September is the Cruelest Month - By Tyson Barker

When German travelers return from their hallowed August vacations this week, they will find that the euro is gone -- at least as far as Frankfurt airport is concerned. Without much fanfare, the massive euro sculpture, a fixture at Germany's largest airport since 2001, was unceremoniously dispatched in the dead of night to make room for an inter-terminal railway. The sculpture's unloved twin, which is famously perched in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the heart of Frankfurt, has become the symbol of the eurozone crisis (and a favorite of wire service photographers) and may suffer a similar fate. When the bank moves to the east end of the city in 2014, some urban planners are lustily planning the sculpture's removal from public view. Symbols are inexorably tethered to politics, and this one is a doozy.

But in the coming month, anxiety-ridden policymakers struggling to maintain the euro will face a series of threats that are anything but symbolic. September will witness a political big bang that ushers in another existential crisis, and failure on any single issue could wreck the European currency. Over the next month, four potential crisis points constitute a political cliff for Europe that will be key to determining if the eurozone has a future.

First, on Sept. 12, Germany's constitutional court is set to rule on the constitutionality of participating in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an institution that was envisioned as the permanent facility for pooled sovereign lending to debt-strapped European countries. The ESM, which passed the Bundestag comfortably (493 votes to 106) in June, would have autonomous control over German public funds -- and therein lies the legal problem. The German constitutional court sees itself as the guardian of a certain idea of Germany -- small, stability-minded, and inwardly oriented -- and court watchers expect a "yes, but..." ruling that stipulates that the red lines of German democracy have been reached. Any further moves to integrate crisis management at the eurozone level -- and there will inevitably be more -- will necessitate a referendum, the first in Germany's post-war history. Already the debate around a possible constitution-altering plebiscite is driving the political narrative.

The second crisis point is the upcoming assessment of Greece's progress in fulfilling the terms of its loan conditions by the troika of the ECB, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), expected in late September or early October. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is already trundling between Berlin and Paris in an attempt to prepare eurozone leaders for a disappointing report. Athens' hope for extending its repayment schedule has sparked heated debate in Germany, where exasperated rhetoric on the political right about the inability of Greece to meet its commitments has become more vociferous. Grandstanding in the Bundestag in the wake of the troika report is likely, especially from the arch-conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the business-minded Free Democratic Party (FDP). Germany's paper of record, Der Spiegel, called in May for Greek's exit from the euro, citing its unwillingness to undertake structural and labor-market reforms.

For ultra-cautious German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the unintended, potentially devastating second and third order consequences of the "Grexit" are anathema. She is a politician who prizes the maintenance of the status quo above all else and fears the unpredictable effects on Spain, Italy, and France, among other countries. A Grexit would eliminate all credibility that the eurozone has left as an insoluble currency union. This could lead to massive speculation and capital flight on an unprecedented scale from countries seen as next in line to go. While German banks have limited but important exposure to Greek debt, they have much more exposure to other countries of the eurozone's south and a need for these markets as consumers for German exports. The effects would tear through the German economy. It is this worry, not a vague sense of European solidarity, that drives the chancellor to hold firm on Greek membership in the eurozone amid the siren calls from her backbench to kick Greece out.

Sound and Sensible - By Peter D. Feaver

President Barack Obama faced a crucial choice early in this campaign: he could run on his record and on a platform of important things he thought needed doing in a second term, or he could try to scare voters about his opponent. Every candidate does a mix of these two, but few incumbents have adopted a mix so heavily tilted towards the latter. Given the poor economic record and the low marks voters give Obama for his most consequential legislative achievements, this strategy is an obvious one for domestic policy. What is surprising is that the Obama campaign appears to be using the same playbook on foreign policy, an arena where the president has had some genuine successes and where voters seem ready to give him comparatively better marks.

Despite a few more things to boast about in foreign policy, the Obama campaign seems most focused on scaring voters about Mitt Romney, and Exhibit A is the tandem piece published in Foreign Policy and written by my friends and colleagues, Bruce Jentleson and Charles Kupchan. Jentleson and Kupchan are both first-rate scholars and some of the finest foreign policy thinkers on the Democratic bench. If there were a stronger case to be made for Obama's foreign policy record and future platform, I have no doubt they would make it. Instead, they caricature Romney as an extreme ideologue, eager to waste American military power and ignorant of the essential linkage between American economic strength at home and its global position abroad.

It is a caricature so flimsy and transparent that it raises the obvious question: why distract so zealously from Obama's own record? The answer, I think, is that Obama's record does not stand up so well to close scrutiny and certainly does not support the conclusion that he deserves a second term. 

If, instead, President Obama invited the public to examine his record, what would they see? They would see some significant successes, to be sure. Obama deserves credit -- and ample credit has been given to him - for rejecting the advice of Vice-President Joe Biden and ordering the SEAL raid on the Osama bin Laden compound. Obama deserves credit for rejecting Biden's advice against the surge in Afghanistan, though here he deserves only partial credit since he also rejected Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's good advice and undermined his own policy with the strategic blunder of announcing an arbitrary timeline for withdrawal. Obama deserves credit for preserving the war on terror legal framework he inherited from President George W. Bush and for building on the counterterror special-operations/stand-off-drones and other special capabilities developed during Bush's tenure. It is good that Obama, after years of delay, finally did get ratified the signed free-trade agreements he inherited from the Bush administration. And it is good that Obama went along with the British and French and the U.S. Congress, who took the lead in pushing for stronger sanctions against Iran.

These are all notable successes or partial successes and certainly legitimate boasting points for the campaign. The problem for Obama is, however, that all of these successes have one thing in common: they are simply following in the path of Obama's Republican predecessor and fully consistent with what Romney would do. They are evidence of the wisdom of the bipartisan mainstream in American foreign policy, not evidence of Obama's own foreign policy merits.

On the contrary, in almost every case where Obama followed his own instincts, he undermined the success of the policy or made the situation worse. The Republican-supported surge in Afghanistan was laudable; the Obama arbitrary timeline was not -- and it failed because it signaled to the Taliban how long they needed to wait out the surge. The Republican-supported effort to strengthen sanctions against Iran was praise-worthy; the Obama delay for years while offering unconditional leader-to-leader talks, even at the cost of standing on the sidelines when pro-democracy activists in Iran took to the streets to protest a stolen election, was not -- and it failed because it delayed the imposition of more powerful sanctions while Iran inched closer to the point of nuclear immunity. The Republican-supported offer of expanded security cooperation with Israel was laudable; the decision to impose new preconditions on Israel to coerce a better deal in peace negotiations was not -- and it failed because it unnerved the Israelis and set an unreasonable precondition that even the Palestinians had not insisted upon, thus driving the two sides further apart. (By the way, this is a mistake even ardent Obama supporters are willing to concede, albeit perhaps not in a campaign setting.) Ratifying the Republican-negotiated free trade pacts with South Korea and Colombia was laudable; delaying and renegotiating them for years because of pressure from his electoral base was not -- and it failed because it robbed the United States of any momentum on the trade front and ceded the initiative to others.

A Dangerous Mind - By Bruce W. Jentleson and Charles A. Kupchan

The speeches at this week's Republican National Convention, on top of those that Mitt Romney has been giving during the campaign, make clear that Americans face as stark a choice on foreign policy as on domestic policy. Whereas President Barack Obama has claimed the middle ground and crafted a strategy based on principled pragmatism, Romney is following in the footsteps of George W. Bush, relying more on bluster than strategy and veering to ideological extremes.

Contrary to the rebuttal to this article written by our colleague Peter Feaver, there is much good to be said about Obama's foreign policy. In this piece, timed to coincide with the Republican Convention, our focus is on what's wrong with Romney's approach. We'll respond to Feaver's critique of Obama next week as attention turns to the Democratic Convention.

It's not just Romney's positions on particular issues, however vague they may be, that are cause for concern.  It's his core world view. Guided by a Republican Party virtually devoid of moderate centrists, Romney has embraced a global assessment distorted by ideological excess, pledged to wield power in a way that will leave the nation weakened and isolated, and demonstrated a failure to appreciate the key linkages between strength at home and influence abroad.

Romney's view of the changing global landscape rests not on a sober assessment of the world that is emerging, but on the same neoconservative myths that led George W. Bush astray. Like Bush, Romney seems to fixate on the wrong threats -- and dangerously inflate them   He has, for example, identified Russia as America's chief geopolitical foe. But with the Cold War long over, terrorists still planning attacks against Americans, Iran seeking nuclear weapons, and China flexing its muscles, it is a flight of fancy to see Moscow as the nation's top threat.

On Afghanistan, Romney regularly bashes Obama for his scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops -- but without providing a clear rationale for extending the U.S. mission. Absent more capable partners in Afghanistan and cooperation from Pakistan, U.S. forces have limited ability to bring stability. To pretend otherwise is to fritter away American lives and resources. American forces have accomplished their main objective -- dismantling al Qaeda and eliminating Osama bin Laden; it is now up to local parties to find their way to peace. Good statecraft aims at the achievable, not impossible maximums.

Romney's worldview also reveals a basic misunderstanding of the role of power in international affairs.  The Republican Convention has been one long paean to American Exceptionalism. In speech after speech, Romney and his entourage invoke "leadership" and "resolve" as if all the United States has to do is take a stand and flex its muscles -- others will get in line, get out of the way, or pay the price.

The United States unquestionably occupies a unique role in history of which it should be plenty proud, and American security and leadership ultimately rest on the nation's economic strength and military superiority. It's also true that most threats can best be met and problems best be solved if the U.S. plays a leadership role.

Leadership, however, is much less about chest-thumping and self-congratulation than building partnerships and taking effective action with like-minded nations. Brute force and national self-confidence certainly have their place, but they can do more to invite resistance than acquiescence unless wielded with care. How the United States deploys its power and influence is key to its success as the world's dominant country. Judicious diplomacy, the fashioning of coalitions, engagement with international institutions -- these are the critical elements of good statecraft.

All the Pentagon's Lawyers - By Rosa Brooks

In 1999, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, both colonels in China's People's Liberation Army, published a slender book called Unrestricted Warfare. The two officers predicted that technological innovations and globalization would change warfare almost beyond recognition. In a world of cyberattacks, asymmetric warfare, and transnational terrorism, they wrote, "the three indispensable 'hardware' elements of any war ' soldiers, weapons and a battlefield ' have changed so that it is impossible to get a firm grip on them.' [I]s the war god's face still distinct?"

Qiao and Wang published Unrestricted Warfare two years before the 9/11 attacks, and their description of likely changes in warfare was strikingly prescient. In previous columns, I've described some ways these changes challenge our most basic ideas of what a military is, does, and should do, and suggested that failing to fully confront those changes and challenges is a surefire way to end up with a national security strategy that's both incoherent and inefficient.

It's also a surefire way to damage the rule of law.

A lot of ink has been spilled defining the rule of law (some of it by me), but at root it's pretty simple. The rule of law requires that governments follow transparent, universally applicable, and clearly defined laws and procedures. The goal is to prevent the arbitrary exercise of power. When you've got the rule of law, the government can't fine you, lock you up, or kill you on a whim -- it can only do that in accordance with pre-established rules that reflect basic notions of humanity and fairness.

When you don't have the rule of law, life can get unpleasant. Qiao and Wang, for instance, come from a country where the rule of law is only partially realized, and arbitrary detention and executions without due process remain common. Or consider the grievances enumerated in the American Declaration of Independence: Britain's King George III, the colonists complained, deprived them of "the benefits of Trial by Jury," refused "his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers," transported prisoners "beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences," and "affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power."

Bad stuff! Americans fought a long and bloody war over it.

Today, however, the very same changes that challenge our long-held assumptions about the military also challenge the rule of law America once fought so hard to establish both domestically and globally. (The United States was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations and the various international human rights treaties and institutions.) For when the idea of "war" loses definition -- when the war god's face grows indistinct -- we lose any principled basis for deciding when the law of war applies, and when it doesn't.

That sounds like a tedious, technical issue -- the kind of thing usually discussed in long, tedious legal articles -- but it's no mere technicality. The law of war permits a wide range of state-sanctioned behaviors that are considered illegal (and immoral) when the law of war doesn't apply.

Start with the obvious: In war, the willful killing of human beings is permitted, whether the means of killing is a gun, a bomb, or a long-distance drone strike. But just try going out onto Main Street and bashing a random passer-by over the head with a brick until he's dead: When the laws of war don't apply, we call that murder.

The same goes for a wide range of other behaviors. In war, it's OK for a lawful combatant to knowingly inflict injury and death on others (as long as they're enemy combatants or otherwise participating in hostilities, or, if they're ordinary civilians, as long as your actions were consistent with the principles of proportionality and distinction). Ditto destruction of property, and ditto various restrictions on individual liberties. In war, enemy combatants can be detained (with little or no due process) for the duration of the conflict -- not because they have committed crimes, but to keep them from returning to the battlefield. Civilians can also be detained if they pose specific threats.

Everything You Think You Know About China Is Wrong - By Minxin Pei

For the last 40 years, Americans have lagged in recognizing the declining fortunes of their foreign rivals. In the 1970s they thought the Soviet Union was 10 feet tall -- ascendant even though corruption and inefficiency were destroying the vital organs of a decaying communist regime. In the late 1980s, they feared that Japan was going to economically overtake the United States, yet the crony capitalism, speculative madness, and political corruption evident throughout the 1980s led to the collapse of the Japanese economy in 1991.

Could the same malady have struck Americans when it comes to China? The latest news from Beijing is indicative of Chinese weakness: a persistent slowdown of economic growth, a glut of unsold goods, rising bad bank loans, a bursting real estate bubble, and a vicious power struggle at the top, coupled with unending political scandals. Many factors that have powered China's rise, such as the demographic dividend, disregard for the environment, supercheap labor, and virtually unlimited access to external markets, are either receding or disappearing.

Yet China's declining fortunes have not registered with U.S. elites, let alone the American public. President Barack Obama's much-hyped "pivot to Asia," announced last November, is premised on the continuing rise of China; the Pentagon has said that by 2020 roughly 60 percent of the Navy's fleet will be stationed in the Asia-Pacific region. Washington is also considering deploying sea-borne anti-missile systems in East Asia, a move reflecting U.S. worries about China's growing missile capabilities.

In the lead-up to the Nov. 6 U.S. presidential election, both Democrats and Republicans have emphasized perceived Chinese strength for reasons of both national security and political expediency. Democrats use China's growing economic might to call for more government investment in education and green technology. In late August, the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation, two left-leaning think tanks, released a report forecasting that China will have 200 million college graduates by 2030. The report (which also estimates India's progress in creating human capital) paints a grim picture of U.S. decline and demands decisive action. Republicans justify increasing defense spending in this era of sky-high deficits in part by citing predictions that China's military capabilities will continue to grow as the country's economy expands. The 2012 Republican Party platform, released in late August at the Republican National Convention, says, "In the face of China's accelerated military build-up, the United States and our allies must maintain appropriate military capabilities to discourage any aggressive or coercive behavior by China against its neighbors."

The disconnect between the brewing troubles in China and the seemingly unshakable perception of Chinese strength persists even though the U.S. media accurately cover China, in particular the country's inner fragilities. One explanation for this disconnect is that elites and ordinary Americans remain poorly informed about China and the nature of its economic challenges in the coming decades. The current economic slowdown in Beijing is neither cyclical nor the result of weak external demand for Chinese goods. China's economic ills are far more deeply rooted: an overbearing state squandering capital and squeezing out the private sector, systemic inefficiency and lack of innovation, a rapacious ruling elite interested solely in self-enrichment and the perpetuation of its privileges, a woefully underdeveloped financial sector, and mounting ecological and demographic pressures. Yet even for those who follow China, the prevailing wisdom is that though China has entered a rough patch, its fundamentals remain strong.

Americans' domestic perceptions influence how they see their rivals. It is no coincidence that the period in the 1970s and late 1980s when Americans missed signs of rivals' decline corresponded with intense dissatisfaction with U.S. performance (President Jimmy Carter's 1979 "malaise speech," for example). Today, a China whose growth rate is falling from 10 to 8 percent a year (for now) looks pretty good in comparison with an America where annual growth languishes at below 2 percent and unemployment stays above 8 percent. In the eyes of many Americans, things may be bad over there, but they are much worse here.

Counterprogramming - By Uri Friedman

It says a lot about the Republican Party's posture right now that in its platform, Ronald Reagan is mentioned nine times and George W. Bush only three (the latter, in the context of tax cuts and the global fight against AIDS). The GOP has deliberately distanced itself from Bush during the campaign season; Mitt Romney rarely mentions the former president's name on the campaign trail, and neither Bush nor his father will be speaking at the convention this week (the two appeared in a video that aired on Wednesday, and Bush's brother Jeb will deliver an address on Thursday).

In fact, the only top Bush administration official making an appearance in Tampa is former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is often credited with helping scale back some of Bush's more hawkish policies during his second term. Rice, who appeared alongside Romney during Chris Christie's keynote address on Tuesday, is speaking at the convention Wednesday evening. Ahead of her talk, she made the media rounds to explain why Romney would "lead from in front" and "understand American exceptionalism." This is "not a time to look back, it's a time to look forward," she noted.

But what's ironic is that if you do indeed look back, Rice may be the Bush official most at odds with where Romney and the Republican Party currently stand on some of the most pressing foreign-policy issues of the day. Here are five topics Rice may want to sidestep when she delivers her prime-time address.

NORTH KOREA

Rice may have included North Korea in her list of "outposts of tyranny" in 2005, but she also spearheaded six-party nuclear weapons talks with Pyongyang and met with the country's foreign minister in 2008, striking a deal in which the United States removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and green-lighted fuel and food supplies in exchange for North Korea pledging to dismantle a nuclear facility and disclose details about its nuclear program.

John Bolton, Bush's former U.N. advisor, condemned the concessions. "Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse," he wrote. Last year, former Vice President Dick Cheney also lashed out at Rice's policy in a memoir. "It was a sad moment because it seemed to be a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine and a reversal of so much of what we had accomplished in the area of nonproliferation in the first term," he recalled.

Bolton is now one of Romney's foreign-policy advisors, and Romney has assumed a much less conciliatory posture toward North Korea. The candidate has criticized the Obama administration for "embolden[ing]" Pyongyang and pursuing a "food-aid deal," and called for harsher sanctions to combat the country's nuclear program rather than "a series of carrots in return for only illusory cooperation."

Whose Side Is Yemen On? - By Sam Kimball

SANAA, Yemen ' In the crowded Shumaila market in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, on May 28, 2005, Faysal Abdulaziz al-Arifi took a few trembling steps past buzzing stalls and garbage quickly accumulating on the street's edge.

Nasr al-Faqih, a police officer in the market, noticed Arifi's nervous looks and approached him. Faqih tried to get close to him, but Arifi pulled away. When the policeman asked him why, Arifi whispered, "I can't tell you on the street. The cell is watching me."

Under interrogation, Arifi confessed that he had been on his way to the central United Nations office in Sanaa, where he had been ordered to detonate an explosives belt hidden under his clothes -- a belt his mother had fastened to his body. But the teenager admitted that he was not ready to die and went looking for somewhere to turn himself in.

This story was related by Abdu al-Faqih, Nasr's brother and an officer in Yemen's Defense Ministry. According to Abdu, however, there was an even more disturbing twist to the young man's suicide mission: The cell he claimed was watching him was an al Qaeda unit operating in the capital whose membership included officers from the elite Republican Guard, Central Security forces, and the army's 1st Armored Division.

The response from authorities when Faqih reported his capture of a suicide bomber targeting the United Nations was negligible, according to Abdu, who has followed his brother's case closely. Officers in the security apparatuses refused to take Faqih's report seriously and ignored claims of al Qaeda infiltration into the ranks of Yemen's armed forces.

Months later, the attacks began. First, a gang attacked Faqih with a dagger as he left a Sanaa restaurant. Then men fired at him on his way home from duty. Finally, returning to Sanaa from his home village on a snaking mountain highway, Faqih's taxi was pushed off the road by a pursuing Hilux pickup truck. Faqih's vehicle overturned, and he lost his right eye and suffered a crushed jaw in the crash.

Yemen's Interior Ministry refused to pay for treatment of Faqih's injuries. Sanaa's prosecution court never published the findings of its investigations of the attempts on Faqih's life, and when his family pressed them for information, they were met with a firm response: His case had been closed.

Abdu is convinced of the complicity of the Yemeni security apparatuses in the attempts on his brother's life. "I accuse members of al Qaeda and their operatives inside the security organizations of being behind the assassination attempts," he seethed, looking over a pile of his brother's records in a living room in Sanaa's Old City. He pointed to the traffic report of his brother's accident, which states that Faqih sustained only basic injuries despite his now permanent disabilities, which Abdu believes is a sign that authorities wanted to keep the accident as low profile as possible by minimizing the damage.

Once Upon a Time in Karachi - An FP Slide Show

With 18 murders and violent deaths in just the past few days, Karachi is living up to its reputation for being one of the world's most dangerous cities -- a teeming den of ethnic violence and decades-long bloody political feuds. With more than 13 million people living in this South Asian metropolis, the nerve center of Pakistan's culture and commerce, life today often means squeaking out an existence amid an urban chaos, punctuated by roadside bombs, bus explosions, and shootings by militants affiliated with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Last summer, in July alone, some 300 people were gunned down across the city in a spate of targeted killings. But the Karachi of the 1960s and 1970s was a much different place. The city became a stop on the "Hippie Trail," a popular route that led bohemians from Britain and the United States across Asia on their search for enlightenment. With the influx of Westerners before the country's takeover by Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977, Karachi enjoyed a period of relative permissiveness, with nightclubs, bars, cinemas, and restaurants hosting the city's vibrant nightlife. Here's a special collection of photographs from that time, courtesy of the Citizen's Archive of Pakistan, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural and historical preservation. 

Above, a Karachi family poses for a photo. The woman, sporting short hair, a sleeveless dress, and sunglasses, appears to be taking fashion cues from American first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who visited Karachi herself in the 1960s.

Personal Collection of Adeeba Abidi/The Citizens Archive of Pakistan

Confederacy of Dunces - By Aaron David Miller

The international goat grab this week in Tehran -- aka, the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) -- is unlikely to have any lasting impact on the struggle between Iran and the United States over the ultimate disposition of the nuclear issue.

It's a fleeting, feel-good moment for the mullahs. Indeed, I really hope America's diplomats didn't waste too much time trying to persuade U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon not to attend. Teenagers talk on the phone, beavers build dams, and U.N. folks go to these kinds of things.

Still, the NAM conference made me think about a more enduring and consequential issue -- the state of America's influence in a region that remains vital to its national interests, but which it can neither fix nor leave. What, if anything, does the NAM gathering tell us about America's stake and stock in the Middle East?

Not everybody sees the world the way America does.

No shocker there, except maybe to Americans. The fact that representatives of 120 countries, two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and the U.N. secretary-general are milling around with the mullahs is no small matter. This may not be the NATO A-Team. Rather, it's a pretty strong testament to the limitations of America's containment strategy -- at least on the political side. The summit is proof that the United States isn't succeeding in persuading vast swaths of the world that Tehran is a major threat to international peace and must be contained, sanctioned, and isolated. Nor will it.

As if to put an exclamation point on the matter, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy is bringing Iran directly into the latest plan to fix the Syrian crisis. He has launched a regional initiative that calls for a committee of four powers -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Islamic Republic -- to work together on the issue. So much for America's influence.

Bomb, or accept The Bomb?

That the United States hasn't succeeded in bringing the mullahs down, or at least to their knees on the nuclear issue, is also pretty self-evident.

Iran's search for a nuclear capacity is driven by a complex mix of insecurity and grandiosity, two factors inextricably linked to Iran's self-image and identity. These kinds of inchoate motivations are rarely, if ever, susceptible to external pressures -- certainly not to sanctions, cyberattacks, and militaristic rhetoric. If Iran doesn't decide to jettison its nuclear program on its own, we're rapidly moving to a situation in which military action may well be the default position, however risky or nonproductive it could turn out to be.

We've tried negotiations, kind of, and sanctions too. However, the centrifuges continue to spin. And the most widely discussed default position -- a "kaboom" by Israel or the United States -- increasingly seems to be drawing inexorably closer, like a moth to the flame. How such a military strike could do much more than retard the nuclear program is unclear. Eliminating Iran's acquisitive desire for a nuclear weapons capacity would require regime change -- and even that might not do the job. Had the Shah of Iran not fallen to Ruhollah Khomeini and the crowds, Iran would long ago have become a nuclear weapons state.

Just say no.

The Tehran gathering signals something else too: These days, everyone seems to have the capacity to say no to the world's greatest power without much cost or consequence.

The fraternal order of the "Just Say No Movement" includes a checkered cast of close allies, neutrals, the so-called nonaligned, and adversaries. Its ranks include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary-General Ban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Iraqi strongman Nouri al-Maliki, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad, assorted Egyptian generals and Muslim Brothers, and, last but certainly not least, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As I wrote some months back, the United States is fast becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of the Middle East: America really doesn't get much respect.

What Would Ronald Reagan Do? - By Jamie M. Fly

An economy in shambles. Unemployment high, even in double digits in some states. Overseas conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The U.S. military strained by budget cuts. A growing sense that America has abdicated its leadership role -- being, in the words of the Republican presidential candidate, "unwilling or unable to fulfill its obligations as the leader of the free world." And an incumbent president calling his Republican challenger a warmonger whose proposed defense buildup would yield more conflict and endanger America.

The year is 1980. Or 2012.

There are many foreign-policy similarities between this year's race and the one that ushered in the Reagan revolution and the end of the Cold War. And with a recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and his trip to Britain, Israel and Poland, Mitt Romney has begun outlining a foreign policy that embraces Ronald Reagan's legacy. He has highlighted the Obama administration's neglect of allies and its obsession with engaging enemies, and the resultant sense of an America adrift in a dangerous world.

This Reaganesque vision has been overshadowed by the media's obsession with several Romney "gaffes," and Boston's view that any day spent talking about something other than jobs and the economy is a lost opportunity. The campaign is also likely hesitant due to public opinion pollingthat shows President Barack Obama with a sizable advantage over Governor Romney on national security, the first time in decades that a Democratic candidate for the presidency is polling better than his Republican challenger on the issue.

Despite these challenges, as he delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Tampa this week, the former Massachusetts governor has a foreign-policy message to be proud of -- a vision of an America that will once again lead rather than follow and that has the military resources to ensure the respect of its allies and the deterrence of its enemies.

It's troubling, then, that Romney has cited a story about then-President Reagan telling his close aide James Baker that he wanted no more meetings scheduled on foreign policy for the first 100 days of his presidency, because attention needed to be on turning around the economy. The story appears apocryphal, but in any case it's a poor model of presidential decision-making. Our enemies certainly won't wait 100 days to test Romney if he is elected president.

Just as Romney's selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate has encouraged the campaign to tackle controversial issues such as entitlement reform head on, so too should he be willing to engage President Obama on his national security record. Americans generally give President Obama -- who ordered the daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- strong marks on national security. But his record is actually dismal.

Will Romney Discover His Inner Nixon? - By Jacob Heilbrunn

This past May, Colin Powell appeared on the Morning Joe show to plug his latest book, It Worked for Me. One thing that did not appear to be working for Powell that day, however, was Mitt Romney's candidacy for the U.S. presidency. Losing his customary cool, Powell, one of the last realist grandees in the Republican Party (along with Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger), expressed his vexation with Romney's proclivity for encircling himself with neocon advisors, not to mention declaring Russia America's No. 1 geopolitical enemy. "C'mon, Mitt, think!" Powell said.

Since then, however, Romney has expressed few thoughts that would suggest he is cogitating along Powell's lines. Rather, as he prepares to accept the Republican nomination in Tampa, Florida, Romney will likely denounce President Barack Obama in his acceptance speech as a supine and feckless leader abroad as well as at home, further bolstering the belief that he has been captured by the neocons. Bereft of any real ideas about foreign policy, Romney, like George W. Bush, has become a vessel for some of the most retrograde ideas about foreign affairs that a Republican candidate has ever advanced. Whether the issue is Israel or China, Romney, who has cloaked himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, repeatedly espouses truculent stances that would likely mire America in new conflicts. He has declared that he would brand China a currency manipulator, stated in June on Fox News Radio that Russia remains a "geopolitical foe," and pandered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And though Romney advisor and prominent neocon Elliott Abrams is arguing that a congressional resolution authorizing force against Iran would be a neat idea, Romney himself says that the president doesn't need any such authorization, but can just go for it. As the Nation warned in May, "a comprehensive review of his statements during the primary and his choice of advisers suggests a return to the hawkish, unilateral interventionism of the George W. Bush administration should he win the White House in November."

Or does it? Is what has rapidly become the conventional wisdom correct? Is Romney a plaything of the neocons? Or might he actually revert to a more moderate and pragmatic tradition of Republicans that began with Dwight Eisenhower (something that I myself was skeptical about in 2010 in Foreign Policy)? Might Romney, to put it bluntly, discover his inner Nixon?

Given the somersaults that previous presidents have performed in moving from the campaign trail to the Oval Office, it's at least worth pondering whether Romney -- the preeminent flip-flopper of our time, after all -- might not perform yet another one. A potentially auspicious sign is that Romney has been longer on sweeping criticisms of Obama than on spelling out just where he would differ from the president. He has brayed about American exceptionalism, while hardly promising anything very exceptional. At most, he has backed a massive and antediluvian shipbuilding plan. While his campaign boasts a number of neocon stars, ranging from the intellectually deft Robert Kagan to the cantankerous John Bolton, he has also appointed Robert Zoellick, a bête noire of the neocons, to head his foreign-policy transition team. He has also successfully sought to water down some of the more reactionary planks that Tea Party types wanted to promulgate in the GOP's official platform, as FP has reported, such as officially jettisoning the two-state solution. In short, the right's fears about Romney -- that he is something of a squish -- may be justified not only on domestic policy, but also on foreign policy, the area where a president has the most unilateral authority as commander in chief.

Romney's evasiveness on foreign affairs has prompted a number of foreign-policy commentators to engage in the modern-day equivalent of the Roman practice of haruspicy. In the Washington Post, for example, David Ignatius discusses the Romney "enigma." In the National Interest, longtime defense reporter James Kitfield calls it "Romney's neocon puzzle." And on the right, Human Events frets, "When it comes to defense and foreign affairs, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney has played strategy cards close to his chest for much of his campaign."

Indeed he has. One reason is that foreign affairs commands little interest in the 2012 election. For his part, Obama, as has been widely observed, stole the Republicans' neocon lunch money when he successfully killed Osama bin Laden. Romney may grouse that "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order" -- though during the 2008 campaign John McCain said unilateral action inside Pakistan was bonkers and that Obama's support for the idea showed his naiveté -- but Obama effectively stilled opposition on national security grounds by dispatching the al Qaeda chief. It's also the case that Obama, to the dismay of some of his supporters, has turned out to be much more of a -- dare one say it? -- neocon than they ever imagined. He retreated on closing the Guantánamo Bay prison. He upped the Predator drone program. And he backed the surge in Afghanistan.

What War in Syria Looks Like - An FP Slide Show

The civil war in Syria is increasingly an urban conflict. On Sunday, August 26, hundreds of residents of the Damascene neighborhood of Daraya were laid to rest, victims of a massacre which has been blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Many of the dead had been shot in the head or bore the marks of bayonet wounds. Fighting continues in the flashpoint city of Aleppo, as well, where rebels and the Syrian army have been fighting from neighborhood to neighborhood since the beginning of August. As Justin Vela reported in Foreign Policy, Syrian rebels have made huge gains in the area, but Assad is now pulling out all the stops -- including using fighter jets and helicopter gunships to attack rebel positions -- in the battle for the city, which lies near the border with Turkey. Photographer Adam Dean visited Aleppo from Aug. 6-11 and brought back a rare street-eye view of Syria's brutal civil war. 

Above, a rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighter fires on a Syrian army position down an alley in the old city area of Aleppo on Aug. 11.

Adam Dean/Panos Pictures

Magical Thinking - By Nellie Bowles

MBABANE, Swaziland ' King Mswati III, one of the world's last absolute monarchs, is a powerful man -- precisely because many think he isn't a man at all.  

"He believes he is divine, believes he is magic," his former speechwriter, Musa Ndlangamandla, told me one evening. "And so do his people."

The paunchy young king, typically sporting a goatee and traditional Swazi garb, has made himself one of the richest royals in the world by controlling an estimated 50 percent of the economy. His Swazi kingdom is a tiny, mountainous region between South Africa and Mozambique, but there's still big business: it's home to a Coca-Cola concentrate-manufacturing plant (the company's biggest on the continent), a new iron-ore reprocessing plant, and one of the largest man-made forests in the world. Over all this lords Mswati III, but for one month a year, he has different business to attend to.  

Last winter, a few weeks after I arrived in Swaziland to study traditional healers, the country shut down for the month-long witchcraft and kingship ceremony known as Incwala. The annual event is taken very seriously. Shops close, police take off work, and warriors camp outside the king's palace while he goes into seclusion to perform elaborate rites -- eating traditional herbs, dancing -- under the supervision of inyangas, or witch doctors. A month later, he emerges from Incwala invincible, cleansed from the past year, and reaffirmed of his divinity. Many Swazis call Incwala "our national prayer month" -- the deity being Mswati III.

Some people -- including U.S. diplomats and even the king's former speechwriter -- are beginning to suggest that King Mswati's belief in his own divinity blurs his vision. In a 2010 cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the U.S. embassy in Swaziland, citing a local businessman, described the king as "imbalanced" and heavily influenced by "witchcraft."

While traditional culture ought to be celebrated, the stakes of Mswati's mental balance are high. For Swazi women ages 30 to 34, the HIV rate is 54 percent, the highest in the world. Life expectancy fell from 61 years in 2000 to 32 years in 2009.

Belief in his own divinity may allow Mswati to disconnect himself from these realities. In April of last year, he stirred anger by demanding cows and presents from his impoverished subjects to accompany government funding for his $652,000 40th birthday party (70 percent of the country lives on less than two dollars a day, and yet the royals are wealthy enough to skew World Bank statistics, making it seem a lot less bad.) In May, he flew to England for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and let one of his 13 wives spend $60,000 at a South African hotel. Such decadence shouldn't be significant, but it becomes so when such a tiny and ailing populace must shoulder it. Later that month, the International Monetary Fund pulled an advisory team out of the country because it did not have faith in the government's commitment to rein in spending (not surprising when the government spends 17 percent of its budget on unnecessary security, funds lavish royal birthday parties, and then asks for loans).

"The rest of the world keeps saying we should have democracy, and we agree," Vusie Majola, who runs a nonprofit, said. "But what they don't understand is that the king, he can point a stick at you and you die. We are dealing with someone whose power the world can't understand."

Swazis fear the king and fervently believe in his power. Their reverence for Mswati is, to a foreigner, jarring.

Breivik Won - By Elias Groll

After being sentenced Friday to 21 years in prison for the July 22 attacks that killed 77 people in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik was asked how he wished to respond to the ruling. Did he wish to appeal? Did he want some time to think about it? Flanked by his attorneys, he shuffled some papers, pulled the microphone toward him, and denounced the proceedings.

"As I explained in my first statement to the court on April 16, I do not recognize this court as legitimate. I do not recognize this court as it has received its mandate from political parties that support multiculturalism.... The verdict is in my eyes illegitimate. At the same time, I cannot appeal the verdict, for to appeal would be to legitimize this court."

After a brief pause, Breivik continued: "I wish to end by expressing my regret. I express my regret to militant nationalists in Norway and Europe that I can no longer..."  With that, Judge Wenche Arntzen angrily cut him off. If Breivik wished to speak to his followers, Arntzen would have none of it, turning to Brevik's lawyer instead to determine whether he wished to file an appeal. He did not, Brevik's attorney said.

And with that, Norway's trial of a century came to an end -- and Brevik won. The prosecution had asked the court to find Breivik insane, an argument the court rejected, and in a press conference after the trial proceedings, it was announced that the prosecution would not appeal the ruling. But Breivik got exactly what he wanted: to be pronounced mentally fit enough to be punished for actions he has never disavowed, not dismissed as a madman.

Though he denounced the court as illegitimate and did not recognize its authority, Breivik admitted to carrying out the attack that amounted to Norway's worst peacetime atrocity. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, one question kept being asked: "How could this happen in Norway?" What could possibly compel this blonde, blue-eyed Norwegian to carry out a grisly attack against his countrymen, most of whom were teenagers at a political summer camp on the idyllic island of Utoya? Surely, many argued, this must be the work of a lunatic, someone who has lost all grip on reality, someone who is deeply ill.

But Breivik has rejected that narrative, styling himself as a foot soldier in the fight against "multiculturalism," which he thinks represents a mortal threat to all that he considers good --Norway, Europe, Christendom. In this way, Breivik represents the utmost extreme of a radical right-wing ideology that has made significant gains in Europe over the past two decades. In Norway, its representative is Fremskrittspartiet -- the Progress Party -- of which Breivik was at one point a member. Across the continent, a similar screed of xenophobic paranoia is peddled by the likes of Jean Marie le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and, before his death, Jorg Haider in Austria.

For this reason, Breivik is highly dangerous for the contemporary radical right. These parties have sought to place themselves as legitimate political movements while at the same time advocating explicitly racist policies, especially toward Europe's growing Muslim population. Breivik risks tarring these groups with his violent acts, which, in turn, endangers the parliamentary gains made by the far right. And make no mistake, the far right is on the march: In Norway, the Progress Party won 22.9 percent of the vote in 2009, the FPO won 17.5 percent of the vote in Austria in 2008, and the Freedom Party won 15.5 percent of the vote in the Netherlands in 2010.

The question of Breivik's sanity therefore cuts in two different directions. In Norway, dismissing Breivik as a madman allows his actions to be written off as an utter aberration. For the right, his insanity would mean that an ideological climate rich in racism and xenophobia had no significant role in nurturing a man who proclaims himself a soldier in a war for European civilization. But if he is sane, Norway faces the prickly question of explaining how such an act could have taken place. For the right, if he is sane, the ideological stew in which Breivik steeped becomes more difficult than ever to ignore.

The FP 50

Politics is mostly about people -- and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to foreign policy. From the fire-when-ready rhetoric of a John Bolton to the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of a Stephen Hadley to the intellectual suasion of a Bill Kristol, the relentless lobbying and insider machinations of surprisingly few people can often end up defining the foreign policy of entire administrations. Americans may not realize it (after all, only 4 percent consider foreign affairs much of an issue in this year's campaign at all), but with the start of the Republican and Democratic conventions, they are merely two months not only from choosing a president, but also from choosing the advisers who will determine the country's course in the world. So, to peel back the curtain on this rarefied part of the Establishment, Foreign Policy has compiled a list of the 50 Republicans who have the greatest influence on the GOP's foreign policy. (Next week, we will tackle the Democrats.) The people on this list are all GOP partisans (you will not find serving military officers or career civil servants here), but they come from different ideological traditions and they are currently fighting for the soul of their party's foreign policy -- realists, neoconservatives, even isolationists. If Mitt Romney wins the presidential election he will be handed the keys to the world, and the winner of these battles will determine what he does with it.

 

Few in politics know how to wield a megaphone like John McCain. Although his White House dreams are over, as the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, the Arizona senator remains a fixture on television, a powerful voice on foreign policy, and a mentor to rising Republican stars, including Marco Rubio and Kelly Ayotte. McCain was instrumental in opposing the "harsh interrogations" of the George W. Bush years and has lately been a key player in Pentagon oversight -- warring with the defense industry over its cozy relationship with the military. McCain has also been a leading booster of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, opposing President Obama's moves to draw down troops in both countries. McCain has ardently championed the Arab world's revolutionaries, visiting the Libyan city of Benghazi in April 2011 and consistently calling on the Obama administration to intervene in Syria. "The time has come for a new policy," McCain said in March 2012. "The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad's forces."

 

From his perch atop the masthead of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which he co-founded in 1995, to his omnipresence on talk-show panels, Bill Kristol has often defined GOP priorities abroad -- from China in the 1990s ("one of the world's most repressive regimes") to Saddam Hussein in the early 2000s ("not unlike Stalin, whose ruthlessness he admires"). A leading supporter of the Iraq war, Kristol in 1997 co-founded, with Robert Kagan, the Project for the New American Century, a Washington-based non-profit promoting American political and military leadership across the globe, including bringing democracy to the Middle East. Kristol -- former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and foreign-policy advisor on the 2008 McCain campaign -- has a knack for picking vice-presidential nominees, too, having been an early advocate for Sarah Palin and this year's pick, Paul Ryan. He has, however, criticized Romney, recently urging the candidate not to shortchange foreign policy on the campaign trail. "Reminder to Mitt Romney," Kristol wrote in July, "With respect to the presidency, national security isn't a bug; it's a feature."

Once ranked the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes on account of her "unparalleled level of trust with and access to" then-President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice ruffled her share of feathers in the White House and State Department. John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney have all criticized her since she left office, claiming she misled the president about North Korea's nuclear weapons program and generally lacked the experience needed for her post. "Don can be a grumpy guy," Rice fired back at Rumsfeld. "We all know that." Part of the reason for this grumpiness may be that Rice generally had her way in shaping the foreign policy of Bush's second term, when she was secretary of state and neoconservative hawks were in retreat. Despite sequestering herself in academia during the Obama presidency, the scholar-turned-diplomat is still a towering figure in the Republican foreign-policy establishment and was even floated -- briefly -- as a longshot VP candidate after speaking at a Romney fundraiser in June; she'll get the nod to make the nominating speech for Paul Ryan this week in Tampa instead. She has also recently begun to dip her toe back into the policy waters, calling on Obama to arm the Syrian rebels and criticizing the president's trade policies in Asia.

Pipe Dreams - By Michael Levi

Mitt Romney has slammed Barack Obama's administration for its handling of energy since day one of his presidential campaign. On Thursday, the Romney team released its own plan, promising energy independence by the end of this decade. That plan contains important elements that Obama would benefit from adopting as his own. But ultimately, the Romney plan overpromises on results while ignoring many of the biggest energy problems the United States faces.

Republicans have frequently criticized Obama for his admittedly hodgepodge energy strategy, a charge repeated in the new plan. The Romney plan solves that problem by substituting a narrow fossil-fuel production strategy for a genuinely comprehensive plan. Much in that fossil-fuel strategy is reasonable. Romney would shift more power to the states by allowing them to approve drilling on their lands and near their coasts without federal intervention. He would streamline environmental reviews, in part through clear deadlines, and in part by handing more control to the states. If that were accompanied by more federal capacity to process permit applications -- something that Romney has decidedly not promised to do -- the result could be a win-win for business and the environment. Romney also promises to streamline cross-border permitting and expand North American regulatory cooperation, steps that could benefit clean energy and fossil fuels alike.

But the Romney plan promises far too much as a result of these policy shifts. It extensively cites recent Citigroup research to back up its claims its contention that North America could eliminate all imports by 2020 as well as to support its claims about jobs and economic growth. Yet that study is not just about oil supplies -- it assumes that the United States will continue with strict fuel economy standards that lower its oil demand. Romney, though, has argued that such standards are the wrong way to go, and proposes no alternative scheme in his energy plan.

The plan also promises "freedom from dependence on foreign energy supplies." As I explained in a Foreign Policy essay earlier this year, achieving energy independence through expanded supplies is a pipe dream. So long as the United States is part of a global market, domestic crude prices will rise in the face of turmoil overseas, putting the U.S. economy at risk and constraining U.S. freedom of action. The only way to break that link without clashing U.S. oil consumption is to bar energy exports from the United States altogether -- something that Romney, quite correctly, has explicitly opposed. Indeed, one study that the Romney plan cites extensively to back its energy independence claims says the that self-sufficiency "will neither insulate the country from the rest of the global oil market, nor diminish the critical importance of the Middle East to its foreign policy."

Romney also promises cheaper oil as a result of his plan. More oil production would do that, though how much lower remains an open question. The Romney plan pushes this claim further by emphasizing that Canadian and Mexican oil sell at a discount to OPEC crude. Yet the Romney plan would (rightly) permit pipeline infrastructure that would raise the price of Canadian oil by giving Canadian producers full access to the world market. Mexican crude, meanwhile, sells at a small discount because it is of relatively low quality and thus requires more expensive equipment to refine.

The Decider - By Oren Kessler

TEL AVIV ' Twenty years have passed since Israel first raised the alarm over Iran's nuclear program, 10 years since Iranian dissidents revealed the enrichment plant at Natanz, and roughly two since pundits started predicting an Israeli attack against the Islamic Republic. Today, never have so many Israelis from across the political spectrum agreed that a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities could arrive within months.

Channel 2, Israel's leading newscast, reported earlier this month that the foremost advocates of a strike -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak -- are nearing a final decision on whether to push the button. Meanwhile, Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn wrote that Netanyahu wants to attack "in the coming weeks" -- and Yossi Melman, the paper's former intelligence reporter, estimated the "window of opportunity" for a strike at 80 days.

Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel's Mossad spy service and an outspoken opponent of a strike, echoed the same sentiment. "If I were an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks," the laconic, British-born septuagenarian said early this month.

While the media often depict Netanyahu as the prime mover behind a strike, it is Barak -- the one-time standard-bearer of the Israeli left  -- who over the past two years has emerged as the unlikely champion of military action. This support from Netanyahu's political polar opposite has been crucial in leading Israel to the brink of war.

"Barak is much more of a hawk than Netanyahu," a security analyst and former longtime member of Israel's National Security Council told FP. "The idea that Bibi is the hawk and Barak is a good little boy serves Israel -- it's the good cop, bad cop routine -- but I don't believe there's much of a difference between them on this issue."

"Barak is the stone-cold analyst: What are the objectives? What are the risks?" the former official said. "Bibi comes from a different perspective -- that of the historical leader. Jewish history weighs upon him, and he's leader of the Jewish state, the country with the world's biggest Jewish population."

Netanyahu and Barak view the Iranian nuclear threat in roughly the same terms, analysts told FP, but where they stand on the issue depends largely on where they sit. "Netanyahu is much more prudent, because he's the prime minister and has to make sure he has broad legitimacy from the cabinet and the public," said Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. "Nonetheless, both are of the opinion that something must be done."

According to Rabi, Israeli officials' interminable warnings of an impending strike could be an attempt to prepare the Israeli home front, and international public opinion, for the inevitably messy aftermath of any such action. "What Barak and Netanyahu have done over the past month or so is tell everyone -- the Iranians, Americans and Israeli public -- that a military option could be in the offing," he said."

The Meles Inheritance - By Mohammed Ademo

When Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's leader for more than two decades, died this week, he was mourned by many as a "stable" force in a chaotic region. South African President Jacob Zuma praised him for "lifting millions of Ethiopians out of poverty" while British Prime Minister David Cameron remembered him "as an inspirational spokesman for Africa on global issues", who had "provided leadership and vision on Somalia and Sudan." Microsoft founder Bill Gates even praised him as "a visionary leader who brought real benefits to Ethiopia's poor."

Ethiopians themselves have more complicated feelings about the late prime minister. Yes, the country emerged as a regional power and one of Africa's most dynamic economies under his rule, but Ethiopians also saw Meles crush political opponents, surround himself with yes-men, muzzle the free press, and purge dissenters even from his own party.

His death has been as controversial as his tenure. Meles, 57, had been missing since June 26, the last time he was seen in public before his demise. Officials dismissed earlier reports that he had died, insisting instead he was vacationing or on doctor-prescribed sick leave. The state of his health and an ensuing power struggle within the ruling party has been a subject of online speculation for the last two months.

Meles's death also comes at a moment when Ethiopia is witnessing an unexpected and hitherto unknown phenomenon: popular protests. For the last eight months, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been nonviolently protesting a series of religious decisions by the government and a quasi-independent religious council. How the government handles the protests could affect the fragile transition.

Ethiopian Muslims, who make up a third of the country's 94 million people, began demonstrating in the capital in January, after students at the country's only Islamic university, the Awolia Institute, walked out of classes to protest a proposed curriculum change mandated by the government and the removal of some teachers. The students accused Ethiopia's government of imposing the teachings of Al-Ahbash, a foreign sect with Ethiopian roots but better known in Lebanon.

Al-Ahbash is a supposedly moderate Sunni sect founded in Lebanon in 1930 as a philanthropic project and reorganized into a religious movement in 1980s by followers of exiled Ethiopian Muslim scholar Abdullah ibn al-Habashi, who was forced out by Emperor Haile Selassie's regime. Ahbash has followers throughout the Middle East, who have often clashed with Salfi Islamist groups, but until recently has remained fairly obscure in Habashi's home country. The protesters claim the government is forcing them to accept Ahbash's teachings as a way of containing what it sees as a growing radicalization of Ethiopian Muslims.

Powder Keg in the Pacific - By Rowan Callick

Over the past decade, East Asian countries have surprised observers with their eagerness to work together. After all, this is a region where ancient (and not-so-ancient) hatreds run deep. But observers shouldn't get their hopes up: Modern rivalries and historical baggage still stand in the way of transforming these arrangements into genuine regional cooperation.

On paper, progress appears to be occurring rapidly. In 2010, China, Australia, and New Zealand implemented free trade arrangements with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), providing preferential access to each others' markets. China, Japan and South Korea are negotiating a free trade agreement. Even erstwhile enemies China and Taiwan entered into an economic agreement that reduces trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas on both sides: trade between Taiwan and China reached $128 billion in 2011, a 13 percent increase from the previous year, when the agreement went into effect.

But East Asia's patchwork of economic alliances is weighed down by history and hobbled by ineffective security arrangements. The region's three biggest flashpoints stretch back decades, if not centuries, and are like volcanoes -- mostly dormant but occasionally deadly. Besides the French, U.S., and Chinese wars with Vietnam, the last full-on slugfest was the Korean War, which ended almost six decades ago. But its repercussions linger until the present day: North Korea and the United States never signed a peace treaty and technically remain at war. Similarly, Imperial Japan's invasion of China, Korea, Taiwan, and practically all of Southeast Asia was the greatest cause of upheaval in 20th century Asia. World War II also remains far more politically explosive in Asia than it does in the United States -- as the July torpedoing of a South Korean-Japan military pact because of lingering anti-Japanese sentiment shows.

If Japan is weighed down by its historical baggage, so is China. After Chinese guerrillas kicked out the Japanese in 1945, Mao Zedong and his Communists drove Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists to Taiwan in 1949, an island China still claims (and at which it still points an estimated 1,000 missiles). In July, China celebrated the creation of Sansha City, a flyspeck of 3,500 people that China claims administers about 770,000 square miles of the South China Sea. That claim grates on the five other countries (plus Taiwan) that consider parts of the sea as their territory. Philippines President Benigno Aquino seemingly spoke for everyone in the region when he said in July, "If someone enters your yard and told you he owns it, will you allow that?"

China, Japan, and Taiwan also bitterly contest the uninhabited islands known as Diaouyu in China and Taiwan, and Senkaku in Japan, which lie near Taiwan, China, and the Japanese island of Okinawa. The issue strikes a nationalist chord among the rival nations: Tokyo's governor Shintaro Ishihara mischievously suggested in June that a panda cub due to be born in Tokyo zoo should be named Sen-Sen or Kaku-Kaku.

You might think that East Asian countries, which are increasingly wealthy and stable, would seek regional allies to help protect their own interests and defend their sovereignty. But this is a region of shifting diplomatic sands, and mistrust continues to stymie apparently rational arrangements. Incredibly, there is only one regional alliance that requires a military response to an attack -- it's between China and North Korea, an agreement "sealed in blood," as China's Defense Minister Liang Guanglie described it in 2009.

Highway Robbery - By Rosa Brooks

In August 2003, some colleagues and I were held up by armed bandits on the highway in Fallujah, Iraq. (Don't ask why I was dumb enough to be wandering around Fallujah.) My bandit -- there were quite a few of them, but I like to think of the guy who stuck a gun in my face as my bandit -- was straight out of central casting, complete with a red kerchief around his mouth and nose to disguise his facial features.

I doubt he knew much English, but he knew enough to say the magic words. "Money, money, money!" he demanded with a guttural, heavy accent, waggling his gun unnervingly around my head.

I handed him my wallet. He took out the cash and handed the empty wallet back to me.

"Shukrun," I said, using my sole word of Arabic. "Thank you."

"You are welcome," he said, and sprinted off to wherever bandits go when they're not robbing people. (This was in the good old days of 2003, when gunmen in Fallujah just robbed you.)

In some ways, this story is a reasonable metaphor for the current debate about the defense budget. Men with weapons intone, "Money, money, money"; we hand it over and say "thank you," even though much of the time we don't really know who they are or what they plan to do with our money.

At least, that's how it can look from the outside. The presidential candidates seem to be competing over who is more dedicated to ensuring a steady supply of funds to the Pentagon. And we're not talking about chump change: the United States spends more on defense than any other nation. In fact, it accounts for 41 percent of global defense spending: annually, we spend almost five times more on defense than China with its 1.3 billion people, and nine times more than Russia. We spend more on defense each year than the next 15 biggest spenders combined.

Obviously, some of this money goes to important programs -- salaries for soldiers, equipment, training -- but the Pentagon, with its vast budget and complex accounting system, is also an infamous money pit. Every couple of years, the inspector general or the Government Accountability Office discovers that large sums of DOD money have been spent on mysterious, never-accounted-for purposes.

I wrote last week about DOD's difficulty tracking humanitarian assistance projects, but the problem isn't unique to such efforts. DOD's a big place, and stuff gets lost: money, programs, people, organizations, the occasional small war. I spent far too much time, during my stint at the Pentagon, telling irritable twenty-somethings on the Hill that the Pentagon was Very Sorry for certain apparent budget discrepancies. Mistakes have been made.

Even many easily understood costs seem to be spiraling out of control: health care already accounts for nearly 10 percent of the defense budget, and DOD spending on health care has grown twice as fast as health care spending in the civilian sector. In a goofy-but-illuminating exercise, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concluded that if the defense budget increases only in line with inflation each year while health care costs continue to increase at their current rate, virtually the entire defense budget would go to health care costs by 2039. To say that the defense budget could use a long, hard look would be the understatement of the decade.

Notwithstanding that backdrop, Team Obama and Team Romney are eager to assure us that they'll give the Pentagon plenty of money. How much money? Obama: A lot. Romney: A lot, plus even more. "Supporting our troops" always plays well with voters, and the current threat of budget sequestration offers extra opportunities for campaign trail posturing.

"Mitt will begin by reversing Obama-era defense cuts," Romney's campaign website assures potential voters. President Obama, complains Romney, has "repeatedly sought to slash funds for our fighting men and women." (He ignores the fact that the few "cuts" so far have involved reductions to the budget for Overseas Contingency Operations, reflecting the end of the Iraq War, rather than from cuts to the base defense budget.) Right now, the DOD base budget accounts for about 3.6 percent of GDP. Romney promises that he'll set the base defense budget at a floor of 4 percent of GDP.

How much money is that? Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress Action Fund estimates that the Romney proposal would "result in $2.3 trillion in added spending over the next decade compared to the plan presented to Congress by the Obama administration." Boiled down, the Romney defense budget plan is simple: Give the guys with guns money money money.

The Meles Zenawi I Knew - By Barry Malone

I once asked Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who died on Aug. 20 from an unspecified illness at age 57, whether he was a dictator. He grinned and then, stopping, just looked at me.

Nervously, I did what a journalist should never do, and filled the silence.

"A lot of people call you that," I said.

He told me he didn't care much what foreigners thought and that the people who described him that way were rarely his countrymen. "If Ethiopians thought that I was what you say, I would not sleep at night," he said. "But I don't believe they do."

I persisted that there were indeed Ethiopians who called him a dictator and that they often gathered to protest his trips overseas -- where, with his ferocious intellect, charm, and ability to speak in perfect paragraphs, he was regularly a star at meetings of the G-20 or in the snowy mountains of Davos.

Looking uncomfortable, he admitted that their presence saddened him.

"We may be at fault in some way," he said, as my pen started scratching with greater speed, anticipating a rare confession from a man usually so sure of himself.

"I am sorry," he said. "That maybe we didn't communicate well enough to those Ethiopians living abroad what is happening. What we are doing here."

Meles was not your typical one-dimensional African strongman -- a term often applied to him by the Western media but one that seemed somehow lazily old-fashioned and patronizing, jarring uncomfortably with his bookish demeanour.

Meles came to power as one of a group of men who led a rebel coalition that overthrew brutish communist dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam -- a man who killed, by most estimates, hundreds of thousands of people in anti-opposition purges.

There is no evidence that power was something Meles craved simply to line his pockets, though the financial dealings of Ethiopia's ruling party are sometimes questionable. No private jets, Paris homes, or yachts decked out with shark tanks for this African leader.

Instead, friends said, on the very rare days when he wasn't working, he liked to play a bit of tennis, chat about political events outside Ethiopia, and dress down in sweatpants and sneakers to eat and drink with a small circle of family and confidantes.

He was a man on a different mission. What he was "doing here" was pursuing a vision, what he called the "Ethiopian Renaissance." But he didn't like people getting in his way.

"He loved Ethiopia and was proud of its long history," a Western academic who had regular email correspondence with him told me. "He wanted to restore it to glory."

***

In the early hours of Sept. 12, 2007, Meles, decked out in traditional dress, stood to give one of the most important speeches of his premiership so far. It had just turned midnight and Ethiopia, which follows a calendar long abandoned by the West, had entered its new millennium with fireworks and tooting car horns across Addis Ababa.

"We cannot but feel deeply insulted that, at the dawn of the new millennium, ours is one of the poorest countries in the world," he said, adding that "the darkness of poverty and backwardness" had dimmed the country's once proud and powerful reputation.

Gu Kai-lies? - By Isaac Stone Fish

On Aug. 9, Gu Kailai, the wife of deposed Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, stood trial for murder in a courtroom in the central Chinese city of Hefei. The 53-year-old Gu had been accused of poisoning Neil Heywood, a British businessman, in the trial of a century for China, and one inextricably linked to its biggest political scandal in decades. But after an anti-climactic, seven-hour trial, closed to all foreign media and observers with the exception of two British diplomats, Gu was pronounced guilty. On Aug. 20, the court sentenced Gu to death with 2-year reprieve; according to George Washington University law professor Donald Clarke, this means that "if she commits no new intentional crimes while in prison, that sentence will be commuted after two years to life imprisonment."

The role of Chinese media, as Chinese officials have repeatedly said, is to be the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, and not as checks on the government's power or purveyors of truth. But the case itself begged speculation. No witnesses testified publicly, and though the court improbably suggested that Gu had killed Heywood to protect her Harvard- and Oxford-educated son Bo Guagua -- no one has convincingly established the basic motive for the murder.

No wonder the Chinese social media is alight with rumor and innuendo about Gu's case. Because if the mentally unstable wife of a high-ranking Chinese official poisoned a British businessman to protect her son, isn't anything possible? Here are the five most interesting theories floating around:

The Gu on TV was a body double

The most pervasive rumor states that a woman who looks like Gu replaced her during the trial. Maybe Gu is free; maybe she's dead. One posting, noted by the Wall Street Journal, shows a photo of the handsome, angular Gu next to an image of the much heavier, fleshy-faced woman who stood in court. "Huge News," the post proclaims. "Gu Kailai's Body Double is the roughly 46-year-old Zhao Tianyun from Langfang [a city in central China's Hebei province]. For the fairness and justice of society, the human flesh search engine has found the fake Gu Kailai." Censors have since blocked the phrase 'body double,' and 'Zhao Tianyun.' Interestingly, the Financial Times cited "two security experts familiar with facial recognition software," who said that "the person shown in state television footage of the courtroom was not Ms. Gu."

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Don't Pity the Nation - By Mitchell Prothero

BEIRUT ' There are many ways to define "democracy," but they all share one critical dimension -- the notion that the people themselves grant their consent to a government that reflects their cultural mores and values. But how to classify a state whose authority is little more than the leftover scraps that the real powers don't want to deal with? I'd suggest a one-word definition: Lebanon.

This tiny Mediterranean country seems to be coming apart at the seams. So far this week, a minor dispute over the launching of fireworks sparked a running gun battle between Sunnis and Alawites in the northern city of Tripoli that has so far left dozens injured and seven dead. In the predominantly Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut, residents have taken to the streets in abject fury over reports that suspected Hezbollah members captured by Syrian rebels in May had died in a regime air strike. And in the same neighborhood, a small but powerful Shiite clan went on a kidnapping spree -- targeting Syrians, Turks, and Gulf Arabs -- as leverage to gain the release of one of their compatriots captured in Damascus.

Even by Lebanon's famously liberal standards of civil unrest, it has been a nasty week. And the fate of Hezbollah, the heavily armed Shiite group and staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is the central question in this drama. The cabal of anonymous, serious-minded men who run the party have clearly realized that the Syrian regime is doomed, and have begun preparing the battlefield in Lebanon for whatever comes next.

On Aug. 15, families of the men kidnapped in Syria -- openly assisted by Hezbollah's military and security wing, though the party would later tepidly deny providing help -- tore around southern Beirut and other parts of Lebanon in dark sport utility vehicles sans license plates with masked gunmen shooting into the air to clear traffic as they delivered unlucky Syrians to their captivity.

"Hezbollah is not responsible for this," said one of the group's unit commanders, jumping in my car for a quick chat amid the overt military operations being conducted around us. "We cannot control all the [Shiite] tribes in Lebanon. This is the fault of the Gulf states who want to bring Lebanon to its knees next to Syria. We will not get involved in these fights between the family and the government. It is the responsibility of the government to protect Lebanon and its people, not the Resistance."

Even as he unabashedly lied to my face, his best friend, sitting next to me, broke into a huge grin.

"Look around at how everyone seems relieved," said this longtime Beirut resident, who was sympathetic to the party. "Finally Hezbollah is letting the Shiite respond to these insults from the Sunnis and the Syrian rebels. They can't admit that they're involved, but they had to let this happen to ease the frustration. Finally the Shiite feel like they have some power again."

In that scene, at that moment, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable analysis. But wait a second: Hezbollah isn't just the most powerful political and military element of Lebanese society, but in terms of its ability to actually get things done, it might represent the only functioning authority in the entire country. So why is Lebanon's only politically cohesive sect -- backed by a military organization that puts the nation's military to shame -- so insecure?

How to Solve All of America's Problems in a Single Step - By David Rothkopf

It is sadly apparent to those who travel this great country -- when they see along the highways aging bikers with long grey ponytails or on the beaches men who are long past the age when they should be seen in Speedos or at political rallies, where they quake in fear over competing claims about retirement benefits -- that the elderly are not only an eyesore but a growing threat to our society because of their cost, the speed at which they drive, and because, absent real work to do or support from their impoverished government, they could easily turn to crime or worse, turn to us, their relatives, and seek to move into our basements or family rooms.

I think it is agreed by all Americans that this prodigious number of burdensome old folks visible to all as they conduct their morning mall walks or take up valuable bench space in public parks are, given the present deplorable state of the nation, a source of great unease, debate, and public dissension and therefore whoever could find a fair, cheap and easy method of making these chronologically challenged Americans sound and useful members of the commonwealth would earn the gratitude of the public to such a degree that he would have a statue erected in his honor or possibly have his bust added to those on Mount Rushmore.

But my intention is far from being limited to providing for the admittedly not overly long futures of our senior citizens. It is my goal to also address a number of the other urgent issues facing the United States. Among these are the financial crisis that threatens to bring our country to its knees, the divisive political debate that has rendered our government dysfunctional, and the need to find ways to provide for our public defense and national security while living within our means.

The great advantage to my program is that it is instantly apparent to anyone who hears it described, even those with profound intellectual deficits like reality-show contestants and members of Congress, that it solves not only the greatest problem the country faces -- that of ensuring care for the elderly -- but that it does so instantly and in such a sweeping nature that it might once again reknit the rent fabric of our polity and restore unity to a fractured, hurting society. It does so in a way that will also eliminate the need to resort to commonly contemplated alternative approaches to addressing the plight of the aging including placing them on ice floes, sending them to python-infested streets of Florida, or providing them with health-care vouchers that aren't worth the paper they might be printed on. I am also able to rule out the approach suggested in 1729 by Dr. Jonathan Swift in his "A Modest Proposal," which recommended that to deal with a similar over abundance of unwanted people, in that case poor children, that the surplus population of grubby little kids be eaten and, where possible, their skins turned into "admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen."

My program draws on our history and reinstates one of America's most venerated national programs while, at the same time, drawing equally on the ideas, priorities and programs of our political mothers and fathers, the Democratic and Republican parties.   The aforementioned program is the draft, a nationwide program of conscription, and my proposal is that we institute mandatory military service for all Americans over 65 years of age.

Can you think of a single proposal that so directly addresses the shared concerns of an aging nation for its oldest citizens while at the same time guaranteeing the public care for those seniors sought by Democrats and providing for the strengthened national defense so important to all Republicans? One that helps trim our fiscal deficit and eliminate the retirement health-care deficit altogether? One that could end the brief and unwelcome outbreak of substantive debate about the nuts and bolts of massive government programs and allow us to return to the character assassination and discussions of hair-care regimes and hunting techniques that we prefer to dwell on during election campaigns?

Because I have digressed from enumerating the merits of my proposal for too long, I will return to the central purpose of this essay. I think the advantages of the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

First, as I have already observed, this approach would immediately place our elderly into the care of the government. Not only would it do this but it would do so via an institution, the military, which is accustomed to providing for every need of its members and has a long history of putting into productive use those who age also renders nearly impossible to deal with: teenagers.

Second, because every older American would be in the military, we would actually have no need at all for Medicare. Not only would this eliminate the threat posed by the unfathomably large deficit associated with it but, as this is also the greatest threat extant to America's wellbeing, it would thereby strengthen the country in ways achievable by no other current or contemplated program of the Department of Defense or the military contractors it serves.

What's $2 Trillion Among Friends? - By Lawrence Korb, Max Hoffman and Robert Ward

Since announcing that he was a candidate for president, Governor Romney has continually criticized the Obama administration for what he claims are the president's severe and unnecessary reductions in defense spending. According to Romney, Obama would make massive cuts in defense spending that could decimate the U.S. military by returning the armed forces to their pre-World War II levels. Romney's doomsday scenarios have been echoed by conservative commentators like Robert Kagan, Dov Zakheim, Mackenzie Eaglen, Tom Donnelly, and Arthur Herman.

But close analysis reveals not only that these claims are overblown, but that if anyone is responsible for the defense budget failing to keep pace with the increases of the past decade, it is Romney's own running mate, Paul Ryan.

To see why, it is necessary to go back to early 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration. In February 2008, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates presented an FY 2009 budget request which projected that the defense budget would reach $544 billion in FY 2012. Three years later, in February 2011, President Obama requested $553 billion in defense spending, an increase of $9 billion over what the outgoing Bush administration had said was necessary to provide for the common defense.

While Congress was considering Obama's request for FY 2012, however, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, led by Congressman Ryan, refused to raise the debt ceiling unless Obama agreed to the Budget Control Act (BCA). Among other things, this act mandated that President Obama could request "only" $6 trillion in defense spending over the FY 2013-2022 period, $487 billion less than he had projected a year before. Thus, for FY 2013, Obama requested $551 billion for the base defense budget, $3 billion less than he had requested the year before.

 

Kim Jong Un Is No Reformer - By Victor D. Cha

For those searching for signs of reform in North Korea, Kim Jong Un has been a godsend. Women on North Korean state TV wore high heels and miniskirts while he sat in the audience. Disney characters, the cultural export of a country North Korea has long demonized, danced onstage. The not-yet-30-year-old Kim, since taking over from father in December 2011, frolicked with school children and was photographed on a rollercoaster with a British diplomat, signaling a level of international openness never seen under the stern Kim Jong Il. He found a pretty wife, Ri Sol Ju, whom the New York Times equated with Britain's Kate Middleton. In a sign of changing times, the new first lady has even been photographed with her husband -- significant because Kim Jong Il was never seen with his spouse -- sporting a Christian Dior purse worth more than the annual wage of a North Korean worker.

Such inane details, combined with the young Kim's years of Swiss schooling where he wolfed down pizza and idolized NBA stars, have caused optimists to declare once again that North Korea is ready to open up to the outside world. This spring, I participated in unofficial meetings in New York where North Korean officials met with executives from Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken to discuss opening branches in North Korea.

Rumors of a new economic policy being hatched in Pyongyang only fuel speculation that junior Kim is serious about change. Similar predictions were made in 1994 when Kim Jong Il, then a sprightly 52, took over after his 82-year-old father Kim Il Sung died. Needless to say, the reforms never happened. But apparently, believers in the irresistibility of Disney, Dior, and Coke have short memories and tall hopes of a China-type economic modernization coming to North Korea.

Let me be blunt: The North Korean regime will not change because Little Kim studied in Switzerland, likes Mickey Mouse, and has a hot wife. If anything, another crisis could be looming: The death of Kim Jong Il and the politics of an unstable leadership transition, a new "get-tough" attitude in Seoul, and U.S. and South Korean electoral cycles constitute a unique confluence of escalation that has not been seen on the peninsula since the 1990s. This could spell another nuclear crisis with North Korea, or even worse, military hostilities that could threaten the peace and prosperity of the region.

The Obama administration stopped trying to engage Pyongyang after its April 2012 missile launch, which North Korea announced just 16 days after a food-for-nuclear-and-missile-freeze deal with the United States. Stung by the launch, the Obama administration immediately called off the deal and gave up on its last chance to get IAEA inspectors into North Korea's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. The launch, which North Korea claimed was for a weather satellite but tested ballistic missile technology banned by the U.N. Security Council, exploded an embarrassing 81 seconds after liftoff.

The spectacular failure of Kim's first major public act almost ensures that another provocation is in the offing. He lacks the revolutionary credentials his grandfather earned as a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese. Unlike his father, he does not have a decade of training and preparation for the job. Without serving a day of military service, in September 2010 the junior Kim was made a four-star general and foisted to the top of the power structure at the age of 26 or 27. Even for North Koreans, who expect their leaders to start young so that they can rule for decades, this is a stretch. So Kim must prove himself -- be it through another missile launch, a nuclear test, or a military provocation against Seoul.

Terrorism is Terrorism - By Rémi Brulin

In his rebuttal to Glenn Greenwald's critique of the "terrorism expert industry," Daniel Trombly profoundly mischaracterizes both my research and the specific points on which Greenwald's post quoted me verbatim. Trombly writes:

"[Greenwald] rejects 'terrorism' as a useful term altogether, arguing, along with scholar Remi Brulin, that the term terrorism is primarily 'propaganda' for 'justifying one's own state violence'-- especially of the American and Israeli variety -- rather than a possible subject of expertise."

My research, presented in my recently completed Ph.D. dissertation, in a book chapter, and in an extensive 2010 conversation with Greenwald at Salon, addresses the definition and deployment of the concept of terrorism in American political discourse since 1945 and, more specifically, between 1972 and 1992, when this discourse was born. Much more narrowly, in Greenwald's post I attempt to show how "terrorism experts," in this case scholars writing for the two main "terrorism studies" journals, Studies on Conflict and Terrorism and Terrorism and Political Violence, have wrestled with the definitional issue in the specific context of American policies in El Salvador in the 1980s.

Replying to a comment that noted his focus on "non-state groups," Trombly notes: "Author here: I apologize for the lack of clarity. I was explaining the origin of the term as applied to non-states, which was almost a century after it was first used to describe the French revolutionary regime. My point was that even in its origin of its later application to non-state groups (which is now the common use of the term), it was not a term of propagandistic condemnation, but self-identified tactical and ideological description. Obviously state terrorism exists." (Emphasis mine.)

As I write in Greenwald's post, a comprehensive analysis of the two main "terrorism studies" journals shows that the (very few) scholars mentioning the issue of "death squads" or discussing U.S. policies in that country in the 1980s all (with one exception, Ariel Merari) accept that "state terrorism" exists, and that their definition of "terrorism" includes "death squads." In this they agree with Greenwald, with me, and indeed with Trombly.

But this is far from being the end of the story. Indeed, despite this, not a single article in these journals has ever applied this definition to U.S. support for El Salvador in the 1980s. In essence, the two main "terrorism studies" journals have been silent about this topic not by defining "terrorism" in a way that would exclude such actors and policies, but rather simply by never writing about it at all (while at the same time publishing countless articles where the United States is described as being "opposed to terrorism" or "fighting terrorism").

Bruce Hoffman's book was specifically mentioned by Andrew Exum during a previous online debate as the work of someone who clearly deserves to be called a "terrorism expert without the scare quotes." Furthermore, Hoffman's stance is of much interest since he explicitly excludes "death squads" from his definition of "terrorism," stating, on p. 27 of Inside Terrorism:

The use of so-called 'death squads' (often off-duty or plain-clothes security or police officers) in conjunction with blatant intimidation of political opponents, human rights and aid workers, student groups, labor organizers, journalists and others has been a prominent feature of the right-wing military dictatorships that took power in Argentina, Chile and Greece during the 1970s and even of elected governments in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru since the mid-1980s. But these state-sanctioned or explicitly ordered acts of internal political violence directed mostly against domestic populations - that is, rule by violence and intimidation by those already in power against their own citizenry - are generally termed 'terror' in order to distinguish that phenomenon from 'terrorism', which is understood to be violence committed by non-state entities.

Besides its tautological quality, this argument is extremely problematic since it makes no sense once placed in its historical context.

First, it is silent about what should be a central fact when discussing the El Salvador conflict, namely that Ronald Reagan repeatedly presented U.S. aid to that country as being part of the "fight against terrorism."