Steve Clemons

The Clemons Grades for the National Security Debate

Rick Santorum  D+ [Changed to C-]
Michele Bachmann  B+
Newt Gingrich  B-
Rick Perry  D-
Herman Cain  F
Mitt Romney  B-
Ron Paul   B
Jon Huntsman  B+

[After reviewing my grades, I decided that Rick Santorum's candor about the importance of negotiating and willing to compromise with the "other side" deserves a bit more credit.  I hereby revise his grade to a C-.]

Here is the full transcript of the debate.

Sad truth is that this was really amateurish overall.  Where was the serious discussion about the costs of war and peace (except from Ron Paul)?  Nuclear weapons responsibilities and challenges?  North Korea?  Sudan?  Piracy?  The complications and challenges of the Arab Spring?  And what of non-traditional but important national security issues like global water management, climate change, pandemics, natural disasters, and the growing sense aroundt the world that America's mystique has been ruptured and is in decline.  Other than platitudes from Romney, very few got into the realities of America's limited stock of power today.

9:59 pm

AEI visiting scholar Marc Thiessen asks good question of candidates about what issue they haven't heard about tonight that they worry about or which might be hidden behind a blind spot.

Santorum says -- predictably -- it's all about "radical Islamists."  Also says that we need to do more care for Central and South American allies.

Ron Paul says that need to get out of unnecessary wars.  Gives a rosy view of Taliban -- says they are trying to kill us not here but over there...  Rick Perry says China is not a country of virtue -- says that "Communist China is destined for the dustbin of history."

Mitt Romney says China is a big issue.  Agrees with Santorum that Latin America is a lurking national security issue -- Hezbollah, he says, is building capacity in Latin America.

Herman Cain says that cyber security is the biggest threat ahead.

New Gingrich says he worries about nuclear/WMD attack; electro-magnetic pulse attack, and cyber attack.  Michele Bachmann believes that there is a radical Islamic threat here inside the United States now.

Jon Huntsman says that a trust deficit at home -- people not believing in Congress or their government -- is a national security problem, that joblessness and an economy not working is a national security threat.

9:53 pm

Former Cheney Chief of Staff and global war on terror architect David Addington from Heritage Foundation up.  Someone call Jane Mayer.  Asks about Syria -- and asks candidates to outline American interests in the region.

Herman Cain says he would not support No Fly Zone over Syria -- says that we should work with allies to constrain Syria's options, curtail oil purchases and use economic tools, not military ones, to influence Syria.

Rick Perry want a No Fly Zone over Syria.  Perry really seems uncomfortable with just about every question.

Jon Huntsman said the US missed the Persian Spring; got involved in Libya where the US has no interests; and now is holding back on Syria where it does have interests -- and the biggest interest is Israel.  Says we need to do more to prevent a nuclear armed Iran and need to work more closely with Israel.  Refrain.

Ron Paul making sense about the blowback that comes from intervention in other countries.  Links al Qaeda to US bases in Saudi Arabia and thinks that imposition of a no fly zone is exactly the kind of thing that would inspire an al Qaeda like reaction.  Wants the US to learn how to "mind its own business."

Mitt Romney on a platitude streak -- talking about America reasserting its power in the world and not apologizing for leadership.  Romney says no on No Fly Zone over Syria -- but YES to covert action inside Syria to achieve "regime change."

9:39 pm

Rick Perry oddly says "here we are again Mitt" -- agreeing with one another -- this time, on the "magnet" as a draw pulling in illegal immigrants.  Perry says he knows how to secure the border -- that he's been doing it for ten years.  (Then why is the border a problem today??)

Romney is strongly against conversion programs for illegal immigrants -- strongly for legal immigration programs, particularly for the educated (and rich?).  Bye bye Hispanic vote.

9:37 pm

For those interested, here is the CNN transcript for the first 30 minutes of the debate.

9:36 pm

Mitt Romney says that "amnesty is a magnet" and that we have to stop all of the support and stickiness that draws in illegal immigrants.  That said, he believes US should "stable a green card" to completed advanced degrees.

9:34 pm

Rick Perry says that within 12 months he will close down the Mexico-US border and make it secure.  Ron Paul says that the "war on drugs" is another war he'd cancel.  Good line actually.

Ron Paul called the federal war on drugs a total failure and believes that sick and dying people should have access to marijuana if they want it.  Says US should regulate some drugs like alcohol.

Cain says an insecure border is a national security threat.  Can't tell whether Cain supports amnesty for illegals or not -- my sense not, but he has a way of speaking that just doesn't help one get much detail about his views.

Will have to check out the clock later on how long each of these candidates got to speak.  It seems, surprisingly, that Rick Santorum is getting much more time than anyone else to speak.  Not hearing as much from Mitt Romney as we should tonight.  Gingrich is getting a good deal of air time.

Gingrich supports an H-1 visa for everyone who gets a graduate degree here and who came from other countries.  Wants US to educate folks and keep the best.  References Albert Einstein.  Thinks on immigration, US needs a comprehensive approach that secures border but that also reviews those who have been here illegally and creates a way of keeping those who have built solid lives here -- and deport those that haven't.  Bachmann opposes this sort of program and doesn't think there should be amnesty for 11 million workers in the US illegally. She supports the Steve Jobs platform of granting visas to highly skilled workers like chemists and engineers.  Impressed that she knew about Steve Jobs' conversation with President Obama.
 
9:16 pm

AEI economics staff member asks a question that doesn't even pretend to rope in a national security theme.  He asks about what they would do to cut entitlement programs because of a large and growing $11 trillion debt picture. 

What about China?  And those combat troops just sent into Africa?  The implications of the Euro debt crisis?  Does anyone know what the key takeaways of the Halifax International Security Forum were this past weekend (where 18 defense ministers including Leon Panetta and Ehud Barak assembled)? 

How did we get back on entitlement program cuts?  Wasn't that in the last debate?

9:11 pm

Gingrich goes off on doing everything more efficiently. Most interestingly, he basically supports a more efficient Millennium Challenge Corporation.  He also says that the only Iran bombing program he would support was one tied to regime change.

Jon Huntsman says that "everything needs to be on the table" in cutting the budget deficit -- including defense!  Brave comment at an even cosponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.  Says we need defense spending to match our strategy and objectives.

Wolf Blitzer asking Rick Perry about the failure of the Super Committee and asks if he would compromise with Democrats in Congress to help stop the large coming budget cuts.  Perry turns the question into an assault on Obama's leadership -- doesn't mention Congress' failure at all. 

OOPS.  Perry says "half a trillion dollars" -- and then says with emphasis "500 million dollars."  I'll leave that to others to play with.

9:03 pm

Mitt Romney says that his first foreign trip will be to Israel to show the world we care about that country.  Pandering!!  His first trip should be to either China, Mexico or Canada -- all rank far more significantly to the United States than Israel.  Romney is fundraising tonight.

8:57 pm

American Enterprise Institute foreign policy program director Danielle Pletka asks whether sanctions really make any difference in clipping Iran's nuclear weapons track.  Rick Perry says "yes" and that the US and world should sanction Iran's central bank.  Perry says that Obama has not had the backbone to cut off the central bank as of yet.

Newt Gingrich says we need a serious strategy for topping and replacing the Iranian regime using as minimal force as possible.  Gingrich thinks that sanctioning Iran's central bank a good idea.

Michele Bachmann going after Iran because of its standing, overt threats to Israel.  While I disagree with her overall framing, she has clearly studied up on foreign policy -- and has views that are generally informed and internally coherent.  Impressive actually.

Now Paul Wolfowitz up and asking about Millennium Challenge program and foreign assistance.  Rick Santorum says he completely supports Millennium Challenge Corporation and other forms of foreign aid as vital to the US.  Santorum challenges those (like Rick Perry) who have talked about "zeroing out" all foreign assistance.

Santorum's answer Messianic, all about spreading American values -- but still an internationalist even though he's got a Borg-like posture of wanting to assimilate the rest of the world to look like the US.

Cain says he'll support foreign aid if there is a tight plan, tight mission, tight objectives. 

Ron Paul says that we are in big trouble at home -- endless wars, too much foreign aid, too much meddling abroad.  He says the biggest threat to the United States today is America's domestic economic condition.

Ron Paul ties foreign policy to "Obama Care."  I'm dizzy on that one.  How did he get there??  Ron Paul hammering on Obama administration's so-called cuts.  Says that nothing is getting cut.

8:47 pm

Big question:  If Israel attacked Iran to help Tehran from getting nuclear weapons, would the candidates help Israel?

Herman Cain says that he would want to know what the likelihood of success was -- and what the mission and plan were.  He would help if it was a solid plan and perhaps even join US forces to the Israel mission.

Ron Paul thinks that's crazy -- and wants to get out of Israel's way.  If they want to do something, then they should go ahead and the US should not be involved.  Says US is over-involved in Israel's key decisions.

8:44 pm

Former US Senator Rick Santorum says that the US is "fighting a war against radical Islam."  Opened by saying that he agreed with Ron Paul (really??) that we are not fighting a war on terror.

Now, taking a break.

So far, most impressive responses and positions -- in terms of coherence -- have been articulated by Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul.

8:41 pm

Romney says he's with the commanders.  Huntsman counters by saying the Commander-in-Chief calls the shots, not commanders.  During Vietnam, the President deferred too much to the generals.  Romney, seems wounded, and says of course he knows that the Commander-in-Chief calls the shots.  Newt looks and sounds ruffled and grouses at them for not playing by the debate rules.

8:38 pm

Mitt Romney says we need to help bring Pakistan into "modernity."  Also thinks that we need to stay in Afghanistan until the country can incrementally take over more of its core security responsibilities.

Jon Huntsman makes strong statement supporting withdrawal from Afghanistan -- says we have done nothing to define an "end point" in Afghanistan.  Huntsman calls for 10-15,000 troops with much more limited roles in counter-terrorism and security support. 

Romney says that this is not the "time for America to cut and run" from Afghanistan.

8:34 pm

Governor Rick Perry says that he'd not give one dime of US aid to Pakistan unless it was tied directly to American interests. 

Wow again! Michele Bachmann calls Perry "hopelessly naive", properly and maturely mentioning that Pakistan has nukes that could be vulnerable to terrorists and that we must be engaged and have a presence.

Perry says we need to stop writing "blank checks" to countries like Pakistan.  Bachmann counters that our arrangements with Pakistan are "not blank checks".  She says we are sharing a lot of intelligence information -- and she is largely correct, certainly more than Perry.

8:30 pm

AEI's Fred Kagan asks candidates whether they support expanded drone use policy.

Jon Huntsman says Pakistan is the country that should be keeping us all up tonight.  Says Army Commander General Kayani really running the country -- not President Zardari.  Says that an expanded drone program would serve US interests but also says that 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan are not serving US interests. 

Wow.  Michele Bachmann knows about and mentioned the Haqqani Network.  That's like getting an extra three points on FourSquare.

8:28 pm

Ed Meese launches things with a very wonky question about the investigatory powers of the Patriot Act, which he feels has helped stop more than forty acts of terror in the United States.  Wonder if Herman Cain got that. 

Newt Gingrich thinks that the US government and presidency should have many more powers to fight terrorism.  Ron Paul says the Patriot Act is unpatriotic as it "undermines our liberties."  Gingrich responds that Timothy McVeigh "succeeded." 

Ron Paul implies that Gingrich advocates the building of a "police state."  Michele Bachmann says that "we are in a very different kind of war."  Bachmann says that we need to completely change the way that we investigate terrorist activities -- says Obama has "outsourced investigations to the ACLU."  Jon Huntsman said that we have to be very careful about sacrificing our liberties -- says that it is part of the shining light of the United States abroad. 

Mitt Romney said we can "do better" than TSA pat-downs. Mitt Romney says there is "crime" and there is "war" and that there is a body of law that applies to each.  Really? Isn't the problem of our Kafkaesque secret prisons and Guantanamo detentions a function of the laws of war being thrown out and made up in ad hoc ways?

Rick Perry says that the Obama administration has been poor at drawing in intelligence from around the world to keep America safe.  Who got bin Laden, Governor Perry?  Wolf needs to drill down on some of these.

Santorum says "we are at war" and supports profiling of "Muslims" and "younger males" to chase down likely terror candidates.  Ron Paul goes after Santorum for reckless with terms and words -- and says that this is a slippery slope to all Americans being at risk. 

Herman Cain rebrands "profiling" as "targeted identification."  Says terrorists "want to kill all of us" so we should use every means possible "to kill them first."  Wolf Blitzer keeps pushing on the issue of whether Cain supports profiling of Muslims and more.  Calls Wolf Blitzer "Blitz".  Blitzer calls Herman Cain, "Cain."

8:13 pm

Rick Santorum throws punch at Obama on economy and national security.  Ron Paul says that unnecessary wars undermine the nation.  Rick Perry uses national security debate to talk about 29 years of "married bliss".  Mitt Romney wants "to keep America strong and free."  Herman Cain says America's national security has indeed "been downgraded."  Newt Gingrich says that this is all about "the survival of the United States."  Michele Bachmann wishes Happy Thanksgiving to soldiers around the world.  Her dad was in Air Force (mine too).  John Huntsman intros wife of 28 years who is sitting "fortuitously in the New Hampshire box."

8:06 pm

Wolf Blitzer intros Jon Huntsman as former US Ambassador to China but not as former Governor of Utah or Deputy US Trade Representative. 

7:57 pm EST

I'm not at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall tonight as are many of my friends preparing in moments to watch the CNN GOP national security debate -- but I'm going to blog it remotely.

Prediction:  Herman Cain now knows more about what President Obama did and didn't do towards Libya.

Photo Credit:  CNN

My Atlantic colleague Max Fisher has posted a terrific piece thinking through how America's intelligence operation may have tilted too much towards terrorist killing rather than terror network penetration. 

Fisher builds on the Los Angeles Times' Ken Dilanian's important revelations about the roll up of one of America's legendary spy operation centers.  One US source told Dilanian:  "Beirut Station is out of business."

The fact that Hezbollah may have tracked informants who met with CIA operatives at a pizza joint after the CIA used the codeword "PIZZA" to signal the place to meet sounds eerily similar to a CIA clerk accidentally issuing a "readable" electronic communication that listed most or all of America's intelligence assets inside Iran.  Of course, according to the Pulitzer Prize New York Times writer James Risen who disclosed this CIA mistake in his book State of War, Iran rolled up that network -- much like Hezbollah will roll up (i.e., kill) all those who were compromised by this alleged "pizza" spycraft mistake.

The only caveat that I would humbly add to this coverage and to these assessments -- both of what Risen reports happened in Iran and the latest revelations about blunders in Beirut -- is that intelligence is a very complicated game. 

Seeing things on the surface -- earnestly, in straight lines, in ones and zeros -- could very well be a distraction from other operations or realities.  Knowing something about the intelligence field and just thinking through possibilities, I can't help but wonder if these informants were blown to give Nasrallah and Hezbollah a false sense of security and accomplishment.  Perhaps there are others on the inside -- and these recent revelations were designed to make Hezbollah think that the CIA was incompetent. 

I have no idea whether my speculation has merit in this particular case but do know of other cases in which similar methods and distractions were set up.

Ali Larijani, Iran's former nuclear negotiator and now Chairman of the Iranian Parliament, once told me "You Americans play baseball, we play chess."

I think he's wrong.  The fact is, Americans play virtually every kind of game -- and as much as I think it's highly possible that we bungled our spy operation in Beirut, part of me thinks that this could be frosting on something else.

(photo credit:  Steve Clemons)

Yesterday at the 2011 Halifax International Security Forum -- basically the Davos for defense and foreign policy junkies at which 18 defense ministers from around the world are in attendance (about a 1:10 ratio with other conference guests and participants) -- US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave a mostly compelling speech that has no title but should be called "Security Deliverables in an Age of Austerity?"

Panetta was upfront with the assembled defense ministers that the US and all of them would have to find ways to "sharpen the application of resources" to major security challenges, that the age of austerity was here -- and that the US needed others to pick up their game in bridging the gap between defense upgrades needed and their particular fiscal and political constraints.  This was a call for greater efficiency, greater pooling of resources, and innovation across the board.

Panetta did offer a line that Senator Jon Kyl or John McCain might have made which is used to distract rather than enlighten citizens about real economic and security choices they are facing today.  He said:

I refuse to believe that we have to choose between fiscal responsibility and national security.

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Former presidential candidate and US Senator John McCain's comment was a biting kicker at opening dinner of 2011 Halifax International Security Forum.

(photo credit:  Halifax the Forum)

I'm up at the 2011 Halifax International Security Forum where 18 defense ministers and a who's who of the international defense and security community have assembled.  The forum is modestly sized with about 200 attendees -- but the diversity of perspective here is impressive.

I'll have a post up in a while on US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's appeal to allies in an "era of austerity" -- but wanted to get something up now that John McCain tagged on to his otherwise very humorous remarks at the opening dinner last night.

After Senator Mark Udall used his time on stage mostly to joke about American and Canadian hockey -- a theme nearly everyone here can't stay away from -- McCain jested that in Arizona, mothers tell their kids that they'll never grow up to be President -- as Barry Goldwater, Bruce Babbitt, Morris Udall (Mark's dad), and McCain had all tried and failed.  McCain was truly funny -- his sense of timing better than Udall's.

But then sensing that a crowd of generals, admirals, defense ministers, and national security policy practitioners prefer gravitas to slapstick, McCain dropped a pretty big zinger on the crowd.

He said, "A year ago, Ben-Ali and Gaddafi were not in power.  Assad won't be in power this time next year.  This Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing." McCain then walked off the stage.

Comparing the Arab Spring to a virus is not new for the Senator -- but to my knowledge, coupling Russia and China to the comment is.

Senator McCain's framing reflects a triumphalism bouncing around at this conference.  It sees the Arab Spring as a product of Western design -- and potentially as a tool to take on other non-democratic governments. 

At an earlier session, Senator Udall said that those who believed that the Arab Spring was an organic revolution from within these countries were wrong -- and that the West and NATO in particular had been primary drivers of results in Libya -- and that the West had helped animate and move affairs in Egypt.  Udall provocatively added Syria to that list as well.

But John McCain's biting kicker last night would have been seriously jarring to any Chinese or Russian defense types who might have been in the room.  They seem to be the only ones not here. 

McCain may be right that fake democracies like Russia and authoritarian regimes like China may face the same kinds of disruptions in their locks on power that Gaddafi and Ben-Ali did, but to frame this possibility as objective -- which was the tone of McCain's comment -- seriously complicates the global security picture particularly when the US and Europe are hoping to draw Russia and China into a much more cooperative arrangement confining Iran's options in the world.

It's tough to partner with regimes on one front while essentially calling for their collapse and downfall on another.

Steve Clemons talks to Chris Matthews about Mitt Romney's unserious Iran strategy.

Tonight, I participated in a discussion with USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar and Middle East affairs expert Robin Wright and MSNBC Hardball's Chris Matthews. 

We got into Mitt Romney's comment that if Obama remains President, Iran will get the bomb - - and if he, Romney, is elected President, Iran won't get the bomb.  This plays pretty close to Senator John McCain's "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" comment in the 2008 presidential race.  In my view it's vapid fearmongering and incredibly unpresidential for someone of Romney's potential consequence as a national leader not to talk about the potential consequences and net positives that come with potential military action. 

If war, or force, are the tools that Mitt Romney first wants to use in dealing with serious national security challenges, then he is not ready to be President of the United States.

Update:  The 2nd day of the Green Intelligence Forum starts this morning and can be watched live on the screen below.

My colleagues at The Atlantic have produced an outstanding forum -- very diverse views throughout from the environmental sector, the corporate sector, the think tank crowd -- on the question of how to build more sustainable cities in the future. The title: "GREEN INTELLIGENCE FORUM: Creating the Sustainable City of the Future."

I am going to be managing/chairing three of the sessions later today -- and have to admit that my favorite will be one which features Democratic Staff Director of the Senate Energy Committee, Bob Simon, pairing off with Republican Staff Director of the Senate Energy Committee, McKie Campbell -- on what is politically possible and what is not on the energy and environment fronts.

This is now streaming live below I hope. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is opening the day -- and much more to come today and tomorrow.

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After former World Bank President James Wolfensohn had taken over in 2005 as chairman of the Quartet a representative body comprised of the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations and focused on moving the cause of Israel-Palestine peace forward, he once said to me that the only way to know whether progress was being achieved is if we saw Palestinian produced strawberries finding their way to breakfast tables in Europe.  Wolfensohn was so focused on making business work for Palestinians that he invested his own money in trying to retrofit operations at the Karni Crossing. 

Ultimately, Israeli indifference and in some cases strong opposition to trying to make this effort work -- and the lack of trained Palestinian infrastructure managers resulted in strawberries rotting en masse at the shipping terminal. 

Wolfensohn's effort and dedication to the Palestinian cause has always fascinated and troubled me because he knew that political optics were not enough -- that one needed to link on the ground changes to political cosmetics to secure change.  Frequently, perhaps mostly, what is happening in the Palestinian street and what is taking place between top-tier Israeli and Palestinian politicos are not in sync. 

Sometimes, leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah have pretended that things were moving in positive directions while the institutionalized humiliation of Palestinians increased, for example when the number of checkpoints and transportation blocks in the Occupied Territories surged upward, as they did after the Bush administration initiated Annapolis conference Israel-Palestine peace effort.

Today, it's difficult to see any serious international efforts focused on resolving Palestine's standoff with Israel moving forward.  While the Obama team has had a number of key foreign policy and national security successes -- the Israel-Palestine mess which was a defining challenge Obama accepted for himself has been a disaster. 

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(photo credit: James Fallows)

I had to laugh when I saw this post by my colleague James Fallows noting that the US edition of China Daily now had a news-box right outside our offices at The Atlantic.

I had just returned from China yesterday and was in town for a few hours before having to take off again so I grabbed a China Daily to catch up on what China wanted us folks at the Watergate to know about all things Middle Kingdom.

I think that there are occasionally some terrific, serious articles in the state-run paper, but very frequently Fallows is right that a good number of them give The Onion a run for its money.

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(photo credit:  Steve Clemons)

Flying from Xian to Beijing this week, I spotted the books above at the airport book shop.  They were the marquis offering in the place -- front, center of the store.  On my plane, three Chinese folks carried the Chinese version of Walter Isaacson's illuminating biography of the iconic Steve Jobs; two in economy class, one business.

In Beijing, billboards advertising Isaacson's book appear at many bus stops  (I've seen a lot from our bus window).  And amongst those my colleagues and I have spoken to, the Chinese seem to be asking themselves and discussing whether they could ever produce a Steve Jobs. 

I'm not sure whether even the US can easily produce another Steve Jobs -- though I instinctively feel that America generally allows for the emergence of brilliance more than China.  Nonetheless, after a few days meeting a few of China's IT entrepreneurs, I think the gap between the US and China on this front is narrowing.

But one of the things I find odd is that the Chinese basically have a person who is their Steve Jobs.  I don't mean someone who created a line of products that we have all become addicted to and which have changed our world -- but rather a leader who saw a future, went against the tide, and used the levers of influence he had to gamble on a complete retro-fitting and relaunch of China.  I'm talking of course about Deng Xiaoping.

Several weeks before Steve Jobs' death, I had the privilege of listening to Walter Isaacson share with a small number of people what some of the key themes and findings of his book would be.  We were sworn to secrecy then on the details of the book he was sharing -- but something he said and which rings in my head is that there is a difference between 'brilliance' and 'genius.'

Isaacson said that geniuses don't always prevail; they can be impractical and ultimately irrelevant in their eccentricities.  Their genius may never get an on-ramp to impact.  It's those like Steve Jobs who may not be geniuses but may be brilliant at an entirely different level who really change the world in remarkable ways.

I think Isaacson's insight is important.  Deng Xiaoping said "cross the river by feeling the stones," meaning that even though China was moving forward in new directions -- it needed to stay grounded, incremental, feel its way forward even amidst uncertainty.

Deng Xiaoping didn't have it all figured out; he was someone who packaged and enabled China to grow -- and he used the ideas, even the genius, of others who understood markets better than he did to create the dramatic shift in China's fortunes that we see today.

The other biography that should be on China's reading list next to Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs is the recently released Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra Vogel.

Certainly no one in the current Chinese leadership appears to have the talent and latitude to punctuate Chinese history as definitively as Deng Xiaoping -- and in America, we don't see the likes of Steve Jobs too often either.  Both had their dark sides and moments -- but they were brilliant and both changed the world and more importantly, the expectations of people about what may yet still be possible.

I'm an outsider over here in Beijing, but my response to the Chinese who lament whether or not they could ever produce a Steve Jobs is that they actually did.  His name was Deng.

(For those interested, here is my interview with Ezra Vogel about the life and deeds of Deng Xiaoping held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and organized by The Atlantic and the New America Foundation.)

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During the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany traded the geostrategic insecurity of a Cold War fault line and divided nation for a unified country with high levels of economic tension.  The transfer payments from the West to the East were politically and economically stressful.  The costs of reunification helped compel a rebalancing of accounts, a reduction in Germany's social welfare framework alongside renewed investment in its manufacturing and export sector.  China's mercurial growth and juggernaut manufacturing platform has been built in large part on German machine tools and equipment -- hitching Germany's economic fortunes to China's rising star.

Germany might have chosen not to trim its entitlement outlays to students, retirees, and displaced workers and to instead dig a deeper fiscal hole like many European countries.  For the most party, the German government chose to tilt toward austerity and investment, and the bets it made have largely paid off in the sense that it stands with China, Japan, and various of the Middle East oil states as a leading export-dependent, "surplus nation" while much of the rest of the global economic order wallows (or may be drowning) in debt.

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Obama National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has now been in his post for a year.  This is the first installment in taking stock of his and his team's performance.  But data to keep in mind, Donilon has organized 700 deputies meetings, 200 principals meetings and pulled together 480 morning briefings for President Obama since the beginning of the Obama term.  He's not allowed to take any sick days.



Tom Donilon was sworn in as the 23rd National Security Advisor on the 8th of October last year -- and though it's a bit late in the month to pounce on the anniversary date of his ascension, I am putting together an article looking at whether America's foreign and national security platforms have been enhanced or undermined by President Obama and his team.

But a couple of data points from Obama's White House that jumped out at me really need to be highlighted.  A bigger piece on Donilon Inc. is in the works -- but let me just toss out some data.

Since Obama has come into office and Donilon has either been National Security Adviser or Deputy National Security Advisor under Jim Jones, Donilon has called together 700 "Deputies Meetings," and 200 "Principals Meetings."  This is an astonishing number of gatherings of the likes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates (recently resigned), Leon Panetta, and others.

Each meeting has paper flow -- and a decision memo or a memo outlining points of consensus prepared within 24 hours of that meeting. 

Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough is the axe man who makes sure that no deputies take their tasks lightly and wander into meetings unable to "speak for their building" -- something that seemed to happen too frequently during the Bush administration according to some of the memoir material in Condoleezza Rice's recent book.  According to a White House source, McDonough enforces preparedness across the national security bureaucracy and trades responsiveness from his bosses for preparation by them. 

Tom Donilon has 'done' 480 morning briefings for President Obama.  One wonders if Michele gets jealous -- or alternatively, what the President and Donilon do to keep spark in their relationship.

And it's not just Donilon, but also five other horsemen -- Vice President Biden, McDonough, Biden National Security Adviser Antony Blinken (who is also a deputy assistant to the President -- no more rogue ops in the White House); Counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, and the Chief of Staff -- previously Rahm Emanuel and now Bill Daley.  This is the very tight circle that has been meeting with the President from the star nearly every working day of his tenure.

As National Security Council chronicler David Rothkopf writes, the Donilon-crafted and run operation is disciplined both in ginning up ideas but then executing them.  Rothkopf has concerns about sustainability -- but I think the machinery that the young mid-20s and early-30s types are now learning to work with will create a national security-style muscle memory that could be lasting.

More on this in a longer piece later -- but I wanted to get the frequency of meetings figure out just on their own.  It's a staggering pace. 

I asked one senior White House staffer what happens if Donilon catches a cold or gets sick or just can't show up for some silly but real human reason -- and was told that that's not allowed.  Donilon is in fact pretty much married to the job.  His wife, Catherine Russell, runs Jill Biden land; and his brother, Michael Donilon, is domestic policy adviser to Vice President Biden.

There are rumors that Donilon could be in play to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  Not sure why he would want to move to a less powerful job than he has now -- and not sure that the President would be willing to have just anyone move in and run the machinery that Donilon has running at a precise and wicked fast pace.  McDonough probably could do it -- but very few others.

More soon on what the Obama team has scored on in the national security arena as well as repeatedly belly-flopped on in coming days.

The congressional "Super Committee" by most accounts is working feverishly to get some sort of deal that would avoid triggering an automatic $1.2 trillion set of cuts across government accounts.  The committee's work has been done mostly in secret -- though some are reporting that the Republicans on the committee have dug in their heels against any form of tax increases.

But what has reached me through a senior national security official is that the level of likely defense cuts that would be part of a potential deal is approximately $465 billion.  I don't know whether that figure is a 10-year cut target, or 12-year, as there are two calendars floating.

Earlier this year, President Obama called for $350 billion in defense cuts over ten years -- but also used a figure of $400 billion in defense cuts through 2023, or 12 years.

A senior Obama national security official made the sensible comment to me that the President knows he has very hard choices ahead and that the cutting edge of global affairs will not be in the Middle East but will be in Asia.  He said that the defense portfolio and commitments had to be rebalanced -- that too much of America's capacity and focus was in the Middle East/South Asia.

The official said that with the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and a clear and steady drawdown of US forces planned for Afghanistan -- most likely leaving a nominal force that would preempt anyone in Afghanistan from overthrowing the government and which would continue support and training of Afghan forces -- created a major opportunity for defense rebalancing.

Interestingly, the senior White House official said that the decision had been made by the President not to cut any force levels or defense commitments in Asia.  The official made it clear that the President and his team would be continuing to build out and reaffirm America's presence and alliances in the Asia-Pacific scene both in economic and security dimensions and that some of this would be reflected in remarks the President would make at the APEC Leaders Summit in Honolulu November 10-11.

Bottom line.  The White House is expecting slightly bigger defense cuts than the President proposed.  A lot of the savings will come from extracting US forces from costly, low return wars in the Middle East -- and that while other defense accounts may be under pressure and will be reduced, the Asia defense portfolio will remain where it is now, if not more robust.

It is interesting to note that former Obama Senate staffer and national security confidant to the President, Mark Lippert, has just been nominated by President Obama to serve as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs.

A close friend with whom I worked in Senator Jeff Bingaman's office in the 1990s, Wayne Propst, was forged into who he is today in part because of his experiences teaching people how to create fish ponds in Ghana.  And although he's kind of tight on the number of words he uses in any given sentence, he's a very cool policy guy. 

Another of my friends was a volunteer in Zambia -- and there have been tens of thousands of others in the JFK-launched Peace Corps program who not only did important work and bridge-building abroad but also helped themselves become more informed and enlightened through these experiences.

Vanity Fair special correspondent Maureen Orth also was one of those who heeded Kennedy's call and traipsed off to Medellin, Colombia to set up school houses.  She is enormously committed to education in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America and has established and funded several schools. 

Every time I run into Maureen or hang out with her friends, I don't hear about her living in the wake of of the death of her megastar journalist husband Tim Russert, or spending lots of time on political swirl in DC.  Rather, she is obsessively-compulsively devoted to the Peace Corps, telling the organization's and her story, and getting people on board to help.

I have tremendous respect for her -- and as a salute to Maureen and the Peace Corps on its 50th -- and for keeping America engaged in real people's lives abroad and not just engaged with arms buyers and oil sellers -- I am posting Maureen Orth's video Peace Corps postcard above and linking to a site that has others she has helped produce.

Below follows an email I got from her today about these new Peace Corps postcards:

Subject:  My cool new interactive website Peace Corps Postcards is live!

Today is a very exciting day for me and celebrates a labor of love, the launch of a new interactive website: www.PeaceCorpsPostcards.com.

Fifty years ago the Peace Corps was born, I became a volunteer in the sixties, as most of you know, in Medellin,Colombia, and the experience became one of the most important in my life.  I am still involved today with three One Laptop per Child schools in Colombia @  www.MarinaOrthFoundation.org.

To celebrate the Peace Corps 50th anniversary and to share the stories of amazing volunteers of all ages and backgrounds at work across the globe today, my friend, the award winning filmmaker, Susan Koch, and I have produced a series of video postcards we hope you find inspiring and moving. We also feature former volunteers like Chris Dodd for whom the Peace Corps had a profound affect throughout his life.

We are very grateful to American Express and the Bank of America for helping to fund us and we are very proud of our new website which allows anyone in the Peace Corps community to post his or her story, picture or blog which we also locate on a Google map.

We are not asking you to do anything but share these postcards widely if you like them, send them out on your lists and tweet them to your network. We will frequently add new ones so visit us often.
 
Here's even a sample tweet:
 
Check out these inspiring video postcards of amazing volunteers to celebrate #Peace Corps 50th anniversary www.peacecorpspostcards.com 
 
 Enjoy!

Well done Maureen -- and thank you.

Think tanks in Washington scramble and compete with each other to influence the policy debate on a variety of fronts -- but what is desperately needed is for one of them to put forward a white paper on how to spell Moammer Gaddafi's name. 

This is not a trivial matter. President Obama's national security and foreign policy legacy will be inextricably tied to the action against Libya's late long-serving dictator, and the history books and blogs need a better guide than we have today on how to get the Libyan boss' name right.

Many have struggled with this.  This work by Danny Sullivan does a masterful job of drawing together many of the Gaddafi/Qaddafi/Libyan bad guy options.  While this spelling struggle isn't new -- but it has bothered me that my own colleagues at The Atlantic have a variety of names for him.

The Atlantic's International Channel editor Max Fisher uses "Qaddafi."  I use "Gaddafi" -- but flip to the Q on occasion, usually when I'm having a more festive day.  Atlantic writers have also used "Khaddafi", "Khadafy", and "Quadhafi".

I wonder if Moammer (and yes, there's a spelling dispute with the first name also) used to google his different names to see what got the most hits. 

If he had, here are the google mentions of a few of the myriad possibilities:

Khaddafy  409,000
Gaddafi  84,900,000
Khaddafi 4,900,000
Qaddafi 8,400,000
Gadhafi 15,900,000
Quadhafi 11,400

I can't find a version of the name with more hits that "Gaddafi", which is what I use -- so at least in my editorial and New America Foundation hats, I propose that we go with what the market tells us and use GADDAFI.

As Danny Sullivan reports from a Library of Congress survey, there are a lot more possibilities:

(1) Muammar Qaddafi, (2) Mo'ammar Gadhafi, (3) Muammar Kaddafi, (4) Muammar Qadhafi, (5) Moammar El Kadhafi, (6) Muammar Gadafi, (7) Mu'ammar al-Qadafi, (8) Moamer El Kazzafi, (9) Moamar al-Gaddafi, (10) Mu'ammar Al Qathafi, (11) Muammar Al Qathafi, (12) Mo'ammar el-Gadhafi, (13) Moamar El Kadhafi, (14) Muammar al-Qadhafi, (15) Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi, (16) Mu'ammar Qadafi, (17) Moamar Gaddafi, (18) Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi, (19) Muammar Khaddafi, (20) Muammar al-Khaddafi, (21) Mu'amar al-Kadafi, (22) Muammar Ghaddafy, (23) Muammar Ghadafi, (24) Muammar Ghaddafi, (25) Muamar Kaddafi, (26) Muammar Quathafi, (27) Muammar Gheddafi, (28) Muamar Al-Kaddafi, (29) Moammar Khadafy, (30) Moammar Qudhafi, (31) Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, (32) Mulazim Awwal Mu'ammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Qadhaf

Gaddafi is way easier.  Takers?

photo credit: Reuters

Update:  My colleague Max Fisher had a terrific post, up a while back but that I had not seen, on Gaddafi's passport application and the spelling there:  Gathafi.

Pervez Musharraf, the former Army general turned (former) President of Pakistan, is a different man than the Musharraf who has now declared that he will again contest for his nation's presidency.  The earlier version of Musharraf would bristle at questions about his respect for democracy, about the relationship of the Taliban to the security organs of the government, and, well, just about anything.  Musharraf, before, was self-confident, a talker more than a listener, and personally intimidating.

The man who spoke to the students of Washington College on the eastern shore of Maryland yesterday evening struck a significant contrast to the man that so many believed had become a de facto dictator during his tenure as Pakistan's president.  Musharraf listened.  He met students and engaged them seriously.  He spoke to them like mature adults who were informed -- and didn't dumb down his commentary.

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The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index offers comparative rankings for 139 countries.  Here is the pdf of the United States report.

Here's how the United States ranked on the various criteria in the 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report. 

The picture is not good.  One of the few categories in which the US leads the world is "University-industry collaboration in R&D" -- and many engineering and science department chiefs, most recently at UC San Diego, tell me that America can't afford to take this leadership position for granted.

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I'm inclined to think Washington, D.C., constrains, frames, levels, directs, empowers, and topples -- all of which can be important. In contrast, the west coast of the United States -- and many corners of the country outside the Beltway -- builds, innovates, creates, launches, discovers, struggles, figures out stuff, and designs the future. 

Anyone who has spent time in Silicon Valley or Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and more will quickly feel that innovators, scientists and engineers change the world far more than those of us in Washington.

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Reuters

This morning, Washington Post editors challenge Mitt Romney's foreign policy views in this morning's lead editorial and also give Jon Huntsman a working over. 

The editors applaud Romney's call for American leadership but call his approach to US foreign policy challenges unimaginative and devoid of key details -- particularly how he would wrangle the hundreds of billion dollars of new military spending he called for in his recent Citadel address.

But then the Washington Post challenges Jon Huntsman by slur rather than logic on his Afghanistan policy.  The Post writes:

In contrast, Mr. Huntsman is relatively bold but decidedly more misguided: His promise to "bring home" U.S. troops so as to rebuild an American "core" he views as "broken" sounds like an updated version of George McGovern's "Come Home America" campaign of 1972. Americans didn't buy it then; it would be surprising if GOP primary voters lined up for it now.

Jon Huntsman has offered a strategically coherent view on why American force deployments to Afghanistan undermine rather than enhance American interests.  He sees American power being trapped and tied down by the deployment -- and that higher tier problems, like Iran, are emboldened rather than constrained by the perception of an overstretched American military.

Huntsman also thinks it is irrational for the United States to spend upwards of $120 billion per year in a country with a $14 billion GDP.

What is the Washington Post's rational for labeling this logic "misguided"?  The Post offers no explanation at all as to why Afghanistan is strategically more significant to the US than other vital American challenges -- or why Afghanistan should stand as the "Moby Dick" of the US foreign policy portfolio. 

The Post should table counterpoints and alternatives that are themselves strategically coherent if they decide to challenge Huntsman.  All that the Post does in this attack on Jon Huntsman is to assert without explanation that withdrawal from Afghanistan will weaken the US, at least that is the implication.  It is equally possible to reasonably argue that a withdrawal or sizeable drawdown in Afghanistan will strengthen the United States -- free troops and other military resources to be available for other higher priority contingencies (i.e., Iran, Asia, etc.).

One hopes that the Post will pick up its game as its editors are the ones that are 'misguided' in setting such a low bar in the manner in which they challenge Jon Huntsman's efforts to explain the costs and benefits of various national security strategies to the American public.