The new FISA Amendments Act of 2008 is not only an affront to privacy, it is a symptom of the leadership deficit currently afflicting the U.S. Congress. The bill, which passed the House last week by a landslide, makes two drastic changes to our current surveillance laws:

1. First, the bill generously grants telecommunications companies a broad immunity against financial and criminal liability for helping the U.S. government spy on domestic communications without a warrant or probable cause. There’s only one string attached: Telcoms must show that the government asked them to spy on Americans. Translation: Telcoms will get off the hook as long as they can rustle up some evidence that the government actually asked them to violate the law.

2. Second, if the bill is passed by the Senate, citizens will have no effective right to privacy in electronic communications because the government will always be able to claim that calls were intercepted in order to ward off a terrorist threat. Translation: As long as the “target” of the surveillance is reasonably believed by the government to be abroad, under this bill the NSA can intercept communications between that target and U.S. citizens without any form of judicial oversight whatsoever.

(Keep in mind that this second change is less extreme than some critics of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (“New Act”) acknowledge. Under the New Act, it is true that a traditional FISA warrant is not required to spy on a foreign person located abroad - even if that individual is communicating with a U.S. citizen. However, a judicial finding of probable cause will still be required to target an American person located abroad, regardless of whether interception occurs within or outside U.S. borders. This means that the New Act (i) expands the governments ability to (indirectly) spy on U.S. citizens if it can reasonably claim that the true target of the surveillance in question is a foreign party located abroad but (ii) actually restricts the government’s ability to target Americans that happen to be living or working overseas.)

What makes these changes so extreme? Consider our current surveillance regime. Whenever the U.S. government wants to intercept communications (thought to be) between a domestic source and a foreign intelligence agent outside the United States, it can petition the Foreign Intelligence Security Court (“FISC”) for a FISA warrant - either prior to implementing a wiretap or after the fact. FISC evaluates these warrant applications in a non-adversarial, secret forum, and the federal government is therefore ordinarily the only party to the proceeding. In the event of a national security emergency, the Attorney General is able to authorize electronic surveillance and then seek ex post approval from FISC. Such approval is rarely withheld. Take 2004 for example. In that year, 99% of FISA warrants were approved.

Thus, the current FISA regime provides the federal government with (a) a secret forum (b) in which it is ordinarily the only party to the proceeding (c) that can be used to retroactively endorse wiretapping at the discretion of the Attorney General. What this means in practice is that the National Security Agency (“NSA”) believes that monitoring international communications is critical to national security, it can already do so. Even if the NSA acts without first getting a FISA warrant, one can easily be obtained after surveillance has commenced.

What’s more, FISA warrants are often not required by law. For example, if the U.S. government wants to perform “vacuum cleaner” surveillance to intercept all wire communications mentioning the word ‘terrorism,’ FISA will not stand in the way, provided that the surveillance only targets the word ‘terrorism’ and does not specifically target a particular person located in the United States. FISA also places no restrictions at all on capturing wire and radio communications between two (or more) parties located outside the United States. Finally, FISA allows the government to intercept communications between foreign individual and persons located in the U.S. provided that the interception occurs on foreign soil. In a nutshell, FISA requires judicial oversight for (1) capturing domestic-to-domestic communications and (2) intercepting data within the United States that is being transmitted by a party clearly located within the U.S. to someone located outside U.S. borders.

If the old FISA was so flexible, why change it? Lay supporters of the bill may genuinely think that we really need a new surveillance infrastructure to effectively capture terrorist communications. As Patrick Radden Keefe observes at Slate, these folks think that without new legislation, “America’s intelligence capabilities will dry up, leaving the country vulnerable to attack.” Too many of us, after all, have been seduced by the spurious claim that national security is enhanced whenever the government gets additional surveillance powers. Make no mistake, this claim is demonstrably false (particularly in light of the flexibility FISA currently provides). But it is worth keeping in mind that some may earnestly hold this (groundless) view.

The real puzzle is figuring out why the bill’s supporters in Congress think overhauling FISA in this way preserves liberty or enhances national security. One plausible explanation is that the new bill is viewed as necessary to address a critical problem in gathering information about terrorist organizations like al Qaeda: Under the existing regime, the federal government could be challenged for intercepting communications on U.S. soil where one party is a U.S. citizen even if the target of the interception was actually a foreign national suspected of using or distributing information relevant to national security. Probable cause may exist vis a vis the foreign national, but not for the U.S. citizen. The new bill sidesteps this problem by allowing the government to target without restriction persons “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign surveillance information” (See 702(a)). With just a few choice words the probable cause requirement vis a vis U.S. citizens disappears, thereby enabling the NSA to capture a wider range of international communications without having to bother obtaining FISA warrants. With respect to interception of this particular type of communications, the government, under 702(g) of the New Act, is at liberty to use any particular switching facility or employ a wide range of surveillance measures to capture the data it believes to be relevant to national security. This, my friends, is what the New Act is all about - reducing the “regulatory friction” the NSA and other government agencies have to deal with when conducting foreign intelligence surveillance.

There are a lot of problems with this justification of the New Act. For starters, it doesn’t explain why the telcoms should receive immunity for deliberately violating a panoply of criminal and civil laws. Moreover, the New Act, much like the current FISA regime, is not only extremely complex (and therefore hard to apply), it also makes the availability of warrantless surveillance turn on where the government thinks the target is located. In the digital world, where well-funded terrorists are surely able to use technological trickery to falsify their location, why is geography even relevant? The New Act, in other words, doesn’t necessarily make it easier for the U.S. government to spy on high-value targets. But isn’t that precisely what a meaningful overhaul of FISA should do?

Shibley Telhami focused on Arab public perceptions. The main part of his study, was centered on the question “How important is the issue of Palestine in your priorities?” He surveyed Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, KSA, and the UAE, over a period of 5 years. The results, somewhat unsurprisingly, indicated that non-Palestinian Arabs on average found the issue most important in 2004, least important in 2005, and are quickly approaching the 2004 levels once again. Even in 2005, however, 69% of non-Palestinian Arabs still found the issue to be one of the 3 most important to them.

According to Telhami, the results indicate that the perceived importance of the issue is directly correlated to the level of violence and disagreement in the region. All in all, it was not exactly the most astonishing finding.

Telhami did have some very interesting results on questions regarding conflict resolution, however. He noted that the Arab world as a whole tends to favor the idea of a two-state solution in principle, but that they were pessimistic about the possibility of making such a solution happen in reality. As a result, opinion polls have begun to favor militant groups over those that seek peaceful resolutions, because the militants are seen as taking more practical measures.

Steven Kull’s presentation was focused on world opinion. His study, conducted by World Public Opinion.org, was intended to find what various publics around the world thought their governments, as well as the UN, should be doing/saying about the Palestinian-Israeli situation. Overwhelmingly, people across the globe tended to want their governments to remain neutral and favor neither side.

At the same time, however, the Palestinians, Israelis, U.S., and the Arab States, were all rated very poorly on average for not having done enough to resolve the conflict. Moreover, in response to a series of questions about possible UNSC actions, there was a high level of public support for greater UN involvement. According to Kull, the results mean quite simply that people around the world find the issue to be important, and want the conflict resolved quickly and fairly, without favoring either side.

One thing is overwhelmingly clear, and that is that in a region tending towards radicalism, our next president is going to have to act quickly to try and get a workable resolution. Both experts agreed; time is not on the side of peace.

In a speech at the Brookings Institution yesterday, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel spoke eloquently about the challenges that will be faced by the victor of this year’s presidential election. The speech, entitled “Memo to the Candidates”, was essentially Senator Hagel’s laundry list of problems the new president must deal with, and advice on how to do so.

The oration was both clear and comprehensive, addressing most of the major issues of the day and providing unambiguous opinions and recommendations. The speech came across in the way its title would suggest, like a general memo summarizing Hagel’s positions on the main points of the election. The senator from Nebraska renewed his call for phased troop withdrawal from Iraq, insisted that we work in closer consultation with our allies, supported negotiation with Iran, highlighted the potential dangers of climate change, and noted that Doha remains important as well.

On the whole, however, there was little to distinguish Hagel’s speech from those of the many politicians, pundits, and think-tankers who focus on the same issues and advocate similar measures. That lack of originality gave the otherwise interesting and well-delivered address a decidedly mundane aftertaste.

The real breath of fresh air in the speech, and the part making headlines, was Hagel’s insistence that the candidates must avoid intensifying the partisanship of the election. He argued that

One of these candidates is going to have to bring this country together, make the Congress a partner, form a broad consensus to govern, and help lead the world. If they so polarize and divide our country during the campaign, they will find it difficult to govern. The complexities of an interconnected world will require leadership and decisions from the new president the day he takes office. These realities won’t wait until America might come back together.

In many ways, it is not surprising that such advice should come from Chuck Hagel. After all, he is known as a moderate Republican and represents the only U.S. state with a unicameral legislature. Nevertheless, in the current political climate, with people growing tired of partisan political posturing, and officials that consistently toe the party line, the point is very well taken. As Senator Hagel noted, “The plurality of registered voters in America today are independents, not Republicans or Democrats.” Of course, given the possibility of a vice-presidency with Obama, Hagel also clearly has some good reasons of his own to call for a shift away from partisanship.

Still, the Nebraska Senator’s point is a sensible one. He rightly points out that “The rate and intensity of change today in a world of less and less margin of error has brought with it an unprecedented immediacy to actions, reactions, and consequences.” Our next President will not have the luxury of time for a long healing process. If we are to see real progress after the election, the candidates must get to work on finding a broad consensus now.

But we need to remember, especially at Across the Aisle, that bipartisanship should rarely, if ever, be a goal for its own sake. The United States in recent years has made all sorts of “bipartisan” foreign policy errors.

And we’re on our way to another one, if the House-led effort to crack down on oil market speculators makes it into law.

In recent years as a New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman has often opined based on his values, and his columns can sometimes seem partisan and shrill. But when he writes as an economist, he is almost always sharp and clear and insightful (who am I to offer broad criticism of one of the leading international economists of our time? I once tried to get him to join my committee of advisors on my Ph.D. dissertation, but since I studied graduate international economics at MIT when he was on leave, meaning that I took the class with another great contemporary international economist, Avinash Dixit, Krugman demurred.  Bottom line: I have my personal views about Krugman’s economics writings, but a dispassionate observer would be perfectly justified in taking his views much more seriously than mine.).

Krugman’s column in today’s Times about speculation in the oil market seems solidly on point, based on well-argued economics. And he offers much more detailed analysis on his blog (here is the most recent post in a series, which started here). Blaming “speculators” for the run-up in oil prices and passing bipartisan legislation to crack down on speculators in hopes of driving down the price of gas in the U.S. is misguided.

I don’t have much to add to the specifics of the oil discussion. Krugman posts lots of detail and some useful graphs. The bottom line is that “paper barrels” traded by financial speculators rarely affect the price that consumers of oil pay for the ability to burn petroleum (whether in their cars or somewhere else). Financial speculators who never physically possess the oil both buy and sell in the market. They increase the number of trades, but they don’t change overall supply and demand. Every “paper” speculator who buys a futures contract then sells that same contract before the delivery date. So the added demand for purchases is exactly compensated by the added supply offered for sale within the lifetime of the contract.

Of course, if the speculator does actually take delivery of the oil and decides to hold it in inventory, then his purchase in fact reduces the supply available to people who want to take the oil and burn it. So if inventories rise along with “speculative” trades, then speculation can drive up the consumer price of oil, at least until the speculators decide to sell from their inventories (e.g., when tanks get so full that the rental cost of storage capacity is high enough that it’s no longer profitable to hold the oil hoping for a higher consumer price in the future).

The thing is that oil inventories have not been rising in this fashion, and the relationship between the futures price and spot price of oil does not appear to support the hypothesis that this hoarding dynamic is going on.

Of course, producers of oil may be speculating by leaving oil in the ground, and the fact that producers are organized into a cartel (OPEC) makes it more plausible that they might be do this. Whatever the level of demand (which surely has been rising in recent years), a working cartel will withhold some measure of supply, selling less than the amount at which price equals marginal cost. And it’s hard to tell today whether OPEC is pumping at full capacity and investing as fast as it can to increase its future ability to pump oil (that is, trying to “catch up” to rising demand), or whether OPEC is acting like a working cartel. We just don’t know enough about what’s going on inside OPEC’s fields, because they hold their technical data very close to the vest.

But if OPEC “speculation” is the problem, then the issue for U.S. policy is with OPEC not with financial speculators regulated by the CFTC. Directing the CFTC to limit the ability to trade oil futures will just reduce trading volume and create market rigidities that in principle may create losses in the American market.

For me, though, the real thing to consider is what makes someone a “speculator” (hence the quotes throughout this blog entry). No one ever seems to define carefully who the “bad guys” are in this plot. Definitions of speculation are hard to come by, and they are even harder to operationalize.

In my courses, I try something relatively simple, and although it is imperfect, I think it helps make some points: a speculator is someone who hopes to make a profit by buying an asset (e.g., a futures contract) and selling it to someone else at a higher price even though he has not taken any action to increase the value of the asset. A speculator’s goal is to profit by taking money from some other buyer rather than by creating additional value. If the speculator correctly buys “low” and sells “high” at the “right” price in each transaction, the speculative purchase has not created any new value; it has simply transferred the profit from the previous owner (who sold to the speculator) to a new owner (the speculator himself).

This definition is not too far from the one offered in Benjamin Graham’s classic business book, The Intelligent Investor, which seeks to differentiate between “investors” and “speculators” and to convince readers to be the former rather than the latter. Graham doesn’t include as clear a statement of the definition as I would like, but Jason Zweig’s commentary in the 2003 revised edition comes close: “An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses. A speculator gambles that a stock will go up in price because somebody else will pay even more for it.” The definition of an investor presumes what seems to me an unreasonable ability to calculate the true value of a business (and that the current owners won’t be able to calculate that same value), but again, Zweig is getting at something meaningful.

So what’s the implication of this investment? Speculators may or may not make money on particular trades, but it seems that their success depends more on luck than on reasoning — or perhaps on understanding human nature and animal spirits of other speculators more than on understanding the underlying business.  But the worst that speculators can do is lose their own money rather than change the underlying value of the asset. Their demand for the asset — and their money flowing into the market for the asset — is only a temporary aberration. The recent run-up in oil prices has extended over several years, which is a pretty long time to blame on purely financial speculation.

If OPEC suppliers are holding oil in the ground rather than pumping as fast as they can, are they speculating? Probably not. For one thing, they are taking direct action to increase the price of the asset (that is, they are constraining supply).  Is that good behavior, from the perspective of the United States and American consumers? Probably not (unless you really believe the climate change story that says we’re better off with much higher energy prices). But it’s a different problem from the one that the bipartisan consensus in the House of Representatives diagnosed this week.

Begging our friends in the Persian Gulf to pump more oil doesn’t seem very productive (as in the Bush administration’s recent effort), because Saudi Arabia and the other producers will decide what’s in their interest and what they are capable of doing in terms of investment and exploitation of existing fields. Our ability to tell them what to do is, well, limited. But the begging policy is based on a logic that is closer to the right way to think about the causes of current high oil prices than Congress’ anti-speculation jag.

So this post mostly has been about what is not causing high oil prices. I recently was interviewed at length about oil by the Romanian magazine Revista 22 (of all places — I have no special ties to Romania), and if anyone has the stamina to read on, here is the English version of a couple of my thoughts about what is causing oil prices to rise:

1.     What has triggered the current oil crisis-the post 9/11 price spikes? Which were the structural forces that shaped these trends? Which are the key factors that affect oil supply and prices? Which was their role in shaping these trends?

Many things affect oil prices. The market is incredibly complex, especially at the detailed level of trying to explain individual trades, as particular deliveries of crude oil depend on variations in the quality of the oil, the exact timing of deliveries, the number of oil tankers available to compete for the business, etc. But for broad understanding of the environment rather than an effort to make money on particular futures contracts, we can explain the run-up in oil prices in the past few years based on a couple of key factors.

The first big factor is that demand is rising around the world.  Economic growth in China and India have received a lot of attention in the press, and those countries are big factors to be sure, but demand has also soared in other countries, notably including the United States. Comparing to the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is a bit unfair, because the economic troubles at that point artificially depressed demand (so of course demand looks like it is “up” since then), but even comparing to the late-1990s, demand has increased worldwide. And that demand increase has helped raise oil prices, partly because it takes a few years for investment in production and distribution capacity to catch up and partly because the higher level of production to meet the demand involves exploitation of more expensive marginal resources. But I should stress that increases in the cost of producing oil cannot explain the run-up to a $130 per barrel price: there’s a lot of oil available that’s economically viable to produce at a price of $50 per barrel – for example, in Canada – that just takes a few years to get on line. 

Along with the increase in demand (relative to the rate of investment in supply), the second big factor in the rising nominal price of oil to the vicinity of $130 per barrel is the drop in the value of the dollar. If we monitor the price of oil in dollars, and each dollar is worth less, then the reported number for the price needs to increase just to maintain the same level of true cost for the oil. The drop in the value of the dollar relative to other currencies is not caused by anything in the oil market: the United States runs a trade deficit, and over time, economists expect that long-term exchange rates should adjust to bring that deficit back into balance. Indeed, at some point, the U.S. will run a trade surplus again. But because oil prices reflect a combination of the real cost of production and, probably more importantly, the real value of oil to consumers, when the numerical representation of that value changes because the value of what we use to measure prices – the value of the dollar – changes, then the nominal price of oil must change, too. This would be true even if the real value of oil stayed the same. One effect of this is that the real increase in the cost of oil for consumers in the United States has increased more than the real increase in costs for consumers in countries whose currencies have appreciated relative to the dollar (e.g., for European consumers).

2.     We live today in a global oil market that has become very tight on supply. The real issue seems to be a supply issue. So, in this context (of a very tight supply) has the market the capacity to respond to some major oil supply shocks caused by political disruptions (wars, terrorism)? In the past it seems to have a market pattern capable of dealing with major disruptions in the oil supply by compensating increases elsewhere. Has the today’s market enough slack production capacity in order to increase the output for dealing with a price spike triggered by political disruptions?

It is hard to divide the causes of the rising price into the “supply side” and the “demand side” of the oil market. The price is determined simultaneously by the amount of oil on the market at a particular moment (supply) and how much people want to use that oil (demand). You can only talk about “tight supply” in comparison to demand conditions. What we see today is that demand has broadly increased, and the amount of oil pumped into the market has increased, too, by a few million barrels a day – say, from 80 million barrels a day to 86 million barrels a day worldwide. Right now, people are willing to pay more than $130 for the marginal barrel of oil, given that 86 million barrels or so are on offer, but suppliers are not willing to reduce inventories or pump faster right now for a marginal price of only $130. There’s a lot of oil inventory around the world – in private and public stocks, owned by oil producers and by middlemen and by consumers – and all that oil could be additional “supply” tomorrow, if people thought that it was worth it to sell at the current price. 

Trying to trace a particular price or a particular restraint on selling to “supply-side” political disruptions like wars or terrorist attacks or fires or natural disasters is a mistake. Most supply disruptions are very small compared to the overall size of the market, and many market participants have opportunities to compensate for the disasters.  Iraq’s contribution to oil on world markets dropped after 2003 for several years, but the net drop of a few hundred thousand barrels of Iraqi oil did not cause the market price to double.  Supply disruptions have been one factor, but a relatively small one. The market generally over-reacts to news of an attack on oil supplies: most of the time, when pipelines are damaged or a tanker is attacked, the damage is minor and the asset gets back on line promptly.  It is hard for terrorists or even militaries to cause a lot of damage to such a large and diverse infrastructure of oil supplies. If one tanker does not make its scheduled delivery, some oil comes out of the market that day, but there is plenty of oil available in inventories to compensate – and the tanker will eventually make its delivery, a bit behind schedule, so the inventories can later be refilled. The only supply disruptions that really should affect oil prices are sustained disruptions that affect a lot of oil (millions of barrels per day) for a long time (weeks). 

Last year Hansen said that a global tipping point will be reached by 2016 if the human population is unable to reduce greenhouse gases. He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios for future sea level rise do not take into account ice sheet disintegration, which could cause several meters of sea level rise during the next century.

It is important to remember that even before his 1988 testimony Hansen was sounding the alarm. In 1981 he and a team of scientists at Goddard had reached the conclusion that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to global warming sooner than previously predicted. While other climatologists had already predicted that a trend would be apparent by 2020, Hansen predicted, in a paper published in Science, that the change was already occurring and that there would be record high temperatures as early as 1990. He also predicted that it would be difficult to convince politicians and the public to react.

The history of Hansen is instructive for what it says about the American government’s ability to deal with a real global threat. After decades of even acknowledging there could be a problem it then switched to minimizing the dangers. When even that became impossible it switched to suppressing information about it.

In 2005 and 2006, Hansen stated in interviews that NASA administrators tried to influence his public statements about the causes of climate change. He claimed that NASA public relations staff was ordered to review his public statements and interviews after a December 2005 lecture at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

He also appeared on 60 Minutes stating that the White House edited climate-related press releases reported by federal agencies to make global warming seem less threatening. He claimed that he was unable to speak “freely”, without the backlash of other government officials. “In my more than three decades in the government I’ve never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public.”

On June 23 Hansen, returned to testify before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This time he essentially offered a final warning on the subject. Unless the U.S. begins to act soon, he pointed out, “it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control.”

In his latest paper, Dr. Hansen calls for deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, beginning almost immediately, with a focus on phasing out the uncontrolled combustion of coal by 2030.

The world has now had at least two decades of ever increasing coverage on the impact and dangers of global warming. For example, last fall, two think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), jointly released a study, “The Age of Consequences,” predicting that rising temperatures and sea levels are likely to set off mass migrations involving “perhaps billions of people” over the next century.

So it says something sad that the global warming only appears to get traction when it is framed as a national security issue, instead of the international danger it truly is.

As this new TomDispatch commentary points out:

An office of the Pentagon, war-gaming climate change back in 2004, wrote up a hair-raising, spine-tingling end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it report on a future planet in eternal conflict amid every kind of weather disaster; and only this week, the U.S. Intelligence Community, the official 16 agencies gathering the stuff for the government, chimed in with a grim new report, “The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030.”

As “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” a 2007 report from the military-allied research organization, the CNA Corporation, indicated, admirals and generals galore have been worrying about the subject for a while. Think, for instance, of those low-lying U.S. bases, like the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, that might just go under. Could climate change not only send millions fleeing from flooding or salinating lowlands, or out of areas of conflict over ever scarcer resources, but start the process of de-garrisoning the globe for the Pentagon? (”Climate change could compromise some of [our] bases…[T]he loss of some forward bases would require longer range lift and strike capabilities and would increase the military’s energy needs.”) It’s enough to set a military-minded group to worrying.

Sadly, it does not appear that either of the two U.S. presidential candidates is prepared to do much. Sen. Barrack Obama’s presidential website has a scant two paragraphs on the subject, saying he would:

Create New Forum of Largest Greenhouse Gas Emitters: Obama will create a Global Energy Forum — that includes all G-8 members plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa –the largest energy consuming nations from both the developed and developing world. The forum would focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues.

Re-Engage with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change: The UNFCCC process is the main international forum dedicated to addressing the climate problem and an Obama administration will work constructively within it.

Thus he would create more forums for talking about the threat, instead of actually doing something about it.

Sen. McCain has more detailed recommendations but they seem constrained by the need to not offend his politically conservative base; thus the emphasis on using market-based cap and trade mechanisms for carbon dioxide emissions.

It is really quite pathetic. In presidential elections candidates always talk about making the world a better place for their children and grandchildren. But when it comes to global climate change they seem resolutely clueless.

Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, has, over the years, made a virtue out of inconsistency when the logic of consistency has not always been a virtue. This has been part of his appeal to independents and to others who gaze at the political world not from partisan eyes but through analytical lenses. What some observers may interpret as an inconsistency or paradox, others view as logical and well-formulated understanding. In this context, it is difficult to separate campaign rhetoric from serious policy, to differentiate politics from policy.

One apparent inconsistency in the campaign that involves U.S.-Russian relations is worth exploring. Earlier this year, the Senator surprised some observers by proposing that Russia be excluded from the G-8 group of industrial democracies. Then, on May 27^th, in a speech outlining a comprehensive U.S. approach to foreign policy and proliferation that revealed clearly his internationalist mind-set, he urged continuation of cooperation with Russia on programs of mutual interest such as cooperative threat reduction (aka Nunn-Lugar or “loose nukes” program) and a host of related nonproliferation and anti-terrorist programs. How punitive action depriving Russia of the status among the G-8 would advance cooperation on nonproliferation has puzzled more than one observer. Senator McCain has since distanced himself from his G-8 statement on Russia, but the motive underlying his initial thinking merits some analysis and can shed light on his national security thinking.

Russia was invited to join the G-8 by President Clinton in 1997 at a time when the Russian economy was declining sharply, its political stability shaky, a barrel of oil a fraction of its current price, and its regional and international influence all but sapped of capability. Russia had participated on the margins of the then G-7 prior to 1997, and the thinking in the 1990s was that inviting Russia into the international cluster of important nations would bring them further into cooperation on matters over which the rest of the world had concerns – nuclear weapons, energy resources, regional stability, and the shift away from Communism and authoritarianism to an open society and democratic governance. Apart from that, Russia’s bare economy hardly qualified it for membership with the other seven and it had not transitioned into a democratic society, the two important eligibility criteria for membership in the influential group of industrial democracies.

Since l997, the price of a barrel of oil has skyrocketed, Russia has re-gained influence on its periphery and beyond. Its economy is now buoyant, its self-confidence restored, and its politics mostly settled, with one exception – the drift back to authoritarian governance – Russia would seem today to be more eligible for G-8 membership than it was a decade ago. When measured by Gross Domestic Production (GDP), the 2007 IMF ranking had Russia the eleventh largest economy in the world. When the country scores come out for 2008, its ranking will, no doubt, move up several notches. This has encouraged a bolder, more assertive foreign policy, use of its energy muscle to pressure neighbors, and greater determination to advance its interests on issues ranging from missile defense to shoring up is southern border with tough talk and behavior, actions that were unthinkable in the 1990s.

Russia’s contribution to national security and nonproliferation decisions in recent G-8 meetings has not been noteworthy for its exceptionality. Its voice has been heard more often and listened to more closely by the other G-8 members than in the past and this evolution has been in direct correlation to its growing economic clout. In the G-8 nonproliferation working groups, Russia has often stood with the United States on nuclear weapons, nonproliferation, and anti-terrorism issues by resisting strident language on disarmament, while jointly promoting initiatives to combat nuclear terrorism, promote responsible nuclear energy, and advance mechanisms for assuring an international supply of nuclear fuel so that countries will abstain from developing indigenous fuel cycle capabilities. Russia has been a cooperative, though often-times prickly participant, in the bilateral Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program aimed at reducing the proliferation threat from the states of the former Soviet Union and the larger ten year, twenty billion dollar Global Partnership which is the G-8 follow-on to the U.S. Nunn-Lugar program.

Russia’s helpful rhetoric in the G-8 on Iran has not been matched by its action towards Iran in the United Nations Security Council where it has acted to soften sanctions resolutions and in the IAEA Board of Governors where it has sought to tone down harsh criticism of Iran. This has understandably riled Senator McCain and others who believe that Russian cooperation is essential if Iran’s drive toward nuclear weapons capability is to be stopped and reversed. Essential, but not fully forthcoming. This also explains why the proposed U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia, sometimes known as a 123 Agreement, has been buffeted by political turbulence in the Congress.

Russia’s drift back to its tradition of authoritarian governance and the recurring attacks on civil society and concentration of political power in Moscow wear badly on those, like Senator McCain, who have been enthusiastic promoters of programs that further democratic governance and open societies. Indeed, he has proposed that the world’s democracies form a voluntary consortium – a League of Democracies – as a problem solving alternative to international organizations prone to inaction or sluggish reaction to international crises. Presumably, McCain might consider excluding Russia from this consortium.

It is entirely appropriate to criticize the drift towards authoritarian governance in Russia because the backward political drift there is true, not fabricated for purely political reasons here. To remain silent is to ignore the core values underlying our political culture. Questioning the membership of Russia in the prestigious G-8 is one way of getting attention to the political regression. Similarly, ignoring the role that Russia can and must play in strengthening the global nonproliferation regime would be contrary to our national interest. We should encourage more Russia cooperation on nonproliferation and arms control matters even as we express our concern about political backsliding at home. When competing interests collide, as they often do, they can co-exist and survive and succeed if carefully managed. We need to cooperate with Russia on issues of mutual interest where we can, and to disagree with them on those issues where we must. Senator McCain’s maverick reputation and his propensity to speak his mind may allow him considerable running room to follow both foreign policy tracks toward Russia.

The Bush administration’s unilateralism and incompetence, typified by its reckless invasion of Iraq, have damaged perceptions of the United States in much of the world. By many accounts, China has taken advantage of this lapse in U.S. leadership by bolstering its own influence across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But a new study of perceptions in Asia suggests that favorable opinions of the U.S. will outlast the Bush years and that China still has a long way to go before it can match America’s soft power. This offers grounds for optimism that forecasts of America’s global decline are premature and that a new U.S. president with a more multilateral foreign policy will find many overseas partners who seek and support his leadership.

The new study is a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the East Asia Institute of more than 6,000 people in China, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United States. The survey, conducted before this year’s unrest in Tibet and the devastating Sichuan earthquake, asked ordinary citizens questions about how they view each country’s culture, economy, politics, and influence. The findings are striking: majorities in every country except Indonesia see U.S. influence in Asia as positive, and Asians have more positive perceptions of America’s diplomatic, political, and human capital power than they do of China’s. Even Chinese views of America’s soft power are quite favorable: 44% of Chinese would pick the U.S. as their first choice for their children’s higher education. What’s more, pluralities or majorities in most countries state that U.S. influence in Asia has increased over the last 10 years. All of this suggests that, despite the many failings of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, the underpinnings of America’s standing in Asia remain strong.

This is great news, especially considering that the Bush administration has neglected most of Asia while focusing on counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Asian countries want more U.S. involvement, not less, and, in particular, they want more American engagement with the economic issues that are of greatest interest to them. (While many Asian governments are providing valuable cooperation in the fight against Al Qaeda, counterterrorism is not their top priority.) The upshot is that a new U.S. president will have a tremendous opportunity to further improve America’s standing in Asia.

As president, Barack Obama will be better positioned to take advantage of this opportunity than would be John McCain. McCain’s worldview and foreign policy proposals are not much different than those of President Bush, emphasizing military power as the primary means of achieving U.S. goals. By contrast, Obama favors a greater focus on nonmilitary elements of American influence, including diplomacy, economic engagement, and humanitarian assistance. Those are the tools that are essential to maintain our position of leadership in Asia and to demonstrate to Asians that our soft power is more attractive than China’s. If we use those tools wisely, our influence will remain strong-and even grow-not just in Asia, but throughout the world.

Part 1:

Pickering kicked off the discussion with a tidy summary of some of the most major foreign policy problems that the new president will have to face, placing emphasis on the middle east for the short term, but with an eye to future possibilities for conflict and cooperation with China, India and Russia.

Part 2:

From there the discussion centered on the ways in which the president could spearhead bipartisan cooperation on foreign policy. There seemed to be wide agreement on the idea that some form of consultation body or commission would allow for more informed foreign policies, and naturally promote greater bipartisanship on some of these tough issues.

Part 3:

Eventually the discussion moved on to the future of our Iraq policy. Naturally, there was disagreement on that issue, particularly on the timetable of an American withdrawal, but each of the speakers, especially Tom Pickering, noted that the major goals of both parties are the same. Though there may be widespread disagreement on when, and under what circumstances we ought to withdraw, the problem is not an insurmountable one.

After Iraq, of course, came the current worsening energy situation. Here, there was very little disagreement indeed. The main point was essentially that, regardless of method, our next president will have to work hard on weaning the United States off of gasoline.

Overall, the discussion was very interesting, and showed clearly both where the two parties agree and disagree, and how our next president might go about finding a foreign policy consensus.

Actually, it’s tahadiya, as opposed to hudna, which means calm or cease fire (sometimes spoken of as a truce). It’s interesting that in the Middle East, even a temporary, grudging condition-laden cessation in the fighting has to be negotiated. For the amount of time Israelis and Arabs (not to mention a host of other intermediaries, including US presidents) have spent at the negotiating table, they could have gotten through a lull, a calm, a cease fire, a truce, an armistice, a treaty, and moved on to solving world hunger, the energy crisis, and working out deals for Brad Pitt’s next dozen movies. They could have, that is, if it were anywhere other than the Middle East. But at least the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiation (this time under Egyptian auspices) has given rise to what experts are calling a “lull” in the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Inshala.

I’m not just writing this to highlight the absurdity of drawn out negotiations over something as pessimistically titled as a “lull”—it almost invites speculation about who’ll manufacture a violation first, and take advantage of it to catch the other side off guard—but rather to offer you, dear reader, a bit of detail about the nature of this agreement that I find infinitely more revealing than the reams of colorful descriptions coming from the mainstream press. So, here goes. (These details, by the way, are courtesy of the loosely IDF affiliated Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Tel Aviv—hardly an impartial source, but their information is generally solid.)

Here are the basic facts about the deal:

1. On June 17, 2008, at the end of several months of contacts between Egypt and Israeli and Hamas representatives, Egypt and Hamas separately announced that a lull in the fighting ( tahadiya ) between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had been agreed on. According to the announcements, it was expected to go into effect on the morning of Thursday, June 19, at 06:00 Israeli time.

2. The lull, which was formulated by Egypt , will be in effect in the Gaza Strip for a period of six months , at the end of which it is likely to be extended to Judea and Samaria . The core of the lull is the cessation of the fighting in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas is obligated to enforce on the other Palestinian terrorist organizations which have stated that they have no objection to the arrangement (although some of them have reservations). The cessation in the fighting will pave the way for the reopening of the crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip, put into motion the renewal of talks for the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and eventually lead to talks about reopening the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

3. At this time the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center does not have a full, detailed, formal version of the arrangement. From what can be gleaned from Palestinian, Egyptian and Israeli media reports, the lull will be implemented in three stages:

i) Stage One : Three days after the lull goes into effect, Israel will open the Karni and Sufa crossings and allow the passage of basic commodities from Israel into the Gaza Strip.

ii) Stage Two : One week later Israel will permit the passage of most commodities into the Gaza Strip with the exception of those used in the manufacture of weapons.

iii) Stage Three : One week after that talks will be held about opening the Rafah crossing. Participants in the talks will include Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Authority and European Union representatives. ( Israel ’s status in such talks is unclear to the ITIC. Israel is also a party to the November 2005 agreement which regulated movement through the Rafah crossing).

I’d just like to point out a really astounding and potentially hopeful part of this deal—Hamas has in effect agreed to enforce the “lull” within Gaza. In other words, it expects the other Palestinian organizations to

obey the deal it’s struck with Israel, and (unlike Fatah before it) Hamas might actually have the muscle to make it stick.

Here’s what they said:

Hamas made it clear that from its point of view, the arrangment obligated the other organizations . At a press conference Fawzi Barhoum noted that the lull was the fruit of the Palestinian organizations’ firm, united stance which had been achieved over a period of months. He said that all the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip were completely committed to implementing the lull to protect the Palestinian people and its land, and to lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip (Palestine-info Website, June 17).

Here’s an interesting bit about what wasn’t included in the deal, and why:

Hamas was forced to back down on the issue after having tried, during the initial negotiating stages, to extend the lull to Judea and Samaria . However, Muhammad Nizal, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said that by agreeing not to include Judea and Samaria in the arrangment Hamas was not capitulating to Israel . He said that “the West Bank is part of the land of Palestine but the most important thing is to lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip.” PIJ spokesmen said that as far as they were concerned, there was no separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

It certainly sounds like Hamas has come around to the predictions of some democracy promoters (Secretary of State Rice among them) that an electoral victory would force them to moderate some of their more exteme positions in the interests of delivering on promises of a better life, and holding onto political power. In this case, Hamas seems not only to have been willing to make a deal with Israel, but to sell out their operatives in the West Bank, on the theory that Gaza, after all, is where Hamas is the elected authority. Wow—it’s almost like these terrorists have developed a sense of government accountability. Better late than never.

Of course, it’s still the Middle East, so let’s not get too hopeful. Here’s what some senior Hamas figures had to say about the deal:

Khaled Mashal , head of Hamas’s political bureau in Damascus , said that the lull was necessary and that it would benefit the million and a half residents of the Gaza Strip, who had been harmed by the Israeli blockade. He said that the various organizations had achieved the lull from a position of strength. However, he also said that Hamas would respond to any violation by Israel (Reuters, June 18).

Mahmoud al-Zahar held a press conference where he said that the lull was a victory “for the resistance organization, which carried their weapons and that it meant that the blockade of the Gaza Strip, had failed.” He added that it was not a question of completely abandoning the use of weapons because he did not believe that Israel was capable of honoring the arrangement (Hamas Website, June 17).

I wonder if anyone in Vegas is laying odds on who’ll break the cease fire first and when.

In a recent article published by the New York Times, David Kirkpatrick traces John McCain’s views about foreign conflicts all the way back to 1974.  During that year, McCain submitted an essay to the National War College in which he argued that the American soldiers held captive in prison camps during the Vietnam conflict often collaborated with the North Vietnamese because of the antiwar movement in the United States.  Fidelity to one’s country, no matter how strong at the commencement of a military campaign, can quickly disintegrate when soldiers perceive that there is little or no public support for a war effort.  In McCain’s own words, detainees stuck in these camps “were easy marks for Communist propaganda” because large portions of the American public did not support the conflict in Vietnam.

McCain doesn’t seem to be saying that the antiwar movement was the sole cause of the traitorous collaboration he experienced as a P.O.W.  Rather, the antiwar movement enhanced the emotional appeal of collaboration in the minds of captured American soldiers by making the war seem pointless and immoral.  How did the antiwar movement accomplish this exactly?  Well, that’s where the fundamental premises of McCain’s argument get a bit difficult to articulate and disentangle.  It seems that the underlying logic goes like this:  Where a conflict like Vietnam comes to seem pointless and counterproductive, it becomes natural and reasonable for the soldiers captured during battle to change sides and support the social and political institutions seeking a quick end to the conflict.  And, if you can convince these soldiers that the war has no sound moral or political justification, ceteris paribus their loyalties and sympathies will naturally tend to shift as they increasingly come to identify with the enemy.  As a result they will begin to proactively collaborate with their sworn enemy, despite the fact that doing so makes them traitors.

There is something right about McCain’s view, but something deeply misleading as well.  On the one hand, McCain is generally correct that a person’s ability to persevere depends on his or her understanding about the desirability or achievability of a given objective.  To the extent that the antiwar movement made a clear U.S. victory in Vietnam look less desirable or achievable to some P.O.W.s, they probably did decide to collaborate with the North Vietnamese on the basis of their revised beliefs about the war.  So, as a matter of moral psychology, McCain is right on the money:  Rational human beings tend to pursue with vigor only those goals that they wholeheartedly believe in.  Once faith in a goal is shaken, we tend to lose our resolve.

On the other hand, McCain’s contention that the antiwar movement had a noxious effect on the resolve of American P.O.W.s fudges the question of who is ultimately responsible for traitorous collaboration.  The antiwar movement may have cast the Vietnam conflict in a way that made fidelity to the American military campaign unappealing, but ultimately individual soldiers had to decide for themselves whether the reasons presented by the antiwar movement were cogent.  In other words, before loyalty to the American military wanes, soldiers must as individuals decide that the war effort is morally problematic or destined to fail (or both).  And so we must carefully distinguish questions about human psychology (e.g., what is the psychological impact of reconsidering or rethinking a military conflict for individual soldiers?) from questions about where moral responsibility lies for making certain choices (e.g., when soldiers change their attitudes about a particular conflict, who is to blame for those changes of heart?).

There is an important lesson here for the debate currently raging about the impact of domestic dissent about Iraq on the American military’s ability to successfully prosecute the war.  Soldiers - whether they are engaged in battle or suffering in P.O.W. camps - must make their own decisions about whether they believe in the foreign policy that makes a particular conflict necessary and justified.  It will not do to say that vigorous debate about Iraq unreasonably coerces or encourages American soldiers into second-guessing the campaign in which they’re involved.  And why is that?  First, as we have seen, this subterfuge ignores the fact that soldiers must weigh reasons for and against a particular conflict just like the rest of us.  And second, this specious view ironically denies soldiers like McCain, patriots who resisted their captors while enduring extreme physical pain and psychological torture, the honor they deserve as individuals who made a conscious decision to eschew special treatment during captivity and the hope of an early release to remain loyal to their country.