Jamie Metzl served on the National Security Council in the Clinton Administration and is Co-Chairman of Partnership for a Secure America and a former Executive Vice President of the Asia Society. This article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

NEW YORK — The compelling drama of former Chongqing Communist Party chief Bo Xilai’s ouster amid allegations of corruption and murder, and of blind Chinese human-rights advocate Chen Guangcheng’s dash to safety in the US Embassy in Beijing, are more than just fascinating narratives of venality and courage. Unless China can purge the thousands of corrupt Party leaders like Bo, and empower people – like those Chen represents – who have been left behind or harmed by rapid growth, its economy will increasingly suffer.

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Laurie Dundon is currently living in France and is a PSA Senior Fellow. To read more about her, click here.

A new President, Francois Hollande, was inaugurated in France this week and is already visiting the US just days after coming into office. Hollande rode into office on a slogan that “change is now”.  So what does that mean for the US?  America and France have been working collaboratively in the last years under President Sarkozy.  How will that change?

The short answer: not much. Although the US should expect some policy divergences at first and Hollande could come with a confrontational bravado this weekend — especially on Afghanistan — once President Hollande settles into office, expect more continuity than change.  Fundamentally, the US still has a partner in France.

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Thomas Miller is the previous Ambassador to Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Special Coordinator for Cyprus. He is also the current President/CEO of International Executive Service Corps, a non-profit that furnishes expertise to the developing world to train in best business practices. You can read more about his impressive career here.

The Greek Elections and the Future of Greece

Author: Ambassador Thomas Miller

As of now it looks virtually certain that Greeks will return to the polls on either June 10 or 17—just a few weeks after the last inconclusive election. On May 6, Greeks resoundingly turned out the two parties that had alternated power for nearly the last four decades when 70% of them voted for parties that rejected the austerity plan these two mainstream parties had signed with the European Union, IMF, and the European Central Bank (ECB).

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Today the European Union announced an escalation of their sanctions against Iran. According to the new guidelines, the 27 member nations will end any oil contracts with Iran by July 1^st and any assets held by the Iranian central bank within the EU will be frozen, with a limited exemption to continue legitimate trade. While this new oil embargo will go a long way in satisfying European public opinion, it is unlikely that it will have the desired effect on the Iranian regime and, most importantly, has huge potential to backfire.

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Gary Hart is a member of the PSA Advisory Board, president of Hart International, Ltd. and chairman of the American Security Project. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1975 until 1987. This article originally appeared in The Hill on January 18th, 2012 and can be found here.

As an American with more than average interest and experience in Russia, it is a mystery to me why, unlike virtually every other country on earth, U.S. policy has tended to be so dependent on the personal relationship between the respective leaders.

This was especially true of Presidents Clinton, with the late Boris Yeltsin, and George W. Bush, with then-President Vladimir Putin (“I looked the man in the eye.”). This mystery of Russian relations is not totally confined to U.S. leaders: Remember Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s famous report to President George H.W. Bush on Mikhail Gorbachev as “a man we can do business with.” A humorist might call it the vodka syndrome, except Clinton was never known as a drinker and, of course, the second President Bush had sworn off alcohol.

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PSA Advisory Board Member and former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, write about what a decline in American power could mean for the rest of the world – particularly China. The fall of the American hegemon could mean a slide into global chaos as quickly developing countries compete for global economic and strategic power. This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy and can be found here.

After America

Not so long ago, a high-ranking Chinese official, who obviously had concluded that America’s decline and China’s rise were both inevitable, noted in a burst of candor to a senior U.S. official: “But, please, let America not decline too quickly.” Although the inevitability of the Chinese leader’s expectation is still far from certain, he was right to be cautious when looking forward to America’s demise.

For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor — not even China. International uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes.

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Lee Hamilton is a Co-Chair of Partnership for a Secure America’s Advisory Board, Director for the Center of Congress at Indiana University, and also served in Congress for 34 years. This article originally appeared in the Taunton Daily Gazette and can be found here.

The failure of the congressional Supercommittee to reach an agreement on reducing the deficit was not just bad fiscal news. It was a significant failure of political leadership.

Not only did the committee move us one step closer to a genuine fiscal crisis, but also it put the dysfunction of Congress on full display. At a time of great economic stress, its members lost sight of what failure would cost the country in lost economic growth and foregone job creation. They did not fully appreciate that inaction ensures grave economic risks. Even worse, they sent a signal to the American people — who overwhelmingly wanted to believe that common ground is still possible in a divided age — that partisan politics is stronger than the national interest. Failure robbed Americans of hope at a time when they desperately needed some.

Where do we go from here? We did learn some important lessons from the Supercommittee’s many weeks of work.

An obvious one is how difficult it will be getting our fiscal house in order. The Supercommittee proved that deficit reduction is hard on the substance and even harder on the politics. The fact that its members could not salvage a formal agreement from their discussions, unlike special committees in the past, makes clear that it will take a supreme effort of political will to move the nation past this point. Though even in failure, the committee could have done much more to educate the American public on the hard choices necessary to get our fiscal house in order.
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Ms Albright is former US secretary of state and a member of PSA’s Advisory Board.  Mr. Kohut is president of the Pew Research Center.  The original editorial appeared in the Financial Times, you can find the article here.

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Graeme Bannerman is a PSA Board Member and scholar at the Middle East Institute, where his work focuses on US-Arab relations, regional security, the peace process, and the history of the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asserted recently that critics of the Libyan mission “have been proven wrong.” Now, with the death of dictator Muammar Qadhafi, the secretary’s view is supported by the overwhelming majority of Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

But this won’t be the first time that Washington may be proven wrong. Even conceding the unlikely outcome that the Libyans overcome their tribal, regional, and political differences to establish a democratic state, the long-term costs of U.S. involvement are likely to far outweigh the benefits.

Col Bryan Bearden, USAF, is an instructor of National Security, Joint Warfare and Leadership and Ethics at the Marine Corps War College.

The great debt-ceiling fight of 2011 produced partisan politics at its finest.  It also produced a congressional Super Committee tasked to identify $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by late 2011.  With this daunting task at hand, where does one think the Super Committee will go pursue budget cuts?   One answer is the U.S. government department that has a $680 billion budget.  Thus, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has his top captains scouring the department for cuts – anywhere.

Rather than addressing the Department of Defense (DOD) economic condition with relatively small budget cuts as it has done over the past several years, the DOD and the nation would better be served by going after first order assumptions.  Specifically, asking the hard question: Are the military Services really a joint force and, if so, can the DOD nix expensive duplication of the tools of warfare?  Can Secretary Panetta go beyond merely cutting programs that are deemed outdated or ineffective, and look deeper into the fundamental questions about Service core competencies, missions and responsibilities?

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