[2:56 PM] American politicians and policymakers have a difficult time understanding what an important role perception plays in the mind of constituents. Their typical line of reasoning suggests to them that people should see the obvious benefits of their policies, weigh them against the few costs and subsequently agree with the policy. Of course this suggests that people don’t think or vote with their hearts. But it also can be insulting when politicians particularly transparently use this to suggest how genuine their motives are when obviously they are not.

John Ashcroft comes to mind. When Bush first gave him the nod for attorney general, some questions were raised about his policies toward minorities, blacks in particular. Never mind his visit to Bob Jones University or his interview with Southern Partisan lamenting the bad rap some slaveholders who happened to be founding fathers have gotten. Given all of that, Ashcroft and supporters feign incredulity that some might believe that he could possibly have problems with blacks; after all he has deep religious convictions, etc., and how dare you suggest otherwise.

Okay, fine. But why don’t you understand that your actions might cause some to wonder about your social convictions. Well this is becoming part of the politics of this country. We shouldn’t be criticized as long as we do some things right. And if you don’t give us credit for those things done right along with criticism, then you’re being unfair and irrational.

I’ve gone a long way to talk about an essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs called “The Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism.” The essay's argument is that in the 20th century, America’s policies in the Arab world have been quite favorable. It’s fundamentalist religious figures who stir up most of the anti-American hatred. This coupled with state controlled media limits the ability of people in the region to get a balanced view of what America is really doing in the world.

“A brief survey of U.S. policy toward the Middle East, furthermore, reveals just how hard Washington has tried to win the support of Arabs in particular and Muslims in general,” the author writes. He then goes on to enumerate a host of actions the U.S. took (mostly for its own strategic interests) in the Arab world that were in some way beneficial for individual Arab states.

The tone of the article contains a hint of “we kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait and September 11th is the thanks we get?”

The essay continues

Why has the real record been so disregarded in the Middle East? There are several explanations. First, whatever the extent of Americans' failure to understand the region, Middle Easterners' inability to understand the United States has been greater…Third, Washington's real record is constantly distorted. The United States, for example, is blamed for the suffering of Muslims whom it protected in Kosovo and Bosnia. U.S. humanitarian efforts in Somalia are portrayed as part of an imperialistic, anti-Muslim campaign defeated by heroic local resistance.

The author makes some valid points. But the points are exactly what you would expect to find in Foreign Affairs -- the journal of foreign policy. It’s fatuous to expect oppressed citizens of a developing country not to focus on the negatives in their relationship with the West. Perception. Why is this so difficult to understand? A poor person in Yemen doesn’t care that the U.S. backed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. What have you done for me lately?

Of course no discussion would be complete without a discussion of Israel. On one side we have the “we hate you for your support of Israel.” And on the other side we have “why is it always about Israel?” Perception. These are our brothers suffering in an occupied land. Don’t preach to me about what Arafat should have done at Camp David.

Whether you agree with the argument or not, not understanding how and why the perception of the U.S. breeds these virulent feelings is inexcusable and arrogant. Questioning the logic behind the motives won’t get us anywhere. Trying to understand them will.

[3:07 PM] This USA Today editorial emphsizes some of my concerns of the previous post.

[2:50 PM] I was a bit surprised at the White House reaction to the death toll of hostages in the Moscow theater ordeal. I suppose I was expecting a more muted response that didn’t criticize, but didn’t approve forthrightly either. But as I turn over these events in my mind, I am forced to wonder what the U.S. would have done in a similar situation. On September 11th, the U.S. “escaped” having to act on a similar tough decision that would have resulted in the deaths of innocent hostages. So I think we should continue to examine closely what the Russians did. However, the U.S. media (especially television), still in a frenzy over the DC sniper, isn’t giving much attention to the matter. We need to continue to focus on the Bali bombings and this incident to remind ourselves that despite all the maneuvering over Iraq, the war on terrorism is still raging.

[10:13 AM] In the last post, I wondered when Thomas Friedman, who is in the region would be writing from Bahrain, concerning their parlaimentary elections. Today he checks in from Manama, Bahrain, but it's a pretty bland piece.

[2:09 PM] Thomas Friedman is over in Qatar. When is he going to opine about the elections in neighboring Bahrain? For the first time, women can vote in a parliamentary election and run for national office.

[1:24 PM] Donald Rumsfeld sets us straight on the Cuban Missile Crisis-Iraq analogy. Here's an excerpt I think worth posting at length:

Q: On President Kennedy, didn't -- Mr. Secretary, President Kennedy did not preempt action by Cuba by a military strike. He engaged in --
Rumsfeld: I didn't say he did.
Q: -- he ordered a blockade, not military action. So how --
Rumsfeld: (Inaudible.)
Q: Two things. How --
Rumsfeld: Oh, I'll explain it.
Q: You're not --
Rumsfeld: I'll explain it. Are you ready?
Q: How --
Rumsfeld: Here we go.
Q: How is that justification for a preemptive military strike?
Rumsfeld: It's perfect.
Q: (Laughs.)
Rumsfeld: It's perfect. What he did was he interposed U.S. ships -- Soviet ships that were sailing to Cuba with U.S. ships with orders to stop those ships and prevent them from delivering those missiles to Cuba.
Q: But he didn't bomb Cuba.
Rumsfeld: Just a minute. There would be no reason to. The missiles weren't there. He made a conscious decision that he would put the world at risk of a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union by preventing those ships from doing that which the Soviet Union had ordered those ships to do. And a set of decisions had to be made on both sides as to how they would wind that down. That process is taking place in the world today. The president has said that there are risks to taking action, and they're serious risks; and he has also said there are serious risks to inaction, and the one thing that is not acceptable to him is to do nothing. And he has gone to the United Nations, and Iraq is being offered an opportunity -- just as the Soviet Union was -- to make a set of decisions. And it seems to me that if one thinks about it and walks through that process -- we happen to know how the Cuban missile crisis came out: The ships turned around and went home. The Soviets made a set of decisions that they would not risk testing that blockade.
I do not have any idea what set of decisions Iraq will make in the event that a U.N. resolution passes and -- or fails -- and they have to face a set of decisions as to what kind of inspections they will agree to. And time will tell.
Q: (Inaudible.)
Rumsfeld: It is not a perfect -- it is not a perfect, on all fours, analogy, but it is certainly as similar as anything in recent years that one can find.
Q: But given the situation in North Korea now, why can't you just as easily draw a parallel between the Cuban missile crisis and North Korea? North Korea has launched missiles much more powerful and with longer range than Iraq has. North Korea attacked South Korea. Why couldn't you draw a parallel with North Korea also?
Rumsfeld: The president's speech to the United Nations distinguished between the two cases. My remarks and testimony and responses to questions up on Capitol Hill distinguished between those cases. The conclusion on the part of the president is that Iraq is unique; that is has the set of characteristics and intent and behavior pattern that he described, and there are distinctions between that country and other terrorist states and other terrorist networks.
Q: Mr. Secretary, one more attack on your --
Rumsfeld: And we'll make this the last question.
Q: Thank you, sir. Just another attack on your opening statement and your, in a sense, rebuttal here.
If you accept the fact that President Kennedy established a blockade, there are critics of the president's stated and possible policy vis-a-vis Iraq, by saying that containment works and that we could solve the problem by continuing the containment of Iraq without any kind of military action.
Q: Which is what Teddy Kennedy said.
Q: Your view on that, sir?
Rumsfeld: There's no question but that there have been times in history, in my lifetime, when containment has worked. There have also been times when containment or deterrence have not worked. And one has to look across a spectrum of activities and recognize the reality that some set of capabilities deter certain kinds of behavior but not others. With respect to containment, if you wanted to use that word and say that a containment of Iraq might be an appropriate approach, the reality is that for 11 years, the United States has attempted to do that. They have worked with other countries, through the United Nations, some 16 resolutions. They have attempted to diplomatically restrict Iraq, with the hope of creating incentives for them to give up weapons of mass destruction. It's failed. They've used economic sanctions. And for a while, the economic sanctions pinched. But today they not only don't pinch, but they may very well even result in higher revenues for Iraq than were those sanctions not there. And so that has not worked, because he's made a conscious judgment that he'd rather have weapons of mass destruction than the food or the revenues from the oil liftings. And the third approach of military activity has also been used, and it's been used first in Desert -- in the Gulf War and then, second, in -- Desert Shield I guess it was called, and -- pardon me?
Q: Desert Fox in December '98.
Rumsfeld: Desert Fox. And then, third, it's been used in the northern and southern no-fly zones -- military weaponry and capability. And all three have failed. And they failed over a sustained period, which is not a month or a week or a year; it's 11 years of --
Q: To do what?
Rumsfeld: They have failed to bring about a situation where Saddam Hussein would do what he promised to do at the end of the Gulf War, namely, give up his weapons of mass destruction and adhere to those resolutions. Now, anyone who wants can rewrite history, anyone who wants can give speeches and say things they'd like to say. But the fact is that at some point, I think most reasonable people would have to agree that 11 years is a long time; that the economic sanctions are not working; the borders are porous, the weapons are flowing in; and third, that the diplomatic efforts have not failed. So, if one is enamored of the word containment, it's pretty clear that they have not been, are not currently, and I would submit, are unlikely, prospectively, to feel contained. Deterrent, one can also raise, and say, are they deterred? We know that the fact that the United States has nuclear weapons did not deter the Korean War. It did not deter the Vietnam War. It did not deter Saddam Hussein from invading Kuwait, and it did not deter a bucket of other things. It happened that those deterrents did work with the Soviet Union, one would think, and created a relatively stable situation between two powers. But it never worked with respect to terrorist states. It never worked with respect to lesser contingencies. And I think that that's an accurate reading of history. And I hope you do, too. Thank you.
Q: Have a great day.
Q: Thanks.

[11:40 AM] James A. Baker is critical of the Clinton administration’s approach to North Korea. “But in reality, our policy of carrots and sticks had given way overnight to one of carrots only -- fuel oil to help run North Korea's beleaguered economy, two new nuclear reactors and diplomatic ties,” he writes in the Washington Post. North Korea is certainly enigmatic and I would suggest as proof that it is slightly less belligerent than Baker makes them out to be, the fact that it is still adhering to a self-imposed moratorium on flight-testing ballistic missiles. Build all the nukes you want, you still need a delivery vehicle and so far only China and Russia have one that can hit the U.S. This is not to say that he does not have some valid points but only to make the case that the North seems more amenable to engagement than sticks. And not surprisingly Baker offers no pronouncements on the second Bush’s nonexistent North Korea policy which may have made all of this unnecessary in the first place had the administration had a plan from the outset.

[10:44 AM] The Program on International Policy Attitudes has published results of a survey entitled “Americans on the Conflict with Iraq.” Some interesting findings:

* 79 percent of those surveyed think Iraq has the capability to strike the U.S. using WMD

* 68 percent say if Iraq agrees to unrestricted inspections, the U.S. should agree not to invade

* 42 percent believe U.N. inspections are likely to be effective (versus 36% who say they won’t be it’s worth the effort and 21% who say they will be ineffective and that invasion is the preferred option)

* Finally, 43 percent give top priority to the war on terrorism and al-Qaida with 34 percent placing Iraq as the top priority

The most striking finding in my opinion is the significant number of people who think Iraq can strike the U.S. And certainly the administration is playing on that remote possibility. But North Korea has a much better chance of that feat than Iraq--and they most likely have a couple of nuclear weapons as well.

[11:50 AM] Yesterday six men in Buffalo were indicted on charges of supporting al-Qaida. Today the trial begins in Germany for Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of aiding and abetting murder as part of an al-Qaida cell in Germany. The Buffalo six and El Motassadeq allegedly trained in Afghanistan. “Trained in Afghanistan” is phrase we hear so much lately. It’s been while, but a question has returned in my mind. Why was it so easy for such a diverse group of Muslims to travel to Afghanistan and train in terrorist camps, yet the intelligence community’s argument post 9/11 was that it was incredibly difficult to penetrate this network. There is a steady parade of individuals arrested, indicted, and sentenced (in the case of John Walker Lindh) almost every week. Inevitably we discover that the individual was in Afghanistan at some point. Was this avenue never explored pre-9/11 by the intelligence community?

But before I start piling on the intelligence community, I found CIA director George Tenet’s testimony before Congress last week very interesting. One item that I noticed was his refutation of the accusation that the Sudanese had offered to turn Bin Laden over to the U.S. after they asked him to leave. “We have read the allegations that, around this time, the Sudanese Government offered to surrender Bin Ladin to American custody. Mr. Chairman, CIA has no knowledge of such an offer,” Tenet testified. More later.

[10:48 AM] Why I watch Hardball with Chris Matthews, I don’t know. The train wreck syndrome I suppose. Here’s an excerpt from last night’s show about the DC sniper

BO DIETL, FMR. NYPD HOMICIDE DETECTIVE: We can throw this whole terrorist thing out about al Qaeda and all that. Let’s just think about it. First of all, this person-terrorists are going to be making communication with the police. And remember the Tarot card; it says “I am God”. If it was a fundamental Muslim terrorist, the worst thing in the world is a sacrilege to use the word God. I mean Allah is their God, and that’s the only word they can use. So we can take the terrorist thing, I think, out of the equation here...

So now former NYPD homicide detectives are experts in Islamist terrorism? Allah is the Arabic word for God—Muslim God, Christian God, Jewish God. In fact, didn’t “experts” find it odd that the anthrax killer would write a note proclaiming “Allah is great,” instead of either writing completely in English “God is great” or the common Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar?”

[5:00 PM] The Robert Kagan article and the Commentary article metioned here not too long ago about the divide between America and Europe have stuck in the back of my mind lately. As I mentioned before, I think Kagan is off base and places too little emphasis on the cultural divide. I've been meaning to read this article titled "What Is a European?" from last week's NYT Magazine. It's on the list for tonight.

[4:38 PM] In his usual uninspiring, uncreative fashion, President Bush sticks to his foreign policy template. 1. Remind us that (because for some reason we need reminding that nuclear weapons are dangerous or that terrorists kill people) bad things are...well bad. 2. State an obivious fact. 3. Assuage us by telling us that you're talking with our friends and allies. Here's the president on North Korea:

"We view this very seriously. It is a troubling discovery, and it's a discovery that we intend to work with our friends to deal with, and I believe we can do it peacefully."

[2:01 PM] North Korea seems in a confessional mood these days (although Fields Report's Korean analyst colleagues are underwhelmed by the admittedly limited evidence and some of the erroneous alarming headlines -- Uranium enrichment program does not equal bomb as some headlines suggest). Now Iran says it's not actually its duty to hate the U.S. (more a hobby I suppose). Habibollah Asgaroladi, "leader of the Islamic Coalition Society, the country's oldest and most influential conservative party" said that "Negotiation with the United States is not absolutely forbidden, neither is hostility towards the US a duty, we will negotiate with the US if our national interests deem it necessary." If only we could get those damn Iraqis in line, we could get the entire Axis into therapy.

[1:45 PM] Update on the archive problem. We have made a temporary fix to the main page but if you click on an archive link that page will have no archives listed. Still working on that one.

[3:13 PM] For some reason all the archives have disappeared from the left side of the site. Blogger's help section says this is a common glitch in the system, but their suggested remedies have not fixed the problem. The Fields Report technical team is awaiting a response to an email sent to Blogger.

[10:55 AM] Thomas Friedman takes to task “professors and students” who are urging their universities to divest from Israel. Friedman calls the effort dishonest and hypocritical. Dishonest because he feels it absolves the “Palestinians” (quotes explained later) from any blame in the current state of affairs. Hypocritical because there is no call for divestiture from despotic regimes like Egypt.

But this argument is nonsense. It’s one thing for campus activists to claim that Israel is the only evil in the world—which Friedman is accusing them of doing. However, since when did choosing a battle mean you had to give equal time to every other unjust situation? I understand Friedman’s outrage that there is no hue and cry for holding the rest of the region to higher standards of human rights. But why is it incumbent on students to rank their targets of protest according to Friedman’s criteria?

Indeed, this is an issue in post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy especially now vis-à-vis Iraq. Why Iraq? Why not Iran or North Korea or Libya? Why is Saddam Hussein so evil for gassing his own people but Xiang Zemin is not for systematically repressing and killing Chinese?

Friedman, I suspect, was only using the campus protestors to make a larger point about the current state of Israeli-Palestinian relations and the Bush administration’s approach to the situation. But his accusations toward the campus protestors are just as disingenuous as he accuses them of being.

[10:27 AM]

“Indonesia is not a terrorist hotbed. Proponents of radical Islam remain a small minority, and most of those are devout practitioners who would never dream of using violence. But even a tiny group of people can cause an immense amount of damage. The challenge, both for the Indonesian government and the international community, is to be alert to the possibility of individuals making common cause with international criminals, without taking steps that will undermine Indonesia’s fragile democratic institutions.”

Read this report titled “Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia: The case of the “Ngruki Network” in Indonesia” by the International Crisis Group here. The report also explains what a puzzling number of news stories don’t -- jemaah islamiyah means Islamic community.

[12:28 PM] Most U.S. newspapers have articles marking the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. However, there’s not much coverage of the meeting down in Cuba except for wire stories. NPR had a nice story today.

This Washington Post article argues that there is some merit to both points of view that the missile crisis has parallels and lessons for the Iraq debate and the other side that says the crisis was defused with diplomacy. I don’t agree with the Bush side. To see it from that preemption standpoint, you have to buy into the notion that Iraq is a direct threat to the U.S., which missiles in Cuba were. But that is not the case; so many of the subsequent arguments are built on that faulty premise. The Post article also repeats the suspect accusation that satellite photos have showed Iraq rebuilding nuclear facilities. I wrote in a post a while back that there is no proof that the rebuilding means anything nefarious. Maybe the rebuilding is a sign of Iraq repairing facilities for its nuclear program, but the satellite photo is far from smoking gun. It merely shows outward physical construction.

[12:07 PM] “La Crisis de Octubre: una visión política 40 años después” begins today in Cuba with both Cuban and American veterans of the Cuban missile crisis set to drink mojitos and examine newly declassified documents. Former Kennedy administration officials Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorensen, who are in attendance say President Bush has taken JFK’s words out of context when he tries to equate preemption in Iraq to Kennedy’s handling of the October crisis. Robert McNamara says that “a quarantine is the opposite of a pre-emptive action.”

See some reconnaissance photos from the crisis here.

Barbara Walters interviews Fidel Castro on 20/20 tonight.

Here is how Granma, Cuba’s largest newspaper sees the crisis and the three-day event (the English link is currently not working but you can read the headline and first paragraph. Note the article under this one: “Jeb Bush drinks Bacardi.” The Spanish version of the article is available though)

[11:47 AM] I’ve had lots of disagreements with colleagues about the “next” terrorist attack – generally meaning an attack by al-Qaeda. My feeling is this heightened fear of a WMD terrorist attack is way overblown. It uses the same speculative logic that President Bush uses when he says that because of September 11th, we must take on Saddam Hussein. This is a fear he’s built up in his mind and pushed forward.

The same goes to some extent to the idea that after September 11th, we now must fear a terrorist attack using chemical, biological, or nuclear or radiological weapons. I understand the fear, but it just doesn’t stand up to any close inspection. Al-Qaida and Hizballah have continued to show a proclivity to use conventional explosives. Would they use some non-conventional form if it dropped in their laps? Probably. But that doesn’t mean that it’s their all consuming priority.

The recent tanker explosion in Yemen, which looks more and more like a repeat of the USS Cole bombing is what brought this to mind. If it was indeed a terrorist attack carried out by al-Qaida, it underscores my contention. This WP article mentions that “Moroccan authorities have said al Qaeda leaders instructed operatives fleeing Afghanistan last year to mount a similar operation against ships in the Strait of Gibraltar.” But it fails to report that Moroccan authorities actually detained three Saudi men actually carrying out reconnaissance for a similar attack. Those men have since joined the legion of others detained at “undisclosed locations,” and hence the story has pretty much died.

I’m also amazed at how I hear so many pundits and politicians, and even analysts say that after 9/11 we have to be ever vigilant for the next attack. Or they something like “if al-Qaida strikes again…” But al-Qaida has struck again a few times. The bombing in Karachi that killed 15 French engineers and the attack in Tunisia are just two examples. Both attacks used conventional explosives.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about WMD falling into the hands of terrorists. But it is becoming an all consuming obsession that clouds the debate about preparedness for a terrorist attacks. The Iraq situation is only exacerbating this. Now Saddam’s WMD might fall into terrorist hands — which is a stretch. But again the talk of WMD conjures up such frightening images that they become the focus of the debate despite there being a relatively low probability of their use by terrorists. We need to stop projecting our own fears, real as they might be, into the minds of terrorists. We have plenty of material now (i.e., CNN video tapes, al-Jazeera interviews) to give us direct insight into the minds of al-Qaida. And their thinking is a bit different than ours.

[10:33 PM] The pundits and political writers will analyze to death President Bush’s Iraq speech tonight but here are a couple of thoughts about it anyway. First, it seems that a better case is to be made for Bush wagging the dog right now than Clinton during the Monica ordeal. And that brings up something very noticeable about Bush’s speech tonight – and that is how several times he attempted to give the impression of correlation using sketchy logic and “facts” that have not been confirmed. The most glaring example was the silly statement that “We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy: the United States of America.” One can’t even make the argument that Bush was simply trying to link the two by common enemy because he went on the repeat other sketchy links between Iraq and Al-Qaida. But the “common enemy” is still is a ridiculous argument. Hasn’t the intelligence community for some time been of the mind (although it is changing rapidly) that the Sunni Al-Qaida and Shiite Hizballah wouldn’t cooperate despite their common enemy -- the U.S.? But the Wag the Dog notion comes to mind especially when Bush tried to answer the “why now” question. “Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now. And there's a reason. We have experienced the horror of Sept. 11.” Again though, this is a not so subtle attempt to link Al-Qaida and Iraq, which has yet to proven. It also implies that any threat from Saddam Hussein has intensified since September 11th. And it assumes that Saddam is irrational enough to use, threaten to use, or transfer any weapons of mass destruction thereby bringing about his own destruction at the hands of the U.S. So in my mind, the timing question has still yet to be answered. But speaking of timing, this poll shows that the American people think Bush is focusing on Iraq at the expense of tending to the economy. In hindsight, Clinton’s strike aiming at Bin Laden looks pretty prescient. Bush’s singular obsession with Saddam right now looks truly like he’s wagging the dog.

[3:49 PM] Robert Kagan will discuss his essay "Power and Weakness" and U.S.-Europe relations tomorrow at 12:10 PM ET. Read the essay here.

[2:35 PM] Perhaps James Kelly should read this book.

[2:26 PM] Floundering to come up with a North Korea policy almost two years after taking power, the Bush administration finally dispatched Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to North Korea. Apparently, it didn’t go well with the North Korean Foreign Ministry calling Kelly "high-handed and arrogant." The Bush administration’s bungling approach to North Korea is beyond amusing, especially since now after flip flopping on whether to engage or not, it can’t even successfully engage.

Here are comments from a spokesman for DPRK’s Foreign Ministry, who is apparently still stinging from that little axis of evil comment:

However, the special envoy approached so-called matters of concern with great pressure and arrogance by saying that DPRK-Japan relations and North-South relations, as well as DPRK-US relations, can be resolved smoothly when we first resolve the US unilateral demands regarding nuclear weapons, missiles, conventional forces, and human rights issues.

The so-called matters of concern put forth by the United States are all products of its hostile policy toward the DPRK.

Ultimately, it has become clear, through the special envoy's explanation, that the US Bush administration is continuing to pursue--instead of dialogue-- a hardline hostile policy of trying to dominate us with strength and high-handedness.

The Bush administration continues to adhere to and has not withdrawn its resolution [to term] the DPRK an axis of evil or its selection of the DPRK as a target of a preemptive nuclear strike, and it is continuing to cling to a unilateral hardline hostile policy. As long as this has been proven, we also plainly clarified our principled stance regarding this matter to the special envoy.

The unchanging US hardline, anti-DPRK crushing policy is driving us to pursue all necessary countermeasures, in accordance with the proven correctness of military-first politics.

[11:58 AM] I mentioned in this post a while back that Dubya’s speech to the U.N. seemed to demonstrate a newfound respect for Security Council resolutions. So Stephen Zunes says, what about all these resolutions being violated by countries other than Iraq (I know, I know; it’s all about those weapons of mass destruction).

[1:00 PM] I just completed this piece for the Nuclear Threat Initiative on Islamist terrorism in South America.

[12:43 PM] The Congressional Executive Commission on China has just come out with its 2002 report on human rights and rule of law and China. Among other things the report finds

Despite deepening economic reforms, China’s authoritarian government has resisted calls for political liberalization and has made little progress on improving civil and political rights. Although the Chinese government is seeking to ease widespread anger over rampant official corruption by requiring the direct election of village leaders and encouraging official accountability, the Party has overshadowed such promising steps by continuing to suppress any threat to its unchallenged grip on power. The violent suppression of peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 set in motion a renewed period of intolerance of political dissent. The current Chinese leadership appears determined to modernize the economy while keeping a tight lid on political dissent, continuing firm Party rule, and maintaining its vision of social stability.

Human Rights Watch criticizes the Commission for not making firmer U.S. policy recommendations.

[3:45 PM] This just in. Check out this article in Commentary. Here’s an excerpt:

My own feeling is otherwise: that the current state of transatlantic tension, far from being a temporary artifact of power relations, is the more natural condition between us—a strain based on our radically different cultures and histories and hence unlikely to be dissipated by bigger defense budgets there or more sensitive diplomats here. And my guess is that this condition is likely only to worsen.

No really. I hadn’t read this before that last post.

[3:32 PM] This story on NPR last Sunday sent me back to Robert Kagan’s essay “Power and Weakness.” Kagan contends that the growing rift between U.S. and European foreign policy stems from the America’s preeminent military strength and Europe’s diminishing ability project power. European, therefore are more likely to seek diplomatic solutions rather than use force because it’s the only option they have. It’s a pretty solid argument but it doesn’t account for differences in European thinking when it comes to issues that don’t have military implications or solutions – like the Kyoto treaty or the death penalty or the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Kagan may be right in his contention “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus” but his explanation is limited in applicability.

The NPR story directed me to this report entitled “Elusive Partnership: U.S. and European Policies in the Near East and the Gulf.” The attitudes expressed by Europeans in the report demonstrate that contrary to Kagan’s position, many European attitudes are not driven by being hamstrung, but simply differing priorities and viewpoints. Kagan’s thesis does have direct application to U.S. versus European views concerning Iraq but as he writes himself, “we should stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world…” This is very true but it isn’t all explained by the discrepancy in power that Kagan suggests.

More later.