ezra Klein was handed that opportunity this past Sunday when that paper’s prestigious Outlook section printed his commentary on “dysfunction” in the Senate: “After Health Care, We Need Senate Reform.” He got it right that the Senate “cannot govern,” especially itself, but he blew his chance to say anything to help readers truly understand the Senate or fix its problems. Oblivious, the Outlook editors put the commentary on page one, above the fold.

I spent a career learning about the Senate – from the inside as a staffer for both Republicans and Democrats and as one who both exploited and ultimately sought to change some of the Senate’s more corrosive, modern day behaviors. When I started in 1971 with liberal Republican Jacob K. Javits (NY), a breed now extinct, I observed an institution able to cope – albeit never smoothly nor gracefully – with genuine national crises (Vietnam and Watergate). When I left the Senate staff in 2002, the institution was well locked into moral bankruptcy and intellectual incompetence in its pathetic efforts to address problems as politically glib as defining marriage and as serious as going to war.

To argue, as Klein does, that the problem is just one of permitting a simple majority to rule the Senate, rather than the filibuster-imposed supermajority of 60, is to reveal fundamental ignorance of how the Senate works (or doesn’t). Klein cites two ideas to fix things: to permit 51 votes to prevail on any bill after nine days of debate, or to phase out filibusters over eight years. That these proposals come from two sitting senators does not mean they should be taken seriously. Long timer Tom Harkin (D-IA) presumably knows how empty his non-starter “reform” is; newcomer Jeff Merkley (D-OR) apparently does not. Plus, even if these gimmicks were to be adopted, they would not change anything -- certainly not the atrocious behavior of the individuals currently occupying the Senate.

Recall, please, how the Senate was designed in the Constitution. If you want efficiency and quick turn around in governance and legislation, you want a very different system. Clog and delay were built in from the get go -- quite consciously. Guaranteeing minority rights was a central tenet of the design – as it is of democracy.

The filibuster is merely one of a thousand ways a small number of senators, even just one, can clog the system. Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate was never intended to operate by majority rule; it was designed to operate by “unanimous consent.” That means, as we observed during the endless non-debate of the health care bill, that one senator can demand that the entire text of any bill or amendment must be read aloud – word by audible word – if one member simply utters the words “I object” at the appropriate moment. It also means that nominations, even bills, can be held up for days, weeks, even months before a majority leader tries to start what passes for debate in the Senate these days. And, it means any and all committee hearings must be shut down any time the Senate is in session – and a senator objects. The Senate rules are an almost endless opportunity for mischief, or worse, for any member or faction wanting to play the role – just like the racist Southern Democrats did in the 1960s when they stood, insistently and almost endlessly, in the way of civil rights bills.

The way the Senate operates also means that any senator with the brains and guts to hamstring George W. Bush’s blustering the country into war in October, 2002 could have done so. (But alas, there was no such senator.) It is a system designed, for good or ill, to permit a minority – sometimes tiny – to interpose itself, as obnoxiously or as honorably as they may choose.

Eliminate all that, and what do you get? You get the House of Representatives. If you want to fix the gridlock problem in Congress and fix it good, the best thing to do is to eliminate the Senate.

It’s a bad idea if you like democracy. As designed, the Senate has an important role: cooling the heels of excess, either from an overreaching executive or the House where the majority can run any tyranny it pleases.

Sadly, cooling things off is hardly what the Senate Republicans had in mind during the health care mess. Eschewing the role that George Washington described to Thomas Jefferson as a saucer to cool off some hot legislative tea, they sought instead to heat up their own political base and, of course, contributions to augment their selfish visions of future political self-aggrandizement. May they rot in ignominy for their efforts.

In selecting grubby, selfish, politicized agendas – many of them involving judicial nominations -- the Democrats amply demonstrated during their minority years of the George W. Bush presidency (if that is what you want to call it) that they also love to exploit the rules and clog the system.

If Republicans and Democrats, either as factions or individuals, want to behave like pigs when they are in the minority, why do we make it so easy for them? For more than a decade now, we have seen the Senate ground itself on the shoals of the 60-vote supermajority requirement. It is invoked instantaneously whenever a controversy is even suspected in a bill or amendment. In today’s system, a senator needs merely to think about talking, and the Majority Leader breathlessly imposes the 60 vote requirement, ostensibly to avoid the delay and move things along. We literally have filibusters without anyone doing any public talking, but, of course, we get the delays as well; witness the parliamentary fiasco of the health care “debate.”

Make them pay for it. When was the last time we saw an actual filibuster? If an individual senator or a party wants to hold up the train because they have either a disgustingly selfish or admirably noble point to make, they should be permitted to explain themselves. And, for all to see. Senate rules, properly applied, give them an opportunity to do just that for as long as they care to take. C-SPAN’s cameras will be happy to broadcast their rationalization far and wide for every voting American to observe.

It also used to be that a filibuster required both energy and skill to carry out. It was not just a question of going to the Senate chamber and yakking up a storm; you had to know the rules -- backwards and forwards -- least another exploit a parliamentary goof to shut you down. In other words, you had to be extraordinarily well prepared before your gambit; you had to be skillful and alert in pulling it off, and you had to have the energy and determination to endure. For those simple reasons they were something of a show to be watched, and – far more importantly—they were rare. It would be an extremely useful exercise to force today’s Senate peacocks through such an exercise. Such sorting processes are always revealing.

Today, by raising just a pinky and not having any notion of troubling him- or her-self in the slightest, any hothead or ideologue from either party can impose the gridlock. As a result, real filibusters are very rare, but the delays, the parliamentary wrangles, and the grubbing for votes are more present than ever.

It also should be noted that some new trick to impose simple majority votes will not eliminate the poor behavior that many complain is caused by requiring the 60th vote. Just as senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) whored about to win goodies to be vote number 60 in the healthcare jumble, so will they behave to be number 51. And, the minority will simply find new ways to impose itself on an ambivalent majority, which knows it will some day want to act as just selfishly – without working up a sweat -- when it is in the minority.

It is not the rules in the Senate that need adjustment; it is the members. It is perhaps unrealistic to call for ethical, broad-minded behavior from the current crop of pretenders masquerading as members of the Senate. But perhaps a few of them might want to consider using the rules as they were intended – to permit legitimate minority rights whenever they are willing to go to the considerable effort to exercise them. For those aiming to exploit the rules for cheap, short sighted, or selfish reasons, make them work for it – right in front of the cameras.

Getting there would require leadership in the Senate with the strength of character, intellect, and will to impose higher standards of conduct. It would also require a public, especially journalists, willing to exercise the same. Good luck to us on that.

A distinguished Columbia University professor, William T.R. Fox once told his seminar that when you are asked to predict the future, you should analyze the past . If still pressed to talk about the un-knowable, you should analyze the range of choice. If pressed even further, write humbly in the following format: on the one hand ..., on the other hand ...., only time will tell.

What will happen next year? Only time will tell. The only thing I am sure of is that there will be surprises that were not predicted by any the National Journal's experts. But for the love of the game, here are a few predictions that I already regret:

The Islamic Republic (sic) of Iran: Will move faster toward political implosion than it does toward nuclear explosion. Hawks in the United States and Israel will do their best to save Ahmadinejad.

The war in Afghanistan: Gets better, but few notice. It hurts Obama with his party. Within the administration, there will be a huge battle over the meaning of the President's pledge to begin withdrawal of combat troops in July 2011. In a distant echo of the Vietnam era, as things get better and good outcomes are in sight, our desire to terminate our efforts too rapidly will increase. The next presidential election will begin to complicate calculations.

Iraq: Continues to muddle through; oil (not love) keeps it together. AQI again raises its head, only to have it cutoff for a second time. The USA will help, but Iraqi forces will wield the knife.

Guantanamo etc.: the USG will enter 2011 (!) still working on a plan to transfer its inmates to Illinois. DoJ experts continue to argue over what to do about the 100 or so new federal inmates on US soil who cannot be charged, indicted, tried, or made subject to military commissions. Can anyone in DoJ spell Habeus Corpus? How about those top terrorists we are going to send to Manhattan? They will be fun too. [Memo to Bloomberg: How many tunnels run under that Court House in Manhattan?]

Russia: Continues its attempts to go ugly, early and hard. Putin gets back in the political game for real and his opponents all die young, go into exile, or mysteriously disappear. Russia continues to pressure Nato-philes on its border. Upside: NATO stiffens its spine.

China: Continues to make money, continues to modernize its military, and begins to search for monsters abroad to destroy. Upside: RoK, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, and Australia renew their love affair(s) with the United States. SEATO, anyone?

DoD et al.: Loud talk about drastic cuts in defense spending take place, but the aftermath of war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan push them to the future. Gates becomes more and more the essential man, but his privileged position with Dems begins to wear thin. Left democrats finally realize that Gates has been the key to making Obama Clintonesque. They openly lust after his budget to reduce deficit and fund huge new health care expenses. Gates wants to go home, but has increasing fear that if he leaves, so will his policy thrust at Defense.

How does 2010 end? Hopefully, with the arrival of January 1, 2011. Happy New Year to the readers of the National Journal and to my fellow National Security bloggers.

JJC/28 Dec

I'm posting this on behalf of Brian MIchael Jenkins: THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THE REPUBLIC HAS SURVIVED I will decline the invitation to add my predictions to the generally gloomy forecasts of my colleagues, and instead will offer an observation. But first, an anecdote. Asked by a Congressional committee for my view of U.S. efforts against terrorism--this was long before 9/11--I offered an especially sober assessment. This irritated one committee member who apparently preferred to hear something more upbeat, if not an outright endorsement of the government's achievements. After a brief and frustrating interrogation, he dismissed me with the observation, "Well, Mr. Jenkins, you just don't have a lot of good news." To which, equally frustrated, I shot back, "Congressman, if you want sunshine from California, buy an orange." Neither oranges nor good news seem to be in season right now. Gloom is always in season. Beneath Americans' characteristic optimism lies a great deal of anxiety. We worry about America's unique position in the world. We worry about America's economic future. We worry about new challenges to our national security for which the country is ill-prepared. We worry about subversion from within. Those who worry about national security as a profession, in or out of government, are inclined by attitude and habit toward pessimism. The challenge is to avoid sliding from proper recognition of an always complicated and often scary world into forecasts of inevitable defeat and doom. I am trying hard to recall a time, at least more than a euphoric moment, when well-informed American national security specialists would not see danger on the horizon. Certainly not any time during the 1930s, not during the hard days of World War II, and even as we knew we would win the war, national security specialists at the time soon recognized that agreements between America and the Soviet Union made during the war had consigned half of Europe to another totalitarian state that represented a new and ultimately greater danger to U.S. security. Upbeat assessments were rare during the Cold War. Defense analysts had no notion that we had "won" the Cold War until the Berlin Wall fell, until Communism in Russia itself ended, and even then, doubted for some time that the struggle was truly over. Meanwhile, if a powerful adversary commanding a huge nuclear arsenal posed a threat to the planet, a crumbling adversary ineffectively guarding a huge nuclear arsenal was even more worrisome. Instead of a peace dividend, American forces invaded Panama, fought the first Gulf War, deployed to the Balkans, and with disastrous results, to Somalia. Meanwhile, some analysts, including this author, warned that escalating terrorism represented a greater threat than most recognized. The 9/11 attacks propelled the nation into an era of terror, which persists, and which truly threatened the country's core values. Security analysts predicted even more cataclysmic terrorist attacks--they still do--while the Global War on Terror morphed into the invasion of Iraq and what promises to be a long and difficult campaign in Afghanistan. The point of this brief chronicle is to ask in which of the past 80 years have American analysts provided an upbeat assessment. The good news is that the republic has survived.

Optimism is an opinion; pessimism is a character trait - so someone said. These days, frankly, pessimism rings truer. Still, we should do what we can to have Fortune smile on us. So in keeping with the spirit of the season, let's see if we can charm the muses to help spin our destiny into a positive orbit. Hence the following pro active initiative.

The archaic native American tradition whereby tribal members offer gifts to their chiefs on the advent of the New Year should be revived. For it symbolizes the debt of gratitude to those brave and selfless souls who have dedicated themselves to the welfare of the commune over the past year. Ritual gift giving seals the bonds of respect and affection that are our ultimate safeguard against the forces of evil that menace us. May our chiefs continue to be granted the Mandate of Heaven.

So inspired, I propose the following list of gifts from US to THEM.

Sarah PALIN: Oxford Companion to Armageddon

Robert GATES A time-share condo in Kabul

Rahm EMANUEL A hair relic from the True Beard of Rasputin

David Petraeus The other half of Gate’s time-share condo in Kabul

Lloyd Blankstein

CEO of Goldman Sachs Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends & Influence People

Richard HOLBROOKE A day pass to the Presidential Palace in Kabul

(use restricted to when the President is absent)

Hillary CLINTON A dress

Stanley McCHRYSTAL The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

William KRISTOL Kipling’s ‘Gunga Din” Framed & autographed by Din

Mike MULLEN Cot in Gates/Petraeus time-share condo

Leon PANETTA Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval - pre-dated

John McCAIN Honorary officer in the Khyber Rifles

Ben BERNANKE THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST and the FIRST SHALL BE LAST – Biblical derivative desk ornament

Bernie MADOFF Paradise Lost

Tiger WOODS Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost

Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman,

Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe Original Print of Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse

from woodblock of Albrecht Durer

Progressive Democrats 'Ghost Riders in the Sky" several artists

Robert GIBBS Consulting contract with ‘Spin’ BOLDAK - famed White House press secretary whose name graces a town on the road to Khandahar

Barack OBAMA Map Quest Guide to Central Asian Turnpike Network

(highlights off-ramps and exits)

From Robert Killebrew, sent in at 12:12 A.M., 12.25.09:

On Christmas Eve, let me make a couple of easy predictions. First, it's not all bad. The new Administration is going through what all administrations do in the first year of office -- finding out that the world is a more complicated place than they thought while campaigning. So Obama is learning to be President, and the hard facts of the job are taking him down a different path, in some ways, than he'd planned. I predict his Afghan speech at West Point and his Nobel speech are both signs of his growing maturity as President. We have lost some ground as he and his team have fumbled here and there, but I predict that realism is setting in and the next few years will see greater maturity and fewer "reset button" gimmicks.

On Latin America, I wish my predictions could be more optimistic. Across the hemisphere, we are seeing a new form of crime-led insurgency that makes Iraq and Afghanistan look simple by comparison. The fundamental problem is pervasive corruption, that leads to the drug trade, the criminal insurgency and terrorism in Mexico, and the growing emergence of a Venezuela-Bolivia-Iranian axis that uses the cartels to attack the US. Thus far, we have no strategy to combat what is a multi-pronged and highly complex insurgency that strikes deeply into the streets of America, although we have had, and continue to have, many unrecognized tactical successes (Columbia, closing the Caribbean routes, etc.).

The two centers are, first, the cartel wars in Mexico that threaten the very fabric of Mexican civil society and extend into operations inside the US (Mexican cartels now control drug movement and some other crime roughly south of the line Atlanta-Tulsa-Albuquerque-Las Vegas, though they have presence in other major cities nationwide).

Second is Chavez' bid for political control in Latin America. Thus far he reaches Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and (to a lesser extent) El Salvador; Honduras was and remains a near-run thing. His government has ties to the cartels through FARC and other means. He is working hard to unseat the Colombian government and to drive out the US base in Curacao. He is making major arms deals with the Iranians who, I am reasonably sure, are helping him ship drugs north to the US and east to Africa.

I predict that Chavez will attempt to influence the Mexican elections of 2012, as he did the last one in 2006. (His candidate, Obrador, missed by less than a tenth of a percentage point). If he is successful, we can expect an anti-US, pro-cartel government in Mexico. Even if he is not, it's hard to see that candidates for the presidency will run on continued war against the cartels. This gives us a very short window to figure this out.

Second, I predict that developing a combined US strategy will be marred by bureaucratic infighting (as it is today) over which agency should have overall strategic direction; this is the first, and likely to be the most difficult, issue. And the second will be to grow, in that agency, a strategic planning capability and authority not unlike the JCS (but the lead agency cannot be DoD).

Lastly, I predict that an early strategy choice will be a cry to legalize drugs, a course of action that has the advantage of simplicity and the disadvantage of being dead wrong. In the face of corruption on this scale, legalization, whatever its social considerations, would be only a tactical move bordering on irrelevance. The problem is corruption, criminal states, and terrorism of the Mexican type. If you look closely at the Mexican cartels in Mexico, you don't see drugs as much as you see extortion, kidnapping, murder, larceny and Mad Max-type criminal armies. They won't reform is we legalize pot.

The Chavez-cartel wars are liable to be the most difficult, and most consequential, wars we fight in the first half of the 21st century. Or I should say "are fighting," since thousands of cops, DEA, FBI, Border Control and other agents are working night and day, many of them at the risk of their lives, to hold the cartels and gangs in check. But our window of opportunity gets smaller every day.

Merry Christmas, everybody, and a happy new year.

Bob Killebrew

There are ample reasons for pessimism, but it is nevertheless surprising that Americans—generally upbeat and optimistic even in more difficult circumstances—are feeling so gloomy. Why is that?

Some would attribute it to the grim decade through which we have just come: two real wars, fear of terrorism, stalemate in the Middle East, the likelihood of further proliferation of nuclear weapons, near financial collapse and a deep recession are enough to take the smile off most faces. Others would attribute the pessimism to lack of confidence in the recovery, in the outcome of the war in Afghanistan, in health reform or just in President Obama.

Even the President—generally an optimist—seems daunted. If we work hard and do the right things he says, we might escape the worst. He is settling for a health reform that falls short of his supporters’ dreams, if not of his own. He is not promising a quick recovery, only suggesting that things could have been a lot worse had the government not acted. He has not suggested that Afghanistan will be fixed by the summer of 2011, just that he’ll be able to begin to withdraw a few troops. He is letting things slide in Iraq, apparently convinced that there is more risk in trying to fix its remaining problems than in letting the Iraqis try to do it on their own.

The fundamental reason for pessimism arises from the cardinal developments of our time. We’ve crowed so much about globalization and interdependence that it is difficult to acknowledge that they have now proceeded so far that our destiny is much less in our own hands than once it was.

Want more security? It is not enough to build a few dozen missiles and put them in silos in Kansas. Now you’ve got to deal with Afghanistan (or Somalia or Iran or North Korea). Want more jobs? You’ve got to convince China to loan more money, or Europe and Asia to buy more U.S. products. Want to protect the US from epidemics? You may have to start in Viet Nam or Cameroon.

Of course we always faced challenges abroad—the US Navy first blockaded Tripoli in 1803. But not since World War II Americans alive today been more dependent on forces and factors outside our borders. Ask any teenager how he feels about restrictions—that’s something like the resentment Americans are feeling toward a world they once treated as background noise.

This isn’t going to change, and the trend can only be slowed if Americans are prepared to take make some difficult choices. Looking beyond immediate crises, the most important is to reduce oil dependence, which creates vulnerabilities and enriches our adversaries. But I haven’t been hearing a lot of convincing proposals from American politicians on this score—they are resisting using the market mechanisms they know are the only way to have a big impact on oil use.

Next I would choose enhancing our civilian capacity to protect and pursue our interests abroad—Secretary Gates according to this morning’s Washington Post has apparently made a serious proposal to bridge the enervating gap between State and Defense. That would be a very good first step, especially if it came with renewed commitment to acting in concert with friends and allies.

And third, there is no way to make me a bit more optimistic without serious efforts to slow nuclear proliferation worldwide. If the Administration can find a way out of the Hobson’s choice we currently face—between a nuclear Iran and a military attack, one that won’t prevent Iran from eventually gaining nuclear weapons—I could be convinced to smile again.

Anne Marie Slaughter has rightly argued that America’s connectedness abroad is a great strength, one we need to learn to exploit. But we also need to learn how to limit the impact of that connectedness on our freedom of action. The world notices when Gulliver is tied down. Gulliver is happier when he can move freely, even if he may choose not to do so.

Santa is not going to bring us a bag full of reasons for optimism tonight. But a few relatively simple steps could dispel my end of decade gloom: reduce oil dependence, increase American capacity to act abroad without military force, slow nuclear proliferation, especially by Iran.

Thanks to all contributors and just to remind, this round is a two-week one, taking us through the New Year. A special thanks to Paul Sullivan, who ventured no fewer than 57 predictions for 2010 and beyond. On balance, the predictions so far have been on the pessimistic side, captured in this gloomy comment by David Krieger: “As the glaciers continue to melt, so will American prestige abroad.” So, just to ask, are there are contrarian optimists out there—anyone with a prediction or a speculation on the sunny side of the ledger? One narrative thread of the moment that comes to mind is what looks like, from a distance, the continuing unraveling of the Iranian regime of the Mullahs. Does anyone want to venture that this is looking like a good news story for American interests—and the planet? Or is the risk here mainly on the downside, with the Mullahs in the end only like to consolidate their power, by whatever bloody means necessary, or, if they lose control, for Iran to spiral downward into chaos and possibly even civil war? I’d also welcome more predictions for the Western hemisphere—ripe with possibilities stemming from the Mexican drug wars, the global ambitions (or fantasies) of Hugo Chavez, the twists and turns of a post-Fidel Cuba.

Feliz Navidad!

The question that will fascinate all in the year ahead is how long the Obama administration can keep all of the national security balls in the air that it and the other post-Reagan administrations have put aloft. As a country, we have been operating on best-case scenarios/assumptions and the result is that we have made no improvements in some really serious threats to U.S. national security. What would we do if one or more of the balls hits the deck? Leaving aside pandemics, cyber-attacks, and other evolving threats, one wonders what we would do in 2010 if one or more of our long-unaddressed security problems went from a potential to an immediate threat. What if 2010 sees:

--A major and prolonged spike in oil prices and/or an al-Qaeda attack that drastically reduced production in Saudi Arabia, elsewhere in the Gulf, or the Niger Delta.

--The "success" of the surge continues to unravel -- as it is currently -- and/or Iran keeps annexing Iraqi oil facilities.

--Our masters in Israel attack Iran.

--Mexico's narco-insurgency accelerates, drives large numbers of Mexican's north, armed U.S. citizens take it upon themsleves to halt an inundation their government can't or won't stop, and violence among Mexican cartels begins to occur in U.S. border states.

--Al-Qaeda and/or its allies hit the continental U.S. with a larger-than-9/11 attack.

--China moves against Taiwan, or engages in some hard-ball playing with our debt.

Obviously, none of these problems are new, and, sadly, the fact that America will be controlled by events and will not be able to control them speaks to the paucity of senior statesman-like leadership America has suffered from for 20 years. We have had plenty of senior political leaders, but they have been interested only in winning the next election and have forged spectacular successes only in running up debt and increasing the number of unnecessary overseas commitments that can lead to war. Open borders; a depreciating currency; so-called allies who can take America to war without our consent, and perhaps without warning;dependence on foreign energy resources; a vastly undermanned Army and Marine Corps; Cold War-era treaty commitments that should have been scrapped -- not expanded -- long ago; and a steadily growing worldwide Islamist extremist/militant/terrorist/insurgent movement, call it what you will, are all balls that are in the air and that must stay there if America is to get through 2010 in decent shape. To me, at least, the odds seem very much against us, and for that situation we have only ourselves to blame.

I suspect that 2010 will be a year of disappointment in US foreign policy. President Obama will continue to backtrack and assume more of the characteristics of George W. Bush. The war in Iraq will linger, the war in Afghanistan will heat up. The US generals in Afghanistan will cry out for more troops. The president will deliberate and then capitulate.

Under the pressure of US drone attacks, Pakistan will grow more unstable. Russia and China will learn from the US the "benefits" of drone warfare.

North Korea and Iran will continue to pursue their nuclear programs. Many Middle Eastern countries will pursue the development of nuclear reactors for "peaceful" purposes. The developed countries, eager to profit from the sale of these reactors, will wake up one day, but perhaps not as early as 2010, to realize that "peaceful" nuclear reactors are a pathway to weapons proliferation.

The 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference will be an advance over the failure of the 2005 Review Conference, but it will not end the current nuclear double standards, which will also linger on, provoking proliferation. President Obama, who has promised to aggressively pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, will not submit the matter to the Senate for fear of failure due to the Republicans voting as a bloc against ratification. In order for the president to get the extension of the START agreement with Russia through the Senate, he will need to make major concessions in the form of research and development funding for new nuclear weapons (regardless of what they call them). As the glaciers continue to melt, so will American prestige abroad.

Waiting in the Shadows

“The age of the dictator was at hand, waiting in the shadows for the event to call it forth.” Thus Dalton Trumbo began his screenplay of Spartacus.

We live in state of consciousness — more than mere zeitgeist — in which the meaning of human change is locked in events. For us history is a series of memorable events only. Events are the change-makers, the things to look for: The soul of prophecy.

Yet events are but announcements of change. Might another age even now be “waiting in the shadows”? But if events are signs: Can we even read the signs?

In Trumbo’s screenplay, Gracchus (played by Charles Laughton) observes: “Spartacus destroyed the republic that would not give him freedom.” Yet Romans collectively hailed the triumph of Crassus, Pompey, and Lucullus. “The age of the dictator was at hand” — Not for them.

So are we missing the signs of big change in our daily events? As we look forward to 2010, will we, can we, see what these happenings portend? Try an example from the instant past, noteworthy for its 24/7 newsworthy emptiness:

COP 15 (The United Nations Climate Control Conference) 7-18 December 2009

At Copenhagen we see something waiting in the shadows indeed. Perhaps the world’s two greatest scientists in paleoclimatology and the ecology of the oceans, have told me privately: It is too late, and no human intervention now can stop carbon-loading of the earth’s atmosphere from reaching 700 ppm (parts per million). Other renowned scientists also affirm this deep judgment (that cannot yet be confirmed by data — and will not until it is upon us).

I am no scientist, and have little claim to any renown. But 700 ppm simply means this: Our earth offers humanity a future of toil and pain that our blissful consciousness today cannot even imagine.

This is another age “waiting in the shadows.” This is a new world, forty years and more from now. Hence COP 15 may be seen in years to come as a “turning point” event among our “remote posterity” (as Graves’ Claudius would say!).

Future historians may write like this: “In a transfiguring humanity here was the moment to see the folly: In Copenhagen there was nothing more ‘policy’ could even do. Yet the collective energy there was all about a policy that would ‘save’ the world. Everywhere, every conversation was driven by the narcissism of ‘policy.’”

They will write, someday, how we humans should have been thinking instead about how to prepare ourselves: “Could we have saved more of our own precious future? Could we just possibly have mitigated more of what went down? Yet instead in those lost days we indulged in lofty liberal feel-good.”

Yet there is also another dimension to Copenhagen as our remote posterity’s “world-historical” event. There was this signal moment: Came The American President, not as, “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus,” but rather, as A.A. Milne described:

He is quite a different person

Now he hasn’t got his spurs on,

And he goes about the village as B. Botany, Esquire.

“I am Sir Brian? Oh, no!

“I am Sir Brian? Who's he?

“I haven't any title, I’m Botany;

“Plain Mr. Botany (B.)”

In that last, impromptu, private meeting with China (Wen Jiabao), India (Manmohan Singh), Brazil (Lula da Silva), and the G77 (Dlamini-Zuma), The American President crashed the party to discover himself — B. Botany, Esquire.

Our fervid 1989-place at the end of history: Of forever-realized American millennial triumph, was today in an instant extinguished amidst the polite symbolism of L' Acqua Effervescente and linen tablecloth. After America’s calamitous authority-expenditure though an Iliad-nine years of blood-drenched, fruitless war, we enter a world-elegant conference room to find ourselves just another great power. Goodbye to world leadership, to 1945 and all that!

But there is more. Copenhagen’s climate narcissism, tied to a world of collegial powers (a G1 world now a G20 world), leads to this inescapable meditation:

A world event (like the crushing of a slave revolt) that contemporary eyes cannot see — Must be all about what is waiting in the shadows. Copenhagen, if we might wish to see this in our minds’ eye, could be the celestial sign that the dark, tragic place of future humanity has no reliable friend in the present, and that both our willingness to prepare ourselves and our will to succor our remote posterity is everywhere eroding around us.

So here is a terrible template for you — for all you Americans. It is not just something to layer onto climate change. Try it out on our reified Forever War (see President Obama’s address to the cadets of the US Military Academy at West Point, 1 December 2009). Or explore an economy still rooted in a consumer-debt model that requires infinite growth to survive (reference H.R.4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, passed the House on 11 December 2009).

It is terrible because you can take most prophesized-for-fun events — as, “What will happen in 2010?” — and within each are signs for us awaiting a Rosetta Stone that will not be discovered in time.

This template is also about terror as a horror-shock for Americans who love to “forecast” or “predict” New Years’ events so as to comfort and console. Typically little turbulences promised in projected 2010 sturm-im-wasserglas are in every case manageable and safe: No one conjures real bad stuff. Going further, New Years’ predictions tell us totally about the reality we inhabit. It is all about next year. It is all about now.

Which is surely as it should be for us Americans. Surely we think: If something really big and bad is bearing down on us like at runaway train we will see it.

Sure we will. We will see it in all its majestic and terrible fullness. Sure.

Just like late-Republican Romans.

[If you avoid the shadows you will never see them]

I think the democrats are going to lose quite a few seats in the House in November. A lack of interest on the part of African-American voters, unhappiness over unemployment and disillusionment over the unending war in Afghanistan will all contribute to that end. Will they lose control of either house? No. That can wait for 2012. The disillusionment over Afghanistan will be somewhat ironic because the situation is likely to improve there as the result of the influx of reinforcements and an increasing focus on placating non-Taliban local authorities and using them to control their own territories. Will that undermine the Kabul government? Yes, but we will do it anyway as a prelude to leaving the place in its usual chaos. The US will march steadily toward the door marked "exit" in Iraq. Malaki's government can hardly wait to see our combat units gone. American business will continue to do remarkably poorly in the new Iraq. If you haven't made your money there by now, boys, you had better continue to mover your operations to Afghanistan or Yemen or some other garden spot. Africa? Speaking of money and Afghanistan, there will probably be a major story involving American corruption in Afghanistan. Iran will experience something like civil war. The big question is whether or not the regular Iranian military will continue to allow the IRGC to abuse the people. They are unhappy now about this. If there is a change in the type of government in Iran, will that government still want nuclear weapons? If so, will Israel still press for a castrating attack on Iran? The American people will come to feel during the coming year that most of them are poorer than they were a few years ago. This is change that they will believe in.

As I in my study looking at the large amounts of snow from the historic storm that hit the DC area, and which all of us on this list predicted to the day and the amounts of snow fallen, I will try to prognosticate on the mostly impossible to guess about fully. The world is complex and the toughest thing about predicting is that it is about the future.

Being initially trained as a Ph.D. economist I can look back at all of the economic predictions of the last three decades with a certain amount of sarcasm mixed with humility. The first time I really began to understand macroeconomics was in a class with the great James Tobin. Now there was a man with a true sense of humor and a clear sense of how absurd it is to predict the future from the past, which is the way most people do things even if it makes little logical sense. He was a genius with a wit. With all of the recent talk about how he turned against the Tobin Tax I had to mention him. By the way he did not turn against it. He just thought it would never be accepted by the powers of the financial community. He was right on that one.

He also told me once that he would never get the Nobel Prize. He did. Even the great Tobin had his problems in prediction. When he did get it I was at the celebration at the Yale Economics Department. I mentioned his previous prediction and, as was often his response to my sometimes unconventional way of stating things, he let out a booming laugh and said something along the line of his degree of confidence having changed on the issue after he got it. This was the same fellow who mentioned as the rain poured down on us at the welcome picnic for the new graduate students that I must be a good predictor given that I was the only one who brought an umbrella.

Well, I have missed some and I have got some. With the years some wisdom has been developed in the complexity of uncertainties and the "black swan" events that lurk out there. But wisdom can be such a fragile thing. Indeed, we may think we understand certain events, trends, policy effects and so forth, but there are always those surprises out there just waiting to put us back in our place. I don't have a crystal ball in my study and I mostly stay away from trying to predict things even as simple as the prices of some commodities.

I am often asked what the price of oil will be in the next year. My usual answer is: variable. Indeed predicting the price of something as materially simple as crude oil has a raft of uncertainties based on the other things that are tied to it.

There are the many choke points where 45 percent of the oil is transported by sea: the Straights of Hormuz, The Straights of Malacca, The Suez Canal, The Bosporus, The Gulf of Aden (aka, Somali pirate central), and more. Then we have the uncertainties of Iraq, Iran (if the Israelis attack Iran expect the price of oil to be around $250 plus), terrorist attacks on pipelines and oil facilities here and worldwide, and many more such factors. Then we have the speculation uncertainties, domestic and international policy uncertainties, and the uncertainties of what demand and supply will be like worldwide and in important consuming and producing nations such as China, the US, and so many others. Then there is the underlying prediction of what the value of the dollar will be against other major currencies. Oil is predominantly denominated in dollars even if the Iranians have changed their bit to the Euro. Then there are the potential effects of disruptive technologies that may come around the bend. Then there is the great uncertainty surrounding the Copenhagen "agreements", carbon trading, and more. There are significant investment risks out there for both consumers and producers of oil. Also, what will interest rates be like in a year?

So what will the price of oil be in 2010? Answer: variant. But one might guess that if the world economy rebounds strongly, which I have my doubts on, then the price of oil may climb to over $100 all else being equal and with a world economic growth rate of 2-3% and a Chinese growth rate of 10%, with a very large fudge factor. Of course, all else is never equal and other factors have to be calculated in. Trying to build educated guesstimates of the price of any commodity involves quite complex calculations and a lot of "street smarts".

There are certain trends and possibilities that are important to consider and try to get a sense of, even if the future will likely be full of many surprises, both positive and negative, neutral, and some sort of all of the above.

One clear prediction is that the Redskins will not be in the Super Bowl and they will not win it. However, predicting whether the Patriots will win it is a bit more complex. Now you can see how this predicting business can be simple (the sun will rise tomorrow) and complex (it will rain lightly and be 75 degrees on April 1, 2010).

So here are some "predictions" based on gut feeling and some educated factors added in:

(1) There will be some significant staffing changes on national security issues at The White House. (I can predict with some soundness of certainty that I will not be part of those changes.)

(2) The climate conference at Copenhagen will go down in history as the most carbon intensive waste of money in the history of diplomacy.

(3) More and more people will begin to see the national and international security implications of climate change.

(4) President Obama may just pull a victory out of the jaws of Copenhagen defeat with further better organized and more clearly defined climate negotiations at the leadership level on the bilateral and multilateral levels.

(5) The dollar will be variable, but will likely lose more value relative to many other major currencies in its run to the bottom of the last few years that most people have ignored.

(6) The unemployment rate in the US will remain near 10 percent and there may be more crime as a result.

(7) The Washington, DC housing market will fall more so. With a decent, livable home in a safe area of Washington now going for an unsustainable $700,000-900,000 this cannot last. The numbers do not add up. This could be expanded to many other real estate markets worldwide that many people think have "bottomed out". Ask a new family just starting out in Ireland, Spain, China, Japan, India, and more places how logical and livable their housing markets are. Why is that a security issue? One of the biggest threat generators in some countries, such as Algeria, for example, is the lack of housing, very dense housing, and the lack of hope for a better life amongst the youth thinking of getting married and having a family. This is not a threat generator here in the US, but it surely is elsewhere.

(8) Credit markets are a lot weaker than some think. The commercial real estate debt market is a time bomb waiting to go off. This could have worldwide implications.

(9) Osama Bin Laden and company will remain in their caves in Waziristan, or wherever they are, smiling at how damaged our economy has become and how damaged our economic and other values have become. That really angers me because I know he and his gang of criminals, whom I call Al Cosa Al Qaeda, have nothing to do with the Islam they say they defend and have the same messed up moral values you would find in serial killers, rapists, and extortion kingpins. Is he really our worst enemy? Why don't we have him locked up yet? I can make a wild prediction that a lot more extremists will be killed and arrested in 2010, and will likely not make a dent in the problems we face. The root causes are still mostly ignored. They will continue to be ignored.

(10) Some of the root causes of the "dislike" of American policies can be found in the Eastern Mediterranean, in our support for dictators throughout the Muslim world, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, unemployment and loss of hope amongst the youth of the Muslim world, and the perception that the GWOT is a war against Islam. I don't expect much to change on any of these reasons in 2010. Even if we do get mostly out of Iraq the damage had been done. It will take many years to repair our relations with the Muslim world. Perceptions mean a lot. We need to send out better signals and better people to help resolve these differences before things get a lot messier and meaner than any of us could predict today.

(11) One of the big winners of the world and US recession are criminal gangs. It would be nice to predict that many more people will see criminal gangs and illegal drugs as the biggest threat to the US and the world. If we as a nation and as a world would distrust and push back at the criminal gangs and the markets for illegal drugs more so we could make a real impact here. But many seem to be more accepting of illegal drugs in their homes than they would be of having a fine, solid and decent Muslim family into their homes. Now that is a serious distortion of values that has warped many people's abilities to distinguish the real enemies from the falsely created ones. I would like to say that more people will see Muslims as allies against the same enemies, rather than as the enemy, in 2010. But I doubt it.

(12) The real enemies will continue to be violent extremists of many backgrounds, organized crime, illegal drugs, and..... ignorance.

(13) Water security issues will become far more important in the thinking of some of the best national and international security strategists. The places where this will become the most important include the Middle East, China, India, the Sahel, southern Africa, Iraq, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and more and more as time goes on. Groundwater issues will become more important as well. You might want to look at my recent article in the World Policy Journal on that issue.

(14) Nigeria will get much worse before it gets even a little better.

(15) Many countries in Africa that have recently moved out of brutal civil wars could be heading right back into them.

(16) The Sudan is a huge wild card in Africa. It is the biggest country on the continent. It is on a razors edge. After coming out of a very brutal, and the longest, civil war in the continent (actually many civil wars) it has a chance of falling right back into chaos and this could affect many other countries in the region and well beyond the region. As the world focuses on the brutalities of Darfur it seems to be missing the point of what might be happening in the south of Sudan and between the south and the north. The referendum for independence for the south happens in January 2011. Expect trouble in 2010 as the many sides involved jockey for position. This is a country that keeps me up at night. The Sudanese are an amazing people. They deserve more peace and prosperity.

(17) The problems of Kenya are hardly solved and there could be considerable continuing instability there. The Mungiki are still a violent and criminal force. Tribal issues still abound. Drought is a continuing threat. The economy is not in good shape. The coalition may not work well in 2010. One could hope for the best, but things do not look good.

(18) Equatorial Guinea will continue to be a brutal dictatorship supported by oil. Its people will remain in dire poverty as its leaders drive Lamborghinis near their summer house in Malibu.

(19) Guinea Bissau will devolve into more violence and the drugs gangs that really run the place will likely get more powerful, unless something truly smart is done by the people inside and outside the country.

(20) China will continue to develop business and power in Africa.

(21) Many Africans may increasingly resent the business and power of China in Africa.

(22) The resources of Africa will become an even stronger focal point for domestic stress on the continent and stress between countries which need those resources worldwide.

(23) Somalia will continue to be a lawless basket case. The Somali pirate issues will continue and may increase. The Somali pirates may step up the power and sophistication of their financial and gun trading networks. We may see much more powerful weapons being used by them.

(24) The Gulf Aden off Yemen will continue to be where most of the piracy occurs that is blamed on the Somalis.

(25) Yemen will continue in it's hurtle toward a failed state. The Saudis will continue their attacks in the north. Iran will continue to increase influence in Yemen. Al Qaeda will continue to increase influence in Yemen.

(26) Saudi Arabia will continue to be at risk of terror attacks, particularly against in energy infrastructure, such as Ab Qaiq and Ras Tanura.

(27) Kuwait will continue to face similar risks.

(28) Iraq's oil infrastructure is likely the most brittle in the world for one main reason: 90% of its oil exports move via the ABOT terminal in the south. It could be the premier terror target in the world. If this is hit Iraq and the world have very serious economic and other problems.

(29) Iran will continue its slow fall into greater instability. The death of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri could prove to be a much more important even than many people outside of Iran think.

(30) Ahmedinijad will lose even more credibility in his country and abroad after further outrageous statements and behavior. More of the mullahs will consider turning on him. The opposition in Iran will get more powerful. Congress will likely pass sanctions on the importation of gasoline into Iran. This will prove to be a counterproductive tool to move positive change along in Iran.

(31) Lebanon and Syria will further work toward patching up their differences, but with considerable care, caution, and credibility weaknesses. Hezbollah may likely get stronger if Lebanon cannot get its economic and political act together. The weakening of Iran may not have the effect on Hezbollah some here might think.

(32) Nothing of any real long term positive consequence will happen between the Israelis and the Palestinian due to the continued power of Hamas, the weakness of the other Palestinian leaders, the increasing power of extremists groups within Israel, and the lack of real courage on the part of the outside powers involved to really try for a solution.

(33) The UAE will bounce back a lot faster than people might guess from its economic and financial problems.

(34) Turkey will continue to go on its own with relations with Russia, Iran and others. It will grow in importance in energy markets and transport. Most people in Turkey will give up the idea of joining the EU. This may hurt the EU in the long run considering how Turkey will become the major energy bridge from Central Asia and even the Middle East for gas and oil.

(35) Egypt will become increasingly tense about its future after President Mubarak. I wish them luck. This could be a very complicated and challenging time.

(36) Libyan leader Mohammar Al Ghaddafi will continue to be unpredictable. One of his sons will become a clear favorite to take over.

(37) The King of Morocco will continue his slow, but thoughtful, drive toward economic, social and political reform. However, the country may face some internal threats that could prove to be a serious problem, especially out of the drugs gangs in the north.

(38) The DESERTEC project will begin to take shape in North Africa. This is a great project that carries with it a lot of hope for a new energy system for that part of the world and for the EU.

(39) Alternative energies will really start growing in North Africa and in some countries in the Middle East.

(40) China will have a big burst in alternative energy investments.

(41) The northern route for oil, gas and other transport over the pole will start to take shape in many investor's and companies strategies.

(42) The Arctic will become an even more important point of contention for those countries involved.

(43) The South China Sea energy issues may get hot when the world economy starts a real rebound.

(44) The EU will increasingly become a much weaker system and this weakness will find its growth in the energy and other resource stresses within and across the countries of the EU.

(45) Canada will continue to be a large trading and investment partner with the US, but China will start to move in even more so.

(46) Mexico will have increasing drugs and crime based violence. PEMEX will continue to falter. The drugs and crime gangs will continue to smuggle other goods and commodities, including oil.

(47) Hugo Chavez will become a weaker power in his country as his people begin to see through his false socialist disguise.

(48) One of the most dynamic places for energy change and climate policy changes could be in some of the Islands of the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago.

(49) US policy makers will once again discover the importance Latin America having lost it in their file cabinets long ago.

(50) The importance of oceans, seas, gulfs, etc. and desalinization will begin to be seen more clearly. However, the security issues surrounding desalinization likely will not be seen so clearly.

(51) The year 2010 and for a few years after that the world may be at the cusp of peak oil and all of the implications that it holds. Most of the world will remain dozing as the investments and planning should have been started more in earnest.

(52) Russia will begin seriously thinking about moving from being a resource state to something else before it is too late. But the internal powers and pressures will not let it move fast enough.

(53) The social and political effects of the world recession will start to take hold as the recession begins to possibly end. This will be especially so if there is a double-dip or even greater uncertainty about when some areas will recover. There may be increasing social unrest in Russia, Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia and China.

(54) The cracks in the façade of China may become clearer in 2010. It faces down a huge cost for energy-related health issues, an aging population with a one-child policy, massive unemployment and a drifting work force, and the social tensions built up over time in a vastly changed society that has had economic freedoms increased, whereas political freedoms seem to have gone in the opposite direction.

(55) The data on global warming will continue to be collected. The complexities and uncertainties of it will continue to be mostly ignored. It will become more of ideological, rather than a logical issues. Bottom line: our political and thought leaders will continue to drop the ball on this important issue by vastly simplifying it and not reaching out properly to explain it, especially in the US. There are many sides to this issue. There are many vast and quite dangerous national and international security threats associated with it. But it will be lost to the idea that it will happen long in the future and that there are uncertainties.

(56) More should be done to explain the overall footprints we all have in the products we use, the energy we use, the water we use and more, but I doubt it will take hold much in 2010. Many leaders in Washington are watching the snow and further denying the complex realities we face. If Generals Zinni and Sullivan and Admiral Truly and others can see this, why is it that so many act ostrich like to the issues?

(57) Inertia will as usual rule the day and the truly unconventional thinkers and strategists will continue to have a minor influence. The careerists and the political will still be left holding the wheel while still thinking those 20th century thoughts as the 21rst century moves inexorably forward.

The nice part about predictions is they are like tee ball. A fun game where all can play and no one really wins or really loses. So in that spirit, let's give it a shot.

First, the surge in Afghanistan will likely "succeed" for the short term. Or putting it another way, it is going to look good for awhile based on a ramping down of hostile activities in country. This will have less to do with the military side of the equation than our ability to spend money on various projects around the country. Soft power will take this round as the Taliban have lost their "charm" with local populace.

Second, I think Iran will continue to play Road Runner to our Wiley Coyote. While the Russians will likely join the squeeze on Tehran, the power brokers in Iran are unlikely to budge. They want nuclear weapons and will do all they can to get them. The wild card remains whether Israel is willing to sit still. The closer to weaponization of these weapons, the greater the possibility that Tel Aviv will attack.

Third, barring a war with Iran, the economies of the world will continue to expand in 2010. The much dismissed US economy will make a strong comeback of 3 percent plus growth. Europe will remain a laggard and the Far East will be boosted less by internal demand than the mighty American economic engine. And both US and Europe will continue to have high employment -- always a lagging indicator, but now compounded by a shift away from the financial services/housing industry model of the 00 decade. In this manner, it will look a lot like the painful 1970's readjustment.

Fourth, the Democrats will suffer substantial losses of seats in the mid-term elections. While this is a no-brainer given history, and the Dems are likely to maintain slimmed majorities in the House and Senate, it will totally hamstring the Obama Administration going forward. Whatever liberal agenda is left will be tossed aside to keep Afghanistan and the economy rolling ahead.

And, finally, the trials of the 9/11 conspirators in NYC will bring back plenty of painful memories. But they will also serve to remind everyone of why we need Homeland Security and what we are doing Afghanistan. To the world, it will show once again that America stands by its system of justice under even the most extreme of circumstance.

2010 will see a discomforting revelation of America’s true place in the world. The expose will gradually strip away the veil of illusion as to the ends we set, the means we have for reaching them, and the probity of our impaired leadership. The infirmed state of the nation’s body politic will then become apparent.

Our futile project in Afghanistan, along with our dubious ventures elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, will provide the main instruction. For it is there that the immediate, tangible costs will register and it is there that credibility is eroding for all to see. First, there is the gross distortion in the Obama administration’s declaration of needs and goals. Its policies are driven by the relentless quest for the Holy Grail – absolute security, especially from al-Qaeda and its ilk. The absurd notion that failure to succeed in this quixotic enterprise will gravely endanger the United States and ‘buckle’ the world order cannot be justified by logical analysis. Yet we plunge ahead on a fool’s errand.

Second, we do not have the power to impose our will on other parties. Whether those parties are foe and friend, they show growing resistance to doing things under American pressure that they otherwise don’t not want to do. Robert Gates’ embarrassing trip to the region last week should make that obvious. Mr. Maliki in Baghdad told him that he had more important things to tend to than being badgered for the umpteenth time to follow self-interested American prescriptions for what Washington thinks ails Iraq. Mr. Karzai in Kabul called Gates’ bluff in telling him to his face in public that the Afghan army will not be ready for 25 years to take on the responsibility for national security – whether we threaten to leave or not. After all, you don’t abandon the Holy Grail because the native help is a bit lethargic. Meanwhile, in Islamabad, the Pakistani military, backed by most of the country’s political class, bluntly and bitterly told a battery of top echelon American envoys that they reject the American demand to conduct all-out was against the Taliban, they reject drone attacks in Quetta and they reject giving the CIA/Blackwater crowd free run of their own country. Their message: “We want to make one thing perfectly clear – back off!”

Our one obedient servant, President Asif Ali Zadari, is on the verge of being forced to resign along with his entire government in humiliating circumstances following a decree by the Pakistani Supreme Court which he tried and failed to corrupt.

Third, Barack Obama has done a disservice to the country by dragging out an endless review of tactics when all the big questions of need and purpose had been decided eight months earlier – with no public input. The one person among his senior policy-makers who did not share in the fanciful thinking, Ambassador General Karl Eikenberry, was studiously kept out of the prime time White House discourse. That is why Obama blew his stack when the long Eikenberry memo leaked. This irresponsible mode of policy-making broke every rule in the book: sound decision making demands that diverse viewpoints be heard, that the problem definition and goal-setting be dealt with in a candor that opens to critical scrutiny the underlying premises; that prudent steps be taken to avoid group-think. Taken together, these lapses meant that the American public was presented with a flawed case for war that concealed more than it revealed. Obama’s disingenuous rhetoric at West Point and Oslo never addressed frankly how circles were to be squared and why we had to try. Setting dates for exit strategies and mapping off-ramps before your escalated campaign has even begun is senseless. Having your senior officials contradict you within days dissolves Obama’s authority while shredding his credibility everywhere.

As we mire ourselves in Afghanistan, and as hostility toward the United States mounts throughout the region, we will have thrust in our face the rude truth that we are burning down the house (or houses) in an attempt to destroy some mice – to quote Uri Avnery. Mice whose troublesome relatives are scattered throughout the town. Waging war in a country where al-Qaeda does not exist contradicts directly the case for what is proclaimed to be a necessary and ‘just’ war.

Americans observe these contradictions like a cat looking at you turning on and off the light switch with attention flitting from you to the light. Then it just closes its eyes and goes back to sleep. That is what they now are doing with the encouragement of the Washington pundits who kibitz on the fine points of counter insurgency in places they know nothing about. As for the press, they perform their virtuoso act of slaloming around all the big questions that could make a difference. Others, abroad, have made the connection, exacerbating our troubles. When it dawns on the American public that they have been duped - again, the repercussions could alter profoundly what we can and can’t do in the world. For worse and for better. If they do not wake up, then the further degeneration of our incoherent political system will proceed apace.

cheers

There will be growing dissatisfaction with the allies on which American security is currently based--Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and so forth. This will begin a re-examination of our strategy which was crafted so quickly in those traumatic months after September 11.

My greatest fear is that another major terrorist attack within the United States ignites the already-dangerous levels of distrust and hostility toward Muslims. But should such an attack occur, it may also inspire a long-overdue national debate on whether an 18th century constitution remains adequate for the dangerous 21st century security environment.

Updated at 12:01 p.m. on Dec. 21.

I’m not usually a man for predictions, but, in the spirit of end-of-the-year frivolity, here’s what I think are the most likely scenarios for 2010:

To lead off, a real stunner:

Middle East Peace will not be achieved.

North Korea will not give up its nukes. (Nor do I believe, by the way, that it has any intention of doing so.)

Backed by an influx of U.S. troops, the United States will start a systematic effort to court Pashtun tribal leaders in Afghanistan. It might help a bit, but don’t expect much of an improvement. Pakistan, in general, will remain a big mess.

Plus this entry from the Just When You Thought It Was Over Department.

Tensions over Kirkuk will spur a new round of sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq. Everone will suddenly realize with a jolt that the war there is a long way from over.

Viktor Yanukovich will win Ukraine’s presidential election in January.

The country will edge a bit closer to Russia, sidle away from the notion of joining NATO, and make google eyes at the European Union (easy to do, since all concerned know perfectly well that Vermont probably has an equal chance of gaining membership).

The renminbi will gain in value – but not as much as the US wants.

But none of this will really matter, since global warming will continue apace. Time to put your money in Siberian agribusiness stocks!

Anyway, for what it's worth - have a Happy New Year.

2010 will be the year that Russia finally decides to join the American-led squeeze of Iran. Twice burned by Iran’s duplicitous behavior regarding the nuclear processing deal, plagued by ongoing Muslim unrest in its South, Muscovy will recognize that an Iranian nuclear weapon not only could provide a security umbrella for Hamas and Hezbollah, but also for the Chechens, Ingush and others who refuse to come to terms with Russian rule. With Russia foursquare in the Western camp, China will not hold out for long; and the pressure on Iran may actually succeed in stopping its nuclear program.

2010 will also be the year that China and Taiwan announce that they will set a long-term timetable for peacefully uniting. The Taiwanese are too invested in China to do anything other than seek a Hong-Kong type solution. Beijing is too invested in Taiwan to pay the high economic price that tensions, much less an invasion, is likely to generate. China has other concerns: India, oil supplies, avoiding falling off its economic treadmill. Taiwan is simply not so important an issue, and Hong Kong has proved that Beijing can get its way without wrecking the economic golden goose that the island represents.

2010 will be the year of ….

Digging out of the mess of 2009, and 2008, and 2007 -- and pretty much the past decade or two.

I’ll admit that I have digging on my mind, what with nearly two feet of snow in my driveway, my sidewalk, on my car, etc.

But our foreign policy is buried under a perfect storm, and not just metaphorically. When you consider all of the difficult predicaments that Washington has gotten us into over the past few years, I don’t know how 2010 can be a breakthrough year for American security. The best that we can hope for is a modest turnaround in Afghanistan, a more-or-less-as- scheduled troop drawdown in Iraq, and continued tensions with Iran, Russia and China.

To the extent that our options are limited, we should recall that we didn’t arrive here overnight. Washington took on the responsibility for policing the world after the end of the Cold War, and discouraged other countries from playing a larger military role. Within the last few years, however, the chickens have come home to roost. The true test case has been Afghanistan -- where we have discovered that our allies have little to contribute, and even less of an inclination to do so.

There is little evidence that our foreign policy establishment is prepared to heed the wishes of the American people. Many Americans are suffering from what James Lindsay calls “intervention fatigue”. If Washington adopted a more restrained foreign policy that took account of our strategic advantages, I might be more hopeful for 2010.

But the Obama administration seems determined to discourage other countries from taking the lead in their own defense, and in their respective region of their world. So long as Washington remains committed to playing the role of global cop, our strategic objectives will surely exceed our resources. Resolving the means-ends mismatch has fallen chiefly on the backs of our military (the strain of a very high operational tempo for our troops preceded 9/11), and that will likely continue in 2010 -- although the soft economy is likely to help armed forces recruiting, as it did in 2009.

Then again, the security situation could grow a lot worse. The Obama administration, desperate to show progress in Afghanistan, might not be content with the troop increase announced last month. We are projected to spend $100 billion in Afghanistan next year; I expect that the actual costs will climb far higher, but I doubt that we will see progress on the very ambitious set of objectives that the president set forth earlier this year. There will be pressure to reverse course in Iraq, if, as many fear, the country slips back into civil war, or becomes a staging ground for Iranian chicanery. And we could see a war with Iran, a horrible prospect that would make the costly debacle in Iraq look like a “cakewalk” by comparison.

The smart money says that foreign policy pundits should avoid prognostication altogether, but to be especially wary of falsifiable predictions. So while I’m not ready to place odds on the likelihood of war with Iran, I hope that 2010 will be a little bit better than 2009. I fear, however, that we’re only going to see more of the same.