Join the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program and TWN publisher Steve Clemons from 12:15 pm to 1:45 pm TODAY for a discussion of Hooman Majd's new book, The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge.

-- Andrew Lebovich

While not exactly a haven of free speech before, it looks like Egyptian authorities are cracking down on communications technology in the lead-up to parliamentary elections:

Egypt's National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) has imposed new restrictions aimed at tightening control over the SMS messaging services provided by mobile phone companies and media institutions in an apparent effort to preempt possible anti-regime activism in the run-up to next month's parliamentary elections.

On Monday, a number of private media institutions--including Al-Masry Al-Youm--were notified by SMS news providers that they must now obtain approval from the Ministry of Information and the Supreme Press Council before sending news alerts out to subscribers.

A source at the NTRA denied that the new restrictions had a political aspect, insisting that they had been put in place to regulate 30 companies currently operating in Egypt without a clear legal status.

It remains unclear whether the new regulations will stipulate the suspension or cancellation of phone subscriptions for those found disseminating anti-regime text messages. It is also unclear how the new regulations will affect private newspapers' capacity to generate profits from SMS-based news services.

While Egyptian authorities also indicated that the text shutdown was meant to reduce ethnic tensions between Copts and Muslims, both the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition parties are expected to make use of texting in the upcoming parliamentary campaign.

On the one hand, this is a clumsy attempt, a reactive effort that could force Brotherhood and other campaign efforts a bit more underground, but is unlikely to stop their get out the vote efforts. After all, we're talking about a group that won nearly a fifth of the seats in Egypt's parliament, despite the group being officially banned in the country. And despite official recalcitrance, as the article notes, former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaredei has been able to gather millions of signatures on his petition in favor of reform. Trying to repress such broad-based movements will only strengthen the hands of opposition forces, without much actual benefit to the government.

On another note, this attempt to limit the influence of newer technologies is part of a disturbing broader trend in the Middle East, one exemplified by recent threats to ban Blackberries in Dubai and the continued or past imprisonment of reform-oriented bloggers in Bahrain and Tunisia.

There are many in this country who would, no doubt, not object to a suppressed vote for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Yet if the U.S. does not speak out more forcefully against attempts to limit democratic processes in the region, we risk a further entrenchment of autocracy and repression that will only serve to cripple the reform so desperately needed in much of the region. While we may not always like the result, it is more important that we, as a country, side with freedom.

-- Andrew Lebovich

During the George W. Bush administration, Zalmay Khalilzad headed the National Security Council portfolio on the Islamic world and served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations.

Khalilzad will share his views on America's strategic challenges with regard to terrorism, Iraq, and Afghanistan at the conference, Cutting the Fuse: Beyond the War on Terrorism, that I am helping to produce along with the University of Chicago's Robert Pape.

The conference is taking place in the United States Capitol in the new Congressional Auditorium of the Congressional Visitors Center.

Here is the full schedule and a link to RSVP -- including talks by Robert Pape, Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead, former 9/11 Commission Chair and New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, Congressman Brian Baird, Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling, former CIA Acting National Intelligence Officer for terrorism Glenn Carle, among others.

-- Steve Clemons

(Outgoing National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, President Barack Obama, and newly named National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon; photo credit: Talk Radio News)

Recently I met with David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy blogger and one of Washington's premier chroniclers of American national security personalities and architecture, for lunch and discussed with him who President Obama's next National Security Advisor should be.

Our list was provocative, a bit reckless in a way because we were grasping for names as symbols of certain views or confiding to each other private understandings we had with some of the contenders. Neither of us agreed with all of the names the other threw on to the table.

I won't say who survived our own mutual, back-and-forth vetoes, but the roster included Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, National Security Council senior staff Dennis Ross, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, CSIS President and former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, CIA Director and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, former US Senator Chuck Hagel, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman General James Cartwright, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, CNN GPS and Time essayist Fareed Zakaria, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, and former New York Times foreign affairs columnist and Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus (and Daily Beast wunderkind) Leslie Gelb.

There are obvious problems with the candidacies of a number of these people - some because of temperament, some perhaps age, political stripes, or most importantly -whether President Obama could work with the person closely and comfortably.

Extending this chatter, Les Gelb asked me at the recent Atlantic Monthly/Aspen Institute/Newseum sponsored Washington Ideas Forum if I didn't have to worry about political reality who would be my "choice" for National Security Advisor. I hedged by giving him a shorter version of the above - but told him that for various reasons, the most interesting candidates would be Haass, Holbrooke, Panetta, Donilon, and Steinberg.

Haass, Gelb and I both thought - as well as Rothkopf, would be too much of a stretch for Obama even though the President really does like to incorporate reasonable, centrist, pragmatic Republicans and their thinking on his team. Richard Haass though would make a formidable National Security Advisor -- perhaps better for a Democratic president who too frequently thinks he/she needs to do symbolic things to show toughness rather than a Republican.

Richard Holbrooke is the contemporary Machiavelli of the Democratic political establishment - and I admire him for it. Of all the leading Democratic foreign policy practitioners, Holbrooke is the most tenaciously committed to results in the often fuzzy, inchoate realm of humanitarian, global justice efforts. But the Obama-Holbrooke chemistry reportedly has high toxicity levels, even though there has been recent improvement.

Leon Panetta would have been an interesting choice - sort of the guy who can do everything. Bob Woodward's recent book on the Obama team recounts how Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell warned incoming DNI Admiral Dennis Blair not to underestimate the "knife fight" he would get into over defining the turf between CIA and DNI no matter how well he knew and liked Leon Panetta. McConnell was right and Panetta ended up clobbering Blair. But to resolve the competing, vague lines of authority in the intelligence, war fighting, diplomatic, stabilization, and development functions of government, Panetta could have been a modern day James Forrestal in getting government to work better and less dysfunctionally on these tasks.

James Steinberg and Tom Donilon are both experts in national security decision making process as well as strategy. They have both been key in moving the Obama administration's machinery as well as it could be moved given the miserable economic and foreign policy portfolios passed off to them by the George W. Bush administration. Steinberg has handled the Asia portfolio well - and Tom Donilon became something of a Wizard of Oz in the White House, orchestrating behind the scenes literally hundreds of Deputies and Principals meetings with perhaps the most inclusive structure of non-traditional voices and institutions at the table in national security questions in US history.

In fact, the whole question of what is and isn't a national security issue has undergone revolutionary broadening in the Obama administration, and Donilon's task has been to make discussions of the new roster of challenges - everything from water and climate to development and natural disasters to migration - a real part of the national security structure rather than tokens.

While the Obama administration has had some serious strategic trip-ups, particularly in Israel-Palestine deal making, the fact is that Donilon's furious, competent pace has kept the country and the White House afloat and kept the system from taking on too much water and getting bogged down.

After the announcement that Tom Donilon would succeed General Jim Jones as President Obama's National Security Adviser, Donilon went from being the busiest man in the White House to the even busier busiest man. This is good, and bad, news.

Donilon really did have to be the President's National Security Advisor. Next to Denis McDonough, who moves from NSC Chief of Staff to Donilon's former position, no one is trusted or relied upon as much by Obama than Donilon. None of the other contenders on the list above - with the sole exception of Leon Panetta - has the broad institutional grasp and political understanding of how to move the administration's many national security prima donnas forward.

Donilon's incumbency in the middle of all of the action today made him stand out more than Steinberg, Ross or other potential inside options who had more narrowly defined portfolios.

Obama's decision making system - which is huge now and an obvious corrective to the cabal-like operation that Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney ran during the G.W. Bush years - simply could not function without Donilon (and McDonough).

But that does not mean that the role of being the premier adviser to the President on America's global threats and challenges can be properly filled by someone who is excellent at a speedy, inclusive, decision making process but too overwhelmed to get distance to think and advise strategically.

Some of the early reactions to the Donilon appointment have focused on his political connections and savvy over his intellectual merits and standing. These critics couldn't be more wrong.

While Donilon has not taken the path to power that many others in the national security establishment have of carefully pruned and crafted exposes on American foreign policy - published in journals of record like Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, National Interest, and American Interest - he has been actively engaged for years in national security strategy groups and working meetings.

His thinking about US foreign policy is known to any who have worked with him in these groups. He's a systematic, creative, pragmatic thinker about America's foreign policy challenges - and whether he has expressed himself in roundtable discussions rather than a large volume of opeds makes no difference.

Donilon is a pragmatic, non-ideological practitioner who knows that America's greatest challenge today is restoring its stock of power and its ability to positively shape the global system. He knows that American power is doubted today and needs to be reinvented - and he thinks about this all of the time. It is what animates him and the furious pace he keeps.

Jim Jones is also being misread by many critics who seem to be cheering his departure. They scoff at his distance from the President, his alleged aloofness - though I never found him aloof in my encounters with him. I found him straightforward and a wry wit. What they are missing is that Jones demonstrated that the NSC job should not be overly reactive to moment by moment events -- and to a large degree, he was right.

Jones instinctively knew that if he allowed himself to get sucked into granular, involved-in-every-detail realities of the President's national security inbox, then the Obama administration would lose its ability to make strategic leaps and place bets on power and possibility that would position America beyond just reacting to the crisis of the day.

Vice President Joe Biden was right in saying during the 2008 campaign that Barack Obama and the United States would be severely and frequently tested by the international system - by friends, by foes, by states and non-state actors - to see where the lines of power were faked and where they were real. Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft has called this "the age of 1000 pinpricks". Both are right - and General Jones knew that his job was to preempt a 'reactive presidency' from undermining a 'strategic presidency.'

Jones also wanted to think through how to assemble economic and traditional power voices into national security discussions and decisions - and contributed much to the blueprints for a new national security decisionmaking experiment that Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough have implemented.

Donilon is at the helm now - and needs to accomplish several things and keep some key factors in mind:

1. Figure out how to keep the elaborate interagency machinery of policy formulation, review and decision making going without Donilon's constant supervision. Delegate and train the next Donilon.

2. Step back from the freneticism of the operation now and build capacity to think strategically - create a new "Solarium Project" in which the administration tasks teams to systematically think through the costs and consequences of alternative paths to vital national security objectives. Iran comes to mind. Get your key people into a retreat. Get them to think out loud. Push restart with them.

3. Remember that the Department of Defense is not an independent stand alone body that is a rival to the White House. The Department of Defense and everyone in it - from Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and his strategists to the various service chiefs and even David Petraeus - work for the White House. Establish protocols for reasserting control of the system. It is unhealthy and imbalanced when the Pentagon can outgun the National Security Council with its strategists, its intelligence capacity, its fleet of cars and jets, and its resources in what often looks like a competition between the White House and DoD. Obama must vest Donilon with the authority to bring the military into a position where it works for the White House - not competes with it.

4. Go back to candidate Obama's remarks about the interconnectedness of challenges and resist the silo-ing that is going on in much of the administration with regard to Afghanistan policy, China, Russia, and some other high profile concerns.

5. Create a basic primer course for the political shop on American foreign policy, national security and international economic policy challenges. The political team - from those engaged in public outreach, political strategy, and communications - need to better understand the consequences of the NSC's tasks today, and politics should trump policy only in rare times. America's power situation is eroding badly and needs to be corrected. Regrettably the political shop is keeping the President from doing not only what is bold but what is necessary to reverse the perception and reality of American decline today. Obama should give Donilon's operation greater leverage in final policy decisions.

There are probably many other items that should be added to this list - but Tom Donilon and his team are going to have a huge job ahead as no one will remember to give them credit for an improved US-Russia relationship, an on-then off-then back on restart with China (which Donilon engineered during a recent trip to Beijing), vast gains in restoring the non-proliferation commons and locking down nuclear and WMD materials, and the like. They will only see the problems and challenges ahead - Israel/Palestine and the broader Middle East, Afghanistan, Iran, transnational terrorism, the domestic and global economy, and whatever Iraq evolves into.

Donilon's job needs to be about more than process now.

He needs to work with President Obama to show him how to change the way global gravity is shifting.

Donilon thinks this way. He is a realist and a skeptic of many of the military's grand schemes in which large resources are given, big promises made, and then no accountability for the military down the road. His ascension telegraphs that President Obama feels he does need to bring the Pentagon to heel, and Donilon is the right guy to do this.

Rather than spending his time in tractionless pursuit of platitudes or remaining safely in the grooves of inertia and incrementalism, Donilon's political skills and his knowledge of the policy terrain may give us our only chance for the Obama team to finally begin making key strategic leaps that will benefit the nation and international system.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Andrew Lebovich)

My colleague and right hand Andrew Lebovich sent the following pic to me a moment ago after I emailed him asking if he wanted to chat today (Saturday) about all of the major events we have coming up this next week. I have just arrived in San Francisco after having returned from Eastern Europe and Asia.

Suffice it to say that Andrew did not want to talk about our "Cutting the Fuse of Terrorism" conference and said "no" politely by emailing this picture.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

In Beijing today I woke up to the news that Deputy National Secrurity Adviser Thomas Donilon will succeed General Jim Jones as President Obama's National Security Adviser. This is really tremendous news -- and a very smart choice by the President.

Donilon has become the Wizard of Oz of the national security decision making process -- engineering an highly inclusive process of meetings and discussion dramatically different than the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

I'm a fan of Donilon's realism and pragmatism -- and will write more later today about Donilon's views and possible direction after I land back in the United States.

The other bit of news I heard of course is the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese peace activist Liu Xiabo. Very dramatic choice -- and all the more interesting as I'm in Beijing this very moment and there is no word of this on Chinese television news or in the papers.

More when I land in San Francisco Saturday morning.

-- Steve Clemons

If you're going to be in Washington next Tuesday, October 12, the New America Foundation and the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) are hosting an important, all-day conference on Capitol Hill. The conference will run from approximately 8:30 am - 5:00 pm, covering a broad array of vital national security topics, featuring an all-star cast of scholars, thinkers, and practitioners. Click here to RSVP.

The University of Chicago Project on Security & Terrorism
and the New America Foundation
cordially invite you and your colleagues to a major national policy forum in the US Congress

CUTTING THE FUSE:
MOVING BEYOND THE WAR ON TERROR

TUESDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2010
8:30 am Registration - 5:00 PM Adjournment
The Congressional Auditorium
Visitor Center, U.S. Capitol

8:30 am
Registration & Coffee

9:00 am
Welcoming Remarks

STEVE CLEMONS
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, The Washington Note and Editor at Large, Talking Points Memo

9:10 am
Setting the Stage: Seeing Through the Fog of War to America's Strategic Priorities at Home and Abroad

THE HON. BRIAN BAIRD
Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Committee on Science & Technology
U.S. House of Representatives
Author, Character, Politics & Responsibility: Restarting the Heart of the American Republic

9:45 am
Changing Up America's Strategic Options: The Navy's Role in Offshore Balancing

ADMIRAL GARY ROUGHEAD
Chief of Naval Operations

10:15 am
When the Ivory Tower Connects to Washington:
Empirical Research on Terrorism and Implications for Military Strategy

ROBERT PAPE
Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
Director, University of Chicago Project on Security & Terrorism
Co-Author, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It

11:00 am
Reviewing & Reconsidering US Strategy in the Middle East

KORI SCHAKE
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Senior Policy Advisor for National Security, McCain-Palin Campaign
Associate Professor, International Security Studies, US Military Academy

SETH G. JONES
U.S. Special Operations Command, Office of the Secretary of Defense/Policy Special Operations & Combating Terrorism
Political Scientist, RAND Corporation
Author, In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

FLYNT LEVERETT
Director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative, New America Foundation
Publisher, Race for Iran

12:00 pm
Lunch & Blackberry Break

12:30 pm
U.S. Security in the Age of Emerging Threats

THE HON. THOMAS KEAN
Former Governor of New Jersey
Chair, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States (9/11 Commission)

1:15 pm
Thinking Through the New Security Puzzle: Terrorism & Asymmetric Threats

THOMAS SCHELLING
Nobel Laureate in Economics
Author, The Strategy of Conflict

JENNA JORDAN
Research Associate, Chicago Project on Security & Terrorism, University of Chicago

GLENN CARLE
Former Acting National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, Central Intelligence Agency
Author, The Interrogator (forthcoming)

2:15 pm
Through the Fog of War: Homeland Security and Civil Liberties

THE HON. JOHN B. BELLINGER III
Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP
Adjunt Senior Fellow for International and National Security Law, Council on Foreign Relations
Former Legal Adviser, Department of State (2005-2009)
Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser, National Security Council (2001-2005)

PETER BERGEN
Director, Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, New America Foundation
Author, The Longest War: America and al-Qaeda Since 9/11 (forthcoming)

SAHAR AZIZ
Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Former Senior Policy Advisor, Office for Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Department of Homeland Security

3:15 pm
Constraints, Austerity, and U.S. Foreign Policy

BRUCE JENTLESON
Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Duke University
Co-Author, The End of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER
British Ambassador to the United States, 1997-2003
Author, DC Confidential:The Controversial Memoirs of Britain's Ambassador to the US
and Getting our Way: 500 Years of British Diplomacy

CHARLES KUPCHAN
Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Professor of International Affairs, Georgetown University
Former Director for European Affairs, National Security Council
Author, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace

CHRISTOPHER PREBLE
Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute
Author, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free

4:15 pm
America's Strategic Choices: More Consequential Today than in Generations

THE HON. ZALMAY KHALILZAD
Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan
Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Former Senior Director for Islamic Outreach & Southwest Asia, National Security Council

5:00 pm
Adjournment

-- Andrew Lebovich

Panda stretching at Beijing Zoo; photo credit: Andrew Oros; click image for larger version

Thanks to everyone for patience during the last couple of weeks. I've been engaged in two huge conferences back to back with trips to Beijing and Moscow in the few days between them.

Just finished helping to produce one of the conferences -- the Washington Ideas Forum sponsored by The Atlantic, Aspen Institute and Newseum.

The next is a conference next Tuesday in Washington titled "Cutting the Fuse: Moving Beyond the War on Terrorism" encouraging alternative military strategies for thinking about and going after terrorists abroad. Here is the information for those interested in attending next week.

I return to the USA from Asia tomorrow and will be back to some turbo-charged blogging.

Note to the Beijing Zoo, which was mostly a pleasant experience: you should use part of your vast intelligence network in this country to discourage taunting of the lions and tigers at the zoo.

I couldn't believe it when I saw grandmothers and children laughing and throwing empty water bottles at a magnificent lion in his outside enclosure. It was shameful and disappointing.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest post written by Matthew M. Reed, a research intern with the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

Iran's arsenal is familiar by now. It includes the "oil weapon," armies, proxies, and ultimately nuclear weapons. Each tool of leverage is seriously flawed but that does not prevent alarmists from overstating their effect. Upon further review, Tehran's arsenal is generally weak.

Use of the "oil weapon" is unrealistic. According to the US Government Accountability Office, "between 50 and 76 percent of the Iranian government's revenues in recent years" came from oil exports. Limiting output to punish Western economies with higher prices would thus be suicidal for an oil-dependent regime. Saudi Arabia also makes the threat less viable with their spare production capacity and willingness to stabilize markets during crises. Saudi spare capacity (i.e. the ability to pump extra oil as needed) and Iran's total daily crude exports now hover around the same mark: 3-4 million barrels per day. If Iran uses the oil weapon, the Saudis will compensate.

Any threat from Iran's conventional army is also overrated. The Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular army are competent but aging fast. This limits their ability to project power, which is a prerequisite for intimidating neighbors. Provision 8 of UN Resolution 1929 prevents any decisive accumulation of Iranian conventional arms including advanced weapons and spare parts. Perhaps most importantly, Iran's immediate neighbors - Iraq and Afghanistan - are states which Iran sees no gain in attacking; any substantial Iranian force could also never cross the American-controlled Gulf. Iran's armed forces can certainly defend their own borders but the military poses no threat to neighbors enjoying American protection.

Can it be that American military bases abroad, usually thought of as "stabilizers" in tough neighborhoods, are really the primary cause of radical terrorism against the US and its allies? That is what Robert Pape and James K. Feldman compellingly argue in their new book released this week titled Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It.

Most war planners and geo-strategists conceive of US military bases abroad as if they are anchors of stability in unstable regions. Over the last six decades, while there have been occasional protests, sometimes violent, targeting these foreign bases by rebellious students or groups affiliated with socialist or communist parties in governments hosting these US troops, most of the political system in these respective governments strongly support the American bases, usually as a cheap way to deter aggression from neighbors.

But what once worked in Germany, Japan, Turkey, the Philippines, South Korea, the UK doesn't seem to be working so well in the Middle East or South Asia today and frankly may be eroding even in these traditional base-hosting countries where jihadist terrorism hasn't been a factor.

When terrorist tracker and New America Foundation Counter-Terrorism Initiative director Peter Bergen was invited to interview Osama bin Laden in 1997, bin Laden told Bergen point blank that America had become an arrogant nation in the wake of its victory in the Cold War and that the basing of American troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of the two Holy Mosques, had made the US a target for al Qaeda. It is also true that the Saudi government invited in and agreed to host on a temporary basis US forces in order to help deter Iraq's Saddam Hussein. But after ten years, the phrase "temporary bases" actually shifted in then Defense Secretary William Cohen's remarks to "semi-permanent."

Growing concern about specific terrorist threats targeting Europe in the past few weeks, with the focus on Britain, France, and Germany, led the State Department yesterday to issue a "travel alert" related to Europe. Here is the key portion of the alert:

The State Department alerts U.S. citizens to the potential for terrorist attacks in Europe. Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks. European governments have taken action to guard against a terrorist attack and some have spoken publicly about the heightened threat conditions.

Terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests. U.S. citizens are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services.

U.S. citizens should take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling.

On the one hand, the alert's content and timing make sense. As I noted above, the discussion of a possible threat to Europe has been growing not only in the United States but also in France, Britain and Germany, with a flurry of increasingly specific news last week about a possible "Mumbai-style" attack in these countries, though reports differed on whether or not the plot was still "active" or whether or not it had even transitioned to an operational stage of planning.

Still, I have to question the value of alerts like the one excerpted above. While it is understandable that the government would want to offer some sort of official indication of the increased threat, a warning about travel to an entire continent, as well as words of caution about ubiquitous "public transportation" and heavily-trafficked tourist sites are so broad that they limit the power of any information contained in the warning itself.

Moreover, at a time when European governments are backtracking and reassuring their citizens that the threat information is not new, or not a cause for alarm, what message does this kind of alert send? Even if State Department officials assure Americans that they "are not, repeat not, advising Americans not to go to Europe," and even if the "alert" does not rise to the level of a "warning" I fear this secondary information will get lost in the shuffle. Indeed, the headlines from this country and in others have been dominated not by subsequently reassuring messages from the administration or State, but by the initial news of a terrorism warning to Americans traveling in Europe.

It is possible that this kind of reaction is inevitable, and a cost of the government making public statements about dangerous situations. But such a statement must either be issued in a way so as not to provoke overreactions, or followed by information that will either calm fears or help travelers avoid specific threats. Overly-general warnings effecting hundreds of thousands of people that provide little actual information only serve to sow more fear without making people any safer.

-- Andrew Lebovich

Wow.

President Obama's new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Austan Goolsbee has gone "TED-ish" in his economic commentary.

Goolsbee's talk is coherent, straightforward and doesn't talk down to folks.

And the production style is more modern than virtually anything I have seen from the White House.

Excellent job Austan.

-- Steve Clemons

Bob Wright has a piece on the New York Times' Opinionator which should be read in full as he provocatively suggests that we take the earnestness out of the pursuit of a two-state peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.

His view that the parties can't get to a two-state arrangement as long as the most radical factions set the terms and temperature in the region rings true to me -- and thus he thinks that quiet, complacent centrists need to be stirred.

I just got this email from Republican House Whip Eric Cantor:

Do You Have Time for a 30 Minute Strategy Call?

Dear Steven,

Will you join me for a 30 minute strategy call on Thursday, September 30th at 4:30 PM?

My colleague in the GOP Young Guns program, Representative Kevin McCarthy, and I would like to discuss with you how we can work together over the next 35 days to take America back. We will be taking questions and suggestions from you. Click here to join us.

We're looking forward to talking with you.

Regards,
Eric Cantor
House Republican Whip

Notice that there is no request for "$5" -- just a request for participation in a "strategy call."

Maybe the Dems are doing this too -- but I certainly haven't been on those lists. 30 minutes are not enough for the kind of list that the GOP probably sent this too -- but it promotes the notion of connection.

Impressive.

-- Steve Clemons

The New York Times yesterday filed a report on India's efforts to force communications companies that rely on encrypted or hard-to-track communications systems, like Blackberry and Skype, to make their technology accessible or risk being banned from the country. This new step is unsurprising given talk in the UAE last month of forcing compliance with surveillance efforts and the disclosure yesterday of plans in this country to require companies to be able to provide clear text of encrypted communications if so ordered by a court.

It is interesting that for all of concerns put forth in the article of potential consequences of this new rule for India -- such as fear of increased government reach, concerns about inadequate privacy protections, and lack of capacity to actually deal with this information flow -- the author focuses on the impact increased pressure on communications companies could have for India's business interests:

The most inflammatory part of the effort has been India's threat to block encrypted BlackBerry services, widely used by corporations, unless phone companies provide access to the data in a readable format. But Indian officials have also said they will seek greater access to encrypted data sent over popular Internet services like Gmail, Skype and virtual private networks that enable users to bypass traditional telephone links or log in remotely to corporate computer systems.

Critics say such a threat could make foreigners think twice about doing business here. Especially vulnerable could be outsourcing for Western clients, like processing medical records or handling confidential research projects, information that is typically transmitted as encrypted data.

"If there is any risk to that data, those companies will look elsewhere," said Peter Sutherland, a former Canadian ambassador to India who is now a consultant to North American companies doing business there.

S. Ramadorai, vice chairman of India's largest outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services, echoed that sentiment in a newspaper column on Wednesday. "Bans and calls for bans aren't a solution," he wrote. "They'll disconnect India from the rest of the world."

India certainly does not want to scare away businesses who rely on encrypted communications in a globally competitive marketplace. Yet what is more worrisome about this entire effort is that it represents another example of governments pursuing more and more information without trying to analyze and where necessary reform how that data is actually used.

While it is attractive (and understandable) for governments concerned with their security situation to want to be able to access different means of communication, the allure of more access to data could allow countries like India to acquire more and more information, making it harder to find what they need to break up plots and prevent attacks. This is in part what has happened in the United States, where we have created a massive intelligence bureaucracy devoted in part to taking in as much information as possible, while sometimes not taking steps to process the information more intelligently or effectively.

In the rush acquire data and improve security, governments must continue to evaluate not just what they need but also how they evaluate what they already have, in order to ensure that new efforts to improve security don't just make an already dangerous situation worse.

-- Andrew Lebovich

Many are lauding President Obama's UN General Assembly speech highlighting America's rededicated, slightly shifting course on which countries to focus development aid on -- and which not. The US Global Leadership Coalition, which is having a mega conference this week on the focus of America's international aid agenda, is loudly applauding President Obama and Hillary Clinton for their efforts.

On top of this, the long awaited Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review should be released by the administration any day now -- and while I too think that it's important to promote America's aid budgets, I think that as things look now, the State Department is being applauded too strongly for not achieving as much as it should have in the QDDR process.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was compelling and showed real vision in this talk at the New America Foundation sponsored by the American Strategy Program and the Palestine Note. It's worth the watch.

Special thanks to James Fallows for standing in for me as chair of the event on short notice - and thanks to Amjad Atallah of the New America Foundation Middle East Task Force for managing questions and to Fadi Elsalameen of the Palestine Note for co-hosting this with us.

-- Steve Clemons

The violent clashes currently underway in East Jerusalem, sparked by the shooting of a Palestinian man by a private guard protecting Israeli settlers, have once again demonstrated the volatility and hair-trigger tensions in Jerusalem and in the region that can explode at the slightest provocation. Yet even as riot police are dispersing Palestinians in the Old City, direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis continue, President Obama yesterday at the United Nations called for greater international efforts to create a true Palestinian state, and a poll of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza found that nearly 60% of respondents oppose attacks against Israel, and 54% believed the new round of talks would be beneficial to them (even though nearly 56% said they did not believe the talks would change the status quo).

The New America Foundation American Strategy Program/Middle East Task Force will host Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm TODAY for a discussion of the state of relations between Israelis and Palestinians, and the difficulties of building a state, its institutions, and its economy while coping with the heavy burdens of occupation and settlements. Registration for this event is CLOSED, but it will stream live right here at TWN.

-- Andrew Lebovich

There are so many layers of geostrategic humor in this clip. Watch -- and just think about it.

Not gonna say more at the moment.

-- Steve Clemons

A giant panda eats a special-made mooncake in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province on Sept. 21, 2010, one day ahead of China's Mid-autumn festival this year. (courtesy of Xinhua; photo credit: Liu Dawei)

While the Mandarins of Washington and Beijing square off over the yuan-dollar exchange rate, China's trade in mooncake vouchers is at its peak today.

Walking around Beijing this week, I have seen evidence that there are indeed mooncakes for sale and gifting everywhere. I've received several bags of mooncakes myself. But as I wrote a short time ago, the currency -- the vouchers -- that one can gift these sugar, butter, bean paste, jelly, and flour treats with seem to far exceed the real number of mooncakes that one would think underlie their value.

Mooncake vouchers may eventually replace the dollar as the global reserve currency. You heard it here first. :-)

On a more serious front, I have been spending a lot of time in China over the last three months -- back and forth between China and a lot of places in the world. I have had my eyes opened about China in surprising ways and am incredibly impressed with the vision that China has for itself and its determination to get there.

There are problems in China -- and concerns about the behavior of a rising state, sort of the Google of Nations today, disrupting some of the polite, more Western norms of the global system.

China expects tough negotiations ahead -- and the rest of the world, particularly the United States, should be prepared for serious arm-wrestling matches with what today is really an adolescent great power with a few thousand years of history in its DNA. America, which is a young country, nonetheless is behaving too much like an octogenerian nation and has to reinvent itself.

I think James Fallows, who just spent three years here, and I are in agreement that America won't get far using China as an excuse for its current malaise -- even though the massive infusion of direct investment from the US into China that has displaced a significant part of the American manufacturing base is a "manifestation of economic lunkheadedness" in the US political and business communities.

America has to take responsibility for its own policy decisions and needs to do the things that rebuild its capacities to innovate, to make things, and to bolster its middle class working families. China is not to blame for maximizing its interests. The U.S. government writ large, in contrast, is guilty of dereliction of duty in how it has managed America's economic portfolio and allowed the financial sector to skim off the work and productivity of the other stakeholders in the economy.

With that thought -- it's a magnificent day weather-wise in Beijing today, the best I've seen yet -- and it should be great for thinking big thoughts and looking at the moon tonight.

Mooncake anyone?

-- Steve Clemons

Before I was able to speak to the themes of the Afghanistan Study Group report of which I was a part at a major foreign policy conference titled the 2010 Global Leadership Forum sponsored by the Royal United Services Institute and the Princeton Project on National Security in London this past week, former UK Ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer gave a quick outline of the findings and key proposals -- and said "this report tells us exactly what we need to do."

Princeton's G. John Ikenberry praised the report while the Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Biddle made a principled counter-argument about high national security stakes in Afghanistan and the high consequences if the US and allied efforts at counter-insurgency fail.

I noted at the meeting that Biddle's boss, Richard Haass, had called for an approach to Afghanistan mostly similar to the Afghanistan Study Group -- while my colleagues, Steve Coll and Peter Bergen, were still cautiously on the side of supporting the current COIN strategy, which I am not.

This is the kind of debate that was missing in the build up to the Iraq War -- and it's what is necessary if we are going to be able to "unwind" our position in Afghanistan, as former Senator Chuck Hagel put it.

Also on the UK front, many thanks to Member of Parliament John McDonnell who praised the Afghanistan Study Group report in Parliament (pdf):

HOUSE OF COMMONS -- OFFICIAL REPORT -- PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (HANSARD)

MP John McDonnell

Thursday 9 September 2010

"I refer Members to an excellent report produced recently by the Afghanistan Study Group in America. It is entitled "A New Way Forward: Rethinking US Strategy in Afghanistan." The study group includes a range of specialists--ex-military, intelligence experts, regional specialists and people involved in conflict resolution in the past across the world. The report reflects many of the statements that have been made by Members today, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher).

The report includes sober analysis of the need for us to enter direct dialogue with participants in the conflict. As many Members have done today, it analyses the war in Afghanistan, describing it not as a struggle between the Karzai Government and an insurgent Taliban movement allied with international terrorists seeking to overthrow the Government, but as a civil war about power-sharing. The lines of contention are partly ethnic, chiefly but not exclusively between Pashtuns, who dominate the south, and other ethnic groups such as the Tajiks and Uzbeks who are more prevalent in the north. The conflict is partly rural versus urban, and of course partly sectarian. As many Members have said, it is also influenced by surrounding nations with a desire to promote their own interests--Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others. As others have emphasised, the conflict is interpreted by many in Afghanistan as having elements of resistance to what is seen as a military occupation."

Just keep this in mind: $100 billion in military expenditures alone in a country with a GDP of $14 billion.

-- Steve Clemons