Inside the Bubble - An FP Slideshow

China bears have long warned of a housing bubble; 2012 could be the year that they're proven right. The Guardian reported on Sept. 28 that in a survey of China's largest cities, year-on-year prices rose in all but two urban centers, with 10 major cities showing price gains of 10 percent or more. In an FP article, contributor Roseann Lake looks at the cultural pressure on men to become homeowners, which has helped drive prices across big Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai to record highs.

Above, a housing complex looms over its surroundings in the outer suburbs of Beijing, China.

Jonathan Browning

Little Bo Peepshow - By Isaac Stone Fish

On Friday, after months of furious speculation in the Western press and on Chinese social media, Xinhua, China's official news agency, finally announced that former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai had been expelled from the Communist Party, opening him up for prosecution and potentially a lengthy prison sentence.

Most of the official accusations against Bo are unsurprising. "Bo abused his power, made severe mistakes and bore major responsibility in the Wang Lijun incident," the report reads, in a reference to his former police chief who fled to the U.S. Consulate in February, "and the intentional homicide case of Bogu Kailai" -- a reference to his wife, convicted in August of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood. He "seriously violated Party disciplines" as mayor and party secretary of Dalian, commerce minister, and Chongqing party chief, and "took advantage of his office to seek profits for others and received huge bribes personally and through his family," according to Xinhua.

In the middle of the list of charges is the following accusation: "Bo had or maintained improper sexual relationships with a number of women." As with the other accusations, Xinhua doesn't elaborate, and Bo's alleged unfaithfulness to his wife hardly seems relevant. So what if he was getting some on the side?

But the Communist Party has long held an ambivalent view toward the sex life of its mandarins, dating back the mixed-up mores of its founder, Mao Zedong. Before emphasizing the importance of marriage and the family, Mao flirted with publicly advocating sex "as casual as drinking a glass of water" -- a philosophy he later took up in his private life.

Nowadays, as long as party officials remain loyal and keep their bedroom behavior private, sex is a personal matter. But once they fall, the curtain surrounding their private lives falls with them.

The significance of the charges against Bo thus lies not in their accuracy, but in the Communist Party's decision to use salaciousness to discredit him. As June Teufel Dreyer, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, told Bloomberg News, it fits a pattern "wherein the party decided that no one should be portrayed as having elements of both good and evil within them -- they were either wholly devoted to the party and the people or wholly evil and against them." The following is a list of six officials, high and low, who have been exposed:

1. Chen Liangyu

The previous Politburo member sacked, former Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu, who fell in 2006, was accused of the same dissolution as Bo. In an August 2007 article in Chinese state media entitled "Since Ancient Times, Corrupt Officials Have Been Very Lusty, Also a Characteristic of Today's "Corrupt and Lusty" (Officials)," the author cites the results of an investigation into Chen's background. Not only did he cause a "endanger the safety of the social security fund," but he was "morally corrupt, using the power of his position to philander with females, trading power for sex." Details of Chen's rumored mistresses remained scant, but he's not alone: A report in 2007 by China's top prosecutor's office, cited by ABC News, "disclosed that 14 out of 16 senior leaders punished in major graft cases since 2002 were involved in 'trading power for sex' -- the official code for having one or more mistresses."

Save Benghazi - By Christopher Stephen

Amid the stinging acrid smoke and triumphal yells of the protestors who had just occupied the base of Benghazi's Islamist Ansar Al Sharia militia last weekend, a big man in a yellow polo shirt pressed through the crowd. Mistaking me for an American, he introduced himself as a politics professor, Ehad El-Fawsi, then apologized on behalf of his city for the death of 'my' ambassador. 'He was a good man.'

Encounters like these are a frequent occurrence for the few westerners still in Benghazi following the death of ambassador Chris Stevens and three fellow diplomats on September 11.

The narrative from Washington briefings paints this eastern Libyan port city as a den of jihadists, but the reality on the ground is very different. There is real sorrow at the death of Stevens, who had made the city his second home. 'People feel responsible. He was so good, he was so interested in what civil society was doing,' said Hana Al Galal, a prominent civil rights activist, who had been due to meet Stevens the day after he died.

She, like many others, fears that the triumph of last year's Arab Spring revolution in throwing off the dictatorship of Muammar Qaddafi may be eclipsed by militants ushering in a new one. 'Everybody is rallying against extremists, against all brigades,' she told me. 'We are not going to go from darkness to darkness.'

And rally they did. Last Friday, after a protest they dubbed 'Save Benghazi,' thousands of mostly young male protestors decided they had had enough, and marched on the militia bases. I watched the first assault, on the local headquarters of the Shahouda Abu Salem militia, and it was an extraordinary experience. Hundreds of local teenagers forced the gates of a compound surrounded by crumbling apartments from the city's colonial Italian past. Militiamen, still clutching their guns, were manhandled into the street.

Ansar Al Sharia, the Islamist unit blamed by Libya's de facto president Mohammed Magarief for involvement in the assault on the US consulate, was the next to go. Once the bearded militiamen were respected for bringing security to Benghazi; in more recent times they were feared, booming through the streets in their black-flagged jeeps.

After the attack on Stevens, Ansar's adherents braced themselves for retaliation, deploying anti-aircraft guns deployed against fearfully anticipated U.S. drone strikes. But they had no answer to the thousands of protestors who marched down a narrow street to the front of the militia's main compound. The militiamen fired a volley of shots over the heads of the protestors, then fled. In minutes, their compound was ablaze, inspiring scenes at once triumphant and farcical.

By the time this correspondent got inside, a handful of red-capped military policemen had arrived, to be embraced by the protestors. A lone fire truck was dousing one blaze even as cheering looters set fire to its neighbor. 'It's like in the revolution,' said one military police colonel, Mohammed Ben Eisa. 'We're taking orders from the people.'

The Entebbe Option - By Mark Perry

While no one in the Barack Obama administration knows whether Israel will strike Iran's nuclear program, America's war planners are preparing for a wide array of potential Israeli military options -- while also trying to limit the chances of the United States being drawn into a potentially bloody conflict in the Persian Gulf. 

"U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing on Iran has been extraordinary and unprecedented," a senior Pentagon war planner told me. "But when it comes to actually attacking Iran, what Israel won't tell us is what they plan to do, or how they plan to do it. It's their most closely guarded secret." Israel's refusal to share its plans has persisted despite repeated requests from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a senior Pentagon civilian said.

The result is that, at a time of escalating public debate in both the United States and Israel around the possibility of an armed strike on Iran, high-level Pentagon war planners have had to "fly blind" in sketching out what Israel might do -- and the challenges its actions will pose for the U.S. military.  "What we do is a kind of reverse engineering," the senior planner said. "We take a look at their [Israeli] assets and capabilities, put ourselves in their shoes and ask how we would act if we had what they have. So while we're guessing, we have a pretty good idea of what they can and can't do."

According to several high-level U.S. military and civilian intelligence sources, U.S. Central Command and Pentagon war planners have concluded that there are at least three possible Israeli attack options, including a daring and extremely risky special operations raid on Iran's nuclear facility at Fordow -- an "Iranian Entebbe" they call it, after Israel's 1976 commando rescue of Israeli hostages held in Uganda. In that scenario, Israeli commandos would storm the complex, which houses many of Iran's centrifuges; remove as much enriched uranium as they found or could carry; and plant explosives to destroy the facility on their way out.

Centcom, which oversees U.S. military assets in the Middle East, has been given the lead U.S. role in studying the possible Israeli strike. Over the past year its officers have met several times at Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Florida, and with Fifth Fleet naval officers in Doha, Qatar, to discuss their conclusions, the sources say.  

The military analysis of Israeli war plans has been taking place separate from -- but concurrent with -- the controversy surrounding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence that the United States present Tehran with a "red line," which, if crossed by Iran's nuclear program, would trigger a U.S. military strike. "That's a political question, not a war question," the senior Pentagon war planner said. "It's not in our lane. We're assuming that an Israeli attack could come at any time."

But it's not clear that Israel, even with its vaunted military, can pull off a successful strike: Netanyahu may not simply want the United States on board politically; he may need the United States to join militarily. "All this stuff about 'red lines' and deadlines is just Israel's way of trying to get us to say that when they start shooting, we'll start shooting," retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman told me. "Bottom line? We can do this and they can't, because we have what the Israelis don't have," retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner said.

One thing is clear: the U.S. military, according to my sources, currently has no interest in a preventive strike. "The idea that we'll attack with Israel is remote, so you can take that off your list of options," former Centcom commander Joe Hoar told me. Nor will the United States join an Israeli attack once it starts, the senior U.S. planner said. "We know there are senior Iranians egging for a fight with us, particularly in their Navy," a retired Centcom officer added. "And we'll give them one if they want one, but we're not going to go piling in simply because the Israelis want us to."

That puts the military shoulder to shoulder with the president. Obama and the military may have clashed on other issues, like the Afghan surge, but when it comes to Iran, they are speaking with one voice: They don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, they don't want Israel to start a war over it, and they don't believe an Israeli attack should automatically trigger U.S. intervention. But, if they are to avoid becoming part of Israel's plans, they first need to know what those plans are.

Not So Hot - By Bjorn Lomborg

September 26 was a triumph for public relations. An organization called DARA launched a report called "Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2nd Edition. A Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet." The study, sponsored by 20 countries, projected some astoundingly large impacts from climate change, both on the number of deaths and the economic impacts. The report has produced a media heyday for climate alarmism, but is a house of cards built on dubious analysis and erroneous claims.

News headlines around the world reflected the study's projections about deaths and costs. A much-quoted Reuters story, posted here by the Huffington Post, cautioned: "Climate Change Deaths Could Total 100 Million By 2030 If World Fails To Act." Businessweek's headline warned: "Climate Change Reducing Global GDP by $1.2 Trillion."

Nearly all the media coverage also portrayed the study uncritically, and with the assumption that these bad outcomes were crucially dependent on us not tackling climate change. (Another headline: "If world doesn't act on climate, 100 million will die by 2030.") Bloomberg News's story helpfully stressed that if climate change remains, unchecked the cost will escalate by 2030 to 3.2 percent of GDP or about $6.7 trillion annually.

Unfortunately, this message to the public is dramatically misleading. Serious errors or omissions (whether intentional or not) in at least three areas -- climate change deaths, economic costs, and the costs of "action versus inaction" -- almost entirely undermine the entire thrust of the report.

Let's be clear. Global warming is real and man-made, and it needs an effective response. But unfounded alarmism and panic are unlikely to engender good and effective policy.

Number of Dead

First, the report is seen to claim that "climate change deaths could total 100 million by 2030." This is actually not what the report says. It carefully outlines how the "the present carbon-intensive economy" is causing 4.975 million deaths per year of 2010, and how by 2030 the "carbon economy -- and climate change-related" impacts will kill 6 million people every year.

Why the cumbersome language of a of "combined climate-carbon" economy? Drilling into the composition of the 4.975 million deaths in 2010, one finds these deaths are not predominantly caused by climate change (only a few newspapers like the Guardian didn't fall for this).

Indeed, 1.4 million deaths are caused by outdoor air pollution, which is almost entirely unrelated to global warming. This air pollution, of course, is still predominantly caused by fossil fuels, but only because that is what we mostly use for fuel in the world. So, while the report is technically correct in saying that these 1.4 million deaths are caused by "the present carbon-intensive economy," these deaths are in no way caused by climate change. Rebranding air pollution, mostly from particulate pollution, as "carbon" appears both disingenuous and designed to confuse. It was clearly intended to convey the message that these deaths were somehow relevant for the global warming debate.

Capital Flight - By Frank Jacobs

Back in 2006, when he was still the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama found himself in Metropolis, a small town in the south of his state. A photo survives of Obama in front of the town's giant Superman statue, the then-senator mimicking the Man of Steel's pose. Never mind the ammunition that picture has been providing ever since to both the president's friends and his foes. What the geography-obsessed among us want to know is: What is Metropolis doing on the banks of the Ohio River?

The town's connection with the Last Son of Krypton is post-hoc [1] : Metropolis was founded in 1839, almost a century before Superman was conceived. It was named with something else entirely in mind. As the likely location where the New Orleans & Ohio Railroad would cross the river on its way to Chicago, the fledgling town was hoped to become, in quick succession: a traffic hub, the nucleus of a western District of Columbia, and eventually the new capital of a westward-expanding nation [2]. As place-names go, Metropolis is both grand and bland -- generic enough for an as yet nonexistent capital city.

Western D.C. never came to be [3], but the idea of moving the capital to a more central location isn't as harebrained as it might sound. After all, the Founding Fathers chose the site of eastern D.C. because it was near enough to the geographical center of the original 13 states. This was partly because North and South begrudged each other the chance to host the capital, but also because centrality has a bunch of practical advantages [4].

As the American Empire took a westward course, so did the country's geographical center. It moved away from Washington, D.C., zipping past Metropolis along the way.  Until the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as full-fledged states, the center of the United States was usually situated near Lebanon, Kansas. After 1959, it moved to 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota. America's center and capital are now over 1,400 miles apart. To put that in perspective: Cancun, Mexico is closer to Washington's corridors of power than Belle Fourche [5].

At present, nobody [6] is advocating that the three branches of the federal government uproot themselves from the banks of the Potomac to set up shop on the desolate Dakotan flatlands. Politicians from both parties ritually profess the desire to change the way Washington works; neither wants to change where the national government works. But what sounds impossible in the United States has been done elsewhere in the world.

Plenty of other countries have moved their capital, invariably to a more central location. A practical rationale recurs everywhere: countries are governed more efficiently from the center. But a central capital also has symbolic value. Its location subtly reinforces the raison d'état: this country is a "natural" unit, its political borders are as they should be, and its capital radiates power evenly across its entire domain [7].

Even in the era of instant communication, the interplay between practical and symbolic value of "capital centrality" still holds. It creates a symbolic center of gravity with practical, bricks-and-mortar consequences: new roads and airports will point towards the new capital, minimizing the difference in average distance that national representatives need to travel to their parliament [8].

By accident of history, some countries are endowed with such capitals: France's traditional centralism owes much to the relative centrality of Paris [9]; in spite of its many border changes, Poland's capital Warsaw manages to be relatively close to the country's geographic center of gravity [10]; and Brussels looks to be slap bang in the geographical heart of Belgium [11]. Midway between Nepal and Burma, Bangladesh's capital Dhaka is near the country's geographical center. Windhoek, Namibia's capital, is so close to that country's midpoint that nobody seems to have bothered calculating where it actually is. And Minsk is only 22 miles north of Belarus's geographical midpoint, the museum town of Dudutki. But the kicker has to be Madrid, only 6 miles north of the actual center of Spain, at Cerro de los Angeles [12].

Less fortunate nations have sometimes chosen to right a geopolitical wrong by moving their geographically eccentric capital to a more central location. But as some of the examples below show, such transplants are in serious danger of rejection by the body politic. For the symbolic charm and practical advantages of a centrally placed capital are quite often ephemeral, and perhaps for good reason: settlement occurs not because a location is central, but where it is deemed advantageous. Still, the urge to recalibrate national capitals cuts across so many cultures that it may be deemed to represent a universal human trait -- the never-ending tension between the attraction of the obvious and the urge to plan something better.

[1] In 1972, DC Comics (and, a few months later, the Illinois State Legislature) declared Metropolis, Illinois, to be the "hometown of Superman." Ironically, numbering only a few thousand residents, the town bears more resemblance to Clark Kent's hometown of Smallville than to the big city of Metropolis, where he went to pursue joint careers in journalism and heroism.

[2] In which case the name Metropolis would again have been a misnomer: its etymology suggests a Greek Mother City, like Athens or Sparta, spawning a string of colonies. Had Metropolis become the nation's capital, the former one, Washington, D.C., would have been the metropolis.

[3] A planned Capitol City, across from Metropolis on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, never made it off the drawing table.

[4] "[... T]he search for a geographic location, cast in terms of geographic centrality, rested on the conviction that the capital had to be as near and as easily accessible through central location to the citizens as possible. The greatest possible centrality would preserve the electorate's ability to watch over its representatives, improve representation, and limit corruption." Jason S. Kassel: Constructing a Professional Legislature: The Physical Development of Congress, 1783-1851.

[5] The population center of the United States, by the way, has also shifted west-southwest since the 1930s. And it keeps moving. In 2010, it was 2.7 miles northeast of Plato, Missouri. By 2020, it is projected to be around 10 miles north of Hartville, Missouri.

[6] Public opinion being the many-splendored thing it is, probably not nobody. But apart from the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce -- not an awfully large crowd.

[7] This chimes with the theory of the axis mundi, a central location where heaven and earth supposedly connect. Examples include sacred mountains (Fuji, Kailash, Ararat), but also capital cities: Cuzco is Inca for "navel," and Rome's road network radiated from a location called the Umbilicus. See also [12].

[8] This may seem abstract, but it has practical implications -- in fact, it was the stuff of the so-called expenses scandal in Britain a few political seasons ago. As some members of Parliament need to travel extremely far to get to London, they could claim compensation for second residences in the capital. But since many from the densely populated southeast live within commuting distance, quite a few of their second homes were not really needed -- opening up all sorts of possible avenues of misuse, like renting out the government-sponsored second home for personal gain.

[9] The honor of being France's most central location is disputed by at least 10 villages, in the départements of Allier and Cher.

[10] Usually placed at Piatek, under 70 miles west of the capital.

[11] The actual geographical center of Belgium is near the little town of Walhain, 25 miles southeast of Brussels.

[12] And not the Puerta del Sol, in the center of the city, as some sources claim. That would have been a bit too neat, as this is where the Kilómetro Cero is located, the zero mile marker for all official road distances in Spain.

J. Stephen Conn/Flickr

Budgeteers to the Rescue - By Gordon Adams

Will the fiscal cliff turn into a mere step off the curb for the Pentagon? It may depend on the definition that the administration's accountants use in applying the Budget Control Act to defense -- a definition about which there seems to be disagreement.

The Office of Management and Budget put out its sequester report ten days ago, saying it could not provide details on how the budget sequester would affect government "programs, projects, and activities (PPA)," the way last year's Budget Control Act requires, because Congress only gave the agency 30 days to complete the report. The number-crunchers just didn't have time to get their institutional arms around the definition of PPA and wrestle the details to the ground, according to OMB.

So their report only assessed the impact of sequestration at the level of "accounts," of which there are about 50 in the Pentagon budget -- Air Force aircraft procurement, Navy operations and maintenance, etc. Every one of these accounts has multiple programs tucked inside -- specific weapons systems, for example -- and OMB implied that each of those programs would be hit in a sequester with a 9.4 percent cut.

OMB is still working on exactly what PPA means across the government, but yesterday in an offhand comment Pentagon Comptroller Bob Hale was reported as saying that the OMB document "would give us more flexibility" because it might allow DOD "accounts" to be defined as the PPA.

If Hale's interpretation survives the day, DOD would have an early holiday present. And it would put out the firestorm being whipped up both by the secretary of defense and by such Republican stalwarts as John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Buck McKeon, who have been running a high-volume mini-campaign about the fiscal cliff, warning about job losses, plant closures, and layoff notices -- all backed up by the Aerospace Industries Association's warning about a million defense jobs being lost in the event of sequestration.

Forget 'Better Off' - By Micah Zenko

In his closing statement of the final presidential debate in October 1980, Ronald Reagan told prospective voters that before heading to the polls: "It might be well if you would ask yourself: Are you better off than you were four years ago?" This month, Republicans borrowed this question from the Great Communicator as a litmus test for President Barack Obama's term in office. In a recent poll, a slight plurality of prospective voters said they were not better off now than in 2008.

However, Republicans shied away from the other query Reagan raised in 1980: "Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?" This omission reflected two realities facing the Republican presidential candidate. First, Obama consistently outpolls Mitt Romney by 6 to 10 percentage points when asked who would be better at "protecting the country," who could be "a good commander in chief," and who would be better at "handling foreign policy." Second, only 4 percent of Americans polled believe that "foreign affairs," which includes wars, terrorism, immigration, and other subjects, is the most important issue facing the United States -- the lowest percentage since Obama entered office.

Despite the American public's puzzling disinterest in foreign policy and national security, Reagan's second question is worth a closer look. Both political parties paint starkly different pictures. Romney told a Memorial Day commemoration in San Diego: "I wish I could tell you that the world is a safe place today. It's not." Meanwhile, Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council (NSC), said, "The U.S. is absolutely safer now than four years ago." This Sept. 11, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, "I think the bottom-line implication is that America is safer."

It is unlikely that Obama's signature foreign-policy successes -- authorizing the raid to kill Osama bin Laden and providing the essential military and intelligence capabilities that led to the downfall of Muammar al-Qaddafi -- singlehandedly made the United States safer. By 2011, bin Laden played a minor role in core al Qaeda operations, which had been diminished by relentless CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. At the same time, until the Libyan crisis imploded, Qaddafi was viewed by U.S. officials as a shining star for his cooperation on terrorism matters. According to the State Department's "Country Reports on Terrorism 2010," released in August 2011: "The Libyan government continued to demonstrate a strong and active commitment to combating terrorist organizations and violent extremism through bilateral and regional counterterrorism and security cooperation." It is plain that the current Libyan government is -- so far -- either unable or unwilling to take on terrorist organizations with the same intensity and brutality as Qaddafi.

The reality is that, across a range of criteria, Americans are indeed safer and more secure than four years ago. However, the primary reasons predate Obama and instead reflect long-term social, economic, and demographic trends. Consider just a few indicators from 2008, the year before Obama entered office and the latest year for which data is available.

War. The number of active intra- and interstate "armed conflicts" (having over 25 battle-related deaths) has remained constant since 2008 at 37. Six conflicts reached the intensity of "war" (over 1,000 deaths) in the past year, as Libya and Yemen joined the list. The number of armed conflicts in which the United States is directly involved increased in 2011 due to U.S. military personnel or assets involved in hostilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. However, the number of active-duty service-member deaths (including in war, from accidents, or self-inflicted) remained relatively constant between 2008 and 2010 (1,440 and 1,485).

Freedom. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld observed in April 2003: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." Nevertheless, over time, democracies tend to have healthier and better-educated citizens, almost never go to war with other democracies, and are less likely to fight wars than non-democracies. There has been little change on this indicator since 2008, as the outcomes of the Arab Spring are far from settled. According to Freedom House, there were 119 electoral democracies in 2008 and 42 autocracies. In 2011, there were 117 and 48, respectively.

The Calm Before the Storm - By Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins

It's finally official. China's first aircraft carrier, named Liaoning after the province in which it was refitted, has just been commissioned and delivered to the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). On Sept. 25, President Hu Jintao, who also chairs the Central Military Commission, presided over a ceremony at a Dalian naval base. Joining him were Premier Wen Jiabao, PLAN Commander Wu Shengli, and other top officials. All must have felt the weight of history on their shoulders as they witnessed the unfulfilled ambitions of their civilian and military predecessors.

This milestone was a long time coming. One of Wu's distant predecessors had first proposed a carrier for China's navy in 1928. At the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Premier Zhou Enlai and the PLAN commander at the time advocated carrier development, and Chairman Mao Zedong made a supportive speech in 1958. Yet their aspirations were stymied by the far more immediate priorities of domestic ideological campaigns and countering Soviet military pressure amid economic autarky and political isolationism. Subsequently, Gen. Liu Huaqing -- PLAN commander from 1982 to 1987 and Central Military Commission vice chairman from 1992 to 1997 -- fervently advocated carrier development and initiated studies of foreign technologies and Chinese options.

The procurement and refitting of Varyag, the Ukrainian carrier hull that served as the basis for Liaoning, was an odyssey in itself. The hull was purchased in 1998, but one-and-a-half years of Sino-Turkish negotiations were required to ensure its passage through the Bosphorus. Varyag then began a costly, storm-plagued voyage around Africa in 2001 and did not reach Dalian until 2002. China's formal carrier program, termed "048," was officially approved in August 2004 under Hu's chairmanship of the CMC, making Liaoning's recent commissioning a centerpiece of his military legacy and one of his last acts in office.

The PLAN's possession of an aircraft carrier is a great public relations booster for the Chinese military and suggests that Chinese diplomacy will be backed by an even bigger stick in East and Southeast Asia, and possibly beyond. Yet the stick was hard to come by and remains far from a potent tool. In fact, Liaoning has not yet demonstrated the capacity for aircraft launches or landings, which is the essence of carrier operations. Why has it taken so long to get to this point, which is not itself militarily decisive?

First, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. essentially had to start from scratch on the carrier. Fabricating a carrier hull is not easy, but a modern shipbuilding industry like China's, with yards capable of building supertankers, liquefied natural gas tankers, and large bulk carriers, can bend the requisite steel. This time, Varyag offered a pre-made hull. But on such a massive vessel, the devil is in the details. And for a carrier, the devil manifests itself hundreds of separate times; parts must not only be built, but they must also be integrated into a working set of synchronized systems. Some systems are geared to the maritime dimension, some to the air, and some to both, which imposes very different sets of requirements and characteristics. In short, it is a logistical nightmare to achieve the unforgiving performance levels required of carrier operations.

With respect to hardware, unique subsystems such as aircraft storage spaces and arresting cables to allow aircraft to land must be built and installed. China's state shipbuilders have thus far been very tight-lipped on how they procured the guts to fill in the essentially empty hull they received. Our hunch is that some parts came from Russia and Ukraine, while a good portion came from Chinese ship-subcomponent suppliers that tooled up and built strong human-capital bases as the PLAN ramped up orders for advanced surface combatants like the Type 052C (Luyang II-class) destroyer and submarines like the Type 041 (Yuan-class).

On the human side, China has had to develop substantial domestic shipbuilding and subcomponent-production expertise in order to get its first carrier into service. Now the country must learn how to actually use it. Becoming a proficient carrier operator is important because the vessel's initial diplomatic intimidation and influence value will fade unless China can demonstrate an ability to employ the ship competently to an extent that suggests real war-fighting ability.

The Real Pivot - By David Barno

Last week marked a major inflection point in the war in Afghanistan. NATO decided to suspend joint operations with Afghan forces below the battalion level, while the last of the 30,000 U.S. "surge" troops returned home. After eleven years of conflict, the United States and its allies now stand at a fork in the road. They can continue to press ahead with an increasingly risky advisory effort, where the remaining 68,000 U.S. troops would continue widespread partnering with Afghan forces. Or they can start shifting now to a much-reduced military effort aimed at supporting the Afghan military in combat differently while protecting broader U.S. interests with smaller counter-terror forces.

Starting in the spring of 2009, the United States poured nearly 70,000 additional forces into Afghanistan, tripling its previous troop levels. The "surge" represented the last increments of this growth, capping an effort to counter major escalations of Taliban strength and aggressiveness in the preceding years. Newly arrived U.S. forces moved into areas where few Americans had previously set foot. These included Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, which is a significant poppy growing area but where only 3 percent of the Afghan population lives.

The Taliban largely fell back in the face of this onslaught, but quickly adjusted tactics to emphasize high-profile suicide attacks, ever-larger roadside bombs, assassinations of Afghan officials, and most recently, a surge of insider attacks. These so-called "green on blue" attacks have proven both costly and disruptive to coalition forces, killing more than 50 troops so far this year. Aimed squarely at Western publics, these attacks have provoked outrage in the United States and among its NATO allies.

If popular tolerance for battlefield deaths was tenuous, there is near zero patience with attacks from the very Afghan forces the allies have been working with over the last eleven years. Senator John McCain, not known for wavering in the face of military setbacks, noted last week, "I think all options [should] be considered, including whether we just withdraw early rather than have a continued bloodletting that won't succeed." Although he backed down from that comment the following day, McCain's visceral response signals an important shift among those who have long supported greater U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Another defense hawk, Republican Congressman C.W. Bill Young, was even more direct when he said, "We're killing kids who don't need to die" and "I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can."

The Obama administration now faces two dramatically different choices. It could resume lower-level partnering after several weeks, using the pause to enhance security measures and set new rules to protect U.S. and other NATO forces. U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan are almost sure to recommend this option, since they are deeply committed to the current approach and have invested years in developing its structural underpinnings. Yet once partnering is resumed, the inevitable next insider attack -- and the next, and the next -- would likely render this option politically untenable and markedly worsen the existing discontent at home and growing concern among troops partnered with Afghans in the field.

The Afghan Surge Is Over - By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

The U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan ended last week. You'd be forgiven if you didn't notice. There was no proclamation of success from the White House, no fanfare at the Pentagon, no public expression of gratitude from Afghan President Hamid Karzai. It fell to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was traveling in New Zealand, to announce that the last of the 33,000 surge troops, dispatched by President Obama in late 2009 at the behest of his military commanders, had left Afghanistan.

In stating that U.S. troop levels had dropped to 68,000, Panetta told reporters traveling with him that "this is an opportunity to recognize that the surge did accomplish its objectives." A few days earlier, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, stated that the surge was "an effort that was worth the cost."

Are they right? In my new book, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, I explore what really happened over there -- and in Washington -- after Obama decided to surge. The real story of the surge cannot be reduced down to a soundbite. It exacted a significant cost on the United States -- in lives, limbs, and dollars. Sure, the surge did have some positive impacts: The Taliban were pushed out of large stretches of southern Afghanistan, the influx of U.S. resources accelerated the development of the Afghan security forces, and the billions that were poured into the country in the name of reconstruction did provide short-term employment to thousands of young men. But did the surge really achieve its objectives? And were the gains worth the cost?

The now-retired commanders who pressed Obama to surge in 2009 -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Gen. David Petraeus, and Adm. Mike Mullen -- all insisted at the time that more troops, coupled with a protect-the-population counterinsurgency strategy, would have a good chance of turning around a failing war. They believed a surge had saved Iraq, despite strong evidence that the reasons for the improvements in security there were far more complex. In Afghanistan, they argued, the additional troops would allow the military to protect key parts of the south from Taliban advances; once that mission was completed, they would swing east to pacify areas around Kabul. The surge force also would provide a valuable opportunity to expand the Afghan army, disburse reconstruction assistance and create -- in conjunction with the State Department -- local governments in places were there had been very little government influence, reasoning that generating Afghan-led security and an indigenous civil administration would convince people to stop supporting the insurgency.

All of this nation-building was intended to accomplish a very narrow goal set by Obama: "To disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda" in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It did not matter much to the generals that most of al Qaeda's remaining core was in Pakistan, where it could -- and would -- be targeted with drones. The commanders insisted that they needed to beat back the Taliban because, if they returned to power, they would once again be able to provide sanctuary to al Qaeda operatives.

For the surge and its accompanying countersurgency strategy to prevail in Afghanistan, four main things needed to occur: The Afghan government had to be a willing partner, the Pakistani government had to crack down on insurgent sanctuaries on its soil, the Afghan army had to be ready and willing to assume control of areas that had been cleared of insurgents by American troops, and the Americans had to be willing to commit troops and money for years on end.

Did all of that happen? Let's examine them one by one:

1. Karzai never agreed with America's war strategy. U.S. officers and diplomats argue that tribal rivalries, an inequitable distribution of power at the local level, and the government's failure to provide even the most basic services are all factors pushing many Afghans into the Taliban's arms. Back in 2009 and 2010, they believed the remedy was a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. But in Karzai's eyes, the principal problem was and still is the infiltration of militants from Pakistan -- not the corruption and malfeasance of his government -- and he has long wanted U.S. and NATO forces to focus on the border. By mucking around in the districts of Kandahar and Helmand, the United States and its coalition partners were disrupting what he believed was a natural system of self-regulating Pashtun governance. Through all of his flare-ups, Karzai "is sending us a message," a senior U.S. military official told me. "And that message is 'I don't believe in counterinsurgency.'"

Tribal Warfare - By John Reed

The Muscogee Nation, part of the Creek Indian tribe, which fought with Confederate troops against the U.S. military during the Civil War, is now guarding Americans stationed at U.S. bases in Herat and Helmand, Afghanistan, under a $7 million Pentagon contract. The Muscogee Nation Business Enterprise (MBNE) is a 100-person firm that has in the past used its status as a tribal-owned company to win government business, some of which it then subcontracted to a larger security company, but it says that its employees are fulfilling this contract, providing security in a war zone.

Neither MBNE nor the Pentagon would provide specifics about the deal, citing security concerns. But, according to the contract announcement, made August 9, MBNE is "to provide life support services to the Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations in Afghanistan. These services will include basic necessities, complex security, and personnel security details for safe travel in the immediate region around the Herat and Helmand facilities."

The task force is a U.S. military organization charged with building up Afghan industries, particularly mining, agribusiness, and IT in order to "help Afghanistan achieve economic sovereignty," according to a Pentagon website.

Given its small size, at first glance the notion that MBNE is protecting U.S. efforts in Afghanistan -- a business dominated by large private security firms -- seems implausible. Experts contacted about the contract initially speculated that MBNE might be a so-called pass-through firm.

Pass-through companies are often tiny but politically well-connected Native American-owned businesses that bid for government deals reserved for small, tribal-owned businesses. These firms, usually consisting of a handful of people, then subcontract much or most of the actual work out to a large organization. A small tribal-owned company gets some government business, and the big contractors get a slice of the action.

And, indeed, MNBE used to subcontract at least some of its government-security business in Afghanistan to the Maryland-based Ronco, a private security firm "wholly owned" by G4S, previously known as Wackenhut. G4S, which claims to be largest private security firm in the world, ran security at the London Olympics and guards a range of U.S. government facilities -- from national park sites to sensitive nuclear research facilities, such as the Nevada Test Site.

What's more, MNBE, which is based in Okmulgee, Okla., explicitly describes itself as a small, tribal-owned business that specializes in helping larger companies win federal contracts by partnering with them to take advantage of federal laws designed to funnel government contracts to Native American-owned companies.

"MNBE has developed business skills necessary to compete and perform in the market place and have [sic] developed a network of potential teaming partners for various customer requirements," reads its website. "Not only are you getting a company with a proven track record but regulations allowing the customer flexibility and efficiency in meeting their particular requirements. Tribal owned 8(a) firms, such as, MNBE are eligible to receive sole source direct award 8(a) contracts regardless of dollar size, while all other 8(a) firms may not receive sole source contracts in excess of $3 million for services and $5 million for manufacturing."

A Countervailing View - By Harold Brown

William Burr is to be applauded for successfully gaining declassification of Presidential Decision-59, "Nuclear Weapons Employment," and related documents more than 30 years after its adoption. Unfortunately, his interpretation of what those documents said and meant is badly flawed. Moreover, the views he attributes to me neither were, nor are, mine. I have examined the internal memos of the State Department and the staff of the National Security Council, which I had not previously seen, as well as reread the policy guidance and implementing documents issued by President Carter and by me. It is important that these documents and the decisions and policies they mirror, as well as the lessons they carry, be correctly understood.

   

PD-59 directed implementation of a revised policy for nuclear weapons employment in terms of force structure, command and control arrangements, doctrine, and plans. The purpose of PD-59 was to assure, and make plain to Soviet leaders, that they and their regime would not survive a general thermonuclear war; that there could be no victory in such a war because utter destruction would be the outcome. We in the Carter administration were concerned by Soviet military writings. Some of those indicated that while the USSR did not seek to fight a nuclear war, if it happened, they hoped to "win" by surviving as an organized state. Some U.S. analysts, including the "Team B" that issued its report toward the end of the Ford administration, believed that the Soviets intended to gain an ability to win. And indeed, extensive facilities in the USSR sought to protect the leadership from nuclear strikes by the United States, dwarfing any U.S. counterparts.                                                                                    

PD-59 had two goals. One was to disabuse Soviet leaders from the view, assuming they held it, that they could win or survive a nuclear war. We did that both by our declared policy and by the adjustment of our strategic forces and plans for their use if war came. The other goal was to reinforce the U.S. ability, already initiated in earlier years by Robert McNamara and James Schlesinger, to carry out nuclear strikes in a selective way. Burr writes, "Drafters of PD-59...believed they could control escalation during a nuclear war." Perhaps that was so for some, but I, who had the responsibility for implementing it, had a different view. As I wrote in January 1981 in my final report to Congress (echoing statements on the record before PD-59 was issued), "First, I remain highly skeptical that escalation of a limited nuclear exchange can be controlled, or that it can be stopped short of an all-out, massive exchange. Second, even given this belief, I am convinced that we must do everything we can to make such escalation control possible, that opting out of this effort and resigning ourselves to the inevitability of such escalation is a serious abdication of the awesome responsibilities nuclear weapons, and the unbelievable damage their uncontrolled use would create, thrust upon us."

Plans and controls that maintained the possibility of stopping short of escalation to mutual destruction -- even after initial use -- made sense. This "countervailing strategy" embodied flexibility, escalation control, survivability, and endurance. Our strategy included alternative mixes of targets: Soviet strategic forces; other military forces; Soviet leadership and control; and their industrial and economic base, which would automatically affect but not be directed at their urban populations. Two very able senior staff members produced the drafts of PD-59, which, as the minutes released by Burr show, were debated and revised by the members and advisers of the National Security Council. Walt Slocombe, later undersecretary of defense during the Clinton administration, was my action officer for PD-59 in the Defense Department. Bill Odom, then a brigadier general and later the director of the National Security Agency during President Reagan's second term, was the action officer on Zbigniew Brzezinski's staff.

Guerrilla Lit 101 - By John Arquilla

West Point's recently released list of the top 10 military classics is replete with doorstop-sized accounts of conflict from ancient to relatively modern times -- but almost completely neglects insurgency, terrorism, and other forms of irregular warfare. The U.S. Military Academy's list does a fine job of capturing the "horizontal" dynamic of clashes of roughly equal great powers armed with the most advanced weapons. But the history and shape of the world system have been just as influenced by the "vertical" axis -- the unequal struggles that have seen guerrillas, bandits, and commandos waging "wars of the knife" against empires and nations. And it is this latter mode of conflict that has dominated world affairs for the past half-century -- and will likely do so for at least a century to come.

With this in mind, let me supplement the West Point list. For those drawn to West Point's recommendation to read Thucydides, I suggest taking a look also at Sallust's The Jugurthine War. Jugurtha of Numidia (today's northern Algeria) fought a bitter guerrilla war against Rome, some 50 years before Julius Caesar's great campaigns, that Sallust captured with verve. He also spoke to the corruption of Roman character that came with protracted exposure to this kind of fighting.

Hans Delbrück, whose four-volume history of ancient, medieval, and early modern warfare that West Point selected, can be nicely complemented by Lt. Gen. John Bagot Glubb's The Great Arab Conquests. His survey of the sweeping seventh-century victories of Muslim warriors is of the highest analytic and literary quality, a principal observation being that much of the world of that time was shaped by the irregular "pirate strategy" the Arabs adopted. That is, they used the desert as an ocean and came raiding from it, again and again, with startling success.

The West Point list also focuses on several important philosophers of war: the aphoristic Sun Tzu; the turgid, elusive treatises of Machiavelli and Clausewitz; and Jomini's geometrically inspired principles. Jomini in particular, with his emphasis on angles of approach and other seemingly precise formulas, captured the minds of generations of military leaders. His ideas about how to properly mass one's forces and take the offensive remain powerfully prominent in -- if not especially useful to -- current U.S. strategic thought. Irregular philosophers of war are, by comparison, few. Mao Zedong is certainly the best, though his On Guerrilla Warfare is very nearly as vague as Sun Tzu. Yet Mao's key insight for irregulars -- centralize strategy, decentralize operations -- is still the polestar.

For a more operationally oriented study of land battles, West Point chose Ardant du Picq's Battle Studies. This is a curious choice. Col. du Picq was killed in the Franco-Prussian War, but his belief that good morale could overcome concentrated firepower animated French strategic thought up to and during World War I -- with near-catastrophic results. For the period in question, I suggest two alternatives. First, there is Col. Charles Callwell's survey of the many modes of irregular warfare, Small Wars -- find the third edition, the one with the insightful introduction by eminent military historian Douglas Porch. The second book is by John Reed -- also the author of Ten Days That Shook the World about the Russian Revolution -- whose account of Pancho Villa in Insurgent Mexico is one of the finest eyewitness accounts of an insurgent campaign ever written, even taking into account T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Fear Premium - Interview by Benjamin Pauker

With anti-American tensions simmering across the Middle East and anti-Japanese sentiment flaring across China, the European fiscal crisis all of a sudden seems like yesterday's problem. Not so fast, say Nouriel Roubini and Ian Bremmer, who argue that while the immediate disaster in Europe may have been averted, the fundamental problems haven't even been touched.

In this wide-ranging interview, Roubini and Bremmer see dark omens on the horizon: a "deteriorating" geopolitical environment, a potentially "dangerous" trade war with China if Mitt Romney were to win the U.S. presidency and label Beijing a currency manipulator, and a "fear premium" spiking international markets over what seems like inevitable conflict among the United States, Israel, and Iran.

Foreign Policy: Are we out of the woods in Europe yet?

Nouriel Roubini: The recession is still deep, and it's becoming deeper. The vulcanization of banks and of public debt markets is still ongoing, and therefore the economic side of the crisis is still with us. The positive is that now the Europeans realize that for a monetary unit to be viable, you need a banking union, a fiscal union, and an economic union to provide legitimacy for the transfer of power from national governments to the center. And they've finally put in play a coordinated bond program to provide support to struggling sovereign states. Those are positives, but the fundamental problems of the eurozone remain. The recession is deepening in the periphery, ascribing to the eurozone extreme difficulty in reaching agreements on these elements of a union. Take banking, or the first element of a banking union; if it is supervisory, there is still marked disagreement on how, when, and so on. So the challenges of restoring competitiveness, restoring external balance, restoring growth, are significant, and therefore I still see a very risky road ahead for the eurozone.

Ian Bremmer: George Soros, you probably saw it, came out and basically told [Angela] Merkel that the Germans basically have to support growth or they have to leave the eurozone. And of course, the reality is that Merkel is going to do neither, and that's precisely why Nouriel's downside for continued poor-growth recession, lack of competitiveness across the eurozone, is going to persist, because the desire to fix these long-term structural problems of eurozone governance comes part and parcel with very strong, long-term austerity, which is causing very significant problems across all these peripheral states. As a political scientist, I actually see an interesting problem emerging: I'm quite optimistic, as I have been for some time, that the eurozone stays in place and, ultimately, that governance gets stronger. But what's interesting is that as that occurs, you are weakening national institutions in Europe. And you're not just weakening from the top; you're not just taking sovereignty away from many of these governments in terms of banking regulation and in terms of budgetary authority and fiscal authority; you're also undermining them from below because as you continue with this crushing austerity, you're leading to a situation where every incumbent gets voted out and extremist parties start popping up across Europe who are just disgusted with their national authority. So as you work toward fixing the structural economic imbalances in Europe -- or should I say the structural governance problems -- you may start creating some unsustainable political conflict across the continent.

FP: Where's the leadership going to come from? There's no longer Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and Britain's David Cameron is not interested in playing any sort of a leadership role.

NR: Well, the problem with faith in the eurozone is, of course, that you have 17 countries, 17 governments, 17 coalitions, and sometimes they don't agree even within a coalition, like in Germany, within CDU, CSU, and Free Democrats. So any process that leads to more EU integration, whether banking, fiscal, economic, political, is going to be very challenging and take a long period of time. At the same time, as you suggested, the top leaders, who believe much more strongly in this European integration, are not there anymore. I mean, Angela Merkel comes from East Germany. We'll have to see the views of the French Socialists. Some of them are more pro-European; some of them, like the current foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, who was against the referendum in 2005 in France -- he voted no -- is a little more skeptical. And so, in other parts of the world -- and I spoke recently with [José María] Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, he believes that there shouldn't be a greater union, that Europe should remain a union of separate sovereign states, certainly not the federal system. So there are marked disagreements, and certainly there is no leadership.

IB: And that lack of leadership plays out internationally as well. Historically, the Brits were very interested in having an outsized international diplomacy role. Increasingly, you look at Cameron, you look at [Foreign Secretary William] Hague -- these are folks who really are focused on the economic side of Britain and trying to be part of the global growth story, but not trying to play a significant geopolitical leadership role. Under Sarkozy, France was much more interested in that. That's not true under [French President François] Hollande. Germany is overwhelmingly focused -- yes, they certainly are taking on a great deal of leadership in terms of the way we think about European institutions, but beyond that, if you want to talk from an extra-European position, outside of Europe, as Kissinger said, there's still no address.

Is America Ready for a Male Secretary of State? - By John Norris

Foreign policy has long been one of the last great bastions of sexism. But as glass ceiling after glass ceiling is shattered in Washington, the time has come to ask when one of the last great barriers will be overcome: Is America ready for a male secretary of state?

From a theoretical standpoint, there is no real reason that a man couldn't do the job. But in the salons of Georgetown and the halls of Foggy Bottom, there continues to be a steady undercurrent of chatter that a man just wouldn't be up to it. Right or wrong, here are some of the justifications foreign-policy insiders cite when they make the case that appointing a man as the highest-ranking diplomat in the land would be an overreach.

First and foremost, many wonder whether a man would have the necessary endurance to do the job. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has visited more than 100 nations during her tenure, flown 897,951 miles, and spent 376 days abroad. By making it to 110 countries in just one term, Clinton broke the previous record for most countries visited by a secretary: 98, held by Madeleine Albright. And although Condoleezza Rice visited fewer countries, she did log more than a million miles in the air. Not many men can point to those kinds of frequent flyer miles.

But beyond just the raw stamina needed to robustly represent the United States at home and abroad, others wonder if a man would simply bring the same skills to the table as does a woman. In numerous studies, women have been ranked as more emotionally intelligent than men while enjoying a greater ability to empathize with their interlocutors. Both men and women consistently rate women as better listeners than men. While some level of stereotyping is likely at work in these findings, there is much to argue that women are more culturally attuned and adept at interpersonal skills than their male counterparts. What skills could be more important for a good diplomat?

The pro-women camp doesn't just hang its hat on the touchy-feely side of diplomacy. Certainly, when thinking about secretaries Clinton, Rice, and Albright, there are many who have questioned their policies and abilities from both the left and the right. That comes with the territory. But one would be hard-pressed to find someone who argued that any of these three secretaries was too soft for the job. I don't mean to be too blunt about it, but are there any men out there right now who would bring the same level of toughness to the position? Because of a desire for political correctness, can we risk appointing a man to this job when we are unsure if he will be tough enough to stand up to tyrants in Iran, North Korea, and Cuba?

It is also important to note that secretaries Albright, Rice, and Clinton have all been able to give total commitment to their jobs, at some level of personal sacrifice. Albright was divorced long before her diplomatic career reached the highest levels. Rice never married or had children. Clinton enjoys the relative freedom of being married to a former president of the United States, who is a very active globe-trotter himself. Putting it delicately, some wonder whether a man with more "traditional" family commitments simply would have the time, energy, and focus required to be fully effective as secretary of state. As many a family-minded man has learned, in the demanding and competitive world of modern diplomacy, you just can't have it all.

And there is the great intangible: star power. Is there any man out there right now who could inspire the "Texts from Hillary" feed that generated 45,000 followers on Tumblr in just a few days? Does anyone recall a senior male diplomat who is a good enough concert pianist that he would be comfortable performing for Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace the way Rice did in 2008? Can we imagine the Smithsonian displaying the accessories of a male diplomat and how they were used to deliver subtle but powerful diplomatic messages the way Albright used her pins and broaches?

Maybe as Mitt Romney struggles to gain traction in the presidential race, he will be tempted to engage in some classic special-interest politics and promise to appoint a man as secretary of state. The move would certainly be welcomed by American men who often feel aggrieved and underappreciated in the workplace. And certainly men remain an important minority when it comes to presidential voting (they constituted 46 percent of voters in the 2008 elections).

We just hope a man would be up to the task.

A New Model for Foreign Aid - By Daniel W. Yohannes

Critics often assert -- now more than ever -- that money spent on international development is money that is wasted. They argue that it's squandered on bad projects, that it bypasses the neediest or is spent in countries with governments that don't serve their people. But not all foreign aid is guaranteed -- and nor should it be. During these tough budget times, citizens across the world rightfully question the effectiveness of government spending, including funds spent on foreign assistance.

At the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent U.S. foreign aid agency with a global investment portfolio of more than $9.3 billion, we believe our assistance should be earned. Not only do we expect our investments to yield measurable returns, help the poor, and lead to sustainable private sector growth. We expect them to be matched by progress on a host of good governance benchmarks -- including accountability, protection of civil and political rights, and rule of law.

MCC is an integral part of the administration's comprehensive efforts to modernize U.S. development policies and programs, placing us at the forefront of foreign aid reform. And one of the most effective tools we have to carry out this mission is the ability to say "no."

Take, for example, our partnership with Malawi, a country with gross national income of only $330 per person. Our $350 million agreement in Malawi is expected to generate more than $2.2 billion in economic growth and benefit almost 6 million of the country's 15 million people by expanding access to electricity. The compact is a model for effective foreign assistance: It will incentivize needed policy reform, spur private investment, drive economic growth, benefit the poor, and create goodwill toward the United States.

The compact is also emblematic of effective U.S. foreign assistance in another important way -- it almost didn't happen. MCC suspended the compact in March because the Malawian government was not living up to its commitments to good governance. Only when the government proved through concrete actions and dramatic change that it was upholding the rights of its people did MCC decide to lift the suspension and go ahead with the investment in June.

Because of our demanding development model, we tell many countries "no" -- no to bad investments, no to corruption, no to backsliding on democratic rights, no to partnerships that fail to meet our strict selection standards.

At MCC, the power of no begins during our process of selecting potential partners. We evaluate the world's poorest countries against a set of 20 independent, third-party indicators that measure a country's commitment to ruling justly, investing in their people, and promoting economic freedom. Potential partners also must pass standards assessing corruption and democratic rights. Unfortunately, many of the world's poor countries simply do not pass the scorecard.

The Sino Stranglehold - By June Teufel Dreyer

Anti-Japanese riots aren't a new phenomenon in China, but the ongoing demonstrations across the country have surpassed previous outbreaks in both their extensiveness -- over a hundred cities -- and their perfervid declarations. One banner, hung over an Audi dealership, declared that the Japanese should be exterminated; another called for a nuclear strike on Tokyo; a woman's hospital featured a neon sign announcing that Japanese females would absolutely not be treated. The issue of sovereignty over the uninhabited islands, known as Diaoyu to the Chinese and Senkaku to the Japanese, sparked China's fevered response. Protestors threw eggs and water bottles at the Japanese embassy in Beijing; at least one city reportedly banned Japanese cars from its streets to protect their occupants; a television station in Guizhou province reportedly stopped airing commercials for Japanese businesses. Most worryingly, one of China's highest ranking military officials, vice-chair of the Central Military Commission Gen. Xu Caihou, told the People's Liberation Army to be prepared for combat.

Despite their intensity, these demonstrations, like the half-dozen that preceded them over the past 25 years, are abating. In the past, China has long been able to hold Japan's economy hostage after political disputes, and it is likely to get its way economically this time as well. The two economies are deeply interlinked; trade between them in 2011 was worth almost $350 billion. China is Japan's largest trading partner and absorbs just under a fifth of Japan's total exports; Japan is China's third-largest trading partner, after the European Union (EU) and the United States. China's economy, which overtook Japan's as the world's second largest in 2011, is expected to grow at the reduced but still healthy rate of more than 7.5 percent in 2012; Japan's economy by contrast could contract in the third quarter of this year.

Though it never recovered from the bursting of its economic bubble in 1990, Japan remained the world's second-largest economy until China edged it out of that spot in 2011. The triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown of March 2011 curtailed domestic auto production; disastrous floods in Thailand in October of that year closed Toyota, Nissan, and Honda factories. Shortages of power resulting from the shutdown of reactors and strong public sentiment for ending reliance on nuclear energy meant fuel shortages and higher electric bills. To make matters worse, the global economic downturn depressed demand for the country's exports, and a strong yen made Japanese products less competitive in world markets. In that same annus horribilus, Japan recorded its first trade deficit since 1981. Japan's exports to China had dropped 7.3 percent in 2011, not as bad as the 21.3 percent decline in those to the EU that same year, but worrisome nonetheless. Indeed, despite periodic frictions between Tokyo and Beijing, trade with China in 2011, and in the past decade, had been the brightest spot in the Japanese economy.

A boycott of Japanese goods has the potential to hurt Japan badly; the effects are difficult to calculate but likely in the billions of dollars. In 2002, Japan banned imports of Chinese onions, mushrooms, and rushes -- the latter used in the production of tatami mats for the floors of traditional Japanese homes. Beijing responded by suspending imports of Japanese cars, air conditioners, and cell phones. Japanese car manufacturers complained that the lost sales in autos would amount to roughly $3 billion in losses (according to the 2002 exchange rate), Japan capitulated eight months later.

The Spies Next Door - By Matthew M. Aid

The U.S. economy is stuck in the doldrums, but the intelligence business in America is booming. The 17 organizations that today comprise the U.S. intelligence community are all, to one degree or another, building new multimillion-dollar headquarters buildings and operational facilities all over the greater Washington metropolitan area despite recent budget cuts.

For example, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began construction last year on a brand-new headquarters complex on the grounds of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Anacostia, which formerly was a federally run psychiatric facility. When completed sometime in 2017, DHS intends to consolidate 40 of its offices that are currently spread throughout the Washington region in the new complex, including its own intelligence component and those of its subordinate agencies, like the intelligence staff of the U.S. Coast Guard.

On a per capita basis, there are more spies working in and around the Beltway than anywhere else in the world. Almost half of the 200,000 men and women who belong to the U.S. intelligence community work in Washington, as do several thousand foreign intelligence officers who operate openly from dozens of embassies and international organizations in the U.S. capital, trawling the landscape for secrets.

According to a 2001 report prepared by the General Services Administration (GSA), which owns or leases all U.S. government facilities, as of 9/11 the CIA had offices in 29 facilities spread throughout the District of Columbia, northern Virginia, and southern Maryland.* This did not include over a dozen covert safe houses, training facilities, and communications centers, as well as several large heavily guarded warehouses inside the GSA Stores Depot in Franconia, Virginia, where the agency stored its classified files, equipment, and supplies. And that was before the terrorist attacks that dramatically increased the intelligence community's post-Cold War role.

The same was true of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which the GSA report showed was operating from over a dozen sites in the Washington area. Among the more interesting FBI sites referred to in the GSA report was the Art Barn at 2401 Tilden Street in Northwest D.C., whose attic was filled with eavesdropping equipment during the Cold War so that the FBI could listen to the telephone calls of the Hungarian and Czech embassies across the street. The Art Barn's clandestine work became a matter of public record in the 1980s when the attic's floorboards collapsed, sending hundreds of pounds of the FBI's wiretapping equipment crashing down into the art gallery on the ground floor.

The facilities may have changed, but the intelligence community plays as big a role as ever in Washington, with many of its most important offices hiding in plain sight. Meet the spies next door:

 

* Correction: This sentence originally misstated the year the GSA report was published as 2011.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Golden Buddha, Hidden Copper - By Lois Parshley

Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan's Logar Province, boasts one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world. But it is also home to vast archeological ruins, including 5th century Buddhist monasteries and even older Bronze Age settlements. Preservationists -- working furiously to excavate the nearby ruins before they are buried under mining rubble -- have urged restraint in developing the copper deposits. But those focused on Afghanistan's economic development have urged the country to move full speed ahead, citing the dire need for the $1 trillion in revenue that the mine could bring to the impoverished country. Is the potential for economic growth worth more than the loss of cultural heritage?

Professor Brent E. Huffman, a documentary filmmaker and assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University who has been making a film at Mes Aynak, says there is little hope that much will be saved when the mining begins in earnest. Here, we take a an inside look at the 2,000 year-old Buddhas, temples, and other relics that could soon be destroyed. 

Above, an Afghan archaeologist drapes a fabric across the remains of Buddha statues discovered inside an ancient monastery in Mes Aynak on Nov. 23, 2010. 

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Violent demonstrations erupt across Pakistan

Protest day

Violent protests broke out across Pakistan Friday as the country marked a national holiday, entitled "love of Prophet Muhammad day," created to encourage peaceful protests of the anti-Islam film that has roiled the Muslim world for over a week (NYT, AP, ET, Dawn, Reuters, Tel, BBC). Police in Peshawar shot and killed a television station employee as he drove through a crowd of demonstrators armed with sticks, who were attacking movie theaters and burning posters of female movie stars. A police officer in Lahore died of his injuries after clashing with demonstrators who were attempting to march on the U.S. Consulate building there, and police in Islamabad quickly ran out of rubber bullets as they tried to repel thousands of protesters heading for the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. State Department has launched Urdu-language advertisements on Pakistani television channels condemning the incendiary film (Reuters, AP, AFP). Pakistan's Foreign Office summoned acting U.S. Ambassador Richard Hoagland on Friday to demand that the U.S. government remove the film from YouTube and take action against the people who produced it (Dawn).

A two-person United Nations investigative team pressed the Pakistani government to do more on the issue of forced disappearances on Thursday, at the end of a ten-day research trip during which the team met with government officials and around 100 people who say their relatives have been illegally detained by the government, and in some cases tortured or even killed (NYT, AP, Dawn). But the country's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and paramilitary Frontier Corps, which have been accused of being behind many of the disappearances, refused to meet with the UN delegates.

"Unsurge"

The U.S. military on Friday completed the withdrawal of the 33,000 "surge" troops ordered by President Barack Obama in December 2009, bringing the number of American forces left in Afghanistan to 68,000 (NYT, AFP). The milestone was not marked by a statement from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan or from the Afghans themselves.

Meanwhile, the Times reported Thursday that President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai made significant progress in resolving a dispute over the rules for indefinitely holding suspected terrorists without trial, during a video call on Wednesday night (NYT). President Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi said the two leaders "got very specific on the details regarding the 650-plus Afghan prisoners," who the U.S. military has refused to hand over to the Afghans for fear that they will not continue to be held without trial.

President Karzai made changes to the leadership of almost a third Afghanistan's 34 provinces on Thursday, including the firing of five provincial governors, as part of a decree issued by Karzai two months ago to crack down on nepotism and corruption (Reuters). The changes likely replace powerful local leaders with ones more loyal to the Karzai regime.

Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool complained to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that the shelling of Afghan villages by Pakistan's Army threatens bilateral relations between the two countries, and must be stopped (Reuters).

Display of civilizations

As a Western-made anti-Islam film sparks outrage across the Muslim world, the Louvre Museum in Paris will open a new wing dedicated entirely to Islamic art this weekend (BBC). Over a decade in the making, the exhibit was funded in part by the French government, and contains some 2,500 objects from multiple centuries and regions.

-- Jennifer Rowland

China's Brainwashed Youth - By Qi Ge

SHANGHAI ' Ever since the 1970s, I have known that the Chinese people are the freest and most democratic people in the world. Each year at my elementary school in Shanghai, the teachers mentioned this fact repeatedly in ethics and politics classes. Our textbooks, feigning innocence, asked us if freedom and democracy in capitalist countries could really be what they proclaimed it to be. Then there would be all kinds of strange logic and unsourced examples, but because I always counted silently to myself in those classes instead of paying attention, the government's project was basically wasted on me. By secondary school and college, my mind was unusually hard to brainwash.

Even so, during my college years, I still hated Japan. I felt that the Japanese had killed so many of my countrymen, the vast majority of them civilians, that it wasn't enough that they had eventually surrendered. It was only after studying Japanese and reading additional historical materials that I gradually understood the true face of history: When the Japanese army invaded China in 1931, Mao Zedong, in those days still a guerrilla fighter, turned and ran. Chiang Kai-shek, China's nominal president at the time, stayed behind to fight the Japanese in his wartime capital of Chongqing, but Mao's Communist Party fled to the north to establish a base of anti-Japanese resistance in the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia, where there was no Japanese army at all.

Today's youth are repeating the same growth experience I had, but unlike my generation, whose hatred of Japan remained at the verbal level, they have taken the streets to demonstrate.

Even though China's constitution permits demonstrations, the government prohibits them except in special circumstances. Anyone familiar with Chinese history knows that when Chinese law says one thing, it might mean the opposite. For example, Chinese law says that everyone is equal before the law, but in fact Hu Jintao and his colleagues are more equal than everyone else.

So, Chinese young people today ought to thank the Japanese government, for if it hadn't purchased the Diaoyu Islands, the Chinese government wouldn't have opened the net a little, allowing them to take to the streets last week. The demonstrators chanted monotonous and boring slogans, like telling the Japanese to get the hell out of the Diaoyu Islands; plainclothes cops intermingled with the marchers, keeping in nervous contact through their earpieces. Protesters even carried images of Mao, who died in 1976, though I wish he had died much earlier.

Many of the young marchers were terribly excited. For decades, TV shows about the Anti-Japanese War of 1931-1945 had distorted historical facts and turned the Japanese into a stupid, aggressive, cruel race of cockroaches that needed to be exterminated. Amusingly, the Chinese actors portraying those Japanese devils only spoke Chinese, bowing and scraping shamelessly, their every move no different from those of corrupt officials throughout China today.

Know Your Ansar al-Sharia - By Aaron Y. Zelin

There is a new trend sweeping the world of jihadism. Instead of adopting unique names, groups increasingly prefer to call themselves ansar, Arabic for "supporters." In many cases, they style themselves Ansar al-Sharia -- supporters of Islamic law -- emphasizing their desire to establish Islamic states. Yet despite the fact that these groups share a name and an ideology, they lack a unified command structure or even a bandleader like the central al Qaeda command (or what's left of it), thought to be based in Pakistan. They are fighting in different lands using different means, but all for the same end, an approach better suited for the vagaries born of the Arab uprisings.

The name Ansar al-Sharia shot into the news last week in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, when the local organization Katibat Ansar al-Sharia was accused of perpetrating it -- charges the group denied. Many reports seem to have confused Benghazi's Ansar al-Sharia with another Libyan group, based in Derna.

The naming trend actually started in Yemen, when al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the powerful and ambitious local al Qaeda branch, established the front group Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen in April 2011. It is possible this was born out of Osama bin Laden's musings over whether to rebrand al Qaeda. None of the names in the documents captured from the late al Qaeda leader's compound mentioned Ansar al-Sharia as a potential example, however. More recently, one of the preeminent global jihadi ideologues, Shaykh Abu al-Mundhir al-Shinqiti, put his stamp of approval on the new wave of Ansar al-Sharia groups.

Shinqiti, who is of Mauritanian origin, published an article in mid-June titled "We Are Ansar al-Sharia," calling Muslims to establish their own dawa (missionary) Ansar al-Sharia groups in their respective countries and then to unite into one conglomerate. It should be noted that most of the Ansar al-Sharia groups were already created beforehand. The most prominent of these organizations are the ones in Yemen, Tunisia, and Libya, along with newer versions in Egypt and Morocco to a lesser extent.

The rise of these Ansar al-Sharia groups points to an end of al Qaeda's unipolar global jihad of the past decade and a return to a multipolar jihadosphere, similar to the 1990s. One key difference, however is that jihadi groups are now more ideologically homogenous -- in the 1990s, jihadis thought locally and acted locally, while many now talk globally and act locally. These newer groups are also more interested in providing services and governance to their fellow Muslims.

Distinguishing between these differing groups is crucial for better understanding the new landscape of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the trajectory of new salafi-jihadi groups that are not necessarily beholden to al Qaeda's strategies or tactics. Although there are no known formal or operational links between these disparate organizations, it is possible they may try to link up in the future based on ideological affinity and similar end goals. For now, though, conflating them would be premature. Here's a guide to the major groups going by this name.

The Revolution in Tunisia Stalls - By Fadil Aliriza

Tunisia has made international headlines again with the recent storming of the U.S. Embassy by ultraconservative Islamists. Observers and commentators have tried to explain the events and the rage behind them, the attackers' high level of organization, and the government's inadequate security response and late condemnation. At least one part of that explanation lies in the fact that the Tunisian people are, yet again, disappointed with their government, and a dysfunctional political process has failed to address the core concerns of citizens.

Tunisians took to the streets in late December 2010 and early January 2011 calling for the end of an authoritarian regime responsible for vast income inequality, widespread unemployment, crippling corruption, and a draconian police state apparatus. Despite the glory of a revolution paid for with the blood of many young people, culminating in the triumph of democratic elections, all of these problems persist. Meanwhile polls show that Tunisians believe their elected officials have accomplished nothing.

Promises to develop Tunisia's long-neglected interior have seen half-hearted implementation, and unemployment is higher now than it was prior to the revolution. Promises to clean up corruption have proven to be empty as the government's transitional justice minister claims he is not responsible for the problem. Opposition parties charge that efforts to create a Temporary Judicial Commission are merely an attempt by the governing Islamist Ennahdha party to exert undue political control over the judicial system. Though the worst forms of police abuse were stopped following the revolution, promises to reform the security forces have fallen short as old tactics and old figures re-emerge.

So what went wrong?

Tunisia's popular revolution aimed to create a government that would stand in stark contrast to the previous one in terms of professionalism and transparency. But so far Tunisians are still waiting. The constituent assembly, tasked with writing a new constitution, has not published minutes of any meetings in either committee or plenary sessions. In addition, voting records and attendance have not been revealed, although observers note that only five or ten of the 20-member drafting commissions attended regularly. Absenteeism has been particularly prevalent amongst opposition parties, partly because some do not take their jobs seriously and partly because some want to see Ennahdha fail, according to several observers who are closely watching the process.

Part of this reflects a cultural legacy, according to Mabrouka M'barek, an assembly member from governing coalition's Congress for the Republic Party (CPR). "I was the first to start live-tweeting the assembly sessions," says M'barek. "My colleagues didn't understand what I was doing. They told me I was exposing state secrets. I said, 'No, this is the constitution, which concerns all citizens.'

Commandos for Jesus - By Daniel Lovering

At a military training camp in the lush mountains of northern Burma, a lean, square-jawed American stood at the front of a makeshift classroom adorned with the flags of the Kachin Independence Army. Before him sat dozens of recruits from the ethnic insurgent army and other groups opposed to the central government, controlled until recently by a ruthless military regime. They listened intently from behind small wooden desks, dressed in billowy fatigues and matching green T-shirts. A sign high above them read: "Our fighting ability will be determined by how we train our leaders."

Doug, a second-generation American missionary and former Green Beret, wore a dark green baseball cap, shorts, and a snug black T-shirt emblazoned with insignias modeled after those of the U.S. Army Rangers, but inscribed with the words "Free Burma Rangers." He had come with his Christian-led organization to Kachin State, a resource-rich corner of Burma abutting China, at the behest of local rebel leaders. In June 2011, renewed fighting in the area had ended a 17-year ceasefire between the ethnic rebels and the central government.

"We are here because we all love freedom," he said, his voice reverberating off the walls of the hangar-like building. "Who gave us freedom? Where does it come from? God! God gave us freedom because he loves us."

The students, who ranged in age from 19 to 50, had already completed weeks of training at the camp near the busy border town of Laiza. The Free Burma Rangers aimed to teach them to deliver aid to civilians in remote jungle hamlets, while simultaneously evading and reporting on the Burmese army. Some students had traveled from other parts of the country, officially known as Myanmar, to learn how to use a GPS in the jungle; swim across a river with an improvised flotation device; shoot video and write reports; rappel from a bridge; treat villagers for wounds, malaria, and dysentery; and gingerly locate and remove land mines from the soil.

There is ample need for such skills: Human rights groups have long accused the Burmese military, which ruled the country for decades and engaged in the world's longest-running civil war, of abuses such as forced labor and rape.

Many of the students' instructors were Christian missionaries from the United States, among them a doctor from Michigan, a former Navy Seabee from Oregon, and a software engineer from Wisconsin. Doug himself is a former U.S. Army Ranger who had also served with the Special Forces, advising foreign militaries in Central and South America in the 1980s. He had arrived to join the students for the final phase of their training -- a two-week mission along the front line of the conflict, where rebel and Burmese soldiers eyed each other uneasily from foxholes and trenches on opposing mountaintops.

The students would test their new skills by helping some of the estimated 75,000 civilians who had fled their villages and flocked to camps along the border. They would also creep through the jungle and peer through binoculars at Burmese army camps during reconnaissance forays.

"Have no doubt, you're here for the right reason, for freedom," Doug continued. (He and the other Westerners in the group asked to be granted anonymity due to security concerns.) "In this training, learn everything you can; when you go to the front line, you will be the hero."

What Happens When the Lights Go Out in Karachi? - By Shamila N. Chaudhary

Since 2001, U.S. dealings with Pakistan have been guided primarily by security concerns -- and with Hina Rabbani Khar traveling to Washington for the first time as Pakistan's foreign minister this week, the buzz about Afghanistan, terrorism, and security is unlikely to abate. Indeed, the last time a Pakistani foreign minister visited Washington, Richard Holbrooke, then the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, felt compelled to remind Americans that "We don't work with Pakistan because of Afghanistan. We work with Pakistan because of Pakistan itself." It was hardly true in 2010 and it's even less true now. The possibility of working with Pakistan for its own sake remains overshadowed by the war in Afghanistan -- and will likely remain so even after NATO withdraws in 2014 given the negative security outlook

The preoccupation with security persists because the stakes are so high: the security of the U.S. homeland, stability on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and the future of U.S.-Pakistan relations -- the latter, of course, being an important determinant of the first two. Because of this, the dialogue on security should continue, but it has distracted us from other circumstances that are potentially more devastating for long-term stability in Pakistan and which also have broader implications for U.S. national security. For those of you planning to attend one of the events featuring Foreign Minister Khar in Washington or New York, consider asking her about something other than the Haqqani network, al Qaeda, or the Taliban. Below are three non-Afghanistan questions to ask the foreign minister; they keep real Pakistanis up at night, and they all affect U.S. interests.

1. Why is Pakistan a hotbed of religious extremism?

Pakistan, like many other Muslim countries, is experiencing a growing trend towards more conservative religious practice. This alone is not cause for concern, but it does mean the political space for secular and progressive interpretation of law, culture, and social behavior is shrinking. Just in the past month, gunmen pulled several Shiites off a bus in Quetta and shot them; Hindus fled Pakistan for India claiming persecution; and a fourteen-year-old Christian girl was jailed on false blasphemy claims. In an incident earlier this month at a McDonald's in Karachi, an employee objected to a married couple sitting side-by-side because it broke the rules. (The manager confirmed that such behavior was against the restaurant's policy on Islamic family atmosphere.) Maybe the owner of McDonald's Pakistan is an über fundamentalist trying to convert wayward Pakistanis one Big Mac at a time or maybe the franchise simply wants to avoid being targeted by violent extremists who deem such behavior inappropriate. Either way, it's a distressing sign of the times.

We can't blame the Pakistani Taliban alone for the rise of extremism throughout the country. Others responsible for fanning the flames include the militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, the pan-Islamist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and religious political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami. But the real question is not who, but why? Some say it's because moderate Muslims are unwilling to speak out against militancy. Others believe jihadist ideology justifies violence. A more controversial view holds Pakistan's legal system responsible for empowering extremists. The trend is a dangerous one where violence is regularly used as retribution for being on the wrong side of politics or religion. The United States could sit back and ignore much of this -- conservative social mores and attacks on religious minorities don't immediately impact its priorities in Pakistan. But the further the pendulum swings to the right, the more challenged U.S.-Pakistan relations will be since railing against the United States is a favorite pastime of violent extremists. Furthermore, the weak civilian government in Pakistan will be in no position to challenge ascendant extremists -- either out of fear of retribution or because of election-year political pressures.

2. Why has Karachi become a killing field? 

While Washington has been obsessing about the Haqqani network, Karachi has become a killing field. The problems of the megalopolis do not seem to worry U.S. policymakers -- but they should. Karachi is one of the world's largest and most dangerous cities. The problems of its population, estimated to be anywhere from 14-20 million strong, are representative of the country's broader struggle to address changing demographic patterns.

Just take Karachi's changing ethnic composition and city politics -- a root cause of rising violence -- as an example. Mohajirs -- migrants from northern India -- have traditionally dominated Karachi's politics and economy through the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), a secular political party with liberal positions on many social and political issues. The 1998 census listed Karachi's Mohajir population at roughly 50 percent. In the mid-2000s, the balance of power shifted with the influx of Pashtuns, who now represent an estimated 20-25 percent of the city's total population. This influx enabled the rise of the Pashtun nationalist Awami Nationalist Party, which, along with the Pakistan People's Party, has sought to carve off a greater share of the revenues from Karachi's enormous informal sector, which some unofficial sources estimate at $1 billion.

Senseless - By Newt Gingrich and John A. McCallum

This past week, the United States commemorated the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With those memories fresh in our mind we were confronted with the news that our sovereign embassy in Egypt and consulate in Libya were attacked on the very day of one of America's greatest tragedies.

The morning following the attack, President Barack Obama made a remarkable statement that has gone largely unexamined. Buried within his initial comments, Obama said the following: "While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants."

The president's statement is remarkable for both the sequence of the thoughts expressed and the careful wording of the remarks. Why does the president feel the obligation to soothe the feelings of the offended religious groups in the context of expressing condolences to the families of the individuals who have been killed?

There is no moral equivalency between an alleged offense to religious sensibility and the murder of a U.S. diplomat. Our sovereign embassy and consulate were attacked on the anniversary of 9/11, and a U.S. ambassador and several staff members were executed. Neither the United States nor its diplomatic staff had anything to do with the alleged religious insult, and our outrage at the actions of the murderers should trump any effort to placate a religious insult committed by an amateurish film.

While the sequencing of the president's thoughts is concerning, his remarks are more troubling when one pauses to examine how carefully they were worded. If one reads his comments more closely, the president does not actually condemn anyone for the ambassador's murder -- nor does he even call it "murder." The president blames the attack on the ambiguous and impersonal notion of "senseless violence" that somehow "took the lives" of our countrymen. Whom is Obama talking to? Does he believe that the American people accept the fact that the murder of an ambassador, a Foreign Service officer, and two U.S. security personnel on the anniversary of 9/11 were merely acts of "senseless violence"?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the following statement shortly after the president's: "We condemn in the strongest terms this senseless act of violence, and we send our prayers to the families, friends, and colleagues of those we've lost."

There it is again. The culprit in this tragedy is not a radical terrorist ideology that seeks to harm America, but instead the soft, ambiguous villain of "senseless violence." The use of this phrase by both the president and secretary of state is not accidental -- it's a reflection of the unwillingness of the administration to name our enemies.

It is important to understand the context of how we have arrived at the current crossroads.

Obama undertook a world peace tour before he was elected, and we were assured that his rhetorical skills would convince radicals of various stripes to lay down their arms -- North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, and the like. President George W. Bush was, after all, a warmonger. Obama would be able to persuade Pyongyang and Tehran to abandon their nuclear ambitions once he was able to convince them that he appreciated the fact that it was U.S. aggression that had forced these countries to acquire such weapons in the first place.

Has the president's rhetoric convinced these regimes to abandon their weapons programs?