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Senator John McCain has apparently become a foreign policy ornithologist. He recently dismissed his fellow Senator Rand Paul and others who share his views on a less expansive American foreign policy as "wacko birds," a term, one might think, that would most appropriately apply to the woman from the frozen wasteland of Alaska that he selected to become his vice-presidential candidate. Paul's feathers appear to be unruffled. At the CPAC convention, Paul, fresh off his drones filibuster triumph, which earned him kudos on both the left and right, gave as good as he got, suggesting that McCain and his chum Senator Lindsey Graham are mossbacks, relics of a past era.

These verbal fusillades have prompted the media to conclude that a civil war is taking place in the GOP on foreign affairs (though the current attacks look more like preliminary shots than all-out combat). A case in point is an article about the GOP by Michael D. Shearer in today's New York Times. Shearer correctly suggests that the GOP is starting to revisit the question of whether America should intervene abroad or mind its own knitting. He quotes Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass (the author of a new book called Foreign Policy Begins At Home), who appears to approve of some aspects of Paul's approach to foreign affairs and worry about others. He also zeroes in on the views of neocons such as Dan Senor who profess to be worried about the prospect of a Pauline conversion in the GOP. Shearer's conclusion:

Documentaries, commentaries and forums marking the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War have been so numerous that they already have become tiresome, even though the actual anniversary of the invasion is not until next Tuesday. The repetition would nonetheless be worthwhile if it helped to inculcate and to reinforce lessons that might reduce the chance that a debacle comparable to the Iraq War will itself be repeated. Maybe some such positive reinforcement will occur, but a problem is that the anniversary retrospectives also give renewed exposure to those who promoted the war and have a large stake in still promoting the idea that they were not responsible for foisting on the nation an expedition that was so hugely damaging to American interests.

Some may say print is dead, but one thing is sure: they haven't been to Burma. In just two short weeks the Burmese press will be free to print daily news for the first time in over fifty years, and local journalists (or largely, the young people who want to become them) are electrified with excitement. While their internet connections are shoddy, the would-be journos have been practicing for months, running off private daily editions of the Myanmar Herald and Rangoon Times in anticipation of the April 1 start date. Shanghai-based Jake Spring's piece for the Atlantic is a great window into this special and changing time in the Southeast Asian country. That said, not all will be smooth sailing. According to Spring:

The selection of a Roman Catholic pope is a fascinating, even if mostly occluded, political process. It ought to inspire some thinking about what is good and bad about our own process for choosing a top leader. Of course, a church is not a national government (notwithstanding the legally sovereign status of the Holy See), and some aspects of the selection process that may be appropriate for the former would not be for the latter. The cardinals, for example, are supposed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit in choosing a new pope. Given how much religion, contrary to the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, tends to get injected into American politics these days, this may not appear to be a point of major difference—but that is not one of the attractive features of American politics.

In some respects the cardinals' selection of a pope resembles how some cabinet or parliamentary systems, including in Europe, choose top leaders while differing from how U.S. presidents are picked. By choosing someone from their own ranks, the new leader is certain to be someone with already established experience, accomplishment and stature in the organization. There are no retail politics in the Vatican. One can argue for the virtues of American-style retail politics, but a major virtue of the alternative is to eliminate splashy but inept amateurs from consideration. The secrecy of the papal selection process probably would not fit most secular political systems, although until not very many years ago the Conservative Party in Britain chose its leaders, and thus a good number of prime ministers, through a process that was just as opaque to the public.

Over the past few months, there has been a flurry of commentary claiming that 2013 will be a “year of decision” on Iran. (See, for example, Fareed Zakaria, Anne-Marie Slaughter and James Jeffrey.) In Zakaria’s words, this means that unless a diplomatic deal can be reached between the P5+1 and Iran regarding the country’s nuclear program, “2013 will be the year that we accepted a nuclear Iran or went to war.”

In the Financial Times, Nader Mousavizadeh provides some much-needed pushback against this now-conventional wisdom:

Far more likely, however, is a 2013 defined by another period of sustained stalemate, one driven by an unspoken preference on the part of all the key participants for a pragmatic equilibrium that excludes both war and peace. The see-saw of threats and talks, escalation and negotiation continues, inevitably leading to warnings of showdowns.

This is mostly all theatre. The reality is that for each of the principal parties, the status quo – Iran isolated diplomatically, crippled economically, boxed in militarily – is preferable to the available alternatives.

There is no shortage of windbags in the Senate. Nor is there ever likely to be one. But among his colleagues, Joseph Lieberman has stood out in out in recent years for his particularly grating blend of pomposity and hubris, prattle and sanctimony. Seldom has a Senator who has been wrong so often on foreign affairs trumpeted his alleged superiority more loudly. Whether it is Iraq or Syria or Georgia, the orgulous Lieberman seems never to have met a war he wouldn't like to fight. He is a champion about whining that his extreme views don't meet with greater approbation in the Democratic party.

Several explanations can account for Afghan President Hamid Karzai's outburst this week, in which he accused the United States of in effect working in parallel with the Taliban by keeping Afghanistan unstable and thereby having an excuse to keeping U.S. troops there indefinitely. Karzai has vented with increasing frequency and openness over the past couple of years about various aspects of the U.S. and allied military presence and operations in his country. When he does this he is speaking more to his own citizens than anyone else, as part of an effort to insulate himself politically from everything that is unpopular about foreign soldiers and his government's dependence on them. An immediate point of friction evidently was disagreement over the terms of handing over a detention facility to Afghan control.

It would be easy to blow this off as just Afghan politics. It also would be easy to brush aside the illogical aspects of Karzai's remarks. This included some of what he said about negotiations, including his comments concerning alleged separate talks (which U.S. officials quickly denied) between the United States and the Taliban. We nonetheless ought to reflect on why the Afghan leader evidently considers it good politics to say the things he said.

The Spectator’s Alex Massie offers a sharp critique of David Cameron’s Conservative Party on the occasion of its pathetic third-place finish in a critical by-election, asking “What’s the point of the modern Conservative party?” It’s the sort of question that has to be asked when a ruling party is bested by both its junior coalition partner and a minor insurgent party. Yet many of the problems Massie identifies sound eerily familiar to those who watch the GOP.

Consider the leaflet . . . distributed to voters in the dying days of the Eastleigh by-election campaign [which noted the Conservative candidate had been endorsed by a UK Independence Party MEP]. . . . Perhaps this was just a last, desperate, ploy in the final days of a disastrous by-election campaign. But it also shows how the Tories have allowed themselves to be spooked by the UKIP phantom. They have become so obsessed with protecting their right flank they’ve forgotten that overloading their defences on the right leaves them exposed elsewhere.

On Tuesday, General Jim Mattis, outgoing head of U.S. Central Command, went to deliver testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The occasion was ripe for controversy—the committee is home to some of Obama’s most hawkish critics, while rumors have been swirling that the famously laconic Mattis had been pushed out over disagreements with the White House. The hearing did see some of these disputes aired—Mattis said that he’d hoped to leave more troops in Afghanistan after 2014 than the administration.

But a moment of agreement was far more noteworthy. Mattis had the following exchanges with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, regarding the sanctions on Iran. Mattis had said that the sanctions were not working, but could:

MATTIS: I believe this regime, knowing it can’t win the affections of its own people, I think they are very concerned that the economic sanctions could turn the people against them, in which case I think on a cost-benefit basis they could be willing to give up even the nuclear effort to stay in power.

. . .

GRAHAM: We’ve got two choices: bring ‘em to their senses so they stop developing a nuclear-weapon capability, or bring them to their knees so they can’t develop a nuclear-weapon capability. Aren’t those our two options?

MATTIS: Yes sir.

GRAHAM: As to the second option, do we have the capability to bring them to their knees?

The current issue of Foreign Policy has a Mad Libs–style section where it asks analysts on military issues to fill in the blanks on various questions. In response to the prompt “Obama’s drone policy is…” Peter Singer replies:

Due for a speech outlining America's vision on where the technology and the policy should evolve to next. Who better than a commander in chief/law professor/Nobel Prize winner to give that speech?

This was a good idea to begin with, and it’s an even better one in the aftermath of Rand Paul’s nearly thirteen-hour filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination to run the CIA earlier this week. Paul’s filibuster dominated the media cycle and served to bring some needed attention to an issue that has often been ignored beyond a small circle. But, as others have pointed out, the circumstance he primarily focused on—the possibility of a U.S. citizen being killed by a drone strike on American soil—is a very narrow and extremely unlikely one. At the same time, according to an averaged set of estimates, over the past decade the United States has actually killed roughly 3,400 people with 411 drone strikes overseas, with about four hundred of them being civilians. (To his credit, Paul did mention the practice of “signature” strikes overseas several times as well, which is maybe the most troubling aspect of current drone policy.)