Conventional wisdom has held for some time now that Muslims in the United States integrate better into society than do Muslims in France, Britain or other European countries, and that's why we haven't had many homegrown terrorist plots. But perhaps in light of recent events, that is just so much self-delusion. Some 20 Somali-Americans -- all young men mostly born here, the FBI says -- have gone to Somalia in the past 18 months and joined Al Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated group trying to seize that Horn of Africa country. One of those Somali Americans, Shirwa Ahmed, died in an apparent suicide attack targeting government offices in northern Somalia in October 2008. Najibullah Zazi, an American born in Afghanistan but raised in the United States since the age of 7, was plotting to blow up trains in New York City before he was recently arrested in Colorado. And now Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, an American Muslim born and raised in Virginia, stands accused of shooting to death 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

Are we as good at integrating Muslims into U.S. society as we think we are? Or is it that Muslims worldwide are inevitably getting fed up with America's two wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a global war on terror that is perceived to be attacking Muslims in about two dozen countries? Or is it that Al Qaeda -- which had connections to Zazi, Al Shabaab and the Somalis, and perhaps through a cleric to Maj. Hasan -- is still the force we need first to be reckoning with?

Realistically, though, hundreds of new Lawrences would not be able to make a dent in growing Islamist numbers.  That would require a host of changes in U.S. foreign policy -- re oil, Arab tyrants, Israel, etc. -- which would, with time, begin to slow Islamist growth.  Once such changes are in place and begin to undermine the Islamists' center-of-gravity and major motivation -- status quo U.S. foreign policy -- the new Lawrences could begin eliminating Islamist leaders wherever they are found.

One caveat, however, is that nearly 14 years after bin Laden declared war on America it may well be too late for any new program to help much.  The Israeli-Muslim war is coming to our shores, notwithstanding all the Pollyanish nonsense about "99.9-percent of American Muslims are peaceful" and "U.S. supporters of Israel are all loyal Americans." Perhaps this domestic disaster is what we should be planning for at the moment.    

Indeed, all it would take to restore sanity is some slight reflection on our dismal performance everywhere we have tried our hand at manipulation in the Greater Middle East since 9/11. We have been consistently arrogant, incompetent, corrupt - in all senses, callous to the pain inflicted on the natives and ourselves alike, and abject failures.  That is the bitter truth.  Now we conjure Jack Armstrong All-American Boys who happen to be Muslims attune to the sensibilities of their co-religionists who are to be the clay for the American Master Potter.

We long since have left Saturday Live territory; we're deep into Monty Python territory. 

Sorry folks.  But as the kids say, it's time to get real.

In response to your question:

What is the alternative to having people who understand the country and people of where they are serving? "Ugly" and "quiet" Americans don't work out so well.

My summary of the discussion so far follows below. First, however, I would like to pose a related question to the group in hopes of spurring further debate. The U.S. military and Special Operations Command have launched a “Project Lawrence” initiative that attempts to recruit the next “Lawrence of Arabia,” someone steeped in the cultures of places where U.S. forces now operate like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. These recruits will almost necessarily be Muslims, and they will likely be given great authority. Knowing what you do about the Hasan case, should it dampen the military’s enthusiasm in any way for Project Lawrence, or suggests safeguards?

This Week’s Summary

The group wisely rejected generalizations that would impugn the vast majority of American Muslims by the actions of this tiny minority. To tarnish the reputation of 99.999 percent of American Muslim’s with this group of Jihadists, Ron Marks wrote, would be insulting to them and all that they bring to this country. The Muslims who serve in our military, and who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, noted Dov Zakheim, are certainly neither terrorists nor a threat. The average American Muslim is probably no more dangerous than the average Buddist, Sikh, Christian or Jew, echoed Joe Collins.

In terms of what is known about Maj. Hasan, Brian Jenkins points out that his profile has elements both of the radicalized Islamic terrorist and the deranged and reclusive civilian who “goes postal” in a homicidal rage. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, terrorism by its very nature, notes Jenkins, does not attract the well-adjusted. Workplace violence is a sad fact of American life, notes James Carafano, but if complacency and “political correctness” did stop officials from connecting the dots before the tragedy at Ft. Hood, then they should dedicate themselves to finding out what went wrong so as to avoid a repeat.

Joe Collins finds great fault with the U.S. Army Medical Corps that apparently identified Hasan as a problem, and then shipped him off to another unit rather than deal with it themselves. The future face of terrorism within the United States, Paul Pillar wrote, may well be just such random shooting rampages as exemplified by Hasan and the D.C. sniper. Dan Byman agrees that this kind of individual attack launched by Hasan is the most difficult to prevent and thus likely, but also in some ways the least worrisome from a strategic standpoint.

When it comes to the Somali Americans who have joined Al Shabbab the group seemed more concerned. As opposed to the relatively well-educated and prosperous Arab-American Muslim community, Byman notes, Somali Americans are poorly integrated and a majority live in poverty. That makes them similar to the Pakistani community in Britain and the North African community in France: poorly integrated, bitter, and prone to radicalization by terrorists and their ilk. The trigger may well have been the U.S. backed intervention in Muslim Somalia by the largely Christian Ethiopian Army. Time to wake up to the fact that such American actions since 9/11, Michael Brenner warned, are seen across the Islamic world as anti-Muslim.

Because of the apparent links to the Al Qaeda core, the terrorist bombing plot allegedly hatched by American Muslim Najibullah Zazi worried some of our group the most. Individuals who are familiar with this country and linked to the Al Qaeda core, notes Byman, are capable of acting strategically and inflicting great harm. Their Al Qaeda training may encourage them to maximize the psychological impact of a terrorist attack, for instance, by linking it to major celebrations, elections or other symbolic events. In order to root out such threats, Carafano argues that U.S. officials cannot let individuals hide behind the Bill of Rights, and should not be afraid to go into mosques, churches, libraries or inside immigrant communities to find them. 

 In the end, many in the group agreed with Brian Jenkins that these cases collectively tell us little about the radicalization of Muslims in America. Radicalization and recruitment to violence is occurring in the United States, it is a legitimate concern, but it also has yielded very few actual recruits. Michael Scheuer would keep an eye on two groups driven by their religious beliefs – fundamentalist Salafi Muslims who see the separation of church and state at the foundation of the American system as an affront to God, and “Israel-First Jewish Americans” and “Christian Zionists” who put Israel 's interest above those of the United States in all things.  

What we can say is that we have not integrated recent Muslim immigrant well. Many recent arrivals live in poor conditions, similar to their co-religionists in Europe. That situation breeds crime--and, when stoked by the Internet and other influences, terrorism. Our governments--Federal, State, local--need to do whatever possible to integrate recent arrivals so as to avoid their alientation, or worse.

And there are some things only the Muslim community can do. Such as establishing theological seminaries for homegrown Imams, who will have imbibed American culture and values from birth. The vast majority of foreign born Imams are law abiding. But American Islam needs far more native born leaders, for they can have a special influence on youngsters in particular that foreign born Imams simply cannothave, because their formative experiences have been so different.

We are a nation of immigrants. We have welcomed all, and that has included, and must include, Muslims. Certainly, we need to do all we can to prevent terror of any kind--I am a strong supporter of the Patriot Act. But we owe it to Muslim immigrants, and their American-born children, to integrate them into our society as rapidly as possible, so that they, like so many immigrants before them, can contribute mightily to the American dream.

On the Muslim side of the coin, there is no objective rationale for believing that Salafi Muslims can ever become full and enthusiastic members of U.S. society -- especially as the paganization of our society merrily advances.  These folks not only do not see a need for a separation of church and state, but they tend to view such a separation, man-made rather than God-made law, and, indeed the nation-state itself as affronts to God.  In addition, Salafists tend to see U.S. foreign policy as an attack on their Muslim brethren and Islam as a whole.  Now, it may well be that these beliefs remain simply beliefs and never prompt Salafis to undertake anything more than political action.  Then again, they may at some point lead to violence in God's name.  We'll have to wait and see, but Major Hassan may well have come to a point where he could no longer could reconcile his Islamic faith with his duties as a U.S. citizen serving in the U.S. military and came down on God's side.  If this turns out to be the case, our society and domestic security face a rough path ahead. 

On the other side of the coin are Israel-First Jewish Americans and Christian Zionists.  Based on their religious beliefs both of these groups put Israel's interests above those of the United States, and seek to involve all Americans in the endless Israel-Islam conflict in which America has no genuine national interest at stake. These two groups are the true, vigorous war-mongers of U.S. society; they want the United States to wage war against any and all of Israel's enemies, from Iraq, to Iran, to Hamas, to the pathetic Syria and Fatah.  Both groups use their extensive financial resources and media access to bribe, intimidate and smear any person, politician, or writer who opposes U.S. wars against entities that pose no threat to the United States, but do threaten their country/idol of first allegiance -- Israel.

These two groups are, at least in my view, fundamental threats to U.S. national security because, on the Salfi Muslim side, our secular society is anathema to the Salafis and our foreign policy is perceived by the majority of U.S. Muslims as a threat to their brethren worldwide.  On the Israel-First Jewish American and Christian Zionist side, on the other hand, the threat results from these folks having an interest in America's survival only to the extent that it can be reliably exploited to protect Israel, its God-given right to territorial aggrandizement, and also hasten the arrival of the Judgment Day. Both sides inherently contain the potential for domestic violence; on the former side, if U.S. foreign policy does not change, and on the latter, if the status quo U.S. foreign policy does change.

In all of this the fundamental tragedy is that the beliefs of these two opposing camps pertain to an issue -- the Muslim-Israeli war in the Middle East -- that is not a life-and-death concern for the United States.  Our only vital interest in the Middle East is oil, and that is only a concern because the Congress has wasted nearly forty years since the first oil embargo and left us in the thrall of OPEC and its Arab tyrant kingpins.  Without our need for oil, there is nothing in the Middle East worth the life of one U.S. soldier or Marine.  Indeed, without oil worries we could be a truly even-handed partner for the Middle East by selling weapons to both sides -- so long as they could pay cash and carry the weapons they purchase in their own ships.  

First, some throat clearing on Muslims in America.  To tarnish the reputation of 99.9999 percent of America's Muslims with this group of Jihadists is thoroughly insulting to them and all they bring to this country.  It would be like calling guys like myself, slightly pudgy, middle aged professionals all potential white collar criminals.  Though the tendency lately...

Still, when is comes to radicalization among some Americans, well we have been whistling through the graveyard on this matter for some time.  We like to see ourselves as a melting pot where everyone is treated equally and fairly.  We certainly aren't a society that openly attacks or dismisses its minorities with a thousand and one cuts like the Western Europeans.  Some scholars have noted that our immigration policies focused on allowing middle and upper middle class people from Muslim nations to enter the US -- certainly not the "working classes" like Europe.  In my opinion, all of this may have ameliorated the potential troubles, but did not "solve" them.

The radicalization of Jihadist Muslims lies is a system of deep belief. It is a belief that the direction of the world under a form of Western Modernism is wrong.  It is a belief that the United States and Western Europe are at the forefront of that movement and they must be brought to heel and submit.  This is a belief that transcends any efforts of America to be the "good guys" and any effort that "explains" ourselves.

Dealing with this issue is the definition of a wicked problem.  You may get a solution, but it is going to be "subminimal"  versus optimal at best.  We are going to need to move beyond our political correctness and recognize that people in the US can and will be radicalized.  We need to understand that a higher vigilance will be required and sometimes we will arrest the wrong people. And we also need to understand that there is no time or border limit on this one -- this is a generational struggle fought within and outside the US.  Our message must be clear and consistent about the good we are bringing to the world. And that we will not tolerate violence as a means to an end.

The average American Muslim is probably no more dangerous than the average Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, or Jew.  There some Muslims in American, however, who are caught up in the jihadist ideology; those Muslims may well pose a threat to national security.  While respecting the rights of law abiding citizens, we must also safeguard our society, our communities, and yes, even our Army at home and abroad.  This means that we must support intelligence fusion, good police work, sensible security precautions, and effective small unit leadership in the Armed Forces.

Georgetown's Dan Byman said that the jury is still out on Major Hasan, and that is fair.  In all probability, if what we know today is found to be accurate, he will in the future be typed as a lone wolf terrorist, an exemplar of sunni  jihadist ideology in action.  The fact that Hasan had personal problems and "went postal," does not disqualify him from being a terrorist.  Indeed, it would be hard to believe that all of our suicide bombers or garden variety terrorists are well adjusted, happy, normal individuals.  My guess is that Hasan, in terms of serious psychoses, is relatively well adjusted as the average terrorist or suicide bombers go.

As we contemplate how the Hasan massacre happened, we should remember the case of the 9/11 attack.  Just as 9/11 could have been prevented by better police work, tighter immigration policies, and better airport screening, the Hasan massacre could have been prevented by more attentive unit commanders and supervisors, as well as more resolute action by the US Army Medical Corps.

Two of the three biggest black eyes on the Army in the war on terrorism (Abu Gharib, the Wounded Warrior Scandal, and the Hasan massacre) can be laid directly at the feet of the US Army Medical Corps.  While the USA Medical Corps (USA MC) excells at combat  medicine, it has had long-standing problems with leadership and administration, especially in its major hospitals. 

Take the case of Major Hasan.  Here is a poor performer who received bad marks throughout his residency.  The USA MC's response was to promote him with his peers and send him on a prestigious fellowship.  Throughout his residency and fellowship, Hasan showed clearly that he was a security risk and had attitudes incompatible with service as an officer in the United States Army.  It was clear beyond any doubt that his attitudes disqualified him from counselling soldiers, before or after combat.  One wonders how he was able to maintain a SECRET clearance, a requriement for all officers. 

Instead of being flagged and dealt with administratively, Hasan was transferred to Fort Hood and told that he was going to deploy to Afghanistan.  Some of his colleagues opined that Hood was a good place for him because there Hasan could get a lot of help due to its large contingent of psycho-therapists!  In all, this was the oldest bad-leadership behavior in the book:  transfer your problem soldiers to another unit rather than dealing with them.

Issues of racial/ethnic sensitivity and "political correctness" have been around for a long time in the Army and the US Government.  Leaders in uniform are expected to have the courage to carry out their duties in the face of obstacles, whether those obstacles be enemy bullets or challenges to your moral courage.  Every unit commander in my service age cohort (1970-98) faced pressures from lawyers, higher level commanders, or the media.  In  the Army, you get paid to do the right thing to protect the country and then, to protect your soldiers.  Hasan's leaders did not do this even though he gave them dozens of opportunities to exercise good leadership.

There should be wide investigations of the chains of command that supervised Hasan over the years.  It is already clear that he was a radical soldier, and a poor performer, broadcasting near constant warnings of his severe personal and ideological problems.  All of these stimuli were ignored.  Unless there is a wide seam of exculpatory information that has yet to be discovered, Hasan's trial for murder should be accompanied by trials or administrative punishments within the Medical Corps for dereliction of duty, derelictions which resulted in the deaths of 13 people, and another black eye for the Army Medical Corps.

The extent to which the public notices, is alarmed by, and reacts to an incident (and isn’t this much of what terrorism is about?) is not directly correlated to the number of perpetrators, the extent of the organization to which they may be affiliated, or the sophistication of their methods. A singleton or small cell can get our attention in a big way. Whether or not it does depends on circumstances. The Fort Hood incident made a large impact not only because of the number of casualties but because of the shock of perpetrator being a U.S. Army officer (and a psychiatrist, no less) and of occurring within the seemingly secure confines of a military base in the United States. Political context also does much to determine the impact. The wave of terrorism in the United States in the mid-1970s—well beyond anything we have seen since, in terms of numbers of incidents—did not lead to a “war on terror” or increased priority to counterterrorism because one of the tenets of the political zeitgeist of that time was the perceived need to rein in, not to empower, security-related agencies such as the FBI and CIA.

Enhanced domestic security measures since 9/11 have made it harder to stage another terrorist spectacular (especially involving that ever-attractive terrorist target, civil aviation) of the sort to which the resources or experience of an established foreign terrorist group such as al-Qa’ida are most apt to be relevant. What remains are the many unavoidable, more mundane vulnerabilities in our open society. Just about anyone can stage a shoot-’em-up in any of countless public places (and even some that are not so public, like a military base). The future face of terrorism within the United States, certainly as far as methods of attack are concerned, is exemplified by the exploits of Nidal Hasan and the D.C. sniper, whom Virginia executed last week.

This is one reason the likes of al-Qa’ida are not the main worry regarding further terrorism emanating from Muslim Americans. Another reason is, as Brian notes, that al-Qa’ida’s operational capabilities have been reduced to the point that its leadership can exhort, cheer, or claim credit for other people’s violent initiatives much more than it can instigate them. 

In this regard, it would be useful to get away from the widespread tendency to gauge the seriousness of any incident in terms of whether or not we can establish “links” to al-Qa’ida. Links can, and do, mean anything from command and control to the most innocuous or feckless contacts. Links per se also do not tell us where the initiative came from. In the case of Zasi (while adding the caveat that there is still much not publicly known about the case), it appears that he became radicalized during his days selling coffee and pastries from a cart in lower Manhattan, before he reportedly went off to a training camp in Pakistan. And whatever he was taught in camp evidently did not remove the need for him later to try, between trips to the drug store to fill his shopping cart with hair products, to do research on the Internet to teach himself how to make explosives.

All of this has implications for U.S. policies overseas, including military operations in parts of the Muslim world such as Afghanistan. Whatever effect such operations have on the extent of Islamist terrorism within the United States will be less a matter of further degrading al-Qa’ida’s capabilities than of angering additional Hasans and Zasis and stimulating them to resort to violence.                                 

Hasan’s profile looks familiar. Descriptions of his inability to connect with others, absence of close relationships, passive rigidity, personal disillusion, frustration at not being able to alter his life’s course indicate a man in crisis—a susceptible terrorist recruit.

It is a parallel path that takes Hasan to the Fort Hood slayings. It includes many of the signposts identified in the radicalization process: Hasan’s search for meaning and spiritual guidance, his engagement via the Internet with jihadist ideology, his adoption of the jihadist view that the West and Islam are irreconcilably opposed, the broadening of his sense of grievance from the personal to the defense of a besieged Muslim community, his reported encounter with an enabler—a jihadist imam whose writings would morally validate and reinforce Hasan’s own feelings of anger and aggression, his expression of extremist views, and at some point, as yet unclear when, his decision to kill. If some of the markers of radicalization and recruitment are missing, it is because, except for his reported on-line correspondence with Anwar al-Awliki, Hasan’s journey is entirely an interior one.

We do not know how much to credit personal distress or political intent. The underlying motives may have been personal, but they were acted out in a political realm. Within the ranks of proper terrorists, we also find those who became terrorists in response to profound personal crises, as opposed to deep political convictions, muddled individuals who were swept along by others they happened to meet, or who radicalized themselves, sociopaths attracted by the practice of violence. Terrorism, by its very nature, does not attract the well-adjusted.

Some analysts say that al Qaeda is currently following a strategy of “leaderless resistance.” Leaderless resistance envisions an army of autonomous terrorist operatives, united in common cause, but unconnected organizationally. Although this makes it difficult for authorities to destroy the enterprise, leaderless resistance is a strategy of weakness. Eight years of unrelenting pressure worldwide have greatly reduced al Qaeda’s operational capabilities. Outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan, al Qaeda’s leaders can do little other than exhort others to violence. Leaderless resistance does enable terrorist leaders to assert ownership of just about every homicidal maniac on the planet, thus projecting an illusion of strength. Major Hasan’s Internet imam was quick to praise the Fort Hood murders as another jihad victory.

What does the Hasan case tell us about the radicalization of Muslims in America? Not a lot. Since 9/11, authorities have uncovered a score of terrorist plots involving “homegrown terrorists” including Muslim immigrants, native-born Muslims, and Muslim converts, in all, fewer than seventy individuals. Almost all were U.S. citizens. A few, like Nidal Hasan were veterans of military service, and Hasan is better educated than most.

Some of the terrorist clusters uncovered in the United States began to radicalize before 9/11 while others, like Hasan are more recent converts to jihadist world views. Almost all were local recruits—we have no evidence of terrorist sleeper cells being established here.

The plots show that radicalization and recruitment to terrorist violence is occurring in the United States, and is a legitimate security concern. It has, however, yielded very few recruits. With roughly 1.4 million Muslims in America, although some estimates run higher, 70 terrorists represent a mere 0.00005 percent of the Muslim population--one out of 20,000.

This is not a new phenomenon. Al Qaeda and its jihadist followers did not bring terrorism to the United States. Along with its immigrant communities, the United States has imported numerous terrorist campaigns. Cuban, Puerto Rican, Croatian, Serb, Palestinian, Armenian, Taiwanese, and Jewish extremists have all carried out attacks on U.S. soil, in addition to the homegrown terrorist campaigns of the far left and far right. In fact, the level of terrorist violence was greater in the United States in the 1970s than it is today.

The lack of significant terrorist attacks on the United States since 9/11 suggests not only intelligence and investigative success, but an American Muslim community that remains overwhelmingly unsympathetic to jihadist appeals. Modern communications, especially the Internet, offer access to violence-exalting narratives, but there is absolutely no evidence that attempts to exploit the dismay of some Muslims at policies that can be portrayed as an assault on faith or community have interrupted the integration of immigrant communities. What authorities confront are tiny conspiracies or the actions of individuals, which in a free society, will always be hard to predict and prevent.

Even a sketchy attempt to address these issues would lead to a short disquisition. So here are a few stray thoughts.

1)      American Muslim immigrants are far better integrated into American society than their British and French counterparts are over there.   There simply is no comparison with Bradford or St. Denis.

2)      It is easy to exaggerate the significance of the Somalis from Minnesota who went back to fight with Shabbab. Their targets were groups and peoples who were seen by these recent immigrants as threats to the homeland they ledt under duress. There were grounds for joining up with the Shabbab. After all, the interim government I that we backed for years was kept in place by the Christian Ethiopians we unleashed and who, by all accounts, were brutal occupiers who killed many thousands of civilians. Interim government II now in place is simply one of the Islamist factions we treated as an enemy for years.  They have tribal roots as do their more fundamentalist rivals.  Here is how a leader of the Somali community in Minneapolic explained the situation earlier this year:

      "one reason they may have returned to Somalia is that they were caught up in the outpouring of nationalistic fervor following Ethiopia's invasion of the country in 2006. It was kind of popular within the Somalis that many people were calling to liberate the country from the illegal occupation," Hurre went on. "Some of the factions who were fighting over there came even over here to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and held some conferences, some rallies, and sometimes openly calling people to fight in Somalia."

      So how different in kind is this from Jewish Americans volunteering to fight for Israel in 1948 and from a few joining the terrorist Stern Gang (and later American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane’s fascist movement)? Some, but not that much.

3)      There is a latent possibility of other Dr. Major Hassans. That is inescapable. Identifying them is a police matter (in his case an FBI/Army matter). Their numbers are unpredictable but in all likelihood will be in the single digits.

4)      The greatest danger, therefore, does not stem from these conjectured dissidents but an anti-Muslim wave that could increase their numbers and radicalization.  We can only hope that the 9/11 civil trial will bank the fires of vengeance rather than inflame them.

5)      Time to wake up to the fact that American actions since 9/11 are seen across the Islamic world as anti-Muslim. All of our hand-wringing that we are misunderstood will not change that.  Nor will Obama's honeyed words contradicted by his deeds.  Put yourself in their shoes and that becomes obvious.

Do we have a domestic threat? Sure we do. That is beyond debate. At least 27 terrorist attacks aimed at America have been foiled since 9/11. Most of these attacks were domestic in origin. Some of them were hatched by American citizens. Some of these individuals were "radicalized" overseas. Some became extremists here. All we know for sure is that there is a terror threat on the homeland. (There is a reason why when the Bush administration updated the national homeland security strategy before it left office that it included a section on "domestic" radicalization. They could read the numbers just like the rest of us.)

Do we know the nature of the domestic terrorist threat? Sure we do. We know it is anything but uniform. The only thing all these plots have had in common is that they have very little in common. So far, there is no discernable pattern.

Do we know why are they trying to kill us? You bet. They have different reasons. We shouldn't be too surprised, for example, that we might see occasions where killings look a bit like both an act of terror and a senseless premeditated murder. We know that "workplace" violence in America is a fact of life. We have seen innocents gunned at the office, the post office, schools, the front gate of CIA headquarters, the door steps of museums, and the foot of a pulpit...just to name few. At the same time, we also should not be too surprised when some of them turn out to be an al Qaeda "look-alike," "wannabe," or Bin Laden surrogate. There is a domestic Islamist extremist threat...that is also an undeniable fact.

Do we know who they are? You bet. We know that domestic terrorists are a tiny cluster in any data set...except a data set of other terrorists. They are a miniscule portion of any ethnic, geographic or economic group. Looking for terrorists by profiling any group is like looking for a needle in a needle stack.

These are the things we know for sure...and our counterterrorism programs ought to be based on the facts we know.

The only way to get bad guys like these is to go look for them.

We know, for example, that some extremist groups love to hide behind the Bill of Rights...using the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion to plot and plan activities that are not protected by Constitutional liberties. Intelligence and law enforcement can't be afraid to go look for them. We can't be afraid to go into mosques, or churches, or libraries, or behind the scenes at non-profit groups, or inside universities or immigrant communities...or inside the ranks of the armed forces.

Since 9/11 we have filled the toolbox with instruments that can be used to look for bad guys and adequately protect individual liberties. These tools, like the Patriot Act, allow for lawful investigations, searches, and surveillance. They foster information and intelligence sharing. We have created fusion centers and task forces. The reason why 27 attacks have been thwarted is because many of these capabilities were put to good use. The lesson learned is that we have to use them.

The real issue before us is not about whether we should be looking over our shoulder at one religion or one group or another...but what to do when the system fails, like it did at Ft. Hood, to stop an attack when many of the classic signs of extremism were blinking red.

Our government should first start by stop making excuses. Complacency and "political correctness" could well have been at the root of what went wrong at Ft. Hood. Officials ought to start by admitting that they failed us....and dedicate themselves to rooting out what went wrong and making sure it does not happen again.

Initial reports seem to indicate that Hasan was a scared and angry individual who snapped – he acted along, not part of a larger group.

This sort of individual attack is the most difficult to prevent, but in some ways the least worrisome. Angry individuals regularly do horrible things -- think Virginia Tech or Columbine. They can kill significant numbers of people, but they are not tied to a broader group, and we rarely need to fear a broader spree of killings and follow on attacks.

A second danger is posed by the potential radicalization of the Somali-American community. In contrast to the Arab-American Muslim community, which in general is educated and relatively wealthy, Somali Americans are poorly integrated, and the majority live in poverty.

Moreover, the strife in their home country (and the apparent U.S. siding with Ethiopia when it invaded the country in 2006 to topple the Shebab government), has radicalized some Somali-Americans. So far, these individuals (like Ahmed) have focused on the conflict in Somalia, but it is plausible that they could return to the United States bitter at the U.S. intervention and eager for bloodshed. The FBI is justly concerned about this potential radicalization. In my judgment, the Somali-American community is like the Pakistani community in the United Kingdom or the North African community in France: poorly integrated and often bitter about its experience in the new countries. The younger generation, which often grew up here, is often particularly prone to radicalization.

Al-Qa'ida exploited this resentment in finding recruits in Europe, and I worry that the Somali community might be similarly vulnerable.

The third and perhaps gravest concern is attackers like Zazi:

individuals who know this country well and, at the same time, are linked to the al-Qa'ida core. They are capable of both inflicting great harm and in acting strategically (in contrast to individuals like Hasan).

They could plan and time attacks not only to inflict mass casualties, but also to maximize the psychological and political effects, linking it to major celebrations, elections, or other symbolic events. From the press reporting I have seen, the Zazi arrest not only involved considerable skill on the part of the FBI and particularly the NYPD, but also a fair amount of luck -- something that can always fail the next time around.

Yet even with these three dangers in mind, I think it is premature to compare the situation in the United States to that in Europe. The numbers are much smaller, and the vast majority of the Muslim community is well integrated. Recent events, however, suggest more danger than we think, and the Somali-American and Zazi-type dangers deserve particular attention.

How should the Obama administration broaden its counterterrorism strategy to include these burgeoning terrorist havens? Should it increase the use of Predator drones in these countries? Or the kind of commando raids that killed a key Al Shabaab leader in Somalia recently? Should the president consider lifting the ban on assassinations in order to more freely target terrorist figures in countries where we're not at war? And what are the options the president has for focusing on the "upstream" factors, as his chief counterterrorism adviser has called them, that lead people to commit terrorist acts in the first place?

More disconcerting, I suspect that the White House itself doesn't know; by White House in mean President Obama and General Jones.  Most disconcerting, I do not believe that that any effort will be made by the White House to find out - for the compelling reason that it fears revelations of misdeeds that it may not be able to ignore.  Hence, the implicit preference for flying partially blind when it comes to assaying methods for contending with the terrorist threat - such as we vaguely define it and such as it may actually be.

Therefore, perhaps the greatest challenge facing the crafting and implementation of genuinely smart counter-terrorism policy is the common inability to step back from the overall problem and reassess current activities that involve either further aggravation of the fundamental forces undergirding country-specific, anti-Western or more narrowly anti-American terrorism or the disproportionate wastage of US national assets--military and economic especially--in a rather fumbling pursuit of what have been regarded the premier sources of trans-national terrorism.  The latter has involved a previously inconceivable consuption of critical national resources in largely localized and ill-understood conflicts in remote theaters of war.  In that respect, the current agony over fashioning a reasonably sensible course in Afghanistan, while trying to pick through the bewildering damage already done, is classic. 

1.)  Honestly accept the obvious: The Islamists are motivated to wage war on the United States because of what Washington does in the Muslim world, and not because of who Americans are or how they think, behave, and live at home. 

2.)  Recognize that nearly 80-percent of the world's Muslims believe U.S. foreign policy is intended to undermine or destroy Islam.

3.)  Armed with 1 and 2 above, we can begin to change the foreign policies that are no longer in U.S. national interests, starting with (a) an urgent energy-sector development effort that will allow us to have little or no need to buy from Gulf oil producers; this will allow us to dump our Islamofascist allies; (b) an end to identifying the Chinese war against Uighurs and the Russian war in the North Caucasus -- both amount to genocide --with our battle against the Islamists; and (3) a cutting of all ties with Israel, an end to interfering in her national security affairs -- such as settlements and relations with Palestinian and Iran -- and a willingness let her sink or swim on her own. Much more would need to be done in the foreign policy arena, but this would be a good start toward crafting a foreign policy that would better protect America and also severely damage the Islamists by dissolving some of the anti-USG glue that unites them.

4.)  Recognize that our domestic proponents of multiculturalism and diversity are today what they always have been -- political hucksters of the first order; there has never been a rational reason or reliable metric to prove that either policy makes us -- as the brain-dead mantra goes -- "stronger".  Would putting three Hindu commandos in a Pakistani infantry platoon make the unit stronger because it was more "diverse"?  Accepting this reality, Americans could then start to undo the damage these policies have done to their society.  In the national defense area, their first priorities should be to decide what to do about the Sunni Salalfis and Israel-Firsters in the United States. If both are coddled and left to their own devices, as they long have been, they will involve Americans in more overseas wars and will absolutely bring their eternal religious war -- a fight in which we do not have a dog -- to North America.

5.)  Use the U.S. clandestine service to kill Islamist leaders when the opportunities arise, and thereby avoid all the dead and wounded, the economic costs, and the defeats that have accrued to America because we didn't assassinate Saddam and Osama when we could have easily done so.  If we have cheerfully used federal law to help the AMA's doctors to kill 46 million innocent, unborn Americans for profit, we can surely protect our soldier-children by passing laws that authorize killing a few mass murders here and there when the need arises.

6.)  Realize that at base the U.S. is not the Islamists' main enemy; rather, it simply stands in the way of what they and untold millions of Sunni Muslims want to do; that is, destroy the Muslim tyrannies that rule them, the Israel that kills them and steals their land, and then get on with the business of settling scores with the Shia.  Our goal should be to create a foreign policy that will deflect away from the United States as much as possible of the violence that will be part of this coming intra-civilizational war.    

We need to treat terrorists the way we once treated anarchists. Terrorists are not common criminals, but they can be dealt with through enhanced international police cooperation, as the world once did when it dealt with anarchists who blew up palaces, parliament buildings, and assassinated world leaders, including President McKinley. We need not and will not nab every terrorist, any more than we killed or captured every terrorist, But the civilized world destroyed anarchist networks, and it can defeat terrorist networks. 

In dealing with terrorists, we must not tie our own hands too tightly. Targeted assassinations make a difference--ask the Israelis--and are pefectly legitimate as a tactical element of a larger anti-terrorism strategy. Technology allows the efficient use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles that involves minimal loss of American lives. Other states also have unmanned vehicles and should be recruited in this effort.

I must stress that there is no law that bars assassinations of foreign leaders. It is an Executive Order (number 12333) that was signed by Gerald Ford in 1976. Times have changed, and the Executive Order should be modified and clarified. We cannot afford to be politically correct when it comes to dealing with terrorist leaders. While we should not give credence to their claim to be at war with us--they are not warriors of any kind--we certainly decapitate their organizations. We have done so in wartime and have even attempted to do in peacetime, for example, during the  1986 Gulf of Sidfra operation when we targeted Moamar Ghadaffi's house.    

Finally, we must press all the major financial powers to cooperate even more closely in choking off terrorist financing. The Central Banks of some states, for example, the Bank of England, cooperate far more closely with us than do other Central Banks. All major financial powers must be pressured into joining this effort. We have the means to exert pressure; we should use them.

A combination of enhanced international police and related intelligence cooperation, of increased financial pressures,and of aggressive decapitation tactics will go a long way toward ridding the world of terrorist  networks, and relegating them to the dustbin of history that already houses the anarchists of a century ago. 

Furthermore, the children's game assumes that the targets are “unpredictable” to some degree and that they normally remain underground. There are certain degrees of unpredictability in the actions, movements and strategies of many terror groups.

But the analog that moves the toys in the children’s game is static, whereas the analog for the terror groups is often be dynamic and recursive. Terror groups also move in 4 dimensions: the usual 3 plus time, but not in set stovepipes, such as found in the game.

Terror groups also travel in a thinking space that is often different from the way our people think. We are not just following plastic toy moles, we are trying to track and “manage” more effectively persons and groups of persons who have complex motives and manifold methods.

We are also dealing with persons and groups that can learn from events and circumstances, and who can change their tactics. Plastic mole toys cannot.

Also, many of the terror groups are far from underground and unseen. Hezbollah in Lebanon is part of the parliament. The Taliban groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan rule over large swaths of territory and are mostly out in the open. Abu Saif in the Philippines is sometimes in the shadows, but sometimes seems very much at home out in the open in the local public houses.

These terror groups listed also are not moving that much to other parts of the world in order to escape US troops. Moving from Afghanistan to Pakistan for the Taliban is just crossing to another part of their territory. They have been in both places for a very long time.

Then there are groups like Gama'at Islamiyya in Egypt who are in the shadows, but are also rather well known and understood by the Egyptian government and it security services. Al Qaeda in the Maghrib live in the shadows, but also very much have a public life in the region.

Sometimes the best way to handle and damage such groups might be to not push them into the shadows and caves, but to try to draw them into the sun. That, in some circumstances, could require very clever strategies that go way beyond “whacking”. Some of these groups and some of the persons in these groups could also be drawn back into regular society as positive contributing members with the right incentives and follow ups.

When it comes to some groups moving to places where there is not a significant US or other military presence, well, there are many places they could go to. Our military is stretched very thin and the OPTEMPO is wearing it out on many levels. Our military is not large enough or well trained enough to handle many of the issues and problems some of our civilian leaders would want them to on some occasions. We need to get realistic about what we can accomplish on our own, with coalitions and teams, or ever at all.

Realism and basing decisions on facts and on-the-ground basics are important parts of any effective strategy.

Language and cultural training has been very good for only a very few in the military, such as the Special Forces, Navy Seals, specialized Marines and the like. In order to really track movements, plans, intent and more of these terror groups we need a lot more expertise and skills in the military focused on these groups and on subsidiary groups and issues.

Furthermore, learning Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Dari are not things that can be done in short order. Learning enough about a culture to really effectively move within that culture to understand what is really going on could take years. Body language in one culture does not translate well into some other cultures. Nuances of wording and expressions could also be lost on the non-experts.

Misunderstandings based on improper training can lead to big messes, and unnecessary messes.

Increasing our use of predator drones is a technical quick fix to a much more profound problem. We need more expert and nuanced boots and suits on the ground. We need diplomats and others who have spent their entire careers in a specific regions or cultural milieus. We need much better human intelligence and a lot more positive outreach in many communities.

We need a lot more help from our allies who have some of these skills. Our best allies in this fluid and trying battle can be the people on the ground and our many Muslim allies.

Try counting up all of our allies and you will see that a significant proportion of them are Muslim states or states with large Muslim populations. Our longest lasting alliance is with Morocco, a Muslim state. This dates back to George Washington.

Muslims are not the enemy. The enemy we face is the same enemy these Muslim states and Muslim peoples face: violent extremists who have hijacked and distorted, for their own perverted benefit, the tenets of a profound and spiritually powerful religion, Islam.

We need to be very clear with ourselves, our allies, and our enemies who is who in this deadly and sometimes fragile challenge.

We also need far more of our people understanding what Islam is and what it is not.

The most important issues to focus on outside just simply getting some of the most dangerous people and groups, or at the least mitigating their actions and strategies, is to get to the root causes of some of the anger and hatred out there. This may be the best way to cut off the recruitment supply chain and the financial and other supply chains of the terror groups. If one does not get to the root causes then one is simply hitting at the symptoms.

Getting to the root causes also gets us into some causality complexities. The best way to understand the anger, and why some go over the edge, and to, frankly, ask the people in the region and to also find out via proxy or direct analysis what the terrorists and terror groups themselves are truly thinking about why they are doing what they are doing.

One cannot make up root causes from a cushy office in DC. One needs to seek out the real answers in the places where the problems exist. Poverty, unemployment, weak Islamic training, distorted Islamic training, corruption, lack of a sense of human security, lack of hope, long-held grievances, resentments, chronic unsolved problems, a pervasive sense of weakness (and sometimes the weak are the most dangerous) and much more contribute to why a young person and others may go over the edge.

However, sometimes there are personal reasons that are sui generis to each case, including, possibly, harsh events that either they and their friends or families experienced in the past.

Root causes are often looked at in a general sense. However, sometimes the root causes can be personal. This can be particularly dangerous if the personal reasons are being held by a charismatic and very violent person who can develop a following.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4448

Pictures are worth millions of words. This is an excellent depiction of the utter pointlessness and futility of our ongoing presence in Afghanistan.

We suffer from the inadequacies of political science to provide a theory that encompasses the reality of religion zealotry merging with political radicalism. But we have been down this road before. Then it was termed Marxism-Leninism. The catechisms of this political “religion” were every bit as steeped in ideological obscurantism, self-righteousness and messianic visioning as the most extreme apocalyptic variant of any established religion. Devotees of this atheistic “religion” held to their views with all the tenacity we now see from members of al Qaeda, al Shabab or Jamai Islamia. If Western liberalism were a religion then Leninism (and the splinter doctrines that came after it) would be the equivalent of radical Islam.

Leninism, like the Salafist brand of Islam, took a theory or belief system that sought to guide the behavior of men on the path to ultimate righteousness and perverted it into a cult of violent revolution directed at achieving a utopian goal. Whether it was the Marxist vision of the one world proletariat state or that of the 21st century Sunni-based caliphate
it matters not.  It is not the attainment of that utopian end state that matters, although it serves as the ultimate justification for the choice of the most extreme means in the pursuit of revolution. For extremist devotees of both ideologies/religions, it was taken as a given that those they sought to represent and defend (the proletariat in the case of Leninist, the Sunni Islamic community for radical Islamists) were oppressed. Whatever the oppression, it must be opposed, violence met with violence. Moreover, violence was a means of mobilizing the masses and separating leaders from followers.

For both Leninism and radical Islam violence is an end in itself. It is justified, in Leninist theology, by reference to the demands in Marxist doctrine for a proletarian revolution and in Islam by the calls in the Quran for jihad in defense of the faith. In both instances, the extremists assert that oppression, real and imagined, are sufficient to justify limitless violence. In fact, where oppression is absent, it is the duty of the revolutionary to incite it, thereby creating the very oppression that is the excuse for violent revolution. Historically, Leninists and radical Islamists groups rapidly descended into the practice of wholesale, mindless violence. There is little difference between Stalin’s show trials and those conducted by Hamas or al Shabab of alleged traitors and spies. Nor is there much daylight between the well-photographed slaughters perpetrated by groups such as the Baader Meinhoff gang, Red Brigades or Sendero Luminoso and the taped beheading of Westerners by Islamist groups. The more violent the behavior, the more committed the revolutionary.

The equation for radical Islam goes from a sense of grievance = oppression  = justification for action = revolutionary violence = violence as an end in itself. This is what makes the narrative so powerful with groups and individuals around the world. Those Muslims who see themselves as oppressed in any way and who fail to pursue alternative approaches to addressing their grievances have a ready outlet for their anger in violence. They can rationalize their behavior by asserting that their actions will lead to a better, even utopian end. Or, more dangerous perhaps, violence may be viewed as a normal form of protest.

It is this last point that is particularly dangerous because it is a seductive rationale for those who surf radical Islamic websites. They are bombarded by arguments for and evidence of violence justified in the name of the faith. Individual acts of rage, such as that perpetrated by the Fort Hood murderer can be rationalized as part of the jihad, as a defense of Islam. For this reason, the event of last week may well be a terrorist act, albeit one without external direction. It is crazy and a perversion of religion but this dogma is become central to the global terrorist threat.

I bring all this up to address the part of the question about how should the Administration address the upstream factors that lead to terrorism. This type of question tends to produce the standard response which is to take away the source of their grievances. In reality, this is impossible. In essence, the causes or grievances are manufactured. In fact, the better the world becomes at addressing real grievances, the greater the radicals’ penchant for violence. Ultimately, this is all they will have left. Like the extreme offshoots of Leninism in Latin America, their strategy was to use violence to create the pre-conditions for revolution. All they managed to achieve was a protracted cycle of extreme violence.

The whack-a-mole strategy may feel unsatisfactory because it does not enable the vermin hunter to eradicate the species. However, it is half the answer. Terrorist leaders need to be hunted down. Much can be done remotely with drones, air strikes and the like. What we need more important than strike assets are improved ISR systems and intelligence capabilities. We need to improve the endurance of the UAVs and the fidelity of the ISR systems so that individual terrorist leaders can be tracked and struck more effectively and with less collateral damage. The High Altitude Airship now in development could contribute to this mission.

More important, our strategy should place more emphasis on preventing the consolidation of terrorist organizations in the ungoverned spaces such as Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, some Philippine islands, Somalia, Yemen, etc. One important aspect of such a strategy is to anticipate places where Islamic terrorist may try to set up shop and get there ahead of them. Special Operations Command is already doing a lot of this. But more can be done. The Pentagon’s programs to build partnership capacity and provide assistance to local security forces needs to be given all necessary attention and resources.

Finally, our strategy needs to focus more on countering the radical Islamic narrative. This is the lesson of the war against Leninism and the political struggles of the Cold War Some of this may be a matter of using cyber attacks to disrupt radical Islamic web sites. But this is primarily a political struggle which needs to aggressively support moderate Islamic thinkers, leaders and regimes. There needs to be a counter-revolution in the Islamic political discourse that we can and must support.

We can do better than whack a mole or even more of the same.  It is time for a Nixon Doctrine-inspired strategy toward international terrorism.  We can't do it all by ourselves, but we can help states find local solutions to the problems that create openings for Al Qaeda or whatever comes after it.

While stopping AQAM and the Taliban in their drive for their preferred base in Afghanistan, we have to find ways to deal with new potential base areas in places such as Somalia, Yemen, and Algeria.  We need to do this --- first and foremost --- by working with regional allies and using force sparingly, and that includes Predator strikes.  We need to work on creating negotiated settlements where that is possible.  We also need, where possible, to use our soft power to win friends and influence the locals.  Our biggest gains in popularity abroad during the GWOT came during earthquake and tsunami relief in Pakistan and Indonesia, respectively.  Maybe our best Littoral Combat Ships are named Comfort and Mercy.

The model for our national security planners should not be Iraq or Afghanistan, but what we have done in the Philippines.  With little cost and fanfare, a relative handful of Army Special Forces and other troops helped to train allied forces that in turn have made great inroads against local insurgents.   Security assistance and military education and training programs have made a great contribution in Asia and Africa.     

One final recommendation here:  don't get stuck in an analytical rut.  Islamist extremism is a worldwide problem,but the pull of Al Qaeda may well be waning. We can't afford to be fixated on Al Qaeda as an organization even as it is losing its grip.  Audrey Cronin, the author of a new book on how terrorist movements end, recently said “I think Al Qaeda is in the process of imploding. That is not necessarily the end. But the trends are in a good direction.”   To protect our nation in the most effective and efficient manner, we need to stay abreast of the threat.  As Major Hasan proved at Fort Hood, it may well be the radicals within, rather than international terrorists organizations themselves, that need more of our attention. 

Finally, we need to work on removing the causes of insurgencies and terrorism.  This is, however, a very tall order.  The causes of terrorism involve errant theology, failed states, personal frustration, and the full range of psycho-social disturbances that attend globalizaiton and modernity.  Much of our problem today has to do with the failure of states in Arabia and South Asia to adapt to modernity, politically, economically, and socially.  Moreover, culture, religion, and fear have created obstacles to Muslims policing their own.  Given globalization, the phenomenon of the few bad actors living at peace among law abiding citizens is also a problem in the United States and Europe.  It is even a problem in the United States Army.

jjc 11-9-09

In any case, how should Washington try to manage the Sino-American relationship -- the political as well as the economic dimension? Given the global rise of China, was President Obama right, for example, recently to postpone a meeting in Washington with the Dalai Lama -- until after a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao? Or did this step express too much deference towards a China that still has a long way to go before rivaling the U.S. in global influence?

US direct investments abroad also do not focus on China as much as many people think. The place we invested in most as of by the end of 2008 is, drum roll please: The Netherlands. This is followed by the UK, Canada, Bermuda, Luxembourg, Ireland and so forth. Our investment positions in China in 2008 were tiny compared to these other investments. We invested a lot more in the islands of the Caribbean than we did in China. The Netherlands, the UK and Canada account for 1/3 of our overseas investment position. We have invested far more in Australia than we have in China. In Asia the place we have invested most in is tiny Singapore.

China has tiny inward direct investments into the US. The most important inward direct investments into the US by the end  2008 were from the UK, Japan, The Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and France and in that order. China is a blip on the screen compared to these. Japan is the biggest Asian direct investor in the US.

Indeed China holds the largest amount of any foreign country of our treasury securities. However, Japan is not far behind as number two. Then there are the UK, "Oil Exporters", "Caribbean Banking Centers", Brazil, Hong Kong and Russia. (One wonders why the US Treasury still has Hong Kong separated out.) If we added up, Japan, the UK, "Oil Exporters", "Caribbean Banking Centers", Brazil, and Russia they would add up to twice China's holdings. Is anyone talking about that?

We are bound in complex interdependences with many countries and those countries are bound in complex interdependences with each other and also with still yet other countries. The economic connections between the US and China are powerful, but we should not neglect the importance of our very friendly neighbors to the north and our now struggling, but very important neighbors to the south. We should also not forget our more quite, but far more long-standing relations with our European friends and allies, such as The Netherlands, The UK, Germany, France, Ireland, and many more. We also have less talked about, but still very important, trade and financial relations with Asian countries which are not China, such as Japan and Singapore. Then we have our good friends the Aussies. I suspect very few in the US understand how deep and important our economic and other relations are with this massive country in the South Pacific.

The largest economy in purchasing power parity terms is the EU. Then there is the US. Then there is China. However, in per capita terms China is way behind. Qatar is number one with $86,000 per year. The US is number six with about $47,000 per year. The PRC is number 100 at $5,900 per year and that is a stretch. China has about 250 million roving unemployed. It has massive income inequalities both within regions and especially across the rural-urban divide. There have been thousands of demonstrations related to economic and land issues. Even with the one-child policy China has big problems in keeping up with the growing costs of its energy, schooling, transport and other infrastructures. There are lots of cracks in the Chinese façade. The EU is far ahead of them on many issues as are Japan, Singapore and Australia, for examples.

All of this is not to minimize the importance of China. This is a giant country with a massive population, a giant military, nuclear weapons, and great clout in many parts of the world we are also involved with. It is building a blue-water navy. It is building its military and diplomatic clout by the day. It is a power to be reckoned with.

Should we tread smartly and carefully with the Chinese? The answer is: of course. Should be we build more cooperation on energy, water, environmental, economic and other issues. The answer is: of course. Should we show sensitivity to Chinese interests and goals in our meetings with them? The answer is: show sensitivity, but keep a steady eye on our own goals and objectives.

Should we magnify the power, might and threat of the Chinese? No. We need to get real and treat them as partners in a very complex economic, political, diplomatic, and, yes, military, relationship. But we should not do this to the neglect of our other allies, friends and competitors. There are many teams on these fields.

The US is far too focused on China, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan to the detriment of our other interests. These other interests deserve more time and effort, and some of our best and brightest. Draining our skills and talent pools, especially in the military and the State Department toward such limited visions may prove to be the generator of more tragic and costly mistakes in the long run, which is the time period that really counts. We also need to put more time and effort toward the future problems and powers, which can be found in Africa, Latin America, and other areas where the relative effort neglect seems astonishing at times. Then again, good relations could start in the neighborhood with our friends in Canada and Mexico. Our neighbors across the pond, the Atlantic, are also vital, and by that I don't mean just the EU, but also Africa.

China could be a good and productive partner or it could be a significant competitor. Frankly, likely it will be both. Our relations may also be quite fluid and changeable at times. Such is life in the big leagues. We need to be prepared and trained, and thoughtful, skillful and clever.....just like China is expecting its people to be. If that means that both sides will need to play the complex games of give-and-take at many levels then so be it.

Remember Bobbitt's "market state?" If Walmart were a nation-state, it would be China's 8th largest trading partner.

Maybe Bismarck's maps (and the nation-state elites that still exalt in their resplendent meaning) don't mean as much anymore.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in posts for this round. It is fair to say that there is a rough consensus among the bloggers that current talk about the Chi-America paradigm reflects a certain trendiness in geopolitical circles. Just as Japan was once widely seen as the ‘next big thing’ in the world, now China (and the Chi-America version of China’s rising role in the world) is often viewed in that light.

For what it’s worth, I have a quasi-cynical explanation for this and a substantive one. The quasi-cynical explanation is that there is a constant need in the geopolitical conversation, as in all aspects of discourse in our information-saturated society, to generate new paradigms. If not a continued American Century, if not a New Age of Japan, then why not Chi-America and books with action movie titles like “Superfusion?” (I say ‘quasi-cynical’ because this exercise can also be fun, and I’m not opposed to fun.) China is an especially good candidate for such speculation precisely because it is still so ill understood by so many in the West, even in expert circles, and also because its sheer size inspires fear. India, though approximate to China in population, and also a nuclear power, does not inspire a similar fear, at least in America—perhaps because India is a messy democracy (‘we’ get that).

Still, there are good substantive reasons for the China-inspired wave of speculation. First, as Jim Mann notes, something like an ‘economic G2’ of China and America does seem to be evolving as an anchor for the global economy. This could be—emphasis on could—a genuinely huge event for the world. Second, even though the Cold War ended more than fifteen years ago, there remains a vacuum, the absence of an ordering principle, in geopolitical life. So it is entirely reasonable, indeed I think necessary, to search for such a principle. It is also reasonable to search outside of Europe for the principle, since Europe cannot seem to make up its mind about how to exercise its power on the world stage. But in the end, for all the reasons Michael Brenner notes, it is just as easy to imagine friction as it is to imagine cooperation between China and America on big issues like resource supplies.

Christian Caryl suggested the G20 group, rather than any bilateral pairing, as the wave of the global future. While we’re at it—does anyone else want to put forward their own idea of the global paradigm to be? All suggestions welcome—paradigm away!

India may not overtake China economically, but it too is a rising power, not to be ignored in the rush to crown China as America's next major partner. Its GDP growth has been impressive, and its military modernization program, which already benefits from leading edge development in conjunction with both Europe and Israel, will progress even further as it increases its technical cooperation with the U.S.

Brazil, already energy independent, is also one of the world's top agricultural producers. Indeed, major petroleum finds off the Brazilian coast may soon result in that country's becoming one of the world's top three oil exporters as well. Brazil has, in fact, weathered the financial crisis as well as any of the major devleoped nations.

Let us recall that it was not too long ago that Japan was seen as the next great American rival, a threat to buy up every major American asset. Japan's decades-long recession put paid to that threat, though not before several pundits made tidy sums selling Japan-bashing books that became best sellers.

Just as Japan hit an economic bump from which it has yet to recover, China too has the potential to run into trouble. Migration to the cities, as well as unemployment, remains a nightmare for the Beijing leadership. Global warming is rendering the Chinese north even more impoverished, and exacerbating the gap between the north and the prosperous south.China must remain on its economic growth treadmill, recording 8 per cent GDP growth or better, if it is not to face major internal dislocations. 

Perhaps China will maintain its economic balance, but we cannot be sure. And so we cannot as yet create a new Chinese-American bipolar world, although no doubt there will be many analysts whose vision of such a world will get them on the New York Times best sellers list for what will purportedly be non-fiction.    

So, what does this have to do with China.  Every time I hear about some grand alliance of their interests with our, I cannot imagine it.  We are hardly a supplicant at this point.  And they are hardly a superpower.  But, both sides -- Washington and Beijing -- will act in their own interests.  Sometimes those interests will conflict lie over Taiwan and human rights.  Sometimes they will converge like on North Korea.

That being said, we are in an interesting dance right now. Beijing is gaining economic power and some additional clout around the world.  For the time being, we are a big fat debtor nation -- as we have done at many points in our history.  We owe them a lot of money. I'll go with the old aphorism -- you owe the bank a little and you have a problem.  You owe the bank a lot and you have a friend. For now, Beijing will do us no harm economically beside occassionally yank our chain about various policies.

The Chimerica idea is sexy. China’s growth is dramatic; America’s current account deficits are scary. So it’s very exciting to focus on the relationship between the two.

But this paradigm leaves out just a bit too much to be really useful.

America’s biggest trade partner is not China but the European Union.

Japan holds almost as much Treasury debt as China. And there are quite a few other countries that are also racking up growth rates just as impressive as China’s, even if they aren’t quite in the same league as American trade partners – yet. In the second quarter of this year India recorded annualized GDP growth of 6.1 percent – not shabby at all. The world’s economy is much, much bigger (and messier) than the bilateral relationship between China and America.

China is, of course, a very important country. I don’t doubt that it will soon become the world’s number two economy and can imagine a day when it might well become number one. And yet I think the single-minded focus on its relationship to the US is deeply misguided.

We seem to forget that, as China rises, so, too, do countries like India, Indonesia, and Brazil. Many members of Washington’s power elite still seem to be fixating on a bygone age when a few leading nations – the US, Germany, Japan – called the shots. Today, by contrast, the global economy is becoming more diverse by the day, less concentrated rather than more. Against this backdrop all the talk of a G2 sounds misguided; as big as they are, not even China and America together can solve all the problems of a much messier world. The G20 is a far more accurate reflection of global realities. So it will be harder to get things done in a group with that many members? Get used to it. As far as China is concerned, Washington’s tone should be respectful, businesslike, and unemotional – nothing more, nothing less.

Perhaps Homer and Hesiod is after all a good place to begin: A fantabuous creature that Billy Mumy might have cobbled together in the dark reaches of the Twilight Zone from the parts of multiple animals: the body of a lioness, a tail ending in a snake's head, the head of a goat rising from her back at mid-spine.

That would be Chimerica.

I write this looking back from the chiaroscuro terror of the early 1950s. A movie I must have seen at age 6 — Steel Helmet — existentially attuned me in my nightmares to a vision not so distant from Orwell’s 1984.

To Americans who lived through that dark sink of consciousness perhaps Chimerica seems truly chimerical. But then there are my little children, happily soaking up Ni Hao, Kai-Lan on Noggin — and the Chimera looks like Darwin intended — genetically counterintuitive.

This is of course is the now-way to see a Chimerica future.

What is Chimerica? Well don’t you know? It is all about us. Call it late modernity’s grandest and greatest co-dependency: They stuff Walmart and we let them buy our dollars. Pretty good deal.

Americans generally understand this symbiosis. Some see it as threatening — mostly in the United States Navy, desperate to rediscover a long-sunk Mahanian fleet to fight, requiting angst from losing its precious Samurai-warrior enemy so many years ago.

But consider actual reality. What is China? What is the United States? And please, try not to flow into the molecular “now-conversation.” Just try jumping into the not-so-distant future.

The United States and China are today’s anchors of humanity. This does not mean that they are somehow inclusive or even embracing, but rather simply that these are the two most effective centers of humanity at this time — and at this time may be an important data point.

I believe that humanity is heading, whether it wishes to see this or not, to a crisis of globalization. Climate change, a coming energy crunch, and the negative consequences of human activity worldwide (as in, dying, anoxic oceans) will in just a few years become the urgent agenda for all societies everywhere. Severe water shortage, famine, and pandemic: these are, like or not, our shared human future.

The United States — as part of North America — is well positioned to weather the storm. China is in a far more vulnerable situation. Yet China like the US today is the global center of innovation and creative thinking. Our economies are also inextricably intertwined.

If in the next twenty years China faces the terrible challenges of massive desertification, death of its rivers and seas, massive weather events, and the stress of water shortages as Himalyan glaciers disappear — plus the famine that follows — The Question is:

Will the United States step up to the plate and ensure the survival of China?

So you see, this is not about some replay of “The Great Game” — Cigar grand strategy in a Victorian Gentleman’s club — nor is this is about a recherché to rediscover the perfect — and all-giving — new bi-polar world.

To be honest — the question begs itself by implication — India will be just as critical and essential as China in our future — and if this is a truly stressed collective future, the incumbency is on the United States to help save literally a third of humanity. The 3 billion Chinese and Indians of 2030 are — in sacred terms from our own and still-surviving mythic national mission — Our charge.

However slowly it works its way into our day-to-day consciousness: Our world is transitioning right now from its ancient (which is to say Cold War) neuralgias … To something entirely different. Most visible are the “people movements” — the riotous proliferation of non-state groups and movements, like a global Petrie Dish — unfolding before us without respect to future earth shocks waiting in the wings.

All of this strongly suggests a new vantage for us. It is a challenge to step back a bit from national security neuralgias, but we must. Can you?

Only then can we even begin as American to get ready to be leaders of a future we did not anticipate — and yet which nonetheless faces us ferociously.

If on the other hand we cannot face this thing, then our historical marker will become, year-by-year, increasingly clear. What we shirk — starting with China — will become the testament of how, over time, we fail our own posterity.

And they will be our sternest jury, and also, our final judge.

It makes sense to begin with the big picture. In historical perspective, there is reason to expect a clash between today’s dominant power (the United States) and its putative rival. That configuration has led to direct conflict at every historical juncture except one – the transition from pax Britannica to American predominance. That exception is generally understood in terms of unique affinities and few differences over core interests. The latter had something to do with geography. A simple extrapolation of the logic at work in other eras points to a Sino-American contest for being ‘king of the hill.’ Such a rough comparison is inadequate, though. For all other things in the equation are not equal. What has changed in the world is the twin phenomena of deep economic interdependence and material well-being reaching at the apex of peoples’ wants and desires. The apparent correlation of the latter with internal political liberalization offers further encouragement that a status /power sharing arrangement might be arrived at without bloodshed or other nasty confrontations.

This, of course, is pure Kant – not just as a superimposed intellectual construct but a logic supported by actual developments in the world we inhabit. A very large segment of world affairs, defined both sectorally and geographically, does represent a partial reification of the Kantian vision, objectively speaking. American strategic attitudes toward China for the past two decades have followed this logic and have been grounded on that perceived reality. It is a bet of historic dimensions made for high stakes – the future stability of the international system. To state its underlying precepts simply, they are: (1) economic development roughly along free market lines brings with it an attendant political liberalization, even if the lag time is unknowable; (2) countries whose political system makes leaders accountable to the populace – preferably directly, possibly indirectly too – are likely to be peaceable in their external relation; (3) countries that place the greatest importance on economic well-being are less likely to be aggressive because of both the financial costs and, above all, the disruption of the fruitful economic ties across national borders; and (4) therefore, the more extensively China, and its economy, can be enmeshed in global markets and multilateral institutions for maintaining them, the better the prospects that China’s mounting power will not manifest itself in military actions or expansionist, empire building projects generally.

The United States, at the same time, has kept a strong military presence in the Pacific and East Asia so as to reinforce this logic by maintaining disincentives for aggressive behavior. This containment component of American strategy aims to remove temptation, e.g. South Korea and Japan, and to create an existential counterforce to any Chinese illicit ambitions. Taiwan, needless to say, is the most ticklish issue. Sooner or later, China expects its integration with the mainland in some form or other. The question is whether the larger strategic context will induce China to extend the time frame and loosen the notion of what integration means.

Even an optimistic view of Chinese power/influence progression cannot elide the many places and instances where there will be frictions. It is worthwhile to delineate them. Before doing so, it is useful to highlight a couple of features of Sino-American relations that will be omnipresent background factors. By far the most significant is that China is now and, as far as the eye can see, will be the United States’ creditor. The latter’s chronic budget deficits, trade deficits and currency value can only be managed with China’s benign assistance. It is incontrovertibly true that mutual dependence on stable global finance creates something of an economic Mutual Assured Destruction situation. None the less, this pronounced asymmetry cannot fail to exercise some constraint on American behavior toward China. For there are easy ways by which China’s action in the financial realm could generate immediate pressures on the American economy. The psychological effect, barely visible today, can be expected to grow down the road.

The second background factor derives from history. China traditionally has not been in the empire building business. It feels neither compulsion to achieve glory nor confirmation of its national mission by controlling directly other places and peoples. As noted back in May:

“China mtches the United States in the depth of its belief in its own exceptionality. Historically, China as Heaven’s Middle Kingdom was felt to stand at the summit of earthly attainments. There is a basic difference between the two countries’ self image, however. The United States’ sense of exceptionality and uniqueness is closely tied to its sense of mission as model and agent of world progress. Others are presumed to emulate the United States in aspiring to its achievements. The Chinese by contrast have no sense of mission. After all, to their way of thinking, no other people is capable of matching them. This may be a good thing in that there is no inevitable clash between two proselytizing nations.”

Against this background, here is a notation of foreseeable points of friction that one can envisage.

• Resource conflicts – especially over dwindling energy supplies. Consequences are already evident in Central Asia, Iran and the Gulf, Africa, and the South China Sea where politics intersects economics. Less charged competition for minerals is also evident.

• Multilateral interventions for humanitarian, peacekeeping or peacemaking missions.

• International monetary matters. Recent Chinese initiatives are the harbinger are more serious efforts to reduce the role of the dollar as the international transaction and reserve currency of choice.

• Power shares in multinational organizations – above all the International Monetary Fund for reasons indicated above.

Perhaps the greatest challenge the United States faces is the diplomatic one. This refers not only to direct dealings with China but also dealings with those issues where China will be a party one way or another. That means most matters of consequence. Incorporating the diplomatic factor into our foreign policy making never has been an American forte – especially where we do not control the field of action. We are strongly inclined to take our own counsel, make judgments and then declare our policy with the expectation that most will see the virtue of how we approach affairs and what we want to do about them. Consider policy-making on Iraq and Afghanistan. Contrast it to policy-making on Iran where the slighting of others is a big liability and where we have encountered difficulty in orchestrating an international strategy.

In short, China already is beginning to change just about everything.

As a practical matter, I think that over the past year we have already seen the first signs of an “economic G-2.” The U.S. and China worked closely together to stimulate their economies after the Wall Street upheavals of 2008, at a time when other major countries were far more reluctant to do so. This economic cooperation has been heralded as a success and worked in some ways, but it has not produced any significant change in the value of the undervalued Chinese renminbi. During the 2008 campaign, then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both denounced China for holding down the value of its currency – and as soon as they took office, they changed their tune. And so for American factory workers (or unemployed former factory workers), the “economic G-2” hasn’t been working out too well.

When you go beyond economics to security and other issues, I think the concept of “Chi-America” or a G-2 is way off base. This idea is not anything close to a reality, now or anytime soon. China isn’t giving the United States the help it wants in resolving the disputes over the North Korea and Iran nuclear programs, for example. On security issues, I don’t think the Obama administration has been pursuing a “G-2” with China. For example, while seeking better relations with China, the Obama administration is also working hard to forge new strategic relations with India.

I think it was a mistake for Obama to postpone the meeting with the Dalai Lama. The administration was taking a step backwards, seemingly out of deference to Beijing. I think the administration was wrong, as a matter of principle. I also think this was a mistake as a negotiating tactic. If the administration got anything in exchange for the delay, we certainly haven’t seen it. Think about how this dispute will play out now. When he goes to Beijing, the president may inform Chinese leaders that he plans to meet with the Dalai Lama at some point after the trip. The Chinese will probably try to extract some other favor or concession in exchange for the eventual meeting.

Clinton has taken charge of relations with great powers China and Russia, and is a key player in reinforcing Obama's multilateral approach to international issues, one of the things that the Nobel committee cited in giving him the Peace Prize. People give her credit for giving this administration some spine. And she certainly is getting more resources for the State Department. David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote a piece in the Washington Post in August saying that Clinton is "rethinking the very nature of diplomacy and translating that vision into a revitalized State Department, one that approaches U.S. allies and rivals in ways that challenge long-held traditions."

But we would like to know what you, the experts, think about Hillary's performance so far, what she has accomplished, and what more she could or should be doing. So what kind of report card do you give Hillary Rodham Clinton so far as secretary of State? Was she a good, or bad, choice as the nation's top diplomat?

"Thanks, Pakistan, for all you have done. We American leaders have behaved as abject, child-like creatures since 9/11 and have looked to use bribery as a tool for enticing other people to do America’s dirty work. That was and is a stupid and cowardly policy. From here on out, we recognize that 9/11 was an act of war against the United States -- not an attack against Western civilization, per Colin Powell’s fatuous claim -- and that we alone are responsible for eradicating those who attacked America. We are capable of doing so, and we intend to do so and end this problem as quickly as possible. "

This is what America needs to hear from Mrs. Clinton. Alas, we will not hear it from her or any other member of the Obama team. We will keep looking for other countries we can bribe to do America's dirty work. Geography may become a problem shortly, however. After Pakistan is gone as a viable state, who will Washington turn to get bin Laden or any other foe who appears? The mighty legions of Turkmenistan, perhaps?

It is the best of times and it is the worst of times, to paraphrase Charles Dickens’s famous opening line from A Tale of Two Cities. The choice of Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the country’s top diplomat was a choice of great consequence for the United States and a significant decision of the nascent Obama administration.Without a doubt, her leadership, vision and energy have invigorated the Department of State. She is a secretary who cannot be ignored, shunted aside or marginalized; her leadership at the helm of the Department of State was desperately needed at this juncture. She is also the first secretary who truly understands development, from the role women and community groups must play in any social change to the central role of well-crafted development policies in any 21st century U.S. foreign policy. When Secretary Clinton accepted the offer, she and her team began the arduous task of rebuilding and recalibrating the diplomatic and development institutions of the U.S. government, while at the same time deftly handling the day-to-day diplomatic work, including Russia, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea and Burma, as well as H1N1 pandemic fears, climate change and food security and working with the Departments of Defense and Agriculture and others. She is a masterful juggler of competing priorities and has been adept at the job – so far.  She has also assembled a solid, experienced high-caliber team of professionals to help her manage these challenges. There is, however, one glaring hole.

Without high-level political leadership at USAID, Secretary Clinton is bereft of the very counsel necessary to address some of the thorniest challenges to this administration. She has a competent and talented acting administrator at the helm of USAID, but the agency is desiccated and without any real political clout. It is a shadow of its former self.  The agency has had to bring back retired USAID foreign service and civil service officers in droves to fill key leadership positions. Mentors for the newly hired are themselves lacking in experience, and without political leadership, critical elements of the administration’s foreign assistance strategy is being parceled out within the State Department and to other agencies. Without political leadership at USAID, Secretary Clinton is missing a key ally in pushing for a redrawing of lines of the military’s engagement in development work overseas. Without political leadership at USAID, the secretary does not have the professional development managers in place for her development policy work. Without political leadership at USAID, the secretary is confronted with the continued proliferation of development programs at other staffed, functioning U.S. government agencies. Without political leadership at USAID, the secretary’s overall “three Ds” foreign policy approach and the use of soft power has been hampered by the lack of a strong, independent and knowledgeable development voice.

Bloggers:

Permit me a bit of shortchanging shorthand to summarize an excellent discussion on Hillary Clinton, a person and personality who always provokes strong feelings. It seems that we have a rough division here: On the one hand, we have the grassroots structuralists who see a fundamental need for Hillary to remake the Foggy Bottom bureaucracy, and policy and planning process, or else State will never be able to accomplish anything asked of it, no matter who is in charge.

On the other, we have the policy-above-process crowd, who desperately want Hillary to bust outside the conventional U.S. foreign policy box, push the White House to make hard choices, and run a bulldozer over anyone who gets in her way—in other words the Hillary who at the end of her presidential campaign last year seemed tougher than Barack Obama.

I imagine both sides are right, that State as an institution needs to be reformed—bureaucracies are important to policy--but I confess there is a part of me that wants Hillary—without undermining the president—to get in there and force some hard choices. With a nod to Mike Scheuer (how can you not appreciate lickspittle?), I thought Hillary would be the one to tell the Israelis, for example, that if one more nail or brick goes into a West Bank settlement, we’ll put a temporary stop payment on the Treasury checks to their government and maybe recall our ambassador for a few days. In fact, she wouldn’t even have had to do that, just hinting at it would probably make Netanyahu lose his lunch. Or maybe tell the president that a speech to Muslims is a good idea, but not in Hosni Mubarak’s police-state.

And that leads me to my follow up question. Hillary has a tough, I’ll-fight- for-you public persona, but she was a quiet, hard-working, coalition-building senator who did a lot of behind the scenes work. Which one is in charge of Foggy Bottom, and which one does State, and Barack Obama, really need?

On balance, I think that Jim Carafano gets it right: the president sets policy, and his appointees carry it out. This is particularly true in the case of foreign policy. The exceptions to this rule are notable, but rare. A few Secretaries of State are remembered for opposing the president's policies and resigning from office (think Wiliam Jennings Bryan or Cyrus Vance). Far more common are the cases where secretaries supported policies publicly even as they harbored doubts in private (e.g. Colin Powell or Dean Rusk). A few have grabbed ahold of a particularly high-profile initiative, and turned it into an enduring legacy (George Marshall), but that can only work when the policy enjoys the full support of the president, and when the president can deploy his influence to coax, cajole, or intimidate, other players in the administration and on Capitol Hill into going along.

Which of her predecessors will Clinton most resemble? Joe Collins accurately responds with "only time will tell." My friend Gordon Adams agrees, but goes on to identify a way in which Hillary Clinton might institute a large-scale reform, with backing from President Obama, and put a mark on U.S. foreign policy that persists long after she has departed Foggy Bottom. Gordon discerns in a few small steps that the secretary has taken a path that could "dramatically reorient how the State Department operations, how it plans, and the role it plays in overall US international engagement." Specifically, he hopes that she puts development at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy, and matches that goal with the resources -- both personnel and money -- to make it a reality.

Gordon and I agree that there is a serious capabilities gap between our stated foreign policy objective and the resources available to accomplish them. We disagree on how to fill it, or even if it needs filling. We could, for example, change our goals.

If we don't, how we fill the goals-ends gap is particularly important. Gordon lays out a series of ideas for staffing the Foreign Service.

Of course, such a staffing surge won't be worth a darn if, when the president orders them to a place, they refuse. (And the Matthew Hoh incident reminds us that Foreign Service Officers, unlike their military counterparts, can still vote with their feet). 

We have relied on the military to do what civilians should do for largely one reason: when the president says "go" a soldier/sailor/airman/Marine has two choices: 1) salute smartly and go, or 2) be thrown into jail. I am extremely skeptical that you are going to get the numbers of people you need in non-military capacities in the places you need them in a timely fashion if they can simply refuse an order and not be punished for it.

Which is why, if Secretary Clinton intends a truly revolutionary change to the way we conduct our foreign policy, I expect that she will fail. The different regulations governing military and civilian personnel reflect deep-seated cultural preferences, and they shouldn't be overturned lightly. Americans want a State Department that relates to foreign countries, not a Colonial Office that runs them.

The truth, I think, is that Mrs. Clinton is more of the same: an interventionist and a bully when it comes to weak countries; a hypocrite when it comes to tyranny; a surrenderist when it comes to America's national interests; and a lickspittle when it comes to Israel. And in this there is nothing new: it is standard operating procedure whether the Democrats or Republicans in power. As Osama bin Laden recently said, the foreign policies of the American governing elite can never substantively change because they are driving the U.S. train on a single track built decades ago. But then, again, softer rhetoric with no policy change does win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mrs. Clinton has been Secretary of State for a year. What has she done -- by herself or with her cabinet colleagues -- on the major national security issues and threats to the United States:

--Debt control: Are you kidding? Team Obama has taken the frantic debt-making of the Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations to a whole new level, and it has put ever more of our economic future in the hands of our enemies -- China, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf tyrannies.

--Energy self-sufficiency: Since the end of the presidential campaign this issue has dropped of a cliff. Team Obama has snuggled up to the Gulf's Arab tyrants -- not to mention our new best friend, the oil-rich butcher Qadhafi -- just as did the Bush administration. Why? Because we must keep the Gulfies and other energy-owning dictators sweet so they keep buying our debt.

--Spillover violence from Mexico: Mrs. Clinton blamed the violence on Americans, implicitly signaling the Obama administration's plans to undermine the 2nd Amendment, especially for those Americans who own guns for the purposes envisioned by the Founders: to defend themselves against an oppressive federal government or to overthrow an incompetent federal government that fails to protect their country, homes, and families.

--Sovereignty and territorial integrity: Mrs. Clinton and Team Obama said they may take up the border and immigration issues in a year or two -- if, presumably, ACORN gives them permission to issue a blanket amnesty for current and future illegal aliens.

--Afghanistan and Iraq: The surge's success is unraveling in Iraq and Obama has marooned a growing U.S. field army in Afghanistan, an army that is now told to do less fighting of America's Islamist enemies and more Westernizing of Afghans. But hey, the American kids dying in those two countries aren’t Harvard or Yale bound anyway and many probably vote Republican.

--Israel: Where has the Secret Service been when Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly smashed President Obama in the face with brash knuckles over the issues of settlements, Gaza, and the peace process. Suffice to say, that, because of their AIPAC-intimidated and truckling leaders in both parties, 300 million Americans can be taken to war with Iran -- which is no threat to America -- by a Muslim-hating Israeli leader and his fifth-column of U.S. citizen supporters.

--Human rights, women's rights, all kinds of rights for all: Mrs. Clinton has befriended Russia and China; Mr. Obama has bowed to King Abdullah and enjoyed Hosni Mubarak's hospitality; and they have both cooperated to make sure that communism -- or at least tyranny of some kind -- has a chance to play a future roll in Honduras. Mrs. Clinton has, however, bullyingly lectured the mighty powers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia on their rights-installing responsibilities. Hypocrisy, they name is Clinton, Obama, Bush, McCain, Powell, Albright, etc.

At day’s end, then, Mrs. Clinton has done what she was sent to the State Department to do; that is, maintain the foreign policy status quo in terms of interventionism, unnecessary and losing wars, tyrant-coddling, democracy-spreading, and failing to protect genuine national interests. Well done, Mrs. Clinton -- all this and it is only costing America its treasure, the lives of its soldier-children, and its future security.

Maybe, it’s a little to close to Halloween, but you have to wonder if Secretary Clinton is channeling Cordell Hull and Sumner Wells.

As we learn more and more about the emergent leadership style of the Obama White House, it more and more appears to resemble that of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt once famously declared “I never let my left hand know what my right hand is doing.” You could not tell who was taking the lead in administration decisions by looking at the organization chart. Roosevelt had confidence in one individual…Roosevelt…and he distributed divided, competed, and segmented authority to impose his will on Washington. Marginalizing and ignoring the State Department and sending Harry Hopkins off to do the real work was one of his favorite tactics. He once assigned Treasury Secretary Morgenthau responsibility for drafting a plan for post-war Germany knowing it would infuriate the Joint Chiefs and make them more amenable to accepting a plan closer to FDR’s liking.

The rules under FDR were simple. There was only one person in charge of US foreign policy and it was the president. This was not a “power down presidency.” He doled out and pulled back authority to make things happen as he saw fit.

From outsiders perspective this more like the Obama White House everyday. One day the military is running the war in Afghanistan. The next day is seems Joe Biden is running the war. Now, apparently John Kerry is making policy. My guess is the president is really making policy…and everyone else is just players on the stage…and that includes the Secretary of State.

This observation is meant to be neither a criticism nor a compliment. It is just an observation. To outsiders, the FDR White House seemed chaotic, but it worked and won World War II.

The point is that under this system the decision-making powers and intuitive judgment of the strategic leader is the key essential variable.

If the president can’t be a strategist on par with FDR he needs to pick a different model for exercising strategic leadership…or we are all in trouble.  

What would make a difference today is a Secretary who could forcefully argue to the President that the nation's security does not depend on what's going on in the poppy fields of Helmand province nor is the future well-being of the West hostage to counter insurgency in the high valleys of the Hindu Kush.  That, to my mind, is far more compelling than a bureaucratic restructuring at Foggy Bottom intended to make the department better able to undertake nation-building in places we designate as failed states - especially places like of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and now perhaps Pakistan where we ourselves are a major cause of the failure. 

Between big policy issues and the personal politics at the apex of the executive branch, commentators risk missing the one big opportunity she has to bring about long-term change in US foreign relations: reforming the State Department and strengthening its ability to exercise leadership in US foreign relations.

As proud as the State Department is, it is also, in a number of ways, a less-than-functional institution.  Once the clearly dominant leader in establishing and implementing US foreign policy, its role has increasingly been eclipsed the the Defense Department, with more funds,  more discipline, more people, a focused mission, and planning and budgeting processes, which, for all their warts, are in many ways "best practice" in the federal government. 

State lost this leadership role in the 1970s and has seen its impact continue to decline, especially in the past twenty years.  Given her visibility, ability, and commitment, Secretary Clinton has an opportunity to set in motion reforms and changes that should have been undertaken years ago.  These changes will demand commitment and long-term attention from the very top of the Department, in order to ensure change.

It is too early to judge the outcome of her leadership on State Department and USAID reform, but the first steps have been, for the most part, good ones.  She has made it clear that long-term development is an integral part of her view of the Department's mission, and it is an issue with which she has had some experience, unlike almost all past Secretaries of State.  She has put in place the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, linking America's diplomacy to its assistance programs.  She has filled the long-empty position of Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources with a quality appointment, and given Deputy Secretary Jack Lew responsibilities which cover the full range of foreign assistance, management, and administration. And she has made it clear that she wants State to assume full responsibility for civilian US overseas engagement, ending the trend of handing that responsibility over to DOD.

Together, these initial steps have the potential to dramatically reorient how the State Department operations, how it plans, and the role it plays in overall US international engagement.

So why is the jury still out?  What needs to be done? 

First, she needs to ensure that these changes are institutionalized.  If she were to leave, for example, and there were no statutory requirement for a QDDR, the current exercise could be the first and last of its kind.  State should be discussing this issue with its authorizers in the Congress.

Second, she will need to ensure that the QDDR planning process has a directly link to, and impact on, budget decisions, providing a more complete and detailed analytical basis for the Department's budget requests.   The Department has not been well-served by budget requests that lack such a detailed analytical basis.  The QDDR office says its work will be connected to the FY 2012 budget process, so the true test of this linkage is yet to be seen.

Third, this means developing a strong, permanent staff for planning and budgeting, building on the Foreign Assistance office (F).  Such an office needs to combine responsibilities for planning and budgeting for operations, both at State and USAID, and program planning for US foreign assistance.  It is not yet clear that such a planning and budgeting capability is being built at State/USAID.

Fourth, she will need to tackle the human resources issue: how do State and USAID strengthen their professional work force for the wide agenda of US global engagement.  At USAID, this means restoring the strength of the in-house development capability and reducing the dependency on outside contractors for US assistance.  At State, this means a fundamental look at the Foreign Service, with attention to who is recruited, how they are trained and for what skills, how to create full-career training, the importance of cross-cone, and cross-agency experience, and, as a result, the incentives for promotion.  The QDDR terms-of-reference include this issue, but it is too early to tell the outcome.  This issue, above all, will demand a long-term investment and leadership from the top, if real change is to happen.

Fifth, she will need to grapple with the dilemma of how the civilian side of US government handles US engagement in governance, failed states, and post-conflict situations.  While this is sometimes discussed as the civilian counterpart to US force deployments, the real task is to shape US civilian institutions, personnel, and policies to deal with a much broader range of engagement - in strengthening governance in critical areas of the world.  This may have much less to do with building up the S/CRS office and a great deal more to do with defining USAID's role in governance programs more generally, including crisis situations.  The QDDR is grappling with this issue, but it needs to be framed in the broad, not the narrow sense.

Sixth, she will need to focus major attention on building State's analytical and planning capabilities for US security assistance programs.  This will be critical, if she intends to make the case to the Congress, and to DOD, that State is a reliable, flexible, adequately-funded steward of US security assistance.  Not believing this to be the case today, Defense has created its own authorities and the Congress has been willing to authorize and fund them.  The QDDR is also dealing with this issue, but it is a major inter-agency dilemma, and an area where Congress lacks confidence in State's abilities.

These are the key issues that lead to a "jury's out" conclusion about the Secretary's leadership on management and organization.    She, and her team, have made a very good start; one of the best in decades.  But the road is long and difficult, and will require persistence and consistent scrutiny from the very top of the Department for the needed changes to occur.

First, Secretary Clinton is proving a willingness to be a team player in an administration that is still sorting out its foreign policy priorities.  Had Clinton been anything else, it could be quite destructive and she knows it. 

Clinton has even been willing to put up with an insane system of special envoys appointed out of her control dealing on the hot button issues of the day.  Fortunately for her -- not necessarily the nation  -- they are beginning to show signs of wear or little advancement, except the ever vainglorious Dick Holbrooke who needs a large stage like Afghanistan to be successful. Perhaps they will be folded back under State once they have run their course.

Second, Clinton has been willing to co-opt and accept the participation of the unjustly maligned State Department rank and file.  Never has a sharper group of people been more abused by their leadership -- Kissinger and Rice among the worst offenders.  Clinton's approach has been inclusive, supportive financially and willing to take on ideas from the experts.  No one will ever be loved at State -- not the nature of the best.  But, Clinton is widely respected and that is a good thing for all.

Third, and not the least important, Clinton has a grasp of the new realities of diplomacy.  She established and is maintaining a good relationship with Sec Def Gates.  Under the Bush Administration, the DOD was into areas of messaging and statecraft that made local commanders like viceroys.  It was not smart, but necessary given the Rice State Department's narrow view of their role.  Clinton knows from her own political background that "the message" is crucial and State should be the chief coordinator.

Bottom line: I would give her a solid B plus for her effort.  As an old professor, I find it hard to give A's.  But, given how early we are in the game, I like to leave room for a little improvement

Seriously, individuals do count in decisions at the highest level of government.  And the question of relative influence one or another issue is pertinent.  That assumes, however, that the individuals represent different angles of vision that lead to contrasted judgments on important questions.  There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton has pronounced or original views on anything of consequence.  It would be strange for reality to be otherwise in the light of her limited experience and interest in foreign affairs.  I submit that what we should be concentrating on is how to break away from the group think in the Obama administration that is preventing consequential change in how we conceptualize Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, Iran and the implications of our financial collapse on our foreign policies. 

The recent story in the Washington Post recounting the Obama administration's modus operandi in Super Afghanistan Review I  (March) evinces a worrying lack of intellectual and procedural discipline.  From what we hear of  Super Afghanistan Review II, little is improved.  The question on my mind is what Hillary Clinton - or any of her other worthy colleagues - will contribute to remedying this situation.

On the black-to-gray hand, she has not yet been Secy long enough to have any substantive triumphs.  Moreover, she has appointed senior envoys --- Mitchell and Holbrooke --- who have become neo-Czars in their regions.  Her voice on Middle East and AfPak issues is strong inside the White House, but muted on the public stage.  She has masterminded a re-engagement policy with enemies and adversaries,  which is great, but carries with it no guarantees of glory.  Russia, China, and North Korea have pretty much dissed the United States in the last 10 months, but that likely would have happened in any case.  There is a glimmer of hope in the case of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, but it is too early for parades, or even leaked stories of secretarial mini-triumphs.  There are lots of new problems with old allies.  Some, as in East Europe, were the result of American mistakes, others, as in Japan, were the result of new and inexperienced friends coming into power.

One final gray issue:  the failure to nominate after 10 months a director for USAID.  One boo for State here, but five boos for the White House personnel operation.  How is it that we are up to our ears in nation building and the White House can't find the wherewithal to hire the engineer/master builder?  How is it that there are newspapers in this country who can explain what a huge error this is?

On the other hand, pointing toward the good, Secy Clinton has a strong team and has instilled discipline in Foggy Bottom, no mean feat.  Her public diplomacy and public affairs operations have generally been good.  She does not make mistakes or serious misstatements.  State has received masterful help here from Pres. Obama.  Grizzled generals and senior diplomats are for now basking in the glow of a new pro-American feeling in many places.  There is clear but managed tension between the centrist-realist line of Foggy Bottom and the more liberal, activist-internationalist (we used to say, neo-con) line that occasionally comes out of our UN mission in New York.  

Secy Clinton is talking the right game about improving State Dept performance in planning and programming, and generating civilian surges for Afghanistan.  On the latter issue, her department remains many bricks short of a half load, simply because it has learned how to "woof" expeditionary, but it has not (yet?) been resourced for or even pointed in that direction.  Efforts to make State the lead horse in nation building continue at 2.5 miles per hour, about the speed attained during the last years of Bush 43 administration.

In all, Secy Clinton has shown herself to be a team player and a very effective manager.  We have every reason to be hopeful.  Gates and Clinton are the major stars in Obama's constellation, but only time will tell.  :-)

A surprise nomination, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton has embraced her role as Secretary of State and skillfully navigated both the array of pressing foreign policy issues that confronted the new Administration as well as the Washington bureaucracy. Her tenure has been marked by keen interest in strengthening the role of the State Department in the foreign policy process and creating new civilian tools for the President’s use in carrying out 21st century national security missions. Having an abiding interest in development, she has been adept at recognizing the need to reassess how we provide foreign assistance.  And, coming from her experience on the Senate Armed Services Committee, she was quick to note the value in subjecting diplomacy and development to a longer term planning process that relates objectives to resources. The resulting QDDR is a promising vehicle for building civilian capabilities in a strategic fashion and empowering American diplomacy to be more proactive in its orientation. Further, she has staffed the second Deputy Secretary of State position for management, created by statute in 2001 and left vacant until now, with Jack Lew, former director of OMB. Eminently qualified for the job, Lew is charged with the vital tasks of leading and pulling together strategy, planning, and budget processes within the Department.

While dedicated to strengthening the State Department, she has demonstrated comfort in working with others throughout the government. Her relationship with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is unparalleled in recent years and harkens back to the level of collaboration enjoyed by Secretary of State Acheson and Secretary of Defense Marshall under President Truman.  The leaders of these historically competitive bureaucracies exhibit a shared vision of integrated ‘soft power’ that trickles down throughout their respective organizations and sets the tone for interagency conduct. Her ease in working in partnership with Congress, as seen in Senator Kerry’s prominent role in brokering an election re-run in Afghanistan, and her willingness to experiment with a system of ‘super envoys’ to deal with foreign policy challenges that span countries and regions, as well as the prerogatives of any one Department, are born only of confidence and a commitment to trying everything necessary to tackle the issues of the day.

The super envoy system, however, highlights some of the challenges she will face going forward in institutionalizing change. While a decentralized approach is perhaps necessary for issues that span so many jurisdictions, at some point the Secretary, together with the President and Congress, will need to gather the lessons and give more form to this system. Currently, there is no established way to coordinate foreign policy interests across these envoys and their teams. Foreign leaders complain that they are visited by numerous envoys and do not know who to speak to or listen to. She should not wait until a foreign policy disaster of Administration-threatening proportions highlights the difficulty of exercising accountability among these envoys. In part, Senator Kerry’s input on the Afghan elections appeared to have been necessary because the envoy system failed. What happened?  What can we learn?  What is being done about it?  The QDDR holds promise, but cannot deliver on that promise while people remain unsure about its ultimate status. The existence of a Presidential Study Directive that appears to be on the same topic sows a certain degree of confusion at best. Unless the QDDR is properly staffed, embedded in core processes that drive the establishment of departmental objectives and the allocation of its resources, and works with Congress and the President to advance US interests, it risks becoming another experiment or slogan. Similarly, the increased resourcing for State Department personnel that began under the previous Administration will only continue if the department can demonstrate ability to productively employ these resources in recruiting, developing, and fielding new, needed capabilities and capacities. So too, progress in growing the Office of the Secretary’s Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization to include a civilian reserve and an interagency civilian planning function marks significant progress. However, these functions cannot forever be tacked on to a larger organization who’s DNA may perennially reject this new organ. Her great difficulty in staffing the Administrator position at USAID is a testament to the level of frustration people have with existing arrangements and concern that they do not effectively serve our interests in a globalized multipolar post-9/11 world. 

All of these things will require substantial political commitment and deep organizational reform. Created in 1789, the Department of State has not appreciably changed since the founding of the Republic in its organizational and cultural orientation towards reactive responses to bilateral diplomatic issues. Secretary Clinton is reaching the end of her first year. While much has been accomplished under her direction, her ultimate record will be a function of what legacy she leaves behind in the department itself. Unless change is instantiated in bureaucracy, it quickly dissipates without key proponents constantly pressing its cause or is easily reversed by subsequent administrations. Secretary Clinton’s vision for diplomacy and development requires a next generation organization, capable of truly transforming the way the U.S. interacts with the world across Secretaries, Administrations, and Congresses. The end of the first year of the administration is a good time to give that goal some consideration.

Are those fears well-founded? Given a level of popular opposition to the theocratic regime that surprised many outside observers, especially on the part of the country's urban youth, is there a viable prospect that the regime can be swept from power by a people's revolution? Given the sensitivity and danger of any domestic group being associated with the "Great Satan," are there proactive and helpful steps -- secret or otherwise -- that the United States should take to improve the chances of a "velvet revolution"? What aspects of the velvet revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia might apply to Iran? Finally, is there likely any truth to Iranian charges that the United States or other outside players were behind the unrest surrounding the elections?

Whether such behavior change affects the other regime’s domestic strength and longevity (and what direction the effect will be) depends on what kind of behavior is involved. In any case, it is up to us to decide what behavior we want to change. In the case of Iran, it is hard to see how behavioral change in the directions of most interest to us (such as less confrontational Iranian policies in the region, establishing limits to the nuclear program, etc.) would bolster the domestic standing of hardliners in the current regime. If anything, the effect would more likely be the opposite, given the dependence of the hardliners on confrontation as a rationale for their postures and policies.

The other reason the notion is mistaken is that revolutions—velvet or otherwise—have always depended not on whether diplomats are chatting over a conference table in a foreign capital but instead on the political and economic situation much closer to the homes of those who would make the revolution. The recent shudders in Iranian politics—which have given rise to the question whether a new revolution could be in the making—stemmed from wholly domestic factors: an incumbent regime overplaying its hand with a fraudulent election, and failed economic policies. No effort by the United States to undermine the regime had anything to do with it. The most conspicuous Iran-related development in U.S. policy in the months preceding the shudders was the inauguration of a president who had already made clear his intention to engage.                       

We’re at mid-week on the question of whether the Iranian regime’s fears of a “Velvet Revolution” are well-founded. To further the discussion, I wanted to summarize some of the common themes running through the responses to date, and dig a little deeper into what actions the United States should, and should not, take to improve the chances of internal regime change.

As was pointed out by our experts, revolutions are historically rare and inherently difficult to predict. Who can know what spark might start a wild fire? Still, there are obviously hopeful signs in the current conflagration. We’ve witnessed widespread disaffection with the regime on the Iranian street, especially among Iran’s disaffected youth. The crisis has also revealed surprisingly deep fissures among the ruling elite, with influential clerics lining up against hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards. Those unusual divisions in the regime forced Supreme (or maybe only “very important”) leader Ali Khamenei into the uncomfortable position of having to take sides, possibly affecting his own perceived legitimacy. Fears provoked by those divisions almost certainly stayed the hand of those hardliners who wanted to crack down on protesters and opposition figures with even more fury.

On the other hand, there remains a hard core in the Revolutionary Guards and among the clerics who clearly recognize that not only their privileged positions, but also their very survival and the survival of the regime, are at stake. They can be expected to act accordingly even more ruthlessly if the crisis worsens. The opposition leaders are also weak and hardly revolutionary in their views of how to reform Iranian society. And outside nations wield relatively little influence over events inside Iran, even if they were united behind the goal of regime change. They are not.

Given all that, I would like to ask whether other experts agree with the contention by both Daniel Serwer and James Jay Carafano that the Obama administration’s “engagement” with Iran over its nuclear program was counter-productive, strengthening a discredited regime that will only use the talks to reassert its authority and advance its suspected nuclear weapons program? What about recent signs that the talks with Iran are making progress? If the talks eventually hit another dead end and the Obama administration is looking for options, what steps could it take to strengthen domestic opponents of the regime?

Iran is not my bailiwick, but as I am generally credited with having contributed to the program that helped the Serbs bring down Milosevic I dare to offer a few points:

1.       The fears are well founded: no regime is immune to popular protest, and the more unreasonable they get the harder they fall.

2.       The Green movement looks like a serious one, but it is impossible to predict when or if it might succeed. 

3.       Any autocratic regime will demonize the U.S. and the protesters even if the protesters don’t get assistance from Washington.

4.       U.S. engagement with the regime will strengthen it; it is difficult, maybe impossible, to engage and actively seek a regime’s downfall at the same time. Why should the regime play that game? 

5.       There must be a genuine and indigenous protest movement to have any serious impact; only it should decide whether to accept assistance.

6.       If support is given, it should be open to a broad coalition of opposition forces, not to particular individuals or parties. 

7.       Anti-U.S. rhetoric by protesters should be expected and tolerated, whether or not they are getting support from the U.S.

8.       Even after success, it cannot be assumed that a successor regime will necessarily align itself with U.S. interests.

In my experience, truly clandestine assistance, which always seems to go to particular individuals or parties, is ineffectual. Better to sit back and watch it happen than to put our thumbs on the scale in ways that are insensitive to local conditions. 

First, let's get some clarity on what happened after the elections -- obviously rigged.  There is no way the current government in Tehran is considered legitimate by the elites of the country or the middle class.  They know they have been pushed aside and they are plenty unhappy about it.  However, let's not forget that many of the protesters wanted regime modification -- not a complete overthrow.  The lower classes, however, who are more religious and conservative than their elite brethren are not unhappy at all.  In fact, they would be satisfied by a slightly more prosperous status quo.

Second, the power base in the Iranian governing group is not of one mind.  The leading religious leaders and many at the highest levels of government do not like Ahmadinejad.  They think he is too reckless and would dearly love to get rid of him.  While they do not like the West, and like that Ahmadinejad tweaks the West constantly, they also know he antagonizes them and could well bring on further sanctions.  And the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp want tight control so they can make money and increase their power in Iran.

Third, and this is another sticking point, the West is not organized in terms of a response to the current situation. We grumble about sanctions lead by the U.S. and the UK.  However, Russia and Germany seem to be ignoring these efforts and doing their own bilateral business -- nuclear weapons or not.

Bottom line -- there will be no Velvet Revolution in Iran any time soon. 

There is little question that powers in Tehran feel under siege and need the boogeyman of American power more than ever to justify repression.

That said, the US has little to hope by engaging Iran’s extremist government…and everything to lose. By kowtowing to Iran and offering talks without preconditions, the US makes the regime look stronger and gains nothing. On the other hand, the government uses every opportunity to “demonize” America. It blamed the US for post-election violence. Then it was quick to claim that the bombing this weekend was a Western plot as well. Most troubling of all was a public statement by Iranian diplomats last week that they had every intention of using talks with the US to “play out the clock” and buy more time for the regime. Reuters quoted an anonymous senior Iranian official as saying “Time is on our side” and declaring that Iran plans to slow-walk the diplomatic negotiations that will resume this week by sending junior officials who do not have the authority to make firm commitments.

The irony is no country has done to more to make the world safe for Iran than the United States. We got rid of all their implacable enemies—the Soviet Union, Saddam, the Taliban. Tehran should be building statues to America’s leaders not burning them in effigy.

If Iran’s rulers feel under the gun—great. They should. They have taken a prosperous country with a young, energetic, and freedom-loving population and run the nation into the ground.

Why the White House would give this government any respect is beyond me. Not only will the Obama’s charm offensive fail to charm Iran, it will lead Israel to question US resolve in the region. Israel will take events into its own hands and attack Iran’s nuclear facilities…and then we’ll all wait for the morning after.

I have no first-hand knowledge of Iran. I do not read Farsi. I do read a fair amount about current developments and occasionally speak with true experts. In this I am like the vast majority of those inside government and out who pronounce on Iranian affairs. With this avowal of relative ignorance, here are a few thoughts about attempts to interpret how internal Iranian politics may evolve.

All predictions have wide confidence margins. That is one. This is due not only to fluid conditions, but also to the high importance of individual judgments and actions among political elites. Individuals count most at times of uncertainty when structures are eroded, established practices and ideas challenged, and power up for grabs. Twenty years from now, many will explain outcomes in terms of the interplay of determining forces. Right now, the truth is that decisions made by individuals are the compelling reality.

External parties who have a bearing on internal developments are few. That is two. They are the governments of the United States and Israel primarily, of China and Russian secondarily. Regional states only come into play in the event of a serious effort at negotiating a comprehensive set of arrangements for the Gulf. The NGOs which played a noteworthy role in the Ukraine and Georgia are not in this game. Less organized attempts by groups outside Iran, whether exiled Persians or others, to influence attitudes and conduct internally are marginal.

Regime leaders are experiencing acute anxiety about the regime’s survival. Internal and external insecurities reinforce each other. That is three. Consequently, it is unlikely that assertive external policies will be seen as a way to relieve domestic pressure. Fuite en avant strategies are improbable. Any externally oriented action likely will be motivated by defensive considerations. It follows that sny American led initiative should be calibrated to take due account of the politico-psychological realities of today’s Tehran.

Compounding all of this is Iranian leaders’ ignorance of the West, above all the United States. They are confused as to our purposes and strategies. They cannot make us out. That incomprehension extends to our policies toward Afghanistan. Iraq and Palestine. The consequence is an inclination to perceive diabolical cunning behind Washington’s mixed signals rather than disarray.

In this last respect, they have a lot of company outside of Iran.

Cheers,

For a revolution to have any chance of succeeding, there must not only be a popular movement, but also cracks within the elite. To me, this is the most surprising thing about the recent unrest. We all knew that much of the Iranian population scorned the clerical regime. More intersting is the open defiance of the Supreme Leader by several leading Iranians who are usually viewed as establishment types. In addition, the Supreme Leader's open siding with Ahmedinejad also is a departure from his traditional approach of (publicly, at least) staying above the fray. Finally, to make things even more complex, many conservatives also appear to scorn Ahmadinejad as well as would-be reformists. The Iranian elite usually strives for consensus, so these open divisions may be even more serious than it appears from the outside.

The odds of a popular revolution still seem low. Hardliners have a solid base within the Revolutionary Guards and judiciary -- perhaps the two key institutions with regard to suppressing popular unrest. Still, I would have rated the chances of a velvet revolution at near zero six months ago, but the continuing domestic outrage and leadership strife makes this more plausible today and in the months to come.