The National Interest Blogs

Deeper into Terrorism

Paul R. Pillar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:30:34 +0000

LM/The National InterestAlthough the assassinations of Iranian scientists have until now been followed by no indication of responsibility other than smug comments of satisfaction from officials of the most likely foreign state perpetrator, now NBC offers something more specific. According to a report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem, the assassinations have been the joint work of Israel and the Iranian cult-cum-terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq. According to the report, the partnership has involved Israel providing financing, training and arms to the MEK to accomplish the hits, as well as to commit other acts of violent sabotage inside Iran. The story tracks with accusations from officials of the Iranian government, who say they base most of what they know on interrogations and captured materials from a failed assassination attempt in 2010. Such accusations by themselves would be easy to dismiss, of course, as more of the regime’s propaganda. But the NBC story cites two senior U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, as confirming the story. A third official said “it hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet,” although like the others he denied any U.S. involvement. The Israeli foreign ministry declined comment; the MEK denied the story.

Progressive Grand Strategy

The Editors — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:00:33 +0000

The Editors

Can America develop a grand strategy that’s above ideology? According to Georgetown professor Charles Kupchan, maybe not. In a symposium on “America and the World” from the current issue of Democracy, Kupchan argues for a "progressive grand strategy."

After the collapse of the bipartisan Cold War consensus, Kupchan says, only Democrats are well equipped to lead on foreign affairs. Republicans are in two camps: isolationist Tea Partiers and neoconservatives, with the latter now discredited in the wake of Iraq. Watching the recent primary campaign suggests that Kupchan is correct; besides ineffective attempts by Jon Huntsman, Republicans have offered no foreign policy outside these two extremes.

But for a progressive, Kupchan is remarkably unimaginative about the future of American politics. What if the Democratic Party someday also evinces more isolationist sentiment? Might conservatives eventually reconcile their split personality on international affairs? They could even look to a realist grand strategy, accepting limited interventions while avoiding the neocon overextensions. And wouldn't progressives benefit from a genuine sparring partner, a school of engagement more compatible with political conservatism?

Charles Kupchan

Democracy

The Truth Is Out There

Trevor Thrall — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:06:37 +0000

Trevor Thrall

Adam Berinsky from M.I.T. reports over at YouGov that less than a year after President Obama released his long form birth certificate, the number of Americans who believe that Obama is an American citizen has dropped back to same level as before the certificate was made public. The percentage of Republicans who believe Obama is an American has dropped even lower than before. Rumors, Berinsky argues, die hard, and thanks to the Internet, they spread faster and further than ever before.

Rumors may seem a bit far afield for this blog. But in fact, rumors are close cousins of lies, misinformation and propaganda, standard tools of foreign policy in democratic nations and dictatorships alike. Rumors, like their cousins, are designed to alter judgments about people and policies by shifting the basis on which citizens consider them. For example, recent rumors about Obama’s “death panels” can be understood as an effort to shape judgments about Obama’s health care plan by focusing attention on a specific element of that plan (end of life decisions) through the strategic use of misinformation (i.e., that there would be such things as panels determining who would live and die). In this sense, the death-panel rumor differs very little from the Bush administration’s claims about Iraqi WMD in the run up to the 2003 war.

Sadly, Berinsky’s findings are not surprising. As John Stuart Mill argued 150 years ago in On Liberty:

God Bless George F. Will

Jacob Heilbrunn — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:56:16 +0000

Jacob Heilbrunn

"Republicans who think America is being endangered by `appeasement' and military parsimony have worked that pedal on their organ quite enough." So says George F. Will in his column today. To which one can only respond: Amen.

Will's column amounts to a vivisection of Mitt Romney, who has made a number of ostentatious claims about how he would restore the American preeminence that has allegedly been squandered by the Obama administration. His principal point is this: traditionally, the GOP has held an edge over the Democrats when it came to national security. Democrats were seen as temporizers, unable to face up to the fact that America actually had an adversary (the Soviet Union) that was determined to surpass it. As a result, Republicans, at least since 1972, battened on the public's perception that Democrats were weak and soft and feeble when it came to foreign affairs.

Now, in an attempt to portray Obama as the latest manifestation of Democratic pusillanimity, the GOP has taken to bewailing the exit from Iraq and the looming one from Afghanistan. Those policies may be popular and common sense, but Romney will have none of it. "We should not negotiate with the Taliban," says Romney. "We should defeat the Taliban." Great. But how? Should we stay for several more decades in an effort to create an Afghanistan in America's image?

Will notes,

Exposing Earmarks

The Editors — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:14:24 +0000

The Editors

The February 7 Washington Post had a front-page story on how members of Congress have used those ubiquitous "earmarks"—federal monies directed by Congress to specific purposes—to foster public projects right near the homes or investment properties of those very members of Congress. The piece jumps to the inside, with two full pages of investigative prose and mini-profiles of sixteen specific examples. Earmarks are a scourge on American democracy, not because they represent a material amount of money in the bloated federal budget but because they are a recipe for corruption.

Heretofore the focus has been on members helping favored constituents who then contribute significantly to those members’ campaigns. The Post, in a bit of really probing journalism, shows that the corruption goes beyond that. There’s no particular reason this should be surprising. It should be a rule of thumb in politics that entrenched power always gets abused. That’s what this story is all about.

Of course, the members deny that there is any corruption here—or that there is any connection at all between the earmarked funds and their own interests. As the Post said, "Any potential personal benefit—financial or otherwise—is nonexistent, minimal or secondary to the needs of the public, they said."

That rings hollow, of course, and is likely to seem even more hollow after the next installment in this two-part series—a look at money delivered to institutions connected to lawmakers’ relatives.

David S. Fallis, Scott Higham and Kimberly Kindy

The Washington Post

Occupy Afghanistan

Malou Innocent — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:40:46 +0000

Malou Innocent

In an essay for Armed Forces Journal, Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis writes that after traveling across Afghanistan and speaking with more than 250 soldiers in the field, “What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.” Further down he continues, “I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.”

It’s hard to disagree.

Davis’s essay comes weeks after the top-secret 2011 National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan finds that security gains in the Afghan war are unsustainable and that pervasive corruption, government incompetence and militant safe havens in Pakistan have undercut progress.

I’m reminded of a comment made recently by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee:

There have been gains in security . . . but the Taliban is still a force to be reckoned with. They still occupy considerable land in the country.

Appeasing Assad

The Editors — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:35:38 +0000

The Editors

The last thing anyone wants to do is offer Bashar al-Assad a carrot. The idea of granting concessions to the brutal dictator is enough to make one’s stomach turn. But the implications of failing to do so are more dire than anyone cares to admit.

In a thoughtful New York Times op-ed, Nicholas Noe makes the case for negotiating with Assad—for “bargaining with the devil.” His point, well made and well-taken, is that the United States and its allies are currently operating as if they can somehow engineer a controlled collapse of the Assad government. In fact, for a number of reasons that Noe puts forth, the far likelier scenario is “a bloody last-ditch effort by Mr. Assad, Iran and Hezbollah to save the Syrian government, which they have the means to do.”

The crucial part of Noe’s piece is his insistence that Washington—not Russia, not China, not even Assad himself, although these actors certainly deserve their fair shares of blame—should be held accountable for jettisoning its “inconsistent maxim that bargaining is morally prohibited when a leader is deemed to have gone beyond the pale—especially when bargaining could actually mitigate future fallout, while eventually securing one’s interests and values.” Sanctions aren’t working. Threats aren’t working. The UN Security Council resolution is dead in its tracks. Washington should be willing to seriously consider the option of negotiating, even if it will produce a less-than-ideal outcome and even if it entails granting concessions to the devil.

Nicholas Noe

The New York Times

Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Roach Motel

Paul R. Pillar — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:08:49 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

One of the latest efforts by members of Congress (especially, but not exclusively, Republicans) to impede the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy concerns the possible transfer of several Afghan Taliban out of the detention facility at Guantanamo as part of the process of negotiating an agreement with the Taliban. Specifically, the move would entail transferring five senior Taliban from Guantanamo to Qatar as a good-faith gesture. One anonymous Republican member of Congress forecast strong opposition if the Obama administration attempted this transfer, saying, "If they do that, then all hell breaks loose. There's just no way."

Opposition to this move probably reflects a combination of several misconceived and unhelpful beliefs:

That negotiating is mutually exclusive with fighting. A substantial modern history of warfare, including the U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, demonstrates that not only are they not mutually exclusive, but negotiating while fighting may be the only way out of a war with even a hope of a satisfactory outcome. This belief is related to a more general one...

That diplomacy is a reward that should not be bestowed on enemies. This attitude merely handicaps ourselves by removing one of our tools of statecraft. The late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said it best: you negotiate peace with your enemies, not with your friends.

A Tortured Comparison on Drones

The Editors — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:39:49 +0000

The Editors

Some say where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Andrew Cohen says—perhaps blinded by his own exhaust—where fire was, fire will be.

In a theatrical Atlantic editorial, “The Torture Memos, 10 Years Later,” contributing editor Cohen marks the ten-year anniversary of the Bush administration’s ironic memo on “Humane Treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda Detainees.” He claims the same obfuscation and legal malfeasance that marked that fiasco is now occurring on Obama’s drone program.

Let’s be clear. There is no question that the U.S. government needs to make greater efforts on transparency. But more information needs to be learned about the drone program before it can be compared to a document that abandoned America’s commitment to crucial provisions of the Geneva Convention and allowed the brutalizing torture of terror-law detainees.

Cohen argues that we remember the detainee memo anniversary “because it may help us muster the courage today to ask the right questions of the Obama White House.” Fair enough, but his undoing is buried later in his very argument, “Yet we cannot even see the legal memos upon which the drone program is based, much less evaluate the documents for their loyalty to the Constitution and to the rule of law.”

And not having seen them, how can we possibly make a prudent judgment, no less compare the drone program to one of the most embarrassing American foreign policy episodes in recent history? This reckless howler shoots first and asks questions later.

Andrew Cohen

The Atlantic

Bursting the Chinese Bubble

The Editors — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:56:55 +0000

The Editors

America is finished as a superpower. Or so you might think from the recent discussion in the U.S. media. Popular books lament that “that used to be us” and that the United States is committing “suicide.” Meanwhile, a majority of Americans believe that China has already passed Washington as “the leading economic power in the world today,” according to a 2011 Gallup poll.

In the latest issue of International Security, Michael Beckley argues strongly that this is all wrong—as his title, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” indicates. Beckley, a research fellow at Harvard, brings empirical facts and cool analysis to an issue often dominated by overheated rhetoric. His main target is the idea that we can measure China’s rise solely based on its rising levels of GDP.

Michael Beckley

International Security

Libya Begets Syria?

Christopher A. Preble — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Christopher A. Preble

A little over a year ago, as members of the Obama administration were pondering military intervention in Libya, skeptics (including The Skeptics) pressed them to explain how that situation differed from other comparable cases elsewhere in the world. If Libya, why not Yemen? Why not Bahrain? Why not Syria? We may soon learn the answer to that last question. And their too-permissive—or merely haphazard—approach a year ago might pave the way for an intervention in Syria that would be ill-advised, if not disastrous.

At the time of the Libya debate (to the extent that there was one), the president and his foreign-policy advisers dismissed concerns that the intervention in Libya would set a precedent. "It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs," President Obama said in a televised speech to the nation on March 28, 2011. But, he continued:

What Is Our Number One Priority?

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:50:22 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

In an interview broadcast during NBC's Super Bowl pregame show on Sunday, President Obama made a couple of statements that were disturbing, even if politically unsurprising. In a portion of the interview about the danger of Israel touching off a war with Iran, the president said, “My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel.” Wait a minute—shouldn't the security of the United States be the number one priority of the president of the United States? Rather than merely sharing the top spot on the priority list with some foreign country's security? This comment was part of an unscripted interview, and perhaps the language of a prepared speech would have come out differently. But the president said what he said.

Elsewhere in the same interview, Mr. Obama said that in dealing with Israel regarding the issue of Iran, “We are going to make sure that we work in lockstep.” If working in lockstep means that Israel defers to U.S. interests and preferences, that would be fine for the United States. But of course the deference nearly always works the other way around. For a glaring recent example involving President Obama, recall how he caved to Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the continued Israeli construction of settlements in occupied territories. So this statement is disturbing as well.

Washington's UN Temper Tantrum

Ted Galen Carpenter — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:22:15 +0000

Ted Galen Carpenter

Dmitri Medvedev with Hu Jintao (www.kremlin.ru)U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice huffed that her country was “disgusted” by Russia and China’s decision to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning the violence in Syria and calling for an immediate end to that bloodshed. Their actions, she added, were “shameful” and “unforgivable.” Not only could Ambassador Rice apparently use a refresher course in diplomatic language, Washington’s response also betrays a troubling arrogance on two levels.

First, U.S. officials seem to believe that even such major powers as Russia and China should simply kowtow to the United States and adopt whatever measure Washington and its allies want on any subject, even when such a measure might be contrary to the interests of Moscow and Beijing. That is an offensive attitude that is provoking more and more irritation and resentment not just in those capitals but in such places as Ankara, Brasilia and New Delhi as well. Someone needs to convey a message to Rice and other Obama-administration officials—and much of the U.S. foreign policy community—that America’s “unipolar moment” is over and that other powers in the international system are increasingly unwilling to take dictation from Washington.

A Neocon by Any Other Name

The Editors — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:08:20 +0000

The Editors

In his piece for the January/February 2012 edition of World Affairs, Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane sets out to evaluate the foreign-policy stances of the GOP hopefuls. He comes to two major conclusions: Republicans will not “enjoy their customary edge over the Democrats as the party of national security,” and “the ‘neoconservative’ movement has no obvious candidate in this race.” (The one possible exception, he claims, is Rick Santorum, who Lane must be forgiven for writing off as having “little chance of winning” before the surprising Iowa-caucus results.)

The first conclusion seems solid, albeit arrived at through a series of oft-repeated observations: voters care more about the economy; the contenders don’t know what they’re talking about; the new threats are ill-defined; the public is generally content with Obama’s foreign-policy record.

The second is where Lane encounters difficulties.

He claims the GOP hopefuls eschew a neoconservative agenda of democracy promotion in favor of a “narrowed-down version” of Bush’s foreign policy “whose central concern is not so much expanding democracy across the Middle East as protecting its one outpost—Israel.” There's something to Lane’s notion that protecting Israel has supplanted spreading democracy as the top Republican foreign-policy priority. There can be no doubt that the race for the nomination has been marked by a sort of Israel one-upmanship.

Charles Lane

World Affairs

Obama's Bad Education Ideas

Jacob Heilbrunn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:58:31 +0000

Jacob Heilbrunn

President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that no one should be allowed to drop out from high school under the age of eighteen. Obama's desire to raise graduation rates is laudable. But simply raising the age limit is not. In fact, it's a dumb idea.

Whether students drop out at age sixteen or age eighteen is largely immaterial. The truth is that teachers shouldn't be forced to try and teach students who don't want to be taught. Instead, they pose a disruptive presence inside public schools. Obama is proposing to identify the schools with the highest dropout rates, close them and then transfer students to better districts. But is that simple a recipe for adding troublemakers to districts that are performing well? Yes, the administration should work to improve schools and lower dropout rates. But don't try to enforce it by executive fiat, which is what raising the dropout age would represent. You can't legislate your way to better results. Schools have to produce them.

The other idea that the Obama administration proposes is even worse. Far worse. It is embracing high technology as a panacea for teaching students. In a scorching column in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik points out that the administration is peddling moonshine. U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan is pushing for a major infusion of iPads into school classrooms. Who's eager for this to happen? Apple computers, naturally. It stands to make big bucks. The claim is that iPads are studier than textbooks, can be updated and are cheaper in the long run. Baloney, says Hiltzik. For one thing, you can drop a textbook, but an iPad? It's finished.

Regime Change, Humanitarianism and Syria

Paul R. Pillar — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:45:10 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

The West and especially the United States are still paying a price for the messy habit of conflating regime change with other objectives, even the laudable objective of saving lives. Last October, Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria. The Russians in particular made it clear they were determined not to fall again for what they regarded as a bait and switch on Libya, in which a NATO military intervention that received multilateral support on humanitarian grounds quickly morphed into support for toppling the Libyan regime. Last Saturday saw a replay at the Security Council: another resolution on Syria, and another double veto by Russia and China. It's not as if the Russians and Chinese are throwing vetoes around with abandon these days. The vetoes on the Syria resolutions are four of only five vetoes that have been cast at the council in the last couple of years (the United States used the other one a year ago against a resolution criticizing continued Israeli construction of settlements in occupied territories). Despite efforts to word the most recent resolution on Syria in a way that would assuage Russian and Chinese concerns, all the talk about seeing the backside of Bashar al-Assad, in addition to the experience with Libya, makes it easy to see why Moscow and Beijing were still not buying.

The Polemical Economist

The Editors — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:19:06 +0000

The Editors

Paul Krugman’s polemical bulldozer rolls along, smashing buildings, automobiles and anything else that evinces even a hint of conservatism. On Friday, the New York Times columnist turned his bulldozer toward GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The issue was Romney’s unfortunate word choice in talking about where he would place his economic focus. The now-famous quote: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

What Romney was trying to say was that his primary economic goal as president would be to get the economy growing in order to extricate the middle class from its current squeeze. As he said, “I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.” And ultimately he says the goal is to “get this economy going for them.” Eureka! He actually got to economic growth. But, as the Wall Street Journal editorialized, the wait was “excruciating.”

So Romney asked for it with his artless articulation, and he certainly got it. Liberals went after him like foxhounds on the scent. As for Krugman, most of his column offers a solid liberal critique that focuses on past Romney expressions regarding that safety net, a defense of federal transfer payments and an attack on the distribution of largess in Romney’s tax plan. So far, fine.

Paul Krugman

The New York Times

Zakaria's Alternate Reality

The Editors — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The Editors

Writing in the Washington Post, foreign-policy writer Fareed Zakaria touts his own book, The Post-American World, in a column addressed to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He suggests Romney should rethink is oft-expressed criticism of President Obama for believing “that this next century is the post-American century.”

The theme of America moving into a less hospitable world less subject to American power is getting a lot of attention. And, based on Zakaria’s past writings, it’s safe to speculate that his book makes a worthy contribution to this literature.

But he pulls from the book a quote that should give any geopolitical analyst pause: “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.”

This can’t be. While societies can generate new wealth through wise economic policies, they can’t generate political power. A fundamental rule of politics, as ironclad as the law of gravity, is that every polity has a finite quantity of political power. The only question is how it will be distributed. This is true of the local school board, the Vermont legislature, the United States of America and the world of nations.

Fareed Zakaria

The Washington Post

The Right Direction on Afghanistan

Paul R. Pillar — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:59:10 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

Although Christopher Preble is right that Secretary of Defense Panetta’s statement about NATO forces transitioning out of a combat role in 2013 is long overdue and leaves important unanswered questions about U.S. troops in Afghanistan during the next three years, this transition is definitely a step in the right direction. Some of the questions that still need to be asked involve why any further costs and casualties should be incurred to obtain some result that is ill-defined and may not be achievable anyway. But as each week on the calendar goes by, the difference between the most prudent possible withdrawal from this expedition and what the Obama administration seems to have in mind gets less and less.

Romney's Gaffe Problem

Jacob Heilbrunn — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:37:00 +0000

Jacob Heilbrunn

Michael Kinsley famously defined defined a gaffe as something a politician inadvertently says that is true but also embarrassing. Mitt Romney's remark this week about his not being concerned about the poor may fall into that category. It reinforces the perception that he is the $200 million man—a politician who truly is out of touch with common folks. Will the comment prove fatal? Hardly. But it does suggest that Romney continues to have a penchant for making gaffes even as he struggles to seem more spontaneous.

It would have been fine if Romney had said that he wants to focus on the middle class. But why did he go on to make the distinction with what he called the "very poor"? He's supposed to be running to become president of all Americans, not just the middle class. Anyway, empathy is the paramount virtue in an Oprahized culture. Coming across as a nakedly venal Scrooge McDuck wallowing in his lucre is not. The worst thing a politician can do is say he isn't concerned about something or someone. It's old school.

And why did Romney make it sound hunky-dory that there are government programs to take care of them? After all, the standard conservative credo is that government help is not OK. That, in fact, it hampers the poor from attempting to alter their circumstances. This must be one of the few times in recent memory when a conservative Republican, which is what Romney says he is even as conservatives doubt it, has endorsed welfare programs.

Unanswered Questions on Afghanistan

Christopher A. Preble — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:26:08 +0000

Christopher A. Preble

Secretary Panetta’s announcement that the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan will end as early as mid-2013 is a positive development. But it is long overdue and still leaves too many questions unanswered. After more than ten years of war in Afghanistan, the administration should follow through on its commitment to end combat operations and withdraw all troops by 2014. Continuing to narrow our objectives will make this war winnable.

Politically, this makes perfect sense for the Obama administration. It is a shot across the bow of his political opponents and those wishing for an indefinite combat mission in Afghanistan. Secretary Panetta’s announcement allows the administration to get on the side of voters who want to draw down in Afghanistan. By opposing any drawdown, his critics side with the much smaller segment of the American people who still support the nation-building mission.

President Obama is in a position similar to the debate over Iraq in his 2008 presidential campaign. He argued in 2008 that he would end a grinding war he inherited. The president can claim victory (and vindication) in Iraq and argue that if you liked the first act, you’ll love the second. He will end another grinding war he inherited—and conveniently gloss over the fact that he sent more troops to Afghanistan than President Bush ever did.

How Romney Made It

The Editors — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:38:44 +0000

The Editors

Thursday’s Washington Post contains a Dan Balz column that demonstrates why Balz remains one of the country’s most respected campaign analysts. He makes the point that, yes, this has been a singularly unpredictable political year, as many have noted over the months of fluctuations in the political fortunes of Republican presidential candidates. But one thing has remained constant—the campaign strategy and operational discipline of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Now, says Balz, this constancy has paid off in Romney’s position as the almost prohibitive front-runner.

There are two noteworthy aspects of this piece. The first is Balz’s smart and sharply analytical portrayal of the thinking of Romney and his campaign operatives, from the beginning, through the early contests and down to the present. No retrospective revisionism. Few political writers have Balz’s breadth of knowledge on the inner workings of politics, and almost nobody spends more time traversing the country in pursuit of inside interviews on the unfolding drama. Thus his rendition of what the Romney folks were thinking during the planning stages has credibility.

The second notweworthy aspect is Balz’s suggestion that Romney now enjoys a commanding lead that will be difficult for anyone to obliterate—except perhaps Romney. At this stage in any presidential nomination battle, when a front-runner seems emergent, many commentators and pols cast about for possible scenarios that could upend that front-runner—possible stumbles, a dramatic change of fortune in Illinois or some such place, a late entry into the race, a late surge by someone already in the race. Yet these things never seem to materialize.

Dan Balz

The Washington Post

Egypt’s Pragmatic Islamists

Malou Innocent — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:37:49 +0000

Malou Innocent

As many expected, Islamist parties will form a dominant majority in Egypt’s first freely elected parliament. The Islamists are here to stay, and fearmongering over their rise is unproductive, since Egyptians will judge for themselves whether Islamists are delivering on their promises. Moreover, understanding the dynamics that brought religious parties to power should be the real goal and will ultimately prove more useful to those engaging this nascent democracy.

Economic Pipe Dreams

The Editors — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:43:56 +0000

The Editors

“Take a vacation!” “Buy more yachts!” “Hire everyone!”

No, these responses aren’t the fodder of impulsive, giggling adolescents when asked how to solve the myriad issues of our global economy. They are reactions from thirteen esteemed thinkers and intellectuals in Foreign Policy’s January/February 2012 special feature “13 Out-of-the-Tinderbox Ways to Save the Economy.”

The allusion to quick, “out-of-the-box” solutions shouldn’t have permitted suggestions so theoretical and unrealistic that they can never be applied. Tinderboxes fell out of use when matches were invented because they were unwieldy and impractical. This feature’s ideas are equally useless when one gets down to the real work necessary to “firestart” the global economic system. They range from tangential (Daniel Dennett’s three-month-long vacation for everyone), to unrealistic (James Galbraith’s nearly doubling minimum wage), to the unthinkable (Paul Kedrosky’s mass default).

All of these minds are accomplished. The central problem of this symposium lies in what must have been an overly-simplistic prompt: The global economy is a fragile, complex system. Please craft an unusual, decidedly unwonky solution in 1,500 words or less.

A Symposium

Foreign Policy

The Preconditions Game and Talks with Iran

Paul R. Pillar — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:13:38 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

Many international negotiations start with diplomatic dances that involve—ostensibly and/or really—preconditions to the negotiations themselves. Preconditions, or complaints about them, can be used for various purposes. A party that does not really want to negotiate can impose arbitrary conditions that it does not expect the other side to accept. Complaining about preconditions is a way of arguing that the other side doesn't really want to negotiate. Preconditions also might be manipulated to placate domestic constituencies or to try to gain an early advantage in the substance of the negotiations.

What functions as a precondition is not to be equated with what is explicitly labeled as a precondition. And attempts to manipulate the terms of a future agreement should be distinguished from what is necessary to negotiate any agreement at all. Israel, for example, portrays itself as wanting to negotiate without preconditions with the Palestinian Authority and complains about the PA imposing a precondition about ceasing the expansion of settlements in occupied and disputed territory. But the PA understandably sees the continued unilateral colonization of disputed territory through settlements as directly contrary to the whole concept of bilaterally negotiating the future of the disputed territory. Israel's no-conditions posture quickly melts away when the subject is negotiation with Hamas, even though the prior declarations about Israel that are being demanded of Hamas (besides the fact that Israel itself has never made any similar declarations about Hamas) are not needed for those two parties to negotiate agreements on issues that divide them—as demonstrated by the complicated agreements they have already reached on exchanging prisoners.