Given the number of times that John McCain and Sarah Palin have mentioned him and his accomplishments, you’d think that General David Petraeus would be an implicit supporter of the McCain-Palin approach to American foreign policy. 

Not so much, as it turns out: 

Apparently Gen. David Petraeus does not agree with the Bush administration that the road to Damascus is a dead end.

ABC News has learned, Petraeus proposed visiting Syria shortly after taking over as the top U.S. commander for the Middle East.

The idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon.

Petraeus, who becomes the commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) Friday, had hoped to meet in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Petraeus proposed the trip, and senior officials objected, before the covert U.S. strike earlier this week on a target inside Syria’s border with Iraq.

Officials familiar with Petraeus’ thinking on the subject say he wants to engage Syria in part because he believes that U.S. diplomacy can be used to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran. He plans to continue pushing the idea.

“When the timing is right, we ought to go in there and have a good discussion with the Syrians,” said a Defense Department official close to Petraeus. “It’s a meaningful dialogue to have.”

Petraeus would likely find a more receptive audience for his approach in an Obama administration, given Barack Obama’s views on the need to engage America’s enemies.

Steve Benen makes an interesting observation about the timing of this story: 

Not only is Petraeus at odds with Bush, but people close to him are leaking this information just a few days before the presidential election.

What’s more, it reinforces the dynamic that’s been apparent for a while — when it comes to a national security strategy predicated on diplomacy, Obama and Petraeus are on one side, while McCain and Bush are on the other.

That might be ascibing intent to Petraeus when none existed — leaks happen for all kinds of reasons — but it is an interesting development. 

Developing….

P.S.  In other news about foreign policy realists, it sure seems like those supporting McCain are doing so in a very passive-aggressive fashion. 

10 Comments »

The latest issue of The National Interest is out, and hey, what do you know, I have an essay in it! 

I was asked to speculate on what the world would look like if oil became an irrelevant commodity — i.e., cheaper than it was at any point since 1973.  The thesis paragraph: 

[L]et’s imagine—as The National Interest asked me to do—that the summer of 2008 turns out to be the all-time peak of oil prices, and that the end of the oil era is imminent. The first instinct is to assume that in this world—a world in which oil would be a minor commodity, irrelevant to both geopolitics and the global economy—America would be much better off. Oil-exporting autocracies would fade into obscurity, and the Middle East would revert to barren sand-strewn lands. This imagined future, after all, is what drives politicians from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to say that ending dependence on foreign oil will liberate America.

But would this really be the case? It may be that the assumptions we hold are grounded in a misunderstanding of the global order. Perhaps instead, without oil dominating their economies, the Middle East oil states would be far less dependent on the United States for trade, for security and for dollars. Perhaps the dollar would no longer be the world’s reserve currency, which would severely hinder America’s ability to fund its current-account deficit—and its military superiority. And then, perhaps, the security guarantee the United States provides to the Middle East—and by extension the entire oil-dependent world—would be null and void.

In short, a world that doesn’t need oil may also be a world that doesn’t need the United States. But when prices of oil are skyrocketing, people aren’t thinking about the possible long-term implications of energy independence, only the short-term gains.

Go read the whole thing.  Feedback is very much welcomed — this was, by definition, a speculative essay. 

And props to Justine Rosenthal, who was smart enough to push me to write this back when oil was over $140 a barrel. 

7 Comments »

Traditionally, Halloween is the time for stories in which many women lament the fact that the holiday pushes them to dress in a more risqué manner.

This year, however, I think Sarah Palin has done feminists a favor — based on my anecdotal evidence from attending a few Halloween parties, she’s the fave costume.  Although Palin’s sex appeal cannot be denied by some, Palin’s wardrobe, whatever its controversies, is certainly more demure than most Halloween choices for women. 

This story by Tom Giratikanon in the Naples Daily News suggests some of the key accessories:   

Those dressing up as Palin are certainly finding unlikely partners, such as wolves, Eskimos and babies, managers said. But the key to any good Palin, it seems, is her trademark glasses.

“They’ve been pretty popular,” said Billy Ray of The Fun Tree, a costume shop in Fort Myers.

Because there are no Palin masks yet, her glasses have become perhaps the most distinctive political Halloween accessory since a 1998-vintage cigar.

“This is as big as Monica Lewinsky,” said Masquerade owner Barbara Baier. The Lewinsky scandal was a time when her store always kept a sailor hat, a wig and yes, a cigar, on the front counter, such was the demand.

The Toronto Star’s Tracy Nesdoly as some useful tips for those who want to try the full Palin for their costume. 

7 Comments »

Yesterday the Federal Reserve announced a currency swap arrangement beyond the G-10 economies — $30 billion each was extended to Brazil, South Korea, Singapore and Mexico.  Krishna Guha explains the logic behind this step in the Financial Times: 

In effect, the US central bank is taking care of the dollar liquidity needs of these four emerging economies, leaving the IMF to take care of the rest.

International officials believe that the European Central Bank may also take some responsibility for providing further support for vulnerable economies in Europe, including potential members of the eurozone, along with the IMF.

The Fed is providing its support to Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Singapore via currency swaps on essentially the same terms as those offered to the 10 industrialised economies with which it already has reciprocal currency arrangements, including the eurozone, UK and Japan.

These are much more generous than the terms on which the US government and multilateral institutions lent money to developing countries during emerging market crises, for instance in the 1990s.

In today’s operations the Fed simply lends dollars to the local central bank, and the local central bank lends the dollars on to local banks. The Fed takes the counterparty credit risk of the central bank on the other side of the swap, with collateral in the form of an equivalent amount in local currency. There are no policy conditions….

It worried that the IMF might not have enough resources to support all the emerging economies that might need dollars. The Fund’s total lending capacity is about $250bn. The Fed swaps supplement this with an extra $120bn for Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore alone.

The Fed hopes the Fund’s resources will be enough to deal with the remaining needs of the emerging economies.

Meanwhile, the IMF also announced the creation of a new credit facility:   

The geopolitical implications of these moves are pretty surprising to Brad Setser: 

[I]t has been fashionable to argue that the crisis would increase China’s financial influence — as China sits on a ton of foreign exchange and potentially offered an alternative source of foreign currency liquidity. Indeed, China seems keen on doing a deal with Russia that would help Russian state-owned energy firms raise foreign exchange to help cover their maturing external debts — and the in the process, help reduce the drain on the government of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves.

But so far the crisis hasn’t had that effect — in part because the US and Europe have moved quickly (by the standards of governments) to help a broad range of countries meet their foreign currency needs. That was driven first and foremost by the needs of the emerging economies — and the ripple effect their deepening trouble would have on the US and Europe. But I wonder if the possibility that institutions like the IMF could be bypassed if they didn’t respond more quickly and creatively than in the past didn’t help to spur the recent set of policy changes. Those in the IMF’s Executive Board who normally would object to unconditional lending didn’t block the new short-term lending facility — perhaps at least in part because of recognition that the IMF potentially isn’t the only game in town (or in the world).

China’s rise, in effect, contributed to the a change in the political climate that helped to lift some of the political constraints that in the past limited the IMF’s scope.

I certainly didn’t anticipate this. Three months ago I was among those thinking that the rise of the emerging world’s reserves would reduce the IMF’s future relevance.

I agree with Brad that the presence of alternative sources of financing could explain why the Fund and the G-7 have moved so quickly.  There’s something else going on, however — China is moving very, very slowly.  They’ve already had opportunities to provide alternative sources of financing and declined.  Indeed, for all the bluster about countries like Iceland and Pakistan working around the IMF, in the end they’ve needed both Fund capital and the Fund imprimatur in order to get access to liquidity.  One could argue that these are countries more inclined to ally with the West, but that doesn’t really hold true for Pakistan — and it certainly doesn’t hold true for Belarus. 

So what’s going on?  I don’t know yet — but my hunch is that there are two things driving this curious inaction:

1. These countries are focusing on domestic problems first.  So is the G-7, of course, but the nature of the Russian and Chinese polities make those governments extra concerned about any signs of unrest. 
2. For all their aspirations to great power status, both countries lack the policy expertise necessary to take on greater leadership roles.  This leads to profound risk aversion, which leads to inaction.  On the flip side, the U.S. is accustomed to talking to the countries in crisis, which both provides it with more information and allows Washington to act more quickly. 

This is just spitballing — I could very well be wrong.  But there’s no doubt that, six weeks into this crisis, America’s hegemonic status has, if anything, become more entrenched. 

3 Comments »

I’m betting that I am unconsciously cherry-picking data here, but I do find it interesting that last month:

• New home sales rose by 2.7%;
• Sales of existing homes rose by 5%;
• Durable goods orders rose by 0.8%, the fourth increase in five months.

Question:  could the fundamentals of the economy actually be stronger than the vicissitudes of the financial markets suggest? 

I suspect the answer is still “no,” in part because the financial crisis itself has knock-on effects on the real economy.  Anecdotally, I can relate plenty of stories of institutions engaging in hiring freezes, deferring large-scale capital expenditures, and otherwise cutting spending because of financial turbulence and/or borrowing costs.  Unless and until that kind of delay ends, the financial markets will have an significant impact on the real economy. 

UPDATE:  Hmmmm:  “General Motors on Wednesday said it had continued to feel the impact of the financial crisis in its third quarter sales but that the US had reached the bottom of its economic downturn.” 

7 Comments »

Politico’s Ben Smith has done some outstanding blogging during this election year, and is a daily hourly read when I’m paying attention to the campaign.   What amazes me is that he’s capable of generating new information even during down times of a campaign — i.e., late Friday night. 

Over at The New Republic, Julia Joffe writes this year’s version of Tim Crouse’s The Boys on The Bus chapter about the campaign’s effects on reporters covering it.  It includes this nugget into how Smith does it: 

“It’s so built into my system, that it’s going to be hard to stop,” says Politico’s Ben Smith. Smith, who started blogging about New York politics in 2005, is now seriously addicted to the pace and metabolism–a word many invoked to describe the election’s rhythms–of the blogger’s life. He finds himself especially energized by the intensity of his readers who, by 4 a.m. have posted dozens of comments to a 3 a.m. post and who are now some of Smith’s best sources, sending him scoops and stories and snapshots of a far-roaming campaign. His family, however, is eagerly looking forward to November 5th. Smith’s wife repeatedly threatens to flush his Blackberry down the toilet; his kids, jealous of his “running conversation” with his readers, regularly squirrel away the device in the off chance they find it unattended. But Smith can’t bring himself to stop. Recently, he returned at 2 a.m. from a fishing trip and “couldn’t not plug in after being off the grid for an entire day.” He stayed up blogging and answering emails until 6 a.m.

 

“It’s really pathological,” he conceded.

1 Comment »

Henry Farrell and I have a bloggingheads discussion about minor topics like the future of capitalism and the global economic order.  Really important topics, like the election, are not discussed. 

Go check it out.  Alas, a sick child on my end had to cut the conversation short (she’s fine).  This is too bad, because Henry and I were both looking forward to ripping this piece of blather to shreds. 

No comments »

Robert Draper will be blogging during the last week of the campaign for GQ.  This post contains some more behind-the-scenes on prepping Sarah Palin for her VP debate: 

I’m sympathetic to [Tucker] Eskew and [Nicolle] Wallace, and not just because they’re decent people. They’ve held their tongue from leaking what a couple of McCain higher-ups have told me—namely, that Palin simply knew nothing about national and international issues. Which meant, as one such adviser said to me: “Letting Sarah be Sarah may not be such a good thing.” It’s a grim binary choice, but apparently it came down to whether to make Palin look like a scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus (emphasis added).  

Of course, this speaks just as badly of McCain as it does of Palin.  He’s the one who wedged himself into a Palinesque dilemma. 

UPDATE:  Given all the speculation about Palin in 2012, it should be noted that just because she was uninformed in September 2008 does not mean she’ll stay that way.  I’ll be interested to see what course she charts over the next few years. 

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Conor Friedersdorf is immune to irrational arguments about Palin: 

In case you haven’t been paying attention, an enormous turnout at an Obama rally means that he is a celebrity cult leader who talks pretty to his mindless supporters but lacks substance, whereas smaller crowds turning out to see Palin prove that she is the best decision John McCain has ever made, and that she is obviously qualified to be vice-president.

12 Comments »

It’s easy to overlook this sort of thing, but the Bush deserves a lot of credit for trying to facilitate the transition process to the next president.  Doing things like fast-tracking FBI background checks and the like will hopefully prevent a repeat of 2001, when key #2 and #3 subcabinet positions had yet to be filled. 

The sclerotic pace of staffing key positions in the government has been a bipartisan lament for some time now.  It’s good to see that the process has improved since 2000. 

Marc Ambinder has more on this. 

3 Comments »

Charles Barkley went on Campbell Brown’s CNN show and said he was planning on running for governor of Alabama in the future.  I like his explanation for why: 

Brown: So are you going to run for governor?

Barkley: I plan on it in 2014.

Brown: You are serious.

Barkley: I am, I can’t screw up Alabama.

Brown: There is no place to go but up in your view?

Barkley: We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere.

Dammit, the man stole my campaign motto:  “Vote Drezner — he can’t screw it up any worse.”

8 Comments »