I, for one, am glad that the foreign press is brave enough to cover what America's mainstream media is not -- the U.S. government's complicity in causing the Haitian earthquake. Never mind that the foreign media echo chamber aparentluy started with a false rumor -- with luck, our MSM will now start asking the tough questions.

This is a plan so brilliant that only the Evil League of Evil, in conjunction with the reverse vampires and the Obama administration, could have devised it.

Why, you might ask? What is America's motivations to trigger Haiti's earthquake and then intervene with massive aid in the hemisphere's poorest country? Well, there are different theories bandied about.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez suggests that this was a practice "drill," designed to test the earthquake weapon before targeting Iran (though see the update below). Very clever!! It is unclear whether Chavez believes that this is a test of the "demonstration effect" variety or not. It is also unclear just how such an earthquake would actually destroy Iran's nuclear program -- the 2003 Bam earthquake certainly didn't.

This Canadian-based Centre for Research on Globalization's Ken Hildebrandt offers the following ingenious explanation:

You've likely guessed my suspicions about recent events. I'm not saying this is what occurred, though it's sure a possibility to be considered in my view.

This could hardly have happened at a more convenient time. The president's ratings are plummeting, and his bill to subsidize the insurance industry has essentially divided the nation in two.

What better way to lead the people into believing we're one big happy family than to reunite former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush along with Obama in a joint humanitarian effort?

This is so convenient... and brilliant!! It makes perfect sense that the Obama administation would try to kill upwards of 200,000 Haitians in order to bring the country together as one! Because, clearly, in recent years, natural disasters have bolstered the standing of U.S. presidents!! Certainly, a calamity in Haiti would work even better! If only Rush Limbaugh had played ball....

What I love about conspiracies like these is the careful balancing of smart and stupid that the key actors have to possess in order for the plan to work as described.

Question to readers: how far and how wide will this meme travel?

UPDATE:  I just received the following from a atrategic communications advisor to the Venezuelan Embassy in the United states: 

In response to your recent post on Foreign Policy’s website, I just wanted to clarify that President Hugo Chavez never associated himself with the theory that a U.S. weapon had caused the earthquake in Haiti.  

The claim was made by a blogger on the website of a state-run yet independent television station. At some point thereafter, someone jumped to the conclusion that President Chavez had agreed or repeated the claim, which is absolutely not true. President Chavez did argue against an increased U.S. military presence in Haiti, but at no point did he question what had caused the earthquake or aligned himself with any conspiracy theories to that effect.

 

Everyone inside the Beltway is preparing their 500 words on what the  results in the Massachusetts special Senate election will mean for Barack Obama's domestic policy agenda.  It's worth speculating for a moment, however, about the implications of this election for Obama's foreign policy agenda.  What would a Republican victory signal to the rest of the world?  How would the rest of the world's policymakers react? 

The first and simplest answer would be that there would be no effect.  It's just a single Senate election.  Furthermore, one could argue that, on foreign policy, GOP hopeful Scott Brown is actually closer to Barack Obama than Martha Coakley.  Brown supports Obama's Afghanistan plan -- Coakley opposes it.  This election hasn't really been about foreign policy.  Surely, then, a GOP upset wouldn't have much impact on the realm of international relations. 

Not so fast, however.  The election will also be interpreted as a signal of Obama's domestic political strength.  Unless the numbers are way off, the Republicans will do much better tonight than anyone expected even two weeks ago.  Foreign leaders -- particularly those from countries not terribly well-schooled in electoral politics -- will undoubtedly interpret that as a sign of:

1)  Obama's domestic weakness; and

2)  The depths of populist outrage in the United States -- populist outrage that could bleed over into increased protectionism, isolationism, or "kill them all and let God sort them out" provocation on the foreign policy front.   

Soooo..... how they respond to this information depends on many factors.  If they prefer Obama and his foreign policies to the GOP (cough, Europe, cough), then they might prove to be more accommodating to U.S. positions.  If they like the  results from a United States foreign policy that is more hawkish (cough, Iran and Venezuela, cough), then they might amp up their belligerence to make Obama look weak and hamstrung. 

The one sure effect of the election is that it will throw a monkey wrench into international negotiations that require legislative approval.  Unless Obama can secure bipartisan support for, say, a replacement to Start II, other countries' negotiators are going to wonder why they should bother with the transaction costs of negotiation. 

Am I missing anything? 

Andrew Sullivan has been blogging about Iran juuuust a wee bit the past 48 hours.  Now he asks a question:

The Green Movement has strongly resisted all sanctions against Iran, and even more passionately opposes any military strikes. If Israel strikes, it will effectively kill the Iranian opposition movement, and set off a global wave of Jihadism which will kill many American soldiers and civilians. So how to respond to the Revolutionary Guards' continuing and mounting brutality?

He also links to some useful Spencer Ackerman posts, which contains the following two points of interest:

1. Some leaders of the Green Movement are begining to think some targeted "smart" sanctions might be useful;
2. The Obama administration has been pulsing the system to figure out what the possible sanctions options are. 

What to do?  I think two big questions need  to be asked.  First, how are the sanctions supposed to work?  Is the idea to squeeze the elite coalition ruling Iran just hard enough to get the current leadership to cut a deal?  Or is the idea to cause enough discontent with the regime such that it collapses, and then a deal can be struck with the next regime?

The process by which sanctions are supposed to work matters.  If the hope is to still do business with the current regime, then targeted or "smart" sanctions make more sense.  They're less likely to impact the broader Iranian population -- though, like precision-guided munitions, there will always be collateral damage. 

If the goal is regime change, well, then broad-based sanctions might make more sense.  If these reports are any indication, then  it appears that the Khamenei regime is alienating an ever-larger swath of the population.  Obviously, the regime could try to use the prospect and implementation of broad-based sanctions as a way to rally around the flag.  If the regime's popular support is badly eroding, however, and that erosion is partly explained by economic hardship, then you want sanctions to target a somewhat larger segment of the populace. 

Of course, as I've said before, this is all sophistry unless you get Iran's major trading partners on board.  And my hunch is they won't go for the "heavy" sanctions option.  This is a shame, because at this point, I think it's the option that's somewhat more likely to work.   

Let's not kid ourselves, however:  we're talking about policy options that will change the probabilities by a few percentage points either way.  There is no magic bullet -- or bomb, for that matter -- on this policy quiestion. 

Am I missing anything? 

Nader Mousavizadeh, a special assistant to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1997 to 2003, writes in The New Republic that the United States should prioritize democratization over de-nuclearization in Iran:

The fracturing of the Islamic Republic’s traditional elite, and the persistence and power of Iran’s democratic awakening six months later, make clear that a regime change is under way in Iran--one that is indigenous, sustainable, democratic in spirit, and peaceful in its means. It is the most promising development in the broader Middle East in the past quarter-century. Rather than being viewed as a sideshow, the uprising should be at the core of every policy decision regarding Iran. Western leaders should ask themselves just one question whenever faced with a new set of measures toward Iran: Will they help or hurt the Green Movement?

For all the concern about a fitful and still highly vulnerable nuclear program, a far greater prize is now in sight: a freer society and an accountable government under the rule of law. An opportunity now exists to encourage the evolution of a democratic Iran--through careful, calibrated, and principled policies that refuse to be baited by the crude and bellicose behavior of a usurper president. 

Now, I'm sure Flynt Leverett and other purebred realists would vehemently disagree with this assessment.  And I'm sure that William Kristol and other neoconservatives would vehemently agree with this sentiment. 

For the rest of you, does this preference ordering make sense?  To me, it seems that you need to take the following variables into account:

1. What is the likelihood of a second Iranian Revolution?  Mousavizadeh seems to think it's a virtual certainty.  I'm probably more optimistic than most Iran-watchers, and I'd give it a 50/50 shot at best.
2. If a revolution took place, what is the likelihood that the new Iranian government would be more amenable on the nuclear issue?  Again, Mousavizadeh seems to think this is a virtual certainty.  Me, I'm not so sure.   
3. If a revolution took place, what would be the additional positive policy externalities?  An implicit point in Mousavizadeh's essay is that on a whole array of other issues, a democratic Iran would be much more constructive.  This is indeed possible -- I suspect support for, say, Hezbollah might dry up.  That said, it is equally possible that a democratic Iran would freak out the non-Democratic Sunni states in the region just as much as a revolutionary theocracy has done in the past.

 None of this is to say that a carrt-and-stick appoach on the nuclear issue is going to work either.  If you're comfotable with risk, an approach that marginally boosts the likelihood of a Green Revolution taking place might be the best play. 

I bring up these questions, however, because it's possible that a carrot-and-stick approach that prioritizes the nuclear issue over the regime change issue is the best of a really lousy set of policy options. 

Developing....

I see that Steve Walt couldn't resist critiquing Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech.  At the end of his post, he argues that Obama should be judged by his actions and not his words:

I still think we should pay less attention to what he said and focus on what he and his advisors do. In his first year in office, President Obama has made two critical decisions involving matters of war, peace and justice. The first is his decision to abandon the admirable principles he set forth in his Cairo speech in June, to tacitly accept the continued expansion of Israel's West Bank settlements, and to collude in a well-orchestrated assault on the Goldstone Report on war crimes in Gaza.  The result will be to perpetuate precisely the sort of injustice that gives rise to very violence he deplored in his speech. The second is his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan -- sending 17,000 troops last spring and 30,000 more last month -- despite the continued absence of a compelling rationale or coherent strategy for success.

From Day One, Obama has shown that he is a thoughtful and intelligent leader who takes his responsibilities seriously and weighs decisions carefully. But in the end, what matters is not how long or hard he thinks or how well he talks. What matters is whether he makes the right decisions. And by that criterion, he's 0 for 2.

No doubt, these are important policy actions.  The most important, however?  No, I don't think so -- not if you really buy the precepts of realism (Indeed, one of the things I love about purebred realists is how they emphasize the importance of power beyond all else, and then obsess about every aspect of American foreign policy except great power interactions). 

No, what should matter most for realists is how the United States engages the other great powers of the world -- China, Russia, and maybe India and the European Union.  By this metric, the four most important actions the Obama administration has taken to date are:

• Revamping the missile shield that was ostensibly suppposed to cover Eastern Europe in the event of an Iranian missile attack in a way that mollified Russia. 
• Nearly completing negotiations with Russia on a follow-up to the Start II treaty 
• Refraining from branding China as a currency manipulator in Treasury's report to Congress
• Elevating the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue with China to the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue

On the whole, in great power politics, I'd say Obama is doing reasonably well.  Relations with Russia are unquestionably better than they were a year ago.  Sino-American relations are fraught with more tension, as recent events in Copenhagen suggest.  However, I'm with James Fallows in noting that Obama's China trip was more successful than most commentators noted in November. 

There might come a time in the future when the United States must balance against these countries, but that day is a long way off.  For now, however, one could argue the Obama administration's emphasis on developing a more robust economic foundation for American power necessitates relatively peaceful relations with the other great powers. 

What do you think? 

So, Pew has a new survey of elite and mass attitudes about foreign policy, and it's chock-full of interesting results.  Turns out Americans sound pretty realist right now:

In the midst of two wars abroad and a sour economy at home, there has been a sharp rise in isolationist sentiment among the public. For the first time in more than 40 years of polling, a plurality (49%) says the United States should "mind its own business internationally" and let other countries get along the best they can on their own....

The public sees China's emerging power as more worrisome than do the foreign policy opinion leaders. There has been virtually no change since 2005 in the percentage of the public saying that China represents a major threat to the United States (53% today, 52% then). Moreover, while Iran is mentioned most often as the country that poses the greatest danger to the United States, China continues to rank among the countries frequently named by the public as dangers to the U.S....

At the same time, there has been a rise in unilateralist sentiment. Fully 44% say that because the United States "is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not." That is by far the highest percentage agreeing since the question was first asked by Gallup in 1964.

Hmmm... this sounds familiar.

Now, you might think supporters of these policy positions would be overjoyed at this news, or at least extoling the sage wisdom of the common folk of America.

The thing is, there are other results in this survey suggesting the public is kinda, sorta stupid*: 

In a reversal of opinion from the beginning of last year, 44% of the public now says China is the world's leading economic power, while just 27% name the United States. In February 2008, 41% said the U.S. was the top economic power while 30% said China.

Now I understand that China's relative power has grown vis-a-vis the United States in the past year two years decade.  Maybe in a decade or so, China will be the more powerful and robust economy.  Maybe.  Right now, however, there is simply no way you can describe China right now as "the world's leading economic power."

If you were to take a snapshot of the distribution of economic capabilities in the world, then the United States remains the most powerful country in the world, and it's not close.  The U.S. share of the global economy has hovered around 25% for the past decade.  This is twice the size of China or Japan, and far larger than that of any other individual nation-state.  Any measure of science and technology outputs generally has the United States coming out on top.  Historically, the U.S. is not only the current hegemon - the country controls a far greater share of the world's resources than most great powers of the past.  [But, but, but, China has the largest amount of official currency reserves in the world!!--ed.  Yes, and a fat lot of good that does Beijing.] 

Is China more economically powerful than it was in 2008?  Absolutely. Is it more powerful than the United States?  No f***ing way. 

There's a lot more to dig through here -- I'll be bashing the inconsitencies of foreign policy elites sometime this weekend.  But I highlight these results to suggest that anyone talking about this stuff as an example of the "wisdom of crowds" does not know what they are talking about.  These are very interesting results, but they're based on a pretty high degree of ignorance about world politics.

*Yes, the more accurate word to use would be "uninformed," but I'm trying to provoke here. 

Comment away on Obama's Afghanistan speech here.  My quick hits:

• Well, everyone who's been waiting for Obama to do something unpopular to demonstrate his leadership skills should shut up for a while;
• My favorite bit was the Eisenhower quote: "As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests.  And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces.  I don't have the luxury of committing to just one.  Indeed, I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, 'Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration:  the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.'"
• To that end, my reaction to the proposed policy is very similar to my reaction to Bill Belichick's much-discussed fourth down play a few years back.  At the end of that post, I wrote:

[I]t'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. 

... Looking at the Obama administration's foreign policy, which move echoes Belichick's play-calling?

I think I have my answer now. 

This is a 51-49 decision, and I'm far from confident that he's doing the right thing.  If that Eisenhower quote is any indication, however, I'm pretty sure that the decision-making process was solid. 

Developing....

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.   

A year after Barack Obama's election, I'm seeing a lot of post-mortems on his administration's first year in foreign policy.  Ben Smith's Politico story is a nice template for them: 

Foreign policy never goes according to campaign plan, but for President Barack Obama, who promised a hardheaded new engagement with the world, the last week and the weeks he sees looming ahead must be discouraging.

Across a region spanning Pakistan to the Mediterranean, foreign leaders seem to be challenging the very premise of his policy: that foreign countries can reasonably be persuaded to move in the direction of common interests, and that a better-loved America can get more done.

In Afghanistan, an all-out effort to promote a legitimate election turned into a scramble to prevent a civil war and ease the defrauded challenger off the stage. Iran persuaded the White House to drop its late-September deadline for action and then appears to have rejected a deal on nuclear fuel. Great powers such as Russia and China show no appetite for crucial concessions, while the U.S. Congress continues to block major action on a pillar of Obama’s policy goals — international action on climate change.

To which I say:  meh.  First, Smith's premise about Obama's foreign policy isn't quite right.  Sure, I think Obama and his foreign policy team would love it if "foreign countries can reasonably be persuaded to move in the direction of common interests, and that a better-loved America can get more done."  But c'mon, these are not stupid people, and I'm pretty sure that they know the limits of diplomatic goodwill and reasoned discourse. 

Second, you always need to grade on a curve -- i.e., how has Obama's first ten months stacked up to prior administratons?  Most incoming administrations screw up plenty in their first year in office.  With Clinton, there was flip-flopping over Haiti, dithering over Bosnia, screw-ups over Japan, etc.  With Bush 43, there was a lack of consultation with allies over treaty withdrawals, a dramatic policy shift on North Korea that badly embarrassed South Korea's leadership and eventually had to be walked back, and that whole failure-to-prevent 9/11 problem.  Even with George H.W. Bush, the first six months primarily consisted of a strategic review of the Soviet Union that was overtaken by events the moment it was finished. 

Will Obama have to walk back or reverse course on foreign policy?  He's done so on Israel, to be sure, and might do so on Afghanistan.  He has had successes in Honduras, Russia and the Somali pirates, however.  So far, I'd say Obama is shooting par for the course. 

I haven't been a huge fan of certain aspects of Obama's foreign policy -- like Philip Levy, I'm not thrilled with his trade policy.  Mostly, however, I'd characterize his foreign policy actions as reasonable -- and pretty much what I'd expected a year ago today. 

What about you, dear readers -- how do you grade Obama's foreign policy? 

In light of Hamid Karzai's agreement to go forward on a run-off election in Afghanistan, I was curious about special envoy Richard Holbrooke's role in this denouement.  Jon Western links to this Nukes & Spooks McClatchy blog post chock-full of some inside dirt: 

Three administration officials, who asked not to be identified by agency, told us that, while Holbrooke is laboring away hard behind the scenes, he's received direct orders from the White House to cool it publicly while Washington desperately tries to unscramble the Afghan electoral mess between President Hamid Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

"This process is so sensitive. He'd love to deal with this. The White House thinks ... it's not the time for him" to be out front, one of the officials said of Holbrooke...

To be fair -- and we do try to be fair here at N&S, we're told that the White House orders are not directed at Holbrooke alone. Everyone involved in Af/Pak policy has been told to keep a lid on it while President Obama deals with the difficult decision of how to keep the situation there from dropping into the abyss and whether to send more American servicemen and women to Afghanistan.

Everyone did keep quiet... except Senator John Kerry.  The Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon and Peter Spiegel explain why: 

According to one Western diplomat, the Afghan president was more comfortable dealing with Sen. Kerry than with U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry or the administration's special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke. Mr. Holbrooke angered Mr. Karzai when he suggested shortly after the Aug. 20 election that a runoff might be needed.

The Century Foundation's Jeffrey Laurenti earlier this week on the sharp differences between the Obama administration and its predecessor:

Barack Obama is reaping treble returns for America this week as he makes his first appearance as president at the United Nations.  Never has an American president been greeted on the U.N.'s unique global stage with such giddy anticipation, or undertaken so extensive and substantive a schedule there.... 

[I]t is Obama's dramatic realignment of U.S. policy away from American conservatives' unique fetishes, and to the mainstream goals and values that most of the American people share with the rest of the world, that explains the new opportunity for renewed American leadership.

From Helene Cooper's write-up of Obama's United Nations speech today in the New York Times: 

But even as Mr. Obama sought to signal a changed tone in America’s dealings with the world, much of his speech centered on old and intractable issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a Middle East peace process. And while his choice of words was different and more conciliatory, the backbone of American policy he expressed remained similar to the Bush administration’s in many areas.

Well, that clarifies matters, then. 

My latest TNI online essay is now available for viewing on the interwebs.  It looks at recent U.S. foreign policy actions through the ever-useful lens of the good cop/bad cop routine.  Can a gambit that always worked on NYPD Blue work on the global stage?  I have my doubts:

On the whole, the good cop-bad cop routine is of limited utility in world politics. Iran appears to be unbowed in the face of a hawkish Israeli government (though, to be fair, they have been preoccupied with other matters recently). A protectionist Congress has not made it any easier to complete the Doha round. Bill Clinton’s good cop was able to secure the release of the hostages, but at the price of a photo op that looked bad no matter how necessary it might have been. And while no one doubts that Biden occasionally goes rogue, it remains unclear just what policy benefits that strategy yields.

In theory, the best kind of bad cop is the one that seems genuinely unconstrained and ready to strike. An independent but allied government plays this part much better than a subordinate member of the executive branch. In other words, if you want to successfully execute the good cop-bad cop routine in world politics, the odds are long to begin with. To pull it off, however, under no circumstances should you let Joe Biden be Joe Biden.

Go read the whole thing. 

[Would a threat to display more of Dennis Franz's posterior work as a compellent threat?--ed.  Hmmm... let me check the Biological Weapons Convention to see if it's a legit move and I'll get back to you.] 

Denis McDonough is the director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.  I mention this because whatever McDonough has done in the first six months at the NSC, getting Michael Crowley to write this glowing essay about Obama and the NSC in The New Republic was the cherry on top. 

Here are the key paragraphs: 

Whether he is shaping the White House's message on Iran, or personally cajoling Asian leaders to crack down on North Korea, or brokering power deals among NATO allies, Obama has, in effect, been his own national security advisor and secretary of state. Unlike Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, who had world events thrust upon them, Obama seems to be more in the mold of Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush--a president involved in foreign policy because of, not in spite of, his priorities and personal interest. "He's very engaged, very hands-on," says his longtime foreign policy adviser, Mark Lippert, now chief of staff at the National Security Council (NSC)....

To this administration, process is not simply the poor cousin of strategy. Process is what allows harmony and progress amid multiple challenges and viewpoints. Senior Obama aides call it "regular order"--a system that gives the president a diversity of views with minimal infighting and back-channel maneuvering, little leaking to the press, and no public airing of dirty laundry. "Regular order is your friend," says Denis McDonough, director of strategic communications for the NSC. "The system only works if you have adult behavior."

Thus far, the system has confounded skeptics who predicted melees among big-name advisers and conservatives who warned that Obama lacked the experience to govern in such dangerous times. "The level of harmony is just striking," says James Goldgeier, a national security aide in the Clinton White House and a political scientist at George Washington University. There are signs, however, that the administration's approach to foreign policy, however well-intentioned and well-executed, is vulnerable to unexpected challenges--the very kind that are likely to multiply the longer the president is in office.

Read the whole thing. My take is that, while based in reality, Crowley's essay has the whiff of someone who talked to a lot of White House officials (including the NSC staff) but not a lot of other foreign policy figures. Goldgeier's quote is the only outside evaluation.* No one outside the White House is quoted by name. The evidence for foreign policy harmony and NSC control over the policy process comes from... NSC officials. 

Just to be clear, I don't think Crowley is telling tall tales.  The occasional gaffe aside, Obama's first six months on the foreign policy job have been pretty decent --- especially compared to the first six months of George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.  But it is odd that in an essay on Obama's foreign policy process, there's very little about Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, or Timothy Geithner in this essay. There's no discussion of reports about Clinton chafing -- and trust me, there are reports about this stuff. There's very little about their reaction to Obama's decision-making process.

On the whole, I hope that Crowley is correct. The best way to ensure a high quality of American foreign policy is to have a president actively engaged in the process, and this piece suggests that to be the case. Still, the only thing I was sure about after reading this essay is that Denis McDonough is very, very, very good at his job.

Well, there's one other thing I'm sure about -- I would have loved to have listened in on this phone conversation: 

[I]n at least one instance earlier this year, Holbrooke received an angry phone call from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel after the diplomat was perceived to have stepped on Obama's public message about the war effort.  

Sounds like a job for the Undersecretary of Go F**K Yourself.

*Oh, and given that Goldgeier was a foreign policy advisor to Obama during the 2008 campaign, I'm not sure I'd call him impartial, either. 

The Pew Global Attitudes project has released their 2009 report, which means we finally have some hard numbers to see whether the election of Barack Obama has altered global perceptions of the United States. 

And it turns out the answer is yes in most places: 

The image of the United States has improved markedly in most parts of the world, reflecting global confidence in Barack Obama. In many countries opinions of the United States are now about as positive as they were at the beginning of the decade before George W. Bush took office. Improvements in the U.S. image have been most pronounced in Western Europe, where favorable ratings for both the nation and the American people have soared. But opinions of America have also become more positive in key countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well.

Here are the numbers:

Most of the results are not surprising.  The Obama effect is pretty substantial in Western Europe and Latin America, and nonexistent or negative in the Middle East and Russia.  A small positive effect in sub-Saharan Africa, though this is in pat due to the fact that U.S. favorables were already pretty high in that region. 

The surprising results are in Eastern Europe, Pacific Rim and South Asia.  Obama does poorly in Poland -- perhaps because he's been perceived as more accomodating towards Russia. 

In the Pacific Rim and India, however, favorability ratings increased by a fair amount.  I'm particularly surprised by the bump in India, given the occasionally prickly tone between the policymakers of the two countries. 

Question to readers:  Obama said a few weeks ago that he thought a soft power bump would help advance U.S. interests.  Given the data, do you agree? 

UPDATE:  Wow.  Kevin Drum digs through the report and finds an even better measure of the increase in U.S. standing -- asking respondents whether they think "America will do the right thing in world affairs."  The numbers here are pretty stunning: 

Wow.  I mean, wow.  In a lot of ways this is the more interesting result, because it suggests that other countries think the United States is now more competent.