While NATO bickers over strategy in Libya, BRIC leaders have gathered in Sanya, China, to demonstrate the growing strength of an alternative grouping that has among its principle selling points the fact that it is neither Western nor U.S.-dominated. To compare the world's most potent and enduring military alliance with a loose affiliation of emerging powers that are divided by perhaps more issues than unite them is clearly comparing apples and lychee nuts or guarana seeds, but the juxtaposition of the two events does offer yet another whiff of how the institutions and ideas of the 20th century are giving way to those of the 21st.

In Libya, the potent alliance that "won" the Cold War is coming apart at the seams fighting over strategy, tactics, and objectives in an optional, low-grade intervention in a largely irrelevant country. The U.S. secretary of state is forced to make public pleas for the bumptious commanders of the coalition to get their acts together, while on the ground the weakened forces of the isolated Muammar al-Qaddafi seem to be holding the megapower onslaught at bay. It is too poignant a reminder that intangibles like knowing what you're fighting for and political will are as important to any battle as the hardware being brought to bear by each side on the other.

In Sanya, Brazil, Russia, India, and the hosts welcomed South Africa into their little club, and if they achieved little else they underscored that they are taking coordination among their countries very seriously and seeking to deepen their ties. However, they did go further and offered a broad agenda including more hints that they will push for alternatives to the dollar-dominated global monetary system that we currently have.

Of course, the BRICs summit resonates with the Libya follies because the original four BRICs voted as a bloc to abstain during the Security Council vote on the imposition of the no-fly zone in Libya and within days of its initiation were publicly speaking out against it. That they were joined in the vote by Europe's most powerful country, Germany, also sent a message that the opposition to the initiative was meaningful and suggested that future votes in international institutions might see the BRICs (or the BRICS … if the final "S" is for South Africa) emerge at the core of a potent new alternative coalition to the traditional Western or developed powers.

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What would you do after a rough few months on campus? Roadtrip!

It works the same way for presidents. Though, instead of making the journey in Flounder's brother's Lincoln this one involves -- according to the same people who estimated 11 million people attended the Glenn Beck rally -- 3,000 people, 34 warships, Air Force One, 13 cargo aircraft, three helicopters, and the private aircraft of a coterie of fat cat hangers-on. And instead of heading to Emily Dickinson College to comfort the grieving roommate of Fawn Liebowitz (by treating her to an evening at a local roadhouse to listen to Otis Day and theKnights) this one includes stops in India, Seoul,Korea for a G20 meeting that will involve more slippery smooth talking than"Otter" Stratton could ever muster, Japan, and Indonesia.The rumor that Obama is visiting Indonesia to consider locating his presidential library there is untrue and was denied by the White House moments after Mitch McConnell started to spread it, thus ending the three hours and twenty-two minutes of civility following Tuesday's elections.

For Obama, the trip is bound to be a relief. In fact, a variety of pundits are peddling the idea that given likely gridlock, congressional investigations, and general acrimony at home, that this trip will mark the beginning of a period during which the president will focus on international issues. As the theory goes, presidents can elevate themselves on the international stage without being dragged down by the Congress. Like many such theories, of course, this is nonsense. Nothing would seal Obama's fate as a one-term president quite as fast as a refocusing away from the domestic economic issues that torment his employers, the U.S. electorate.

Furthermore, given those domestic economic problems and the problems associated with our recent overseas misadventures, the United States is going to be both considerably less forward-leaning overseas, considerably more inward-looking generally and, in all likelihood, despite the "trade" sub-theme of the upcoming trip -- which is really a form of mercantilist chest-thumping -- more protectionist going forward.

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Once again, America's political pundits got it wrong in their analysis of this week's primary elections in the U.S. They immediately sounded the alarums regarding the big Tea Party wins, focusing on two of the most bizarre and extreme candidates to recently win victories -- Delaware's anti-masturbation advocate Christine O'Donnell and New York's porn-loving gubernatorial cartoon Carl Paladino. In so doing, they missed a far greater threat to the U.S. that was imbedded in the election results -- the success of the teachers' unions in defeating Washington, D.C.'s reformist mayor Adrian Fenty.

The unions didn't like his tough schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her policies holding teachers accountable for their students' performance. So they poured money into the campaign of Fenty's opponent, D.C. City Council Chairman Vincent Gray. The spin on the election was that Fenty lost touch with the city's black voters, but behind the scenes it was another victory for special interests that care more about their job security than they do about America's economic future. The side that seems dedicated to ensuring that the U.S. continues to fall behind other countries in academic performance -- and thus in terms of competitiveness, growth and by extension, national security, scored a big victory … if anything so cynical and counter-productive could actually be called a victory. Sadly, within hours of this setback for education reform in the nation's capital, it became clear that another courageous reformer -- with Rhee, one of the two or three most notable in the country --, New York City's Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, was also under growing pressure to suspend some of his trail-blazing accountability practices. The argument the critics made was that some New York City students were underperforming on one measure of English and Math proficiency, even while they conveniently overlooked a wide variety of national and state-level achievement gains made under Klein's stewardship. They also ignored the fact that the areas in which the setbacks occurred were ones in which standards were only this past summer revised upward (as Klein himself had urged for a long time).

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Yesterday Steve Walt offered a post on this site called "National Security Heats Up" in which he took on a recent CNA Corporation study that suggested that climate change was an important new national security issue for the United States, Walt argues that this study overstates the threat for the United States. 

His basic thesis is that because some of the biggest potential problems cited are far away they are not U.S. problems. Migratory pressures in Bangladesh that might be caused by rising sea levels are offered as one example. Walt makes the point that this is really a problem for India to handle, that we should beware the trap of inserting ourselves into every problem (which he associates with a Madeleine Albright "indispensable nation" worldview), and that most DoD studies inflate risks anyway ('cause that's the self-serving thing to do.)

While I can't argue with any of these points -- India should take these threats more seriously than they have to date, we shouldn't insert ourselves into every problem, and DoD funded risk assessments tend to have a "sky is falling" tone to them. But the central thrust of Walt's piece -- that global warming is not a major national security threat to the United States, is just wrong.

First, there are the immediate consequences associated with potential sea level changes in our neighborhood. As one Bahamanian minister once said to me, "For you, a shift of a foot or two or three is something you can adjust to. For us, it is a matter of life and death. If some of the estimates are to be believed, we won't exist as a country." Well, don't take the most dramatic estimates. A modest shift in sea-level will have new waves of immigrants pounding at our doors too ... from the Caribbean, from Mexico, from Central America.

Next, we will have our own issues in states like Florida where much of the population lives very close to sea-level. Permanently inundating coastal regions aside, spotting every incoming hurricane a foot or two of sea-level is going to have big costs whether it is in retaining walls, levies or post-disaster relief.

Third, global warming will produce major consequences for agriculture as climatic conditions change, droughts increase, etc. Food shortages and increases in the cost of food are another likely consequence that we will feel here at home, in our neighborhood and in volatile regions where we have vital interests.

Similarly, if glaciers melt, much of the power capacity of regions like Latin America dwindles. If warming produces reductions in the availability of water, an already critical situation, -- perhaps two-thirds of the world's people are already predicted to live in water-stressed environments in the next several decades -- will get worse. Competition for water is already an issue in parts of the Middle East that don't need any more fuel doused on their flames ... and this is going to be an issue in critical regions first.

The list goes on. Food shortages. Economic setbacks. Water competition. Refugee movements. Resulting tensions between states. High costs of mitigation. Walt is right to approach the report and even the motivations for it with some skepticism. And he is right to suggest the United States cannot and should not assume burdens that are rightfully those of other countries. 

But he goes too far when he when he suggests that the primary consequences will be humanitarian and thus this is not really a security issue but a "philanthropic" one. If there were some other threat that was likely to increase tension in the Middle East or South Asia, likely to cause massive immigration in coastal regions worldwide, likely to have a major impact on the vulnerability of the world's poorest (thus creating unrest and opportunities for populists to exploit instability), and to do so while stressing our own resources and testing our own borders, it would definitely be considered a significant national security threat.

I think there is a bit of a bias among "serious" national security scholars against "soft" issues like global warming. But count the wars that have started over food shortages, resource competition, migration, and related issues and you will see there is nothing soft about threats of this nature and there have been very few threats of this scope. For these reasons, it is in my view dangerously short-sighted to dismiss the concerns the CNA Corporation report rightfully highlights.

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Maybe the problem in the United States isn't that we're paying our business executives too much. Perhaps it's that we pay our government officials too little. 

The Obama administration has made headlines this week by appointing yet another czar, this one to ensure we don't pay too much to the executives of the financial institutions the United States has bailed out. They have also made noises about trying to tackle the broader issue of executive pay in the United States. The second point is idle posturing that almost certainly will amount to little constructive change. The first has already sent the companies we bailed out scurrying to the exits of the TARP program and it will be a while before we see whether this is a healthy step, getting them off the dole, or an unhealthy one, with institutions hopping out of their hospital beds before they were fully cured. I also can't help but wonder if cutting executive pay is the best way to attract the kind of brains and efforts that will be needed to fix our busted banks.

Meanwhile, I have arrived in Singapore, home according to one count, of the 30 highest paid government officials in the world. And trust me, given the extraordinary success this city state has enjoyed, none of the people with whom I met today were complaining that those officials were overcompensated. This country wants the best minds in the government and recognizes that they have to pay to get them there otherwise they go work in the financial community, sell their souls and ultimately add to the overcrowding problem that is currently one of the biggest social issues facing Hell.

Come to think of it, the overcrowding in Hell probably plays directly into the hands of management down there. I know this because I was in Mumbai airport last night. And for all my enthusiasm for India, Mumbai airport, thronged with people as the late night flights prepare to depart, hot, fetid, and chaotic, would have had Beezelebub feeling right at home and Hieronymus Bosch reaching for his paint brush. In fact, I think I may actually have seen the Prince of Darkness himself there. He was manning a security line and he gave me such a thorough pat down that I think we are now engaged.

It would have been unbearable were it not for the staff of Singapore Airlines who met us, mere ticket holders albeit of premium tickets, at the door and whisked us through the crowds and ultimately onto the plane. And once on the plane, I knew exactly how Dante felt once he left Virgil behind and had reconnected after all those years with his old squeeze Beatrice. 

Suffice it to say that it does not appear that Singapore Airlines is even in the same business as American Airlines or United. From the meticulous, exceptionally well-appointed aircraft to a seemingly enthusiastic commitment to service, the airline that was one of the first of the businesses created by the Singapore government when it gained its independence in 1965, is achieving its strategic goal. It makes you want to travel through Singapore on every flight. Treat me like they did last night and I'd be happy to have a Singapore Airlines connection on my next flight to New York from DC. Especially when the only other option is travel on run down U.S. airlines whose flight attendants seem to have been trained under some footbridge somewhere by a particularly obnoxious family of trolls. 

Then you arrive at Singapore's Changi Airport and you are powerfully reminded that the excellence of the airline is not a fluke. This is the best airport in the world, spacious, efficient, and attractive. As such, it is the perfect preparation for Singapore itself, almost certainly the best run political entity on the planet. Admittedly, the country, led from the start by the man who is now known as its Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew, has practiced what I would characterize as constrained form of democracy but few places have ever so compellingly made the case that what is trade away in terms of the occasional citation for spitting gum on the sidewalk is more than made up for in a society that is prosperous (Asia's second richest), innovative, and safe.  

It is a government that has led the way by behaving in many ways like a corporation, taking ideas like competitiveness and strategic planning seriously. (At dinner tonight with a senior business executive who is one of the country's great entrepreneurial success stories, she said, "In the beginning, in Singapore, the state was the entrepreneur." And that was said with a genuine appreciation for all the state achieved in that role.) Even in the midst of a global recession it has been seen as not just responsive, but creatively responsive, promoting retraining of workers and focus on new growth industries. 

Part of the credit must go to its unique system of senior government official compensation. Ministers are paid via a formula: two thirds of the average of the eight highest salaries in six key professions (lawyer, accountant, banker, multinational executive, local manufacturer, and engineer). As a result in recent years the president and the prime minister have made in excess of $2 million a year in salary and other ministers in excess of $1 million. The result is that many of the best minds will be found in the government, zero corruption and terrific results. Want an example of the innovation? The president, prime minister, and ministers took an almost one-fifth pay cut this year because of the recession. What? Accountability among public officials? Real incentives? Imagine the loud "gak" you would get out of the U.S. government as they choked on those ideas. 

I could go on regarding the innovation here, and perhaps I will tomorrow, but while we're on the subject of incentives, one last thought. Yesterday, I noticed that in exchange for taking those 17 Uighur terrorists, Palau was getting $200 million from the U.S. government. That's $14 million or so per terrorist. And incentives being what they are, I immediately concluded that I want some of that terrorist action.

I will take 100 of them or however many they have left. 100 will fetch me $1.4 billion. With this I will spend maybe $200 million on a small island on which to house them (and my appropriately comfortable warden's compound). Maybe I could buy Devil's Island from the French space agency -- which apparently currently controls it -- for about that much. Then I would set aside another $200 million to care for the prisoners (at $50K per year for an average of 40 years each that would cover it). And I'll pocket the billion as my fee. Secretary of Defense Gates or his representatives can contact me at FP to work out the details.

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Developing further my Airport Theory of Foreign Relations, it is impossible not to marvel at the creativity and industry of the Indians. Arriving after an eight-and-one half-hour-long flight from that shopping mall from Hell also known as Heathrow Terminal Five, we raced into Mumbai for a meeting. Naturally, we were seething with hostility after bad treatment and flying here on what seemed to be the original Boeing 777. In fact, parts seemed to be made from balsa wood suggesting they had been salvaged from earlier aircraft... a de Havilland Jenny for example. 

At any rate, this is the kind of subtle undermining of international relations that our painfully inefficient and unpleasant system of connecting the globe produces. We were ready to be ugly Americans, well-prepared for the job both by circumstances and genetics. 

So, what is rapidly expanding India -- today's papers announced that the country expects to grow in this global economic annus horibilis at the breathtaking rate of 7 percent -- to do with visitors like us? Answer: build in a cool-down period (no mean feat when the temperature is over 90 and everyone is nervously awaiting the arrival of the monsoon season). Where? The highway from the airport. A trip that should take 40 minutes took almost two hours. It was an exceptionally effective buffer. By the time we got to the hotel I could barely muster a sneer at the reception lady when she told me my room wasn't ready. Of course, I'll admit I was subdued somewhat by the sight of the gutted remnants of the terrorist gutted Oberoi which we passed on the way in. (And also by the security we had to pass through just to enter the lobby of this hotel.)

Admittedly, thanks to a tube strike, the city from which we came, London, is also offering massive traffic jams from the airport. The problem is they are also offering massive traffic jams to the airport. And they don't have anything like 7 percent growth to explain the rapidly growing number of cars on the motorways. Nor, of course, do they have anything like the slums that line the route into downtown Mumbai...but I'll admit it, despite the gut-wrenching deprivation in which the slum-dwellers live, it is hard to not to look around at cranes on the horizon or the ubiquity of cell phones (a phone line for life costs $2) or to think of the recent successful elections in this complex country of a billion and not think that India has the wind at its back at the moment. That doesn't minimize the social challenges but it clearly gives a feeling of vitality and hope.

What a relief to be seeing the stories of Manmohan Singh's new government on the front page of the paper and not the stories from the front pages in my last stop noting the electoral success of the BNP, the racist, troglodyte British National Party. America elects an African American. Britain sends haters to the European Parliament. (What a relief that it is a useless organization.) Worse, the papers also noted similar recent right wing successes across Europe. For example the triumph of anti-gypsy nationalists in Hungary. Great to see Europe stepping up to meet the great challenges of our times with these creatures who have crawled out of the shallow end of the political cesspool. 

That said, I can't say that I am that heartened by the news my blackberry keeps sending me from home, either. Can it really be that America is either surprised or interested that Adam Lambert is gay? (Really? Really?!) Can a Washington Post columnist actually be praising Obama for boldly taking a stance against Holocaust deniers (what next, a bold defense of Copernicus?), even as he seems to be allowing the country of those deniers to creep its way into the nuclear club? (If you don't see the irony here, write in and I will draw you a picture.)

is actually going to help either? Chrysler's best minds left after their last merger with Daimler Benz. Fiat doesn't have one single leading international brand. Is it really credible that if one of the world's most successful auto companies (Daimler Benz) couldn't save Chrysler that a combination of one of the world's most mediocre (Fiat) and a bunch of government guys who don't know anything about cars plus some union members who helped screw things up in the first place are going to do it? 

Here in India, taxi drivers talk with palpable pride at the advent of the Tata Nano, a tiny car that is a source of great national pride. Business executives cite the ease with which they meet much higher average gasoline mileage targets than posed in the United States. I mean, I get it, this is a very poor country with a wide range of desperate needs (over 40 percent of Indians don't have access to electricity yet). But you've got to ask which way the trends are pushing us...and you also have to ask why the United States has not made a more urgent priority of dramatically strengthening relations with this country. Such a relationship could not be more central to containing the threat in Pakistan, counter-balancing China, promoting democracy and managing a whole host of global threats from climate to proliferation. To be perfectly honest, I think a lot more real and lasting (rather than symbolic and likely to be fleeting) good would be likely to come from President Obama making a trip to the land of Gandhi than his recent trip to the land of Mubarak and Nasser.

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