Yesterday your humble blogger gave a talk about the state of the 2012 presidential race to a group of really rich people international institutional investors.  At the end of the talk, the convener asked for a show of hands about who they thought would (not should) win the race, and an overwhelming majority said Obama.  In talking to the organizers, I learned that this was the sentiment of other groups of overseas bankers that had met earlier in the month.  Indeed, there was apparent surprise at the suggestion that Mitt Romney could actually win. 

Why did this sentiment exist?  I don't think it had much to do with ideology -- we're talking about the global one percenters here.  Based on my conversations, I think it was based on a few stylized facts: 

1)  The U.S. economy is outperforming almost every other developed economy in the world;

2)  They assume that in times of uncertainty, Americans will prefer the devil they know rather than the devil they don't;

3)  President Obama's foreign policies seem pretty competent;

4)  Mitt Romney's policy proposals either seemed really super-vague (this will be an American Century) or, when specific (designating China as a currency manipulator) made him seem like an out-of-date clown. 

So, consider the following a Global Public Service Announcement from the hard-working staff at this blog: 

Dear Rest of the World,

Hey there.  I understand that the overwhelming lot of you believe Barack Obama will be elected to a second term.  I can sorta see that, as that is the current prediction from recent polls, some of our prognosticators and prediction markets. If you look closely, however, none of these predictions are very strong. Or, to put it as plainly as possible:  there is still about a 50/50 chance that Mitt Romney will be sworn in as president in January 2013. 

I can hear your derisive snorts from across the oceans. Ridiculous! Surely Americans would reject such ludicrous ideas as a trade war with China. Surely Americans understand that their economy has done pretty well in comparison to the rest of the world. Surely Americans can see that many long-term trends are pretty positive. 

Valid questions. To which I must respond: The overwhelming majority of Americans do not give a flying f**k about the rest of the world. 

Really, they dont. Take a look at these poll numbers about priorities for the 2012 presidential campaign, and try to find anything to do with international relations. There ain't much. It's almost all about the domestic economy. 

See, most Americans don't compare the U.S. to other major economies -- they compare the U.S. now to, say, the U.S. of 2005. And things don't look so hot based on that comparison. As for the notion of a trade war with China, go read how Americans feel about absolute vs. relative gains with China -- they'll superficially welcome a trade war, when they bother to even think about it. Which they don't.

As for foreign policy or counterterrorism, yes, you could argue that the Obama administration has been pretty competent. But, again:  Americans. Don't. Care.  If anything, the foreign policy competency removes the issue from the campaign, and just concentrates the minds of everyone on the state of the domestic economy. 

The fundamental fact of this election is that the American economy is pretty sluggish, voters blame the incumbent when that happens, and the incumbent happens to be Barack Obama.  Indeed, it is only because Obama is seen as pretty likable  -- and that voters do still tend to blame George W. Bush for the current situation -- that this race is even remotely close. 

I'm not saying Mitt Romney is gonna win. If the economy picks up over the summer, Obama should win pretty handily. However, you, the smart money, should think about it this way: what are the chances that between now and November, none of the following will happen: another Euro-implosion, a rapid deflating of the China bubble, or a war in the Middle East? If you're confident that these events are not in the cards, bet on Obama.  If any of them happen, all bets are off. 

Will it matter to you? Think of it this way: compare and contrast who Mitt Romney would pick as the next Fed chairman versus Barack Obama. And plan accordingly. 

Enjoy the summer!  All the best,

Daniel W. Drezner

Am I missing anything? 

I've been banging on about the useless "we need leadership" meme this week.  Erik Voeten has a good follow-up, and makes a trenchant point -- leadership is not the same thing as good leadership: 

I would add that you should be careful what you wish for. Kohl and Mitterand were heralded as strong leaders when they created the Eurozone and opened membership to Europe’s weaker economies. Strong leadership may not always work out so well.

The point is not that leaders who make good decisions and have persuasive power cannot make a difference. I won’t underestimate the power of good (and bad) ideas to shape outcomes. But lamenting “poor leadership” provides little guidance on understanding what is going wrong or how things could go better. It is with good reason that good leadership is usually only recognized after the fact and even then perceptions often adjust as facts change (see Kohl and Mitterand). Believing that things will go better if only there were better leadership is like wishing for politicians to “do the right thing:” it is a perfectly reasonable desire but not much of a prescription or explanation.

I bring this up again because I see that I managed to criticize Tom Friedman's latest op-ed -- two days before it was published!!  Here's his opening paragraph: 

One of the most troubling features of today’s global economic crisis is the lack of political leadership anywhere. No one has the courage to tell their people the truth. And the truth, alas, is that four of the pillars of today’s global economy — Europe, America, China and the Arab world — have, each in their own way, squandered huge dividends they enjoyed in recent decades, and now they have to dig out of their respective holes with fewer resources, less time and, almost certainly, more pain. There is no easy way out. But, as confronting these hard truths becomes unavoidable, I think we’re likely to see some wild, angry and destabilizing politics that could make the economic recovery even more difficult. Deep holes and weak leaders are a bad combination.

Excuse me, I have to go do this again. 

What's interesting, if you read the next few paragraphs, is that Friedman thinks the leadership failure in Europe is on the periphery -- that these governments failed to exploit the windfall of euro-driven lower interest rates to make themselves more competitive.  Friedman is not necessarily completely wrong here, but this overlooks a few things.  The design of the euro -- which French and German leaders created -- contributed to the underlying curency area problem.  The "Austerity!! Austerity!! AUSTERITY!!" response to the eurocrisis by Germany and the European Central Bank has also been... let's say problematic and incomplete (and, unfortunately, continues to be the status quo policy). 

Indeed, this past week Germany's Angela Merkel has proven Voeten's point and undercut Frideman's argument.  She has demonstrated leadership -- she's repeatedly offered up a Grand Bargain with the rest of Europe in which Germany agrees to a closer fiscal union and Eurobonds -- in return for a more centralized European political authority that would implement German policy preferences.  This sounds an awful lot like leadership to me.  Whether it's the right policy or not is juuuuuust a wee bit more contentious. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  "Yes, leadership matters on the margins -- but power and purpose matter one whole hell of a lot more."

Seriously, I'm beginning to suspect that those calling for greater "leadership" are the victims of a Jedi mind trick or something. 

Your humble blogger is headed to Shanghai this week for the "12th Dialogue on Sino-U.S. Relations, Regional Security and Global Governance," co-organized by the CSIS Pacific Forum, the Asia Foundation, and Fudan University's Center for American Studies. 

This trip has been planned for several months.  I raise that because the fact that I'm leaving the country as this story makes the top of The Drudge Report is just a coincidence:

It was a scene as creepy as a Hannibal Lecter movie.

One man was shot to death by Miami police, and another man is fighting for his life after he was attacked, and his face allegedly half eaten, by a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp Saturday, police said.

The horror began about 2 p.m. when a series of gunshots were heard on the ramp, which is along NE 13th Street, just south of The Miami Herald building.

According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.

The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots.

You know, I'd feel a lot safer if they confirmed that the guy who got shot a lot multiple times is... how to put this... no longer animated. 

That this happens just when the Bilderburg group is meeting in the States is, I'm sure, also... just a coincidence. 

Concerned readers should stock up on duct tape, water, and plenty of copies of this.  I'm sure everything will be fine, however, if by the time I return. 

In the meanwhile, I feel the blog has been a bit top-heavy on the 2012 campaign and China as of late.  What other topics, dear readers would you like me to blog about? 

There's a lot that's happened over the past week with respect to Chen Guangcheng's status, and your humble blogger could write a 5,000 word essay on it if someone wanted to pay me gobs and gobs of cash because I'm remodeling my home I had the time.  I don't however, so I have one big thought on the matter.

Before I begin, given the rapid real-time developments in the Chen case, I'm operating on the assumption that China's last Foreign Ministry statement suggests the denouement:  Chen and his family will be able to go to the United States to study, and he then may or may not be allowed back into the country.   

My Big Thought:  contrary to just about every headline I've seen in the past three days, I think Chen's case demonstrates the surprising resilience of the Sino-American relationship.  Recall what I wrote earlier in the week: 

The fact that both Beijing and Washington have kept their mouths shut on Chen is a pretty surprising but positive sign about the overall stability/resilience of Sino-American relations. Bear in mind that according to the latest reports, much of the leadership in Beijing takesan increasingly conspiratorial view of the United States. As for the mood in Washington, well, let's just call it unfriendly towards China. Both sides are in the middle of big leadership decisions, making the incentive to cater to nationalist domestic interests even stronger than normal. With the rest of the Pacific Rim trying to latch themselves onto the U.S. security umbrella, this could have been the perfect match to set off a G-2 powderkeg.

Despite all of these incentives for escalating the dispute, however, it hasn't happened. Kurt Campbell was dispatched to Beijing, talks are ongoing, and neither side appears to be interested in ramping up domestic audience costs. That escalation hasn't happened despite massive political incentives on both sides to let it happen suggests that, contrary to press fears about Chen blowing up the bilateral relationship, there are powerful pressures in Washington and Beijing to find a solution that saves as much face as humanly possible for both sides.

Now, in the three days since I wrote that post, Chen has been released, calling every Chinese dissident, U.S. congressman and international reporter with a phone/recording device/Twitter account and is loudly and frantically describing the intimidation he and his family have experienced.  The man has asked to be flown out on Hillary Clinton's plane as she departs from the Strategic and Economic Dialogue.  In other words, everything that has transpired in the past three days has given a black eye to both the Chinese and American governments' handling of this case. 

Despite the near-overwhelming incentive to ramp up bilateral tensions, however, it really hasn't happened.  China's Foreign Mnistry has issued a couple of garden-variety press statements demanding a U.S. apology that won't be forthcoming.  There have been no leaks or anonymous criticisms of the United States otherwise, despite the fact that this entire case is a burr in China's saddle at veery awkward moment.  None of the U.S. State Department statements or press leaks have been terribly critical of the Chinese side either.  Indeed, as the Washington Post observes:

Neither Clinton nor her Chinese counterparts mentioned Chen in their formal remarks at the end of their two-day meeting, saying instead that U.S.-Sino differences on human rights issues must not disrupt the broader relationship between the two world powers.

State Councilor Dai Bingguo, China’s top foreign policy expert, said his country and the United States still have “fundamental differences” on human rights issues. “Human rights should not be a disturbance in state-to-state relations,” Dai said. “It should not be used to interfere in another country’s internal affairs.”

Clinton promised to “continue engaging with the Chinese government at the highest levels” on the “human rights and aspirations” of all people.

This is pretty extraordinary.  Even more extraordinary is the possiblity that despite Chen's outspokenness, he actually could be able to leave the country with his family. 

Now, as the Post shrewdly observes, "China’s Foreign Ministry said the self-taught lawyer would have to apply 'through normal channels ... like any other Chinese citizen' — which would mean returning home to the village where he has been confined and beaten, in order to obtain a passport."  Still, if the rhetoric between the U.S. and China on this boils down to Clinton asking the Chinese government to "expeditiously process" Chen's visa application, then this is a really big dog that didn't bark.   

For other big thoughts on the matter, read these posts by Sam Crane, as well as this assessment by Walter Russell Mead.

What do you think?

The latest issue of The National Interest is out, and it's a special issue devoted to the "Crisis of the Old Order."  Fittingly enough, I have a review essay in there of Charles Kupchan's latest book, No One's World:  The West, The Rest, and the Coming Global Turn.  Kupchan's book is pretty pessimistic about the current order: 

In No One’s World, Kupchan joins the chorus arguing that the distribution of power has shifted away from the West and toward the “rest,” meaning non-Western nations. More significantly, Kupchan argues that these rising powers will not embrace the same ideas that governed the United States and Europe during the creation of the post–World War II and post–Cold War worlds: “The Chinese ship of state will not dock in the Western harbor, obediently taking the berth assigned it.” The conditions that caused the West to embrace secular, liberal, free-market democracy are not present in very large swathes of the globe. Instead, according to Kupchan, it will be no one’s world: a mélange of competing ideas and competing structures will overlap and coexist. No one great power or great idea will rule them all.

Somewhat surprisingly, I think I have the most optimistic take on the current order among all of TNI's contributors this issue -- which means, in turn, that I'm somewhat skeptical of Kupchan's claims.  Read the whole thing to see why, but here's how I close: 

[M]any of the regions that Kupchan highlights as being “different” from the advanced industrialized world are not really all that different. It is true that most democracies in Latin America and Africa do not currently resemble the Madisonian democratic ideal. On the other hand, the same conclusion would have been reached after examining a snapshot of southern Europe in the 1970s or East Asia in the 1980s. Indeed, one could have made the same arguments about an absence of horizontal linkages, the heavy hand of the Catholic Church, and the ways in which the state had centralized economic and political authority. The fact that these countries now resemble their democratic allies suggests that the past is not destiny.

The moment one realizes that democracies evolve over time, Kupchan’s argument seems even more static. No One’s World assumes that either the strongman or populist variants of democracy will perpetuate themselves. If anything, the opposite seems to be true: the more extreme versions of Latin American left-wing populism are imploding, while Brazil looks more and more like a conventional secular democracy. Even countries as closed off as Myanmar seem willing to embrace myriad aspects of the Western model. Kupchan is certainly right that the rest of the world will not automatically migrate toward the West. But the migration will likely be greater than he thinks. A world in which China and Russia are the global “outliers” looks very different from the one depicted in No One’s World, which posits a much more heterogeneous assemblage of regime types.

I was on the road when President Obama announced his preferred choice of Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim to be the next World Bank president. Since then, both the Economist and Financial Times have endorsed Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala instead. I didn't pay it much mind, because, frankly, if the U.S. could get Paul Wolfowitz through the nomination process, Kim wasn't gonna be a problem.

Over the weekend, however, things jumped up a notch on the rhetorical front. I confess to being a bit puzzled by it all.

First, Bill Easterly suggested in the Guardian that the vote be delayed because Kim hadn't addressed a public forum on his development views... because he was too busy meeting with the member governments who have actual, like, real votes on this selection.

Then Chris Blattman came out against Kim, concluding grumpily that "identity has crowded out substance." He then adds the following:

Kim is smart and qualified, and there are many good reasons not to have a business-as-usual Bank President, even one in health. But if you find yourself supporting his candidacy on such substantive grounds: congratulations, you have successfully succumbed to Obama’s strategy for maintaining imperial control of one the world’s most influential institutions.

Yeah! How dare the perfidious Americans extend their control over the World Bank presidency by.... selecting someone who substantively addresses the issues of developing country governments!! That's like, totally unrepresentative. Or to put it more bluntly, I don't think "identity" means what Blattman thinks it means.

Finally, I've seen a bunch o' tweets to myriad articles suggesting that Kim's selection could be in doubt. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. It's more like the headline/lead paragraphs scream "Whoa! Non-American could actually win!" until we get to the text of the articles, which then observe thing like, "most analysts believe there is little doubt that Kim will secure the presidency" or that Kim would lose if "the US signals willingness to accept defeat."

Look, let's get a few things straight:

1) I'm very sympathetic to the notion that non-Europeans should head the IMF and non-Americans should head the World Bank. This is an entirely fair and appropriate issue to raise.

2) For that to happen, it will require the United States and Europe to jointly renounce their informal cartel on the leadership posts and that they will not suggest any candidates. No way one side moves without the other, and no way this happens now after the Europeans managed to install Christine Lagarde as IMF head only last year.

3) Barack Obama is up for re-election and his chief opponent has been accusing him on going on non-existent apology tours across the world. There is no way -- no way -- he is going to compromise on Kim's selection. I can see a second-term shift towards what everyone wants, but the only way the World Bank becomes an election issue is if Kim loses.

4) Even with the current arrangements, the selection process has been more... let's say polyarchical than even a decade ago. Lagarde had to woo China and other key voters at the IMF, and Kim has been busy doing the same thing now. Deputy selections have been used to win favor from key voting constituencies. Blattman's complaint that Kim represents a gesture towards exactly the issues that a lot of development activists care about shows that the US and EU are recognizing the rising political constraints at the IFIs.

5) For reasons 2 - 4, I think that what's happened over the weekend is mostly a lot of stuff and nonsense. If development activists are smart, they will initiate a major push after November 2012 to get the Americans and Europeans to gracefully and jointly commit not to nominate anyone for the next go-around of IFI leaders.

Am I missing anything? UPDATE: Nope, I wasn't.

Here's a fun little exercise.  Let's say that the vice-president of a political consulting firm went on MSNBC or Fox News with the argument that no matter what the U.S. government said, Osama bin Laden wasn't actually buried at sea.  No, this wouldn't be a claim that Osama had returned as a zombie.  The VP would simply argue that based on past standard operating procedures and the desire of some agencies in the USG to gather forensic evidence, it would seem likely that they would want the body.  In all likelihood the cable anchor would then ask if there was any direct evidence to back up this assertion.  The VP would either say no, dodge the question, or imply some third-hand knowledge, and that would be that. 

Here's my question:  would this cable news hit generate anything in the way of news headlines? 

I ask this because the Drudge Report has headlined:  "WIKILEAKED: BIN LADEN BODY NOT BURIED AT SEA"  This sounds pretty definitive.  But if you look at the actual Stratfor emails that Wikileaks provides on the matter, you get little but speculations and assertions from Stratfor CEO George Friedman and VP Fred Burton.  From Friedman:

Eichmann was seen alive for many months on trial before being sentenced to death and executed. No one wanted a monument to him so they cremated him. But i dont know anyone who claimed he wasnt eicjhman (sic). No comparison with suddenly burying him at sea without any chance to view him which i doubt happened.

And from Burton:

We would want to photograph, DNA, fingerprint, etc.

His body is a crime scene and I don't see the FBI nor DOJ letting that happen....

Body is Dover bound, should be here by now.

That's it.  No sourcing, nothing else.  Friedman is speculating, while Burton makes a somewhat stronger assertion without much empirical foundation.   The only reason this is on the front page of Drudge -- and the only reason reporters are running with it -- is that the Stratfor e-mails were private and not intended for public consumption.  And if it's private, then it must be pretty good!

Or not.  Look, reporters and analysts should pore over these email contents and see if there is anything of value.  But they also need to follow up with outside experts in their reporting to distinguish between what's said in the emails and what's actually true.  Because, to repeat a point I made a few years ago:  "just because someone says something in a Wikileaks memo doesn't make it so."  Indeed, it is precisely this sort of BS pseudo-analysis that makes me distrust the quality of Stratfor's analysis in the first place. 

In the Boston Review, Natasha Bahrami and Trita Parsi take a long look at the economic sanctions literature and conclude that the ever-more-stringent sanctions regime won't lead to a democratic transition in Iran. One can quibble with their review (they don't cite Nikolai Marinov's work, for example), but they do state the current state of play on Iran rather cleanly:

The official objective of the sanctions is to compel Iran to negotiate with the West toward the implementation of existing U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program. Unofficially, there are hints that the sanctions are aimed at collapsing the Iranian regime and bringing about democratic change.

That sums up the situation rather neatly -- the problem is that these goals are somewhat incompatible. If the aim if to negotiate a deal on the nuclear program, then Iran's regime has to be persuaded that the United States is not trying to topple the regime. If the administration keeps up the ambiguity regarding the purpose of sanctions, then Iran's current regime has zero incentive to negotiate. In that case, the only way sanctions work is via regime collapse.

Based on Robert Worth's front-pager in the New York Times on the effect of sanctions in Tehran, however, it looks like the negotiation option might already be closed off. The effect of the sanctions put in place (and the ones that will kick in over the summer) are, well, a mixed bag:

Already, the last round of sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank has begun inflicting unprecedented damage on Iran’s private sector, traders and analysts say, making it so hard to transfer money abroad that even affluent businessmen are sometimes forced to board planes carrying suitcases full of American dollars.

Yet this economic burden is falling largely on the middle class, raising the prospect of more resentment against the West and complicating the effort to deter Iran’s nuclear program -- a central priority for the Obama administration in this election year…

The rising economic panic has illustrated -- and possibly intensified -- the bitter divisions within Iran’s political elite. A number of insiders, including members of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, have begun openly criticizing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in recent weeks. One of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s aides indirectly accused Ayatollah Khamenei of needlessly antagonizing the West in ways that pushed down the rial’s value, the latest sign of a rift between the president and the supreme leader that is helping to define the parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for March 2.

“They criticize Ahmadinejad and even the supreme leader by name now; it’s not like before,” said Javad, the 45-year-old manager of a travel agency in north Tehran…

Ordinary Iranians complain that the sanctions are hurting them, while those at the top are unscathed, or even benefit. Many wealthy Iranians made huge profits in recent weeks by buying dollars at the government rate (available to insiders) and then selling them for almost twice as many rials on the soaring black market. Some analysts and opposition political figures contend that Mr. Ahmadinejad deliberately worsened the currency crisis so that his cronies could generate profits this way…

Many Iranians are also skeptical about the Western preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program. “The economic pressure will not push Iran to a nuclear settlement,” said Kayhan Barzegar, the director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies, who has taught in the United States. “The nuclear file is a nationalistic issue; it’s too late for Iran to backtrack. Domestic politics will react negatively to any negotiation — candidates in the elections will say: you sold the nuclear program!”…

[T]he businessman also noted that when Iran last suffered similar privations, in the 1980s, the economy was far smaller, and the revolutionary zeal for self-sacrifice far greater. Iran’s leadership was also far more unified than it is today.

“The question is, when this panic translates into a real diminution in the living standard, will Iranians be willing to take it?” the businessman said. “That’s when these guys will really be in trouble.”

The above report suggests that the sanctions themselves have effectively eliminated the more modest goal of negotiating on the nuclear program. The primary effect of the sanctions to date has been to exacerbated divisions within Iran's regime. Because of these divisons, there's no point to negotiation -- at this point, the United States could ever be sure that the entire Iranian state could credibly commit to any bargain (for advocates of negotiation, it should be noted that this was already a problem; the sanctions just bring it into high relief). The economic effect of the sanctions has also accentuated Iran's nationalist pride in the nuclear program among the middle class.

It's still possible for the sanctions to work. Those that are imposed multilaterally tend to take a longer time to have a policy effect. The target state will first try to break the multilateral coalition apart -- and only after that policy fails will they consider concessions. Recent reportage suggest that Iran was not expecting this kind of multilateral pressure -- and so it's possible that Tehran will reconsider.

That said, the sanctions policy is pushing the United States into a policy cul-de-sac where the only way out is through regime change. In the abstract, that might sound great, but in reality, pushing for that option could be both messy and expensive.

As both the unrest and crackdown in Syria continue to get worse, Russia has steadfastly stood by the side of the Assad regime. Matters are coming to a head in Turtle Bay, however, as James Blitz and Roula Khalaf and Charles Clover report for the Financial Times:

Britain, France and the US will be making their most forceful push yet for a political transition in Syria at the UN Security Council this week, lending support to an Arab plan that they hope will overcome Russian opposition....

Paris and London said on Monday that they had the support of 10 out 15 Security Council members, which would mean a resolution can be put to a vote. But it remains unclear how Russia, which last year vetoed a much milder resolution, will vote....

French and British diplomats argue that Russia can no longer block a UN resolution. “We’re trying to convince the Russians that they can’t stay in their posture of opposition to a resolution while there is this much killing on the ground,” said a French official.

The State Department said Hillary Clinton had been trying to call Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, for the past 24 hours to discuss Syria, but he had been “unavailable.” The Syrian regime in recent days had “just let loose in horrific ways against innocents," said Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the State Department (emphasis added).

This is a serious humanitarian crisis and a brewing confrontation between permanent members U.N. Security Council…and yet, there's something I find very amusing about Lavrov's efforts to duck Clinton's calls. In the old days of the 20th century, one could imagine this kind of lying low gambit being easier to pull this off. Not any more.

Still, in honor of Lavrov's efforts to play hide and seek, your humble blogger suggests a contest for readers: Proffer your own version of Lavrov's outgoing voicemail message. If you're Lavrov, representing the interests of the Russian Federation, what would you want Hillary Clinton to listen to as she tried to reach you? Could the outgoing message itself constitute part of Lavrov's pushback?

To get the ball rolling, here's my effort:

Hello, you've reached Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation. I'm away from my phone right now, coordinating an investigation into serious human rights abuses that have occurred in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia over the past year. If you wait for the "reset" beep and leave me your name and number, however, I'll be sure to get back to you about how this stuff might need to be raised at the next U.N. Security Council meeting.

Try it yourself -- it's easy and fun!

One could argue that the job of ambassador has been made obsolete by macrotrends in technology and politics.  Oh, sure, maybe traditional envoys from great powers still play an important role in smaller countries that don't normally capture much attention in major capitals.  Among the great powers, however, one  could posit that ambassadors are superfluous.  In a world in which heads of government and foreign ministers have multiple direct means of communication, in which you can't go a week without some big global summit, and in which leaders are wary of confiding with ambassadors because they'll quit and then run for head of government that's just another press leak waiting to happen, what can ambassadors really do?  Will we see the likes of Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, or even Anatoly Dobrynin ever again? 

Probably not, but even in the 21st century, great power ambassadors to other great powers still serve a purpose.  In the case of American ambassadors to Russia and China, they can excel at getting under the skin of their host country governments.  Gary Locke seems to be doing that pretty well in China, in no small part by being an ethnic Chinese politician that doesn't seem to be behaving like Chinese politicians. 

In the case of Russia, there's the new ambassador Michael McFaul, who before this was in Obama's National Security Council and one of the architects o the "reset" policy, and before that was a professor of political science at Stanford (full disclosure:  Mike's first year at Stanford as a professor was my last there as a grad student, and he's been a friend to me ever since). 

The New York Times' Ellen Barry, following up on the excellent reportage of FP's Josh Rogin, has a long story on how McFaul is really pissing off official Moscow.  The good parts version: 

 In the annals of American diplomacy, few honeymoons have been shorter than the one granted to Michael A. McFaul, who arrived in Russia on Jan. 14 as the new American ambassador.

Toward the end of the ambassador’s second full day at work, a commentator on state-controlled Channel 1 suggested during a prime-time newscast that Mr. McFaul was sent to Moscow to foment revolution. A columnist for the newspaper Izvestia chimed in the next day, saying his appointment signaled a return to the 18th century, when “an ambassador’s participation in intrigues and court conspiracies was ordinary business.”....

Mr. McFaul, 48, has arrived in a city churning with conjecture and paranoia. The public attack illustrates how edgy the Kremlin is about the protest movement that has taken shape, turning Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s re-election campaign into a nerve-racking test for the government. It also reveals how fragile relations are between Washington and Mr. Putin’s government, which has repeatedly accused the State Department of orchestrating the demonstrations.

If the blast of venom that greeted Mr. McFaul was intended as a warning to maintain a low profile in his new role, he seems unlikely to comply. At the end of his first week, he was exuberant, saying his goal was to “destroy cold war stereotypes,” especially misstatements about the United States’ intentions in Russia.

“I know I’m just going to go in full force, I’ve got nothing to hide, and we feel very confident in our policy and in selling our policy,” said Mr. McFaul, a native of Bozeman, Mont., who spent much of his career in academia. He does not need to fret over his next diplomatic posting, he added, because there will not be one.

“I ain’t going nowhere else,” he said, with a big smile. “This is it. I am not a career diplomat. And so I am here to do that in a very, very aggressive way.”

As someone who spent a short stint in DC, I recognize the sentiment McFaul expressed in that last paragraph.  The exit option is one of the greatest assets an academic has if they enter the foreign policymaking world.  Of course, that option can also encourage policymakers to stray way outside the reservation, so it kind of depends upon which academic has been appointed.  In the case of McFaul, I'm very confident he will use this power for the forces of good. 

Read the whole story -- and check out McFaul's (Russian language) blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube greeting to Russians.  Gonna be some interesting Web 2.0 diplomacy. 

Developing....

This has been an exceedingly weird week with respect to the escalating dispute between Iran and countries not thrilled with Iran's nuclear program.  On the one hand, you have the United States going to great lengths to widen and deepen the sanctions regime against Iran and deter Iran from trying to close the Straits of Hormuz.  On the other hand, you have U.S. officials contradicting themselves and backtracking from statements made to the Washington Post over the precise purpose of the sanctions.  On the third hand, you have signals that Turkey is brokering another round of negotiations between Iran and the P5 + 1. 

And then, in the last hand, you have... Israel.  Some weird s**t has been going down.  Following the apparent assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took great pains to "categorically deny" U.S. involvment.  In a New York Times front-pager, U.S. officials were even more explicit:

The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity. The statements by the United States appeared to reflect serious concern about the growing number of lethal attacks, which some experts believe could backfire by undercutting future negotiations and prompting Iran to redouble what the West suspects is a quest for a nuclear capacity.

“The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday’s killing, “categorically” denying “any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

“We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Also this week, FP ran a story by Mark Perry describing Israel's "false flag" operation to recruit Pakistani terrorists.  In the essay, Perry gets the following quotes from retired U.S. intelligence officials: 

There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians....

We don't do bang and boom... and we don't do political assassinations.

Contrast this with the Israeli quotes in the NYT story:

The Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, writing on Facebook about the attack, said, “I don’t know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear,” Israeli news media reported....

A former senior Israeli security official, who would speak of the covert campaign only in general terms and on the condition of anonymity, said the uncertainty about who was responsible was useful. “It’s not enough to guess,” he said. “You can’t prove it, so you can’t retaliate. When it’s very, very clear who’s behind an attack, the world behaves differently.” (emphasis added)

I think the bolded section in the last paragraph suggests some intuition about what is happening.  If it's true that ambiguity about who is responsible for covert action is useful, and the United States is categorically denying its role in the assassination part of the covert action, then the Obama administration is openly and clearly signaling to Israel to cut it out. 

As to why the United States is doing this, I'd posit one or a combination of the following reasons: 

1)  Washington might have moral or legal qualms with the assassination dimension of these covert actions;  

2)  Such assasinations give the Iranian government cover to conduct its own assassinations campaign, which winnows the number of scientists the United States  can recruit for its own intelligence;

3)  The Obama administration thinks it can topple the regime, but these assassinations will be counterproductive;

4)  The Obama administration has been trying to get Iran back to the bargaining table, and this kind of covert action stops that from happening;

5)  The Obama administration is fragmented and therefore not entirely certain what it's aims are in Iran, but the policy principals know that what Israel is doing ain't helping. 

I'm leaning towards (5) at this point, but I'd entertain other explanations in the comments below.

Developing... in some very bizarre ways. 

UPDATE:  The Wall Street Journal has some further reporting that reveals a bit of the current uncertainty and the bureaucratic wrangling that appears to be going on.  Some key parts:

U.S. defense leaders are increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, over U.S. objections, and have stepped up contingency planning to safeguard U.S. facilities in the region in case of a conflict.

President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike. The U.S. wants Israel to give more time for the effects of sanctions and other measures intended to force Iran to abandon its perceived efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Stepping up the pressure, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv next week....

Mr. Panetta and other top officials have privately sought assurances from Israeli leaders in recent weeks that they won't take military action against Iran. But the Israeli response has been noncommittal, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials briefed on the military's planning said concern has mounted over the past two years that Israel may strike Iran. But rising tensions with Iran and recent changes at Iranian nuclear sites have ratcheted up the level of U.S. alarm.

"Our concern is heightened," a senior U.S. military official said of the probability of an Israeli strike over U.S. objections.

Tehran crossed at least one of Israel's "red lines" earlier this month when it announced it had begun enriching uranium at the Fordow underground nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom.

The planned closing of Israel's nuclear plant near Dimona this month, which was reported in Israeli media, sounded alarms in Washington, where officials feared it meant Israel was repositioning its own nuclear assets to safeguard them against a potential Iranian counterstrike.

Despite the close relationship between the U.S. and Israel, U.S. officials have consistently puzzled over Israeli intentions. "It's hard to know what's bluster and what's not with the Israelis," said a former U.S. official.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Well, this is just peachy:

The IRNA state news agency said Saturday that Iran's Foreign Ministry has sent a diplomatic letter to the U.S. saying that it has "evidence and reliable information" that the CIA provided "guidance, support and planning" to assassins "directly involved" in Roshan's killing.

The U.S. has denied any role in the assassination....

In the clearest sign yet that Iran is preparing to strike back for Roshan's killing, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, the spokesman for Iran's Joint Armed Forces Staff, was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency Saturday as saying that Tehran was "reviewing the punishment" of "behind-the-scene elements" involved in the assassination.

"Iran's response will be a tormenting one for supporters of state terrorism," he said, without elaborating. "The enemies of the Iranian nation, especially the United States, Britain and the Zionist regime, or Israel, have to be held responsible for their activities."

It's been a busy week for Iran-watchers. The European Union is mulling a phased-in oil embargo, prompting Iranian officials to label the move as "an economic war" against Iran. Now Iran's Asia customers are trying to diversify away from Iranian oil. These expectations of future cutoffs, combined with pre-existing sanctions, are taking their toll on the Iranian economy in the form of dollar-hoarding and a free-falling national currency. Fareed Zakaria sums up the current state of play nicely:

[T]he real story on the ground is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting. Abroad, its closest ally and the regime of which it is almost the sole supporter -- Syria -- is itself crumbling. The Persian Gulf monarchies have banded together against Iran and shored up their relations with Washington. Last week, Saudi Arabia closed its largest-ever purchase of U.S. weaponry.…

The Obama administration has put tremendous pressure on Iran on a variety of fronts -- far more pressure than the Bush administration was ever able to muster. This is, in part, because the pressure has been brought to bear, wherever possible, with other countries. The United States does not buy oil from Iran. But European nations, Japan and South Korea do, and if they go along with a new round of sanctions, Iran faces the real prospect of an economic freefall.

Iran's response to these moves has been a mixture of tough talk, empty gestures, backtracking on threats, and an acknowledgment of economic difficulties. It's therefore no wonder that the Washington Post reports, "U.S. officials are increasingly confident that economic and political pressure alone may succeed in curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions." Walter Russell Mead observes that, "public opinion in Iran does not seem to be rallying behind its unpopular government as the economic storm intensifies."

At the same time, however, Iran is trying to demonstrate that its uranium enrichment will continue unabated. Trita Parsi argues that overconfidence in the sanctions track will cause the Obama administration to rebuff any negotiated breakthrough on the nuclear issue. This leads to the obvious question: What's the endgame in Iran? Will sanctions "work"?

To get Clintonian, this depends on your definition of "work." One could argue that the current and projected actions taken by the EU and Pacific Rim might have been a wake-up call to Tehran that it's more isolated than it had previously thought. Iran is not merely facing the United States; it's facing a multilateral coalition that's growing stronger, not weaker. Unless potential benefactors like China take proactive steps to function as a "black knight," these sanctions really will cripple Iran's economy. The alienation of Iran's bazaari from the leadership in Tehran would ... let's say complicate the domestic situation in Iran.

That said, I'm skeptical that it will push the current regime toward making a substantive accommodation on its nuclear program. Based on how the leadership has treated domestic unrest, it seems clear that the top leadership is perfectly comfortable following The Dictator's Handbook approach to staying in power. More-powerful sanctions will therefore simply lead to more-powerful crackdowns. If Iranian elites view the nuclear program as the key to preventing outside attempts at forcible regime change, there's no way they'll compromise.

So would negotiation work? I'm skeptical here too. In part the problem is determining whether the Iranians are capable of negotiating in good faith. I don't mean that Tehran will act duplicitously; I mean whether the fractious regime can act in a coherent manner. Its behavior over the past week or two suggests otherwise. So does Zakaria:

The Obama administration seems to have concluded that the Iranian regime is not ready or able to make a strategic reconciliation with the West. The regime is too divided and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate authority, the Supreme Leader, is too ideologically rigid. So for now Washington wants to build pressure on Iran in the hopes that this will force the regime into serious negotiations at some point.

I suspect the Obama administration's hopes are more ambitious. They want the sanctions to be so crippling that Khamenei's ultimate authority comes under challenge, to the point where factional divisions open up space for a substantive change in the regime.

This might work, but I'd put the odds of this happening at less than 1 in 3. Still, this is the thing about instances in which economic sanctions are deployed. Even if their prospects don't look great, they're usually employed because the other options have even worse odds. For the next, say, six months, pursuing this course of action makes sense. It weakens Iran at a key moment in the Middle East, and it might lead to some positive developments down the road. That said, even if the sanctions work in crippling Iran's economy, they likely won't work at altering Iran's objectionable nuclear policies -- the expectations of future conflict are too great. At that point, the United States is going to need to consider whether it's prepared to pursue a longer-term containment strategy or alter course.

What do you think?

Foreign policy didn't play much of a role at all in last night's GOP debate, but there were a few telling moments about Newt Gingrich's foreign policy worldview -- telling in that they scared the living crap out of your humble blogger. 

The foreign policy portion was devoted entirely to Newt Gingrich's description of the Palestinians an "invented people".  Gingrich doubled down during the debate, labeling all Palestinians as terrorists.  When pushed by Romney on the wisdom of going further rhetorically than Israel's Likud government on this point, Gingrich fell back on the "I'm speaking blunt truths like Reagan when he called the USSR an 'evil empire'" gambit. 

This is pretty odd.  Last I checked Israel was a democracy, had a healthy amount of free specch, and has a ruling coalition that seems pretty hardline with respect to the Palestinians.  I don't think the Israelis need an American candidate to speak truths to them that their government is hiding. 

To be honest, however, that wasn't the scariest part of Gingrich's rhetoric.  No, the part that set my hair on edge was during the last question on the night, when the candidates were asked what they'd learned from the other candidates. 

Gingrich responded by praising Rick Santorum's "consistency and courage on Iran."  He then added: 

If we do survive, it will be in part because of people like Rick who've had the courage to tell the truth about the Iranians for a long time. (emphasis added)

Now, this was practically a throwaway clause, but still, how can I put this clearly....  this is f***ing insane.  Totally, completely, utterly f***ing insane. 

Even a nuclear-armed Iran led by the current regime of nutball theocrats cannot threaten America's survival.  I get why the United States is concerned about Iran going nuclear, and I get why Israel is really concerned about Iran going nuclear.  The only way that developments in Iran could threaten America's survival, however, would be if the US policy response was so hyperbolic that it ignited a general Middle East war that dragged in Russia and China.  Which... come to think of it, wouldn't be entirely out of the question under a President Gingrich. 

Gingrich's apocalyptic rhetoric will go down well with many neoconservatives and GOP hawks, but to resuscitate a point I've made before: 

I'm about to say something that might be controversial for people under the age of 25, but here goes. You know the threats posed to the United States by a rising China, a nuclear Iran, terrorists and piracy? You could put all of them together and they don't equal the perceived threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Gingrich, as he is fond of pointing out nowadays, is a 68-year old grandfather and trained as a historian.  He should know better than to sound as apocalyptic in his foreign policy statements as the very mullahs he lambasts.   

As Andrew Sullivan (the only other debate-watcher who picked up on this line) observed, "Wow. Does Gingrich really believe that the US faces an existential threat from Iran? Or is he running for the Likud party?"

Indeed. 

The Washington Post's Liz Sly has been doing some excellent reporting on the ground in Syria, and her latest report suggests that the latest batch of sanctions are starting to hurt Syria badly: 

The dramatic decision by Arab states to turn against President Bashar al-Assad could further damage Syria’s economy at a time when it is already unraveling, posing perhaps a graver challenge to Assad’s survival than the country’s nearly-eight-month-old popular uprising, analysts say....

The extent of the damage is difficult to measure, and Syrian government officials say they don’t have indicators. But they do not play down the gravity of the situation.

Syrian Economy Minister Mohammad Nidal al-Shaar said at a conference last month that the economy is in a “state of emergency,” according to comments quoted by the Damascus-based Syria Report. In a recent interview in Damascus, Adib Mayalah, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, described the situation as “very serious” and ticked off the problems the economy is facing.

“Unemployment is rising, imports are falling, and government income is reduced,” he said. “In areas where there are protests, there is no economic activity — so people aren’t paying tax. Because they aren’t working, they are not repaying their loans — so the banks are in difficulty. And all this is weakening the economy.”

Merchants interviewed recently on the streets of Damascus report a 40 to 50 percent fall in business as consumers hoard cash and cease spending on all but the most essential items. Tourism has skidded to a halt, representing a loss of $2 billion a month to an economy worth $59 billion last year, Mayalah said.

“The whole system has been shrinking — and very fast,” said Rateb Shallah, a prominent Damascus businessman. “The sanctions are squeezing us, and it is definitely affecting us quite a bit.

To what extent the downturn is due to the sanctions isn’t clear, however.

Until now, only the United States, the European Union, Canada and Japan have imposed sanctions on Syria, with relatively limited measures mostly targeting individuals and financial services. The most serious measure, a European embargo on oil purchases imposed in August, goes into effect only on Tuesday because Italy sought to ensure that its existing contracts were honored.

But the experience of the oil embargo illustrates the broader crisis of confidence confronting Syria. European nations, which account for a vast majority of Syrian oil exports, immediately halted their purchases, even though they were not required to do so for three more months. And oil pumped since then has gone unsold, despite Syria’s boasts that it would easily find other customers. Syria has curtailed its oil production by more than 25 percent, Mayalah said (emphasis added).

The EU sanctions are clearly having an effect, and they were just ratcheted up a notch.  What's particularly interesting, according to CNN's Ivan Watson, is that Turkey might be weighing in:

Turkey threatened to cut off supplies of electricity to its neighbor Syria Tuesday, as the Damascus regime found itself under growing pressure from Arab, Turkish, European and North American governments for its ongoing lethal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

"We are supplying them (Syria) with electricity at the moment. If they stay on this course, we may be forced to re-examine all of these decisions," Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said Tuesday, according to Turkey's semi-official Anatolian Agency....

Observers warn the protest movement in Syria, which struggled peacefully for months, is growing increasingly "weaponized" as more and more Syrian soldiers desert from the armed forces and join the opposition.

There's just a whiff of the Ivory Coast in how things are playing out right now.  Effective sanctions + regional cooperation + weaponization of the opposition = eventual dictator downfall.  It's not as neat and tidy as that equation, of course, but you get my drift. 

There's an interesting irony here.  Historically, the leaders of resource-rich economies have had greater leeway make mischief and resist waves of democratization.  In the current climate, it would seem that these are the very economies most vulnerable to active economic pressure. 

Obviously I'm not expecting an oil embrago on Iran anytime soon -- there are costs to sanctioning a major oil exporter.  Still,  these events are no doubt disturbing in Tehran and elsewhere. 

What do you think?  Is Assad doomed?