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.

Obviously, the inevitable letdown will be more pronounced in Germany than in France.  In both countries, there remains a tendency to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.  An example from Paris.  Back in June, there was a high profile meeting that featured four Middle East experts.  They were nearly unanimous in expecting the White House to press the Israelis very hard and in predicting success for the effort.  In October, one of the speakers explained the manifest failure in terms of Obama´s ´capture´by the Washington culture.  So much for ingrained French skepticism.

My correspondence with the Middle East suggests that there is less disillusionment there for the simple reason that they were far less inclined to take Obama at his rhetorical word.   Belief in messiahs may be universal; but the annointing in any particular one is culturally determined.

As to the Norwegian Nobel committee´s thinking, one interpretation is that it was equal parts Kant and Machiavelli.  That is to say, a conviction that peace through reasoned preference for enlightened self-interest along with an attempt to put pressure on Obama to live up to his high-flown words.  Hope in Barack Obama springs eternal.  Maybe, we'll also get an end to wholesale electronic surveillance and the 'public option' in the bargain.

cheers

Sydney Freedberg raises a great point. Are there issues where the pressure of the Nobel or more accurately the pressure to be successful put US interests in jeopardy?  I think the answer is yes and we’ve already seen some examples of that in the arms control arena. There is a story out this week that the administration has rushed to agree to give the Russians unprecedented access to US nuclear facilities. That’s a problem. While the description reported in the press of what has been agreed to is way too vague to know whether there would be a significant security risk; what we know for sure is that the administration is dead wrong in how its approaching verification and transparency issues. These should be negotiated as a protocol to the existing Moscow Treaty and not negotiated through a START follow-on treaty (which requires unrealistic deadlines for signature, ratification and entry into force before the December 5th expiration of START). Pushing for agreements in a slap-dash fashion risks getting really complex negotiations wrong.

Furthermore, before agreeing to new verification and transparency measures the administration should address the fact that Russia has violated the existing such measures under START in multiple ways and on numerous occasions (catalogued in the August 2005 report “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments” released by the Department of State).  It makes no sense to give new concessions when the Russians are not playing by the existing rules.

The administration's unrealistic rush to negotiate new arms control agreements should give us all pause to ask what is going on here. What is the goal? Deliver on promise to negotiate or keep America safe?

Meanwhile, Europe has its own internal splits.  That missile defense shield in Poland the Czech Republic was wanted by their politicians, but disliked by most of the people of these states -- making any move America took the wrong one in someone's eyes.  British elites hate the death penalty and don't want to send terrorists to American courts--the British public supports it.  And so on.  France's Sarkozy tends to be pro-American, anti-terrorist, and abundantly secular--the growing Muslim population of France hardly shares these views.  When we as pundits look at rifts with Europe, it's important to think carefully about who we are talking about.  These countries have deep internal divisions that often rival our own.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/10/the-nobel-committee-and-obama-1.html

The risk of negative consequences arising from dashed hopes is greatest in the Middle East. By reaching out to the Muslim world, President Obama unleashed pent-up aspirations of a sharp change in the course of American policy,  vis a vis Israel and the Peace Process as well as with respect to the democratization of the Arab world. Yet, in practice, the Administration has found that Israel has a way of sidestepping direct clashes with Washington while pursuing its own interests. By seeking to confront Israel head-on, the Administration has in fact made it harder to deal with Jerusalem. The lesson that confrontation with Israel simply does not achieve any practical results is one that successive Administrations always seem to have to relearn. And it is a lesson that supporters of the Palestinians have never absorbed. Awarding President Obama the Peace Prize will make it even harder for them to absorb it.

Similarly, the hopes that the new Administration generated in terms of pursuing a human rights and democratization agenda, in the MIddle East, and indeed elsewhere, have not been nourished by any real progress. But the Nobel Prize will ratchet up those hopes even further. When bitter reality sinks in, that Washington has, to praphrase the Secretary of State, other priorities, popular resentment against the United States could rise to fever pitch, particularly in the Middle East, and especially if the Peace Process has not come unstuck.

I do not see how the President can decline the Prize; he does not want to be lumped with Le Duc Tho. But he surely cannot be happy with it either. It is an albatross that he knows will remain around his neck for some time to come.  

Obama has done as much to weaken U.S. national security and domestic cohesion as any one in recent memory. From telling Americans that we are no longer at war with Islamists, to dismantling the capture-interrogate-incarcerate system that offered America a modicum of effective defense against the Islamists, to marooning a too-small army in Afghanistan, to pushing us ever closer to bankruptcy, to keeping America in Israel's thrall vis war with Iran, to postponing doing anything about border control for yet another year, to deliberately doing more to restoke the culture war in the United States than even Rush Limbaugh, to blaming Americans for the narco-terror war in Mexico and preparing to move against the 2nd Amendment, to promising the Muslim world at Cairo things he cannot possibly deliver, Obama has weakened America domestically and internationally -- and the Nobelistas and the Europeans absolutely love it.  There is no end of praise and honors that an American president can earn from our friends and allies in Europe if he just strips away the ability of Americans to defend their country, history, traditions, and sovereignty.

The Labors of Obama-celes

The award committee did not do the president any favors. 

First, really, who wants an award where the first question at the press conference is “do you think you really you deserve this?” It is huge distraction for the White House as they try to make hard decisions on Afghanistan and deal with a plethora of domestic issues.

Second, I think they make the president’s sale job overseas tougher. Basically, the committee knighted him for his willingness to negotiate and cooperate. But, cooperation is a two-sided coin and the decision may have the perverse effect of actually weakening the president’s negotiating position…because the other side can simply say, “if you want a deal, if you want to look like you earned that reward, the price just went up.” The irony is the committee just may have made the cause of peace harder, not easier.

Let’s face it, at the end of the day at the negotiating table, the Nobel Prize is just a paper weight.

I fear much ado about the Nobel Prize is making it harder not easier for the president to be presidential.

Then, I see on French television that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  This made my trip.  Nothing like watching the ever sanctimonious and utterly phlegmatic French commentators stutter and fumble for a reaction -- mostly, as American icon Homer Simpson would say, "d'oh."

I will not speak to the merits of the award nor the committee's motivations.  That is for others to fuss about.  The award has been given.  The third American President to receive this award is Barack Obama.  QED.

However, I believe this award for Obama is like getting on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- a true curse of which I would not wish on anyone.  It is an unfair burden for a very new President.  Domestically, it confirms the feelings of the right about his "weak" policies pleasing the ever perfidious Europeans.  On the left, health care is more important. Internationally, however, is another for more serious matter.

First of all, it simply lays the predicate for every tinpot dictator out there to take on the Nobel Prize winner.  Castro, Chavez -- you name it.  Every move the Administration makes to push these guys back in their holes will be a PR coup with them dismissing the Nobel Prize winner as simply another imperialist duplicitously violating the spirit of the prize.

Second, and this is the real problem, the more serious dictators/terrorists such as Kim, Ahmedinejad, and Bin Laden, have even greater incentive make sure either nothing happens in any of the Obama initiatives or something evil happens to the U.S. on Obama's watch. 

And, finally, I also wonder whether some of our erstwhile allies, like Putin, will do anything but fold their arms and smile at the Nobel Prize winner.  Interested in seeing the results of the Nobel wunderkind efforts while they stay on the sidelines.

So thanks to those five guys in Oslo who gave this award.  If there was a Nobel Prize for premature and potentially problem laden awards, they won.  Let's hope they would end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Or would you advise against the mission entirely and resign in protest rather than execute it -- perhaps telling the president that such a strike would likely fail, be counterproductive to other U.S. goals in the region, and push the Iranians into a faster nuclear arms race?

We started the week talking about viable military options for halting Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But let’s turn this question around a bit, because the consensus among our experts seems to be that a U.S. strike against Iran is too costly, in terms of military force expended, as well as strategic consequences for the United States. And it’s highly doubtful that the strike would be all that effective. Indeed, some of our experts offer detailed plans about how a strike might be accomplished, but even Wayne White, who has laid out a number of options, concludes that any use of force would have to be “so extensive as to, essentially, place the US and Iran in a virtual state of war.”

I’d like to riff off of a point that James Carafano made. “The real issue is what will we do after Israel attacks Iran?” It seems a more likely scenario that Israel would strike on its own. So, assuming that this happened, how would the United States deal with the aftermath? Would we inevitably be drawn into the conflict militarily? It seems unlikely that any Israeli raids would accomplish the goal of subduing the Iranian nuclear program, since, as Joseph Collins notes, “the core of the program…[is] will and knowledge,” not so much sites and technology.

cheers

The issue is not whether or not that there should be an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The US has no interest in this course of action- period. Seymour Hersh was just dead wrong when he claimed the Bush administration was seriously thinking about attacking Iran. The Obama White House has even less interest in the idea.

The real issue is what will we do after Israel attacks Iran? The Israeli calculus on this decision could be changing. The Iranian elections have put the hardliners who want a weapons program in a more powerful position. The Israelis know that the Obama charm offensive is going to fail, as will any subsequent efforts by the US to “turn-up” the heat on Iran. Meanwhile, they have to be panicking over the likelihood that Russia will beef-up Iranian air defenses to the point that an Israeli strike is no longer feasible.

What we need to be thinking about is what we are going to do if and when they take matters into their own hands.

There are no sensible military options against the Iranian nuclear program.  The center of gravity of this program is not facilities, many of which are underground and hardened. The core of this program ---no pun intended--- is will and knowledge, neither of which can be bombed away. Even if the center of gravity of their effort were facilities, it would take a massive air operation (not air strikes) to take out the key facilities. To make sure you took care of them all, you would probably need some ground operations, as well. Only the United States could do this; Israel has the will but not the capability to do the job on its own. 

But let your imagination run wild: suppose the US and Israel together conducted an air war against Iran. Even if it were successfully to destroy the nascent nuclear capability, before you went kinetic, you would need good answers to some questions about the “day after”:

·      What would the ecological effects of the air war be?

·      How fast could an enraged Iran rebuild its program? How would we know we “got it all? ”

·      What effect would an attack have on the Iranian population? Would it drive the youth back into the arms of the mullahs?

·      Would you ignite a fire storm in the Middle East? What about Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian areas as well? Would Iran begin to fire missiles with conventional warheads into Israel?

·      What would Iran do in Iraq and Afghanistan? How would we respond to greater risk to US forces there?

The world will not be successful at stopping the development of Iranian nuclear weapons, but we can contain the ill effects of Iran becoming a nuclear power. The United States can extend its nuclear umbrella, declaring that any state threatened by Iran is under the US umbrella. This should dampen the desire for proliferation. We can spread missile defenses in the region and Europe, which may also bring us some healthy profits. We will be the beneficiary of added Iranian threat to our friends and allies, if we play our cards right and refrain from an attack.

Iran can be made to rue the day that it went nuclear. It too will find that nuclear weapons promise much but deliver little in the way of useable military capability. Nukes will buy them basic deterrence, but their size and sophistication already merits all the deterrence from attack that they need, but not as much as they want. 

A longer version of this argument is in my December 2008 editorial in the Armed Forces Journal. See    http://www.afji.com/2008/12/3809524.                           

One must consider that to do the job as thoroughly as possible, a massive amount of sheer military power would have to be brought to bear against Iran.  Aside from the complex target set involved (made more difficult to tackle by Iran's deliberate efforts at dispersal), one must factor in the aerial action needed to clear paths to the various targets in terms of taking out Iranian anti-aircraft defenses as well as portions of the Iranian air force that could well attempt to defend Iranian airspace in order to reduce potential US losses and enhance access to the desired targets.  Additionally, in the face of this magnitude of US military action, professional contingency plans would have to take into account the very real possibility of Iranian retaliation against military or other shipping in the Persian Gulf with its aerial, naval and coastal anti-ship missile capabilities.  In a prudent attack plan, a serious attempt probably would have to be made to take out these capabilities as well.

One can imagine the amount of military clout, both air force and naval, required for this level of military action against Iran.  The number of aerial sorties required could easily surge well beyond 1,000, not to mention the need for at least two--if not three--carrier battle groups in or very close to the Persian Gulf.  Additionally, to fulfill this demanding mission, even an unusually robust air campaign could extend over a period of many days

Also, in the course of military operations this extensive, one must seriously contemplate the loss of some US aircraft over Iran.  This would likely mean US prisoners falling into Iranian hands, generating an ugly situation that the Iranians could exploit for maximum effect over a long period of time after the end of the military campaign against the various target sets attacked.

Iran could attempt to draw the Israelis into such a conflict by copying Saddam Hussein's 1991 gambit of launching conventional missiles against Israel.  Such Iranian action would generate yet another task that probably would befall the US military in the course of such military action:  destroying as much of Iran's ballistic missle capabilities as possible.  This also would require quite a lot of strike missions, but could well be justified not only in the Israeli context but also as an adjunct to any Iranian interest in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, as well as a measure that might well be requested directly by Arab Gulf state governments fearing Iranian retaliation against them in the course of a robust US air campaign against Iran.   And it should be noted that there would be a significant possibility in this wide-ranging scenario that the US would almost certainly require the assistance of nearby Arab Gulf countries in terms of access to military facilities, airspace or both, making it very probable that Tehran would view them as complicit.

It might not be difficult to keep Israel out of such a conflict.  A thoroughgoing US hammering of the vast array of Iranian nuclear targets would be an Israeli dream scenario:  one in which Iranian nuclear capabilities would suffer far more than would be the case if a far more limited package of Israeli strikes was delivered from extreme long range.  With the US effectively doing much of Israel's dirty work for it--and more--the Israels might well be content to stand aside, perhaps even in the case of Iranian missile strikes, if the US was viewed as making a good faith effort to take out Iranian missile capabilities.  After all, despite considerable casualties, Israel was successfully restrained in the face of Saddam's missile attacks in 1991.

Finally, there is the disturbing problem of the end game.  After inflicting such extensive damage on Iran, how does one bring an end to what, in effect, would have become an armed conflict with Iran?  There is no easy answer to this question, and one could not rule out the possibility that such large-scale military action could initiate a period in the Persian Gulf (and in portions of the greater Middle East beyond) of far more intensive low-level conflict between the US, the Arab Gulf states and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other.  Such an ugly state of affairs could persist for some time, tying down considerable US military resources.