Before Deadly Bulgaria Bombing, Tracks of a Resurgent Iran-Hezbollah Threat - By Sebastian Rotella

After a decade in which al Qaeda dominated the world stage, the global terror threat from Iran has escalated sharply, generating a swarm of recent plots from Delhi to Mombasa to Washington and signaling an aggressive new strategy, counterterror officials say.

But there were meager results until this month. On July 18, a suspected suicide bomber killed six people and wounded 30 aboard an Israeli tourist bus in a coastal town in Bulgaria. Israel quickly accused Hezbollah and Iran, longtime sponsor of the Lebanese Shiite militant group. Many questions remain about the bombing, and Bulgarian authorities have said they do not have proof implicating Hezbollah so far. Nonetheless, many Western counterterror officials share Israel's suspicions.

If the allegations are true, Iran and Hezbollah have crossed a dangerous line with their first strike in Europe in more than 15 years. The repercussions are stoking more turmoil in a Middle East torn by civil war in Syria and conflict over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

ProPublica has reviewed a string of plots attributed to the Shiite alliance, 10 cases in the past year alone, and found a complex and contradictory evolution of the threat. Iran and Hezbollah have waged a determined campaign to strike their enemies in retaliation for attacks on the Iranian nuclear program and the killing of a Hezbollah chief, counterterror officials say. The offensive led by the Quds Force, Iran's elite foreign operations unit, has displayed impressive reach and devastating potential.

"The Hezbollah-Quds force threat is the big thing worldwide right now," a U.S. counterterror official said. "There has been a wave of activity." 

Yet the modus operandi so far has veered between agility and clumsiness, precision and improvisation. Most of the attempted strikes have failed, often hampered by hasty execution and unreliable operatives, according to counterterror officials and experts around the world. In some ways the apparent opportunism and erratic behavior make the menace worse, increasing the chances of conflict with the West, experts say.

"These cases all seem amateurish," an Indian counterterror official said. "The Iranians feel great frustration and desperation because of the attacks on the nuclear program, a real desire to strike. So they aren't prepared -- they act quickly. They don't care about reprisals. They are out of practice. They have done few operations like this since the '90s."

Syria's DIY Revolt - By Eliot Higgins

"We are using bullets that cost $3," lamented a Syrian rebel commander, "and they are coming with bombs that cost thousands."

That may be so, but Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters have used those $3 bullets to bring President Bashar al-Assad's regime to the brink of collapse. Over the past week, they have seized control of several districts in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and economic hub. Now, as Assad musters his forces to retake the city, both sides are bracing for what could be a pivotal battle in the 16-month revolt.

How did Syria's rebels get so far with so little? As their strength has grown, they have used heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft cannons, rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and they have even captured tanks to inflict damage on the Syrian military. As a largely improvised guerrilla force, they have also cobbled together some strange do-it-yourself (DIY) weapons systems, designed to hurl whatever explosives are on hand back at their enemies.

These weapons reflect the FSA's need for rapid movement, and they have at times proved effective in urban combat environments. Whether they will be enough for the rebels to repel the Syrian military in the battle of Aleppo, however, remains to be seen. Here is just some of the military hardware that Syria's opposition fighters are using against Assad.

It Ain't Just a River in Egypt - By Shadi Hamid

When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pulls up to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo this week, he will see a protest outside its walls. Just steps away from Tahrir Square, supporters of Omar Abdel Rahman have been staging a sit-in for nearly a year to protest the imprisonment of the man known as the "Blind Sheikh," who is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison for planning terrorist attacks on American soil.

Upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit just weeks before, these protesters were joined on the embassy's doorstep by a group often seen as more sympathetic to U.S. values and policies: Egypt's liberals. This time, they had lost some of that sympathy.

The protests, by themselves, weren't entirely unexpected -- after all, no one in Egypt these days seems to have much praise for President Barack Obama's administration. And liberals, due to their perceived closeness to the West, have often had to overcompensate to shore up their nationalist bona fides. After all, it wasn't the Muslim Brotherhood but, rather, liberal standard-bearer Amr Hamzawy who refused to meet in February with Sen. John McCain due to his "biased positions in favor of Israel and his support for invading Iraq and attacking Iran."

What is different about this most recent surge in anti-Americanism is its conspiratorial bent. Some of Egypt's most prominent liberal and leftist politicians are telling anyone who will listen that the United States is in bed with the Islamists. Such allegations would be concerning on their own, but they're even more troubling for what they represent -- Egyptian liberals' growing ambivalence and even opposition to democratic rule. The rise of what we might call "undemocratic liberals" is threatening Egypt's fledgling democracy.

The suspicion that the United States is secretly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood sounds far-fetched, in part because it is. I remember first hearing a variation on the theory from a top Egyptian official in January: He spoke at some length of a U.S. master plan to install a grand Islamist alliance in government, including not just the Brotherhood but also more radical Salafists. Initially, I thought he might be making a meta-commentary on the absurdity of conspiracy theories. He wasn't.

Over the course of Egypt's troubled transition, liberal resentment has only grown. This month, former presidential candidate Abul-Ezz el-Hariri claimed that the Obama administration was backing the Brotherhood so it could then use the establishment of Egyptian theocracy as a pretext for an Iraq-style invasion. Most of the allegations, however, have not aspired to the same level of creativity. Emad Gad of the Social Democratic Party, a leading liberal party, asserted that the United States was "working with purpose and diligence in order to enable the forces of political Islam to control the institutions of the Egyptian state."

It was Gad who would capture in a few choice words the newfound merger of anti-Americanism and anti-democratic sentiment. "It's an Egyptian issue. It's not for the secretary of state," he told the New York Times. "We are living in an unstable period. If the SCAF [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] goes back to its barracks, the Brotherhood will control everything."

Liberals' fears have increasingly dovetailed with those of Egypt's Coptic Christian community, which makes up perhaps 10 percent of the population and is understandably suspicious of the Muslim Brotherhood, after decades of ambiguous statements on minority rights. On the first day of Clinton's visit, four of the country's leading Coptic figures released a statement saying, "Clinton's desire to meet Coptic politicians after having met with the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi leaders is a kind of a sectarian provocation which the Egyptian people and Copts in particular reject." It has reached the point, they wrote, where the United States had backed one candidate -- referring to the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsy -- in the presidential election.

The belief that the United States was behind Morsy's victory has spread among anti-Brotherhood groups. Before the final election results were announced on June 24, a coalition of leading liberal parties held a news conference condemning the Obama administration for backing Morsy's candidacy. "We refuse that the reason someone wins is because he is backed by the Americans," said the Democratic Front Party's Osama el-Ghazali Harb, who was an influential figure in former President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party before resigning in 2006.

In all these examples, no evidence was provided to substantiate the allegations, in part because no such evidence exists.

When asked to explain how they came to believe in a U.S.-Brotherhood "deal," Egyptians point to innocuous pro-democracy statements from U.S. officials, such as Clinton urging that the Egyptian military "turn power over to the legitimate winner" of presidential elections. One organizer of the anti-Clinton protests, the Free Front for Peaceful Change, accused the United States of attempting to "impose its hegemony" on Egypt because of a July 4 statement by U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson in which she said, "The return of a democratically elected parliament, following a process decided by Egyptians, will also be an important move forward."

Children of War - By James Thomas Snyder

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Geolympics - by Katie Cella

Despite official bylaws against "political behavior" at the Olympics, there has been no shortage of attacks, boycotts, and demonstrations in the 116 years since the first modern Olympic Games. Nationalism, racism, and a host of other political sentiments have repeatedly found their way into the competition, inciting everything from flag burning to bloody fistfights to the tragic murder of athletes.

Although human rights groups urged boycotts of the 2008 Beijing games because of the Chinese government's human rights record, suppression of protests in Tibet, and coziness with dictators in countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe, the competition ultimately provoked relatively little political activity. So far, the London Olympics have not been dogged by many boycott threats, but it hasn't exactly been controversy-free either -- they've mainly centered on whether London has enough security personnel and whether to hold an official moment of silence to mark the 40th anniversary of the Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Indeed, the competition has already produced some striking -- if ultimately empty -- solidarity. On Monday, Iran announced that Iranian athletes will compete against Israelis, after some members of the country's delegation refused to do so during the 2004 Athens games and 2008 Beijing games. (The catch: Athletes from the two countries are not scheduled to face off in any events).

But cooler heads haven't always prevailed during the Olympics. Here's a look at eight games where politics took center stage, relegating sports to the sidelines. 

London, Britain (1908): The fourth official Olympic competition was the first to feature an opening ceremony, which called for the flag bearer from each nation to dip their flag in respect to King Edward VII as they passed by his box in the 68,000-seat stadium. But the American flag bearer, a shot-putter named Ralph Rose (pictured above), did not tilt the Stars and Stripes toward the ruler, and legend has it that U.S. discus thrower Martin Sheridan defiantly declared that the American flag "dips to no earthly king." American athletes have not dipped their flag to the host nation's leaders since.

Anglo-American tension erupted once again during the marathon event when Italian runner Dorando Pietri collapsed in the final moments of the race and had to be carried across the finish line by medics. U.S. competitor Johnny Hayes was initially declared the runner-up as British and American officials argued over Pietri's disqualification for over an hour, while spectators brawled in the stands. Eventually, Pietri was disqualified and Hayes crowned the winner.

These weren't the only political incidents at the London games. Finland, which at the time was under Russian control, chose to march in the opening ceremony without a flag rather than bear Russia's colors. Athletes from Northern Ireland boycotted the competition altogether because Britain refused to grant the territory independence.

Wikimedia

Family Feud

Roger Clinton and Billy Carter have nothing on Antauro Humala, the imprisoned brother of Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, who will mark his first year in office on July 28. Currently serving a 19-year prison sentence for instigating a failed military rebellion in a remote Andean town in 2005, Antauro has, according to reports, smoked marijuana, received unauthorized female visitors, used a cell phone, and left the facility a dozen times.

Such misbehavior prompted a series of prison transfers, ultimately landing him in a high-security naval penitentiary where Antauro joined four other notorious detainees: Abimael Guzmán, arrested in 1992 as leader of the ruthless Maoist Shining Path insurgency; Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's disgraced spy chief during the 1990s; Victor Polay, former leader of another insurgent group, the MRTA; and "Artemio," another Shining Path leader captured just months ago.

The move to the latest prison has soured relations between the novice president and the rest of the Humala clan. Their extremely vocal father, Isaac, a lawyer who gave his children the complete works of Marx and Engels to read, has joined the fray, asserting that the relocation was personally authorized by Ollanta and involved a group of hooded men who physically abused the president's brother. He even vowed to file a complaint against his son with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

Long associated with a bizarre, virulently natinonalist ideology that "calls for the supremacy of 'copper-skinned' Peruvians," Isaac had already become deeply disillusioned with his son's presidency. He and other family members, including older brother Ulises and sister Ima Sumac, feel betrayed by Ollanta's failure to follow through on his commitment to sweeping change. Although Humala's family had posed a problem for his political ambitions for some time -- in 2006, his mother, Elena, called for shooting a few gays as a way to keep the rest closeted -- the relationship has become notably adversarial in the past several months.

Although doubtlessly an uncomfortable distraction for the president, there is no sign that the other Humalas have influenced his decision-making. On the other hand, the sway of Nadine Heredia, the first lady, has no rival.

Not only does the president's wife and closest confidante tend to outperform her husband in the polls, but there is speculation that she might be contemplating a run for the presidency herself, despite some inconvenient laws preventing it. Her clout was evident when, during a recent press briefing, she asked in a fit of pique, "Where is my minister?" The education minister at her side quickly responded, "I'm here, Señora, here." The public musings over who actually calls the shots -- Ulises openly calls his sister-in-law the actual president -- represents yet another public relations headache for the administration.

5 Flashpoints in the South China Sea - By Elias Groll

Read more about China's military moment here.

As tensions mount in the South China Sea, an isolated stretch of the South Pacific has become the latest testing ground for how a regionally ascendant China will manage ties with its neighbors. Many fear that China will steamroll its neighbors in securing access to lucrative natural resources -- vast reserves of oil, natural gas, and minerals -- in the South China Sea. China's decision this week to name a little-known city on a postage stamp of an island in the South Pacific as the administrative capital of an enormous swath of ocean seemed to confirm those fears.

But what exactly is at stake in the South China Sea? For starters, as many as 213 billion barrels of oil --more than the reserves of any country except Saudi Arabia and Venezuela -- according to a 2008 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As a result, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei are engaged in fierce jockeying over the rights to what at first glance are not more than a handful of rocks.

aaron tam/AFP/GettyImages

Capital Blues - Interview by Isaac Stone Fish and Elias Groll

It's been a bad month for Vincent Gray. The Washington, D.C. mayor is facing a major scandal -- a local businessman illegally contributed $653,000 to his 2010 campaign -- and though it's not clear that Gray knew of the dealings, there's speculation that he will soon resign; he might even be arrested. Yet in late June, as evidence against him grew, the mayor decided to take a long-planned seven-day trip to Beijing, Shanghai, and Suzhou to try to raise billions of dollars for city development projects.

In an interview in early July, the mayor seemed dazzled by both the scale and the apparent ease of running a Chinese city. In Beijing, buildings get permitted and constructed in months; in D.C. it seems to take that long just to fix the Metro escalators. "There's just an assumption in this country that things should take a long time," the mayor said. Speaking with FP in his office, the mayor spoke, occasionally critically, but more often glowingly, about the ease in which Chinese politicians seem to operate, the U.S. 40-hour work week, and how Thomas Friedman can save America. Excerpts below.

Foreign Policy: What impressed you about Beijing? Besides the size. As a mayor of a city of much smaller size, what did you learn?

Vincent Gray: We had this plan to [put streetcars in D.C.] over 20 years. And the folks that we've been working with there, who may be potential investors in the project, that was one of the first questions they raised. Twenty years?! Why 20 years? You ought to be able to do that in two or three years.

FP: Did you find it embarrassing to ask the Chinese for money?

VG: I didn't have a sense of that on either side. They're financial investors. I don't know that anybody -- even some of the Americans that invest in American projects -- probably have differences of opinion with their own government. So I don't see that as a game stopper.

FP: What are some misunderstandings that you feel you've been able to clear up, in terms of your views on China?

VG: Well, I think it's an autocratic system, much more autocratic than we are, but at the same time there's a lot of innovation -- innovation beyond what I fully understood. And it's interesting to be able to see the innovation that has taken place.

FP: With China's famed ability to get things done, how much of that is their spirit and how much of it is them riding roughshod over due process? 

VG: Well there's no question that they can get things done in ways that we can't get things done -- or won't get them done, let's put it that way. Some of the labor practices are probably not ones that would ever be tolerated in this city.

On the other hand, setting that aside for a second, my sense is that they work 24/7. We don't do that. It's not the same people, but why is it that on a project we're working on everybody is out there from 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning and then goes home at 4:00 or 4:30?

FP: Why do we use only a 40-hour work week?

VG: I don't think there's a good answer. It's the same question I've asked about schools. Why do kids start school when they're five? Why do kids get out of class at 3:00? Why are we still using an agrarian calendar to have kids get out of school in the middle of June and come back in August?... Who said eight hours a day is the right work day?

I'm not even talking about an individual. Let's just assume that 8 hours is the right work day. Why can't you have 16 hours -- with two shifts of people? You can work at night -- there's no reason why that can't be done... even if you have to use lighting or whatever, when you're doing outdoor [jobs]. Think about it: The sun comes up at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. and goes down at 8:30 or 9:00 at night. We don't have the same sense of urgency that other people seem to have at this stage.... Have you read Tom Friedman's book [That Used to Be Us]?   

FP: I haven't, no.

VG: You ought to read it. Because he has some comparisons in that book on how things are done in China. And he understands how some of the labor practices are running roughshod over people. But setting that aside, there are still things that we can do within the framework of our values, our own beliefs that would get things done quickly, more efficiently, and more effectively.

FP: Did you look at something in China and think, if only I could do that?

VG: Yeah, well, you know ... you deal sometimes with the bureaucracy [here].

FP: I recently moved from Beijing to D.C. It's more pleasant here, but the Metro escalators are often broken.

VG: If you read Friedman's book he talks about the broken escalators.... [In Beijing] they built a convention center equivalent to ours in nine months, and it took us nine months to get the escalators fixed in the Metro system.

FP: How does that make you feel?

VG: Oh, it's embarrassing to me. We saw somebody's website -- they built a 30-story hotel in 15 days. That seemed a little suspect to me. But the idea that it takes nine months to fix escalators! And people have these eloquently developed excuses. "The parts aren't available." It's always somebody else's fault.

FP: Did you ever ask the Chinese how many eggs you had to break to make this omelet?

VG: No. I didn't.

FP: Not your place to ask?

VG: I think there will come a time and a place for that. That wasn't the time and place. If you really want to build relationships you don't go and do that. Because it's already like you're questioning these people's motives, you're questioning the way they do things, like you know better. Americans have an unfortunate reputation for thinking they know more than everybody else.

FP: If you would have said something about human rights, you think they would have walked away?

VG: I think they would have politely shut us down.

FP: As you know, China is sensitive about its human rights record. I don't know if you saw the big flap about the Twitter feed about pollution statistics in Beijing that the U.S. government runs.  How would you feel if the Chinese government decided to tweet murder statistics in Petworth or Columbia Heights [two DC neighborhoods with relatively high crime statistics]? Would you appreciate that they were shining light on a problem?

VG: I'd like to think in a democracy that we would be tolerant of people having free speech and people sharing information, but I probably wouldn't feel good about it. The human reaction would be like, "Well, what you got going on over there?"

Hungry Days, Festive Nights: Images of Ramadan - An FP Slideshow

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan is a time for spiritual introspection and quietude -- but it is also a time of excess and revelry. Celebrated every year during the lunar month in which the Quran was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, Ramadan brings with it a change of pace in the Muslim world. During the daylight hours, restaurants are shuttered and work grinds to a halt, but at night whole cities come alive. Iftar, the traditional breaking of the fast, is perhaps the most recognizable Ramadan ritual. Often held on sidewalks and neighborhood thoroughfares, iftars are known for their colorful decorations, lavish dinner dishes, and candied sweets. Above, a woman buys sweets in preparation for Ramadan in Baghdad's Shorja Market on July 18.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GettyImages

Justify My Love - By David Rothkopf

The Middle East is like Madonna: Its time at the center of things has come and gone, but it is taking a while for that new reality to sink in.

Mitt Romney may be paying what seems to him and his advisors to be an obligatory pilgrimage to Israel this week. And the Obama team is counterprogramming it with a sandwich strategy that has every White House official above the rank of chef visiting there before and after the Republican candidate's trip. But what we are seeing is a ritual that will seem odd a decade from now, a vestige of the late 20th century that, like an aging pop star or an old general, took a while to fade away.

Once upon a time, the Middle East was important due to the combination of its massive reserves of oil and Cold War competition for geopolitical clout. Then, the Soviet Union collapsed. Almost immediately, the region -- and its oil -- was seen to be in play again, this time caught in a competition between the West and a perceived rising threat from Islamic fundamentalists.

But those days are over, or should be. The truth is, the United States has made the Middle East a priority vastly beyond the importance of its economies, population, or influence. The bottom line is that the U.S. reaction to terrorism in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was out of all proportion to the size of the threat involved. We overspent in blood and treasure in the region -- so much so that, Libya aside, the appetite for further costly involvement has dwindled to nearly zero in the United States and among our allies.

More importantly for the United States, the importance of the Middle East's oil is rapidly plummeting. Hosanna! According to a recent Citibank report, by 2020 the United States and Canada will produce 20 million barrels of oil a year and, thanks to advances in efficiency, use only about 17 million making us a net exporter -- something unimaginable just a decade ago. For Americans, the Middle East is shifting from vital wellspring of an essential resource to competitor in the provision of something we need relatively less of to grow.

Advances in energy efficiency are virtually certain to reduce the dependence of the United States and that of many other countries on the region's oil. Discoveries of alternative sources of abundant hydrocarbons like shale gas and oil in the United States, Argentina, Canada, China, Poland, and elsewhere will further reduce our reliance on Middle Eastern oil. Big offshore discoveries of oil in places in like Brazil will do likewise, as will our growing ability to harness other sources of energy from the sun, from wind, from biofuels, from waves, from geothermal sources, and so on.

Middle East leaders have been conducting a decades-long campaign to ensure that just about any other source of energy in the world is preferable to theirs -- because they are so damn hard to deal with. Arab Spring or no Arab Spring, the region is fraught with risks, instability, and corruption. The region's leaders are arrogant, unreasonable, and untrustworthy. They have stolen from and abused their people, repeatedly betrayed their best customers, and even in the case of the ones who have been more reliable allies, they have been very, very costly friends to have.

Even in places like Israel, with which the United States has and should have a special relationship, the big wheel of history is turning. The old reasons for that unique relationship, associated with the Holocaust and the Cold War, are fading as younger generations take a leadership role. Barack Obama's generation entered the workforce at the time Ariel Sharon was directing Israeli troops into the camps in Lebanon, a watershed that for many washed away much of the positive narrative about Israel the virtuous underdog. From then on, through the Intifada and the construction of new settlements on contested land, Israel has systematically damaged its standing in the eyes of the world (which hasn't been hard to do since so many around the world are predisposed for pretty awful reasons to dislike the idea of a Jewish state to begin with).

The World in Its Sights - By Dave Weigel

The National Rifle Association issued only one response to the shootings at an Aurora, Colorado, multiplex. On Friday, the flag at the firearms rights group's northern Virginia headquarters was lowered to half mast. And that was that -- no more on the story until "more information" was available.

It was classy and clipped -- a reminder that a domestic gun control debate at this moment would be a huge distraction for the NRA, which has broadened its targets beyond state and federal legislation. Last month, the organization elevated the Fast and Furious scandal when it "scored" Congress's contempt resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder. (Vote for contempt, or fail your NRA vote-rate report card.) And, this month, the NRA's lobbying and PR muscles have been squeezing the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, an attempt to establish common standards for the international sale of weapons, including so-called "small arms," like assault rifles.

An international drug war debacle, an international agreement on weaponry -- this is your introduction to the "global war on guns." On one side: The NRA, whose executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, identified the war and gave it a name. On the other side: Gun control NGOs and anyone who might favor an Arms Trade Treaty. The battles at home are largely won, so the NRA has turned toward laws outside the United States and global agreements that its home country might want to join. It's just the latest attempt to try to squeeze any rationality from all discussion of gun control anywhere -- even as the nation mourns the killing of 12 and the wounding of dozens more with legally purchased firearms.

It's hard to miss this seemingly oblivious single-mindedness at the Arms Trade summits. Despite the fact that the proposed treaty contains absolutely no restrictions on domestic gun ownership, the current round, like every preceding round, featured a pavement-rattling speech from LaPierre. On July 11, he appeared before the panel in New York to give a five-minute lecture about tyranny and the red-hot blood running through American veins. "The only way to address NRA's objections is to simply and completely remove civilian firearms from the scope of the treaty," he said. "That is the only solution.  On that there will be no compromise.  American gun owners will never surrender our Second Amendment freedom. Period."

How do you follow that up? According to an on-the-scene Alexander Zaitchek, LaPierre immediately left the building to go on Fox News. "The conversation breezes right by the NRA," says Scott Stedjan, an adviser at Oxfam who's lobbying at the summit now. Its stated fear of a national gun registry in America doesn't have anything to do with the negotiations -- the treaty's about international transfers. "They have three or four lobbyists here on any given day, and they're working, but it's on such a narrow issue. The United States already controls the trade of civilian and military weapons, so when it opposes this, the NRA is asking for a standard below the one that already exists."

But that's how the NRA's international lobbying works. The lobby rings alarms about new gun laws in any country. It broadcasts the bad news back home. "Gun-grabbers around the globe believe they have it made," wrote LaPierre in his 2006 book The Global War on Your Guns. "Ever since its founding 65 years ago, the United Nations has been hell-bent on bringing the United States to its knees." The NRA's strategy: Make them kneel first.

Take the example of Brazil, which spent part of the Lula years debating tough new restrictions on civilian gun ownership. In 2003, the legislature passed new laws and set in motion a 2005 referendum that would ban "commerce in firearms and ammunition." Brazilian conservatives begged for help from the NRA. Charles Cunningham, one of the group's best Washington advocates, was dispatched to Brazil to share his tricks. "Ignorance and emotion are key issues for us to address with logic and common sense," he said at an August 14, 2003, meeting of the Pro Legitima Defensa campaign. "Gun control legislation only affects law-abiding citizens because criminals don't get permits."

The Innocents Abroad - By Joshua E. Keating

As Republican challenger Mitt Romney heads off on a foreign trip that seems conspicuously timed to coincide with the anniversary of U.S. President Barack Obama's now famous 2008 Berlin speech, it's easy to forget just how odd it seemed just four years ago for a candidate to fly abroad in the middle of campaign season.

The Washington press corps was incredulous when Obama, then a senator with just two years under his built announced his trip, which included stops in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, France, and Britain as well as the July 24 speech before a crowd of more than 200,000 in the German capital -- essentially a campaign rally on foreign soil.

"Since when do American candidates, particularly candidates who are not incumbents, actually conduct their campaigns abroad? No one I've talked to can think of a real precedent," wrote the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum at the time. Obama was forced to give up on his original choice of venue, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided that the site of historic presidential addresses by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan was an "inappropriate" backdrop for a political speech by a candidate.

Obama's opponent Sen. John McCain also went on the offensive, telling CNN that he would prefer to give speeches to audiences in Europe "as president of the United States, rather than as a candidate for the office of presidency" and would instead spend his time "campaigning across the heartland of America and talking about the issues that are challenging America today." Clips of Obama speaking before crowds of admiring Germans would later be prominently featured in the McCain campaign's famous "celebrity" ad.

McCain would himself take a tour of Latin America several weeks later, but the senator's aides stressed that it was intended to highlight his positions on trade and democracy promotion in the region rather than simply burnishing his foreign-policy credentials. McCain had already visited Israel as the presumptive GOP nominee in March 2008.

This time around, the Obama team is certainly using the Republican candidate's trip as an opportunity to attack Romney's foreign policy, but the trip itself no longer seems like such an unusual undertaking. "Overseas trips by candidates have almost become an expected part of the 'I can be president' process," writes Michael Shear of the New York Times. ABC News has headlined a story about the tour, "Mitt Romney Embarks on First Foreign Trip of His Candidacy" as if it the odd thing was that it took him so long.

How Republicans Sabotaged the Recovery - By Daniel Altman

Imagine, for a moment, how difficult it would have been to land a man on the moon if half of the U.S. Congress had believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Or consider how the War in the Pacific might have progressed if half of Congress had still thought the world was flat. Or whether polio would have been eradicated if half of Congress insisted that the best cure was bleeding using leeches. Unfortunately, this was the situation the United States in January 2009, when Barack Obama assumed the presidency. The nation was trying to climb out of the deepest economic hole since the Great Depression, but the Republican Party had about as scientific an approach to the economy as medieval alchemists did to the periodic table.

Sometimes, mistaken ideas can be harmless or even humorous. But in a crisis, they can be downright dangerous. By the time Obama took office, Lehman Brothers had failed, and the Treasury was already trying to prop up banks and other financial institutions to prevent a complete collapse of the economy. In addition, the nation had undergone a tremendous fiscal transformation. Back in 2000, the United States had expected to rack up more than $4 trillion in budgetary surpluses over the coming eight years, but the Bush administration enacted tax cuts that brought the tax burden for upper-income Americans down to the lowest levels since the 1940s. These cuts, combined with two expensive wars and a short recession, sent the nation into deep deficits. The new president faced an enormous task to revive the economy -- one that he could not complete without Congress's help. Together, they would have to protect Americans from a prolonged economic slump while attempting to chart a course toward a more fiscally responsible future.

Not everyone in Congress was in a mood to cooperate. Stung by their electoral defeats and facing Democratic domination of both houses, the Republicans did everything they could to slow the new president's agenda, from filibusters and procedural votes to delayed appointments and partisan bickering. Clearly, the election campaigns of 2010 and 2012 had already begun, and Republicans were determined to stop the new president from keeping his promises. But in the early days of the financial crisis that began in September 2008, the Republicans knew that they had to seem like they were doing something about the economy, too.

So when Obama cast himself as a compromiser ready to temper the legislative proposals of the Democrats in Congress, the Republicans got whatever they could from him -- often while Obama's supporters cried foul -- and made sure to water down his proposals as well. It started with the first stimulus package. In January 2009, Obama announced his proposal for a combination of tax cuts and new spending worth $825 billion over the coming decade, including more than half a trillion dollars in the first two years. By this point, the value of the economy's annual output of goods and services had already shrunk by about five percent, adjusted for changes in prices, since its peak in the fourth quarter of 2007. This was a big hole to fill, easily worth half a trillion dollars a year. The stimulus wouldn't replace all that had been lost, but it might prevent a bad situation from lasting longer and getting worse.

In the end, Congress agreed to $787 billion in stimulus spread over 10 years. Would it be enough? Some economists already had their doubts. Even Christina Romer, who would soon chair the president's Council of Economic Advisors, had pushed Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary and Obama's top economic advisor, to recommend $1.8 trillion in stimulus to Obama in December 2008. Across the Pacific, China had just announced its own stimulus package of $586 billion over just two years -- and that was for an economy only a third the size of the United States that had no deficits problems and was still expected to grow quickly for many years. If the American economy still stood on the brink of a new recession a year or two years hence, the president and Congress would have to consider another attempt. After all, Americans would be suffering the pain of joblessness, foreclosure, and bankruptcy until the economy returned to strong growth.

As they girded for each fight against a president they were determined to defeat, the Republicans fell back on the basic tenets of their economic philosophy. Unfortunately for the American people, those tenets were myths. Each one of the economic concepts that the Republicans held dear simply wasn't true, as qualified economists from around the political spectrum agreed.

The time is running out to repudiate these myths. The unemployment rate is still at 8.2 percent, and the nation added a scant 80,000 jobs in June. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Americans polled this month by the New York Times and CBS said that they thought Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, would do a better job with the economy as president, compared to 41 percent for Obama. If Romney were to follow Republican orthodoxy, however, his economic policy would be dangerously reliant on these five myths:

Word Is Bond - By Michael A. Cohen

Four years ago last week, then-Senator Barack Obama delivered what is known in campaign parlance as the "big foreign policy speech." It's the sort of address that is a rite of passage for a presidential contender -- an opportunity to demonstrate to voters (and even more so reporters) that the candidate is fully prepared for the awesome responsibilities of U.S. global leadership.

Given at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., Obama used the address as an opportunity to lay out his major foreign policy and national security strategy while also differentiating himself from both his opponent Sen. John McCain and the President George W. Bush's deeply unpopular foreign policy.

Like any major campaign speech, Obama's remarks were more than just a vision of the future, they also represented a promise of what his presidency would bring to the country. So, four years later, it's worth asking the question: Has Obama upheld his foreign policy and national security promises?

While every candidate makes a host of pledges, declarations, and assurances on the campaign trail, for the purpose of simplicity and brevity, the Reagan Building speech provides a good template of Obama's campaign 2008 message and what he said he would do as president.  For example, while Politifact has helpfully pointed out that Obama broke his promise to "seek to negotiate a political agreement on Cyprus," we here at Foreign Policy are not going to make this into a federal issue (of course Cypriot-American voters may have a different perspective on this). Let's focus on the big stuff.

Here's what Obama said in his Reagan Building speech: "I will focus this [national security] strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

These five goals formed the outline of his foreign policy pitch to voters. So how has he done?

Think Again: The Eurocrisis - By David Gordon and Douglas Rediker

"The Euro Is Heading for a Crackup."

Don't bet on it. Sure, things look bad. The crisis, well into its third year, has forced Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and now Cyprus into various forms of international financial rescue pregrams, and it shows no signs of abating. After two years of denial and half-measures, market participants have little faith in the ability of Europe's policymakers to reach a solution. Spanish bond yields are frighteningly wide and those of Italy, the continent's most prolific borrower, are following closely behind. This summer's announcement a fuzzy-at-best plan to recapitalize Spanish banks and create new mechanisms to channel pan-European resources to Europe's stricken financial sector relieved market pressure for all of a few hours. Perhaps most alarmingly, no one seems to have a plan, with British Prime Minister David Cameron warning that the eurozone must either "make up or break up" -- with the implicit threat that the latter is increasingly likely.

But before writing the euro's obituary, let's remember: The driving force behind a European currency union was never purely or even principally financial. It was political -- and these binding forces remain strong. After centuries of bloodshed on the continent culminating in the last century's two world wars, the European Union (EU) and ultimately the euro arose from a deep-seated desire to abolish the risk of state-to-state conflict. A slide back to nationalism is a constant fear in the minds of European political leaders and peoples. And so, in spite of growing concerns about the benefits of sharing a single currency across 17 countries, member states and their publics remain highly supportive of the European project and the euro. While the crisis has caused this support to decline a bit, studies consistently show that Germans, French, and Spaniards favor remaining in the euro. Even upwards of 70 percent of Greeks, who are in their fifth year of recession and looking forward to a decade of grinding austerity, claim that they want to stay in the currency union. They may not get their wish (boundless hope can overcome an awful lot, but not the cold mathematics of Greece's debt burden) but their robust support illustrates the basic fact that the political will to maintain the euro remains strong.

It's true that Europe doesn't yet have a comprehensive plan to balance sensitive and increasingly difficult issues of national sovereignty, financial resources, and disparate economic models and strength among eurozone members. It's also true that this marks a decisive break from the post-World War II trajectory of European integration, which was built on grand visions both successful (the common market and common currency) and less so (the Lisbon Treaty that set the foundation for today's host of supranational European political institutions).

What Europe does have, though, beyond sheer will, is a process, however tortured and painful it may look to those on the outside, to ensure that the euro and the EU hold together. The political and economic costs of a eurozone implosion remain too high and the benefits of maintaining the common currency too real for the countries involved, as self-defeating as they appear at times, to allow a crack up. Europe will likely make steady, halting, and at times apparently counterproductive steps toward a banking union, limited fiscal federalism, and a path to political union. The path from here to there won't be smooth, just as the past two years haven't been -- but it will likely be enough to keep the currency union.

To be clear: We could very well be heading for a deep crisis, and we might even see the exit of one or more member states, with Greece the most likely. But other peripherals won't see a Greek exit as a signal to leave themselves; in fact, measures taken as a consequence may well strengthen their own prospects within the currency union. The likelihood of the eurozone imploding and the reintroduction of national currencies across a broad swath of Europe thus remains exceptionally small.

Flying Under the Influence - By @Drunkenpredator

Every morning, the hangar doors roll open and the sunlight flares my electro-optical sensors. I drag myself onto the flight line, load up my pylons with Hellfire and Griffin missiles, and try to get some coffee into my tank before takeoff. If all goes well, I lumber into the air, loiter over some godforsaken warzone du jour, and occasionally lob weaponry at those I'm told are the enemies of the free world. By broad consensus, I'm pretty good at my job -- and when I'm not soaring above the mountains of Afghanistan or Yemen, I even find time for hobbies, like posting on Twitter. But after I return to base, I self-medicate with extreme prejudice. Because I'm a Predator drone, and you people make me drink.

Allow me to explain.

In the last decade, my robotic flying cohorts and I have gone from Air Force afterthought to indispensable weapon in the global struggle against violent contingencies, or whatever the hell we're calling it now. We come in sizes large and small: Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk is the size of a modest jetliner and AeroVironment's NAV is hardly bigger than a golf ball. And we don't just do war, either. Among other civilian missions, we've sampled radiation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and helped firefighters monitor wildfires in Alaska and California. We even fly weather-research missions into hurricanes.

Yet somehow, us drones -- yes, we prefer the term "drone" over the alphabet soup of UAV, RPA, or UAS -- have been pressed into unwilling service as the bugaboo for a host of disparate interest groups. Libertarians like Ron Paul probably couldn't agree with Code Pink's Medea Benjamin on the time of day, but they can at least agree that they don't like me. And that hurts my robotic feelings, because I simply don't deserve it.

Many of the key misconceptions about me have already been effectively dissected by the talented national-security bloggers I like to read in-air, not to mention some excellent myth-busting here at FP. So I'll be brief, and touch on only the most binge-inducing notions polluting the public discourse.

The House of Nehru-Gandhi - By Sadanand Dhume

India will elect its 13th president on July 22, when votes cast earlier this week by about 5,000 national and state legislators are tallied. The almost certain winner is former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, a career politician and the official candidate of the ruling Congress Party.

Though the largely ceremonial office carries little clout-the prime minister wields executive power-India's president is nonetheless the country's official head of state. Not surprisingly, the national media has giddily covered every twist and turn in Mukherjee's likely ascent to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the palatial 340-room estate completed in 1929 for the viceroy of British India. But nobody has paused to ask why India needs an elected president in the first place. Perhaps it's time the world's largest democracy considered a constitutional monarch instead.

Before dismissing the suggestion as ludicrous, consider its logic. A hereditary monarch provides the comfort of continuity against a backdrop of rapid economic and social change. The best ones also take over the brunt of ceremonial duties at both home and abroad, allowing the executive to focus on governance. And since they don't have to worry overly about faddish public opinion, monarchs are often better able to stand up for core national values such as pluralism and fair play than a career politician conditioned by reflexive attention to short term goals.

In many of the other parliamentary democracies cleaved from the Empire, Queen Elizabeth II still acts as head of state. This is probably a nonstarter for India, which is proud of its independence struggle and wary of foreign influence. Luckily, there's a closer option at hand: the nearly 100-year-old Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, led currently by Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi. Who needs to import a royal family when you have a perfectly serviceable one of your own?

Indeed, in India, the transition to monarchy would be virtually seamless. Many Indians, from captains of industry, to normally hard-bitten journalists, to star-struck society hostesses, already treat the Nehru-Gandhis like royalty. A cabal of courtiers and party officials zealously guards their privacy and shapes their public image. The family itself acts like royalty, gently floating above the rough and tumble of national discourse. They've lived in taxpayer-funded housing for more than 60 years.

With their famous last name, pan-Indian appeal, and vast experience in the public eye, the Nehru-Gandhis seem better suited to a life of ribbon-cutting and ceremonial globetrotting than many of the presidential palace's previous occupants. In power, the family expresses its patrician noblesse oblige by backing costly and inefficient welfare programs India can't afford; as purely ceremonial leaders they could continue to make the right noises but do little actual harm.

Add to this the uncertain electoral appeal of the dynasty's bumbling heir apparent, 42-year-old Rahul Gandhi, and you begin to see why it may be time for India's de facto royal family to borrow a trick from Europe and leave the grubby business of politics to lesser mortals. In short, the idea of Her Royal Highness Sonia and Crown Prince Rahul makes as much sense for the family as for India.

Oh, Brother - By Steven Miller

Mohamed Morsy's young presidency in Egypt hasn't started all that smoothly. It's largely been characterized by a series of standoffs with the Egyptian military, including this week's controversial court case on the legality of an assembly tasked with drafting the country's new constitution. But Morsy is also performing a less publicized high-wire act in trying to court vital benefactors in the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia. How this endeavor plays out could prove just as consequential for his political survival.

Since Morsy became president last month and resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood, he has worked hard to ease tensions with jittery Gulf countries. Dubai's police chief has been warning Gulf leaders since March that local Brotherhood cells "want to stir the streets" against them, but Morsy's real challenge is to reassure a visibly nervous Saudi Arabia, which lost its key ally Hosni Mubarak to Egypt's popular uprising. In an effort to secure Saudi aid, Morsy has done all the right things: pledging not to export Egypt's revolution, describing the Gulf countries' security as a "red line" that should not be crossed, and making the kingdom his first foreign destination as president last week.

So far, Morsy's overtures appear to have placated the Saudis, who have continued sending Egypt financial support. But while there are similarities between the Brotherhood's ideology and Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi brand of Islam -- both are Sunni, religiously zealous, and critical of Western influence in Muslim countries -- it's safe to say that the Saudis preferred Egypt's old order.

As a Sunni Islamist who came to power through democratic elections, Morsy challenges the autocratic system that Saudi Arabia's rulers have been fighting tooth and nail to uphold. Just last year, the Saudis doled out nearly $130 billion in aid packages to their citizens to assuage discontent. But they did not simply rely on cash to save themselves. The kingdom's leaders also preempted planned "day of rage" protests in March 2011 by sending thousands of troops to Shiite-majority provinces, locking down the capital, and unleashing loyal clergy to threaten potential protesters with violence.

Those measures brought some calm to Saudi Arabia, but not for long. Violent protests erupted last week in the Eastern Province -- home to the country's oil and most of its Shiite population -- after security forces shot and arrested prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr for instigating "sedition." With restless Shiite citizens in the region already chafing at the state's discrimination, Saudi authorities poured gasoline on the fire when they fatally shot two men during the demonstrations. More than a week later, crowds are still taking to the streets in protest and showing no signs of letting up.

The Shiite question is just one of several reasons why the Saudis worry about the future of Egypt. Long before Morsy's election, the Saudis were nervous that Shiite Iran would exploit Egypt's transition. Although Egypt and Iran severed diplomatic relations in 1980 because of Egypt's close relationship with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its signing of a peace treaty with Israel, the two countries have maintained economic ties. One example is the Misr Iran Development Bank, a joint venture that was founded in 1975 and survived the next 30 years of turmoil in the Egyptian-Iranian relationship. Today, U.S. Treasury officials suspect that Iran may use the bank as a means of skirting international sanctions on its nuclear program.

Saudi anxieties only deepened in February when Egypt allowed Iranian naval ships to pass through the Suez Canal -- an act Mubarak's regime prohibited. In May, Morsy said that he hoped to have "relations" with Iran during a televised interview with Egypt's CBC network, though he was careful to not specify what type of relationship he wants with Iran and to emphasize that the relationship would not come at the expense of Gulf countries' security (Iran's Fars News Agency later quoted Morsy as saying that he wanted to strengthen ties with Iran to strike a strategic "balance" in the Middle East, in a purported interview that Morsy vehemently denies giving).

In response to these growing concerns, the kingdom is doing what it always does: throwing petrodollars at the problem. In June, the Saudis gave Cairo $1.5 billion toward the state budget (the Financial Times has reported that the Egyptian government expects a budget deficit this year of 7.6 percent). The kingdom, which currently funds more than 2,300 projects in Egypt and maintains investments there that are estimated to be worth anywhere from $12 billion to $27 billion, also provided Cairo with a $750 million credit for Saudi oil imports, $230 million for a range of water and agriculture projects, and $200 million for Egyptian businesses.

Arab League - Photos By Brigitte Lacombe

 

Saudi Arabia recently made international headlines when the kingdom announced that, for the first time, it would send two women -- 800-meter runner Sarah Attar and judo competitor Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani -- to the Olympics. The move was heralded as a sign of progress abroad, but provoked a serious backlash among the kingdom's religious conservatives. As Eman Al Nafjan writes in Foreign Policy, Sheikh Al Shathri -- a Saudi  cleric -- was kind enough to suggest some alternatives to athletics for women ... such as vacuuming or household chores.

But whether Saudi Arabia's half-hearted gesture is a true opening for women or a token move to avoid an Olympics ban, many women are already competing in regional sports events across the Middle East. Some countries have stringent restrictions on women's sports -- including conservative dress codes and restricting spectators; others like Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, have attitudes toward female athletes that are very similar to those in the Western world. To dispel myths and learn what life is like as a female athlete in the Middle East, Brigitte and Marian Lacombe decided to investigate for themselves. Commissioned by the Qatar Museums Authority, their new book, Hey'ya ("Let's Go," in Arabic) contains interviews and photographs of 75 women from 20 Arab countries. The Lacombes found women practicing archery, athletics, basketball, cycling, discus, fencing, handball, judo, riding, sailing, shooting, swimming, Taekwondo, tennis, volleyball, and weightlifting across the Arab world.

Above, Saudi Arabian equestrian show jumper Dalma Malhas with her horse Flash Top Hat. The international buzz this spring was that Malhas would be the first female athlete to attend the games. Malhas won bronze in the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore, and was seen by many as the most likely female athlete from Saudi Arabia to make it to the Olympics. But less than a day after it was reported that Malhas would be going to London, news broke that she would not be competing, as her horse had apparently been injured for weeks.

Brigitte Lacombe

Democracy, Salafi Style - By Aaron Y. Zelin

The Muslim Brotherhood has so far emerged as the clear political winner from the popular uprisings that have seized the Arab world. In Egypt and Tunisia, its affiliated political parties have either won power outright in democratic elections. But the Brotherhood isn't the only movement mixing faith and politics in the new Middle East: Salafis -- hardline conservatives who model their lives on Prophet Mohamed and the first three generation of Muslim leaders following his death -- are setting aside years of theological opposition to democracy to participate in the political game.

This sea change was driven home earlier this week when Saudi Salafi heavyweight Sheikh Salman al-Awdah took to his Twitter feed and Facebook page to proclaim: "Democracy might not be an ideal system, but it is the least harmful, and it can be developed and adapted to respond to local needs and circumstances." Although Awdah notably made his announcement on his English and not Arabic social media platforms, where his audience numbers in the millions rather than the tens of thousands, the sentiment is still positively Churchillian -- echoing as it does the late British prime minister's maxim: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Awdah's pronouncement is significant due to his history and popularity within the Salafist milieu. He was one of the key leaders of Saudi Arabia's sahwa ("awakening") movement, which butted heads with the House of Saud most prominently during the Gulf war in the early 1990s. During those years, key Saudi religious scholars and sahwa activists signed two petitions admonishing the Saudi royals for their reliance on the United States, and calling for the creation of a shura ("consultative") council that would grant greater authority to the religious establishment to determine whether legislation was truly in line with Islamic law.

The House of Saud viewed these letters as a direct threat to its power, and consequently arrested Awdah and other sahwa figures in 1994. Awdah would not be released until 1999. Although he has not been as overt in his criticisms of the regime since his release, he is not part of the official religious establishment and has a level of independence, which has afforded him the ability to maintain a large following without being viewed as a lackey of the government.

Osama bin Laden was one of the young Saudis deeply affected by Awdah's stand against the Saudi regime in the early 1990s. The al Qaeda chief viewed him as an intellectual mentor, and allegedly told his former bodyguard Abu Jandal that if Awdah had not been imprisoned, he would not have had to raise his voice up against the Saudi ruling family.

The al Qaeda leader's admiration highlights Awdah's influence among not only mainstream Salafists, but some of the more radical wings of the movement. Awdah himself was never an al Qaeda sympathizer. He would rebuke bin Laden in 2007 during Ramadan, saying, "My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed ... in the name of al Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?"

The Inspector in Chief - By Isaac Stone Fish

Say what you want about Kim Jong Un -- the man is good at inspecting things. After taking power following the death of his father in December 2011, Kim has taken a page out of dad and granddad's book and had himself photographed across the country looking, watching, and guiding his people forward in a propaganda campaign that appears designed to show the competence of the young leader. But as Ken Gause argues, there may be a method to Kim's seeming madness: He's trying to show that economic growth and development, not the country's military, is his top priority.

This photo, released in January 2012, shows Kim inspecting the future site for the Pyongyang Folk Park.

KNS/AFP/GettyImages

Hired Gun Fight - By John Norris

Rajiv Shah, President Barack Obama's U.S. Agency for International Development administrator, is waging a high-stakes battle to make U.S. foreign aid programs less dependent on American for-profit contractors. At the same time, he's aiming to roughly double the amount of assistance that flows directly to governments and local organizations in the developing world.

Shah's initiative reflects Obama's broader desire to clean up government contracting announced early in his term, as well as the thrust of a White House review of development policy and the State Department's first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Although Shah's plan hasn't gotten much public attention, it represents a seismic shift in how American foreign aid programs are conducted and will require both wrenching institutional change and a very tough political battle if it is to become a reality.

Given the degree to which USAID works with contractors, some of Shah's language has been delightfully undiplomatic. In a 2011 speech, he drew parallels between the agency's reliance on for-profit firms and Eisenhower's warnings about the emergence of a military-industrial complex. Saying that USAID was "no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors and calling it development," Shah argued that development firms were more interested in keeping themselves in business than seeing countries graduate from the need for aid. "There is always another high-priced consultant that must take another flight to attend another conference or lead another training," he complained.

Shah's fiery rhetoric quickly set off alarm bells among USAID's many for-profit contractors, particularly since it came hot on the heels of the agency's December 2010 decision to suspend a huge non-profit, the Academy for Educational Development, or AED, from receiving new government contracts because of abuses in two of its Pakistan projects and what USAID argued was "serious corporate misconduct, mismanagement and a lack of internal controls." AED was one of USAID's larger partners, managing about $500 million annually in grants and contracts, and the suspension led AED to go belly up just month later in the spring of 2011. AED insiders complained bitterly that USAID overreacted; USAID insiders countered that AED would have survived had it not tried to downplay and conceal the problems when they were first discovered. Eventually, AED paid $5 million to the U.S. government in a Justice Department settlement for the Pakistan projects in question.

---

Top 10 USAID Contractors for FY 2011

A bit of history is important in explaining why the Obama administration remains convinced that too much foreign aid flows through firms around the Beltway. Much of the current struggle has its roots in a bitter battle between the Clinton administration and Senator Jesse Helms during the mid-1990s, during which Helms and his allies attempted to abolish USAID and fold its functions into the State Department. USAID managed to fend off Helms, but ended up weathering steep cuts to its operating expenses, which forced it to dramatically reduce staff size through layoffs and attrition. Even when funding for foreign aid rebounded after Sept. 11, USAID was a shell of its former self, having lost much of its staff and expertise in key development areas like agriculture. A 2003 Government Accountability Office report captured the dilemma: "Since 1992, the number of USAID U.S. direct hire staff declined by 37 percent, but the number of countries with USAID programs almost doubled, and, over the last two years, program funding increased by more than 50 percent." In short, USAID had gone from being a development agency to being a large, poorly organized contracting agency. Incredible pressure to push money out the door in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan only exacerbated these trends.

Because USAID remains laden with bureaucratic restrictions, it also tends to rely on large umbrella contracts that favor a handful of well-connected Beltway firms. The 10 largest USAID contractors received more than $3.19 billion in 2011, and more than 27 percent of the agency's overall funding was directed to American for-profit firms last year. To put this in perspective, if the for-profit contractor Chemonics were a country, it would have been the third-largest recipient of USAID funding in the world in 2011, behind only Afghanistan and Haiti.

Blowing up the Death Star - By Mitch Prothero

 

BEIRUT ' No one really saw this coming. That is, no one except for the handful of Syrian rebels who executed the startling July 18 bombing in Damascus that claimed the lives of Syria's top intelligence and security officials. But the shockwaves of this assassination have already reverberated across the Middle East, leading political players of all stripes to contemplate the possibility of President Bashar al-Assad's imminent demise.

Confirmed dead in the explosion, which Syrian state media blames on a suicide bomber but Free Syrian Army officials insist was caused by a remote-detonated device, are Defense Minister Dawood Rajiha; his "deputy" Asef Shawkat, Assad's brother-in law and one of the regime's most feared strongmen; and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani, a former Defense Minister.

After more than a year of being shelled by the regime's well-equipped military and terrorized by gangs of pro-regime military thugs, the Syrian rebels' attack was the equivalent of blowing up the Death Star: They not only decapitated the Assad regime's top security officials, they sent a message that they could reach anyone -- and any part of the country. Even if the belief that Assad could fall any day is overblown (and with such limited access inside Syria it's impossible to know for sure) -- it is clear that his hold on power is shakier than ever.

Syrian state media's account of the attack focused on the "martyrdom" of Rajiha, but Shawkat -- who only merited a single line in that same announcement -- is the real story here. The defense minister, who hailed from the Greek Orthodox community, was widely considered an affirmative action hire -- someone meant to keep Syria's Christian minority on the side of the regime. Shawkat, on the other hand, is a true insider. He has run Syria's feared military intelligence services, which is probably the only institution still trusted on any level by loyalists, and was in charge during the last gasps of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. He also often acted as a regime fireman, parachuting into trouble areas to quell dissent. Despite much resistance from some members of the Assad family to his marriage, Shawkat regularly amazed Syria observers with his ability to navigate the opaque power struggles and often-deadly intrigue that comes part and parcel with the Assad family dictatorship.

Syria's rebels responded with unrestrained glee, filming celebrations around Syria for YouTube and fielding phone calls from journalists in Lebanese safe houses, where they openly expressed pride in the operation. The real prize was Shawkat: Rebel officials tell FP that despite his sometimes rocky history with his in-laws -- it's rumored that Maher al-Assad, the president's brother, once shot him during a family meal -- Shawkat's dedication to the regime once again made him an indispensible and trusted enforcer at a time when the Assad clan has seen key allies abandon them.

"Shawkat and Maher have been in charge of crushing the revolution," said a Free Syrian Army official in Lebanon who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ahmad. "They can't trust the Sunnis in the army after thousands of defections and this regime always turns to its own blood when it is time to protect the regime."

It's not only the assassination that is bolstering the Syrian opposition's morale. The rebels have also sustained four days of fighting in the capital, which had previously seen only limited clashes and smaller demonstrations as the rest of Syria descended into civil war. Furthermore, in numerous meetings with anti-regime fighters in Lebanon over the past several months, it has become abundantly clear that new financing and equipment have reached the once shabby rebel army units.

"This regime is so rotten that even their own supporters sell us weapons," one rebel commander in a village along the border with Lebanon told me. "We never needed weapons from outside countries like America or Saudi -- we needed money. Syria has plenty of weapons already and these guys are so corrupt that they profit by selling us the weapons we will later use to kill them."

"Now we have money," he concluded, before demurring about the source of the generosity.

Across the border in Lebanon, which rightfully watches events unfold in Syria like its future could depend on the outcome, reaction to the assassination depended on one's political loyalties.

Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, a conservative Sunni cleric currently engaged in a political standoff in the Lebanese city of Sidon with Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian allies, has emerged in the last month as a key critic of the Lebanese government's neutrality on the Syria question. In a wide-ranging interview, I asked the cleric -- whom critics have painted as an al Qaeda-style radical -- about his feelings towards the Syrian revolution next door.

"The Syrian regime will fall," he said. "And it will have an impact in Lebanon, but I doubt Hezbollah will resort to violence over it. I expect they will push out politically to protect themselves from the loss of their allies in Damascus. But, God willing, we will not see sectarian violence."

The Era of Oil Abundance - By Steve LeVine

We are suffering whiplash: For nearly four decades, OPEC -- the cartel formally known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries -- has been a major economic and geopolitical force in our collective lives, driving nations to war, otherwise self-respecting world leaders to genuflect, and economists to shudder. The last half-dozen years have been especially nerve-wracking as petroleum has seemed in short supply, oil and gasoline prices have soared to historically high levels, and China has gone on a global resource-buying binge. Russia's Vladimir Putin has strutted the global stage, bolstered by gas and oil profits, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has thumbed his nose at los Yanquis.

Yet now we are hearing a very different narrative. A growing number of key energy analysts say that technological advances and high oil prices are leading to a revolution in global oil. Rather than petroleum scarcity, we are seeing into a flood of new oil supplies from some pretty surprising places, led by the United States and Canada, these analysts say. Rather than worrying about cantankerous petrocrats, we will need to prepare for an age of scrambled geopolitics in which who was up may be down, and countries previously on no one's A-list may suddenly be central global players.

One primary takeaway: North America seems likely to become self-sufficient in oil. "This will be a huge potential productivity shock to the U.S. economy," says Adam Sieminski, director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. "It could grow the economy, grow GDP, and strengthen the dollar."

OK, we get it -- we will need to relearn our basic geopolitics. But how so? Last week, the New America Foundation gathered six leading energy analysts to take a guess as to the winners and losers over the next few decades from the unfolding new age of fossil fuel abundance (video here). Here's what they told us:

The Short List - By Joshua E. Keating

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Blood Law - By David Rieff

The International Committee of the Red Cross is the legally recognized custodian of the laws of war and thus, among its other prerogatives, the arbiter of the semantics of both interstate and internal conflict. At the same moment that parts of Damascus are now free-fire zones, the ICRC has finally declared that the conflict in Syria is a "civil war" under international law. In the short term, at least, this is unlikely to have much immediate effect on the fighting in that country, nor are the rebels likely to welcome the designation -- which for the average fighter, merely confirms the obvious -- as much as they would, say, welcome more military help from abroad, not to mention a full-scale international intervention. In any case, terminologically speaking, the ICRC is a latecomer to the party, but there are sound reasons for the organization having decided to wait before rendering a verdict. At least in theory, an ICRC finding has important legal implications for both sides in the fighting, whereas the declarations of other actors are more expressions of opinion than fact.

Tellingly, the other principal actors in the Syrian conflict have shown no such restraint. The United Nations has been using the term "civil war" for months; the Assad regime has spoken of the insurrection in terms of terrorism; the leaders of the Free Syrian Army and other elements of the insurgency have described the conflict in the language of liberation. But all sides are clear that their conflict is one for control of the Syrian state, which is about as good a definition of civil war as it is possible to come by. But this begs the question: if fighters on the ground are convinced they are fighting a civil war, should anyone care all that much about the ICRC's demarche one way or the other?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is yes. To be sure, such exercises in nominalism can indeed be the meaningless intellectual pyrotechnics that their detractors believe them to be. And there is no question that the terms by which conflicts are designated do not always matter. But at other times -- and the Syrian case is one of them -- how a conflict is described can matter, desperately. Anyone doubting this need only think back to the Clinton administration's frantic effort at the U.N. in the spring and summer of 1994 to prevent the Security Council from using the word "genocide" to describe the catastrophe then unfolding in Rwanda. Washington did so because it believed -- even if many international lawyers did not -- that by declaring what was taking place in the Great Lakes region of Africa was indeed a genocide would impose an affirmative legal obligation under the U.N. Genocide Convention of 1948, which had finally been ratified 40 years later by the United States. At the same time, the French government was also resisting the term, though more out of its connection to the Hutu power regime that was instigating the genocide than out of any worries about the designation requiring an intervention.

Rwanda is scarcely the only relevant example. The debate over when and under what conditions it is legitimate for outside actors to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of countries deemed to be abusing their own populations -- a global argument that, for better or worse, culminated in the adoption of the doctrine of the so-called Responsibility to Protect (R2P) --- has revolved around legally binding definitions as much, if not more, than about moral sentiments. The law may be an ass, but to paraphrase John Locke's celebrated description of reason, international law may be very well all we have to limit the horrors of war and the crimes committed by governments against their own peoples. This is because even the most callous great powers know that arguments about whether a conflict is a rebellion or an act of terrorism may help determine whether their efforts in response succeed or fail -- and most certainly what their efforts will be. If the years since 9/11 hold any lessons, they should at least have taught us that even torturers want legal opinions that justify their deeds.

In the Syrian case, the ICRC's declaration has real world implications both for the belligerents and for outside actors. On the ground in Syria itself, the designation of the conflict as a civil war broadens the categories under which both sides can be prosecuted for war crimes under international humanitarian law, since while prosecutions for crimes against humanity can take place whatever the nature of the conflict, the broader category of war crimes can be applied only when a state of war has been found to exist. It was because of this, not only because of the murderous denialism so often attributed to the Assad dictatorship, that Syrian officials at the United Nations fought so hard to prevent the term civil war from being used, and international supporters of the insurrection pushed so zealously for its adoption, even though, as a number of human rights officials both inside and outside the U.N. have pointed out, the rebels are thought to have committed atrocities too. Again, this distinction between the various statutes under which abusers can be prosecuted may seem like a technicality, but it is anything but one. Indeed, the gravity of the usage was such that in mid-June, reportedly under Russian pressure, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon overruled his head of peacekeeping operations, Hervé Ladsous, who had used the term, and declared that the world body would not "characterize the conflict." The ICRC's decision draws a line under that debate, and, whether wittingly or unwillingly, delivers one more blow to the Assad regime by countering its claim that it is only battling terrorists in the pay of outside forces. 

The Other Side of Syria's Civil War - By Kate Brooks

The morning I left Damascus, I woke up to the sound of explosions. I had been dreaming I was a guest at a party where I kept finding slain bodies hidden in the closets. I wondered who exactly among the party had killed them and to what extent my hosts were complicit. I feared what the lurking killer would do if they discovered I knew.

Waking up was a relief. The familiar sound of death was a stark reminder, however, of the reality concealed in the recesses of this city -- often out of sight but close enough to pierce people's consciousness, jolting them out of their fantasies. My dream mirrored an increasingly disjointed society.

There were wedding parties and pool parties. I photographed film sets and parliament. It was as if nothing was wrong -- except nothing was quite right either. Then again, in war only the dead stop living and many people choose denial. For some inexplicable reason, it was harder to obtain permission to photograph the opera at the Al-Assad House for Culture and Arts than the military morgue -- and once I succeeded, I was scolded by the security guards for standing in what was supposedly the wrong place and then hounded for moving at their own instruction.

There were also a spattering of bombings. The only point on which the government, the opposition, and the United Nations are in agreement is the existence of a "third force," a popular euphemism for al Qaeda. Pockets of the city where the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) is operational were shelled every day -- regardless of the civilian population present -- while Syrian soldiers were prepared for burial by the dozens.

Kate Brooks

Hope But No Change - By Mvemba Phezo Dizolele

During President Barack Obama's short term as a senator, one of two bills he authored which eventually became law was the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006. Senator Hillary Clinton was a co-sponsor, along with 11 others.

The DRC-focused bill includes specific provisions on conflict minerals and sexual violence; sanctions on armed groups and their state-sponsors; and support for democracy. Section 105 of the Obama-written law authorizes the secretary of state to withhold assistance from a foreign country if she determines that the foreign government is taking actions to destabilize the DRC. Obama's six-year-old law is still the only official policy the United States has on the books for dealing with the Congo crisis.

Given his past interest in the country, many Congolese were hopeful when Obama came to power that he would continue to prioritize the country. Those hopes seemed to be confirmed three years ago, when Obama spoke movingly in Accra, Ghana, on his first -- and so far only -- presidential trip to Sub-Saharan Africa. He exhorted Africans to assume responsibility for their destiny. He promised that the United States would no longer support strongmen or tolerate corruption. Instead, his government would work to promote strong institutions.

Congo is a dysfunctional state with weak political leadership, an incompetent army, and failing security institutions. Over the past decade, the DRC government has failed to restore the state's authority over its territory, enabling the proliferation of armed groups and warlords -- like the recently convicted Thomas Lubanga -- who recruit children, systematically rape women, and loot mineral resources. Some of these militias receive financial and logistical support from neighboring states. As of the end of 2011, the conflict has displaced nearly two million civilians both internally and outside the DRC.

When Obama addressed the conflicts in Congo and Sudan's Darfur region in his Accra speech, he denounced the criminality and cowardice of systematic rape and the forced conscription of children as soldiers. He pledged U.S. support to efforts to hold war criminals accountable.  

Yet when it comes to Congo, it seems that Obama is running from his own record. For the past three years the president has never implemented the law he himself authored, despite abundant evidence of abuses. The administration's tentative approach to containing the Congo crisis has spawned a schizophrenic and incongruous diplomacy, which fuels a longstanding conflict and has not stopped the killing.

Perhaps hoping to rectify the scant attention his administration has paid to Africa as a whole, Obama unveiled a new plan on June 14 to strengthen the continent's democratic institutions, spur economic growth, advance peace and security, and promote economic development. But coming at the end of his term, the strategy offers too little, too late.

When it comes to history, Congolese have the collective memory of an elephant. Starting in 1960, when the DRC gained independence from Belgium, the United States sought to play a role in shaping the future of the young nation to exploit its strategic geographical position and natural resources for the Cold War. U.S. involvement led to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first prime minister, the ensuing civil war, and the deployment of the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission at the time, as well as the rise and fall of Field Marshall Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country for 32 years.

Just How Deadly Is Assad's Arsenal? - By John Reed

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Syria's government has been moving its stockpile of chemical weapons -- thought to be the world's largest. It is not clear whether the regime is preparing to use them or simply trying to keep them out of rebel hands, but either way the news was disturbing: The use of chemical weapons would radically escalate a conflict that has already claimed more than 10,000 lives, and the prospect of unsecured stores of nerve agent raises serious proliferation concerns. As Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned American lawmakers in March: "We need to be especially alert to the fate of Syria's chemical weapons. They must stay exactly where they are."

With the exception of reports that the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies are covertly providing arms to Syrian rebels, the United States has been unwilling or unable to take military steps to stop the slaughter of protesters. That could well change in the event that Bashar al-Assad's regime deployed chemical weapons -- the pressure for international action would certainly increase dramatically -- but any air campaign, like the one that helped oust Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi last year, would have to face Syria's anti-aircraft systems, which have grown more advanced in the last five years thanks in large part to sales from Russia.

Meanwhile, Assad's assault on the rebels -- with armor, artillery, and aircraft -- continues unabated. Building on FP's earlier analysis, here is a detailed look at just how dangerous Syria's arsenal is:

-/AFP/Getty Images