As I posted earlier, I have been in Singapore for a series of lectures and meetings with strategic studies specialists inside and outside of government, courtesy of the wonderful people at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. This was not my first visit to Southeast Asia, but it was my first (and hopefully not last) visit to Singapore.

I usually gain more from these exchanges than I give out, and that was the case this time. For folks who like to talk strategy -- and who like to sample extraordinary cuisines while doing so -- there is no place better than Singapore. Singapore is a tiny country, essentially a city-state, that punches well above its weight in international affairs both because of its record of economic success and because it takes seriously the need to think and act strategically. And, Singaporeans love to dine.

American visitors like myself get asked lots of tough questions and, since my visit coincided with the gruesome spectacle of the debt crisis, my answers often left me (and perhaps my audiences) second-guessing American power and purpose.

Still I had some takeaways:

Geostrategic tragedies happen when leaders hesitate to act and cling to beliefs in the face of all evidence. Prior to World War II, the British were confident that Singapore was an impregnable fortress, a "Gilbratar of the East." If the Japanese were foolhardy enough to attack it, the big guns on Singapore's hills would destroy the naval armada before it could reach the shore. And so they might have, if the Japanese had attacked from the sea. Instead, the Japanese launched an attack on the northern part of the Malaya peninsula and fought a bloody advance through the jungle in order to attack Singapore from Johore to the north, not, as the British expected, from the sea to the south. This strategic disaster unfolded over two months, so there was plenty of time for the British to adjust their defensive plans. But they didn't. Of course, the British also missed an opportunity perhaps to block the Japanese attack from the outset, if only the Brits had executed their planned preemptive raids to seize more advantageous terrain. But they didn't. And slowly, inexorably, the Japanese advanced until they trapped a very sizable British force in a tiny perimeter with limited water supplies. I kept asking myself as I visited those sites: are U.S. strategists clinging to mistaken beliefs that will come back to haunt us? Have we, through hesitation and uncertainty, ceded the initiative to forces that are not as complacent as we are?

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A news item from this weekend is that President Obama intends to nominate NSC Senior Director Michael McFaul to be the next ambassador to Russia. This is an inspired choice. McFaul will bring a compelling set of attributes to the position, including a deep knowledge of Russia, a close relationship with President Obama, experience in high levels of government and national security policy, and a longstanding commitment to democracy and human rights promotion. That last quality will be of particular importance, as Russia's grim and deteriorating record on democracy will be in the international spotlight with its presidential transition in 2012. "Transition" is a more accurate word than "election," as the question of Russia's next president will not be settled by Russian voters at the ballot box but rather by the opaque intra-Kremlin maneuverings between current President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. As Paul Bonicelli has pointed out, as a former and potentially future president, Putin's intentions and actions are more "neo-Czarist" than democratic, and his relationship with Medvedev will likely grow more and more strained.

In appointing McFaul, President Obama is also departing from recent precedent in bypassing the career Foreign Service for the position. Over the past three decades, all but one residents of Spaso House have been career foreign service officers. But the exception was a notable one: President Bush 41's bipartisan appointment of Democratic elder statesman Bob Strauss (namesake of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, where I'm honored to work), who ably represented the U.S. in Moscow during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the transition of the national identity back to "Russia."

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Imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying that if defense funding were reduced, seven hundred thousand people in Libya would die, and tens of millions elsewhere in the world. It would be considered fear-mongering of the most repulsive kind. In fact, it would be considered a threat to the integrity of our civilian-led military to  attempt such a blackmail of the Congress.

But that's exactly the approach USAID Director Rajiv Shah took last week testifying before the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee. He said that if proposed reductions to USAID's budget go into effect 70,000 children will die. He added that he considered that a very conservative estimate, and that among other effects, another 800,000 recipients of our international disaster assistance in Darfur would be at risk.

Shah testified that 30,000 deaths would come specifically from scaling back anti-malaria programs, 24,000 from lack of immunization, and 18,000 lack of skilled attendants at births. All this from cutting 16 percent of the Obama administration's international affairs budget request.  

Hard to say which is more offensive, Shah threatening Congress will have blood on its hands unless it continues to fund USAID programs, or the bureaucratic and cultural mindset that considers increased spending the only solution to a multivariate problem.

USAID was created as an entity separate from the State Department (and military assistance) in 1961, in order to remove from development assistance the taint of being provided in order to advance America's interests. USAID's official history rather unselfconsciously states that "It was thought that to renew support for foreign assistance at existing or higher levels, to address the widely known shortcomings of the previous assistance structure, and to achieve a new mandate for assistance to developing countries, the entire program had to be 'new.'"

The whiff of sanctimony pervades USAID still, which is part of why it is so unpopular on Capitol Hill, where elected representatives often find unpersuasive that the spending of their constituents money abroad should have no connection to our national interests.

Providing money through the Agency for International Development is by no means the only -- or even the most effective -- way to alleviate disease and poverty in the world. Case in point: funding for AID was dramatically cut in the 1990s, and yet that decade saw nearly a billion people lifted out of poverty by actual economic development. USAID's funding has been increased by 150 percent in the past decade -- most of that coming with the advocacy of a Republican president and his secretaries of state. 

There are many ways USAID could compensate for reduced government spending:

• USAID could build coalitions of like-minded governments to share the burden of funding.
• USAID could reach out into American society for private-sector partners to fund programs.
• USAID could use its power as a convener and facilitator of non-governmental organization involvement in programs.
• USAID could develop performance metrics that ensure it is using what money is available to greatest effect.
• USAID could prioritize its own activity to close down programs of lesser immediate importance.
• USAID could discontinue development projects in countries like China and Brazil that, as a result of their own economic development, are now providers of development assistance to others.

In fact, USAID's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review champions all these approaches. USAID just doesn't practice them.  

In recent weeks, civil unrest in much of the Middle East has reminded many Americans of the very uncertain world in which we live. Repressive regimes that appear stable one day can just as quickly be overthrown the next, altering the strategic landscape and impacting U.S. interests.

This is an important lesson for the members of the 112th Congress as they debate ways to reduce the United States' spiraling deficit. As the search for savings has begun, some members have gone after areas of the federal budget that have nothing to do with our fiscal woes to pay down the debt.

In recent months, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates faced pressure from the White House to find more savings in the defense budget despite being the one cabinet secretary who has already carried out multiple rounds of cost cutting. Republicans in Congress weren't much kinder. The House approved an FY11 continuing resolution late last week providing $15.9 billion less for the core defense budget than President Obama requested. The House's FY11 continuing resolution would also cut the FY11 international affairs budget by nearly 20 percent from FY10 levels. The debate shifts to the Senate when Congress returns from recess next week.

This pressure to cut international affairs and defense is coming not just from Congress, but also from several blue-ribbon commissions that recently produced deficit reduction recommendations.

As Secretary Gates observed after deficit commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson proposed $100 billion of cuts to the defense budget, these recommendations represent "math not strategy." Several task forces have combined a dire assessment of the impact of the financial crisis with questionable proposals about bringing troops home from overseas, closing embassies and consulates, and canceling weapons programs. The long-term implications of these proposals represent nothing less than a rethinking of the U.S. role in the world even though the commissions were ill-equipped to analyze the implications of their proposed cuts.

Defense and international affairs have ended up on the chopping block despite the fact that the 2010 midterms were not a referendum on U.S. foreign policy. In fact, even in the midst of two wars and continuing terrorist threats to the homeland, congressional campaigns were marked by very little discussion of national security. In a late October 2010 poll done by the Pew Research Center, only 12 percent of respondents said that the war in Afghanistan was the first or second issue most important to their vote, and only 9 percent cited terrorism.

As recent events in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East have shown, the United States will continue to face strategic challenges in the coming decades that will require significant diplomatic and military expenditures. For most Americans, the need to adequately fund the military, the country's most-respected institution, is clear. For conservatives looking to downsize government, the case for a robust international affairs budget may be less apparent.

In the post-9/11 era, funding via the U.S. State Department and affiliated agencies increasingly goes toward civilian missions in war zones. These programs are essential to our long-term success in front-line states such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. These targeted funds go toward U.S. efforts to support democracy and human rights abroad and help train and equip allied militaries around the world. Such security assistance is pivotal amid the increased threats of rogue states and terrorist organizations and allows an already overstretched U.S. military to focus on more immediate threats.

U.S. aid programs provide the United States with tools to counter emerging threats from weak and failing states. Often thought of solely as evidence of American goodwill and values, these programs are in fact key components in the battle against extremism, battling the conditions that often fuel anti-U.S. sentiment.

As President George W. Bush recently wrote in his memoirs, "After the attacks [of 9/11], it became clear to me that this was more than a mission of conscience. Our national security was tied directly to human suffering. Societies mired in poverty and disease foster hopelessness. And hopelessness leaves people ripe for recruitment by terrorists and extremists."

It is also important to remember that America only spends roughly 1.4 percent of the federal budget on international affairs. In polls, Americans routinely overestimate the amount spent on such programs, perhaps contributing to the temptation of lawmakers to look to such programs first when drawing up constrained budgets.

Like any part of the government, there are certainly wasteful programs and inefficiencies that should be targeted and eliminated, but the deficit is not going to be paid off by savings generated from gutting the international affairs budget.

Although the amount spent on defense is significantly larger, it too is not the source of our current fiscal predicament. Oddly, given the now frequent proposals in Washington to cut international affairs and defense, it is not apparent that the American public supports this agenda.

It was, in fact, outrage over the Obama administration's runaway domestic and entitlement spending that drove many voters to the polls last November. It is thus these areas of the federal budget that lawmakers should focus their attention on first. Targeting our military and diplomatic capabilities will only serve to put the country at greater risk.

The 112th Congress faces some tough choices about how to improve America's fiscal situation without sacrificing our standing in the world. Unfortunately, thus far, many have skirted over the strategic debate and jumped directly to the budget cutting. The United States' current economic woes are concerning, but abdicating the global responsibilities of the United States is not the solution.

In an incredible 36 hours of developments, Hosni Mubarak managed to wrong-foot just about everyone, ultimately himself. First he was resigning, then he wasn't, then he did. It appears, after all, that there was a coup.

But as the events unfolded, almost everyone, including bloggers like me, managed to get it wrong:

The Intelligence community. The beleaguered IC was already reeling from White House criticism about failing to predict events unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt. (This criticism is a bit unfair since I bet there were some warnings -- given the volume of intelligence products and the way they are written, virtually everything has been predicted as "possible." Moreover, it is clear that those with vastly better intelligence and sources on Egypt than anything the IC ever could hope to amass, the Mubarak regime itself, were also surprised by the flow of events.) Then came the gaffe by Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the "largely secular" Muslim Brotherhood, a statement his staff was obliged to walk back later in the day. And the topper was CIA Director Panetta's admission that his forward-leaning prediction yesterday about Mubarak's departure was based not on intelligence analysis but on television reports. This is an almost textbook case of the CNN effect.

The White House. President Obama and his team clearly expected Mubarak to step down yesterday and gave every appearance of being flummoxed when he didn't. Now that he has, perhaps they will generate a ticktock account that shows a steely command marked by grace under pressure. Some of their most ardent supporters, however, already have spoiled that narrative -- witness Steve Clemons, "The mystique of America's superpower status has been shattered." His critique is surely exaggerated; has any other external power been more relevant to the crisis than the United States? Whoever is number two is a very, very distant number two. But the mystique of smart diplomacy might have taken a hit, and there are serious questions to be asked about the utility of Obama's soft power. 

Bloggers and all the other rapid-response pundits. Including, of course, me. Blogging is to crises what radio play-by-play is to basketball. It is always a step or two behind, usually relating the obvious and (hopefully) never driving the outcome. It rather reminds me of the old joke from the national security policymaking world that many memos deserve to be classified, "Burn Before Reading."

Of course, in the end, the person most wrong-footed is Mubarak himself. He lost the chance to leave graciously. He is leaving, but it has much more the feel of the Oscar winner still talking into the microphone despite the orchestra drowning him out today than it would have even yesterday.

Of greater importance is the possibility that he wrong-footed his own successors. As I noted yesterday, the departure of Mubarak is actually the easiest part of mollifying the protesters. Their deeper demands for democratic reform, good governance, and greater economic opportunity for all are far more difficult to engineer. If the regime has this much trouble managing the easy part, what does this say about their prospects for managing the harder parts?

It is right and natural that we devote a great deal of time deliberating about the foreign policy and other implications of the events unfolding in Egypt. For Egypt, these events constitute a national crisis; for the United States, a foreign-policy crisis. But for many individuals, these events also represent a personal crisis. These include first and foremost Egyptians themselves, of course, who amid jubilation and trepidation about the future of their country must also grapple with rapidly rising food prices, various shortages, looting, and a complete standstill in tourist spending. But the crisis has also affected Americans who live and work in Egypt or tourists who have found themselves unexpectedly stranded there.

While we debate the intentions of President Mubarak, the attitude of the military, and the likely place of various groups and figures in a successor government, many in Cairo worry about
sounds of gunfire outside their windows and reports of looters in their neighborhoods. Their friends and relatives inside and outside Egypt struggle to get information on their safety and whereabouts, frustrated by the interruption of email, mobile phones, and other means of communication.

Looking after the welfare of Americans abroad -- particularly during a crisis -- is one of the core missions of the State Department and a foremost responsibility of U.S. diplomats stationed overseas. U.S. diplomats are rarely noticed, much less celebrated, but their service and sacrifices deserve the American people's recognition.

When a crisis such as this erupts, the local U.S. Embassy will scramble to understand and report to Washington on events and offer its advice on U.S. policy. But it will also initiate a massive effort to account for and care for American citizens, both those who wish to leave and those who remain behind. Right now at the Cairo airport, our Foreign Service officers and other U.S. personnel are putting in days-long shifts to assist Americans who want to leave Egypt. The same officers who are responding to Washington's demands for analysis of opposition figures and the latest reports on protests in Tahrir Square are also comforting weary travelers, serving them food and water, and packing them on to evacuation flights.

Among those the officers have seen off are their own families, whom the State Department yesterday ordered to depart Egypt. The farewells are hasty -- families must leave quickly once the order is given -- and sometimes do not take place at all if the employee is needed elsewhere. The families do not know when they will be able to return, if at all, and must make accommodations for housing and schools on the fly. When their families are long gone, the officers stay on to perform vital work to advance U.S. national security.

The experience of the officers in Cairo is hardly unique -- many diplomats are stationed at embassies and consulates overseas where conditions do not permit their families to
accompany them. Alongside other civilians and of course members of the military, they make daily sacrifices to serve their country. Few Americans are actually aware of what they do, and fewer still will ever have need to call upon their help. But they are there when Americans require, and for Americans stranded in Egypt, that is a deep relief.

In kayaking, you can choose one of two types of stability, but you cannot have both. A flat-bottomed kayak has high "initial stability" -- it appears to ride smoothly in the water, with little rocking back and forth. But it has low "final stability" -- in rough seas, it tends to quickly and catastrophically capsize. An angled-bottom kayak is just the opposite. With low initial stability, it takes more effort to guide and is prone to constant shifts from side to side. But these kayaks are faster and more efficient, and their high final stability means that they remain upright in stormy seas, and can recover even when turned nearly upside down.

Things are not so different with democracies and dictatorships. Democracy is messy -- look at the United States, where in the last five years alone we have experienced swings from right to left and back again, and where political discourse can often be raucous. Dictatorships, on the other hand, often possess a superficial stability -- until they reach the tipping point, which often comes more quickly than expected. Such was the case in Tunisia, which seemed an oasis of calm until a small spark quickly grew to consume the longstanding rule of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Dictatorships lack the self-righting mechanisms and institutions which provide democracies with their deep stability. Free expression, free assembly, multiple and accountable political parties, free and fair elections, and independent courts -- all of these form the vital structure of a democracy and provide an outlet for people's grievances. In a dictatorship, people are denied these outlets and anger simmers beneath the surface, occasionally bursting through society's calm veneer in violent fashion.

These two broad categories -- democracies and dictatorships -- are of course an oversimplification. In reality there is a full spectrum of political and civil liberties along which countries fall. Egypt is not Tunisia. But it is perhaps not so far off. Freedom House gave Tunisia its worst score for political rights, and Egypt scored just one point better. In the civil rights category, the countries received the same score. In understanding the contrasting U.S. and international response to unrest in Tunisia and Egypt, perhaps the most relevant difference between the two is not culture or politics, but the strategic importance of each to the United States.

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The State of the Union speech was almost completely about domestic policy. By my count, roughly 1/7th of the address (about 1000 words in a 7000 word speech) was devoted to foreign policy and national security, the bailiwick of this blog. Perhaps this proportion reflects the mood of the country, or the medium of the platform, or the mode of this administration. However, it is a noteworthy proportion for a president who mentioned national security in his inaugural address before raising any domestic policy issue -- and did so rather dramatically with the words, "Our nation is at war.…"

Last night, President Obama did mention the war, or rather the wars. He described the Iraq war as "coming to an end" and, while he did claim that our troops were leaving "with their heads held high," that was about as far as he was willing to go in terms of claiming success or failure. It was a far cry from the triumphalist rhetoric of Vice President Biden, by comparison. Obama mentioned a "lasting partnership with the Iraqi people," but he placed that squarely with "our civilians," thus avoiding mention of the critical role the U.S. military will play over the next decade in helping train and maintain Iraqi security forces.

Obama's mention of the broader war on terror was brief but otherwise Bushian, combining the kinetic ("we have taken the fight to al Qaeda and their allies") with the police work ("Thanks to our intelligence and law enforcement professionals…") with the war of ideas ("…the conviction that American Muslims are a part of our family.") Left unaddressed is the ongoing controversy over the Obama administration's embrace of the lion's share of the Bush war on terror policies circa 2007.

There were a few optimistic notes about Afghanistan and Pakistan that were doubtless discordant in the ears of the growing number of Americans, especially within the chattering class and most especially among the president's political base, who believe that the mission there is doomed. The confusion over the long-range strategy for Afghanistan was left unaddressed -- the briefest possible mention to the infamous July 2011 deadline and no mention whatsoever of U.S. commitments during the critical period from July 2011 to 2014. I suspect that one year from now domestic politics will demand that the 2012 State of the Union address spend a bit more time elaborating on all of this.

The rest of the foreign-policy references were noteworthy for their focus on the past rather than the present or future. For the most part, they were a series of pats on the back for things done -- New START passed, new Iranian sanctions imposed, new NATO strategic document unveiled, and so on -- rather than a bold vision for how to address the challenges that remain.

President Obama did address the foreign-policy topic of the hour, the popular unrest in the Arab world, but with only the blandest of references to Tunisia and no mention whatsoever of the far more ominous rumblings in Egypt and Lebanon. My objection is not with what the president said ("The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people") but with what the president did not say, as in "What this means for Egypt is.…," or "So in Lebanon we must.…" Undoubtedly, the president's advisors decided that given the delicacy of rapidly fluid environment, the less said the better.

From my parochial point of view, the president's best national security-related reference was his call to open up all U.S. campuses to military recruiters and to ROTC. This is an issue that has true bipartisan support and is long overdue. It is also an issue on which President Obama has unique influence, given that the target audience -- university administrators -- is likely one of the more ardent factions in the president's political base.

Otherwise, the speech offered little grist for a foreign-policy mill. It was not much of a harbinger of how the president and his team will handle the myriad foreign-policy challenges they face. Yet I am confident that President Obama will spend far more than 1/7th of the remainder of his current term on foreign policy, so Shadow Government folks will have plenty to address in the coming months even if there was not much for us last night.

That's what the new Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wants to know. In a letter to the State Department last week, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) expressed her grave concern over reports that the administration was trying to pressure the Honduran government to absolve disgraced former President Manuel Zelaya of his crimes that precipitated the 2009 presidential crisis there.

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen wrote, "It is troubling to consider that the importance of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Honduras would be undermined by attempts to coerce the Honduran government to take steps that run counter to its legal and constitutional processes in order to pave the way for Manuel Zelaya to return to Honduras without facing judicial consequences." She called on the administration to "immediately cease any efforts being taken to undercut the judicial system in Honduras by pressuring the current government to absolve Zelaya of his crimes."

Indeed, absolving Zelaya of his crimes would open the door to his return to Honduras, which appears to be the new administration policy on Honduras. In little-noticed remarks in a December 2010 trip to Tegucigalpa, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela said that, "national reconciliation will advance further when Honduras is able to resolve the issue of the return of former President Zelaya so that the country can regain its place in the [Organization of American States]."

Yet advocating for Zelaya's return is nothing short of reckless, resulting most assuredly in a return to rule of the mob and anarchy. Since his removal from power, the oligarch-turned radical-populist has shown no contrition for his abuses of power and disrespect for the country's constitution. He has continued to wave the bloody shirt while in exile in the Dominican Republic. His actions then and now demonstrate he cares not a whit about endangering Honduran lives in the service of his political agenda.

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Nothing sums up the sorry state of U.S. policy toward Kyrgyzstan than these contrasting images from last week:  at the same time that thousands of Kyrgyz were taking to the streets protesting against their corrupt authoritarian leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Bakiyev's son, Maksim, was arriving in Washington for consultations with U.S. officials. While Kyrgyzstan literally was burning, U.S. officials were prepared for business-as-usual talks with Maksim, who, like his father, has been accused of engaging in massive corruption and human rights abuses. More than 80 people were killed in last week's violence.

For several years, U.S. policy toward Kyrgyzstan has focused almost exclusively on keeping open its military airbase at Manas, through which 50,000 troops passed on their way to and from Afghanistan last month. Bakiyev early last year threatened to close the facility while on a visit to Moscow, which offered $2 billion as an inducement for him to kick the Americans out. But Bakiyev doublecrossed Moscow by agreeing to keep Manas open after the United States agreed to triple the rent it paid from $18 million annually to $60 million and promised another $100 million in aid, including a recently-announced counter-terrorism center.   

To those in the Kyrgyz opposition, it seemed the United States was willing to pay Bakiyev virtually any price, including looking the other way from a markedly deteriorating human rights situation, as long as Manas stayed open. Defending against such criticism, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley argued, "We've been very clear in our concerns about the government, its abuses, its corruption." The reality, however, at least in public, is very different. 

There are only two statements that can be found over the past few months in which the U.S. has spoken out about the problems in Kyrgyzstan: a January 21 statement from the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna about the murder of a Kyrgyz journalist (which occurred a month before), and the State Department's annual Human Rights Report, released last month and which covers every country around the globe. The U.S. Embassy in Bishkek lists no public statements of concern on its website this year. 

Striking in the Human Rights Report is admission that last July's Kyrgyz presidential election, which triggered much of the opposition's fervor, "failed to meet many of the country's international commitments" and was "marred by significant obstacles for opposition parties, intimidation, voting irregularities, and the use of government resources to benefit specific political interests." Such an assessment raises doubts as to whether Bakiyev was the democratically-elected leader of the country in the first place. 

During a recent visit to Central Asia, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voiced concerns about the poor human rights situation in the region. In a speech to the Kyrgyz parliament on Saturday, four days before the situation exploded, Ban said, "For the United Nations, the protection of human rights is a bedrock principle if a country is to prosper.  Recent events have been troubling, including the past few days. I repeat: all human rights must be protected, including free speech and freedom of the media."

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By David J. Kramer

(Editors' Note: David J. Kramer headed the International Republican Institute's election observer delegation to Honduras. He writes here in a personal capacity.) 

Last week was a very good week for the people of Honduras. On Sunday Nov. 29, Hondurans went to the polls to choose their next president in an election that passed the "free and fair" test of observers on the ground (myself included). Three days later on Dec. 2, Honduran legislators rejected a return to the past, defeating a motion to restore the ousted and disgraced leader, Manuel Zelaya, for the remaining two months of his term.

Hondurans are clearly looking to the future -- the question is whether the international community, including the United States, will do the same. 

Earlier this week the mood in Tegucigalpa, the capital, was celebratory. The sight of many young Hondurans participating in the political process bodes well for the country's future. Despite exaggerated reports of widespread violence and bombings in the days leading up to election day, the voting went off peacefully, with few problems save for some late openings of polling stations and technical glitches for phoning in results to the central election commission. The campaign was not perfect, with short-term emergency measures that briefly limited political space, but these measures were lifted in enough time to allow for a lively competition for voters' support. 

The international group of observers with whom I worked heard few complaints before, during, and after the vote. On the contrary, many Hondurans voiced sincere appreciation for our willingness to monitor the election and satisfaction that their country was putting the Zelaya controversy in the past.

The Nov. 29 election was scheduled last year, long before the summer's commotion involving Zelaya. Primary elections in November 2008 produced the two main party candidates, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo and Elvin Santos. Lobo, head of the National Party, won in a landslide by some 15 percent of the vote, a victory acknowledged by Santos, his main challenger from the Liberal Party. Zelaya is also from the Liberal Party, and the fact that Santos decided to participate in the election is a sign that even within his own party, Zelaya is a spent force.

Zelaya's calls for Hondurans to stay away from the polls were largely ignored. And Honduran legislators put the final nail in his coffin when they upheld his June removal from office, carried out by the military upon orders from the Honduran Supreme Court, because Zelaya was engaging in unconstitutional efforts to extend his stay in power. Despite the legal basis for his removal (the military's decision to deport him to Costa Rica could have been handled better), the international community, the Obama administration included, quickly condemned these developments and suspended assistance, calling for Zelaya's return to power.

Whereas the majority of Hondurans saw the election as a proper way forward, the Organization of American States (OAS) and countries such as Brazil and Venezuela chose to boycott it out of allegiance to Zelaya.  Recognizing the elections, they maintained, would legitimize what they deemed to have been a coup d'etat. 

After condemning what it called "a coup" against Zelaya in the summer and trying to iron out a compromise agreement that would return him to office, the Obama administration eventually realized that the election would take place whether Washington approved or not. Accordingly, the State Department requested the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute to assess the election process.  At the same time, Department officials continued to call for Zelaya's restoration so that he could finish out his term in office, but Honduras's National Congress rebuffed the U.S. administration's entreaties by voting against reinstating Zelaya.

The day after the election, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela, in a rambling press briefing, refused to recognize the results of the elections and called for Zelaya to be returned to power. Appearing before the press again the day after the Honduran Congress rejected that possibility, Valenzuela voiced disappointment with the decision, but signaled that the United States was finally getting the message: Hondurans were looking forward, not to the recent past. 

The United States and other countries, as well as the OAS, should lift their suspensions of assistance to Honduras, the poorest country in Central America, and recognize that the citizens of that country followed a democratic process in choosing a new president. The Honduran Congress also took its responsibility seriously in voting on whether to reinstate Zelaya. Those who boycotted the Nov. 29 election missed an impressive display of civic duty by Hondurans determined to exercise their democratic rights. Now, it is time the international community united behind the people of Honduras and their new leaders. 

ELMER MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images

By Jean M. Geran

This past week marked yet another of 2009's 20th anniversaries highlighting the challenges we face to protect the world's afflicted. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), passed in 1989, has now been ratified by 193 countries -- except the United States and Somalia. Its 20th anniversary prompted the usual round of calls on the United States to ratify it, but ratification would not necessarily improve the lives of the world's children. The Obama administration says it is reviewing the CRC, but the reality is that like some other human rights treaties, the technicalities of U.S. law and problems with some aspects of the CRC make ratification anytime soon unlikely.

Vulnerable children are a common denominator in many foreign policy challenges today -- whether an orphan who needs to be adopted, a child soldier or trafficking victim who needs to be reunited, an unaccompanied minor refugee who needs to go home, or a poor child whose family needs support to stay together. Instead of the CRC, a far more productive focus for child advocates would be to urge Secretary Clinton to fix the broken U.S. policy and aid apparatus on global children's issues. A good start would be to designate someone at the State Department, ambassador-level or higher, to coordinate all child protection issues across the U.S. government. 

International children's issues currently fall afoul of the U.S. government's dysfunctional foreign aid system. There is bipartisan consensus that the system is broken. Secretary Rice attempted foreign assistance reform through transformational diplomacy, and the Obama administration has its State-led Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and pending legislation on the Hill. But I doubt change is imminent. For the foreseeable future, gaps will remain in culture, approach, and purpose between State, USAID, and other U.S. agencies with international programs -- and vulnerable children around the world will continue to fall through the cracks.

Every child's right to a family, their best protection against abuse, is enshrined in the CRC. But protecting that right requires finding permanent solutions for each orphan, abandoned or separated child. From a U.S. policy perspective, responsibility for each category of children as well as the solutions available to them are spread across numerous offices and departments from State, to USAID, to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and others. The divisions run wide and deep, but the issue where American foreign policy interests come together around children -- or more often collide -- is over inter-country adoption.   

Americans adopt more children from abroad than any other nation and international adoptions have more than doubled since 1989. Adoption is not right for every child without a family nor is it the full solution to the orphan crisis brought on by HIV/AIDS. But for many needy children adoption is the only way to have a permanent family. Yet adoptions must be done right. Unfortunately, weak laws and regulations in developing countries, preferences for infants over older children, and the money involved can lead to inappropriate adoptions and, in extreme cases, baby selling. Such problems have forced the State Department's Office of Children's Issues to stop adoptions from specific countries like Cambodia and Guatemala until officials could ensure that they were legitimate -- a necessary but tragic outcome for families and children caught in the pipeline. 

As a member of the Policy Planning Staff under Secretary Rice, I developed an initiative that would have improved interagency coordination and created bilateral partnerships and a trust fund at UNICEF to help countries strengthen their own child protection systems. Though there was wide support including from the Secretary herself, the initiative was derailed by petty turf issues, scarce resources and resistance to new approaches -- all common bureaucratic dysfunctions. Opposition to international adoption also played a role. A USAID officer told me that he maintains a firm wall between international adoptions and any assistance he oversees for orphans to keep it from being "tainted." The problem is that the same authorities in developing countries in charge of adoptions are also in charge of other vulnerable children. The bureaucratic wall helps no one -- not the abandoned child languishing in an institution even though a family is willing to adopt him or the government official trying to stop bad adoptions and place children safely into families in her own country. It needs to come down. 

It will take a mandate from the top to push the bureaucracy past these problems and Secretary Clinton is perfectly placed to direct it. As a former Senator and long-time child advocate, she knows of the strong bipartisan support in Congress for adoption and orphan issues. The secretary can task someone on her staff, possibly an existing assistant secretary, with the mandate to implement a comprehensive strategy to protect children globally. An "ambassador for children" could chair a senior policy coordinating group to include HHS and others to oversee strategic diplomacy, technical assistance, exchanges, and public-private partnerships to help developing countries improve child protection systems and provide better oversight of all adoptions. An effective coordinating mechanism could unlock significant resources from Congress, the private sector, faith-based groups, and other international partners.  

Assisting countries that want to improve their own governance is the best way to reduce the abuse, exploitation and neglect of orphans and vulnerable children anywhere. It doesn't require ratifying a new treaty, just some leadership and more effective cooperation.

JAY DIRECTO/AFP/Getty Images

By Peter D. Feaver

An intriguing article in today's New York Times addresses a favorite Beltway party game: Where is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on important policies? This game, which was temporarily suspended for a weekend so insiders could play another game ("What is the best Nobel Peace Prize joke you have heard?"), really matters and, if the NYT piece can be believed, it may prove dispositive in determining President Obama's Afghanistan decision.

Secretary Clinton has largely sailed under the radar and contented herself with high-profile actions on low-profile issues like trips focusing on women in Africa and efforts to promote peace in Northern Ireland. She has won some oddly effusive plaudits, but few people not directly on her payroll would credit her as a driving force in President Obama's foreign policy thus far.  Indeed, the pattern has been unmistakable: The more important the issue, the less prominent the activity and voice of Secretary Clinton.

The thesis of today's NYT story is that this pattern may obscure her real influence. Secretary Clinton's power may come by way of serving as an amen corner for Secretary Gates, the most powerful member of President Obama's cabinet. By endorsing Gates's view on Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and other issues, Secretary Clinton guarantees that the issue will not be framed internally as an us vs. him issue, where the "us" is Team Obama and the "him" is the holdover appointee from the Bush administration. She has thus played a crucial role in forging the most important, if most often misunderstood (cf. the curious convergence of views between former Vice President Dick Cheney and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee) fact about President Obama's national security policy thus far: its dramatic continuity with President Bush's national-security policy.

Ironically, however, that continuity may have played out its course.  As the NYT story also suggests, Clinton and Gates appear to be teaming up to do something that Bush did not do: Stick with an incremental policy rather than embrace a surge. The reporters seem confident that Clinton and Gates favor a middle course between Biden's abrupt shift in mission and McChrystal's Iraq-like (Bush-like) surge in military and civilian resources.

Even without Clinton and Gates recommending it, most observers probably would bet that President Obama is going to split the difference in this fashion. The politics of the Afghanistan decision are such that a split-the-difference option is almost inescapable. Having the two most important cabinet principals endorsing it would make it virtually a foregone conclusion.

It would also do one more thing, which thus far has not happened: It would put Secretary Clinton's imprimatur on an important policy. The war in Afghanistan has already become President Obama's war. If he adopts Secretary Clinton's recommendation, it will also become her war. What comes of that war may well determine a key part of how history rates both of these political leaders in the foreign-policy arena.

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By Christian Brose

Going back to that Foreign Policy Initiative conference I mentioned earlier, I was particularly intrigued by the discussion of democracy promotion between Ken Wollack (president of the National Democratic Institute) and Elliott Abrams (formerly Bush's deputy national security advisor, now with the Council on Foreign Relations). Not surprisingly, they spent most of their time on whether the United States should promote democracy and less time on how to do it. But in the current debate, the two seem pretty linked: After the Bush administration, many people think we don't know how to promote democracy and thus question whether we should do it.

It's a tricky question. After all, democracy is not like, say, disease, where one output (medicine) is likely to achieve the desired outcome (health). There are so many contingent factors that go into democratization, and it's not clear which of these factors -- economic development, a rising middle class, anti-corruption programs, improvements in basic security and rule of law, outside support for democracy activists, external pressure on autocratic governments to reform, free elections, among other factors -- gets a country to democracy. And that's to say nothing about what influence and role an external actor like the United States can have on another country's democratization.

So how exactly do we promote democracy? I put this question to Elliott Abrams, and here is his response:

The United States is not without useful experience in helping foreign democracy activists, and helping governments that are trying to democratize. Some of the expertise resides in the National Endowment for Democracies and the two party institutes, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. Some resides in Foreign Service personnel who have served in posts where this was a major issue, and have seen what works and what does not. So the first part of an answer is to involve people who have worked on this on the ground, pragmatically. 

Sounds simple. But the State Department does not greatly value such expertise; it is most often not very "career-enhancing" because it often involves tangling with your ambassador or deputy chief of mission, your USAID mission director, and the local government. State most often pursues smooth relations with other countries, and pushing for democracy through backing local dissidents is not the path to that over-valued goal. We need less to discover, from scratch, what works, than to harness the knowledge that exists in various corners of the U.S. government. The failure to do this -- for example, at the Foreign Service Institute -- and teach it to Foreign Service  officers is scandalous.

It is hard to generalize about what does work. Societies are not like bodies, to use your analogy -- all fundamentally alike. In some situations, free elections are the best path forward, and our role is mostly pressure and activism to guarantee the integrity of elections. In other cases, there will not soon be elections, and all we can do is try to protect dissidents -- by meeting them, championing them, visiting them in prison, helping their families, advertising their situation. I do believe, as President Bush did, that elections are often transforming events (not least if they are stolen!) and should not be delayed until all conditions are ideal -- the sequentialist view. But there is no playbook that works in all situations; there is only the accrued experiences of success and failure. 

I would say that always and everywhere we should make our position clear, backing peaceful democracy activists (as Bush said in his Prague speech). I reject the view that we need to be silent about abuses, or very quiet about them -- the view that seemed widespread in the Obama Administration as it reacted to Iran after the June elections. Our comments about stolen elections, or the safety of jailed activists, or the trials of dissidents, are always helpful.