Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky opens his book The Case for Democracy with a revealing anecdote:

As my wife, Avital, was demonstrating outside a superpower summit in Geneva at the end of 1985, President Reagan, pointing at her, turned to Gorbachev and said: 'You keep saying that Sharansky is an American spy, but my people trust that woman.  And as long as you keep him and other political prisoners locked up, we will not be able to establish a relationship of trust.'"

Elsewhere in the book, Sharansky recalls the time during his imprisonment when he and his fellow prisoners learned that Reagan had called the Soviet Union an "evil empire":

Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's ‘provocation' quickly spread through the prison. The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth -- a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us."

Though there are manifest dissimilarities between the Soviet Union of the 1980s and Iran of today, Sharansky's memoir has some helpful insights for Iran's current crucible.  This week brings news that the Iranian Government will be elevating its uranium enrichment levels to 20 percent (along with their customary head-fake about possible conciliation). The regime's announcement is also a transparent, and likely futile, ploy to try to steal the initiative from the Green Movement as it prepares this week to mark the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution with large protests demanding democratic reform.

In at least 3 respects, the lessons from Sharansky and Reagan might be relevant here. First, it is a standard part of the playbook of dictatorial regimes to accuse their dissidents of being tools of the West. While Western governments need to act with prudence and be mindful of local conditions, the tiresome canard of being "American agents" should not deter principled support for human rights activists. Second, Reagan demonstrated that nuclear negotiations do not have to be separated from human rights, but can be linked together, particularly when both are connected to the legitimacy and trustworthiness of the regime. Third, Western support -- even just rhetorical support -- for dissidents can be encouraging and even game-changing in assuring them that they are not alone. Hence the joy among Sharansky's fellow inmates on learning of Reagan's words; hence the chants of Iranian protestors "Obama, Obama -- either with us, or with them!"   

As Jeff Gedmin and others have reported, the Green Movement itself is diverse and diffuse, with secular and religious elements, pro and anti-American elements, no clear position on the nuclear program, and no single leader. But that makes its resilience all the more noteworthy, and its demands more unifying: an accountable government that serves, rather than oppresses, its citizens.

So as this potentially historic week unfolds in Iran, here's an idea for the White House and State Department: how about turning a section of your official websites green on Feb. 11?  This would be a simple yet memorable way to add some spice to what will hopefully be official statements of support for the Green Movement from President Obama and Secretary Clinton. And it is a gesture that could quickly be replicated around the world, by other governments such as the U.K., France, and Germany, as well as by think-tanks, NGOs, and anyone else who wants to express solidarity with the cause of freedom in Iran. We at the Legatum Institute will be turning our website green. And to make sure that Iranian reformers know of such international support, the good folks at Radio Farda will be broadcasting, streaming, posting, and using all manner of multi-media to bypass Tehran's censorship and get the word out. 

The Obama administration's foreign policy has hit some rough patches as of late, and much of the international scene probably appears more forbidding than welcoming. Which is all the more reason to recapture momentum, show international moral leadership and launch a new "Green initiative" -- by displaying clear and creative support for the reform movement in Iran this week. 

Which is worse: getting mentioned in a comprehensive analysis of what is wrong with the Obama White house or not getting mentioned? I guess it depends on your level of seniority. But I am guessing that National Security Advisor Jim Jones is done no favors by going unmentioned in this Financial Times story.

The FT article claims that President Obama's tight-knit core leadership team, primarily drawn from the campaign and from old Chicago hands, is responsible for the tactical and strategic missteps that have dogged the first-year of the administration. I was drawn to the Financial Times story by Steve Clemons's discussion of it on his blog. Clemons has very good sources within the Democratic Party and is a generally reliable bellwether for the mood of establishment Democrats on foreign policy. By blogging about the FT article and adding dishy tidbits of his own (such as catching Valerie Jarrett bowing out of a public speaking engagement because of "urgent duties" back at the White House only to turn up a few minutes later at a different Washington watering hole), Clemons explicitly endorses the central thesis and calls on President Obama to shake up his staff. If the underlying FT article is truly based on "dozens of interviews," apparently none of which is favorable to the White House team, and if Steve Clemons (and the faction he represents) is piling on, then things are in a bad way.

That's the bigger story. But when I read the underlying FT article, my eye was drawn to a smaller story, one that Clemons does not comment upon: General Jones is not mentioned at all in the FT article, neither favorably nor unfavorably. The article discusses national security -- specifically, the White House team's travails during the Afghan Strategy Review, the botched effort to close Guantanamo Bay, and the big trip to China -- but does not discuss the national security advisor.

In fact, when the article lists the heavy hitters who are big losers because of the undue influence of the Chicago/campaign team, General Jones is not mentioned:

Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama's health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

And again, when the article avoids mentioning Jones in a longer list of key advisors:

Among the broader circle that Mr. Obama also consults are the self-effacing Peter Rouse, who was chief of staff to Tom Daschle in his time as Senate majority leader; Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff; the economics team led by Lawrence Summers and including Peter Orszag, budget director; Joe Biden, the vice-president; and Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser. But none is part of the inner circle.

By inference, the national security advisor is neither in the inner circle nor the outer circle. Where is he?

Anyone who has served in a White House will know that the reporting for stories such as these can be pretty sketchy. So Jones's absence could be less an indication of a breakdown in the role of the NSA and more an indication of a breakdown in the reporting (or editing) at the Financial Times. But if the article really does reflect the workings of the White House -- or at the very least, the informed view of insiders about the workings of the White House -- then General Jones's extremely low profile is really quite remarkable, and raises questions about whether the national security council staff (now known as the national security staff) is sufficiently empowered to fulfill its traditional role.

The U.S. federal budget released Monday was deflating, particularly for those who had seen our current president as a panacea. The budget is stark in its depiction of the fiscal challenge: unless we can hold deficits below a stabilizing threshold -- roughly 3 percent of GDP -- they threaten to spiral out of control.

Having set itself this challenge, the administration abjectly fails to meet it. The nadir of its deficit projections is 3.6 percent of GDP in 2018. After that, the upward spiral begins. The only hope the administration offers is a call for a deficit commission to put forward solutions that it was unable or unwilling to generate on its own.

This fiscal gloom was linked to foreign policy in a prominent piece by David Sanger in the New York Times. He expresses dismay at the long-term budget numbers and argues that this profligacy could erode American power in the world.

There is ample cause for alarm at the budget picture, in particular the administration's plans for extraordinary levels of spending. The question of what this will do to America's potency on the world stage is a bit more subtle.

It may help to put all the anticipated impairments into a more general framework. We can consider three potential sources of national power:

1. Economic and military capability. A strong economy allows a country to produce and pay for many things, among them a cutting-edge military force.

2. Leadership by example, or soft power. A country that seems to embody an attractive ideal will draw followers, in economic as well as cultural matters.

3. Relationships and leverage. There may be other reasons why one country has a special hold over another, such as a colonial history. I toss it in here because of the common suspicion that the creditor-debtor relationship might serve as a similar lever.

Read on

As we witnessed recently with the questioning of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair by the Chilcot inquiry, the debate over the war in Iraq is one that raises many issues and can be expected to continue for some time to come. But one issue, raised by my fellow FP blogger, Tom Ricks in a recent post, deserves some critical attention here: his contention that removing Saddam Hussein from power strengthened Iran by removing an Iraqi "bulwark" against Persian expansionism. 

Ricks' assertion is one that is oft-repeated but fundamentally mistaken. It is over-charitable to Saddam, who -- having invaded Kuwait, threatened Saudi Arabia, and harshly repressed Iraqis -- was no protector of his neighbors. And it is unfair to the current government of Iraq, which is not a client of Tehran's or passive in the face of Iranian bellicosity.

More importantly, however, the notion that our approach to regional security should be based on supporting a regime like Saddam's as a foil to Tehran should be rejected. We can pursue other more effective and more palatable means of countering Iran's threats, and indeed are pursuing them, as recent reporting in the Washington Post and elsewhere bears witness. In this regard, the Obama administration should hold firm on two important objectives. First, success in Iraq: one of the most potent blows to the Iranian regime, currently struggling against its own loss of legitimacy domestically, would be the emergence of a pluralistic and prosperous democracy in Shia-majority Iraq. Second, an unwavering policy of prevention toward Iran: that is, stressing that we remain determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, rather than resigned to their doing so and focused instead on future "containment."

In one respect, however, Ricks is correct -- the Iranian regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorism pose a threat to the entire region, and countries of the region would be wise to work cooperatively to counter this threat. One of the trickiest issues in the way of a sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace is security; to date, the perceived zero-sum tradeoff between Israeli security and Palestinian sovereignty has proven unmanageable. The convergence in recent decades of threat perceptions in the region offers the opportunity for mutually beneficial approaches to the security issue which should not be neglected. Looking forward, it is such regional cooperation that will form the real "bulwark" against emerging threats, whether from Iran, terrorist networks, or elsewhere.

The Defense Department today released the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, its Congressionally-mandated examination of defense programs and plans. The review is the latest milestone in Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates's campaign to focus the Defense Department on the need to win today's wars. As such, it is to be applauded. However, in concentrating on that goal, it too often shortchanges other challenges.

In its language, the 2010 QDR has clearly been Obamacized. It reads more like a corporate annual report than a strategy to guide the world's most powerful military, one that has been at war for most of the last decade. One is at pains, for example, to find in the document's 105 pages the word "win" (as in, "win the war in Afghanistan"). Indeed, the only instance of the word appears on p. 101, in the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's commentary of the document. Instead, U.S. forces are to "prevail in today's wars" by "ensur[ing] the success of our forces in the field" (p. 11). The United States is not characterized as the sole superpower, but rather "a leading security provider" (p. 26). 

In its substance, however, the document represents a basic continuity, not only with the 2008 National Defense Strategy, signed by Secretary of Defense Gates during the last year of the Bush administration, as well as his January 2009 Foreign Affairs article, but also the 2006 QDR, completed on Donald Rumsfeld's watch. That continuity is largely a good thing: the United States faces a set of enduring challenges, and rising to them will take dedicated effort over years. Apart from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global struggle against violent Islamist extremism, the United States faces regional rogues such as Iran and North Korea, regimes that possess or are seeking nuclear weapons. We must also contend with an increasingly powerful and bellicose China. 

In addressing these challenges, particularly that posed by Chinese military modernization, the QDR comes up short. The QDR is absolutely right when it states that the ability of the United States to project power underpins global stability, as it is right when it states that efforts to deny the United States access to key regions such as the Western Pacific would undermine our alliance relationships. However, it treats China's development of capabilities to do precisely that as more of a future hypothetical contingency than a pressing concern. Thus although the report contains concrete actions to win the wars we are currently fighting, its recommendations for dealing with Chinese military modernization largely consist of future studies and experiments.

The United States must win today's wars. As the world's sole superpower, however, it cannot afford to neglect other challenges.

The Obama administration's decision to sell a robust weapons package to Taiwan is a positive step, and may indicate a welcome course correction in the Obama administration's China policy and even its strategic posture in Asia. 

The first year of the administration's China policy was predicated on some assumptions that are now proving to be wrong, namely that conciliatory gestures by the U.S. would be reciprocated by China. This was not to be. Behind all of the murkiness of Beijing's decision-making lies a simple fact: The Chinese government will act in its own interests. So American steps such as downplaying human rights, elevating China's role in the G-20 by flirting with the "G-2" concept, agreeing to Chinese censorship of President Obama's Beijing visit, downgrading intelligence collection, and supplicating China to continue financing U.S. debt, brought little positive reciprocation from China.  In fact, the only measure that the United States took in the past year that displeased China was to slap tariffs on Chinese tires -- which in economic terms actually undermined U.S. interests. China, for its part, when not engaging in cyber-attacks on Google, offered little or no new steps of help on issues including North Korea's nuclear weapons, Iran's nuclear program, human rights, or even the Copenhagen climate summit. 

Meanwhile, relations between China and Taiwan are comparatively stable. So why might the US rock the sampan now with these arms sales? Precisely because maintaining Taiwan's capacity to defend itself is vital to maintaining the peaceful trajectory in China-Taiwan relations. If Taiwan is able to deter the potential Chinese use of force, than the only realistic option in the relationship will be peaceful coexistence built on growing economic ties and political rapprochement. Whereas if China's military modernization and expansion eclipses Taiwan's defense capabilities, China might find adventurism more enticing.

Read on

On the eve of Groundhog Day, it is worth asking whether President Obama's terrorism policy is facing six more weeks of bitter chill. Obama has been forced to backtrack on several signature initiatives -- the commitment to close Guantanamo by Jan. 19, 2010, the commitment to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan, and the hounding of Department of Justice lawyers from the Bush era over interrogation-related rulings -- and it has gotten so bad that over at Politico.com they are asking whether Obama's entire terrorism policy is unraveling. It does appear that the triangulation at the heart of Obama's terrorism policy is in trouble, but it is not yet clear what will replace it.

Since the earliest days of his administration, Obama has attempted a deft triangulation: he has rhetorically framed his terrorism policy as a bold departure from the Bush era, but he has kept the lion's share of the terrorism policy infrastructure that was operative under the second-term Bush administration. The "change" was dramatized with high-profile moves drenched in symbolism -- the promise to close Guantanamo, the promise to investigate "abuses" from the Bush era, the release of inflammatory material over the objections of his CIA director, or the insistence on talking about terrorism with the language of law enforcement rather than war. The "continuity" was played down with quiet steps, like using Bush era arguments against habeas corpus or defending military commissions, and less quiet steps like a robust Predator drone strike campaign.

The triangulation worked as long as the media played along, letting Obama's caricature of Bush era policies go unchallenged, rebutting the occasional critique from conservatives like Vice President Cheney by listing areas of continuity, and crediting the symbolic changes with all sorts of positive results like the improvement in global polling on America's reputation.

This triangulation survived the nicks of a number of self-inflicted wounds, most notably the early recognition that the Guantanamo promise had been naïve. But it does not look like it will survive the harsh klieg light attention paid to Obama's terrorism policy in the wake of the Underwear Bomber.

The triangulation depended on Obama having found the Goldilocks strategy -- keeping all the good parts of Bush policies and making changes that only improve, without undermining, those policies. Obama, in reversing course on so many issues, is now implicitly conceding that the counter-terrorism porridge he had been serving was most definitely not "just right."  Indeed, the evidence suggests the contrary -- that the promulgation of "treat terrorism as a law enforcement rather than a war problem" produced the very problems Cheney and others worried about.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden documents several vital errors.  First, the rush to Mirandize the Underwear Bomber, and the decision to do so without any input from responsible authorities, deprived officials of the chance to do a meaningful interrogation of the captured terrorist. Valuable and time-sensitive intelligence was lost, and is likely unrecoverable.  Second, the Obama administration had failed to stand up the new interrogation unit it claimed was needed to replace the "flawed" Bush approach,  and the Obama team had not even anticipated that the unit might be needed to interrogate terrorists caught on U.S. soil.

More remarkably, current NCTC Director Michael Leiter revealed in congressional testimony another vital error: in the days prior to the terrorist attack, the analysis units responsible for "connecting the dots" were distracted by the need to implement a 20 percent reduction-in-force -- cuts so deep that they would disrupt the effectiveness of any bureaucratic organization, at least temporarily.  The Obama administration has quietly rescinded those cuts and is instead beefing up the analytic capability, but not before the damage to triangulation politics has been done.

To my ear, the most telling indication of the collapse of the triangulation comes from the changed tone from congressional "moderates," centrist Democrats and Republicans who form the base for this Goldilocks approach. On the Democratic side, Senator Feinstein has been subtly but insistently messaging a wake-up call in the form of a warning that more terrorist attacks are in the offing.  On the Republican side, Senator Collins issued a blistering attack on Obama's terrorism policy.

If Obama has lost Feinstein and Collins, he has lost the political props of triangulation.  But the overall political damage to the president is not fatal for the simple reason that the national security damage done by the policies is not yet irreversible.  The administration has taken some good remedial steps, such as coming clean on the botched interrogation effort, rescinding the NCTC cuts, and changing the venue for the KSM trial.

Moreover, there is reason to hope that the Obama administration is now more focused on uncovering and preventing the next attack than in scoring partisan points with its witch hunts into Bush administration "missteps."

In this hopeful scenario, the Underwear Bomber is a "bing" moment enabling Obama to avoid the other Groundhog Day curse: repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Apparently, Americans are not the only ones losing affection for the Obama administration, if recent headlines on hemispheric relations are any indication.

Assorted pundits will no doubt argue that no president could hope to meet the grandiose expectations engendered by Barack Obama's campaign and election. And that would be true, but for the fact that those expectations in this case were raised by his own campaign operatives.  

To the extent that hemispheric relations received any attention in the campaign, the Obama team's themes were consistent: that President Bush had "ignored" the region, cared only about drugs and terrorism, and, most cutting, that he was a unilateralist! President Obama, in contrast, would rebuild our tattered relationships based on mutual respect and multilateralism and defuse tensions with Hugo Chavez and other radical populists.

As it turns out, if events continue on their present course, it might not be too long before many in the region start to see the Bush presidency as a golden era of engagement with the United States. It was only a quirk in the calendar that brought Obama to Trinidad in April 2009 for a Summit of the Americas; since then, not much consideration of the hemisphere, only a seat-of-the-pants response to the crisis in Honduras that impressed no one.

Of course, there is still time to right the listing USS Obama in the Western Hemisphere, but policymakers can't be happy about a looming showdown that threatens to once again embroil the administration in a contentious fight about hemispheric relations.

Read on