The White House clearly has a problem on its hands. The launch of the military intervention with Libya has been messy at best. The fog of war is supposed to be restricted to the battlefield, but for the moment it seems to have settled in over the White House. Here are just a few of the contradictions and confusions swirling about at the moment:

National Security Advisor Tom Donilon was on the record as saying the U.S. had no strategic interests in Libya. Now, he must coordinate an American involvement that would be irresponsible unless indeed such interests existed.

The President and his team made it clear through their early remarks that America would not be in lead in this mission. But the Pentagon over the weekend let it be known that Americans were indeed in command but plans were being discussed for a hand-over at some unspecified point in the future.

The involvement of the Arab League was allegedly a critical catalyst for U.S. support, but military support has been slow to materialize, minimal when it has, and political opposition to key components of the mission -- like bombing to neutralize threats on the ground -- has emerged.

The involvement, according to the President and his team would be short, limited to protecting the Libyan people from Qaddafi. While the quick dispatch of Qaddafi would be the best protection for the Libyan people, other possible paths are just as likely at this point: a short involvement that leaves Qaddafi in place and Libya divided, which would be a very unsatisfactory outcome strategically and politically, or a long one that ends up in Qaddafi going to ground, resisting the rebels thanks to his considerable resources, and ultimately requiring a much more extensive international involvement than is currently contemplated.  In short, the involvement is unlikely to be as neat nor its outcome as clear-cut in its benefits as was advertised.

The principle underlying the involvement was the protection of the Libyan people from abuse at the hands of their government. Syrian troops fired into crowds of their people this weekend: will the same principle soon apply there? In Yemen? In Bahrain? In Iran? In the Palestinian territories? It is impossible to imagine that it will apply in any of these places thus undercutting the idea that any principle was involved at all.

The President has argued he has consulted with Congress on his actions. The disagreement with this idea seems to begin on Capitol Hill where in one of the few bipartisan displays in recent months, both Democrats and Republicans have complained that what consultation that did take place was perfunctory and inadequate.

The President's men are very agitated that the New York Times narrative that they were led to war by Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Gayle Smith and are now arguing the President was the leader of the move to act. While the final decision clearly rested with the President, the Amazons In-Charge narrative is going to be hard to dial back because these strong, capable women did actually drive the decision process against the opposition of Gates, Donilon, Brennan and others. Worse, the delay between the initial instance in which Secretary Clinton advocated the idea and the time it was ultimately implemented have created many complications that make the involvement much more difficult...and those delays are traceable to uncertainty on the part of the President and his close White House advisors.

The move to multilateralism was belied by a trip to Brazil in which the President effectively rebuffed Brazilian desires to win his support for their candidacy for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council -- support he has already given to India.  All the Brazilians got was a non-committal "we'll look into it" and were left to digest why India was treated differently. The U.S. had wanted a more compliant Brazil on issues like Iran's nuclear program, but the message to the Brazilians is that the Indians were rewarded strategically for undertaking a nuclear weapons program while the Brazilians who avoided this step were penalized for having a different opinion on nuclear issues.

Both India and Brazil abstained on the UN vote on Libya making the distinction between the two even more hard to defend. This issue by the way offset within Brazil's government whatever perceived "success" the Obama trip has had via photo ops for the President in Rio favelas. Combine this with the forced resignation of the US Ambassador to Mexico this weekend and you have a pretty lousy week for U.S. Latin relations coinciding with a presidential trip to the region that was optically very difficult given the entire Libya issue.                                                                 

The White House needs to be decisive and move quickly to undo the problems of the past few days. The President began the process of trying to address these issues during his press conference in Chile, but the real heavy lifting will begin when he arrives again in Washington. At that point, both he and the American public will have a clearer picture of the situation on the ground in Libya.

It is hard to argue with the White House's reasoning behind working collaboratively with other nations in formulating the response to the Libya crisis. But, if the president is going to talk the multilateralist talk, the crucial question is going to be whether he does so effectively or not.

Obama's multilateralism is both ideological and pragmatic. Since his first days as a candidate, he has made it clear that he believes in the international rule of law, support for international institutions and a United States that is a committed partner rather than a unilateralist rogue within the international system. On the practical front, the U.S. public has neither the appetite nor the checkbook for a sequel to the series of with-us-or-against-us-themed American Sherriff road movies that recently have been playing to such mixed notices in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. (In both instances while we have worked with coalitions, the U.S. role has been so great that other nations have really been extras, featured ensemble members at best.)

So the president has shown reasoned restraint in the wake of the outbreak of civil war in Libya. While the plight of citizens on the ground cries out for support, Obama and his team have felt that given both the complexities associated with widely bruited-about "solutions" like the imposition of a no-fly zone as well as other interventive measures, that whatever is done would be both more legitimate and more sustainable if undertaken through collective initiative.

That seems like a sound approach -- if intervention actually takes place. But the president and his team must not fall into the trap of thinking that embracing multilateralism excuses inaction when decisive measures are called for. The United States still has national interests -- whether they are in maintaining oil flows or preventing a humanitarian disaster or discouraging other thugocracies from brutalizing their own people -- and if it is the choice of this administration to advance those interests through collaboration with our NATO allies, via the United Nations or through some ad hoc coalition then the United States must find ways to actually do so and to do so in a timely, resolute and ultimately successful way.

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President Hosni Mubarak's speech to the Egyptian people in the wake of days of rioting was a masterpiece of insensitivity. With his citizens in the street expressing their needs, he addressed his own. He spoke of poverty and concern for his people, but his message was something far darker. He was making a stand for the status quo.

Watching him, ghostly in the stark podium lighting designed to hide what hints of his age his hairdresser and doctors could not, it was clear that this was an old man comfortable in the old ways of the Middle East. As such he was as much a remnant of Egypt's past leadership as any mummy in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, just as brittle, frail, and ready to turn to dust.

His sacrifice of his cabinet also evoked ancient practices, as well as the last ditch measures of autocrats throughout history. His ministers -- many of whom were not objects of the people's anger -- were used as cannon fodder, a way to test whether the old president's position would hold. The hours and days ahead will determine whether it was enough: whether there are real reforms he might actually entrust his new government with or whether he is betting that his lifelong ties to the military will protect him in ways that his political savvy no longer can.

He is a man out of touch with his people and his times. Like Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, he is a symptom of the greatest problem the region has faced over the past several decades: its self-absorbed, corrupt leadership. From Algiers to Kabul, an arc of autocracy extends across nearly all of the greater Middle East, denying citizens the right of self-determination, buying international favor with oil or political deals, ignoring educational needs, the rights of women, and the investments needed to compete in the global economy.

But with each starkly out-of-touch pronouncement like that from Mubarak today, the arc trembles a bit. Certainly, the fall of Ben Ali started it quivering. In Yemen and in Jordan, demonstrators tested the waters to see if progress might be made there. We have already seen the potency of the Green Revolution in Iran and recognize that even when the autocrats seem to win the day, they only postpone the inevitable. You can't keep the cell phones and the Internet and Twitter accounts off indefinitely and compete in the modern world. You can't deny a future to populations dominated by the young and expect enduring stability.

In Israel, leaders are deeply ambivalent, fearful of instability in a country that has been vitally important to the region's stability -- and even more fearful that what they perceive as an even weaker, minority regime in Jordan might totter. At the same time, on some level they cannot help but note that not only do these uprisings underscore their nearly unique role as a democracy in the region (we will see what reform in Iraq brings) but even more importantly, they illustrate clearly that Israel is far from the biggest problem the region faces.

It is tempting for "realists" everywhere to cling to stability over the questions that opening these countries to self-determination might raise. But we should all have long since passed that point of hesitation. Either we are for the principle or we are not. Either all people deserve these freedoms or they do not. Someday historians may draw a direct connection between President Barack Obama's call for reforms and a new relationship between the United States and the people of the Islamic world in his Cairo speech and the events of this winter. We can only hope that it is connection marked by U.S. actions that are consistent with the high ideals espoused by the president.

In the words of Secretary Clinton today, we have hope that will be the case. In the "Made in the U.S.A." marking on the tear gas canisters being used against the Egyptian protestors we see the potential ugliness that can come from that old-fashioned form of flawed pragmatism that is a hallmark of US foreign policy -- the form in which we make a deal for today's stability that puts us on the wrong side of tomorrow's revolution.

You can tell a lot about a major summit between world leaders by what happens in the weeks leading up to it. That's when staff scurry around trying to nail down "deliverables" -- agreements that might be signed, initialed, announced, dusted off, and signed again, that sort of thing -- and fine tune the optics of the upcoming meeting. Tensions are typically defused in advance. Good news is often played up to produce a positive mood.

That's just what has been happening in the run up to the visit of China's President Hu Jintao to Washington. The Chinese foreign minister blew through town last week, meeting with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Tom Donilon and allowing both sides to test out their language about how important the relationship is while also testing thrusts and parries on currency policy. Our North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth went to Beijing to seek progress on cooperatively managing the vexing Mr. Kim. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is in China right now seeking (unsuccessfully thus far) to reboot military cooperation that broke down in the wake of last year's decision to sell more arms to the Taiwanese.

At the same time, as is also typical with such a visit, we have members of Congress like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) flexing their muscles and warning that China had better adopt "fairer" currency policies or else. And sometimes we have seen other actions designed to send messages to the rest of the world to place the upcoming meeting in context -- or at least international actions that cast an important light on the upcoming meeting whether intentionally or otherwise.

Read these tea leaves and you can tell a lot about the largely formal high-level summit to come. In fact, these pre-summit periods are actually where the real work usually gets done with the most important summits typically being so carefully orchestrated that it's almost impossible for anything to actually spontaneously occur out of them.

So, what have we learned? Here are a few highlights:

• The Chinese would like the meetings to go well. The announcement of a couple banking licenses last week is precisely the kind of commercial gifts the Chinese like to hand out as summit-related door prizes.
• The Chinese are ambivalent about how the meetings go. Their pushback on U.S. calls for currency adjustments from the likes of Donilon and Clinton was firm but diplomatic.
• The Chinese are perfectly willing to tell the United States to stuff it. Gates's effort to get military cooperation restarted was rebuffed in a way that was both embarrassing for the United States. and, rest assured, carefully cultivated. (Although getting that embarrassment out of the way this week rather than on the summit trip itself is also a part of deft trip management.)
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Stephen J. Solarz, who died Monday afternoon at the age of 70 after a long, courageous battle with cancer, was a member of the U.S. Congress' "Watergate Class" of 1974. He served 18 remarkable and illustrious years in the House of Representatives, becoming one of the Democratic Party's most respected foreign-policy leaders. He was so bold and courageous in his calls for the United States to pull back its support for the corrupt and abusive regime of Ferdinand Marcos that Corazon Aquino dubbed him "the Lafayette of the Philippines." He played an instrumental role in leading support for the first Gulf War. He attacked human rights abuses and worked to broker the end to brutal conflicts. He chaired both the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Subcommittee on Africa.

With such a record, it was no surprise that he was considered for years to be a likely future secretary of State. He studied foreign affairs avidly, immersed himself in his travels, worked tirelessly and did not suffer fools lightly. I know this because when I began working for him shortly after I left graduate school, I surely qualified as a fool -- if not by disposition then by virtue of my utter ignorance. But he generously not only gave me my first professional opportunity, but for the following 30 years he patiently shared his insights, his wisdom, and his humor, and offered an example I will remember and treasure the rest of my life.

As Steve used to joke, he "represented a district that would have elected Mussolini if he were a Democrat." It was the Brooklyn of Coney Island and Midwood, of Ocean Parkway and Avenue U, a district "with more Jews than live in Tel Aviv" and thus one that not only tolerated his interest in the rest of the world but encouraged it. Having a congressman who knew and quoted Abba Eban or Yitzhak Rabin was a plus even in a country where some mind-boggling percentage of members of the House didn't (and don't) even have passports. Of course, as his press secretary I spent hours squirreled away in his offices in the district, writing press releases about new subway escalators and the thrilling periodic visits to DC where we would work on issues closer to my heart and his, from East Timor to arms control, from the Middle East to the latest diplomatic crisis.

I remember vividly the time he took me on my first visit to the White House during which he invited me in to a meeting with then-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Just the three of us. Me, perhaps 22 at the time. Brzezinski at his intimidating best. Solarz, not forty yet, holding his own, advancing his points with grace and eloquence.

Eloquence mattered to him. There was a school of politics back then in which rhetorical command was still highly valued, something more than today's soundbites or cable news sniping. Solarz, like the Kennedy brothers or Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Eban, the ultimate master, spoke in perfectly formed paragraphs, always seeking the right balance of dignity and substance, humor and sharp points where needed.

His intensity could be off-putting. Truth be told, he was not -- despite his nine electoral victories -- a natural politician. He alienated enemies and, sometimes, friends. In Washington, an old maxim is that you need both a great inside game and a great outside game. He ruffled enough feathers with his lack of attention to the inside game that when he hit turbulence toward the end of his time in Congress, potential allies stepped away from him. Opponents in Albany carved up his district in a way that forced him to choose between running against his friends and running in a district with which he had precious little connection. He chose the unfamiliar district, was a political fish out of water, and lost in the Democratic primary in 1992. It might have been a moment of opportunity. He was only 52. Two months later, a Democrat would be elected president and perhaps he could begin his long foretold ascent to the job he was best suited for, the one in the big office in Foggy Bottom.

His name came up to be ambassador to India, a post he would have filled exceptionally well. But an old enemy from the State Department raised the issue of a questionable contact he had made in Hong Kong and once again, potential allies retreated into the shadows and did not point out that the assertions made about him were absurd reasons to block the career of a man who had devoted his life to exceptional public service. It was an episode of gutless Washington at its worst and the American people were the ultimate losers.

Solarz went on to a distinguished post-congressional career, continuing to immerse himself in foreign policy, to lead the search for lasting solutions to the most complex international problems and to provide warm, wise advice to his friends and love to his dear family.

And then he got sick. And then he died. And now the memories come flooding back and it is clear that we are sorely in need of everything he was -- a dedicated student of foreign policy, a believer in the old school doctrine that national interests always trumped partisanship, a man who placed principle before reflexive loyalty and even self-interest, a guy with a sense of humor and a good heart … a mensch-statesman.

When he lost in 1992, the New York Times ran an article about the reactions to his loss. Solarz himself was quoted as saying that one of his few regrets was leaving office before Saddam Hussein did. Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton, another of the very best Congress has produced in the past several decades, is reported to have sent Steve a note saying: "Few events of the last several months have saddened me more than the realization that you may be leaving."

I can't help but feel the same way right now. But I was cheered by one of the valedictory lines Steve himself offered -- because of its characteristic humor and the way it evokes Steve as well as by its message. "I take comfort in Abba Eban's observation," he said, "That politics is the only profession where there's life after death." That is, of course, especially true of men whose public contributions were of genuinely historic magnitude and whose private kindnesses have touched thousands.

In a single, unexpected stroke President Barack Obama may have made his trip to India one of the most important of his presidency. By announcing his support for Indian permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council, Obama advanced a number of important goals.

First, he went a long way toward establishing a truly special relationship between the world's largest democracy and the United States. He embraced an issue that was important to Indians and, despite the certainty of Pakistan's public unhappiness with the decision and China's less public but nonetheless undoubted discomfort with it, he showed courage and vision in doing so.

Second, he found an issue that could measure up to or even trump the Bush administration's nuclear deal with India, thus ensuring a strong sense of momentum in a relationship that must move forward if both countries are to rise to the challenges of the new century.

Third, he underscored that his administration was serious about turning rhetoric about rethinking multilateralism, and working with a new set of powers, into action. While working within the framework of the G-20 was a step in that direction, that process actually began two years ago under the Bush administration. Adjustments made in the structure of international financial institutions were another positive step, but frankly were rather underwhelming, leaving behind serious representational imbalances.

Admittedly, what the president said in his speech to the Indian Parliament -- "in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member" -- is rather open-ended. Especially when taken in the context of, for example, the extended period of unproductive support we have offered for Japanese permanent membership. Still, the president's statement implied that without permanent membership for India on the Security Council, the United Nations would not be seen as "effective, credible and legitimate." That is not just true (which it is) or an important point from India's perspective (which it also is), but it has major implications for other countries that have a legitimate claim to a similar role.

These other countries, as noted in a quick but insightful commentary from Stewart Patrick at the Council on Foreign Relations, would certainly also include Brazil and Germany. This would make the first tier of new candidates a class of what Patrick calls "four great democracies." Others will cavil and some will argue their merits. But what Obama has done with this statement is to move U.N. reform forward in an important way.

Now, of course, the real work needs to be done. The United States should, at the earliest possible moment, begin a renewed push for translating these words into actions. This will take diplomatic deftness and will require a willingness to begin a process of major-power horse-trading that could well have repercussions across the entire international system. Ideally, the United States will undertake this with a clear vision of how it would like to see the system remade, and with an express willingness to alter, and in some cases diminish, the role of the great post-World War II powers. This is not only the path to a more just and effective system, it is also the path to a system offering fairer burden sharing, a point which may make these changes easier to sell both in Washington and among a group of cash-strapped Atlantic allies. The view should be holistic and represent a sense of where existing institutions need to be strengthened or revamped, and where new institutions need to be cultivated. Virtually no major international institution should be exempted from such a reassessment. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the regional development banks, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, etc., must be reviewed during this process.

Though it is also true that everything cannot happen at once, Obama boldly and appropriately found an issue that could be a lynchpin of such a process of reform. What will make today's remarks a true watershed -- and thus make the current trip a true success -- is if they lead to tangible progress soon, a worthy goal for the remainder of Obama's term.

Tom Jobim, the songwriter who wrote "The Girl from Ipanema," once observed, "Brazil is not for beginners." It is an insight that was shared with me this weekend by a wise friend in Brasilia.

He was not writing about the woman who decisively won Brazil's presidential election on Sunday, Dilma Rousseff. Despite the assertions of her critics, the woman already known to Brazilians simply as Dilma is no beginner. Those critics and some of her soundly defeated opponents are fond of saying that because she had never run before for elected office she might not have the political skills to manage Brazil's fractious Congress or even her ten party coalitions. But this overlooks the long and remarkable road that brought her from being a guerrilla combating Brazil's military regimes of the 1960s to jail and torture, to getting her degree in economics to a path of local government leading to Lula's cabinet to his invaluable chief of staff.

Furthermore, this kind of criticism overlooks her crafty and tenacious work behind the scenes when Lula's administration was battered by scandal and she played such a central role in holding it together and getting it back on track that from then on many in the government considered her "Lula's prime minister."

No, my friend was not writing about Dilma or anyone else in Brazil. He was writing about the policy community outside the country that is now going to face the challenge of shaping a relationship with the new administration. His point was that as a major, complex, rapidly changing power, Brazil has transcended and made obsolete old formulations about its nature and role. Brazil, he was suggesting, requires new thinking which in turn requires a kind of sophistication -- a more nuanced understanding and creativity that was often lacking in policymakers from traditional powers, particularly the United States. His comments particularly resonated with me after a series of meetings and events in which I have participated during the past few weeks all of which focused on Brazil and Latin America.

During several such gatherings in Washington, in surroundings where you would expect to see the crème de la crème of Western Hemisphere specialists, the level of discussion was frequently frustrating. Many of the views heard were those of superannuated relics of what is certainly the weakest regional policy community in America. Most still see everything in the Americas in terms of left vs. right distinctions which are pretty much meaningless today, as former traditional leftists turned stewards of economic orthodoxies like Lula and Dilma illustrate. These veterans of America's often rather ghastly Latin American policies are fighting Fidel and the contras in the steamy jungles of their minds. On the other hand, some of the younger analysts view Brazil as part of a kind of mystical BRICtopia where economies grow to the sky and upheaval and economic shocks are permanently things of the past. (Things are so fizzy there right now that this is as dangerous as underestimating Brazil's growing geopolitical clout.)

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This weekend the Obama Administration will send a team to China headed by the somewhat unlikely duo of Larry Summers, head of the National Economic Council, and Tom Donilon, deputy national security advisor. The purpose is to send a clear message that the U.S. is approaching its relations with China strategically, with a view that integrates the full range of economic and security concerns.

While such trips are old hat for Summers, the journey represents a bit of a change of pace for Donilon, the inside guy who is credited with having done a great job making sure the policy process trains have been running on time within the National Security Council. Some in Washington are buzzing that this is a profile- and skill-raising trip intended to make Donilon a better candidate to replace National Security Advisor James L. Jones should Jones decide to depart, as many expect he will. Others grumble that the trip represents precisely the kind of "operational" role for the NSC and NEC that many cabinet departments have long thought should be out of bounds for White House policy coordinators.

But beyond the Washington gossip the trip has caused, the juxtaposition of economic and security concerns offers an illustration of an often over-looked fact -- the centrality of economic issues to current U.S. national security concerns. In China, the tricky calculus is fostering collaboration on security issues from North Korea to Iran in the face of political pressure back home to press Beijing harder on issues like currency valuation and unfair competitive practices (especially those associated with pressuring foreign firms to transfer proprietary technologies).

The U.S. has never been especially effective at coordinating its multiple interests in China so that pressure in one policy area produces progress in another -- or even simply avoids causing setbacks. So this trip, in concept at least, represents a step in the right direction -- at least if Congress doesn't undercut the administration's efforts by, for example, drafting its own legislation on currency issues.

But China is just one of a host of current hotspots where Summers, Geithner, and the international economic team are playing a central role on national security issues.

For example, in Afghanistan, the story of the week turns on the amazingly brazen behavior of the Karzai gang in trying to pressure the United States into bailing out a clearly corrupt and mismanaged bank in which President Hamid Karzai's brother, Mahmood Karzai, is the third largest shareholder. Mahmood has publicly called for a bailout even though his affiliation with a bank through which U.S. funds flow to Afghan security forces compromises both him and the president. Both remain unabashed, however, behaving like the proverbial kids who murder their parents and seek the mercy of the court on the grounds that they are now orphans. So the United States is in a pickle: Step in and support the Afghan kleptocracy and its culture of corruption or stand on principle (and law), and run the risk that the bank falters. It's not a situation that General David Petraeus can handle, but how the economic team manages it will have direct ramifications for him.

In the same way, some of the most sensitive concerns regarding Pakistan turn on economic policy. Will the Zardari government pump too much cash into the economy to deal with the aftereffects of the devastating flooding, and risk a major inflationary episode? Or will it introduce price controls and a set of micro economic measures that, if mismanaged, could produce social tensions or even rioting? The wrong mix of policies could plunge the already fractured and battered country into political turmoil and perhaps the reintroduction of military rule.

In talks with the Israelis and the Palestinians, many of the core concerns will turn on how to improve the economic conditions for the Palestinian people. If they can get past initial hurdles, they will, of course, ultimately have to move to a state structure that will enable organic economic growth in a Palestinian state, actually fostering job and wealth creation for people who have lived in an economic no man's land for too long.

In North Korea, it is reported that the administration, conducting high level meetings on the subject this week, is seeking to explore "engagement." In the case of the economically isolated and struggling North, that inevitably will mean economic packages in exchange for gradual normalization of relations or reductions of threats.  At the same time, this week, the administration widened sanctions intended to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

In Iran, the core initiative at the moment is making targeted economic sanctions work. In Iraq, the issue is fostering economic growth to help "purchase" social stability. The list goes on. It is clear that wherever the stakes are highest for the United States in the world, even as military and diplomatic initiatives garner most of the attention, behind the scenes much of the most critical work is being undertaken by international economic officials.

It is interesting to note in this respect that the responsibility for conceiving and coordinating most of these activities lies in the White House to a much greater degree than it does with military or diplomatic initiatives. The White House team on these issues is excellent. But in the end, these functions are so fundamental that the real leadership capabilities need to be cultivated elsewhere.

The economic team at the State Department could and should play a greater role in this respect; Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Robert Hormats is a talented and experienced official. As I have written before, State also could and should develop a dramatically enhanced capability when it comes to emergency economic intervention -- pre- or post-crisis. And all the other economic agencies need to be prepared to collaborate on this, not on an ad hoc basis but through a permanent program promoting cross-training and what the military might call inter-operability. Call it an economic rapid response capability -- or call them economic green berets.

We need people we can drop into critical situations and help manage them with an eye to our security and political needs rather than traditional purely economic metrics. That's a critical role for which development officials are ill-suited, and we still don't really have the fully developed institutional structure we need to support it.

Looking at the issues faced by the United States today, while one can't help but admire much of what is being done, the strategic side of the international economic agenda is such that it warrants some real thought about how and with whom we should be meeting such challenges in the future.

The word is that the decision to hammer Bibi Netanyahu on Friday for Israel’s settlements screwup last week came directly from President Obama. 

He was apparently very upset at the seeming contempt the Israelis showed for the vice president and by extension for the president himself and his administration. In addition, Obama, like many of his top aides, felt that the Israeli action was undermining U.S. standing at a critical time in American efforts to both advance the "peace process" and to weave together tough, effective international sanctions on Iran.

Here's the problem: This is one of those diplomatic flareups that may trigger fire drills in the governments and polemic fireworks from pundits but which, upon analysis, is really much less than meets the eye. It's actually a fake crisis. 

First, of all, on the face of it the Israeli action seems genuinely to have been much more of a screwup than a calculated affront. And if someone was trying to undercut the U.S.-Israel relationship, it seems certain they represented a fringe group and not the Netanyahu government. Subsequent statements of defiance by Netanyahu regarding building within Jerusalem were more in response to U.S. efforts to make additional political hay out of the dustup than they were related to the initial misstep.

Second, there is no real "or else" backing up U.S. demands for a reversal, an inquiry and the offering of a meaningful olive branch to the Palestinians. Obama, with few foreign-policy accomplishments to point to thus far in his young presidency, needs the peace process at least as much if not more than Netanyahu does. Time and leverage are, for the near term at least, on Netanyahu's side ... which is one reason why the U.S. government is opportunistically trying to use this crisis as a pretext to gain concessions out of the Israelis in advance of talks with the Palestinians. 

Further, the United States can't really turn its back on Israel and embrace the Palestinian side any more closely than it has because there is really no there there. And were the United States to ally itself more closely to the Palestinian position (as I believe some at high levels wish they could), the administration knows they would inevitably find the Palestinian authorities made gaffes of the magnitude of this most recent Israeli blunder on an uncomfortably frequent basis -- thanks to the fact that the Palestinian government is more defined by rifts than by meaningful accomplishments.

Finally, most importantly, the U.S. argument that the Israelis need to be seen to be more quietly cooperative with U.S. efforts or Obama won't be able to effectively stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program is undercut by the fact that the United States won't, in the end, actually stop the Iranian nuclear program. We just don't have the domestic will or the international support to do so. Just as each successive deadline for Iranian compliance with international cease and desist requirements has evaporated so too will the illusions that the U.S. can engineer anything like effective sanctions against the Iranians in an effort to penalize them for their noncompliance. 

Containment is rapidly replacing engagement as the false hope on which the U.S.-Iranian relationship will be built. (Engagement was dependent on the other side wanting to engage back. Containment is dependent on the government or some other rational actor exercising effective control over all nuclear warheads. Neither precondition will, I'm afraid, prove to have been sufficiently certain to warrant betting our vital interests on it.)  In any event, when the Iranians do ultimately go nuclear, the United States will want and need a strong relationship with Israel more not less. 

This has created the current, almost bizarre, set of circumstances. Everyone, including the Israelis, agree Netanyahu's government made a big-league error last week. (In a way, it's a real breakthrough: finally something that everyone on all sides of the Israeli-Arab divide can agree on.) But the reaction of the United States, regardless of all the robust language and diplomatic dressing down of top Israeli officials, is indicative of weakness not of strength. 

The bigger message that will be unintentionally have been delivered to the world at the end of all this is that the United States is willing to get fierce with its friend Israel over a perceived insult but that we are likely to remain ineffective in the face of self-declared Iranian enemies' efforts to destabilize the entire Middle East with nuclear weapons. This is not only a problem for the president because the outcome is so dangerous. It's also that "tough on your friends, weak with your enemies" is neither a common trait among great leaders nor is it a particularly good campaign bumper sticker.

It's the end of 2009, and not just the end of the year, but the end of the decade. A fact that has editors everywhere jonesing for lists ... who am I to disappoint? (Here is the first in a series of lists. Be on the lookout for big Hanukkah treat: The Winners and Losers of the Decade! Put that in your dreidle and spin it.)

Let's start with The Loveable Losers shall we? After all, while Vince Lombardi said that in football "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."In politics, most of the players are losers to begin with and watching them squirm is what makes Wolf Blitzer so damn irresistible. And that's not to speak of Gloria Borger or Chris Wallace. (Come to think of it, if those guys can make it in television, I have an idea: The Potato Channel. Wouldn't it be more fun to watch an entire field of tubers ripen and rot? That's reality television the average American viewer can relate to. Heck, the average American viewer is likely to think it's about them.)

• The Salahis: The good news: At last a Palestinian captures Washington's attention. The bad news: He's a fraud wrapped in a con-artist, wrapped in the arms of a big cheap blonde who makes the Real Housewives of New Jersey look like the Algonquin Roundtable.

• John Boehner and Mitch McConnell: One looks like an extra in "Mad Men," the other like one from "Six Feet Under" ... but both are clearly dancing to music only they can hear. The Lawrence Welk Show maybe? So far this year they have exactly zero major victories to show for themselves and even their party realizes (well, the ones that are honest with themselves) that we won't be sure that the GOP is back until after these two have exited stage right..

• Jim Jones: One minute he's up ... a great choice for National Security Advisor ... the next minute he's down ... ineffective ... then he's back up. Obama respects him, but now, at the end of the year, it is clear the policy process is drawn out, too messy, and the buzz is that he is getting regularly backdoored by former campaign staffers and others who would have been sitting up straight and saluting in his previous job.

• The Short-Timers: Jones is one about whom the whispers of an early departure ebbed but have now returned (watch for the fight over that slot when it eventually does happen… Susan Rice vs. whoever Hillary’s candidate is with the likely compromise winner being Tom Donilon). How about Rahm? There's lots of buzz that he'll leave early to pursue new political horizons. People say the same about Tim Geithner but I doubt it ... he's proved canny and grows stronger daily. Holbrooke? Mitchell? I'm willing to be that at least one big name czar goes early -- and I mean a bigger name than the already long-gone Steve Rattner (who is rumored to be working on a tell-all book). Ron Kirk? Gary Locke? For them leaving would be redundant.

• Rep. Joe Baca: Here's a guy who thought he would win points for proposing legislation giving Tiger Woods the Congressional Gold Medal. Blergh. Sploink.

• The MSNBC Anti-Sarah Palin Brigade: You know who you are. You guys have watched Twilight too many times. You wanted to kill her with a stake through her heart or a bullet made of your silver tongued ridicule ... you didn't realize that would just make her stronger. It's a year later folks, and don't kid yourself, this semi-literate snow bunny is the second strongest brand in American politics.

• Harry Reid: Here he is quietly putting together a health care bill against all odds and in the corridors they're talking about who'll replace him as majority leader when he loses his seat next November. While Dick Durbin is the likely suspect, smarter folks than I expect N.Y. Senator Charles Schumer to unleash his death-eaters (a Harry Potter reference for those of you over 30) in a stealth campaign to deny Durbin the job and win it for himself.

• Chris Dodd: He may finally start doing what's right in terms of financial reform, but it's way too late. Independent voters in Connecticut are through with him and the betting in the virtual OTB on Capitol Hill is he won't even run the race. Time to retire to that big house...those big houses.

And the Big Winners?

• Barack Obama: Quibble all you want about that process stuff, here are the facts: A year ago we were at the economic brink doubting a turnaround would happen for years, he had been elected to bring an end to an unpopular war and switch our focus to Afghanistan, he pledged to do something about health care despite the fact that nothing had been done of substance in about half a century and then he said he'd restore America's reputation around the world and reverse our stance on global warming while he was at it. Twelve months later despite having had to climb a steep learning curve and deal with the one horse shay up on the Hill, he's done it all. Perfect? No. Flawed? Plenty. But without question the most impressive first year in office for a U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.

• The Cardinals: No, not the ones in St. Louis ...or even the ones in the Vatican (especially not them) ... I mean the campaign inner circle that now are the most powerful people in Washington who are not actually named Obama. Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett lead the parade but also key, folks like Pete Rouse, Denis McDonough and even, on the foreign policy side, Donilon, who literally defies Washington gravity by being the only guy I never hear anything negative about.

• Larry Summers: Not getting the Fed job is probably the best thing that could have happened to him. He's made the NEC and the tight team around him and Geithner the invaluable A-team on the issues that will mean most to Obama's political future. Crisis? Check. Now on to jobs. Tougher...but no one is smarter or more pragmatic ... which happen to be the two traits most often used to describe the President too.

• John Podesta and George Soros: The Center for American Progress is the most influential think tank in Washington, Brookings is a distant second. (And I say that as a visiting scholar at Carnegie...which is home to the smartest, most creative and most drop-dead good looking wonks in town.) Podesta has made it the brain of the Democratic Party. And despite the fact that the right wing nuts have said Soros has bought huge influence in Demworld by writing the check for the place, it's actually true.

• Chuck Todd and Savanah Guthrie: These two are the big journalistic winners for the first year of the Obama administration. The NBC tandem is comprise of rising stars who will dominate American journalism. Todd is a rock solid reporter and analyst and Guthrie is not just sharp as a switch blade she is the most appealing new television journalist who doesn't work on the Daily Show. Close runner up: everyone at Politico who has carved out a central place for themselves in the intellectual life of Washington, (most notably Mike Allen whose morning Playbook has climbed the must read list to the point that I go to it before I go to the Times, the Post, or Drudge). Third place: the Wall Street Journal. Admit it ... go on ... Rupert Murdoch has vastly, vastly improved this paper. When the dust settles and America only has three or four national newspapers they'll lead the pack. 

• Representative Joe Sestak: He's my pick for Sleeper of the Year. Watch the former Admiral closely; he's the real deal ... brilliant, hard-working congressman who is headed for bigger things if the people of Pennsylvania and the leaders of the Democratic Party know what's in the national interest.

• Hillary Clinton: She has done an absolutely superb job in a thankless task. I'm on the record on this with the piece I wrote a couple months ago in the Post but I have to say, the more I know what she is up against bureaucratically in the administration (yes, Virginia, the Obama administration is rife with the same kind of in-fighting as all others ... and the Camp Clinton vs. Camp Barack tensions are there even if the secretary and the president have forged a terrific partnership.)

• Rising Stars: The next Secretary of Defense is likely to be Sen. Jack Reed or Michele Flournoy, the Under Secretary for Policy. The fact that people say these things about them is not a bad thing. Kurt Campbell has done a great job as assistant secretary of state for East Asia...helping to make his region the central long-term strategic focus of the administration. Anne-Marie Slaughter has restored the energy and intellectual clout to the State Department Policy planning department. Susan Rice has done a great job at the United Nations (watch one of her mentors Tony Lake end up as the next head of UNICEF). Gayle Smith may bump heads with state on development issues, but her portfolio at the NSC (global affairs which includes development) is central to every outcome we want in the Mideast and she is a force to be reckoned with.

• Steven Chu and the Department of Energy: From worst to not quite first but at least this onetime backwater has become absolutely central, dispensing big bucks, delivering deals around the globe for the president and playing a vital role in reshaping U.S. energy policy at a time when that is vital on the national security, environmental security and economic security fronts all at the same time.

Sometimes diplomatic initiatives produce progress. But sometimes they produce just the illusion of progress. The best known example is that our efforts to promote democracy worldwide have produced a major uptick in the number of countries that conduct elections but that in many of those countries that's as far as democracy goes. In fact, from Russia to Venezuela the appearance of democracy is used to legitimize rulers with anti-democratic intentions. 

The Obama administration is going to need to be very careful to make sure that we don't fall into the same trap with "engagement." Just as we need to upgrade our definition of democracy to include not just elections but checks and balances, the preservation of the rights of minorities, and the other legal guarantees necessary to ensure the survival of the culture and intent of true democracy, we are going to need to ensure that we don't accept as the fruits of engagement empty gestures or other forms of pseudo-progress that actually empower, elevate or play into the hands of problem regimes without actually advancing our interests in material ways.

The release of John Yettaw to Senator Jim Webb illustrates just how tricky the engagement calculus is. Yettaw is the Missouri man who said a vision compelled him to swim a lake to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Burmese democracy champion who has been under house arrest for most of the past two decades. His entrance into the home in which Suu Kyi is confined resulted in a three year extension of her term of house arrest despite the fact that she had nothing to do with the incident.  This term was cut to 18 months by the leader of Burma's military regime Than Shwe. Nonetheless, the central wrong here is that a woman whose party enjoyed a massive victory in Burma's quickly and brutally quashed 1990 effort at democracy, a woman the Burmese people had selected to be their Prime Minister, is now going to be unjustly imprisoned for another year and a half for something she did not do. 

Yettaw is thus a pawn in a bigger game and to the supporters of Suu Kyi it appears the U.S. has been played in precisely the way that was discussed on this blog last week. Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sub-Committee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, comes out with his man and his headlines and support for his conclusion that a thaw in the U.S. relationship with Burma would benefit us. But the injustice against Suu Kyi is prolonged even as her jailers receive a reward for undoing a secondary wrong that they had already capitalized on as a pretext for continuing policies that amount to nothing less than keeping a boot on the throat of the Burmese people. In other words, thanks to this intervention, both the arrest and the release of John Yettaw provide benefits to the Burmese regime and none to democracy, Suu Kyi or America's true interests in the country.

Apparently, according to preliminary reports, one of Webb's more substantial diplomatic "successes" was being allowed to see Suu Kyi. But according to a story by Seth Mydans in the New York Times, during that visit Suu Kyi and Webb may even have had a disagreement over the issue of continuing sanctions against the Burmese regime. Mydans suggested that Suu Kyi felt they had value. Webb reportedly argued that since so many countries in the region did not honor the sanctions that they were unenforceable and thus not a useful tool. While there is an undeniable practical reality to Webb's point, sometimes sanctions are useful even if they are not 100 percent effective, especially if the cost to the sanctioner, the U.S. in this case, is comparatively minor. In other words, since sanctions are a diplomatic tool, the metrics used to assess their value need to be more than just economic. If they send a message, advance a principle and complicate the lives of the targeted country or regime without causing damage to us that outweighs the (even limited) benefits then retaining them may make some sense. Just as winning a diplomatic "victory" may not make sense if it actually, on balance, benefits an adversary or undercuts our national interests or both.

Is there a path to engagement with the Burmese leadership that might be worth pursuing? Of course. And it may well be that gains from Webb's visit outweigh the negatives. It is too early to tell because thus far all the Burmese have done is what is easy for them and the only way to measure progress will be when they start doing things that are hard -- like freeing Suu Kyi or actually allowing free elections to take place.

There is never harm in dialogue that clarifies or advances our position. We should even be willing to shrug off claims by the other side that such dialogue represents a "victory" for them if it is we are net beneficiaries -- as I believe we were in the case, for example, of the release of the two American journalists from North Korea. In that instance, we got back Laura Ling and Euna Lee and the North Koreans at best, got a photo op with a stony-faced former U.S. president. Here, we got our prisoner back but in so doing appeared to be doing so by throwing Suu Kyi further under the bus and, inadvertently no doubt, underscoring differences between us and the revered leader of that country's democracy movement. We got one addled American but the Burmese junta got a "leave her in jail free" card and the perception that the U.S. might be willing to move forward with further engagement on better terms than might have been available in the recent past (better for the regime, not necessarily better for the 2100 political prisoners in Burma.)

The Bill Clinton visit was engagement with a purpose and with a carefully limited downside. The Webb visit, at first glance, appears not nearly so deft. The commitment to engagement with Iran falls somewhere in the middle with our reluctance to condemn the Iranian government's repression of its own people following a seemingly stolen election seen as either not giving enough support to reformers or, alternatively, not "tainting" the demonstrators with our support. It all depends on who you talk to. In yet another case, that of Cuba, we seem to be willing to require a clear quid pro quo for every future concession we may make, a much stricter standard than seems to be the case in some of these other instances. (Cuba must move toward democracy. Burma must move toward what? Repression that doesn't involve Americans? To my mind, until Suu Kyi is released a substantial change in our policy is not called for.)

Webb says he was not an official emissary of the administration. Bill Clinton said the same thing. Clearly, in both instances this particular bit of diplomatic kabuki theater is transparent to all. Webb is the regional subcommittee chair on a critical Senate subcommittee, he is close to the administration, was briefed by them before his trip and promises to brief them on his return. At no time did they renounce the trip and he traveled on a U.S. government plane. His visit was official and the credit for the release of Yettaw and the potential negative consequences of the mission must accrue to the president and his team. 

Personally, I think making engagement a centerpiece of a new U.S. foreign policy is a major positive development for which the administration deserves great credit. But as with any such new initiative, we need to be careful about how we approach it prior to getting all the bugs worked out. The Webb mission, even with is success in terms of securing the release of Mr. Yettaw, winning a session with Suu Kyi and engaging in a rare exchange with the leader of the regime, raises important concerns that need to be addressed if the new policy is to work to our best advantage in the future.

CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/Getty Images

Senator Charles Grassley, one of the six power brokers featured in the New York Times story today on the inner circle of senators who are shaping health care legislation, may not be one of the three Blue Dog Democrats on the group, but that doesn't stop the Iowa Republican from being pretty dogged when it comes to his own pet issues.

According to today's Congress Daily, the Finance Committee's ranking member has slammed the brakes on the confirmation of Thomas Shannon to be ambassador to Brazil. His reason? He seeks what is euphemistically called a "clarification" of Shannon's confirmation hearing statement that eliminating the tariff on ethanol imports would be "beneficial." Of course, by "clarification" the Senator means a complete reversal slammed down Shannon's gullet by administration higher ups.

In letters to Secretary Clinton and USTR Kirk Grassley wrote:

A clear signal of the President's stance on this issue would decrease the possibility of confusion in America's heartland and in Brazil regarding the ethanol tariff if Mr. Shannon were confirmed as Ambassador to that country."

Since Shannon, most recently U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs and by consensus the most talented and successful individual to hold that office in at least two decades, is one of America's very best diplomats he will of course, be far too circumspect to offer Grassley the "clarification" he deserves.

Let me try however. U.S. ethanol tariffs are indefensible on any level, yet another example of the system of agricultural welfare that has burgeoned in the United States thanks to that good old fashioned combination of backroom and checkbook politics that make America great. There is not a single credible analyst of biofuels (which is to say one that is not paid for by or affiliated with American agriculture) who thinks that corn ethanol makes a hint of sense. It is hopelessly inefficient and with every new development regarding next generation biofuels only grows more so. Brazilian sugar cane ethanol, the main target of the tariffs, is produced as much as eight times more efficiently. As such, it offers a cheaper, more abundant, more environmentally friendly alternative to American consumers at a time when one would have thought that concerns about reducing dependence on foreign oil and combating climate change would be at the forefront of our concerns.

But once again, America's electoral system rears its ugly head. So long as presidential campaigns begin in Iowa, Iowans like Grassley will use the system to put the interest of their state's three million citizens and the most vocal special interests within their midst like the corn lobby, ahead of the three hundred million or so of the rest of us. Further, in so doing, Grassley seeks to preserve yet another dimension of America's system of farm protection and subsidies that costs tax payers tens of billions each year, forces food prices higher (according to the likes of Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz) and is the single biggest distortionary factor in the world trading system. I understand why he is doing it. It's just a shame he can. The system allowing individual senators to hold up presidential nominations is regularly abused and needs to be reconsidered.

It is now July and the Obama administration does not have its own ambassador in Brasilia, capital of one the rising powers that is most important to us in the world. The guy who is there now, Bush's appointee Cliff Sobel, is widely regarded by Brazilians (and anyone else who is paying attention) as a joke whereas Shannon is seen as the crème de la crème of the U.S. diplomatic service and is a nominee viewed with great enthusiasm by the Lula administration. The Shannon pick said "Brazil is important."  Grassley's move says "all politics is local." 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out given that Grassley is so important to the prospects for health care reform. Grassley, who is as canny as they come in the Senate, knows the hand he holds and is betting he can get the Obama team to commit to keeping the tariffs as part of the wheeling and dealing associated with health care. I wouldn't bet against him.

As they say around state fair time in Des Moines, "ain't nothing like a corn dog."

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In discussing last week's Aspen Ideas Festival with a friend yesterday, I mentioned that for all the big name policy types floating around Aspen Meadows and offering their views on the world that the highlight for me had to be standing behind "Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi in the hot dog line. (Yes, they had little hot dog stands located at different spots where you could get free hot dogs.) 

What's better than free hot dogs? Standing behind Padma Lakshmi while getting free hot dogs. This was even better than standing near Madeleine Albright, James Baker, Felix Rohatyn, and the Carlyle Group's David Rubenstein in the dinner line the night before. And not just because the gourmet nitrite and nitrate free hot dogs were so tasty. Padma was stunning, charming, and a magnet for all the little something-or-other fellows they had floating around Aspen imagining that someday they would be the aging millionaires and wiener-eating big thinkers who made up the rest of the crowd.    

So as I described the scene, needless to say, my friend and I started to discuss what Salman Rushdie, to whom Lakshmi was married for several years, had that we didn't have. This in turn led to the creation of a new term and a new disorder from which I believe my friend and I now both suffer: fatwa envy. This is caused when a death sentence from one or more Imams suddenly transforms an otherwise ordinary looking man into something sexy, mysterious, and dangerous. After a certain point in life, it is really the only path open to some of us.

As a consequence, I am making it my stated objective to do whatever I have to in this blog to alienate at least one Imam, preferably one with a low fatwa threshold (so I don't have to be too offensive, as it is not in my nature.) I also am hoping it is an Imam with a very small, peace-loving following so it doesn't lead to anything untoward, like my premature death, which would undermine all the benefits of having the fatwa placed on my head in the first place.

(I will acknowledge that this approach may not work as Lakshmi explains her otherwise mystifying attraction to Rushdie at least in part because he reminded her of her father who she described as being "the most sexy, manic, in-shape, lean, tall, handsome man I have ever met." This is not a description that has ever been used to describe me, fatwa or none. In fact the only word from that list that has ever been used to describe me is "man" and that is only used by aging hippies who yell at me on the highway, "Hey man, get out of the way." This doesn't matter so much because, of course, my wife is every bit as lovely as Padma...the only real difference being that my wife did not have a part as a lip syncing disco singer in the immortal Mariah Carey movie, Glitter. Further, being from the Midwest, my wife did not require a fatwa. The fact that I was a kind of cranky Jew from New Jersey was plenty exotic enough for her. To this day I believe she still thinks a "knish" is a small, mountain-dwelling cousin of the chipmunk....and I believe the only member of her family to be circumcised was injured in a power tool accident.)

One group of people not likely to end up with any of that fatwa glamour any time soon are the leaders of the G8, who today continue their meetings in Italy. That's because in the wake of the recent fraud and brutality from nuclear weapons seeking, terrorist-sponsoring Iran, even as the discredited Iranian leadership warned of  a "crushing response" to further protests, our men and women in L'Aquila, leaders of the world's most powerful countries, offered the following collective statement: "meow." 

Admittedly, the G8 leaders were trying to portray their stance on Iran as tough. For example they condemned the recent violence in Iran and said the detention of foreigners and journalists was "unacceptable." They then said they would give Iran until September to accept negotiations over nuclear issues or else expect sanctions. As articulated by Canada's spokesperson, "All G8 nations are united. There is a strong consensus at the table that unless things change soon, there will be further action." 

Of course, what he wasn't saying (and he wasn't saying much) was that they couldn't take a stronger stand because the Russians, ever helpful, obviously not persuaded by the recent visit of President Obama, simply would not accept action now. So "action" got punted till a September 24th and 25th G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. As for the Iranians, since what they want is time, any such deferral has to be viewed as a victory. And the fact that we couldn't mobilize the G8 to even describe a more detailed, credible track to sanctions now when the Iranian leadership has provided the icing on the yellowcake of its nuclear program with its recent stolen election and murders of its own citizens suggests we are going to have a tough time getting anything meaningful done ever. 

Other than the unconvincing saber rattling of the G8 press release, the closest that they came to any additional action on either matter was, when thanks to the early departure of China's Hu Jintao who had to rush home to quash unrest in his own country, Barack Obama filled an open slot in his agenda with a meeting with Brazilian President Lula. At this meeting, Obama asked Lula to try to use his influence to get Iran to back away from developing its nuclear weapons capabilities. While I'm all for using every channel availability to us, offering up this punt to the Brazilians (whom we have been hectoring for years to avoid developing their own nuclear weapons capability) as a high point of our diplomacy on this issue at the Summit suggests how little of substance was actually accomplished.

So what's the message being sent to Tehran and Pyongyang and other would-be proliferators these days: the biggest real risk you face from creating a nuclear weapons program in today's world comes from the paper cuts you might incur while reading the impassioned press releases of the "great powers."

In other news, an AP story carried in this morning Washington Post, entitled "Drunken man shocks Spain with his generosity," described how an inebriated British citizen arrived yesterday at the airport in Mallorca started handing out wads of cash to passers-by. Needless to say, unsettled by the largesse that was the only thing that distinguished the gentleman from the other drunken Brits in the airport, the Spanish police immediately arrested the man. However, the story does have a happy ending and Prime Minister Brown was put on an aircraft back to the G8 meeting hours later. 

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Talent is important. There is no doubt about it. But character and attitude are defining. Yesterday, nearing the end of the longest set in the 133-year history of Wimbledon, locked in a titanic struggle with an opponent who was playing heroic tennis, Roger Federer said he told himself that "at 13-13 in the fifth set, I'm exactly where I want to be, just a few points from victory." Sure, you can look at things negatively, but my positive side is important and I really believed right until the end." 

If Federer has an equal in the world of sports in terms of character and attitude, it is his friend, another who is the best to have ever played his sport, Tiger Woods. Yesterday, he too stood at a turning point in a tournament, having lost sole possession of his lead thanks to a bad shot on the preceding hole. "You can go either way," Woods is quoted as saying in today's Washington Post, "You can win the tournament or you can lose the tournament." Of course, once again, Woods like Federer summoned what was necessary to win. As Barry Svrluga wrote in the Post, "pressure, with Woods, is like an old, dear embraceable friend." It is not a friend because it feels good. It is a friend because his extraordinary gift for handling pressure, like Federer, is what separates him from his opponents time and time again.

These events, juxtaposed with the death of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Obama's trip to Russia and to the G8 meeting, drive home an important message. David Halberstam's classic book about McNamara and his colleagues during the Kennedy administration is, of course, called The Best and the Brightest. It is a phrase that has worked its way into the language, often invoked about the glittering prizes Obama has surrounded himself with. What has been forgotten is Halberstam's message. The title was ironic. Being the best and the brightest is not enough. More than anything else, character matters. The ability to rise up and play at your best in the face of the greatest pressure is why often those with seemingly limited tools from Lincoln to Truman, outperform the academic superstars and those with the fancy degrees, like Carter or George W. Bush. (Of course, it didn't help Bush that he was neither the best nor the brightest nor possessed of the character of a great leader.)

We already have some clues as to what may test the character of Obama's national security team. His meetings today in Russia suggest one relationship which is certain to do so. Despite the face-saving "framework agreement" (a Washington euphemism for a decision to keep talking in spite of differences so serious that they kept the sides from providing any real progress for the leaders to hail in their meetings), it is clear that the U.S.-Russia relationship is not going to be an easy one for Obama. Last week he took a couple of swipes at Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and yesterday he offered encouragement for reforms proposed by Putin's protégé, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Whether this was deft maneuvering was debated in today's papers but it is clear that the U.S. administration is uncomfortable with Putin's often confrontational, often anti-democratic, sometimes overtly anti-U.S. stance. 

As noted here last week, senior State Department officials feel Russia has been far from helpful on the issue of Iran's nukes. It has been provocative in its own near abroad. It has used its energy supplies as a cudgel that heightens regional tensions. And it is not making matters easier by demanding the U.S. back away from plans for an East European missile defense as part of any arms deal. Obama & Co. have been properly tight-lipped on this but I'm concerned that their impulse is to give in on this issue -- at least in part because they are starting to believe their own rhetoric that the missile defenses are designed primarily to keep out Iranian ballistic missiles. Iran is of course, a concern. But so too is Russia. In fact, let's be honest: it is a hostile, highly armed, economically and socially challenged Russia that remains the main reason to have such a defense. If not because of threats they post today then because they may well pose serious threats in the future. (And if you don't believe missile defense works well enough to fight for it...view it purely as a useful bargaining chip.)

It would almost certainly be politically easier to cave on the missile defenses in order to win some progress on an arms deal with Russia. Just as it would be politically easier to proceed with a deal with Iran on nukes even if we don't really believe they will honor it or let us effectively monitor them. Just as it is politically easier to take a partial solution on health care or half a loaf on climate change. The looming question is whether this an administration that talks a good game but folds when the going gets tough. (And of course, I'm hopeful it's not.)

The Russians we know will press and press and bully and bully. The question is whether Obama will be able to respond shot for shot, holding his ground, remaining focused on his true goal, which needs to be not winning a round of negotiations but rather winning in the bigger contest of ensuring a more stable world in the long term. Frankly, the fact that reports out of Russia suggest some turbulence is encouraging to me, a sign of a U.S. team that is holding its ground. (Although I can't help but comment that I think it is a little weird that neither the Secretary of State nor the Deputy Secretary of State is accompanying the president on this trip. Elbow injuries notwithstanding.)

On arms control, we learned over the weekend new details about Obama's formative thinking on the issue thanks to a New York Times article exploring a paper he wrote on the subject while a student at Columbia. He has clearly been grappling with this issue a long time and as described in his Prague speech on his last major trip to Europe, he has described ambitious goals.  If he can use concessions to the Russians on missile defense to advance those goals meaningfully, if he can use them to get the Russians to be more effective in helping to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, if he can use them to move Russia toward leading us to a meaningfully improved successor to Start I and that agreement in turn to build good will to move toward further reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles and ultimately toward a new NPT, excellent. 

The difference between sports stars and presidents of course, is that when the character of presidents fail, we all lose. And when it succeeds, we all benefit. Watch the news this week from Moscow and Italy to see whether we can see whether Obama is learning the lessons of Federer, Woods...and McNamara.

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