As Peter Feaver observed over at Shadow Government, there's an ever-increasing number of leaks coming from the Obama administration on foreign policy. 

Beyond the drip-drip-drip on the Afghan strategic review, the foreign policy community is now agog at Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf's story in Time on the rise and fall of Greg Craig, Obama's first White House Counsel.  Former colleague Laura Rozen labels it as, "one of the most devastating accounts to have emerged of the Obama White House."

Calabresi and Weisskopf's story contains astonishing revelations, like the following: 

• Obama's foreign policy preferences changed as he confronted political realities;
• As time has passed, Obama has paid more attention to the political ramifications of his national security decisions;
• There were fierce bureaucratic battles over the release of national security memoranda;
• Greg Craig's influence waned when his policy recommendations produced political blowback;
• Over time, Obama has tried to balance national security concerns with his desire to unwind some of the Bush administraton's excessive actions.
• People who oppose Greg Craig did so mostly for short-sighted political reasons.

Well, blow me down.  

I don't mean to belittle those who either ardently support or ardently oppose the initial efforts to eliminate the legacies of Guantanamo and the like.  But stories that reveal politicians to be acting, er, politically don't really cause my jaw to drop. 

The only interesting thing I found in this piece was the part Rozen excerpted:

Obama arrived at Emanuel's office a few minutes later, took off his windbreaker and sat down at a table lined with about a dozen national-security and political advisers. He asked each to state a position and then convened an impromptu debate, selecting Craig and McDonough to argue opposing sides. Craig deployed one of Obama's own moral arguments: that releasing the memos "was consistent with taking a high road" and was "sensitive to our values and our traditions as well as the rule of law." Obama paused, then decided in favor of Craig, dictating a detailed statement explaining his position that would be released the next day.

But for Craig, it turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory. Four days later, former Vice President Dick Cheney attacked Obama on Fox News Channel for dismantling the policies he and Bush had put in place to keep the country safe. More significant was the reaction within Obama's camp. Democratic pollsters charted a disturbing trend: a drop in Obama's support among independents, driven in part by national-security issues. Emanuel quietly delegated his aides to get more deeply involved in the process. Damaged by the episode, Craig was about to suffer his first big setback.

In other words, the  median American voters are comfortable with using illiberal means to protect the national interest (hmmm... that sounds familiar).  And, shock upon shock, politicians respond to public attitudes.   

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Uri Dadush and Bennett Stacil have released The G20 in 2050, in which you learn the following:

China will become the world’s largest economy in 2032, and grow to be 20 percent larger than the United States by 2050. Over the next forty years, nearly 60 percent of G20 economic growth will come from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and Mexico alone. However, these emerging markets will not rise among the world’s richest countries in per capita terms: their average income in 2050 will still be 40 percent below that of the G7 states today. The end of the decades-old correlation between economic size and per capita income will have profound effects on global economic governance.

Hmmm.... yes, this sounds familiar:

  

Studies by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on growth trends for big developing economies contains some startling predictions. By 2010, the annual growth in aggregate demand from Brazil, Russia, India, and China will be greater than the combined growth of the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. By 2020, China and India are projected to have the second and third largest economies.  By 2025, the annual growth in aggregate demand from the four leading developing economies will be twice that of the G-7.  By 2030, the combined purchasing power of China's and India's consumers is projected to be five times that of today's United States.  While simple extrapolations from the recent past can be misleading, economic and demographic trends suggest that growth of India and China will shift what is currently a bipolar economic distribution of power into a more multipolar world.

As the number of actors increases, the likelihood of creating a concert of common preferences among them necessarily declines.  This holds with particular force if these countries achieve great power market size while still having low per capital incomes.  In addition to the current tension between the American and European varieties of capitalism, another source of preference divergence could emerge among the great powers:  the tension between rich countries willing to trade off economic growth for quality of life issues, and still-developing countries that are more reluctant to sacrifice growth.

Over at Duck of Minerva, Charli Carpenter has some interesting blog posts on recent trends in civilian casualties of interstate wars.  These casualties are traditionally divided into two categories.  The more prominent category is the intentional targeting of civilians by militaries -- what we now call "war crimes."  The other category is the unintentional killing of civilians in the course of routine military operations -- what is often referred to as "collateral damage." 

Carpenter is asking the question, "what percentage of total civilian deaths are 'collateral damage' and is this percentage trending up or down over time?"  Her first, very preliminary cut at an answer -- remember, this is a blog post, not the American Political Science Review -- is rather surprising:

This analysis suggests that collateral damage rather than war crimes now constitute the majority of civilian deaths in international wars worldwide, and that the total number of collateral damage deaths is 20 times higher than at the turn of the last century.

The ratio of collateral damage victims to war crimes victims has dramatically increased since the end of the Cold War. According to Downes' dataset, between 1823 and 1900, unintentional deaths constituted 17% of all deaths in war. Since 1990, that number has risen to 59%....

In other words, the majority of civilian deaths since 1990s have not been war crimes but have been perfectly legal "accidental" killings. Of course this could partly be a result of a decrease in direct targeting of civilians over time, which would be a good thing.

But collateral damage is not only increasing as a percentage of all civilian deaths. The number of collateral damage victims is also increasing over time in absolute terms. Between 1823 and 1900, 84 civilians per year on average were the victims of collateral damage. Since 1990, the number is 1688 per year - a twenty-fold increase (emphases in original). 

This finding, if it holds up, is surprising for two reasons.  First, the number of interstate wars has been trending downward for the last thirty years -- so an increase in the absolute numbers of civilian collateral damage would not be expected.  Second, this bump in collateral damage also took place during a revolution in precision-guided munitions -- which, in theory, was supposed to reduce the likelihood of collateral damage. 

One could argue that the good news portion of this is that the intentional killing of civilians is trending downward.  And I'd like the security studies readers to go over Carpenter's approach to see if it holds up. 

Developing....

Last night, the Indianapolis Colts stormed back from 17 points down against the New England Patriots to win a gripping game by the score of 35-34.  After the game, the most talked-about play was the Patriots' decision to go for it on a fourth down play with two yards to go at their own 28 yard line with a little more than two minutes remaining and the Colts down by 6 points. 

Rather than punt the ball, Patriots coach Bill Belichick defied coventional wisdom and decided to go for it.  Had they converted the down, the game would have effectively been over.  Instead, they fell a yard short.  The Colts therefore gained possession about 35-40 yards closer to the Patriots' end zone than if the Pats had punted. 

The Boston press and national press have raked Belichick over the coals for this play call.  You know, stuff like, "Everyone knows by now he should have played the percentages and punted the ball from his own 28-yard line with just two minutes left in regulation against the Colts." Are they right to do so?  Over at his Freakonomics blog, Steve Levitt defends Belichick:

Here is why I respect Belichick so much. The data suggest that he actually probably did the right thing if his objective was to win the game. Economist David Romer studied years worth of data and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, teams seem to punt way too much. Going for a first down on fourth and short yardage in your end zone is likely to increase the chance your team wins (albeit slightly). But Belichick had to know that if it failed, he would be subjected to endless criticism.

If his team had gotten the first down and the Patriots won, he would have gotten far less credit than he got blame for failing.... What Belichick proved by going for it last night is that 1) he understands the data, and 2) he cares more about winning than anything else.

Is Leavitt correct?  Thanks to Football Outsiders, you can fill out your own percentages and see which decision maximizes your expected utility.  Or you can read the Boston Globe's Adam Kilgore and appreciate the historical percentages:

According to [AdvancedNFLStats.com Brian] Burke’s tabulation, going for the first down gave the Patriots a 79 percent chance of winning. Punting gave them a 70-percent chance to win. Even after Burke made tweaks, the win probability never dipped in favor of the punt. If anything, factoring in how explosive the Colts’ offense is, the team-specific adjustments only made going for it more favorable.

“A lot of criticism is probably way over the top,’’ Burke said. “At the very least, it’s defensible. It’s not crazy. It’s not reckless.’’

Of course, the problem with football -- and politics -- is that decision-makers are usually judged by the quality of the outcomes rather than the quality of the processes.  So, the result in both worlds is often excessive risk-aversion. 

And so this blog post might end with absolution for Bill Belichick and a plea for a stronger appreciation for expected-utility analysis.  Except life is not that simple.

On that play, it appears that Belichick made the right call.  Except that Belichick also did the following things before making that call:

• Called his last two time-outs during the series, thereby removing his ability to challenge a ruling on the field during the crucial play;
• Decided, on third down and two, to call a pass play rather than a running play, which would have run more time off the clock and made the fourth down percentages a little easier.
• Traded Richard Seymour to the Raiders in the pre-season, stripping his defensive line of any depth.  Not surprisingly, his starters were pretty gassed by the end of the Colts game. 

Sooooo... it's possible to defend Belichick's call on fourth down as the rational, utility-maximizing decision, but conclude that he committed a series of small blunders that got the Patriots to the point where they had to convert a high-risk, high-reward play.  In other words, sometimes the criticized decision might be the right one to make, but the decisions that structured the controversial choice might not have been. 

Question to readers:  Looking at the Obama administration's foreign policy, which move echoes Belichick's play-calling? 

In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman writes about the problem of macroeconomic imbalances between China and the United States.  Which is fine, except he wrote the exact same column last month.  Just like last month's column, this one makes some good points and fails to mention some important dynamics.  Beyond the inclusion of a useful footnote, however, there's nothing new here. 

As part of an ongoing public service to busy readers of Foreignpolicy.com, the hard-working staff here at the blog is ready to help you bypass the chore of having to read the same Krugman column time and again with this handy-dandy crib sheet.  My guess is that the next six months' worth of Krugman columns will boil down to the following assertions:

1. The root of macroeconomic imbalances is the Chinese (undervalued) peg to the dollar;
2. Obama and Geithner should be "tough" on China's dollar policy;
3. Concerns about incipient U.S. inflation are... er... inflated;
4. That goes double for long-term concerns about rising debt levels;
5. The February 2009 stimulus was too small;
6. The Republicans are blinkered;
7. The Obama administration should act in a more partisan and progressive manner. 

Now, let me stress that I agree with 1, 3, and 6 at this point, and I'm agnostic on 4 and 5, so it's not like Krugman is wrong in what he's saying.  It's just that he's saying the same damn thing over and over again. 

I'm late to this party, but two quick thoughts on Obama's Tokyo speech: 

1.  Last week a sharp foreign policy observer -- and a former campaign advisor for Obama -- made an interesing lexicographical observation to me about the Obama administration's foreign policy rhetoric to date.  They use the word "partnership" a hell of a lot more often than they use the word "alliance."  That's not terribly surprising, given their emphasis on talking with adversaries, forming great power concerts, etc.  Still, there are times when it's important to reach out more to one's allies than one's rivals. 

The Tokyo speech was one of those occasions, and I'm happy to report that Obama used "alliance" 12 times and "partnership" only 9 times.  Perhaps this says more about the lay of the land in the Pacific Rim than anything else, but it does suggest that the adminstration is sensitive to regional nuances.

2.  That said, I was underwhelmed with the trade outreach of the speech.  Some reports suggest that Obama announced that the U.S. would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an APEC trade forum comprising, at the moment, of Brunei, Singapore, Chile and New Zealand (with Vietnam and Australia thinking about joining). 

What Obama actually said, however, was:  

The United States will also be engaging with the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st century trade agreement.

So what exactly does that mean?  Helene Cooper points out the ambiguities of that language in the New York Times: 

Although Mr. Obama did open the door during his speech in Tokyo on Asia policy, he did not explicitly say that the United States would join the pact. A formal announcement that the United States is beginning negotiations would undoubtedly kick off criticism from free-trade opponents in the United States and pushback from Congress.

Mr. Obama spoke, instead, of “engaging the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st century trade agreement.”

That line left many trade envoys already in Singapore scratching their heads: did Mr. Obama mean that the United States would begin formal talks to join the regional trade pact, which presently includes Singapore, Brunei and New Zealand, and could later include Vietnam — an addition that could lead to more Congressional pressure at home?

Many regional officials have been waiting for the United States to join the initiative as a demonstration that Washington will play a more active role in the region. But the Obama administration has yet to establish a firm trade policy, as it is still reviewing its options.

White House officials were not much clearer on what Mr. Obama meant when they were pressed on this after the speech. Michael Froman, an economics expert on the National Security Council, said that what Mr. Obama meant was that he would engage with the initiative “to see if this is something that could prove to be an important platform going further.”

Wow, that's some real enthusiasm coming from the G-20 sherpa.... not. 

For an administration that likes to pride itself as savvy in the ways of foreign policy subtleties, I still don't think they grasp the fact that trade policy is now embedded into foreign policy in the Asia/Pacific Region. 

With the release of 2012 today, we're now at the peak of the apocalyptic movie season.  Soon to come will be the big-screen adaptation of The Road, which looks like yet another barrel of laughs.  This comes on the heels of animated apocalypse movies like 9 and WALL*E. 

This raises an interesting cultural question -- is the obsession with disaster/apocalypse films correlated with the economic downturn? 

I'm not sure the answer is yes. Roland Emmerich, the director of 2012, is just a disaster porn fetishist who likes to destroy the world every time he commits anything to celluloid (except mosques, apparently).  His first disaster flick, Independence Day, was released in 1996 -- not exactly the peak of anxiety about the state of the world.  Deep Impact and Armageddon were also released during the boom times of the last decade.  Furthermore, during the Great Depression, Hollywood responded by instituting the Hays Code and releasing films about "high society" that allowed the downtrodden American to fantasize about The Good Life (a fact that Woody Allen ruthlessly exploited in his best and darkest film, The Purple Rose of Cairo). 

Still, the last time I can remember a spate of disaster flicks being released in such a fast and furious fashion was in the 1970's, another period of economic and political upheaval.  Films like the Airport series, Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Meteor, and Virus were not pieces of great cinema, but they all seemed to hit some taproot of anxiety that caused people to flock to the movies.

So... a question to the pop culture mavens here at foreignpolicy.com -- do down times lead to more disaster flicks, or is this just a trick of the light? 

My latest column in The National Interest online is up, and it sounds a warning about the Obama administration's policy malaise on both the Asia/Pacific region and the #1 issue to countries in the Asia/Pacific region -- namely, trade:

Obama’s policy malaise on trade will not win him friends in a region hell-bent on deepening economic integration. U.S. policy on trade liberalization has stalled out so badly that rumors are swirling around the Beltway that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is contemplating resignation. Meanwhile, countries in the region are signing free-trade agreements with each other at a record pace. The European Union has inked a free-trade deal with South Korea, and is negotiating one with Japan. In contrast, the chances of the Korea-United States free trade agreement passing this Congress is hovering around zero. The comparison with China is particularly dispiriting....

The United States has not been eclipsed yet—the bevy of activity in the Pacific Rim is a lot more about hedging than balancing against the United States. Nevertheless, if President Obama wants to be taken seriously in the region, he needs to take the region’s issues more seriously. Trade is not merely about economics—it’s about foreign policy too. Just because Washington ignores a policy issue does not mean others do not think it important. As we are learning, some regions can bypass America altogether if they so choose. 

In a very disturbing sign of the times, I see that former State Department official Evan Feigenbaum has written something similar for the Financial Times: 

[T]he business of Asia is business. Without more vigorous trade engagement, such diplomatic efforts cannot secure America’s position in a changing Asia. The US could soon face a region less willing to accommodate its commercial and financial interests.

Many eons ago in graduate school Only recently Evan and I woul talk about the Asia/Pacific when we were matriculating in graduate school together -- and, more often than not, we disagreed with one another.  The only times we agreed was when some serious s**t was going down.  So take this consensus for what you will.