After the Floods - An FP Slide Show

Last night, the news from the New York metro area sounded apocalyptic: Water flooding the subways, cranes falling, a blakcout over lower Manhattan, and nuclear power plants forced to partially shut down. Today, as the flood waters recede and the rain begins to lighten, people are venturing outside and beginning to evaluate the damage. Hurricane Sandy was devastating by any measure, but beleaguered New Yorkers can take comfort: It could have been worse. Here's a look at some of the world's most devastating storms this year, often in places far less equipped to handle severe weather.

Above, a man and his family sit in front of their flooded home in Adagama town in Ughelli in the oil rich Niger delta region of Nigeria, on Oct. 13. Recent floods in the region, which have been the worst in decades, killed over 140 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The disaster could also yet spark a food crisis. 

EPA/GEORGE ESIRII

Nightmare on Nuke Street - By Jeffrey Lewis

October is a scary month. And it's not just Halloween. October also happens to be the anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And if the ghosts and goblins don't make you wet your pants, the thought of Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Castro dancing on the edge of nuclear war should.

During the Cold War, the United States twice more raised the alert status of its nuclear forces -- in October 1969 and October 1973. And one of the worst reactor accidents at a military program -- the fire at Britain's Windscale reactor -- also happened in October.

You might start to think there is something particularly dangerous about October. But the reality is that there have been so many accidents, false alarms, and other mishaps involving nuclear weapons that you haven't heard about -- and every month contains at least one seriously scary incident. The Department of Defense has released narrative summaries for 32 accidents involving nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1980, many of which involve aircraft bearing bombs. False alarms? Please. The Department of Defense admitted 1,152 "moderately serious" false alarms between 1977 and 1984 -- roughly three a week. (I love the phrase "moderately serious." I wonder how many "seriously serious" false alarms they had?) I kind of get the feeling that if NORAD went more than a week without a serious false alarm, they would start to wonder if the computers were ok.

The hard part was choosing the most frightening moments. There is no reason to believe the apocryphal story about the British Army choosing red uniforms because they do not show blood. But after 60-odd years of nuclear accidents, incidents, and whatnot, I can recommend that the STRATCOM commander consider brown pants.

So, here's my list of 12 seriously scary events, one for each month. This list is not comprehensive, nor is it intended to be the worst events. And yes, it's written with a dark sense of humor, but you'd have to be very jocose not to ask some serious questions.

How responsible are the people who make decisions about our nuclear weapons? Have they been good stewards both of the weapons themselves and our trust? Why don't we discuss these accidents and mishaps more? Is it because taking seriously the danger that nuclear weapons pose to humanity is uncomfortably akin to activism of the nuclear freeze? Are human beings, fallible as we are, just too imperfect to rely on something as destructive as nuclear weapons to keep the peace? (A lot depends on how you view what Scott Sagan, our foremost scholar of nuclear accidents, labels "close calls.") Are we to be comforted by the fact that, for all the hair-raising moments, we've somehow made it through intact? Or should we be frightened by how little stood between us and catastrophe?

A Tale of Two Asias - Evan A. Feigenbaum and Robert A. Manning

Whatever happened to the "Asian Century?" In recent months, two Asias, wholly incompatible, have emerged in stark relief.

There is "Economic Asia," the Dr. Jekyll -- a dynamic, integrated Asia with 53 percent of its trade now being conducted within the region itself, and a $19 trillion regional economy that has become an engine of global growth.

And then there is "Security Asia," the veritable Mr. Hyde -- a dysfunctional region of mistrustful powers, prone to nationalism and irredentism, escalating their territorial disputes over tiny rocks and shoals, and arming for conflict.

In today's Asia, economics and security no longer run in parallel lines. In fact, they are almost completely in collision.

In the one domain, Asian economies have come in recent years to depend increasingly on China -- and one another -- for trade, investment, and markets. And this trend toward regional economic integration has been reinforced over the last four years by austerity in Europe and slow growth in the United States. But these same economies now trade nationalist barbs, build navies, and acquire new arms and power projection capabilities. With the exception of China, all major Asian states, though their economies are increasingly integrated within Asia, are tacking hard across the Pacific toward the United States for their security.

So much for the new East Asian community of which many in Asia have dreamed.

What explains the change? Put bluntly, Economic Asia and Security Asia have become increasingly irreconcilable. But where Economic Asia was winning the contest in the decade and a half after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, Security Asia has begun to overwhelm those recent trends.

Indeed, so powerful was the rise of Economic Asia that it had challenged even the longstanding American role in the region. Intra-Asian trade and investment took off fast with the end of the Cold War, but Asia's growing web of economic and political connections was particularly reinforced by the 1997-98 financial crisis, which hit hardest in places like Indonesia and Thailand. Across the region, elites came to view the United States as arrogant and aloof, and groped for their own solutions to regional economic challenges. The United States, which bailed out Mexico in 1994, refused to bail out Thailand just three years later, fueling perceptions that it neglected Southeast Asia. To many in Asia, Washington appeared to be dictating clichéd solutions. And, in the ensuing years, preferential trade agreements, regionally based regulations and standards, and institutions created without American involvement advanced. These have threatened to marginalize the United States over time.

But after two years of nationalistic rhetoric over rocks and islets in the East and South China Seas, Security Asia has roared back. Rampant and competing 19th and 20th-century nationalisms have moved again to the fore as pathologies that seemed frozen in time raise the specter of renewed conflict. A recent study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that defense spending in China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Taiwan has doubled in the past decade, reaching $224 billion last year. Asians have worked for decades to develop a pan-Asian identity and enhance their collective clout in the global system. But economic integration has thus far yielded no basis for collective or cooperative security in the Pacific. Instead, the world's new center of economic gravity looks fragile and conflicted.

Politics Unbound?

Could Security Asia actually overwhelm, or even destroy, the economic gains that were beginning to pull the region away from its debilitating past? Some have argued that this is a temporary phenomenon -- a cynical ploy by Asia's politicians to build support at a time of domestic weakness.

But it is too easy to write off these recent developments as the product of domestic politics. Yes, China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, among others, are focused on internal economic or political developments. Seoul, for example, is in the midst of a presidential campaign. Japan's governing party faces a stiff test, and probable defeat, at the hands of a resurgent Liberal Democratic Party next year. China is in the midst of a once-in-a-decade political succession, and, what is more, Beijing has hit the upper limit of its existing growth model, which is delivering diminishing returns and threatens to become a major political vulnerability for the government. Vietnam and others in Southeast Asia face domestic pressures to supercharge their economies and reinvigorate reforms.

Yet while it is true that popular chauvinism is a useful tactic for Asia's beleaguered politicians, such tactics will yield significant costs and enduring damage. Nor are such passions easily turned on and off. Economic and political nationalism is deeply rooted in all Asian countries. It will survive and thrive even after these various political transitions are complete.

Just take the Vietnam-China relationship. Nayan Chanda wrote in his classic history of Indochina, Brother Enemy, that events after the fall of Saigon demonstrated that "Instead of being the cutting edge of Chinese Communist expansion in Asia that U.S. planners had anticipated, Vietnam proved to be China's most bitter rival and foe."

Syrians Are War Correspondents, Too

Dear Mr. Anderson,

I read "Running Toward Danger" yesterday and I had to tell you how much it moved me. Syria is being ripped to shreds, the people are suffering, and the cities are being destroyed. We didn't expect this degree of ruthlessness as a response to the people's demands for freedom after 40 years of Assad tyranny, but as we know well, freedom is not free.

Your thoughts on war correspondents sacrificing everything for the truth applies not only to the brave journalists like Austin and Marie and Anthony and the dozens of journalists inside Syria now, but also to the Syrian men and women who stood behind the cameras, documenting the truth. We have lost dozens of citizen journalists in this revolution. Young men who were students, employees, fathers one day and became threatening targets the next day because of their cell phones, cameras, and laptops. They knew Syrians have been silent too long. Last year, they decided to never cover up Assad's crimes with silence again. And they are paying a heavy price for it.

I don't know what my dead friends would have answered your question, "Was it worth it?" But I do know what the ones who are alive and still film and photograph in Homs, Aleppo, Hama, Idleb, Daraa, and across Syria would say to the question, "Is it worth it to die for your camera?" They would say, "Yes." Because they know for the first time in their lives, their voice matters and they are doing the most important job, to tell the truth while so many are telling lies. Telling the truth, in a way, has become even more important than freedom. It's the road to freedom.

I've been writing about the revolution since the beginning. I didn't expect to take on the role I now have when I began; telling my stories evolved into telling Syria's stories. I only cared about one thing: telling the truth. Sometimes it seems like an impossible task. And many times the truth hurts. But we have to keep going and hope that what's good in the people prevails over the evil.

When I read your piece, I remembered Anthony Shadid, a journalist who changed my life, and how much I miss his voice of truth. And I thought of Austin too. I pray he is safe and will return to his family soon.

Most of all, I wanted to tell you that your words made a difference to me. God bless you.

With much respect,
Amal

Why Iran Wants to Attack the United States - By Matthew Levitt

An Iranian-American used car salesman pleaded guilty this month to conspiring with Iranian agents to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Mansour Arbabsiar's guilty plea would appear to be the end of this story, but in truth it raises more questions than it answers.

The facts were never really in dispute. U.S. officials learned of the plot early on and built an airtight case. The assassin Arbabsiar tried to hire was in fact a DEA informant. Once arrested, Arbabsiar confessed. At the direction of law enforcement, he then called his cousin and Quds Force handler, Gholam Shakuri. With agents listening, Shakuri insisted Arbabsiar go ahead with the plot. "Just do it quickly. It's late."

But why was the Quds Force, which had earned a reputation for operational prowess even among its enemies, so eager to move forward with an obviously flawed operation? Arbabsiar appears to have been a weak character who "wants to be important," as a government-retained psychiatrist determined. He was drawn into the plot by his cousin, a general in the Quds Force, the arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for external operations. So the real question is: What was the Quds Force thinking?

According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the plot "shows that some Iranian officials -- probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime."

This new calculus, intelligence officials believe, dates back to January 2010, when the Quds Force decided that it and Hezbollah, its primary terrorist proxy, would embark on a new campaign of violence targeting not only Israel but U.S. and other Western targets as well.

In the wake of last July's attack on Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian city of Burgas, a barrage of journalists called asking me to explain the logic of the attack.  I was finishing a book on Hezbollah -- Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God, due out next year -- but still could not easily place the attack within Hezbollah's established modus operandi. The more I thought about it, the more perplexed I became. So, much to my editor's dismay, I stepped away from my keyboard long enough to meet with diplomats and intelligence and military officials from several countries to try and make sense of the new trend of Shia extremist attacks tied to Iran and its proxies.  Here is what I have come to understand.

To understand the decision Iran made in January 2010 to engage in a new campaign of violence, one must hark back to the February 2008 assassination of Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, who was allegedly responsible for the 1984 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, and numerous other attacks. Following Mughniyeh's death in Damascus, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for an "open war" on Israel. "The blood of Imad Mughniyeh will make them [Israel] withdraw from existence," Nasrallah vowed.

Within weeks, Hezbollah would attempt the first of several failed and foiled plots -- a series of simultaneous car bombings around the Israeli and U.S. embassies, the kidnapping of the Israeli ambassador, and blowing up a radar tower in Baku, Azerbaijan -- intended to make good on Nasrallah's threat. Several additional plots were foiled, leading the Quds Force to partner with Hezbollah and provide extensive logistical support for a large-scale bombing in Turkey in fall 2009. Turkish authorities disrupted a plot in which Hezbollah and Iranian agents posing as tourists intended to attack Israeli and possibly American and local Jewish targets. According to one account, a cell led by Abbas Hossein Zakr was looking to strike Israeli tourists, Israeli ships or airplanes, or synagogues in Turkey. Turkish police arrested Hezbollah operatives who reportedly smuggled a car bomb into the country from Syria while Quds Force agents left the country posing as tourists.

Winds of Change - By Ty McCormick

Hurricane Sandy's pummeling of the eastern United States has already thrown the presidential campaign off course and disrupted early voting in several states, but could she be the deciding factor in this election? Political scientists have found that bad weather on Election Day typically benefits Republicans, but how much Sandy will affect voter turnout on November 6 remains a mystery. The same can be said of the potential political fallout from the storm. Will President Barack Obama look strong and commander-in-chief-like as he stares down the hurricane, as Sen. John McCain suggested in a recent interview? Or could inadequate disaster relief leave the president mired in a Katrina moment just as voters head to the polls?

If Sandy swings this election one way or the other, it wouldn't be the first time bad weather proved historically decisive. From the French Revolution to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, meteorological events have made all the difference. Here's a list of six storms that altered the course of history.

DIVINE WINDS

The Mongols may have ruled the largest contiguous empire in human history -- at its height, it dominated a quarter of the earth's population -- but they failed twice to bring Japan to its knees. On both occasions (in 1274 and 1281), the invading Mongolian fleets were thrashed by powerful typhoons and suffered heavy losses. In the second invasion, some 80 percent of Kublai Khan's hastily built warships sank during a two-day storm, known in Japan as "kamikaze" or "divine wind." In the popular mythology of the time, Raijin, the god of thunder, was said to have stirred up the divine wind and shielded Japan from the Mongols. Some 660 years later, kamikaze would take on another meaning, becoming synonymous with the suicide attacks carried out by the Japanese during World War II.

SUNKEN ARMADA

In 1588, the "invincible" Spanish Armada of 130 ships set sail to attack the English Channel, but was delayed by a series of storms that forced the fleet back to Lisbon. When the Spanish fleet finally arrived two months later, the British Navy, led by Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake, had regrouped and was able to mount a spirited defense of the Channel. Disorganized and battered by British artillery, the Armada retreated and began the treacherous journey back to Spain. Along the way, the leading Spanish ships were rocked by a cyclonic depression off the Bay of Biscay and, three days later, the rearmost ships were battered on the rocks off the shores of Ireland. In total, the Spanish lost more ships in bad weather than in combat with the British.

PARIS HAILSTORM

If the opulence of the royal court at Versailles and France's increasingly shaky financial situation were at the root of the revolution of 1789, perhaps so was the weather. Beginning in 1785, a series of bad harvests -- possibly the result of volcanic eruptions in Iceland that shifted weather patterns -- contributed to food shortages that roiled an already restive underclass. But the final straw was quite possibly a hailstorm in May 1788 that destroyed crops in a 150-mile radius around Paris, sending grain prices through the roof. Ten months later, following the failed meeting of the Estates-General and the formation of a breakaway National Assembly, the French Revolution was underway.

BHOLA CYCLONE

The Great Bhola cyclone wasn't particularly strong by historical standards -- it may not have even been the strongest gale to strike the Indian Ocean in 1970 -- but its fateful timing and unlucky course through the densely populated Ganges Delta of East Pakistan made it the deadliest cyclonic storm ever. Carrying 115 mile per hour winds, it destroyed crops and razed entire villages, leaving roughly half a million people dead when all was said and done. Relations between Pakistan and its disconnected easternmost province were already strained before the storm, but the Pakistani government's handling of the Bhola cyclone caused the tensions to boil over into violent anti-government protests and, by 1971, civil war. Nine bloody months later, Bangladeshis had won their independence from Pakistan.

Me and My Censor - by Eveline Chao

My first day of work in Beijing, my boss asked if I knew the "Three Ts."

I did not. It was February 2007, and I was a wide-eyed 26 year-old fresh off the plane from New York, struggling to absorb the deluge of strange information that had hit me since arriving.

The Three Ts, he informed me, were the three most taboo topics to avoid in Chinese media -- Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. My boss was Taiwanese himself, and delivered this information with a wry tone of bemusement. He had been doing business here for nearly 30 years, he had said, since China first began opening its economy to the outside world, and had witnessed a lot.

"You'll hear more about it from our censor," he said, and then, having inserted that tantalizing fragment into my head, sent me off to begin my new job.

For the next two years, I served as an editor, then managing editor, of an English-language business magazine called China International Business. The editorial staff was comprised of, at various times, two to four American and British editors, and two or three Chinese writers and research assistants. Supposedly, we had a print circulation of 45,000, though nobody I talked to had ever heard of us. In theory, there was a website too, but it was perennially under construction and, since the guy in charge of it didn't actually speak English, never quite readable. We ran briefs on current events; profiled businesses in China; interviewed executives of international companies with a presence in the country, like Crocs and Calvin Klein; and also did long analytical pieces spotlighting industries ranging from coal to lingerie to frozen foods. Our audience was mostly expat businesspeople in China; hence, in addition to being available by subscription, we were distributed in five-star hotels, international schools, and other expat enclaves.

Technically, we were the only officially sanctioned English-language business publication in mainland China. There were a handful of other English-language magazines in town, mostly listings and entertainment mags along the lines of Time Out. These were usually founded by foreigners who'd partnered up with private Chinese companies to secure a license from the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), which oversees print publications in China. Unlike them, we were published not just under the umbrella of the publisher's private media company, but also in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOMM). In other words, the government wanted us there.

Like any editor in the United States, I tweaked articles, butted heads with the sales department, and tried to extract interesting quotes out of boring people. Unlike my American counterparts, however, I was offered red envelopes stuffed with cash at press junkets, sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work, and had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online. I also liaised with our government censor.

Jobs like this are practically a rite of passage for young, aspiring writers in China who also happen to be native English speakers (and who are trying to avoid teaching English, the default job for most Westerners in Asia). Most start out as copyeditors at state-owned papers like China Daily, correcting the English on articles by Chinese reporters, and often making $1500 a month -- enough to live comfortably in Beijing in the first decade of the 21st century (and two or three times the amount of native colleagues with decades' more work experience). I myself was hired as a copyeditor with no prior magazine experience (though I'd worked in book publishing in New York), promoted to editor two months later, then another eight months later found myself running the show as managing editor, at the ripe old age of 28. This was a fairly normal career trajectory in China. Despite the title on my business card, however, I was always technically an "English language consultant" -- no foreigners are allowed to direct editorial content in Chinese media. Our censor got pride of place on the masthead, with title of managing editor.

Every legally registered publication in China is subject to review by a censor, sometimes several. Some expat publications have entire teams of censors scouring their otherwise innocuous restaurant reviews and bar write-ups for, depending on one's opinion of foreigners, accidental or coded allusions to sensitive topics. For example, That's Shanghai magazine once had to strike the number 64 from a short, unrelated article because their censors believed it might be read as an oblique reference to June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government bloodily suppressed a pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. Many Chinese-run publications have no censor at all, but their editors are relied upon to know where the line falls -- i.e., to self-censor.

Our censor, an employee of MOFCOMM, was a nervous, flighty woman in her forties with long, frizzy hair and a high, childlike voice, whose name was Snow. (Snow requested I only use her English name for this article.) In late September of this year, I learned that Snow left the magazine, enabling me to finally write this story without fear that it would affect her job.

Snow's name made for much late-night comedy in my office, along the lines of: "God, that article totally got snowplowed," or "Uh-oh, I predict heavy snowfall for this one." I met Snow for the first time during our inaugural editorial meeting at the office: the top two floors of a six-story, spottily heated building with a pool hall in the basement and what appeared to be fourteen-year-old security guards at the door, in central Beijing. Here, just as my boss had promised, Snow elaborated on the Three Ts, relaying an anecdote about a journalist friend of hers. A photo enthusiast, he once ran a picture he'd taken in Taiwan alongside an article, but had failed to notice a small Taiwanese flag in the background. As a result, the entire staff of his newspaper had been immediately fired and the office shut down.

Despite these words of caution, we didn't take the fact that we had a censor very seriously, at least for my first few months on the job, and evading Snow's changes became a game of sorts. This was easier back then; the August 2008 Beijing Olympics were a year-and-a-half away, and it behooved China to demonstrate that it was an open country. Besides, Snow was a small presence in our daily work routine. She did not come to our office, and aside from that first encounter, didn't attend our story meetings. Each month, we emailed her our list of article topics for the upcoming issue. After we had edited those articles, we emailed them to Snow, and she sent them back marked with her changes. She reviewed them again in layout, and, once satisfied, would give the printer the order to start the presses.

Longform's Picks of the Week - By Laura Clark

Every weekend, Longform highlights its favorite international articles of the week. For daily picks of new and classic nonfiction, check out Longform or follow @longform on Twitter. Have an iPad? Download Longform's new app and read all of the latest in-depth stories from dozens of magazines, including Foreign Policy.

Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader, by David Barboza. The New York Times.

Through the course of his leadership, relatives of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao ave gained incredible wealth -- riches accumulated through help from state-owned companies, government contracts, and industries ruled by agencies overseen by Mr. Wen himself. An examination of financial nepotism in China reveals a collision between business and state influence.

While Communist Party regulations call for top officials to disclose their wealth and that of their immediate family members, no law or regulation prohibits relatives of even the most senior officials from becoming deal-makers or major investors -- a loophole that effectively allows them to trade on their family name. Some Chinese argue that permitting the families of Communist Party leaders to profit from the country's long economic boom has been important to ensuring elite support for market-oriented reforms.

Even so, the business dealings of Mr. Wen's relatives have sometimes been hidden in ways that suggest the relatives are eager to avoid public scrutiny, the records filed with Chinese regulatory authorities show.

Wen: Feng Li/Getty Images

Nineteen Seventy Three, by Alan Bellows. Damn Interesting.

In the 1970s, Chile was on the verge of developing sophisticated technology to monitor its economy. Then America intervened.

In the early 1970s the scale of Beer's proposed network was unprecedented. One of the largest computer networks of the day was a mere fifteen machines in the US, the military progenitor to the Internet known as ARPANET. Beer was suggesting a network with hundreds or thousands of endpoints. Moreover, the computational complexity of his concept eclipsed even that of the Apollo moon missions, which were still ongoing at that time. After a few hours of conversation President Allende responded to the audacious proposition: Chile must indeed become the world's first cybernetic government, for the good of the people. Work was to start straight away.

Stafford Beer practically ran across the street to share the news with his awaiting technical team, and much celebratory drinking occurred that evening. But the ambitious cybernetic network would never become fully operational if the CIA had anything to say about it.

STF/AFP/Getty Images

'Perplexed ... Perplexed': On Mob Justice in Nigeria, by Teju Cole. The Atlantic.

Why is lynching so common in Nigeria? And what is being done to stem the violence?

When I'm in Nigeria, I find myself looking at the passive, placid faces of the people standing at the bus stops. They are tired after a day's work,and thinking perhaps of the long commute back home, or of what to make for dinner. I wonder to myself how these people, who surely love life, who surely love their own families, their own children, could be ready in an instant to exact a fatal violence on strangers. And even though I know that lynchings would largely disappear in a Nigeria with rule of law and strong institutions -- just as they have largely disappeared in other places where they were once common -- I still wonder what extreme traumas have brought us to this peculiar pass.

UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images

Do Ceasefires Ever Work? - Page Fortna

Earlier this week, the Syrian government, the Free Syrian Army, and other rebel elements agreed to a temporary, four-day ceasefire for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Even before it went into effect, one opposition group, Jabhat al-Nusra, had publicly disavowed the ceasefire, and on its first morning there were reports of clashes between rebel and government forces in Aleppo and Damascus. A car bomb also exploded in the capital city, resulting in multiple casualties. Still, neither side has formally declared the ceasefire dead as of yet, and early reports suggest that the fighting does seem to be somewhat reduced.

What are the prospects for this temporary ceasefire? And what are the prospects for a more permanent ceasefire in Syria?

Temporary ceasefires bring temporary relief from the day-to-day grind of war -- and for residents of battered cities like Aleppo, even a few days of relief over an important holiday will be welcome. Even an imperfectly respected ceasefire can bring some respite if the level of violence drops significantly.

Beyond that, it's possible that a temporary ceasefire or lull could build a sliver of trust and momentum toward a permanent end to hostilities. If both sides are serious about making a deal, a temporary lull in violence this weekend could provide an opening for negotiations. But that's a big if.

If the ceasefire hasn't already been derailed by Friday morning's clashes, what are the prospects for a more permanent peace deal? Wars end in negotiated deals when the costs of continuing to fight outweigh the prospects for winning. The war has proved costly for both the rebels and the government (and, of course, for the Syrian people -- but unfortunately, it's not up to civilians whether the war continues or not). Bashar al-Assad's government is isolated internationally and has not been able to crush the challenge to its rule. It is unlikely the Syrian Army will be able to quell the rebellion without extreme measures -- measures that even Assad's most stalwart international friends might not be able to stomach. The rebels, too, are a very long and costly slog from any prospect of toppling the regime. Without a peace agreement, both sides must know they face a difficult path toward, at best, uncertain victory.

In such a mutually painful status quo, bargaining theory tells us that negotiation should be preferable to continued violence. But reaching a deal and committing to it credibly is no easy task. Even if both sides are serious about negotiating a peace deal, and see some prospects for overcoming the commitment problem, would a temporary four-day holiday ceasefire help move the process forward? If the current violence subsides and the main parties abide by the ceasefire, it could build trust on both sides. But if the ceasefire fails entirely and full-scale fighting resumes, the opposite holds true.

The temporary ceasefire plan negotiated by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi faces obstacles. All ceasefires are fragile, but temporary ones face a structural problem that makes them more fragile than most. As the end of the ceasefire period nears, there is an incentive to go on the offensive prior to the expiration date in order to gain an advantage over the other side. The other side is aware of this, however, and has an equal incentive to move against its adversaries, who, in turn, know this, and so have an incentive to attack even sooner, and so on and so forth. Not surprisingly, temporary ceasefires with a fixed expiration have a tendency to unravel.

This problem can be mitigated if both sides know that it would be clear who broke the ceasefire first -- provided there are real costs to doing so. In this case, the Syrian government is probably hoping to use the ceasefire, and its willingness to agree to it, to shore up international support, and so it will not want to be blamed for being the first to break the ceasefire. And to the extent that the rebels hope to maintain the sympathy of most of the outside world (and the possibility of intervention on their behalf), they also have an incentive not to be seen as violating the truce first. (Of course, rebel elements like Jabhat al-Nusra have already demonstrated that they aren't swayed by international opinion.) But this is a do-it-yourself ceasefire -- there will be no monitors to observe compliance, since the U.N. withdrew its observer mission over the summer. As a result, if fighting resumes, it will be difficult for outsiders to tell who started what. The military incentives to strike first, coupled with plausible deniability, thus make it less likely that the truce will hold through the holiday weekend.

Beware the Tyranny of the Mob - By Jamsheed Choksy and Eden Naby

Citizens who oust dictators often face the question: What comes next? Despotic rule leaves behind few entrenched institutions other than confessional or ethnically based ones. So, transitional countries are finding that ending autocracy frequently does not bring fundamental rights equally to all members of the public.

Ever since the Iranian Revolution of January 1979 swept a Shiite theocracy into power, contests for political change around the Middle East have taken on sectarian overtones. Ousters of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, and now uprisings against Bashar al-Assad, Emir Al-Sabah al-Ahmad of Kuwait, and King Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain have often had the effect of pitting religious and ethnic blocks against each other.

Iraq and Syria have witnessed civil war between religious sects. In Iran and Egypt, the removal of strongmen has led to further repression of minorities. Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on 25 September, U.S. President Barack Obama urged countries to break the "cycle of sectarian violence" so political transitions can be successful.

The Shiite ayatollahs have cracked down harshly on Iranians yearning for confessional and communal rights. Sunnis (8 percent), Bahais (1.8 percent), Armenian and Assyrian Christians (0.2 percent), Sufis (0.1 percent), Zoroastrians (0.03 percent), and Jews (0.01 percent) among Iran's 75 million citizens are tarred as disloyal to the nation. Sunnis are the one religious minority with sufficient numbers and resources to challenge the dominant group. Comprising of Kurds (20 percent), Arabs (2 percent), and Baluchis (2 percent), they are responding with insurrection.

The fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 should have marked the beginning of an Iraq in which the Shiite majority (65 percent), Sunni minority (30-32 percent), and Christian minority (3-5 percent) jointly crafted a country without tyranny. But civil war fuelled conflict between Sunni Kurds and Arabs against Shiite Arabs within the population of 31.1 million. Assyrian-Chaldean Christians were caught amid the bloodletting. Numbering 1.4 million prior to 2003, there are fewer than 500,000 Iraqi Christians left now. Thus far in Iraq's political transition, two de facto states exist--one for Sunnis of Kurdish ethnicity (20 percent) and another for Iraqis of Arab ethnicity (75 percent) which is divided between Sunnis and Shiites.

UnBonJuif - By Eric Pape

PARIS ' A lawyer for France's Jewish students' union declared recently that Twitter has agreed to remove dozens of anti-Semitic tweets, in a small victory against hate in France. Published with hashtags such as #UnBonJuif (#AGoodJew) and #UnJuifMort -- to suggest that #AGoodJew is #ADeadJew -- the bad taste of the messages is astounding. One came with a photograph, published via Twitpic, that showed a pick-up pan full of dust, in an apparent reference to the Nazi crematoriums. Another is more explicit, showing a black and white photo of a starving young person on what appears to be a concentration camp cot. (Le Monde newspaper put together a gallery of some of the worst.)

While the anti-Semitic hashtag controversy has, understandably, garnered plenty of attention in the online universe -- #UnBonJuif was the third most tweeted hashtag in France on October 10 -- this year has seen high-profile attacks in the real world that are infinitely more troubling.

It wasn't merely hateful Internet trolling that led to a police crackdown on October 6. Amid a flurry of anti-terror operations around the country, they detained 11 suspected terrorists, later freeing five of them. That day began in dramatic fashion, when authorities killed a 12th man in a raid in the eastern French town of Strasbourg. They believe that the dead man was personally linked to an anti-Jewish grenade attack in a Parisian suburb in September, that he headed a militant group with a list of "Jewish" targets, and that he was likely involved in channeling French citizens abroad to fight alongside radical Islamists.

Paris court prosecutor François Molins declared in a statement that "a terrorist attack in our country has been avoided" and that authorities have dismantled the "most dangerous" terrorist group assembled on French territory in more than a decade and a half.

In reality, though, it doesn't seem to take a large group to inspire horror. The highest-profile attack this year was the work of a young delinquent turned freelance Islamist radical named Mohamed Merah. In March, days after executing three off-duty French soldiers in southwestern France, he drove his motor scooter onto the grounds of a Jewish school in Toulouse and coldly murdered a Franco-Israeli schoolteacher, two of his children and one of their schoolmates. The youngest victim was four years old. Merah later claimed in his rantings to police and a journalist that the school attack was in retaliation for the death of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli forces.

Days later, police cornered the 22-year-old Merah in his apartment and, during a shoot-out, put a bullet in his forehead that launched him off of his balcony and to the street below. Perhaps it should have been the end of Merah's story, but it wasn't.

Almost immediately after Merah's Natural Born Killers-like rampage ended, his name began to appear on scrawled ghetto graffiti, including these words insisting that he was a "valiant knight of Islam." (The author of that graffiti was sentenced to three months in prison for "apologizing for terrorism.") Immediately after his death, Long Live Mohamed Merah Facebook pages sprang up, with some lauding his anti-establishment ravings. Merah suggested that his murder of three off-duty military men (all ethnic minorities, incidentally) was some sort of resistance against the French State. And Merah, who filmed some of his murders, has inspired an array of video tributes, in some cases strange ones (notice the gun at the end).

Online videos have long offered extremist recruiters a way to inspire angry and lost young men, to shape them for a battle against Jews, the West, or both. They often confuse Jews with the unpopular policies of the government of Israel, but so do many people in France, Spain, and many other countries in Europe. Some 45 percent of French people surveyed believe that French Jews are more loyal to Israel than to France. In Spain, 72 percent believe the same, according to a survey by the Anti-Defamation League.

Anti-Semitism is a particularly sensitive topic in France -- it took until 1995 for a French leader, the incoming President Jacques Chirac, to acknowledge France's responsibility for deporting 76,000 Jews, in many cases, to their deaths during World War II. "These dark hours forever sully our history and are an insult to our past and our traditions," Chirac said 53 years after the first mass arrests of Jews in Paris. "Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state." To this day, many French Jews remain suspicious of their government's commitment to protecting them.

In the six weeks after the conclusion of Merah's rampage, there was a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents (compared to that same period the previous year). A Jewish security watchdog known as SPCJ says that anti-Semitic acts leaped by 45 percent in the first eight months of 2012, and that Merah's actions have inspired others. In one notable attack near the Beth Menahem Jewish school in Villeurbanne in southern France, a dozen or so men attacked a trio of young Jewish men in yarmulkes on June 2, first insulting and shoving them around, and then beating them with an iron rod and a hammer, sending them to the hospital.

There has been other violence, too, including the strange midday attack on a kosher market in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on September 19, days before Yom Kippur. In that attack, two masked men dressed in black entered the store and detonated a weak grenade that shattered the front window of the shop, wounding a bystander who suffered an arm contusion. Sarcelles, a commune of 60,000 people north of Paris, is sometimes referred as Little Jerusalem because of its sizable Jewish community, made up largely of Jews who left North Africa in the 1960s.

The Amphibian - By James Traub

It probably didn't do him a bit of good, but Barack Obama performed a lot better in this week's debate than many of his supporters -- okay, the one writing this column -- had feared. The reason for Obama's success was simple enough: Mitt Romney could not find enough politically usable space to Obama's right. In the Republican primaries, Romney could bid for the loony-tune vote by castigating the president as a closet European who doesn't really love America. But all that went out the window when Romney had to reassure independent voters that he could be trusted with America's national security. Romney could not figure out how to sound tougher than Obama without sounding reckless.

You'd have to go back to Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 -- the last pre-Vietnam election -- to find a Democrat who pulled off that trick. But LBJ was a Cold Warrior; in the 2008 campaign, Obama appeared to run to the left of Hillary Clinton, who had voted in favor of the war in Iraq and whom Obama scorned as a prisoner of conventional thinking. And yet today it is much easier to mount a coherent critique of Obama's foreign policy from the traditional left -- or from the isolationist right -- than it is from the position of responsible conservatism which Romney was trying to assume in the debate. What happened?

Of course, Obama's aggressive prosecution of the war on terror, and his decision to double down on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, made him much less vulnerable to the standard GOP allegation that Democrats are soft on national security even as it angered many liberals. But even before he became president, Obama scrambled the conventional understanding of "left" and "right" in foreign policy. He never had the visceral discomfort with the use of American power, and especially military power, which marked liberals who came of age during the Vietnam War. He wanted to draw down in Iraq in order to ramp up in Afghanistan. He was even able to out-flank Romney during the debate by recalling that in the 2008 campaign he had vowed to violate Pakistani sovereignty, if need be, to track down a high-value target, while Romney had denounced the idea.

One of the reasons why Obama has always been so hard to draw an ideological bead on is that the "engagement" paradigm -- which he hit on during the 2008 campaign, and made his watchword once he took office -- can be understood both as a form of "realism" and as a form of "idealism," as both right and left. The willingness to put values aside in the hopes of finding common ground even with America's most inveterate adversaries is classic realism, which is why figures like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell felt, and continue to feel comfortable with Obama. But the belief that through gestures of respect and deference you can bring rogue states like Iran or North Korea to a rational discussion of shared interests constituted a form of idealism in the face of George W. Bush's unyielding bellicosity.

Obama's foreign policy was thus ideologically amphibious from the outset. Of course, for that very reason it could be criticized from both sides. Liberals worried that Obama was giving short shrift to human rights and democracy promotion in Iran, Russia, and China in order to advance his agenda on nuclear nonproliferation or climate change or trade balances. (Neo-cons made the same claim in much less varnished terms.) And conservatives accused him of naïvely imagining that displays of humility and cultural sensitivity would somehow make dictators more amenable to compromise. 

Over time, as I wrote last week, Obama has moved away from, though scarcely rejected, the engagement paradigm. He has learned that professions of deference and respect don't do as much as he thought to alter the basic calculus of enemies like Iran or North Korea, or refractory powers like Russia or China. The Obama of 2012 no longer speaks the language of "mutual respect for mutual interests" with autocratic states; in this week's debate, he even described China as an "adversary." He is a chastened and less hopeful figure, though also one much less easily reproached as naïve.

The Cyber Trade War - By Adam Segal

On Oct. 8, the House Select Intelligence Committee released a report on the cybersecurity threat posed by China's Huawei and ZTE, the world's second- and fourth-largest telecommunications suppliers. The report, which described the companies as potential espionage risks and asked the U.S. government and U.S. firms to refrain from doing business with them, drew an angry response from Chinese media: Xinhua, China's state news agency, called its conclusions "totally groundless" and arising out of "protectionism"; the nationalistic tabloid Global Times said the United States is becoming an "unreasonable country"; and the state-run English language newspaper China Daily labeled the accusations "unreasonable and unjustifiable." But the fear of vulnerability from foreign technology, whether reasonable or not, is as present in China as it is in the United States -- now more than ever.

The threats China sees from dependence on foreign telecommunications, software, and hardware suppliers echo many of the concerns raised in the House report: both countries fear that dependence on foreign technology makes them vulnerable to spying and threatens network security and economic development. According to an April 2012 article in Outlook Weekly, a  Xinhua publication, 90 percent of China's microchips, components, network equipment, communications standards and protocols, as well as 65 percent of firewalls, encryption technology, and 10 other types of information security products rely on imported technology. Foreign producers also dominate the market for programmable logic controllers, devices used to control manufacturing and other industrial processes. As a result, "all core technologies are basically in the hands of U.S. companies, and this provides perfect conditions for the U.S. military to carry out cyber warfare and cyber deterrence," according to a January article in the military newspaper China Defense.

Beijing has long strived to limit the use of foreign technology and develop indigenous alternatives. The "Regulations for the Administration of Commercial Encryption," implemented in 1999, require government approval for the manufacturing, sale, use, import or export of any product containing encryption, restricting the use of foreign encryption technology within China. Introduced in 2007 by the Ministry of Public Security, the "Multi-Level Protection Scheme" prohibits non-Chinese companies from supplying the core products used by the government and banking, transportation, and other critical infrastructure companies. And the May 2010 Chinese "Compulsory Certification for Information Security Scheme" forces foreign companies wishing to sell to the Chinese government to disclose their intellectual property for security products.

But it's China's over-reliance on pirated goods that makes it extra-susceptible to security breaches. Chinese software companies have been unable to develop competitive products, and as a result Chinese users pirate software from foreign companies. Because stolen software is not updated automatically by the producer, and users rarely patch on their own, it's easier to hack. In October 2008, when Chinese users with pirated copies of Windows on their computers downloaded a new Windows upgrade, their screens went black. The blackout screen could be turned off but returned every hour with a reminder to buy legitimate products. Chinese netizens were enraged at the intrusion, and many Chinese policymakers were suddenly presented with the unpleasant truth that a U.S. company was controlling computers inside their country. As Tang Lan, an expert in information security at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, wrote in a February 2012 article in China Daily about the incident, "It's right to attack piracy, but the incident also exposed China's online vulnerability to high-tech intrusion from overseas."

Why Is Qatar Mucking Around in Gaza? - By David Roberts

A deeply contrarian streak has taken hold in Qatar these days. Insulated by U.S. security guarantees, eager to use its burgeoning fiscal reserves, and propelled by its elites' reformist zeal, Doha continues to exert a disproportionate influence on regional politics. Emir Hamad bin Khalifah Al Thani's latest move was a dramatic visit to the Gaza Strip, becoming the first head of state to visit the Palestinian territory since Hamas wrested control of it in 2007.

Unlike some of its less imaginative Arab rivals, Qatar saw Hamas's regional isolation as an opportunity rather than a problem. Despite its alliance with the United States, Doha has been nurturing its ties with the Palestinian Islamist group for some time: Its worst kept secret is that Khaled Meshal, Hamas's leader, has had a house there for many years and has been increasingly seen in Doha since Hamas was forced to leave Syria in early 2012. Doha has also opened its pocketbook to Hamas, pledging $250 million in February -- a gift that was increased to $400 million upon the emir's visit.

The injection of funds, however, is not the most important aspect of Sheikh Hamad's trip. By breaking Hamas's regional isolation and explicitly recognizing its rule over Gaza, Doha has strengthened the militant group's hand against its Palestinian rivals. An official from the Palestinian Authority, which is in charge of the West Bank, begrudgingly welcomed the visit while noting that "no one should deal with Gaza as a separate entity from the Palestinian territories and from the Palestinian Authority."

Unlike the Palestinian Authority, Israel felt no need to Israel soften its criticism. An Israeli spokesman carped bitterly about the emir's trip, saying that the emir was "throwing peace under a bus."

The visit further highlights Israel's loss of influence with Qatar. Relations between the two countries warmed with the opening of an Israeli trade office in Doha in 1996 (reputedly close to Meshal's house) as the two sides looked to ship Qatari gas to Israel, with Enron acting as the intermediary. The deal failed, however, and relations ebbed and flowed until December 2008, when Qatar cut ties in protest of Israel's offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Rumors that Doha was attempting to restart relations were finally put to rest with a leaked memo from Israel's Foreign Ministry labelling Qatar as a "leading activist" against Israel, decisively cutting whatever informal relations remained.

The Iranian angle

Iran, with whom Qatar maintains cordial official relations, joins Israel and the Palestinian Authority in an unlikely triumvirate watching proceedings in Gaza with glum resignation. Tehran officials are doubtlessly looking back nostalgically to happier times only a few years back, when their proxy Hezbollah all but defeated the Zionist Entity -- winning Iran no small degree of Arab support for its material support to the Lebanese militant organization. Back then, Hamas was also still ensconced in Iran's camp, and Syria was a stable ally that appeared to be gradually increasing its influence in the Middle East.

Playing God - By Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman

How serious is the threat of global warming? One way to figure out is to take your cues from some leading climate scientists: They have moved on. That doesn't mean they've abandoned the issue, but they are looking beyond what all agree is the most obvious solution -- decreasing the amount of carbon we spew into the atmosphere in the first place.

These scientists are beginning to look for a Plan B. There are two distinct approaches under consideration -- sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, or creating an artificial sun shield for the planet. The former, which involves reversing some of the very processes that are leading to the climate problem, is expensive. The latter just sounds scary. David Keith, a leading thinker on geoengineering, calls it "chemotherapy" for the planet. "You are repulsed?" he says. "Good. No one should like it. It's a terrible option."

Repugnant or not, with the globe failing to develop other ways to halt climate change, geoengineering is increasingly becoming an option. The science and engineering are relentlessly marching on: Most research so far has focused on computer modeling, but some has started to move beyond -- trying to test, for example, how to deliver particles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. This summer, an entrepreneur conducted a rogue experiment, dumping 100 tons of iron into the Pacific in an attempt to "seed" the ocean and spur the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This episode represents a particularly apt example of science -- in this case, self-experimentation -- speeding far ahead of public opinion and oversight.

The high costs of doing nothing

If the world can't get its act together to limit carbon emissions, geoengineering may be the only option we have. Distill the climate problem down to the essentials, and it becomes obvious that global warming is fundamentally a market failure: All seven billion of us human beings are "free riders" on a planet that is heating up. We put billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, and largely aren't required to pay for the privilege. There's too little incentive to stop polluting.

Americans are some of the world's worst offenders. Every U.S. citizen, on average, emits around 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year -- twice that of the average European. All kinds of things contribute to that number. Driving the average U.S. vehicle in an average year accounts for more than 5 tons. The full carbon footprint of the average thrice-weekly cheeseburger: half a ton a year. One roundtrip cross-country flight: one ton.

Each of these tons of carbon dioxide causes at least $20 worth of damage in adverse health effects, flooded coastlines, and other effects of climate change. By mid-century, that figure will rise to at least $50. And a truly catastrophic event caused by a warmer climate, like Antarctic ice sheets collapsing long ahead of schedule or Arctic methane bubbling up at precipitous rates, resulting in runaway global warming, could increase those costs by a factor of 10 or more. How do you put a price tag on even a 1 percent risk of altering the climate so much that it could destroy civilization as we know it?

Few of us are paying our fair share for the damage that we're doing to the planet. For example, airlines don't add $20 to ticket prices in order to pay for the damage caused per passenger by flying back and forth across the country. That decreases costs up front, but it also comes at enormous cost to society down the road. The world's population -- led by the one billion or so global high emitters -- are doing many hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to the planet, and in the near future the costs will skyrocket into the trillions.

"Free riding" also plagues relations between countries. Some, like the European Union have a cap or tax on carbon pollution. Most are still waiting on the sidelines. Why should any single country cut its carbon emissions when it knows that its reductions will only be a drop in the bucket toward solving climate change -- and other nations aren't asking their citizens to pay their fair share? Blame it on short election cycles, partisanship, or fossil energy interests, the political will often doesn't exist -- whether in Washington or the latest global environment gathering in Rio de Janeiro.

We're Winning in Afghanistan - By Stewart Upton

Last week, a New York Times editorial argued that it is time for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan -- a process that it said should not take more than a year, a much faster timeline than the president has proposed.

The editorial reflects the growing effort to justify and rationalize our abandonment of Afghanistan, just as we did after the Soviets left. The international community has repeatedly promised the Afghan people that it would not do that again, specifically because we know many Afghans are concerned their country will fall apart when U.S. and international troops leave at the end of 2014. And yet, as the Associated Press reported in August, there is a sense in Afghanistan that history could repeat itself.

When the Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, U.S. support to mujahedeen fighters who had been battling the Soviets dried up quickly, and the country sank into civil war as militias and warlords battled for power, devastating Kabul. That was followed by the rise of the Taliban and years of rule under their repressive regime.

Foreign Policy's own coverage has noted a shift in the conversation from fighting into 2015 or sticking around through 2014 to whether the United States even makes it to 2014. Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban, has noted, "Pundits and politicians, as well as think-tanks and military officers have been full of doom and gloom."

But many of us on the ground don't understand the recent pessimism. As U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, the regional commander for southwestern Afghanistan, told a group of media from Kabul about the negativity of recent press coverage, "When I read them I have to back up and say, are we talking about the same place?" He added: "We are still a province at war, but look at the progress that has been made in Helmand Province over the past three years." Indeed, even the Times editorial acknowledged that "[t]he Taliban has not retaken territory lost to coalition forces."

We are reaching the point in which the misperception being created by the media is undermining our ability to achieve their own definition of success in Afghanistan: denying al Qaeda a safe haven via a strengthened Afghan security force that is capable of taking over lead responsibility in the future.

Have insider attacks and sensational Taliban attacks taken place?

Yes, and we are accountable for that.

But there is something to the comments made by senior officials that the sensational attacks are reflective of a desperate insurgency. If you were a Taliban commander losing an insurgency for the past couple of years since the surge, wouldn't you feel the need to conduct sensational attacks to give the perception your narrative is winning out and to reassure your followers?

Please God, Not Another Blue-Ribbon Panel - By John Norris

The first item on a modern secretary of state's to-do list these days appears to be establishing a high-level review that promises to change the way America conducts diplomacy. Colin Powell launched the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. Condoleezza Rice bundled her reforms under the broad banner of "Transformational Diplomacy." Hillary Clinton conducted the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), modeled on similar efforts at the Pentagon. One can only imagine that the next secretary of state will feel inclined to conduct a second QDDR, or roll out another high-profile effort to reform the State Department's archaic bureaucracy.

All of these reviews were conducted because of a realization by respective secretaries of state -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- that America's foreign policy architecture is poorly structured to meet the demands of the very dynamic world around us.

So why does the United States continue to need such reform initiatives over and over again? The answer is simple: All of these blue-ribbon efforts have done a great job identifying the key problems plaguing the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. They just haven't been able to fix them.

The reviews have resulted in some progress, but largely around the margins -- some improved training, higher staffing levels, and the usual reshuffling of bureau names and responsibilities. None of them has been able to fix more fundamental problems, however, because none of these secretaries of state was willing to engage Congress in a major reform effort. Real reform requires not just a determined secretary of state, but buy-in from the legislative branch: Congress must pass new legislation to get rid of many of the existing and conflicting directives, objectives, and requirements that so muddy U.S. foreign policy.

It is no secret why Powell, Rice, and Clinton had little appetite for engaging Congress on these issues. Even minor pieces of foreign policy or foreign-aid legislation quickly get gunked up with a slew of amendments on abortion, religious freedom, guns, efforts to punish the dictator of the day, the United Nations and a host of other black-helicopter concerns. The idea of working with Congress to pass a major overhaul of the foreign policy architecture surely seems quasi-suicidal.

In an environment so rancorous that avoiding credit defaults and fiscal cliffs is difficult to manage, many have simply dismissed the idea of actually reforming State and USAID as impossible.

But it may not be as hard as it looks. The State Department should consider taking a page from the playbook of the Pentagon, which developed an interesting model for getting out of a similar trap. Whether the next administration is Obama II or Romney I, it would be wise to adopt an approach to foreign affairs reform modeled on the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission -- or as it is more commonly known, BRAC.

The BRAC process was created to deal with an equally difficult challenge -- how to get Congress to approve base closures and troop realignments when those decisions had immense political fallout in members' districts. Efforts to redraw the map of bases in the United States had foundered again and again on the shoals of opposition by a handful of congressman and senators who were willing to sabotage the entire process rather than give up a base in their state.

The Spymaster - By Aaron David Miller

In December 1998, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sent me to Israel and the West Bank to monitor the first phase of the recently concluded Wye River Memorandum, a soon-to-be-forgotten agreement President Bill Clinton had brokered between then Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While in Jerusalem, I gave a public talk on the state of the negotiations. Having worked on this near-hopeless accord for over a year, I was on some sort of negotiator's high. And in one of the most naïve statements of the century, I told the audience that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had achieved a measure of irreversible progress, and that there was no going back.

Within a month, the Wye River accord was dead.

Four months later, I received a letter from a man I'd never met -- Efraim Halevy, then deputy director of Israel's Mossad. In it, Halevy gently reminded me of the broader forces and currents at work in his turbulent region and wondered about the positive forces of change I'd identified. What if these rivers of change left most of the proverbial fish -- in this case the Israelis and Palestinians  -- behind?

Halevy foresaw confrontation. And he was right. I've been learning from him ever since.

Halevy, now 78 years old, reminds me of a cross between an Oxford don and a character out of a John le Carré novel. He speaks carefully and precisely -- rarely forcefully -- and has little problem attracting an eager audience. Born in London, his British inflection -- not greatly tempered since immigrating to Israel in 1948 -- only adds to the sense that you're speaking to a highly intelligent and acutely erudite man.

Halevy is a man of the Mossad serving there for 40 years -- 33 of them in the Directorate, the initial designation for Mossad's intelligence collection unit. He headed Mossad under three prime ministers -- Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon  -- and served as deputy director under two more, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. He ran a variety of secret missions for Rabin, most notably as key negotiator and confidante of King Hussein during the period leading up to the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

The Israeli spymaster has recently made headlines by calling for dialogue with Iran -- thereby joining the burgeoning ranks of former Israeli intelligence officials, notably former Mossad director Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, critical of the Netanyahu government's approach toward the Islamic Republic. He was in Washington last week speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I put 11 questions to him on the vital political issues of the day before he returned to Jerusalem. What follows are his answers:

Aaron Miller: Is a nuclear-armed Iran an existential threat to Israel?

Efraim Halevy: I object to the use of term [existential] for several reasons. First of all I'm convinced that Israel is here to stay. We're going to stay here for the next couple of thousand years at least, and after that we can meet and talk. It's not just a question of semi-religious or mythological belief -- I believe that Israel is a strong country. I think we have sufficient capabilities to deal with any threat of any kind.

Now, I also object to the use of the term because I believe it is a fatal mistake to say publicly that there is existential threat. It means that if the Iranians by one way or another obtain such a capability, you begin to countdown to the end of the state of Israel, and I think that is unconscionable.

And the third point is I think it is a terrible mistake to tell your enemy that it is in his power to destroy you. It is wrong tactically, it's wrong strategically, and it's wrong professionally. To come publicly to the Iranians and say, "Look, you are existential threat to me" only pushes them into trying to prove that what you say about yourself is true. So from every point, I think it's a terrible mistake to use this.

AM: If good-faith negotiations and sanctions do not deter the Iranians from continuing their quest for a nuclear bomb, are there any circumstances under which you would be willing to consider military action?

EH: Yes, if we had followed all the other avenues to try to persuade the Iranians from doing what obviously they're still trying to do, then I believe it is not only acceptable -- it's also logical that one should use military means in order to get this capability removed. I say removed because I don't believe that it will be destroyed. I mean it will be delayed. And I think that delay is important, because time is of the essence -- time sometimes gives you the breathing space to develop other possibilities, which would negate the capability now in front of you.

Now, I believe that if we are looking for the best way of doing it, I think that the United States' capabilities are far beyond Israel's in terms of causing such damage to Iran as to prolong this period. That's why I believe the major priority should be to get the United States to agree to take this this task upon itself.

The Real Takeaways From Monday's Debate

Kenneth Lieberthal on China:

During Monday night's foreign-policy debate, both candidates sounded the same three themes on China. First, there is no inherent conflict between the United States and China and there is the potential for a great partnership in the future (Republican nominee Mitt Romney was surprisingly expansive on this, though President Barack Obama did label China an "adversary" for the first time). Second, to realize this partnership, China must stop cheating on the rules in economics and trade -- stealing intellectual property, counterfeiting goods, etc. And third, how effectively America handles its own domestic problems will have a major impact on the long-term U.S. relationship with China.

Barack Obama's much-maligned Afghanistan-Pakistan policy was eloquently and persuasively defended in the final debate by Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Whatever past reservations Romney had about the president's position were dropped. If you don't like Obama's policy, sorry folks: You have no one to vote for in November.

Romney argued that the "surge" in American and allied troops over the last four years has been successful -- it bought time to build up Afghan forces to roughly 350,000 strong today, and the transition to Afghan-led military operations should proceed on time in 2014. That is the essence of the president's plan.

In Pakistan, Romney supported the use of drones against al Qaeda targets. Obama has used them some 300 times in four years. Romney also argued that Pakistan is too important not to engage with. It has more than 100 nuclear weapons, a fragile internal political balance, and is under threat from extremism. It will be a larger nuclear power than Britain in the near future. He did not advocate reducing aid, although he did suggest it be more conditional. In the last decade, America has disbursed more than $25 billion of aid to Pakistan, half on Obama's watch. The president has tried to get more of it to the civilians in Pakistan to build a healthier state.

Both hinted at their deep concerns about Pakistan. Obama said that if he had asked for Pakistani permission to send in the SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden, "we would not have gotten it," implying that the al Qaeda leader would have gotten away and would still be alive today. Romney worried about the role of Pakistan's top intelligence service, the ISI, in abetting terror.

Neither answered the question: What would you do if the transition in Afghanistan falters as we get closer to the end of 2014? That is understandable. American options will be lousy but the stakes will be significant. It would be a grim problem. The president did not point out that he is committed to a long-term strategic relationship with the Kabul government after 2015, but he also did not repeat his formula that the war in Afghanistan will end in 2014. It won't. He stressed a responsible road ahead and disparaged reckless behavior.

Obama inherited a disaster from George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Pakistan four years ago. The Taliban was on the march across Afghanistan, and al Qaeda was under little or no pressure in Pakistan. Bin Laden had moved into his comfortable hideout in Abbottabad some three years earlier. We had no idea where he was.

The situation today is far from perfect, but we are no longer on the edge of strategic failure and catastrophe. It must have been satisfying for Obama to hear his Republican opponent acknowledge the progress.

The two also failed to mention the most important country in the region: India. That is because there is a bipartisan consensus in America that we need a strong strategic partnership with New Delhi as we confront the many challenges in Asia in the years ahead. While it would have been nice to hear that consensus reaffirmed in the debate, the truth is no one disputes it. That is a rare area of bipartisan harmony.

These have been Obama's themes in one form or another throughout his first term and this campaign. On Romney's side, they reflect his decision in this debate to project himself as a moderate -- one who will not lead the United States into a new war, who recognizes the need to win over support abroad through aid and diplomacy, and who has the character and good judgment to be president. In short, Romney was prepared to allow very little daylight between himself and Obama in a bid to allay fears about where he would lead America abroad -- and this was particularly evident in the discussion of China.

Romney's one serious mistake was in reiterating his determination to declare China a "currency manipulator on Day 1." This is a campaign position that makes no sense. First, the governor is 4-5 years too late -- at 2.1 percent of GDP for the first half of 2012, China's current account surplus  is well below the 4 percent level that the United States argues should be the global standard for what is troubling. Second, dozens of countries, including Switzerland and Israel, use government action to influence the value of their currency -- but the United States has never declared any of them to be a "currency manipulator." Third, the designation is gratuitous. All it would mandate is that the United States engage in intensive negotiations with China on its currency policy, something America has done for years. This designation does not increase the president's authority to impose tariffs. Fourth, contrary to the governor's assertion, China's incoming new leader, Xi Jinping, will feel compelled to take strong countermeasures if Romney approves this designation. Xi will feel he must show Romney that this is a very bad way to elicit Chinese cooperation; he also must show his own countrymen that he will not begin his term by caving in to U.S. bullying. The risk of a trade war developing out of this gratuitous action is thus very real. By any reasonable cost-benefit calculation, "designating China a currency manipulator on Day 1" is a big loser.

More broadly, Romney reiterated in this debate that he is committed to increasing defense spending to at least 4 percent of GDP. He has previously linked that to the U.S. posture in Asia and argued that our friends and allies there think the U.S. pivot to Asia lacks substance. Our allies and friends in Asia do worry about the nature and sustainability of our commitment to the region, but arbitrarily raising the defense budget will likely worsen rather than reduce their concerns. That's for two reasons. First, their biggest worry is that the United States will fail to get on top of its fiscal deficit, thus undermining the long-term U.S. economic strength that underpins our ability to deal with China in Asia. Arbitrarily and significantly increasing defense spending will likely sharpen this concern. Second, they do not want a Cold War to develop between the United States and China that will force them to make a very unwelcome choice between the two -- and thus their critique to date is that the U.S. pivot to Asia has been too provocative and unbalanced in that it has overstressed military moves to the relative neglect of diplomatic and economic/trade initiatives. Romney's debate performance will hit the wrong nerve on this issue.

Obama's brief criticism of Romney for investing in China continues a theme that does not do the president proud. Bain's and Romney's investments in China are not evil; they are reasonable decisions, given the rules and incentives in our system. To change the outcome, it is necessary to change the rules (or the prices in the market).

One of the biggest factors shaping future U.S.-China relations was very much the focus of the debate -- that is, the long-term credibility of the U.S. economic recovery and policies to bend the curve on our fiscal deficit. The attention to this issue, within the overall focus on the three points noted above, made this brief and extremely superficial discussion of China somewhat higher quality than the presidential campaign has produced before tonight. There were few differences between the two candidates on China in this debate -- which reflects Romney's movement, at least for the evening, sharply in the direction of Obama's basic strategy.

Kenneth Lieberthal is director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He served as the National Security Council's senior director for Asia during U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration.

The Battle for Britain - By Alex Massie

LONDON ' "Stands Scotland where it did?" This is the question, asked by Macduff in Shakespeare's Macbeth that now concentrates minds in Edinburgh and London alike. The battle for Scotland is also a battle for Britain in which the stakes could scarcely be higher. In two years' time, Scots will vote in a referendum to decide the future course of their country. The future of Great Britain (established in 1707 by the union between Scotland and England, each previously independent countries and awkward, frequently warring neighbors) is at stake. The choice is stark: reconfirming the country's commitment to the United Kingdom or setting out on a new course as Europe's newest independent country.

For Alex Salmond, the 57-year old leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), these are giddy times, pregnant with promise and possibility. This is the moment -- the chance for which he has been campaigning his entire political life. It has been a long journey to reach this day.

Last week, Salmond, the leader of Scotland's devolved government, welcomed British Prime Minister David Cameron to Edinburgh, where, after months of public squabbling and quiet backstage negotiation, the pair signed an agreement setting the terms and conditions for Scotland's referendum. The plebiscite will be held in 2014 and will -- though the precise wording of the question has yet to be determined -- ask a simple query: Should Scotland be an independent country?

The details of the negotiations mattered somewhat less than the optics and the mood music of the occasion. Here was Cameron, prime minister of the United Kingdom, meeting Salmond on almost equal terms. As the pair signed and exchanged documents in the manner of two powers agreeing to a treaty, a first-time visitor to Scotland could have been forgiven for thinking Cameron was already visiting a foreign country -- not just the northern part of his own country.

In that sense, Scotland is already, if you will, a semidetached part of the United Kingdom. This despite the fact that the devolved Scottish Parliament was only established in 1999 and, in many respects, Salmond enjoys fewer powers than those available to the governor of any U.S. state. (Scotland has responsibility for health care and education for instance, but only limited powers to raise revenues. Instead, it relies on a block grant set by London that Scottish ministers may then spend at their discretion.)

Speaking at the SNP's annual conference on Oct. 20, Salmond, who has led the party for nearly two decades, declared that "Scotland is not in a mood to take no for an answer" and that "Westminster [i.e., London] has had its chance, and Westminster has fallen short." Again, the impression was of a party and a nation on the move, marching to the sound of its own drum. Or pipes, rather.

"Within the limits of devolution," Salmond said, "there is only so much we can achieve." Contrasting his social democratic government with the austerity-driven Conservative-led coalition at Westminster, Salmond portrayed independence as a means by which Scotland could be protected from a London government that is, he claims, out of touch with or inherently hostile to Scottish interests or preferences. London rule was, he said, a "nonsense." (London, it might be noted, has tried to buy off the nationalists: The Tories and Labour Party have etched promises to look at the question of devolving more powers to Edinburgh should Scots vote to preserve the union.)

Yet one of the striking aspects of this battle for the future of Britain -- indeed for Britain's survival as a nation-state as we have known it -- is how it lacks many of the features that ordinarily spark or define great nationalist awakenings. There is no grievous injustice that must be corrected, no sense in which Scotland is a victim persecuted by a hostile, foreign overlord. Scotland is not a colony. Nor do Scots, many of whom are comfortable with their dual identities (Scottish and British) consider it such. Indeed, Scottish nationalism is about as peaceful, respectable, mild-mannered a cause as it is possible to imagine. Notably, it is not a cause for which anyone is prepared to die or kill. This is commendable, of course, and much to be welcomed. It is also unusual.

Scottish nationalists dislike talk of "divorce," but in a real sense, that's what is at stake. The marriage between England and Scotland has sometimes been an unequal one in which the smaller partner has struggled to make her voice heard, but she has, at all times, kept the prerogative of leaving the relationship. But until recently (that is, until the SNP became something more than a noisy pressure group) that prerogative was always considered a more notional proposition than a practical possibility. The union offered security and opportunity, and the question of independence rarely arose. Times change, however -- and for many Scots, Britain no longer offers the opportunities it once did.

So, in a sense, even asking the question formally counts as a victory for Salmond and the nationalists. How did it come to this? Salmond's ascent owes something to his own political skills as well as to his patience, but it is also predicated upon historical forces that have loosened the ties that bind the Scots and English together and that have contributed to a nationalist awakening in Scotland.

The Malaise in Ukraine - By Anders Åslund

Over the past two-and-a-half years, Ukraine has been transformed, but not for the better. In February 2010, Viktor Yanukovych -- whose previous "victory" in the 2004 election was overturned in what became known as the Orange Revolution -- was elected president with a slight margin in a free and fair election. This ex-convict from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine has quickly consolidated power. Increasingly, his family loyalists, primarily represented by his son, the businessman Oleksandr, dominate the Ukrainian government.

On Oct. 28, Ukraine is holding critical parliamentary elections. These elections will be either the final step in Yanukovych's consolidation of power or his opponents' last chance to disrupt his family rule. This time, however, the most palpable threat to his rule comes not from the crowds on the street but the elite businessmen he has alienated.

Yanukovych was lucky to win the presidency in the first place. Ukraine was hit hard by the global financial crisis in 2008 under the tenure of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was running against him for the presidency. The uneasy Orange coalition government led by Tymoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko was consumed by infighting and eventually collapsed. Yushchenko now leads an officially sanctioned splinter group that is taking votes away from the real opposition.

Yanukovych already had a parliamentary majority when he came to power and was thus quickly able appoint his government. He also managed to gain control over the Constitutional Court, which abolished constitutional amendments passed in 2004 and returned the country to its 1996 constitution, which included stronger presidential powers. Meanwhile, Tymoshenko was sentenced in a blatantly political prosecution to seven years in prison for an allegedly shady gas agreement with Russia while she was prime minister.

Yanukovych has also taken steps to increase his control over television. In particular, the stubbornly independent cable channel TVi has been refused licenses and is gradually being ousted from various cable services through pressure from the authorities. In the run-up to these elections, television is firmly in the hands of the incumbent.

But pure repression can't save the president if his support among Ukraine's most powerful business interests continues to erode. Yanukovych initially appointed a government dominated by nine big business groups, each of which was represented by one or more ministers in his cabinet, but their number has quickly dwindled. Instead, Yanukovych family loyalists now dominate the government. They control all the law enforcement bodies, the central bank, and the Finance Ministry, while the businessmen complain that they are being squeezed out by Oleksandr Yanukovych. As a consequence, Ukraine has fallen even deeper on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index to No. 152 out of 183 countries, and property rights have been further undermined.

This year, I had a chance to observe the dissatisfied Ukrainian opposition up close. Each year, Victor Pinchuk, a highly respected international Ukrainian businessman, organizes a major international conference in Yalta. In mid-September, the ninth Yalta European Strategy took place, attracting the whole Ukrainian political elite as well as foreign luminaries including the Americans Condoleezza Rice, Newt Gingrich, Robert Zoellick, and William Daley.

A Real American Hero - By Todd Gitlin

George McGovern's father was a miner turned Methodist minister, and the future senator grew up poor. No matter, perhaps: There are children of ministers who grew up poor in once-populist strongholds during the Great Depression and then devote their lives to forgetting where they came from or priding themselves on having pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and left the losers trailing in the dust.

There were no doubt other 19-year-olds beside George McGovern, who, on hearing the news from Pearl Harbor, rushed off to enlist in the Army Air Forces.  There may even have been one or two others who decided, in the course of 35 bombing missions over wartime Europe, that the appropriate sequel to the fear and trembling of wartime was to finish his college degree (on the same G. I. Bill that many today consider a contemptible element of the nanny state) and then become a professor of history. Along the way, influenced by the Social Gospel, he went to divinity school. About his war service, he rarely spoke -- even during the presidential campaign when he was savaged for insufficient respect for the divinity of an American war cause. When he returned to school -- Northwestern -- to write a dissertation on the Colorado coal strikes, his adviser was Arthur Link, the biographer of Woodrow Wilson. Had McGovern won election in 1972, he would have been the first president since Wilson with a Ph.D.

He was a liberal, not a radical, and he trusted in liberal leadership. In August 1964, against his better judgment, at the behest of the usually astute Sen. J. William Fulbright, he voted for President Lyndon Johnson's Tonkin Gulf resolution, and quickly regretted it. What made him an old-fashioned sort of liberal was his moral directness. When, in the Senate of 1970, he rose in favor of the McGovern-Hatfield bill, which would have cut off American military operations in Vietnam and withdrawn all the troops, he said this:

"Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land -- young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes.

"There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us."

These were not the words of a communist but a moralist.

The bill went down, 55-39.  Many more thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians went down before President Richard Nixon had the grace to resign, and even then, the bill of impeachment failed to cite Nixon's secret (from Americans, that is) bombing campaigns in Cambodia (Rep. John Conyers of the Judiciary Committee moved an additional article of impeachment, charging truthfully that Nixon submitted to Congress "false and misleading statements concerning the existence, scope and nature of American bombing operations in Cambodia.") Many thousands of tons more napalm and Agent Orange (among other incendiary and poisonous weapons) rained down on Southeast Aside because, as McGovern would put it in his ringing acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention of 1972, "during four administrations of both parties, a terrible war has been chartered behind closed doors."

The Creation Myth of Xi Jinping - By John Garnaut

LIANGJIAHE, China ' If every modern president needs a creation myth, then Xi Jinping's begins on the dusty loess plateau of northwest China. It was here that Xi spent seven formative years, working among the peasants and living in a lice-infested cave dug into the silty clay that extends around the Yellow River. Gradually, the selfless peasants and the unforgiving "Yellow Earth" -- a term for China's land that symbolizes relentless toil and noble sacrifice -- transformed this pale, skinny, and nervous-looking teenager into the man who in November will take control of the world's second-most powerful country.

"When I arrived at the Yellow Earth, at 15, I was anxious and confused," wrote Xi in 1998, by which time he was working his way to the top of the Communist Party hierarchy in the prosperous coastal province of Fujian. "When I left the Yellow Earth, at 22, my life goals were firm and I was filled with confidence."

When Xi describes himself as "always a son of the Yellow Earth," as he did in that rare biographical essay published in a book titled Old Pictures of Educated Youth, he was not only setting up his personal narrative as a leader who has toiled with the masses, in contrast with an increasingly corrupt governing elite. He was also alluding to the idealistic creation story of the Chinese Communist Party, in which his own father, former Vice Premier Xi Zhongxun, played a starring role in setting up the wartime bastion of Yanan, just down the road. Yanan, as the local museum puts it, "is the holy land of the Chinese revolution" and "birthplace of New China."

Xi Zhongxun during the Cultural Revolution

The Yellow Earth story matters, says Geremie Barme, director of the Australian National University's Centre on China in the World. "It is ' the log cabin of American politics, and Xi Jinping can claim it." It's a narrative that affirms that he "suffered hardship" and "knows what it's like at China's grassroots," says Zhang Musheng, an intellectual whose father was a high official, explaining why Xi and others of his leadership cohort are more qualified than their predecessors to represent the Chinese people.

If all goes to plan, China's 1.3 billion people will be officially told on Nov. 15 that Vice President Xi Jinping has been named general secretary of the Communist Party, a position he'll likely hold for a decade, in the first and most important leg of a three-stage transition from President Hu Jintao. In March 2013, he will take the title of president, and depending on the outcome of apparently fraught backroom negotiations, he will also take control of the military at some point in the next three years.

Officials, analysts, and business people in and outside China are desperate to understand the incoming leader and what he might mean for a rising China. Awkwardly, in a once-in-40-year coincidence, China's quiet and managed leadership transition will be juxtaposed against the world's most heavily contested and scrutinized election, on Nov. 6. And while there has been an endless flood of news, commentary, and images about U.S. President Barack Obama and his challenger, Mitt Romney, Xi's policy preferences, record in government, and even his family circumstances are closely guarded secrets.

Xi Zhongxun and his sons

Xi has managed to rise to where he is by not offending important people and by avoiding standing out. If he is responsible for any notable achievements, or egregious mistakes, they have already been submerged beneath the Communist Party's insistence on collective leadership. His crowning political achievement is to have risen with barely a trace. "Everything we say about Xi Jinping is prefaced with 'I guess' or 'He might be,'" says Dai Qing, a Beijing-based writer and activist, who shares a similar revolutionary pedigree to Xi -- her adoptive father was former Defense Minister Ye Jianying.

Xi has rarely allowed the outside world glimpses of how he governs. In the few examples known publicly, Xi has shown himself to be a capable politician, seeming to appeal to all key constituencies, even those whose interests and ideologies are irreconcilable with one other. He has played the anti-Western card and the Maoist card, yet while defending private enterprise and sending his daughter, Xi Mingze, to study under a false name at Harvard University.

The Glory Days - By Jonathan Alter

Tina Brown, the founder of the Daily Beast and editor of Newsweek, announced this week that the print magazine was headed to the morgue file, dead after nearly 80 years. A digital offering called Newsweek Global will take its place. Those of us who worked at Newsweek through the turn of the century wish the new venture well, but we can't escape the feeling that there's been a death in the family.

Until the Washington Post Co. sold the magazine in 2010, I qualified as a "lifer," a concept that no longer exists in the American workplace. Over nearly three decades at Newsweek in the pre-tweet era, I was the magazine's media critic and later a columnist. I interviewed and wrote about five American presidents and authored more than 50 stories, almost all of them on domestic affairs.

I was never stationed abroad, and I stand in awe of legendary bureau chiefs like Chris Dickey, Melinda Liu, and Ron Moreau who still write for Newsweek and still can set the pace in covering the world. They and many others were (are?) in a league of their own.

But during the fat years, when Newsweek had a readership of 15 million, my indulgent editors let me pretend to be a foreign correspondent for a week or so a year. I got to parachute into some of the biggest stories in the world without having to uproot my family and move. My international reporting, the luxury of a bygone age, was not especially distinguished, but it sure was fun.

From the start, I was too chicken to dodge bullets. The only battlefield I ever saw was when I stood five feet away from President George W. Bush on Sept. 14, 2001, as he spoke through a bullhorn atop the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center.

But the beneficence of a world-class news organization allowed a homebody like me to get a piece of proxy wars in Central America, the fall of communism, the emergence of China as a world power, U.S. recognition of Vietnam, President Bill Clinton's Mideast peace efforts, and the run-up to the Iraq war, among other international stories. I was Walter Mitty in a trench coat.

Newsweek opened doors. For decades, mentioning my affiliation carried more weight abroad than had I worked for the New York Times or the Washington Post, which -- before the Internet --circulated in foreign capitals only through the International Herald Tribune. Like my colleagues, I could land in a country and within a few hours arrange important interviews that would be impossible at the same level in the United States: The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, the top general in Guatemala (a man responsible for mass killings of civilians), the soon-to-be president of Nicaragua. All talked. And when they came to New York, I had no trouble sitting down with leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev (by then out of office), Hugo Chávez, and Ehud Barak.