Blogs

As Egypt's transition toward a more democratic polity continues—and it is very much in the U.S. interest that it does—the principal U.S. priority should be not to do anything to screw up that process or to get the United States on the wrong side of it. That means not openly picking favorites in domestic contests for power, not rejecting the outcome of democratic procedures even when we would have preferred a different outcome, and encouraging the generals who are now in charge not to cut short the transition process.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistan has urged Afghanistan to reject a long-term strategic partnership with the United States. This revelation, following a string of other troubling developments in the decade-long war, makes it abundantly clear that Pakistan’s growing assertiveness is linked directly to the widespread perception in Pakistan of American weakness in Afghanistan.

 The republican impulse in England has always been something of a mystery to me. The UK has been shorn of so much so quickly—its empire, its self-confidence, its prosperity. The monarchy is its last calling card, the institution that makes it distinctive. Foreigners may pretend to be bemused by it, but royalty continues to command deference, even in America which ostensibly bridles at aristocracy—Thomas Paine declared "Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived."

The marriage of William and Kate is the latest example of the special significance of the monarchy. Tamper with it at your peril. There's something heartwarming about seeing that the British can pull it off once again. Public ceremonies, grand weddings and funerals, are something that they pull off with a special panache. A constitutional monarchy, in other words, can add a dash of color to the dominant banalities of life in a democracy. Countries that don't possess one tend to be a little drab. Germany, for example, would probably have avoided Nazism had Kaiser Wilhelm not hastily abdicated in 1918. The presence of the Kaiser would have provided a measure of stability. The truth is that most democracies are incapable of pulling off what Walter Bagehot called the "dignified" aspect of government. The burden is too great, particularly in America where the president is supposed to combine the "efficient" and "dignified."

Those not old enough to remember headlines from a conflict that was troubling the United States nearly half a century ago may not have paid much attention to the passing in Rome this week at age 86 of Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu. But she cut quite a figure in her day (in more ways than one, in her tight-fitting ao dai) and came to personify much of what was wrong with a South Vietnamese regime that the United States was struggling to prop up. Madame Nhu was married to the regime’s internal security chief, who in turn was the brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem came to power in 1955, the year following the accord that ended France’s war in Indochina and left Vietnam split between a communist north and non-communist south. Diem was a bachelor, and Madame Nhu functioned as the first lady of South Vietnam.

But she really functioned as much more than that. Strong-willed and outspoken, she was seen as a dominating influence on both her husband the security chief and her brother-in-law the president. Exactly how much influence she exerted on Diem outside of public view is impossible to say, but the outward indications were that it was substantial. Certainly she goaded the president toward the sort of hard-line and narrow-minded policies that made for a legitimacy problem in South Vietnam. The family was Catholic, and Madame Nhu especially became identified with intolerance toward the nation’s Buddhists. Some of the most searing images coming out of South Vietnam in the early 1960s were of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest. And among Madame Nhu’s most notorious comments were her reference to the protests as a “barbecue” and her offer to provide more fuel and matches if the Buddhists wanted to continue them.

European leadership of the second phase of the military intervention in Libya has not gone especially well. Although the United States officially transferred responsibility for the operation to NATO, that change was more impressive in the realm of press releases and organizational charts than substance. Even the notion of a “NATO” command was largely an illusion. It really meant transition to a British and French-led mission with token support from some other European NATO members. Several key alliance players, especially Germany and Turkey, are noticeable by their absence. In fact, both Berlin and Ankara have refused even to endorse the mission, much less contribute military forces.

There have also been embarrassing intra-alliance squabbles. Paris and London accused other NATO members of failing to bear their fair share of the military burden—a barb that seemed primarily directed at Germany. Americans who have made similar complaints about European free-riding on U.S. security exertions for the past six decades might find it difficult to suppress a bitter smile.

Today in Politico I have an op-ed titled “How Washington changed Obama.” In the piece, I argue that the recent appointments of Leon Panetta as secretary of defense and Gen. David Petraeus as director of the CIA, combined with revelations in the recent New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, suggest that President Obama has given up on changing U.S. foreign and defense policy:

Panetta is a dubious choice to fulfill Obama’s recent pledge to trim military spending. Any secretary charged with realizing that pledge would need extraordinary credibility with Capitol Hill Republicans, many of whom are determined to continue raining money on the Pentagon regardless of the nation's parlous fiscal position. Despite having once been a Republican, Panetta ran for Congress as Democrat and has served prominently in Democratic administrations. He is unlikely to craft the pragmatic consensus needed to give the Pentagon a haircut.

Petraeus’s nomination poses a different problem. He has spent the past decade focused— at the behest of his commanders in chief — on what we used to call the “global war on terrorism.” But is U.S. nation-building in the Muslim world the most important national security and intelligence problem we face today?

[…]

The U.S. desperately needs to change its focus. We account for roughly half the world’s military spending, yet we feel terribly insecure. We infantilize our allies so that they won’t pay to defend themselves and instead allow us to do it for them. We stumble into small- and medium-sized foreign quagmires the way many people eat breakfast — frequently and without much thought.

Calls for action against Syria are getting louder and louder. Yesterday, Senator Jon Kyl offered some stinging criticism of the Obama administration: the White House “has done little to aid the Syrian people who are being brutalized by the Assad regime — reportedly over 400 people have been killed by the regime in recent protests.” He urged the administration to, “at a minimum,” freeze assets and impose sanctions on “any entity involved in cooperation between the Iranian leadership and the Assad regime.” Lawmakers have questioned both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates about why Washington acted in Libya but isn’t moving on Syria.

Despite protests in Iraq against an American presence and President Obama’s statements to the contrary, Washington is making contingency plans in case it has to keep troops in Iraq beyond the end-of-the-year withdrawal deadline. As Defense Secretary Gates has said in the past, and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted last week, the administration is urging the government in Baghdad to make a decision on whether to extend the U.S. presence. The clock is ticking.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has a new financial adviser—Richard Berner, a former top economist at Morgan Stanley. As the administration still works to clean up the economic crisis, Berner is set to work on a host of touchy subjects, from Wall Street reform and banking to financial regulation and institutions.

 Donald Trump is the Sarah Palin of 2012. Trump's foray into the Republican primary is causing heartburn in the GOP establishment and a flutter of excitment among voters. He's too brash, crude, inexperienced--so goes the verdict of the Trump detractors. Those points are all true, at least up to a point. But as with Palin, Trump's very inexperience means that he's attractive to voters. He is the man on horseback, just as Palin was the woman on horseback, who will ride into town to clear out the pesky varmints who are infesting Washington.

Like Palin, he doesn't speak in the honeyed tones of a politician seeking to curry favor with various voting groups. Instead, he's bluntly announcing that he'll take a meataxe to Washington as well as America's foes. He won't negotiate with China or the Saudis. He'll lay down the law. Trump may hail from New York, but he evokes America's bygone western traditions. The lone fighter who faces down the bad guys.

Conservatives like his temerarious talk. And perhaps not just conservatives. The GOP field has been a study in caution. Trump, by contrast, speaks clearly. He's most recently been visiting New Hampshire. The Los Angeles Times reports,

It's only a preliminary agreement, and given the history of discord between the two parties involved, we should not take anything for granted just yet. But think about the opportunities and implications of the announcement Wednesday by Fatah and Hamas that they have agreed to form jointly an interim unity government for the Palestinians. It means the emergence of a single authority that can speak for and negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians, in both the West Bank and Gaza. It means a commitment by both of the Palestinian parties to a democratic process, with an interim government of technocrats to be followed by elections within a year. The arrangement represents the will of the Palestinian people, in the sense not only that it combines the two parties that together reflect most of the spectrum of Palestinian political sentiment but also that the unity agreement itself responds to recent popular demonstrations in Palestinian streets calling for just such an accord. It also has the backing of important regional actors. Such an agreement has long been a project of Saudi Arabia, although a Hamas spokesman gave primary credit to Egyptian mediators who had been assigned to the task since the change of government in Egypt.

Dan Drezner wrote a post noting that lots of people were snarking about how when then-Senator Obama was trying “to get a deeper education” about foreign policy, he read books by Fareed Zakaria and Thomas “Moustache of Understanding” Friedman. Drezner asked, “If not Thomas Friedman, Then Who?”

Brian Rathbun, who has been doing some very funny “stuff political scientists like” blogging over at Duck of Minerva, writes that the problem is not just that politicians aren’t sophisticated, but also