Here at Les Recontres Economiques d'Aix-en-Provence we are ostensibly discussing "The States of the World" but in reality the buzz around the event is about the global economic ugly pageant. Although much of the conversation among delegates --whether at the venerable conference sites like the law school of the Universite Paul Cezanne or the local outpost of Sciences Po -- focuses on the harrowing state of the Eurozone, one can regularly hear concern expressed for the other contestants in the current perverse competition among the world's economies.

To understand the competition, you just have to understand the old joke about the group of friends whose picnic is disturbed by a hungry grizzly bear. As the friends bolt from their campsite, one stops to put on his sneakers. The others ask what he is doing, worried that he will never be able to outrun the bear if he stops. The one in the sneakers observes as he starts sprinting away, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun the rest of you."

So it is now with the global economic ugly pageant. While most of the major economies of the world are spluttering and the possibility of an unprecedented geoeconomic disaster remains palpably real, what money there is does have to go somewhere. That place is likely to be the least ugly of the world's economies. In other words, absent a true safe haven, capital will seek the safest haven of those available. It's one reason the dollar has done fairly well recently, for example. While the U.S. government seems to do everything in its power to screw things up economically, investors buy dollars because the managers of the world's other big currencies, the Europeans and the Japanese, are screwing things up worse.

The question now is will our "luck" remain the same going forward? How will the world's economies fare in the next round of this contest? Here's the current betting line based on my scientific eavesdropping on conversations here in Provence, appropriate discounting for self-interest and biases of the speakers and my own reading of the tea leaves that get floated as economic news in the world's newspapers. (Note: I am focusing only on national and regional economies here. Suffice it to say that almost certainly the big losers of the coming months -- whether policymakers accidentally blow up the world economy or they dodge disaster through a judicious combination of austerity and stimulus -- will be the poor. They have no voices advocating for them (as do, for example, the makers of private jets currently lobbying to keep the corporate tax breaks their purchasers receive under present U.S. law). Austerity programs will squeeze them further. Disaster will crush them. And almost certainly the biggest winners will be big corporations and the super-rich who will venue-shop and use their access to cash to buy up devalued assets including fire-sales among privatizing formerly state-owned bric a brac like roads, ports, powerplants and water rights.)

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Update, 9/12/10: In the following post due to a mistake regarding which draft I submitted to be posted, a couple of key words were dropped that have been noted by several commenters.  They refer to the paragraph regarding the mosque project in Lower Manhattan.  What I intended to write (and had actually written in the draft that I mistakenly did not submit) was not "It is odious..." but instead "It may seem odious to some, but if our freedoms..."  I appreciate those who noted the incongruity of the remark given that I was early and strongly on the record supporting the right of those supporting the Islamic Cultural Center to build it wherever they wanted to.  As should be clear to anyone who reads this blog, I find the objections and efforts to block the cultural center to be what is really odious and that is the point that I would have made here were it not for my typo.  Apologies.

A week ago, Fareed Zakaria wrote a piece for Newsweek entitled "What America Has Lost." It was subtitled "It's clear we overreacted to 9/11." As is typical for Zakaria, it is exceptionally thoughtful and well-argued. Its timely focus is on the enormous costs associated with building up the massive U.S. security apparatus that targeted a terrorist threat that was and is clearly overstated. Zakaria makes reference to the landmark Washington Post "Top Secret America" series that outlined how, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, the United States has "created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent to $75 billion (and that's the public number, which is a gross underestimate.) That's more than the rest of the world spends put together."

Even today, nine years after 9/11, it took considerable courage for Zakaria to argue that we overreacted to the horrific events of that day. Given their scope and visceral impact on every American, it seemed in the days after the blows were struck that overreaction was impossible. But in the years that followed, the feelings seem hardly to have ebbed at all, and critiques of our national reaction are, with the exception of the near consensus that invading Iraq was wrong, considered almost unpatriotic -- nearly sacrilegious, in fact.

Yet I believe that Zakaria's column understates the problem. I attribute this to its appropriately limited focus rather than any narrowness of his perspective. It was, after all, just a single column in which he focused on making an important point about America's security priorities and the opportunity costs associated with our strategic overreaction. That said, the damage done by letting emotion and adrenaline get the best of us in the months and years after the attacks extends far beyond the distortion of foreign policy priorities or the impact on the U.S. federal budget.

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Today, President Sarah Palin convened a meeting of Middle East leaders to resume the search for a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. "It has been President Palin's knowledge of the players, the issues and her exceptional diplomatic skill that has made this event possible," said Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. 

There is a reason you will never see the preceding paragraph written in a news report. Hint: It has nothing to do with Palin's commitment to seeking peace.

It is precisely because it is unimaginable that Sarah Palin could play the role of honest broker on the international stage on an issue such as Middle East peace that she will never be president. For better or for worse, being president of the United States requires individuals who can assume such a role. Indeed, the success or failure of many American presidents has turned on whether or not they have risen to the challenges of international statesmanship. The American people recognize this fact and with very few exceptions look for character traits in winning candidates that translate into presidents who can hold their own with top leaders on vital issues (although sadly, international experience is not one of them).

This week, with the renewal of direct talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, President Obama's test in this defining crucible will begin. There have been hints of his aptitude for such challenges before -- in the late night session at the global climate talks in Copenhagen, for example, during which he showed skill and drive. But there have also been warning signs, such as his comparatively weak showing when confronted with tough Chinese leaders in Beijing. Nothing he has yet done, however, will be as important as his role in these upcoming talks in revealing to observers around the globe whether he is the real thing or a pretender when it comes to being in the first ranks of world leaders for any reason other than the title he holds.

While the odds are against a breakthrough in these talks, any hope of progress is likely to be directly linked to whether President Obama becomes directly engaged, places his political capital on the line, and is willing to work the issues and the other leaders participating in the talks.

Read on

Admittedly, it's only March and early March at that. Still the year has been full of surprises so far on the Washington politics and international policy beats. So, it's only fair that the surprise winners get the credit they so richly deserve. Here are ten of them, in no special order:

• David Patterson: I know, it is hard to imagine New York Governor David Patterson as a winner when his brief term in office has vacillated between being a complete shambles and much, much worse. But look at it this way, did you ever think it possible that one man could make his disgraced predecessor Eliot Spitzer look so good, so fast? Heck, this guy makes you yearn for the comparative competence and superior values of Rod Blagoevich. In fact, we predict that the next career for Patterson -- which is likely to begin very, very soon -- will be to assist those whose reputations have hit an unexpected downdraft. If he can do what he has done for Spitzer, you can only imagine the calls he is likely to soon be fielding from Tiger Woods and John Edwards. "Caddy for me, Governor," the Woods call might begin, "and I am sure of never being the most despicable guy on the course."
• Gordon Brown: It is truly a tribute to the odiousness and vapidity of Conservative leader David Cameron that Gordon Brown, a man whose prime ministerial career has been marked by scandal and economic collapse, seems to have a chance of holding on to his job in the upcoming British elections. Despite a personality that makes him appear only in shades of grey even on high-definition, full-color television broadcasts and as something worse than that in tell-all memoirs, Brown at least has experience, a degree of international stature and a grasp of political principles that clearly distinguish him from former spin-maven Cameron, who, if he loses, will be responsible for the most significant British missed opportunity since they let their American colonies slip away (or at least since they allowed Emily Blunt to become engaged to John Krasinski).
• The Mossad: At a time when the legendary stealthy accomplishments of Israel's intelligence service were slipping from memory, along come those great press agents from Dubai to remind the world just how much the Mossad is feared by Israel's Arab enemies. Admittedly, the amount of evidence of their apparent hit job on Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh left behind by the Israelis was rather slipshod, but the effort to stir up anger against the Israelis only really serves to remind the world what an effective, dedicated intelligence service can achieve. The fact that al-Mabhouh's former aide confirmed he was a weapons smuggler doesn't help the effort to stir up moral indignation at this skirmish in a bigger, on-going war much either. Further, if the governments of the Arab world showed a fraction of the outrage over the killing of innocents that have over the execution of this Hamas militant, they might both improve their image and save the Israelis the trouble of bringing the criminals within their midst to justice.
• Hamid Karzai: Just when you thought this guy had discredited himself and his sponsors to the point of insuring his irrelevance, further proof that the opposite is actually true. In the latest chapter of "you need me more than I need you" chutzpah from this out-of-control boss of Kabul's Tammany Hall, the international community simply has rolled over and played dead while Karzai has taken over the electoral oversight commission that was created to serve as an independent overseer of the country's dirty politics. The fox has reinstalled himself in charge of the hen house and all the American government can say is: "Look, over here! Victory in Marja." Victory for what in the long-run, that is anybody's guess.
• George W. Bush: Speaking of names you felt were safely buried in the scrapheap of history, the upcoming, seemingly promising Iraqi elections have raised the specter (ugly to some of a more partisan nature than I) that Bush's Folly may be producing a somewhat more positive outcome than many predicted -- even as a better result in, say, AfPak (despite temporary victories) seems far more elusive. I don't want to say more about this because frankly it is causing my lunch to come back up a little, but then again, sometimes the truth is a little hard to digest. The invasion was still a mistake, the war a ghastly combinations of errors of judgment and execution. But admit it, if you had to take a bet right now on which would prove a more effective semblance of a democracy, Iraq or Afghanistan, which would you pick?
• The Jewish Lobbies: For many of you, seeing Jewish lobbies listed among "surprise winners" is probably also a bit difficult to swallow since you probably think that's always the way. Of course, people who believe such nonsense tend to get most of their political information from the graffiti over urinals, so perhaps they're not reading this site. Nonetheless, there are a few academics out there who have sought to suggest that the American agenda in the Middle East has been hijacked by a monolithic, all-powerful Jewish lobby. These people seemed to be briefly in the ascendancy during the first months of the Obama Administration, but circumstances have worked to their detriment. First, the one sure antidote to the naïve views of the self-designated "realists" -- reality -- set in and an administration that wanted to reach out to the Palestinians in the worst way discovered that the Palestinian Authority actually didn't have that much authority due to internal divisions. Then, the reality of long-standing divisions in the American Jewish community also manifested themselves with the rise of J-Street, a Jewish lobby that is barely on speaking terms with the State of Israel. Result: more sensible views, about both the reason for strong U.S. relations with Israel and about the myth of the Jewish lobby in Washington are starting to prevail.  
• Goldbugs: The world is probably facing the most uncertain sovereign risk picture it has seen in two decades. In Europe it's not just the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) who are looking like they've come down with macro-economic swine flu, the pandemic seems to be spreading across the Eurozone leaving all at risk. (Except perhaps the Germans who have quarantined themselves from the problem... which is not exactly in the EU spirit feel many of their neighbors.) Meanwhile Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase is saying, "Don't worry so much about Greece, California is in much worse shape," and if the state that is world's 8th largest economy is teetering at the abyss, can the rest of a country with potentially 1000 nearly-to-thoroughly insolvent regional banks be doing so well? And China and the rest of the emerging world have their own bubbles to worry about. Where do you go when investors will soon be taking the IOUs of recently floundering Wall Street houses rather than those of the countries who bailed them out? Invest in more gold maybe. Or real estate in rapidly-warming Antarctica. A nice igloo maybe, and lots of cans of soup...
• Small Cold Countries: Speaking of gold, Canada, Norway, and Austria beat Russia, China and all but two countries of the world in Vancouver Olympic medal totals. Host Canada produced as many medals as China and Russia combined and set a new record for most gold medals won in one games by one country. Norway continues to lead all nations in Winter Olympic medals won... and it has only 4 million people, which would make it the 13th largest city in China. And smallish, coldish Korea finished 7th among competing nations, but managed to field Kim Yu-na, who history will show is the greatest woman figure skater of all time (if in fact, it is proven that the ethereal, remarkable South Korean is in fact human, which seems unlikely given most of the humans I know.) 
• Jim Bunning: Senator Jim Bunning is a baseball Hall of Famer. He is used to winning. But who could have predicted that the soon to retire 78-year-old would save his greatest victory for the very twilight of his career... or that it would occur in the United States Senate, a place where victories of any sort are few and far between. Nonetheless, Bunning, facing stiff competition, has emerged as the most odious and unlikable member of a Congress that has already gone down in history as one of the least trusted, least-admired in U.S. history. Despite voting for countless indefensible tax cuts for the rich, Bunning earned his place by choosing to make a stand and block funding for extended unemployment benefits in the middle of a national economic crisis. He defended his position, saying he was trying to force the Congress to adopt saner spending policies -- but his decision to make the stand now at the expense of the most vulnerable Americans has earned him a place atop the list of the biggest creeps the perverse American political process has yet to produce.
• Perspective: Here is the greatest surprise winner of them all. But the fact is that perspective arrived in Washington, DC with a vengeance this winter... although it was, perhaps less surprisingly, acknowledged by virtually no one. How did this happen? Well, during this past winter Washington received more snow than it has in the past five winters combined, producing wonderful colorful headlines proclaiming Snowmageddon and the Snowpocalypse with some, of course, blaming it on Snowbama. But, despite the best efforts of flat-earthers like Matt Drudge to suggest that all this snow meant global warming was a sham, the reality was that even with all the snow in DC, January went down on the books as the warmest January on record. This just goes to show, that despite the bluster and the wind and all the snowjobs in America's capital, reality is quite another story indeed.

As promised -- trumpet fanfare -- "The Winners and Losers of the Decade." Or, as I like to think of it, "The Winners and Losers of the Oughts," in deference to the zeros in each year of the decade's numbering, the zeros who were in charge and all that we ought to have done that we did not do.

The Losers

George W. Bush: It almost seems too easy. But upon reflection, it's not even close. Bush wasn't just born with a silver spoon in his mouth -- he inherited America, the world's sole superpower, with a budget surplus and clear skies ahead. When we were attacked on 9/11, the immediate consequence was unprecedented support for him and for the country. And yet, almost immediately thereafter, he started on a catastrophic set of missteps and bad decisions that had alienated the world by the end of his term. George W. Bush was not just the biggest loser produced by the American political system in the past decade, he was in all likelihood one of the worst presidents in American history and he presided over what was almost certainly the worst international relations calamity since, I don't know, maybe the Alien and Sedition Acts.

How did he get there? What was the worst of all the bad choices he made? Was it invading Iraq or picking Dick Cheney to be his vice president in the first place -- or more properly, letting Dick Cheney choose himself? In the literary biz, we call that foreshadowing ... but in the history biz they will almost certainly call it the beginning of the end for a president who undercut American stature like no other, compromised our historic values and at times, seemed like he could barely speak English.

Not only does he get my nod for loser of the decade in the United States, he takes the international crown as well. All hail George W. Bush. Thanks to his bumbling in the highest office in the land, he also achieved the rarest form of comic apotheosis: He became the punch line that didn't even need a joke. Sadly, for us all, it will always hurt when we laugh.

Al Gore and the American People: There are losers and then there are those who lost.  For the remainder of our lives we will always wonder what might have been. Seldom have there been forks in the road of history as clear as the 2000 U.S. presidential elections. The difference between the two candidates was as thin as the sheet of paper on which the politically stacked Supreme Court reached its compromised decision. In retrospect, it is ever more clear that the election was stolen and America, and countless victims worldwide, were sent hurtling toward a destiny that we and they did not deserve. Gore later would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work battling climate change and has handled the defeat and its aftermath with a grace that would warrant the prize had he done nothing at all. But we cannot help but think how much more we would have done by now to combat climate change had he been in office, how much stronger our relations would be with the world, how many innocents killed by our wars in the Middle East would still be alive. It is the decade's defining political defeat.

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While we here at FP don't recommend eating disorders as an effective weight control technique, sometimes it's hard to pass up the canapés at those fancy Washington parties -- like GQ's "50 Most Powerful People in DC" cocktail blast at 701 last night. 

Of course, GQ's party had its own built-in trigger of the gag reflex for most Washingtonians: their names weren't on the list. (I talked with one of GQ's writers as she was working on the list, a conversation I enjoyed right up until the moment it was clear they didn't think I was list-worthy. As for the final product's, um, curiosities see FP's earlier take. But, Leon Panetta ahead of Hillary Clinton? Tom Donilon on the list, but his boss Jim Jones off it? Various worthy but random journalists and bloggers and not Tom Friedman or David Sanger? The Sidwell admissions director ahead of the GDS admissions director? Insiders know the truth ... even as they all hungrily pour over the list looking for their own names and those of their allies, enemies and worst of all, their friends.)

But when a glossy, man-perfume scented equivalent of a long hairy finger down your throat isn't readily available, then knowledgeable Washingtonians know there is always another place they can turn, the Capital's naturally produced form of Serum of Ipecac. Just follow the news until you develop the acute reaction to hypocrisy that is certain to launch away your own indiscretions in one or two turbulent but satisfying moments.

For example, here's a recipe for Capitulimia drawn from just what's going on around town today:

Take just one dose of insurance companies trying to suggest in print and broadcast advertisements that after years of making indefensible profits from literally killing people and destroying families with their policies (the one's they didn't actually deny to those who needed them), it is they who are actually looking out for the interests of Americans in need of health care.

Add one 30 second American Petroleum Institute commercial in which they actually argue that the pending climate bill might hurt consumers by producing more highly priced gasoline? After their record? While they should actually all be hovering in their basements waiting for the class action suit from the planet for selling a product they have known for years was destroying it?

Then sit down and take a listen to say, Rush Limbaugh complaining the media is making spurious, emotional, and uninformed attacks against him ... and that "the media" has too much power. The media? Who is he? Where does his power and obscene wealth come from? Appearances to the contrary, he is not a manatee sunning on a rock. 

If that hasn't done it, listen to one-time supporters of the havoc wreaked by the Great Decider's impulsive and catastrophic policies in Iraq or his ineffective blundering in Afghanistan as they criticize President Obama for actually taking some time to work out a sensible adjustment to tackling the mind-boggling challenges posed in the AfPak region ... challenges that were altered by the recent elections embarrassment in Afghanistan.

Or listen to Republican legislators responsible for the biggest deficits in American history and the collapse of the American economy, attack President Obama for doing what had to be done to clean up their mess.

Not there yet, go to Amazon.com and pre-order not only the Sarah Palin book but the upcoming books from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Hank Paulson, and Karl Rove. Then think about the millions that will be generated by these books. (In New York State, I seem to recall once upon a time in the days of "The Son of Sam" they passed a law blocking criminals from writing books allowing them to profit from retelling the tales of their wrong-doing. These aren't criminals, of course ... well, not all of them ... but what are we to make of millionaires who gutted the American economy making millions from telling us all how they did it?)

Still on the verge of relief but not quite cleansed? Well, pick up a paper and read about the fact that roughly $140 billion in compensation will be paid out on Wall Street this year, a record beating out the last peak year of 2007. (And while you're at it, flip back to the FT from a day or two ago and read Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's call for more industry reform and ask yourself: was placing this oped at the time the bonuses were going to be announced just a little cynical? Do they really think we're going to fall for that kind of grade-school spinning -- even if he did make a number of good points.)

There, that ought to do it. Feeling better now? Lighter on your feet? Angry but empty? No need to thank me. Just another public service from your virtual friends here on the Internet who will always do what we can to ensure our Washington readers are ready for another day of making the rounds from the Four Seasons to the Palm to the usual receptions sponsored by the likes of the American Foot Odor Institute and the National Alliance for Getting Children to Make Their Beds. And for the rest of you outside the beltway, with America's health care system unlikely to be high functioning any time soon, it's probably a good idea to drop a few pounds and get into better shape. 

And here's our hint for turning what could be an eating disorder into a sustainable diet: just keep watching those headlines -- they're the world's most effective non-addictive appetite suppressant. If you follow Washington without losing your appetite, you're not paying attention.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

I've got some real serious advice for my friends in the Obama administration: act quickly or the "dithering thing" is about to become this president's "vision thing."

For those of you who are too young to remember -- and I know this blog skews toward a younger, hipper crowd than the rest of FP's more staid, respectable, and credible offerings -- the "vision thing" became the brutal short-hand describing George H.W. Bush's supposed lack of vision. It was one of those terms that was so memorable that it slipped into those every day water cooler conversations and became an unshakable part of the conventional wisdom that helped make Bush 41 a one-term president.

We've seen the phenomenon many times before. Sometimes, the phrase is self-inflicted as was "vision thing" or "I am not a crook." Sometimes it is an image: John Kerry windsurfing, Michael Dukakis with silly helmet on. And as Gerald Ford and all these others discovered, the truth is not a defense. You can be, as Ford was, the best athlete ever to be president of the United States, a football All-American, and stumble down a flight of stairs or two and you are a clumsy doofus for the rest of your life.

Sticky phrases tied to potent concepts can undo a president or public figure as much as any action they take. Whether it's a reputation for micro-management or skirt-chasing, once one of these nutshell descriptions sticks, it never goes away.

The alarms started going off in my head regarding this when I saw Tom Ricks's post on the FP site earlier this week which was headlined "The Ditherer in Chief." In it, Ricks laid out with typical economy and insight, why Obama's "dithering" on settling on a strategy in Afghanistan or really moving forward in Iraq is a kind of unsettling counterpoint to George Bush's "panic" in the wake of 9/11. Ricks, who I believe readers should take very seriously on matters such as this, said that as a result of the president's seeming lack of decisiveness on these critical issues, he (Ricks) had become, for the first time, worried about Obama's foreign policy.

Ricks concluded by saying that if he were forced to choose, he'd take dithering over panic. But it was clear, he has become a member of an ever growing group, many of whom are extremely pro-Obama Democrats, that have grown impatient with the president's handling of those aspects of his presidency that have life and death implications for U.S. troops.

I should note, I am not personally of the same view. Provided the administration reaches a decision on its going forward strategy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks as Secretary Gates indicated this weekend that it would, I welcome the systematic assessment and reassessment of our situation, the reaching out for multiple views including those of our allies (as reflected in the comments of NATO Secretary General Rasmussen yesterday), and the recognition that it is worth the delay to come to the best possible solution. We've seen where impulse and dogma-driven reflex will get us. We should welcome the impulse to interject thought into the process as we should the apparent willingness to puncture groupthink by seeking divergent perspectives.

To me the issue is whether the decision is the right one or not. Which, as readers of this blog know, in my view is a much narrower mission in Afghanistan, a focus on getting a tolerable, semi-effective government in place in Kabul, and then moving more toward a counter-terror strategy that involves fewer locally-based forces and more over-the-horizon interventions be they drones or ship-based special forces operations as recently took place in Somalia.

But as mentioned above, the facts won't matter to opponents of the president or to the average voter who has bandwidth for little more than a twitter-length description of the president, a string of bits of conventional wisdom that constitute what passes for the total persona of the commander-in-chief.

Professor Obama and community-organizer-in-chief Obama are both compelling identities to many Democrats (and in many ways welcome ones). But they simply don't cut it on pressing national security issues.  The expectations of the public and the defense community which people like Tom Ricks knows so well may be conventional but they are unshakable. Leaders must lead. Decisions must be crisp. The human stakes are in fact undeniably high. Days and weeks do matter...and commanders need to show they "get it." And over all, you need to convey a sense that you have that "vision thing", a sense of where you want to go and that it doesn't take a seminar to reach every decision.

Part of the problem for Obama is that he started out headed in the wrong direction in Afghanistan and he needs to change course. There is no easy way to do it. And it may sting politically. But ultimately, courage carries a lot of weight and is one of the antidotes to the dithering argument.  Another potential antidote is offering up different, better stories and images. I am not sure why the Somalia operation did not get more play. It seems to have been a great example of good leadership and the U.S. military effectively doing their very tough job. Identifying the president more closely with the successes of the military will help (assuming they are real and he is truly behind them ... "Mission Accomplished" moments are precisely the kind this president ... and all presidents ... need to avoid.) And of course, the best potential antidote is more decisiveness whenever it is responsible.

It is not too late to keep this label from sticking. But it's getting there. 

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Despite a growing desire on my part to avoid the cage-match side of blogging, it is hard not to respond to Christian Brose's post "What is David Rothkopf smoking?" Brose seems to have, in President Obama's words, become all "wee-wee'd up" over my article in Sunday's Washington Post. I respond, of course, as a public service because so much of what he said provides a useful insight into how far we have come since the days of the Bush administration and how desperate Bush apologists are to find a way to suggest that their man and the policies they promoted were not actually the nadir of American foreign policy.

I should note however, that I also do this reluctantly because I think Brose is a pretty good writer and a fairly thoughtful guy. Still, when someone suggests that I have been a member of "the foreign policy hoi-polloi that went into intellectual hibernation in 2004 and only awoke this January" I figure, it's probably OK to offer a few words on behalf of my views. (Although it does explain the acorn residue I found in my cheeks.) 

I will ignore for a moment the fact that Brose clearly is willing to spot the world the first term of the Bush administration as indefensible and focus on his core notion that somehow the years Condi was at State were almost indistinguishable in intent, concept and execution from what we have seen to date from the Obama team. It should be noted that coincidentally Brose was a speech-writer at State during the Bush administration.

Let's take his points one at a time:

• Brose opens with a snarky summary of my article. The thrust is: Obama foreign policy is not revolutionary and I am kissing the asses of the Obama administration. I refer folks back to the past eight months of daily blogging as evidence that I have no inclination to butter up the new team and regularly do not. He does not note that he spends the entire article kissing the wholly discredited asses of his former employers.

• He then goes on to wonder aloud how anyone who "thinks and writes about foreign policy for a living" could think Clinton or Obama are transforming U.S. foreign policy. I have to admit, whatever the flaws in their individual policies, I find it hard to see how anyone could think they are not. Does he really think these folks just picked up where George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney left off? In Iraq? In Afghanistan and Pakistan? With their approach to engagement? With their commitment to multilateralism? With their approach to Guantanamo or torture? With their outreach to the Muslim world? With their commitment to reverse nuclear weapons proliferation? I could go on ... but will just take his main points in succession to continue in this vein.

• Brose lists Bush administration development "advancements" to suggest that they effectively covered the waterfront when it comes to reforming the development process. While Bush actually did some good here (and I didn't argue he didn't), that doesn't mean the work is done or that what the Clinton team is doing at State is not promising. The Obama team inherited an aid apparatus that was still deeply dysfunctional, underfunded and focused on missions that were not core. The QDDR process I mention in the article represents a commitment to strategic reevaluation that recognizes the fluid nature of international affairs today and seeks to institutionalize change in much the same way that the QDR does at DoD. Further, there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done if development policy is to be rendered effective in the current environment ... creating the ability, for example, to effectively do post-conflict reconstruction that so flummoxed the Bush administration for so long comes to mind, as does a civilian-side Goldwater-Nichols and other ideas that are currently being reviewed within State and the NSC process.

• His next paragraph argues that since the Bush administration participated in many multilateral forums that is the same thing as the Obama administration's commitment to the centrality of new partnerships. Can he actually believe that the Bush administration was a champion of multilateralism? By this same theory all people who go to church are virtuous and I, who talk a very good diet game, am actually 20 pounds lighter than reported this morning by the scale. Admittedly, there was a line in my article that was cut due to space considerations that I wish had been left in which said that while many of the current policies have roots in the past, what is happening now is very different because of the way it is being approached, the centrality it is being given, the degree of involvement of top officials, etc. Nothing illustrates this as much for me as the role emerging powers are being given. First, this is not a "Bush-era" inheritance. I know. Because I actually helped develop and run the first inter-agency process focused on U.S.-Emerging Markets relations during the Clinton years. Second, he cites a four-year-old Condi speech in which she mouths words he may have written about partners in the emerging world but seriously, wasn't he paying attention? At the time she did it, the perception that the U.S. was arrogantly acting apart from the rest of the world was near its apotheosis. The core concepts of Bush era foreign policy were of "us and them" and of our ability and willingness to effectively act alone or within sham coalitions to advance our interests. The core concept of the Obama administration is that just won't work anymore and that effective partnerships with a core group that includes new allies are the sine qua non of international progress.

• He then goes on to say that the administration has too little to show for its efforts. He minimizes restoring American relations with the world as if that weren't central to foreign policy. He then argues that this is not so meaningful because "cooperation has not always followed." Seriously? Will the Obama-Clinton restoration of America's relations with the world only be complete if everyone in the world cooperates with us always? This reveals his core misunderstanding of the nature of the kind of partnerships on which the Obama-Clinton team is seeking to build U.S. foreign policy. Also, in terms of not having much to show for their efforts, that's just ridiculous. Only seven months into their efforts U.S. policy has changed dramatically in Iraq and in AfPak, the administration has become deeply involved in the Arab-Israeli issue (which took the Bush administration about 7 years to discover), it has helped engineer an international response to the financial crisis, it has restored America's damaged reputation worldwide, the president's Prague and Cairo speeches represented dramatic breaks with the Bush past and set U.S. policies with the Muslim world and re: elimination of nuclear weapons in a new direction, and so on. It's just the beginning ... but it is a beginning very unlike the past eight years.

• Further his one-sided assessments of issues worldwide is full of inaccuracies. He says others won't help with Guantanamo but fails to note the benefits accruing to us from shutting it down. He says India and China don't share enthusiasm for a climate deal while failing to acknowledge that we are in a global negotiation, that the United States is now deeply involved as an advocate for progress for the first time or to note the differences in position between India and China (China is much more forward leaning and inclined to a deal). He inaccurately suggests that the only thing we can agree with the Russians is to reduce the number of nukes (as if that were a small thing). He says Pakistan is dysfunctional but fails to note how much more we are currently doing to address that. He says Iran and North Korea are a still difficult while failing to acknowledge the recent progress made with the North Koreans or that engagement with Iran is a real departure (on which the jury is admittedly still out).

• He concludes with the notion that we "are still a world of nations" (simplistic and wrong ... we are a world of many actors some of the most important of which on key issues are non-state actors) and that the Obama administration has been getting "mugged" by our differences since coming into office. This suggests again a misunderstanding of the nature of international relations. Good foreign policy does not produce a problem-free world. It just minimizes threats while advancing our interests. But, it also fails to note the central point that no doubt will resonate in the mind of the rest of the planet...which is that during the Bush years, it was the United States that was mugging the world and the system of international law we had fought for a century to advance.

That's the key point about these early days of this new foreign policy team. All administrations talk about partnerships and new relationships. To my mind, this one seems to believe what it is saying and is doing something about ... and at the very least is not as transparently hypocritical about such matters as was its predecessor. That in and of itself is perhaps the transformation most of the world was most hoping for. 

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. Congress has their knickers in a twist because apparently the C.I.A. kept from them plans associated with a program designed to kill off al Qaeda leaders. While I think the Congress is right to be disturbed by this apparent cover-up -- and they should go after whomever may have violated the law by keeping the program from them -- it seems to me we're missing the point here.

Shouldn't we be at least equally concerned that in the eight years since the 9/11 attacks, the C.I.A. couldn't get its act together sufficiently to actually deploy the program to kill the al Qaeda leaders we intended to target? If there was ever an instance where the covert use of force was utterly justified it was in hunting down and killing this enemy.

In today's New York Times story "C.I.A. Had Plan to Assassinate Al Qaeda Leaders," the reasons the program got bogged down are laid out. Bureaucratic debates about whether it would be legal to employ such methods are perhaps inevitable and frankly, I'm all for having checks in our system that actually indicate a respect for the rule of law. But let's be serious, we find it is ok to violate national sovereignty with unmanned aircraft but not with people? It's ok to use those unmanned aircraft to fire missiles at bad guys that may or may not blow up dozens of innocent by-standers but it is not ok to undertake an approach where such collateral damage is even less likely? This is through-the-looking-glass legalism, so twisted and absurd that it must be about something else.

One hopes it is not about another reason the plan was difficult which is offered in the article -- the difficulty of figuring out where to base such operations. It is easy for anyone who has been in the U.S. government to imagine such a discussion ... but I wouldn't advise it. Because it makes your head want to explode.

Which brings us to the real problem. It's reflected in the quote: "It sounds great in the movies but when you do it, it's not that easy." Clearly, the concern was that the operation would fail and in failing it would be an embarrassment. But, who said these things were supposed to be easy? They are clearly as difficult as any operations the government can undertake. But when you are confronted by an enemy who uses foreign sovereignty and the presence of innocents for cover, such initiatives are essential.

Yes, it's hard, risky and will put U.S. lives and our national reputation on the line. So too is winning a land war in Afghanistan. So too is working with a divided, complex, unreliable ally like Pakistan. So too is trying to achieve anything on the shifting sands of the Middle East. 

Also very difficult and very risky is coordinating an attack on the other side of the world that involves multiple hijackings and airborne attacks on major U.S. targets. So too will be the WMD attack that will inevitably change the nature of the war on terror. In other words, this is a different kind of enemy. It doesn't help matters that the Bush administration overstated the risks from this enemy, bungled the war against them and sought to use national panic over this real risk to justify extraneous and calamitous missions. But as President Obama has been clear, that doesn't mean the threat from al Qaeda and similar groups has abated. Drones have an important role to play, especially in areas in which the risks of collateral damage are more limited. More densely populated areas provide a different kind of cover that requires a different kind of solution. 

The CIA needs to report as the law requires to the Congress. But the U.S. intelligence community needs the ability to do what this program reportedly intended to do. Killing the program wasn't the right response. Redoubling efforts to make it work would have been.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Last night, Conan O'Brien offered a tribute to Ed McMahon, longtime sidekick to his predecessor Johnny Carson. McMahon died yesterday and was eulogized in today's New York Times as the "top second banana." O'Brien commented on how, as a great number two guy, Ed always knew just when to step in and when to step back and leave the spotlight to the headliner. He was completely in tune with Carson and together they formed a seamless whole. Naturally, mulling this, my thoughts turned to England and the current situation in Iran.

Sidekicks have, of course, long played a central role in the history of international affairs. Adolf had Benito. Nikita had Fidel. Cheney had Bush. Today, Hugo has Evo.

Such sidekicks are employed in multiple ways. Sometimes they simply stand by the star for support, sending the message that the views the big guy expresses are more than the ideas of one nation, that they drive a movement, an alliance or an axis. Sometimes they play bad cop to the good cop. Sometimes they are the fall guys when the star can't afford to take the hit. Sometimes, they offer comic relief. Sometimes, they handle the secondary chores, like invading British Somaliland when you just don't have the time to do it yourself. And on certain occasions, sidekicks even offer benefits to one's enemies or rivals, giving them a secondary target at which to direct everything from invective to troops, depending on the circumstances.

Of course, in the international affairs business, there have been few modern stars that have shined quite so brightly for so long as the United States. As a consequence, we have over the years been joined on stage by a panoply of Ed McMahons. Sometimes they played with us only on regional stages, like Vietnam or Israel. Some have played the role well in countless circumstances, like Canada. 

But there have been no sidekicks as enduring or as useful in modern international affairs as the U.K. has been to the United States. You can almost see British prime ministers sitting on the couch laughing while their respective U.S. presidents cracked wise behind the big desk. Put a plaid sports coat on Tony Blair and it's clear: He was the Ed McMahon of the Iraq War.

The trick is that as the headliner changes, so too does the role of the sidekick. Affable Ronald Reagan needed edgy Margaret Thatcher, the Joan Rivers of British politics. Bland George H.W. Bush required even blander John Major. Blair managed to adjust his role as the submissive sophisticate to suit the two bubbas with whom he worked.

The most recent twist in this enduring relationship has been playing out in Iran these past few weeks. There, with Barack Obama's United States no longer quite so hate-able as Bush's (or Carter's for that matter), and with Obama inclined to pursue a more aloof strategy, the U.K. has started playing a different part. On the one hand, it has been more out in front in its criticism of the Iranians. And on the other, the British have assumed the role of preferred Western target for the Tehran leadership. They are the substitute villain, the Rather Good Satan standing in while the Great One tries a different approach for a change.

Of course, for sidekicks as for the rest of the world, the transition from Bush to Obama has been seismic and deeply challenging. The host has somehow gone from being a somewhat less sophisticated version of Jeff Foxworthy ("you know your president is a redneck when he can be compared to a Blue Collar Comedy tour star") to being the love child of Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley. 

Britain has ably stepped up, perhaps recognizing that it is in their interest and the planet's to have a headliner of the western world who neither delivers nor takes all the punch lines. So too, at least in terms of their stance on the Iran issue, have Germany and France. In fact, throughout the Obama term, the roles played by Angela Merkel (acerbic, more independent, critical of the United States on financial markets reform) and Nicolas Sarkozy (pushing for greater market reform too, but also both more visible and more visibly supportive of the U.S. than any recent French leader), have also evolved into something new. This is clearly due in large part to who they are...but it is also due to a changed dynamic on the international stage thanks to the very different nature of the role sought and played by Obama and the United States.

This effect extends further, of course. Enemies and those with competing offerings find they have to play a different role as well thanks to the arrival of Obama on the scene. Those whose shtick has been anti-American bluster find it doesn't play as well as it did back when George Bush made anti-Americanism easy. The case in point here may well be Ahmadinejad...although Hugo Chavez and others ought to pay close attention here. As in late night comedy...as in everything that happens on any stage...the play is about the relationships between the players. Change one and you fundamentally change the chemistry among all of them.    

In fact, this chemistry factor may be the single greatest foreign policy change of the first half year of the Obama era. (After all, many of his policies are actually not that different from what Bush would have or did employ.) Later, of course, the president will be judged by how he manages the complex processes of global policy. But for now, for allies and enemies alike, having a new star with a very different vibe has changed the roles of all the supporting players, second bananas and rivals alike, all of whom must to some extent play off of the new guy and who have thus been changed by his arrival whether they like it or realize it or not.

It's sad to see a trusty old sideman like Ed McMahon go. But as for having a new guy with top billing on the world stage, the early results seem to suggest that may play very well indeed.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

If you are looking for a unifying theme to describe the overarching policies of the Obama administration, you will find it coming from the least likely source: Hillary Clinton's State Department. I don't say the source is unlikely because HRC is doing a bad job. She's actually done very well. It's just an unlikely source because for reasons that have to be more than an accident, the department itself seems to have become the equivalent of Dick Cheney's undisclosed location. It, and particularly the Secretary, is off the radar. Everyone in DC these days is talking about how she hasn't appeared on a morning show. The Hill had a piece the other day on "The Incredible Shrinking Clintons." Richard Holbrooke has a much higher profile than his boss. Certainly, Bob Gates has had a higher profile and even the nearly invisible Jim Jones has gotten more press recently if only because of the leaked articles about some of his early (and I believe overstated) missteps.

Anyway, the theme and the metaphor that ties so much of what has been going on is "hitting the reset button," made famous when just such a button was delivered, mislabeled, by the state department to the Russians who were the first focus of what has become reset-mania. In addition to attempting to restart that relationship with our former arch-enemies, you can see evidence of the same mentality everywhere. We are attempting to hit the reset button for GM and Chrysler by pushing them through the bankruptcy process (the same one we spent tens of billions to avoid months earlier). 

Today President Obama heads to the Middle East to hit the reset button on our relations with the Muslim World. Problems in Iraq and AfPak? Hit reset. Frayed alliances? Reset. Economy in the tank, Wall Street a mess? To many observers the impulse has been less toward sweeping reform and more toward getting things back to the way they were (with modest changes). In other words: reset. Demonstrating that no issue is too marginal or too antiquated for the focus on resetting, you need look only 90 miles away to Cuba. We even seem to be approaching health care by trying to hit the reset button to take the debate back to the days before the Clinton health care plan cratered and set health care reform back for more than 15 years. 

Of course, the impulse to hit the reset button is pretty natural given the toxic nature of many Bush-era policies. And the reset button metaphor works for all of us in the information age and is undoubtedly better than suggesting that we cleanse ourselves of all the Bush dirt and toxins by climbing into the shower together.

But as any computer user knows, hitting reset doesn't work all the time. It's kind of magical when it does...to the extent that it seems inexplicable to most of us. But it would be a big mistake to make too much policy based on the notion that President Obama has -- to mix metaphors slightly -- the equivalent of the Fonzie touch, the ability to make a jukebox (or Bushed-up policy or relationship) work with a slap to its side. (I don't think it's mixing metaphors that much. The Fonzie touch is the '50s equivalent of the reset button.)

But here's the problem: if your computer is broken, the motherboard is fried, the demon viruses are at work on your data -- the reset button doesn't work. Same is true with broken companies, broken relationships, and broken global economies. Sometimes you may get signs that things are spluttering back to life but without real, material changes the problems will re-emerge. Sometimes you will get nothing at all.

In this respect, going to the Middle East to "restore relations with the Muslim world" sounds great in the reset context...Obama certainly achieves the main goal (and to some extent the primary deliverable) of Resetism, he demonstrates he is not George W. Bush. But it is unlikely to do much to actually fix the problem. It may help, to be sure. But many of the biggest problems that we have with regard to the Muslim world aren't actually problems we created or exacerbated. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt, the President's two regional destinations, are anything like democracies...or for that matter are they home to anything like enlightened governments. Economic mismanagement and corruption are chronic and widespread and a bigger source of regional instability than many other issues that achieve more prominence. They are home to human rights violations, abominable treatment of women and tolerance of radical factions who are as big a threat to the Arab world as they are to the U.S. or any of our allies. These places are breeding grounds for risk to our interests and even doing the right thing and underscoring that the U.S. embraces Islam and all peace-loving Muslims, doesn't get down to the hard business of resolving tensions between the Arab and Persian worlds, the Sunnis and the Shiites, radicals and moderates, reformers and authoritarian rules or Arabs and Israelis. 

Further, we need to remind ourselves that we are not the primary cause of the problems we face. We may have exacerbated some. There is no defense for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or for the hundreds of thousands of innocents who died thanks to our invasion of Iraq. But neither is there any defense for 9/11, terrorism directed at anyone, or state-supported hate mongering. Our support for Israel may inflame the Arab world but even when we acknowledge Israeli policy failures or brutality, even when we condemn them and work against them, we are only addressing part of the problem. 

As a consequence as President Obama wings off to the region, it heightens my sense that there is as at least as much reason for the leaders of the Muslim world to come to America to restore relations with us, to make amends and commit to change, as there is for the President to go there and do so. Indeed, there is much more given the level of dysfunctionality within their societies and their long record of miserable treatment of their own people.

Similarly, the reset button won't fix GM or Chrysler. Admittedly, doing what we should have done six months ago, letting the companies go into bankruptcy and be stripped down to more efficient pieces will help. But U.S. ownership certainly will not (and has not...save for all that writing of big checks.) Merging with Fiat probably won't either. I think the odds are pretty high that we will look at the U.S. monies spent on the auto industry as the most expensive golden parachute in history, designed to make the demise of failed companies as painless as possible and not really terrible effective at identifying, preserving or fostering value within either of them. There is a reset hope in all this -- strip 'em down and let them regrow like a backyard shrub-but without creativity and truly new thinking, neither of which will come from the government or the labor unions who have gained too much sway in all this given their roles in creating the problem, these efforts will likely be frustratingly costly and unsuccessful. 

The list goes on. If there were core problems associated with the creation of new invisible unregulated risks in the global financial systems, even restoring growth to markets and the U.S. economy is not a fix. The risks will remain until addressed. To restore US-Russia relations really requires a fix in Russia and not here. To restore U.S.-Cuba relations to their rightful place in our foreign policy, we need to transfer it to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for the Caribbean, normalize, and start treating like we should in much the same way we handle Jamaica or Trinidad and Tobago. In short, to achieve the ambitious goals the Obama administration has set and the American people seek, we need to rethink, reinvent and remember where the real problems lie...and not just hope that the world is as easily rebooted as our PCs. 

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

At breakfast this morning a leading Democratic policy thinker referred to President Obama's recent jaunts to Europe and the Caribbean as his "global apology tour." This was a Democratic supporter of the president talking. (And listening.) He winced while he was saying it and laughed nervously. But the message is clear: it's all well and good to make nice but these two forays into international diplomacy have to be viewed purely as scene-setters. Obama set a tone. He checked the "I'm not W" box. But the deliverables were negligible at best. Die Zeit's Josef Joffe very smartly explained this point in his weekend Wall Street Journal piece "Obama's Popularity Doesn't Mean Much Abroad." In it, Joffe wrote:

George W. Bush was heartily disliked in Europe west of Warsaw, and Mr. Obama is universally loved. But how well does that popularity translate into power? How far could President Obama push his agenda with, say, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Nicolas Sarkozy? About as far as you can throw a piano."

Europe applauded while the flashbulbs popped but beyond promises of a replenishment for the IMF which may be hard to keep, the policy headlines from the trip were more about what did not happen than that which did occur either in terms of global stimulus, in terms of more effective global regulation or in terms of greater NATO support in AfPak. 

The story was the same in Trinidad. Obama made a good impression. He offered a "new beginning." He deflected a few tense moments with what are becoming his signature quips (whether it be the already tired old saw that he shouldn't be blamed for things that happened when he was three months old...nowhere nearly as charming as Reagan's self-deprecating quips about being too old...or commenting on Daniel Ortega's attempt to reclaim his revolutionary youth by noting snarkily its 50 minute duration). 

But on the deliverables side, he sought to create the impression of change in Cuba policy by undertaking an incremental adjustment in a policy that's a complete failure -- kind of the equivalent of proposing that his first step in addressing GMs problems would be a major rethink of cup-holder designs. And while it is undeniable that Raul Castro's response was not a complete diss (in fact, it was somewhat warmer than NATO's response to the requests for more troops or Europe's response to the request for a global stimulus) in the end all we got was slight forward progress on something where great progress is eminently achievable...and long overdue. Want to see a thoughtful suggestion for how to handle it: go read former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal on the subject. Want to see how opposition to change in Cuba has eroded? See the New York Times article on the new Bendixen study showing that two thirds of Cuban Americans welcome lifting all travel restrictions to that country and embrace the Obama thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations. 

On the big issue of the moment, dealing with the global economic downturn, the Summit of the Americas delivered effectively nothing -- a negligible $100 MM microfinance program that while worthy, happens to come at a time when the effectiveness of microfinance is coming under some scrutiny. But big commitments...replenishment of the IDB's funds, for example...are still "being studied." Very little but lip service was paid to an issue that is likely to send 50 million people in the hemisphere back into absolute poverty.

And so, at the end of the day in Port of Spain, Joffe's observations hold. People may feel better about Obama than Bush but it is far from a guarantee that will translate into improved hemispheric actions in any area, even the policy priorities cited by the meeting.

The same doubts about the approach arise in the Middle East. Hint at warming up to Iran? It gets the United States a nice quote from Ahmadinejad saying "We welcome the U.S. change of policy, provided these changes are fundamental and essential." But of course, he makes that quote while making a disastrous appearance at the UN Conference on Racism in which his attacks on Israel prompted eight governments to walk out. (You have to wonder both what the UN thought it was achieving by inviting Ahmadinejad to this conference or what the eight governments that walked out thought was going to happen at the conference since it was long ago apparent to anyone with a functioning cortex that the event would be used as it was. On the other hand, I suppose, the good news is that at least we had a UN event that delivered what it promised -- they convened a conference on racism and racism is what they got.)

Wanting everyone to like us is not a policy, it's a childlike wish. Seeking improved relations and greater dialogue is undeniably in our interest, but to what end? The first date with the world is over. It has gone pretty well. Right now everything is anticipation. But anyone over 18 has lived through this phase and knows what comes next. And, look at any of the issues at these meetings where progress was not made and it becomes clear that it ain't gonna be easy. But I think the challenges go much, much deeper than that in a world in which the old policy playbooks and ideological standbys are out the window.

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Bob Gates is Tyler Hansbrough...only shorter and better at what he does than the basketball all-American. Our secretary of defense could have left his job last year and although he wouldn't have ended up in the NBA making millions as Hansbrough would've done, surely his life would have been much easier than it is today dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and managing our massive defense apparatus in a Democratic administration. Like Hansbrough, however, Gates saw a higher purpose. And while the papers today are full of paens to the North Carolina power forward for coming back for one more season all in the name of team in the wake of the Tar Heels' NCAA basketball championship last night (predicted here first...and by first, I mean before it was predicted by Barack Obama), Gates actually has the much higher, higher purpose. Furthermore, like Hansbrough, Gates proved his own value and his toughness yesterday...although the former Aggie did it by unveiling substantial military budget reprioritizations that will certainly have him facing a vastly tougher, more seasoned defense than Michigan State could manage last night. In fact, the defense Gates will have to overcome is the world's number one defense, the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Here in D.C. you can already hear the chants starting off in the distance, off in the direction of the Beltway, the habitat in which Beltway bandits live and breed, feeding off of giant defense subsidies and the rotting carcasses of public servants who have tried to stop them in the past. Hear it? Lockheed, Lockheed, F-2-2, If You Won't Fund It, Let's See What Congress Will Do!

Gates's announcement of major cuts to marquee defense projects like the F-22, the insanely expensive presidential helicopter effort, the Army's classic let's-throw-our-checkbook-at-the enemy Future Combat Systems and some of the more bloated, even-less-successful than the norm missile defense programs (and that's saying something), needs to be embraced for two reasons. One is that we can easily do without the programs and that as Gates noted:

The perennial procurement and contracting cycle, going back many decades, of adding layer and layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build, must come to an end. There is broad agreement on the need for acquisition and contracting reform in the Department of Defense. There have been enough studies, enough hand-wringing, enough rhetoric. Now is the time for action."

The other reason we need to get with the spirit of what Gates is proposing is that while the U.S. Congress and the defense contractors who make them dance complain that Gates is putting their programs at risk (House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton has already said "the buck stops with Congress"...which is actually perhaps the wrongest statement uttered by a Member of Congress since either "I don't know how that money got in my freezer" or "I didn't know he was a page."), a new reality will be creeping into view. The problem, in fact, with the Gates cuts is not that they are too sweeping, it is that they are far, far too small. As I will argue at greater length in an article appearing in the May/June issue of The National Interest, the United States can no longer afford the "permanent war economy" that was first described by "Engine" Charlie Wilson in 1944. We can no longer afford to spend as much as every other country in the world added up. Given current deficits, current and future debt levels, and the looming aspiration crushing deficits associated with retirement health care, we will soon look back on the Gates proposals to swap spending here for spending there as the idle chatter of luxurious by-gone days. The cuts will have to be in the hundred billion dollar or more range and we will have to dispose of and move beyond not just old think, but traditional ways of even organizing, deploying and determining missions and strategies for our armed forces. We will have to come to recognize...and this won't be easy...that we actually make ourselves weaker with overspending, that we undercut our strength by creating high tech military programs while we let rust rot away the guts of the U.S. economy. More on this in a couple weeks, when the magazine hits the stands. For the meantime, let's give Gates and Obama credit for starting to stand up to the unbridled lunacy of the U.S. defense spending culture.

Speaking of executive branch sacrifice, one more point: What's up with the attacks on Larry Summers for making a good living the last couple years? The guy was Treasury secretary and president of Harvard for goodness sake. Where did you expect him to work, White Castle? As those who know him and love him will tell you, he probably doesn't have the interpersonal skills for that type of work. Rather, what he does have is very special knowledge, the company he worked for feels he offered (apparently very considerable) value for money, and doing the work gave him better understanding of the markets he is currently supposed to be helping to fix. What's most important, he could still be making the big bucks right now. But he has chosen to take what amounts to a 98 percent pay cut to re-enter public service, to work insane hours and to get beaten up in the press every day. Isn't that something we should be praising? Go after his policies if you want -- I have done so myself from time to time, but this is a highly ethical, principled, dedicated public servant who is actually helping the country address an unprecedented crisis. So, those of you playing up this non-story, in the words of another great public servant, Doctor Evil, "zip it." 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

After all this hoopla about a transformational election, it turns out all this country needed was a good pair of glasses. The Bush administration as it turns out had a focus issue. It wasn't that they had so much trouble focusing on things, although I always thought the president had a bit of that ADHD feel to him. It was that they tended to focus on the wrong things. It was a kind of foreign policy dyslexia that caused us to misread maps and regularly miss the things that should have been our targets by quite bit, say, a country or two.

So, we went to war to stop a WMD program in Iraq and as it turned out, the program we should have been worrying about was a country away in Iran. Also, as it turns out, there was another one a country away, in Syria. We went to war in Afghanistan and it turns out the war was actually in Pakistan. In the waning months of the Bush administration, we started to worry about the situation in Mexico but as it turned out...and as in each of the cases as we should have recognized all along...the real serious problem was right here in the United States.

Say what you may about the muddled economic policies of the Obama administration, the national security team has its glasses on and the result is a president who is offering a much improved vision of what America's foreign policy priorities ought to be. Nothing illustrated this quite so well as today's presidential announcement of our new policy in "Afghanistan"-- although Hillary Clinton's acknowledgement of the drug demand factor in fueling Mexico's violence and the overall effort to wind down operations in Iraq and to initiate new diplomacy with Iran also suggest we are finally doing the obvious and attempting to deal with the real roots of the challenges we face.

What set the new Afghanistan strategy apart was that it clearly acknowledged that our real problems lie with in Pakistan and that we were dealing not so much with countries but with a wild, borderless region. The Afghan side of the strategy was focused on stabilization -- helping to substantially build Afghan army and police forces and thus their  ability to manage Afghanistan's internal issues, and on deploying legions of teachers, lawyers and engineers to help them build the country. While the Pakistan side of the equation did include elements of assistance to support that country, the rational for the aid was clearly different (though this is not something the administration would ever acknowledge.) The Afghanistan money is to promote a more stable society and to make that problem go away (or at least make our exit a little easier when we ultimately pull out.) The Pakistan money -- $1.5 billion a  year for 5 years -- is a bribe...or maybe a multi-stage bribe. On the one hand, it is a public display of friendship to a country whose people don't much like us and on the other it is cash for our friends in Pakistan to use (assuming they actually get their hands on it) to bid for the loyalties of other Pakistanis currently leaning toward our enemies. 

Importantly, Obama was very clear that our target is still al Qaeda and he made one of his most forceful statements to date of the perceived on-going threat from that group. Beyond reiterating that we are there for the same reason we went in originally...to get the guys who did 9/11...this did two important things. First, it separated out the Taliban, consistent with the current strategy of seeking to find an in to them and peeling them off. Second, it said, the real meat of this problem is in Pakistan because the Taliban are in Pakistan. 

As I have said before, I am skeptical that we can achieve much of lasting value in this part of the world as problems there are so amorphous, ingrained and have such strong regenerative features that I feel we will spend much of our effort just pushing our food around on our plates. That said, the only chance for real progress is the kind of narrowing focus, realism and intensification of pressure on the truly bad guys implied by this plan.

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