As a group, foreign policy analysts and international relations theorists tend to focus on how large, impersonal factors affect the contours of world politics.   We're like this for two reasons:  a) Large-scale factors -- like, say, demographics -- really are pretty important; and b) We get allergic reactions to media narratives that stress the ways in which one person or one decision made all the difference.

Because of this trait, an event like bin Laden's death has lead to an orgy of blog posts and essays pointing out that not much has changed.  Charli Carpenter's first response was to ccharacterize it as "a single operation in a vast and endless war, that apparently will have no impact on our foreign policy."   Daveed Gartenstein-Ross recounts the myriad ways in which Al Qaeda still matters in a post-Osama world.  Neither Nate Silver nor David Weigel thinks that the effect on Barack Obama's political popularity will be that great.  Ben Smith points out that conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this, just like they have a field day with everything else. 

So, let me go against my instinct to agree with all of the above points and suggest why bin Laden's demise really is, in the words of the VPOTUS -- a big f***ing deal: 

1)  Pakistan.  You can slice this any way you want, the brute fact is that bin Laden was living in the Pakistani equivalent of Annapolis -- a posh resort town that happens to house a lot of Pakistani retired generals, not to mention their main miltary academy.  This doesn't look good for Pakistan, as their continued silence suggests.  As he promised in his campaign, Obama violated Pakistan's sovereignty, sent in special forces, took out bin Laden, and did it all without consulting the Pakistanis about it.  So not only does the Pakistani leadership look incompetent, they also look impotent. 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that anything that destabilizes Pakistan is a BFD -- and the way this played out destabilizes the country. 

2)  The United States just re-shaped the narrative.  International relations scholars assume that most actors in world politics care about some combination of power, wealth and prestige.  The U.S. killing of bin Laden strengthens American prestige and weakens Al Qaeda's.  According to reports, Bin Laden used his wife a woman as a human shield to protect himself during the firefight, which will tarnish his legacy, even to AQ operatives.  Perceptions matter, and this symbolic victory for the United States will affect perceptions of American power. 

Of course, all it takes for for the debt ceiling not to be raised and this'll disappear, but still...

3)  The United States has increased its bargaining leverage in the Af-Pak region.  As both Matthew Yglesias and Ross Douthat suggest, the death of bin Laden is one of those symbolic moments during which U.S. policy in the region might be re-evaluated.  There are reasons to believe that this blow is actually going to sting for Al Qaeda. 

It's at this moment when a president might have more credibility in bargaining with either Afghanistan or Pakistan.  A large-scare withdrawal is now politically feasible in ways that it wasn't 24 hours ago -- and anti-war members of Congress are already getting frisky about it.  They also have the American public on their side. 

If the administration is smart, they will use this pressure to withdraw to start actually withdrawing, or at least pressure Afghan and Pakistani officials into acting in a somewhaqt more cooperative manner. 

4)  Al Qaeda won't be able to exploit the Arab Spring.  Al Qaeda had already whiffed  badly in handling the Arab unrerst of 2011, and bin Laden's popularity in the region had been falling as of late.  That said, think of bin Laden (in this way and only this way) as like Sarah Palin -- someone who had declining poll numbers but a still-very-rabid base of support.  It's not obvious that this support will transfer to any other jihadist. 

Al Qaeda's remnants and affiliates might be able to operationally exploit the regimes changes in the region -- but they've lost whatever slim reeed they had at a political presence.

5)  It's a social science bonanza!!!  Terrorism experts should be positively giddy about this development.  Bin Laden's death is a great "natural experiment" to see whether Al Qaeda is as decentralized and resilient as some experts claim.  The AP reports that, "U.S. forces searched the compound and flew away with documents, hard drives and DVDs that could provide valuable intelligence about al-Qaida."  I, for one, hope that bin Laden's location in Abbotabad means that he was more of a central node than analysts expected. 

Readers are welcomed to proffer their own explanations for why this is a big f***ing deal in the comments. 

As Ian Bremmer announced over at The Call, Eurasia Group recently released their top risks for 2011. Coming at no. 7 is the U.S. political system: "In 2011, headline risk will be driven by both parties loudly promoting priorities for which there is no path forward."

It's telling that political risk assessments need to be used for the United States, but not surprising. The U.S. political system does not always work terribly well.

The events of the past week would appear to expand that sentiment to U.S. political culture, however, which is several cognitive leaps too far. For example, Gideon Rachman compares the murder of a Punjabi governor in Pakistan to the attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords:

Events in both Pakistan and America suggest what happens when you not only disagree with your political opponents - but when you demonise them as enemies of the faith or the nation. At that point, some may conclude that it is legitimate to end the argument with bullets.

Sigh… let's all take a few deep breaths, shall we?

Let's turn to Lexington's response to Rachman:

Well yes, America could become like Pakistan if people concluded that it was legitimate to settle arguments with bullets. But in America, where guns are plentiful and political and religious feelings intense, the telling thing is that almost no one at all considers political violence to be legitimate. The killings have been met with universal condemnation by ordinary Americans and the whole political class. The violent act of one probably deranged individual doesn't show that America is heading down the same road as Pakistan. And the response to it suggests that the political cultures of the two countries are fundamentally different.

Indeed, seen in historical context, Adam Serwer points out that the United States' political culture has trended away from violence:

Political violence in the United States has never been more illegitimate. There was a time when a member of Congress could walk into the Senate and beat a political rival senseless and walk away unmolested. The South was once a place of unrestrained terrorist violence conducted with the tacit approval of local authorities. Even when those authorities were brave or responsible enough to press charges, securing guilty verdicts would be difficult because of a local culture willing to accept crimes committed in service to white supremacy. We live in a time where no major political movement would be willing to openly justify such behavior.

This is why, in the aftermath of the incident, both the left and right began placing the blame on the other side.

Finally, we get to James Pethokoukis:

[P]olitical violence has been rare in the United States in recent years. That's despite the disputed 2000 presidential election, the unpopular Iraq war and the election of the first black president. Indeed, the World Bank ranks America above the UK when it comes to "political stability and absence of violence." And the U.S. rank has actually been on the rise in recent years.

There's going to be a rollicking debate about whether political vitriol contributes to political violence. Fine. But let's put things in perspective -- extremist rhetoric or not, this kind of thing is blessedly rare in the American polity.

Reuters' Inal Ersan reports on a shocking announcement from Al Qaeda: 

If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired Sunday....

"God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the leader of al Qaeda's in Afghanistan, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.

Well, blow me down!!  I had no idea that this would have been their intent!  It's a good thing Al Qaeda clarified their policy on nuclear weapons, because there had been some ambiguity on the matter.  I, for one, am also unclear about Al Qaeda's position on Israel, or whether they think Adam Lambert got jobbed in American Idol. 

Seriously, there was one interesting wrinkle in the interview:

The militant leader said al Qaeda would be willing to accept a truce of about 10 years' duration with the United States if Washington agreed to withdraw its troops from Muslim countries and stopped backing Israel and the pro-Western governments of Muslim nations.

I'm not saying the United States should take Al Qaeda up on the bargain, but I do find it interesting that they occasionally float bargains like this out there.