It's Not an Intifada - By Jonathan Schanzer

Don't call it an intifada. Not yet, anyway.

Sure, violence has erupted recently throughout the West Bank. The injuries and deaths of Palestinian protestors continue to make headlines. Palestinian and Israeli commentators are warning of a return to chaos. Some are outright cheering for it. But officials from both sides of the Green Line are reluctant to call it an "intifada," for fear of letting the proverbial genie out of the bottle. Instead, they carefully wield such terms as "popular resistance," "rioters," or just "the situation."

What's in a name? The term intifada was popularized when the Palestinians launched their first uprising against Israel from 1987 to 1990. Translated as "shaking off," that Palestinian intifada was replete with rock-throwing, tire-burning, civil disobedience, and low-level violence against Israel in an attempt to gain independence. By contrast, the second intifada, from 2000 to 2005, was an all-out war, with Iranian proxies Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah's Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and other groups carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian and military targets.

These two campaigns to decouple from the Israelis differed greatly in tactics, but both were unquestionably embraced by the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people alike. We don't see that kind of cohesion today, and that, essentially, is why we won't yet call it an intifada.

In fact, according to a recent poll, 65 percent of Palestinians oppose a new intifada. And so does Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has called upon his security services to keep a lid on the violence.

Abbas, however, has not entirely closed the door on a new uprising. The Jerusalem Post reports that he recently reached an agreement with the rival Hamas faction to keep things on a low flame. The two factions, whose leaders are generally prone to disagreement on just about everything, have apparently settled on the term "peaceful intifada."

This strategy apparently includes demonstrations against the West Bank security barrier, Israeli detention policies, and Israeli settlements, as well as more creative Palestinian civil disobedience, including the erection of "outposts" such as Bab Al-Shams in the disputed E1 area and others since.

The Israelis have called upon the Palestinian Authority to unequivocally end the unrest, but that may not happen right away. Abbas knows that, ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to the region in March, the uncertain security situation (not an intifada, mind you) is his ace in the hole.

Abbas's rationale for keeping the unrest on a low flame is simple. Rather than asking the Palestinian leaer for potentially painful concessions at the negotiating table with Israel, Obama might now come to Ramallah with one respectful request: maintain calm.

Welcome to the Middle East, Mr. Secretary - By Marc Lynch

Dear Secretary Kerry,

Congratulations on your first official visit to the Middle East as secretary of state. You start with some real advantages: The president clearly trusts your judgment and will listen to your ideas, you already have extensive relationships with leaders in the region, and you can devote yourself fully to this job without worrying about what comes next. That's important, since obsessing about your "legacy" on day one is the best way to ensure that you won't have one. You know that nobody cares about your frequent-flier miles, and you don't want to be known as Louis Vuitton John. This trip is your first chance -- and perhaps your only chance -- to show the people and leaders of the region what you want to achieve over the next four years.

Everyone you meet on this trip is trying to figure out the priorities of the new administration. You no doubt are looking to build relationships and solicit strategic cooperation from the leaders you meet, but if you try to smooth over those first encounters by avoiding democracy and human rights concerns, don't expect to be able to introduce them later. So set the right tone from the beginning. Your itinerary is a good start, signaling your focus on the two countries that will shape the region's future: Egypt and Syria.

It sounds like you're already on the right track on Syria, with the Rome conference. Increasing direct non-military support for the Syrian opposition is the right way to proceed, as you did with your new pledge of $60 million in non-lethal aid. You should focus broadly on building the Syrian opposition's political institutions and influence on the ground, rather than fixate narrowly on arming them.

Your comments thus far -- such as your remark that the United States would not leave the opposition "dangling in the wind" -- suggest that you recognize the need for more assertive international action to deal with the nigh-incomprehensible levels of devastation in Syria. But they also show that you understand that Bashar al-Assad's fall would be a short-lived triumph if it is followed by state failure, endemic warlordism, and ethnic cleansing -- which is where a strategy based primarily on the uncoordinated arming of rebels is likely to lead. The Saudis may have visions of their "successful" support of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets dancing in their heads; you should remember what happened next. You need to show Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE that you've got a plan that will work, and convince the Syrian opposition that you're serious about it. Good luck.

Syria's not all you'll talk about in the Gulf. You're probably going to hear a bit of triumphalism about Gulf leaders' "success" in riding out the Arab Spring and their wisdom in resisting the winds of change. In the UAE especially, you'll probably get an earful about the evils of the Muslim Brotherhood and how foolish the United States has been in Egypt. Don't buy it. It would be foolish to believe that the Arab world has returned to "normal" and that you can safely expect to work quietly with stable authoritarian regimes. True, the Gulf monarchies managed to prevent any of their team from getting tossed from the throne, for now. But there are deep, fundamental processes of change still unfolding which are likely to lead to real turbulence at some point during your tenure.

And don't fall for the popular line that the monarchies have some unique recipe for stability. The Gulf kingdoms, especially Saudi Arabia, have spent heavily on short-term political stability -- but their level of spending may prove unsustainable if the price of oil should drop significantly. Their societies are changing rapidly: A rising generation of wired citizens is placing escalating demands on their rulers, and their expectations of social, economic, and political change thus far remain unmet. This is true beyond the Gulf, of course -- don't be fooled by the narrative of a successful Jordanian election, which didn't do much to address the fundamental underlying problems in the Hashemite Kingdom.

Get out in front of this by pushing the region's royals on the urgency of political reform -- and letting them know from the start that the new administration cares about these issues. The Gulf leaders you meet are not going to want to hear about democracy or human rights, but if you don't bring up these issues on this trip they will be seen as off the table for the foreseeable future.

How to Win a Cyberwar with China - By Dan Blumenthal

The Internet is now a battlefield. China is not only militarizing cyberspace -- it is also deploying its cyberwarriors against the United States and other countries to conduct corporate espionage, hack think tanks, and engage in retaliatory harassment of news organizations.

These attacks are another dimension of the ongoing strategic competition between the United States and China -- a competition playing out in the waters of the East and South China seas, in Iran and Syria, across the Taiwan Strait, and in outer space. With a number of recent high-profile attacks in cyberspace traced to the Chinese government, the cybercompetition seems particularly pressing. It is time for Washington to develop a clear, concerted strategy to deter cyberwar, theft of intellectual property, espionage, and digital harassment. Simply put, the United States must make China pay for conducting these activities, in addition to defending cybernetworks and critical infrastructure such as power stations and cell towers. The U.S. government needs to go on the offensive and enact a set of diplomatic, security, and legal measures designed to impose serious costs on China for its flagrant violations of the law and to deter a conflict in the cybersphere.

Fashioning an adequate response to this challenge requires understanding that China places clear value on the cyber military capability. During the wars of the last two decades, China was terrified by the U.S. military's joint, highly networked capabilities. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) began paying attention to the role of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) assets in the conduct of war. But the PLA also concluded that the seeds of weakness were planted within this new way of war that allowed the United States to find, fix, and kill targets quickly and precisely -- an overdependence on information networks.

Consider what might happen in a broader U.S.-China conflict. The PLA could conduct major efforts to disable critical U.S. military information systems (it already demonstrates these capabilities for purposes of deterrence). Even more ominously, PLA cyberwarriors could turn their attention to strategic attacks on critical infrastructure in America. This may be a highly risky option, but the PLA may view cyber-escalation as justified if, for example, the United States struck military targets on Chinese soil.

China is, of course, using attacks in cyberspace to achieve other strategic goals as well, from stealing trade secrets to advance its wish for a more innovative economy to harassing organizations and individuals who criticize its officials or policies.

Barack Obama's administration has begun to fight back. On Feb. 20, the White House announced enhanced efforts to fight the theft of American trade secrets through several initiatives: building a program of cooperative diplomacy with like-minded nations to press leaders of "countries of concern," enhancing domestic investigation and prosecution of theft, promoting intelligence sharing, and improving current legislation that would enable these initiatives. These largely defensive measures are important but should be paired with more initiatives that start to play offense.

Offensive measures may be gaining some steam. The U.S. Justice Department, in creating the National Security Cyber Specialists' Network (NSCS) last year, recognizes the need for such an approach. The NSCS -- consisting of almost 100 prosecutors from U.S. attorneys' offices working in partnership with cyber-experts from the Justice Department's National Security Division and the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section -- is tasked with "exploring investigations and prosecutions as viable options for deterrence and disruption" of cyberattacks, including indictments of governments or individuals working on the government's behalf. It's a good first step, but Congress could also consider passing laws forbidding individuals and entities from doing business in the United States if there is clear evidence of involvement in cyberattacks.

Stuck in the Swamp - By Gianni Riotta

Some 90 years ago, the Italian poet Eugenio Montale, who would later go on to win a Nobel prize for literature, wrote these bitter, magic verses:

This alone today we can tell you/What we are not, what we do not want. 

At the time, it was read as a statement against the coming tides of Fascism. Today, it expresses the mood of most Italians, stuck in our post-election quagmire. There is no solid majority in the Senate nor even in the lower house of parliament, where the center-left Democratic Party enjoys a slight majority in seats (though not control) -- and there is no viable political coalition on which to build a government.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi survived his sixth national campaign since 1994: he lost millions of votes from his last go round, yet his promises of slashing taxes once more excited the middle class (and roiled markets). The Democratic Party's (PD) leader, Pierluigi Bersani, was the front runner in all the polls:  but he, too, failed to follow the raw data on the web and his campaign sputtered in the south. Meanwhile, embittered by joblessness, corruption, and organized crime, the south paid no attention to PD and listened to the Sirens evoked by Beppe Grillo, the populist former comedian and founder of the 5 Star party. Grillo shined, winning 25 percent of the votes, which put to rest the technocratic dreams of Premier Mario Monti. Grillo also managed to siphon off more than half of his votes from Bersani's  PD, bleeding the party of its far left. The progressive voters were angry: they did not concern themselves with bond markets, the Davos consensus, or even the wisdom of pundits, for that matter. "Tutti a casa" ("Let's send the crooks home!") was the war cry; homilies from economists fell on deaf ears. 

Clearly, voters did not bother to read Grillo's quixotic manifesto, which includes: quitting the Eurozone; withdrawing Italian troops from all international peacekeeping missions; stopping work on badly needed infrastructure projects, from high-speed trains to highways; putting a moratorium on biotech research; and denying citizenship to immigrants. Instead, in a populist frenzy, they thronged his rallies (to be fair, Grillo is a terrific political performer) and made 5 Star Italy's No. 1 party. Yet such was the chaos of this election, that abstention hit a record high, one not seen since 1946, when war-weary Italians were called to choose between a republic and monarchy.

So as the political parties now scheme and horse-trade, who really won and who lost? And what happens next? 

The real winner was fear -- the fear of globalization, free markets, innovation, integrated Europe, and high tech. Both Berlusconi and Grillo berated Germany's Angela Merkel for her politics of austerity, blaming her cold and stern Europe for Italy's woes. Berlusconi talked of repealing the imposta municipal unica, a much hated real estate tax imposed by Monti. Meanwhile, Grillo claimed that Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz will advise him on how to spur sustainable growth. But without tax revenue and with an epidemic of tax dodging, that's going to be difficult.

Morning Brief: Benedict bids emotional farewell

Top news: Bidding farewell in his last public address as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI conceded that his term had at times been marked by "choppy waters," the most direct reference offered by the pope in reference to the sex scandals that blossomed under his watch.

Addressing a packed crowd of more than 100,000 in St. Peter's Square, the scene in the Vatican was emotional. Several cardinals, in town ahead of the papal conclave and seated to the pope's right, could be seen dabbing at tears. In his address, Benedict compared his time in office to the voyage of St. Peter and the apostles across the Sea of Galilee, saying God had given him "many days of sun and light breezes." "But there were times when the waters were choppy and, as throughout the history of the church, it looked as if the Lord was sleeping," Benedict said. "But I have always known that the Lord was in that boat, that the boat was not mine or ours, but was his and he will not let it founder."

Benedict officially steps down Thursday and will retire to Castel Gandolfo, the traditional summer residency of the papacy, where he will retain the title "his holiness" but will renounce some of the papal garb, dressing a white cassock and giving up the red shoes of the papacy -- a symbol of the blood of the martyrs -- for brown ones. According to statements by Vatican officials, it is expected he will live a largely secluded life in prayer.

U.S. politics: The U.S. Senate voted to confirm former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense in a 58-41 vote, concluding a brutal confirmation process that has raised fears Hagel will arrive at the Pentagon lacking the political capital necessary to confront looming budget cuts.

Against the Tides - By Malte Lehming

Eight years ago, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was proclaimed Pope Benedict XVI, a German tabloid ran the headline: "We are pope!" It was meant to suggest a special bond between Germans and the new pope -- the first to hail from Germany since Pope Adrian VI in 1522. And it was an expression of pride: Finally the Catholic Church was being run by someone whose own biography allowed him to relate to German concerns and sentiments. That's how it appeared then. But the relationship soon went sour: Disappointment turned into indifference, indifference into rejection. Last time he came to visit Germany's capital, in 2011, the pope's detractors gathered at night near his lodgings and tried to keep the old man awake by banging drums and playing trumpets.

Initially, the question of the pope's nationality was also taken up by commentators outside Germany. After all, here was a German who had once been a member of the Hitler Youth. The suspicion grew when he voiced his intent to bring back a reactionary Holocaust denier into the church's fold -- in 2009, Pope Benedict lifted the ban on Bishop Richard Williamson, who once said, "There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers" during the Holocaust. It seemed a little much. But the pope confronted his critics' somewhat superficial perspective head-on by placing himself, his testimonial, and his teachings at the core of his rule. During his visit to Israel in 2009 he stressed the "indestructible bond" between Jews and Christians and the need to fight against anti-Semitism with "all strength." Soon, assumptions about his attitude toward Judaism and position on the Holocaust appeared not only unjustified, but straight-out ridiculous.

The other assumption -- that a German pope would be a pope of the Germans -- turned out to be equally silly. The emphasis on his geographical background was little more than patriotic hubris; if anything, Pope Benedict's reign would contribute to the church's decline on the European continent, where only a quarter of the word's 1.2 billion Catholics reside. His time as the head of the church was marked by the rise of Christianity in Africa and Asia, where the faithful are less concerned about issues like abuse, homosexuality, and the ordination of female priests. But Pope Benedict failed to reconcile the rival impulses within his flock.

To be sure, the pope took up the matter of the declining Christian communities in Europe. During the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid, he complained about "God's eclipse" in the West, railed against "aggressive forms of secularism," and warned that the disappearance of God from our lives would lead to a "derogative view of man." But his call did not lead to a rejuvenation of Europe's Christianity. In Europe, religious traditions are fading, while anti-religious sentiments in general are on the rise. The Swiss banned minarets, the French banned headscarves, and the Germans, of all people, banned -- briefly at least -- religious circumcision.

In Europe, the Catholic Church and Christianity, in general, face two challenging trends: secular apathy mixed with moments of anti-religious fervor, and the mighty social impact of Islam. The two trends are divisive, yet they have occasionally united people across faiths: The German debate about circumcision, for example, brought Jews, Christians, and Muslims together into a coalition, but the pope's 2006 speech at Regensburg University still remains contentious. In the speech, Pope Benedict XVI referred to a debate between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian and quoted the emperor's provocative words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an association of 57 Islamic states, called the speech a "smear campaign."

The roots of this misunderstanding can be traced back to a conscious decision: From the start of his reign, Pope Benedict made clear that he wanted to spar theologically with Muslims. In his first encyclical, akin to a State of the Union address for popes, he described the Christian God of love as the radical antithesis of the entity that terrorists take to justify their acts. "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant," he said.

You Can't Hack a Steakhouse - By Haley Barbour and Ed Rogers

Last week, we learned that the Chinese government had hacked into the computers of some of Washington's most prominent organizations -- law firms, think tanks, news outlets, human rights groups, congressional offices, embassies, and federal agencies -- not to steal intellectual property or unearth state secrets, but rather to find out how things get done in the nation's capital. According to the Washington Post, hackers were "searching for the unseen forces that might explain how the administration approaches an issue ' with many Chinese officials presuming that reports by think tanks or news organizations are secretly the work of government officials -- much as they would be in Beijing." In other words, it appears that Chinese hackers have a lot of time on their hands and don't know much about Washington. There are probably instances where a massive database and a fancy algorithm can tell you what you need to know about a place, but D.C. isn't one of them.

"They're trying to make connections between prominent people who work at think tanks, prominent donors that they've heard of and how the government makes decisions," the Post reported one informed expert as saying. "It's a sophisticated intelligence-gathering effort at trying to make human-network linkages of people in power, whether they be in Congress or the executive branch." Well, it's possible to use espionage to learn the inside thinking at one of Washington's prestigious think tanks. Or you could just attend any of the dozens of daily seminars, issue briefings, and the like in town, raise your hand, and get a direct answer to almost any question. You might even get a free bagel and a cup of coffee.

In Washington, you don't need a satellite to find out who is raising money for whom. Just look at the co-host list of an invitation to any fundraiser. And if the Chinese really want to get a look at where the power decisions get made, send an undercover eater to see who's dining with whom at the Four Seasons for breakfast, Tosca for lunch, and the Palm or Oceanaire for dinner. And here's a secret in Washington the Chinese haven't hacked into yet: Actual decision-makers will meet with the actual experts and affected parties in order to make as informed a decision as possible. Shhhh. Don't tell the Chinese.

Right now, it's a good bet that the Chinese hackers are sifting through millions of emails in which tons of people are saying sensible things, making all sorts of predictions, and maybe even revealing what they think about how and why a particular decision was made. But often the talk isn't connected to any particular decision -- and it isn't always well-informed. Washington is a cacophonic symphony of gigantic plans, dueling facts, eager ideals, and petty pursuits. To understand it, you have to be able to hear it all at the same time and also understand that the music never stops. Beijing will blow a circuit board trying to make sense of all this.

Maybe the Chinese don't understand that a literal transcript of what is said in Washington does not tell the real story. It never has. It never will. People are always saying something here. All we do is talk. At any given time you can find someone saying anything you want to hear -- on any given side of any issue -- from missile defense to agricultural policy. That doesn't happen in Beijing. And that's part of the reason it's so easy to be busy and yet so hard to be productive in D.C. It takes time to know who is relevant to a decision, to understand that person's history and how he or she approaches an issue. That's extremely important and not always easy to figure out.

Our decades of experience tell us that it's the nuance and fragments of information that form the mosaic of Washington politics and power. Reading what a single perceptive reporter overhears when strolling through the Speaker's Lobby during the last vote in the House of Representatives on a Thursday afternoon can be every bit as useful as what a hundred reporters write after a briefing by Jay Carney at the White House. Often it's better to have a short sidebar conversation during a chance encounter at a dinner or cocktails with a 20- or 30-something staffer on a key congressional committee than a courtesy meeting with a member of Congress or a cabinet secretary.

Finding the right people is important. But more and more, Washington has become a place that rewards what you know rather than whom you know. Sure, friendships and political affiliations make introductions easier and some meetings friendlier, but really hearing what was said and accomplishing something afterward requires real work and a lot of relevant, persuasively presented information. And though Washington always gets a bad rap, the people who make decisions that matter really do take their independence, transparency, and integrity seriously. While inside deals and doing favors are the commonplace caricature, they don't represent how Washington really works today.

The Chinese apparently spent gigantic amounts of resources plumbing the depths of computer systems inside the Beltway. Maybe that's because the mindset in Beijing is much more about top-down governance. But a lot of what moves the federal government originates in state capitals, places like Sacramento and Raleigh. The discerning Washington insider listens closely to what's said outside the Beltway to find out what's likely to happen next in D.C.

The Chinese government's worst mistake was to imagine that it could find out anything worth knowing by reading things that were written down, electronically or otherwise. If anyone were writing down anything useful in the first place, WikiLeaks stopped all that. The fact is, you don't have to spy -- you can just ask. You don't need to peep through the keyhole to follow the political maneuvering in Washington; just walk in to any good steakhouse and look around.

Does John Kerry Matter? - By David Rothkopf

As John Kerry launches his maiden tour of world capitals as secretary of state, foreign leaders are looking for signs as to how Obama administration foreign policy is likely to change during the president's second term. The short answer is: They should look in the mirror. If Obama's foreign policy changes at all, it will be because the situations commanding America's attention internationally have shifted in some material way.

In fact, because the world is likely to undergo important shifts in the months ahead, the real questions about what will change ought to be coming from the Obama team itself. The members of Obama's brain trust ought to be asking how they need to adapt to the global situation they are likely to face over the next four years. Staying the course or simply trying to reduce America's overseas exposure due to recent wars and missteps won't be adequate.

Kerry has already given some clues to the kind of secretary of state he will be. His first speech suggested that at least for a while, the United States' new top diplomat would sound rather like the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That speech was very much directed to a domestic audience. For the public at large, it made the case that diplomacy was relevant. For Washington, it made the case that it needed to be funded. For the world, it didn't really suggest a new vision.

There is a reason for this. The primary foreign-policy maker in this administration remains the president. The primary location for the shaping of major policy decisions remains the White House and the National Security Staff. Of the most influential foreign-policy makers in this administration, most of the important ones are remaining right where they were: in the White House. That includes not only the president but also Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Donilon's former deputy and now Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. McDonough's replacement, Tony Blinken, didn't have to carry his boxes very far either as he already was the VP's national security advisor in the last term. So continuity should be expected.

You wouldn't know it from all the handwringing on Capitol Hill or media navel-gazing about cabinet choices, but neither Kerry nor his eventual counterpart at the Pentagon is likely to change very much at all about the administration's international agenda. This is true to some degree because, as just noted, the policymaker-in-chief remains the same guy supported by the same team in the same place. But it is also true because the important drivers of that agenda are beyond the control of the top guys in Foggy Bottom or at the Pentagon.

The most important of these external drivers is what's actually happening in the world. Fantasies about America pulling the strings for the planet aside, the reality is that most foreign policy is reactive ("Events, my dear boy, events."). Next, there is the important and often overlooked reality that most U.S. foreign policy conforms to historical norms and patterns. Shifts from one administration to another are much less drastic than most in the press would have you believe -- see, for instance, the striking similarities between George W. Bush and Barack Obama's foreign policies with regard to drones, treatment of terrorists, getting out of Iraq, and many other issues. Indeed, it is worth noting that while March marks the 10th anniversary of going into Iraq, this month, February, marks the 20th anniversary of the first Gulf War: Every President since George H.W. Bush has had to manage military challenges associated with Iraq (and with Middle East-linked terrorism, for that matter).

Taking these factors into account, Kerry's room to actually make big adjustments to U.S. foreign policy is very limited. To the extent that he does, it will really be at the margins. Which is not to say there are no hints of what those differences will be.

Give Me Shelter - By Justin Vela

ISTANBUL - As the war inside Syria rages, aid organizations find themselves on the outside looking in -- fully aware of the daily destruction across the border, but unable to directly reach those in need because of the violence. That's where people like Mahmoud come in.

Mahmoud, who asked to be identified using a pseudonym, is a Syrian in his thirties who has worked with a Western-backed international aid organization operating on the Turkey-Syria border for the past six months. With security concerns and bureaucratic hurdles keeping most international aid workers from actually entering this war-torn country, NGOs rely on Syrians like Mahmoud to make the hazardous trek across the border to assess the needs for assistance and deliver aid to the local population.

Syrian "implementing partners" pick up the supplies at warehouses in southern Turkey, near the border, and drive them into Syria -- avoiding major highways to mitigate the risk of being attacked by a plane or helicopter. "The roads are bad because there are many parts of the road that are destroyed because of the shelling," Mahmoud said.

It's dangerous work. Mahmoud recounted a trip to opposition-held northern Syria this winter, when a military helicopter menaced the village he was visiting. The helicopter dropped barrels filled with TNT explosives onto the town. As Mahmoud sought shelter, running toward the relative safety of a basement, he saw two children and their mother standing on the roof of a house and watching the helicopter's deadly activity. The children and their mother did not hide, nor did they point or cry out.

"This is something horrible," he said. "I still have my feelings. I am afraid of the shelling. The people who stay inside [Syria] all the time, after all this, they are not afraid of anything."

Mahmoud's job is to help deliver aid, document how it is used, and gather data on the humanitarian needs inside Syria -- and then report back to his employer. It's not work that's going to be complete any time soon. 

"What is going on in Syria...we will need aid for five years after the fall of the regime," he said. "It is not only the materials that you have to deal with, the destruction of buildings, the material damage. There is something else that has to do with the psychology of the people. Here there is big damage."

As the Syrian conflict approaches the two-year mark, it has left more than 60,000 dead -- and the devastation grows larger by the day. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that more than 850,000 people have become refugees. Inside Syria, the situation is even worse: There are 2 million people internally displaced and four million are in need of assistance. According to Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. Refugee Agency, some 7,000 Syrians are fleeing the country every day due to the worsening crisis.

About 15 international NGOs -- including big names such as Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and the Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation -- operate in southern Turkey, sending supplies into Syria. Private donors fund most of the NGOs, said aid workers speaking on the condition of anonymity, though some receive funding from the United States and European governments. Mahmoud estimated that a total of 50 international aid workers have established themselves in the Turkey-Syria border area.

The New Westphalian Web - By Katherine Maher

Nearly 365 years ago, more than 100 warring diplomats and princes got together in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück, in what is now northwestern Germany. There they signed a set of treaties that became the basic framework for our modern world: the Peace of Westphalia. Thanks to these dignitaries, we have territorial sovereignty: nation-states, demarcated by borders.

In the intervening centuries, Westphalian sovereignty has been the basic ordering principle of our societies. Empires have risen and fallen, countries come and gone. The most successful states have established internal monopolies on information and resources and have exerted discretion on what trade, ideas, money, or people crossed their borders.

But 30 years ago, humanity gave birth to one of the most disruptive forces of our time. On Jan. 1, 1983, the implementation of TCP/IP -- a standard protocol to allow computers to exchange data over a network -- turned discrete clusters of research computers into a distributed global phenomenon. It was essentially the work of three men: two engineers to write the protocol, and one to carry out the plan. It was a birth so quiet no one even has a photo of the day; a recent post by one of TCP/IP's authors, Vint Cerf, was able to turn up only a commemorative pin.

It took awhile for the Internet to make it from mainframes in universities to desktops in the home, but as it did, it birthed its own culture, full of shorthands and memes, communities and cesspools. This Internet was wild and wooly, unknown and unregulated. It was clearly a place, but a place without any familiar cultural signposts, a space beyond the boundaries of geography or identity. It deserved its own name: cyberspace.

Like all new frontiers, cyberspace's early settlers declared themselves independent -- most famously in 1996, in cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace." Barlow asserted a realm beyond borders or government, rejecting the systems we use to run the physical universe. "Governments of the Industrial World," he reproached, "You have no sovereignty where we gather.' Cyberspace does not lie within your borders."

With the flip of a switch, three engineers had undone the work of more than 100 princes and diplomats.

Barlow was right, in part. Independence was a structural fact of cyberspace, and free expression and communication were baked into the network. The standards and protocols on which the Internet runs are agnostic: They don't care whether you were in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, or Boise. If they run into an attempt to block traffic, they merely reroute along a seemingly infinite network of decentralized nodes, inspiring technologist John Gilmore's maxim: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

Morning Brief: Afghanistan bans U.S. special forces from key province

Top news: Amid allegations that Afghans employed by U.S. forces had killed and tortured villagers in the area, the government of President Hamid Karzai announced Sunday that it will ban U.S. special forces from operating in Wardak province, a key area just west of Kabul used by the Taliban to stage attacks on the capital.

Arguing that the measure was taken as a last resort after coalition commanders turned a deaf ear on complaints of abuse, Afghan officials said that a university student in Wardak had been abducted and later found with his head and fingers cut off. "Those Afghans in these armed groups who are working with the U.S. special forces, the defense minister asked for an explanation of who they are,' presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said, implying that the Afghan employees in question are members of U.S.-run militias. "Those individuals should be handed over to the Afghan side so that we can further investigate."

On Monday, NATO announced that it so far had found no evidence of wrong-doing in Wardak, which over the course of the war has been a focus for counter-terrorism operations. Special forces represent a key bulwark of the Obama administration's withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan, and their inability to move freely around the country to strike at terrorist groups would hamper White House plans for the country after the NATO mission ends in 2014.

Cuba: Cuban president Raul Castro announced Sunday that he will resign as president in 2018 at the end of his current five-year term, signaling the end of an era on the Communist-ruled island. Since 1959, Cuba has been ruled by one of the Castro brothers, and Fidel Castro was in attendance Sunday at Raul's speech, at which he designated a political heir, Miguel Diaz-Canel.

The Skeletons in Benedict's Closet - By Elias Groll

If a report on Thursday, Feb. 21, in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica is to be believed, Pope Benedict XVI's recent decision to resign just got a whole lot more interesting. The paper claims that around the time that Pope Benedict decided to step down, the pontiff learned of a faction of gay prelates in the Vatican who may have been exposed to blackmail by a group of male prostitutes in Rome. The revelations allegedly appeared in a 300-page report by three cardinals that the pope commissioned to investigate the release of internal documents by his butler, the so-called "Vatileaks" scandal. (A Vatican spokesman has refused to confirm or deny La Repubblica's claims, and the internal Vatican report is reportedly stowed away in a papal safe for Pope Benedict's successor to peruse.)

Seen in the context of Pope Benedict's career in the Catholic Church, it is difficult to understand why revelations of yet another sex scandal would push him to resign. For over a decade, he has served as the church's point person for responding to allegations of abuse. From 1985 until his election to the papacy in 2005, Benedict served as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a powerful Vatican body charged with policing church doctrine. In 2001, Pope John Paul II transferred responsibility for dealing with the sex scandals enveloping the institution to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's office. In that role, Ratzinger received tens of thousands of complaints alleging sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Those documents often went into lurid detail, and Ratzinger is said to have been deeply affected by the experience.

As a theologian and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict gained the not-so-flattering nickname "God's Rottweiler" for his rigid interpretations of doctrine and his stringent enforcement of church rules. In practice, he has frequently displayed a preference -- both as a pope and as a cardinal -- for confronting predatory priests behind closed doors and protecting the church's reputation at the expense of public accountability.

Here's how Benedict tackled some of the most prominent scandals to have struck the church during his career.

Peter Hullermann, Germany, 1980
While serving as the archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger may have played a role in shielding a pedophile priest, Peter Hullermann, from prosecution, transferring him to different parishes when parents complained that he had abused their children. In 1980, Ratzinger approved a plan to send Hullermann, who was facing allegations (that he did not deny) of abusing children in the German city of Essen, to Munich for therapy. Over the objections of a psychiatrist who was treating the priest, the German archdiocese permitted Hullermann to resume his pastoral work shortly after beginning therapy and did not inform the priest's new parish of his history. In 1986, Hullermann was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria.

Lawrence Murphy, United States, 1996
As head of a Wisconsin school for deaf boys from 1950 to 1974, Father Lawrence Murphy is alleged to have molested upwards of 200 children. Yet when the case was presented to Ratzinger in the mid-1990s, he declined to defrock the priest. In 1996, Ratzinger ignored letters from Rembert Weakland, the archbishop of Milwaukee, seeking guidance from the cardinal on how to proceed against Murphy and another priest. Eventually, the church initiated a canonical trial against Murphy, but when the priest personally appealed to Ratzinger for clemency, saying that he was in poor health, the cardinal intervened to stop the proceedings against him.

Limited Partnership - By Jeffrey Lewis

When I last traveled to Seoul, I took in a ballgame. (I am now a fierce partisan of the Doosan Bears.) I headed to the ballpark, anticipating the perfect marriage of Korean and American culture: kimchi dogs!

As it turns out, South Koreans eat fried chicken at baseball games. Who knew? For reasons I cannot fathom, it has never occurred to anyone to smother a hot dog in spicy kimchi, despite the fact that this is fusion cuisine's answer to peanut butter and jelly. The moral of this little tale is that just because two things ought to go great together, the real world sometimes disappoints.

Which brings us to nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Iran. There have been any number of stories in recent days detailing the allegedly close and continuing cooperation between nuclear weaponeers in both countries. A casual reader perusing the Sunday Times, Jerusalem Post, Kyodo News, and Chosun Ilbo might very well conclude that North Korea's nuclear test was as good as an Iranian one. "Why Iran already has the bomb," was the provocative title of an article in Tablet.

But, like kimchi dogs, it's an obvious idea that doesn't seem to have a basis in fact.

Many of the people pushing the "Iranian test" hypothesis are simply trying to hijack a Northeast Asian crisis for their own preferred policy in the Middle East, which usually involves bombing the crap out of Iran. Others are probably just fascinated by the idea of an international rogues gallery of scientists holed up in a fortress of doom, testing nuclear weapons. (Imagine Mohsen Fakhrizadeh asking Dr. No how he lost his hands, with Ri Je-son rolling his eyes at having to hear that story one more time.)

Few of these authors, however, seem to have thought very carefully about either the status of Iran's nuclear program or the purpose of testing nuclear weapons in general. A careful consideration of both, however, helps illustrate why the reality is probably a lot less exciting than the headlines. There probably is some cooperation, but not of the sort that alters the fundamental policy problem with regard to Iran.

Let's start with the allegations.

The Sunday Times, citing the usual "Western intelligence sources," reported that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, generally believed to be the head of Iran's shuttered weaponization program, visited Pyongyang, possibly before attending the DPRK's nuclear test. The Jerusalem Post picked up that story, quoting an Israeli academic stating that "The Iranians didn't carry out a nuclear test in Iran, but they may have done so in North Korea." Debka, on the other hand, expressed doubt that Fakhrizadeh would leave the safety of Iran, given the desire of certain intelligence services to see his brains splattered across his dashboard. Kyodo News, citing a "Western diplomatic source" reported that Iran paid tens of millions of dollars to have Iranian scientists observe the test. Chosun Ilbo picked up that story.

Iran and North Korea do, of course, do bad things together. The North Koreans and Iranians were both clients of Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.

Iran and North Korea also have a well-documented cooperation on ballistic missiles. At least one account has the early contacts between North Korea and the Khan network arising from North Korean and Pakistani technicians working on the Iranian missile program during the Iran-Iraq War. The U.S. intelligence community's most recent 721 report -- the unclassified summary of WMD proliferation it periodically sends Congress -- clearly states that North Korea's relationship with Iran "remains strong."

One can clearly see this connection in the missiles themselves. Iran's Shahab-3 is a Nodong clone. Iran's Simorgh appears to be similar to the first stage of North Korea's Unha rocket. The third stage of North Korea's Unha rocket appears to be based on the second stage of an Iranian rocket called the Safir, which is in turn based on vernier engines from a Soviet missile called the SS-N-6 that North Korea appears to have exported to Iran.

Recent allegations of cooperation have some basis in fact. In September, Iran's science and higher education minister signed a memorandum of understanding with the North Korean foreign minister on scientific and technical cooperation. The MOU was followed by a Kyodo News report that Iran had agreed to permanently station missile engineers from Shahid Hemmat Industries in North Korea. The latter claim is plausible but not corroborated. Some observers have pointed to similarities in the test stands at the Shahid Hemmat complex and the North Korean launch site at Tonghae -- a similarity I noted at the time. All test stands look more or less alike, as evidenced by images from the United States. Given the close cooperation between the two missile programs, the idea of a more-or-less continuous presence doesn't seem far-fetched.

The evidence, however, dries up on the subject of nuclear cooperation.

The idea is not crazy. Both Iran and North Korea were clients of the Khan network. North Korea swapped Nodong missiles to Pakistan for help with centrifuges and sold a reactor to Syria, so we know Pyongyang likes money. But there are also some important differences in their centrifuge programs: The Iranians are developing their own evolution of the P1 centrifuge using a carbon fiber material; the North Koreans claim to use some sort of maraging steel. Despite these differences, the pair might share an interest in developing a warhead small enough to place on a missile.

Rolling out the Red Carpet - By Damien Ma

In the 1997 international political thriller Red Corner, Chinese officials in Beijing entrap an American lawyer for murder. Richard Gere, a noted disciple of the Dalai Lama, China's public enemy No. 1, plays the lawyer fighting for justice in the benighted Chinese legal system, aided by a Chinese female lawyer willing to risk her life for American-style justice and freedoms. But by 2013, another American lawyer was finding love and humor in Shanghai -- the premise of the just-released romantic comedy Shanghai Calling, which the New York Times calls "a plug" for China. These days, "Why would you make a movie that demonizes China?" asks Daniel Hsia, who wrote and directed the film.

Why indeed? Over the past two decades, Hollywood's perception of China has evolved, from a totalitarian state to a major growth opportunity. And as the American movie industry increasingly needs China, its films have begun to alter content accordingly. Life of Pi, which has no connection to China besides the Taiwanese ethnicity of its director Ang Lee, has received 11 nominations for Sunday's Oscars, and box-office receipts of more than $90 million on the mainland. The uncontroversial film is the only one of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture to have been shown in movie theaters in China. In all likelihood, that's for good reason: In the American version, a character declares that "religion is darkness"; in the Chinese it was changed.

An offspring of a co-production with China Film Group, the largest state film conglomerate, Shanghai Calling underscores Hollywood's shifting strategy toward China and the overt or self-censorship it brings. A decade after China entered the World Trade Organization, Hollywood is only allowed to export about 20 films a year to the China market, where box office sales climbed to more than $2 billion in 2012.

One way around the quota restriction, explains Hsia, is to get approval for co-productions. Under this arrangement, a Hollywood studio partners with a Chinese entity in order to have the final product considered a domestic film, exempting it from the import quota. It also allows for risk-sharing, because the Chinese partner puts up part of the money. The potential for Chinese money and market access is highly attractive to a Hollywood that faces dwindling domestic ticket sales and saw declining profits in five out of six of its major studios in 2012.

Although China has made it much easier for Americans to invest, getting a co-production approved is still a difficult process. Ideologues in the Communist Party have long considered Western culture "spiritual pollution" and viewed Hollywood suspiciously as an instrument of American statecraft packaged into nebulous "soft power." Scripts for co-productions are submitted for approval to the State Administration for Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), which oversees the film and entertainment industry. "Like in any business negotiation, the person who has the power to say no has the leverage," says Hsia.

Here's where censorship comes in: SARFT even meddled with the making of a rather innocuous and apolitical comedy like Shanghai Calling. But beyond what foreign filmmakers must do to get a co-production approved, the effort to avoid offending the Chinese has had an impact on film content in the U.S. market. Subtle but noticeable changes have also seeped into on-screen portrayals of China.

Circus Maximus - By Gianni Riotta

Even by Italian standards, the 2013 election -- taking place Feb. 24 and 25 -- has proved to be a weird one.

In January, former Italian prime minister and current candidate Silvio Berlusconi praised Benito Mussolini, Italy's dictator for some 20 years, saying that the racial laws of 1938, which barred Jews from universities and many jobs, "are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good." A few days later, Berlusconi questioned a young woman in front of a laughing crowd, asking, "Do you come? Only once? How many times do you come? With what sort of time intervals?"

Berlusconi's competitor Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned populist insurgent who's now enjoying up to 20 percent support, invited al Qaeda to bomb the Italian Parliament, flirted with neo-fascist groups, and chased public-television cameramen away from his meetings.

Meanwhile, Oscar Giannino, a former Republican turned leader of the new party, Fermare il Declino, had to abruptly quit his race when University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor Luigi Zingales, one of the party's founders, announced that Giannino's CV was a fabrication. Giannino falsely claimed that he got a master's degree in Chicago and a law degree in Rome. He even made up that, as a child, he had sung in the popular TV show Zecchino d'Oro.

Of course, many voters have come to expect this sort of thing out of Berlusconi, Grillo, and the colorful Giannino. More surprising has been the behavior of the incumbent. As a distinguished economist, college professor, and former European Union commissioner, Mario Monti once looked like what we really needed: an aloof gentleman, conservatively dressed, businesslike, soft spoken. Well, the political bug bit Monti badly. He toyed with a puppy on live television and publicly adopted him, even if the show had only rented the hapless dog from a kennel. Convinced that social media is the highway to contemporary politics, the once-detached Monti started his own Twitter account, @SenatoreMonti, surprising everybody with a barrage of teenagerish "WOW :) :)."

Given this behavior, it's not that surprising that Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the center-left Democratic Party, still enjoys a lead before the polls open on Feb. 24. He has avoided big missteps, running a very low-key campaign. In the early stages of the race, when Berlusconi and Monti together accounted for more than 120 hours of on-air news coverage, Bersani decided to reduce his own TV presence to just 20 hours. A few voices dissented among his staff, but he did not relent.

The pollsters agree that Bersani should get a clear majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament. However, he is still fighting to get control of the Senate, which he needs in order to become prime minister. But a byzantine electoral law, devised in 2005 by Berlusconi's cronies to weaken stable cabinets, leaves all scenarios open. And as he has throughout his career, Berlusconi has bounced back, thanks to his knack for electoral promises. This year, he has proposed to scrap the unpopular real estate tax that Monti recently passed, conveniently ignoring the fact that his own party voted for it. That was then, this is now, and now Berlusconi needs votes; he's polling at around 25 percent. Votes aside, it would be impossible for most Italian cities to square their budgets without the tax -- and markets would be nervous if Italy were to yet again take the path of fiscal recklessness. The worst days of the eurocrisis seem to have ended with more than 100 billion euros in foreign investments recently returning to Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. This is money the job market badly needs, but it may soon run out if the election aftermath is messy.

Apocalypse Soon - By Rosa Brooks

I was sitting in a meeting full of serious people last week, listening to a presentation on technology and the future of work by a very smart guy from a very fancy university. The smart guy was talking about Moore's Law and the many things we used to think computers could never do better than humans -- such as driving cars, interpreting mammograms, and writing columns. He urged us to consider our impending superfluity, since much of what most Americans do at work these days will soon be done better by iPhones, robots, toasters, and electric toothbrushes.

He didn't actually say that about the toasters or toothbrushes. Still, the serious people around me were nodding sagely and muttering about Structural Changes to the Economy, and the Importance of Finding Solutions, and Perhaps these Changes will Eliminate Soul-Sapping Labor and Reinforce Human Dignity, and so forth.

But I was way past that point. I was thinking about the Singularity, and whether law professors will become obsolete before I reach retirement age (Magic Eight Ball says: "Signs point to yes."), and the prospect that we will all soon be enslaved by intelligent toasters.

I shared some of these thoughts with my colleagues. Shouldn't we, I suggested, stop kidding ourselves about "finding solutions" to the challenges posed by technologies that evolve faster than our brains? Shouldn't we instead recognize that historically speaking, humans really suck at managing rapid technological and social change (c.f., the Thirty Years War, World Wars I and II, and so on), and recognize that developments that reinforce human dignity are often preceded by really crappy periods in which millions suffer and die? Shouldn't we just accept that the technological and economic changes to come will likely cause massive and painful dislocation, perhaps similar in order to the above-mentioned catastrophes? Shouldn't we abandon quixotic projects geared towards "finding solutions" and instead focus on simple risk mitigation -- on trying to find ways to keep things from becoming as catastrophic as they may potentially become?

This intervention was greeted with polite silence -- the kind that suggests you think your crazy colleague is off his meds -- and after a moment, discussion resumed and we were back to the Search for Solutions.

I admit that my intervention was a bit of a downer. The truth is, I'm 99 percent convinced of the coming apocalypse (minus the Seven Seals, the Rapture, and all that). When there's a blackout during an electrical storm, I always suspect the lights are never coming on again. A few years ago, when a blackout was accompanied by my inability to get a signal on my cell phone, I began to seriously suspect a terrorist attack, and I spent at least five minutes planning for the inevitable chaos and barbarism that would result. I realized I should probably try to clear a defensive perimeter around the house before the looting and cannibalism began. Fortunately, the lights went back on at that point, so I didn't have to take things any further.

But the embarrassing truth is this: It's mostly sheer slothfulness that keeps me from being a survivalist. If I weren't so lazy (and poor), I'd stockpile canned goods, batteries, gasoline, weapons, and ammunition. I'd buy up a nice defensible island, or mountain, or old missile silo and set up low-tech booby traps all around my fortress. I'd teach my children to hunt, fish, shoot, and make fires by rubbing two sticks together. You get the idea.

I don't actually do any of this, of course. For one thing, it's way too much work. For another thing, most doomsday preppers seem to be fundamentalist religious cranks, and I don't feel like allying myself with anyone who's going to be quoting Revelations throughout the apocalypse. As a result, I have a couple of extra flashlights, like everyone else, and a few rusting packs of D batteries in a drawer somewhere, but that's it.

Mostly, I deal with pending apocalypse by crossing my fingers and hoping catastrophe can wait another hundred years. (I'd like my kids to make it through the next century. My hypothetical grandkids will have to fend for themselves.) But rationally, I think that if we make it through the next century without serious national or global catastrophe, it will mainly be the result of sheer dumb luck.

You're skeptical? Join the crowd. Most of my friends -- all perfectly sane people! -- think I'm nuts.

Their perspective is the usual one: The good old human race has hung in there for millennia, so it will most likely keep muddling on. Besides, we've had dangerous technologies such as nuclear weapons for decades now, and we haven't blown the world up yet!

To this, I say: Looking on the bright side is a fine thing in a kindergarten teacher, but it's unbecoming in those of us who purportedly deal in the grown-up world. The fact that "we're not dead yet" is neither here nor there. The fact that you've ridden your motorcycle through the rain without a helmet many times before and you're still alive doesn't make you any less stupid. As Jared Diamond pointed out recently in a New York Times op-ed, even trees that have been standing for many years can fall down overnight.

The Last Bunga Bunga? - An FP Slide Show

Silvio Berlusconi, or Italy's arch seducer, as the British newspaper the Independent has called him, rose from vacuum cleaner salesman to media tycoon to political titan over the course of four decades, serving three separate terms as prime minister. He has also appeared in court more than 2,500 times by his own estimate, gone through two divorces, and been dogged by sex scandals involving "bunga bunga" parties full of scantily clad -- and allegedly underage -- women.

To his detractors, he is a walking catastrophe who has brought Italy nothing but humiliation. To his supporters, he is a charismatic center-right savior of the nation. But detractors and supporters alike both reckoned it was over for Berlusconi when he resigned as prime minister in 2011, after losing his parliamentary majority during and being forced out of office in the midst of an economic crisis. If this wasn't enough to finish him off, then surely his conviction for tax evasion in October 2012 was the final blow.

Now, only months later, Berlusconi is trailing his center-left opponent by just five to six percentage points in the country's general election on Feb. 24-25. If he wins, he will solidify his reputation as Italy's -- and, really, the world's -- ultimate political survivor. If he loses, we may very well be witnessing the last act in a larger-than-life career on the world stage -- chronicled in photos here.

AFP/Getty Images

Hagel's Revenge - By Lawrence J. Korb and Lauren Linde

Since President Obama nominated him to become the nation's 24th secretary of defense, Republicans, particularly those on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have impugned Senator Chuck Hagel's policy positions, his character, and even his patriotism. Last week, Senate Republicans filibustered his nomination, thus delaying his confirmation at least another 10 days.

Senator James Inhofe, the committee's ranking member, claimed that Hagel's policy work is out of the mainstream and that he subscribes to a worldview predicated on appeasing our adversaries and shunning our friends. To prove this claim, Inhofe noted that Hagel's nomination has been endorsed by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, arguing that "you cannot get any cozier than that."

The newly-minted senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, argued that Hagel's confirmation will make military conflict in the next four years substantially more likely by encouraging Iran to speed up its nuclear program. Cruz also accused Hagel of getting cozy with terrorists and countries that oppose U.S. interests, even demanding to know if any of his income over the last five years could have come "directly from North Korea."

Finally, in their questioning during his confirmation hearing, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, haranguing and interrupting, treated Senator Hagel as if he were on trial, rather than a distinguished public servant and war hero once again answering his nation's call to serve. To his credit, McCain did chastise his Republican colleagues for impugning Hagel's character and his integrity in the committee meeting to vote on his nomination. But that didn't make up for the way he treated Hagel during the hearings.

While Hagel had to play defense during the hearing, that will change when he gets to the Pentagon. Based upon his past experience in business, the non-profit world, and the Senate, he will be a take-charge leader, and one of his challenges will be reducing defense spending. And his choices could hurt the constituents of the very officials who have done the most to hurt him.

Neither Hagel, nor any secretary of defense, can close military bases unilaterally, but he can have a large impact on which bases are part of the list that is sent to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. In 1995, then-Secretary of Defense William Perry resisted pressure from some in the Air Force to place two major logistics bases in Texas and California on the list. When the commission overruled Perry and put them back on the list for closure, Perry mitigated the economic impact on the states by privatizing the bases. Similarly, even before unveiling his list in 2005, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made it known that Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota would be on the closure list. Although the commission refused to support this, the commotion surrounding the decision undermined Minority Leader Senator Tom Daschle's 2004 reelection bid, which he lost.

Secretaries can also exert significant economic influence on states and districts by transferring units from one base to another or by disestablishing units altogether. Secretary Gates moved the homeport of a carrier from Norfolk, Virginia to Jacksonville, Florida and decided where in the country units being withdrawn from Japan or Germany would be relocated. Secretary Panetta tried to disband several Air National Guard units.

It's Not About Us - By Christian Caryl

Most Westerners have heard that there's a difference between Sunnis and Shiites, but there are very few of us who can say what it is. I hate to be the one to bring this up, but it's probably time to start getting educated. Like it or not, the 21st century will be dominated by the political reverberations of the rivalry within Islam. The so-called "war on terror" pales in comparison.

If anyone had any doubt about this, just take a look at the recent headlines. Earlier this week, 89 Shiite Hazaras were killed in a bombing in the city of Quetta in Pakistan. Pakistani's 30 million Shiites (the second-largest population in the world, right after Iran) are increasing targets of persecution by the country's Sunni majority. Another attack five weeks earlier killed 100 other Shiites in the same city.

The very same day as the Quetta bombing, six car bombs and three roadside explosions killed 21 people in Baghdad. All of the attacks targeted Shiite neighborhoods. Some 60 percent of Iraqis are Shiites, but that only seems to fuel the sectarian violence there, which has been going on now for almost seven years. Most of the attacks have been staged by terrorist groups like al Qaeda, who regard Shiites as heretics and claim to speak for the Sunni minority that has dominated the political system for much of the country's modern history. Many Sunni Iraqis still haven't reconciled themselves to being ruled by Shiites, people they often don't consider to be "real" Muslims. Sunnis are now vowing to organize politically to defend their claims.

The Shiite-Sunni split is also a major factor in Syria's continuing civil war. President Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, which practices a distinct version of Islam that is close to Shiism. Even though the Alawites amount to a mere 15 percent of the population, they have long been a pillar of Assad family rule. This sectarian factor has reinforced the Assad regime's close alliance with the Shiite regime in Tehran -- and also fuels the hatred felt by members of the conservative Sunni majority towards the regime in Damascus.

So why should non-Muslims care? Because the dynamic of mutual hatred and distrust between the two camps shows every sign of intensifying -- and given that 1 billion believers are caught up within this theological and demographical battle, the rest of us are bound to feel the shock waves. (The United States, for example, continues to prop up the Sunni royal families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, both of which are still suppressing lingering Shiite rebellions by the most brutal of means. And let's not forget Iran's efforts to build the first Shiite nuclear bomb.)

The differences between Shiites and Sunnis go back almost to the dawn of Islam itself. The crucial distinction has to do with the nature of religious authority. Sunnis essentially believed that the leader of the Muslim community, the caliph, should be chosen from among its members. (In the early days, they were usually selected from the original group of companions of the Prophet Mohammed.) Shiites were those who insisted that the leader could only come from the line of Mohammed's direct descendants, and they soon came to challenge the caliphs' right to leadership. The dispute took a fateful turn for the worse when Hussein ibn Ali, the Shiites' leader and the Prophet's grandson, refused to pledge allegiance to the caliph Yazid, and died at the hand of the caliph's troops in the battle of Karbala in 680 -- igniting an intensely emotional narrative of injustice and martyrdom that still infuses Shiite thinking today. (Take a look at this video for a taste.)

Listening In - By Laura Pitter

Just when you think it couldn't get much worse in the military commissions at Guantánamo, something happens to prove you wrong. It all began in late January when, during pretrial hearings in the case against five men accused in the 9/11 attacks, the audio feed -- which runs on a 40-second delay to prevent leaks of classified information -- was abruptly cut off. The media and observers, who sit behind a soundproof glass wall at the back of the court, noted the silence. But the cut surprised even the military judge, who believed he was the only one with authority to press the button and who did not consider the information being discussed at that moment classified.

The audio cutoff was initiated "not by me," the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said angrily at the time, and "I'm curious as to why." He added, "If some external body is turning the commission off under their own view of what things ought to be ' then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off."

It turns out the judge wasn't the only one with the ability to cut off the feed. Apparently, an entity known as the "original classification authority" had the power as well -- but no one, not even the judge, appeared to realize that up until then. Although no one will say officially, the classification authority is likely the Central Intelligence Agency, because most of the information subject to censorship in the case appears to relate to the torture and secret detention the defendants experienced at the hands of the CIA.

The incident prompted defense attorneys to ask: What else was being monitored that they didn't know about? And did that include attorney-client communications? Pohl thought the question important enough that he moved investigation of it by attorneys to the top of the hearing agenda, postponing all other pending issues.

The confidentiality of attorney-client communications is a fundamental element of U.S. justice. And people running the Guantánamo Bay facility had made repeated promises it was being protected. According to the Miami Herald, on March 6, 2012, the then-prison camp commander, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, wrote to Southern Command, the military region that includes Guantánamo, that at the place where lawyers meet the accused "no microphones are installed to ensure privacy between the attorney and client is maintained."

Thus, it was extremely disturbing to learn, when the hearings continued last week, that listening devices disguised as smoke detectors had been installed in attorney-client meeting rooms.

Defense attorneys and their clients had long suspected they were being monitored. "My client raised the issue that we were being listened to," said Cheryl Bormann, defense attorney for Walid bin Attash, a Yemeni who is accused of trying to obtain a U.S. visa to receive pilot training and take part in the 9/11 attacks. "And I said to him, 'Of course not,' just like I say to every client I ever represented." But she wanted more assurance. One day, while meeting with her client, she pointed to a smoke detector in the room and asked the guard: "Mr. Guard, is that a listening device? And he said, 'Of course not.'"

In previewing testimony she was about to present, Bormann told the judge about the listening device. The next day, she called to the witness stand Navy Capt. Thomas Welsh, the prison camp's chief staff attorney, who testified that indeed the smoke detectors in the rooms were listening devices. He said he was surprised to learn so himself and only discovered it when he walked by one day and saw someone with headphones listening to a conversation going on in one of the rooms. When he asked questions about it, he learned that an FBI agent was listening in on discussion among a detainee, the prosecutor, and defense lawyers who were discussing a possible plea deal. Welsh said, however, that this was the only time he knew of that one of the devices had been used and assured the court that they were not being used to listen in on attorney-client conversations.

Morning Brief: Italy gears up for election, Berlusconi eyes return

Top news: With elections in Italy approaching this weekend, the country's politicians are in an all-out sprint to the finish, as the most recent polls indicate that Italians are likely to vote into office a center-left coalition that may leave Silvio Berlusconi out of power.

Berlusconi, who was ousted from power to make way for the technocrat Mario Monti, has in recent months made a brief political comeback, exploiting a weak economy to cast himself as a tax-cutting savior of the Italian economy. So far, that pitch has fallen on deaf ears, and the most recent polls show the no-drama center-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani in the lead, a scenario that will likely result in a coalition government with Monti.

But two upstart political movements make the outcome of this election difficult to predict. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, a group led by a former comedian named Beppe Grillo, and the Northern League, a group seeking greater autonomy for the country's north, a relative newcomers to Italian politics, and if they slightly exceed expectations at the polls they may torpedo the expected outcome of a center-left coalition that would include Monti.

If the center-left fails to cobble together such a coalition, the most likely outcome is a grand coalition, one that would in all likelihood include Berlusconi in some role, returning Il Cavaliere to European politics.

U.S. military: Marine General John Allen said that he plans to retire and will decline his nomination to serve as the supreme allied commander in Europe, one of the military's most prestigious posts. Allen, who has most recently served as head of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, said he planned to step down because his wife is suffering from a severe illness. Allen had been under investigation for emails sent to Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite connected to David Petraeus, the disgraced former CIA director, but Pentagon investigators cleared Allen of any wrongdoing.

The Price of Hagel - By Heather Hurlburt

The Hagel nomination fight will have significant effects, but they won't come in America's national security policy. As much as any president in recent memory, Barack Obama has made sure the fundamental direction and specific tactical choices come straight from his desk. His State of the Union speech this week doubled down on his fundamental priorities -- aggressive, targeted counterterrorism; reducing the role and threat of nuclear weapons; using engagement as a primary tool to secure American interests -- all of which were in place long before Defense Secretary Hagel was a twinkle in anyone's eye.

The fight -- as long as it plays out in elite media and on C-SPAN, and is dwarfed nationally by limping cruise ships and the Pope -- is also unlikely to have any serious effect on public opinion about national security policy. As I've argued elsewhere, the opinions that have been dubbed "controversial" when attributed to Hagel are, it turns out, quite firmly held among the public: the need to rein in Pentagon waste, support for negotiations before military action to constrain Iran's nuclear program, and the desire for the United States to be a leader for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Nonetheless, this tempest-in-the-Beltway may reverberate in American politics for years to come. Here's why:

It could shift the electoral map. Senator Carl Levin -- the fifth-most senior U.S. senator and longtime chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- has waged a draining struggle for comity on that committee in recent years, negotiating painstaking deals with Senator John McCain to report out bipartisan defense authorization bills. The SASC has passed such legislation for 51 years running now. By contrast, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has passed only one authorization bill in the last seven years.

Meanwhile, Levin raised only $13,000 in the last quarter of 2012, and some wonder whether he will run again in 2014, at which time he will be 80 years old. No one thinks he would have trouble winning if he wanted, but the ugly back-and-forth with Senator Jim Inhofe, McCain's replacement as ranking member, and Levin's evident frustration with Inhofe's demands for unprecedented levels of documentation from Hagel, cannot have strengthened his desire to stay on.

If Levin goes, he sets in motion two subtle but important shifts in the political landscape. Levin is the youngest of the trio who lead Michigan's congressional delegation -- and Michigan Democratic politics. Levin, his brother Congressman Sander Levin, and Congressman John Dingell, the longest-serving House member, all solidified their hold on Michigan politics decades ago. A talented set of much younger pols is waiting in the wings -- but most lack statewide name recognition and all lack national experience. With Michigan's Democratic Party badly bruised by its 2012 labor referendum loss, and the GOP governor's successful move to pass a right-to-work law, the ugly Hagel fight could be the butterfly that winds up changing a significant piece of the 2016 electoral map.

The SASC might get more aggressive. Next in line for Levin's committee chairmanship would be Senator Jack Reed, a West Point graduate and retired Army Ranger. Whereas Levin worked for years to build credibility and trust on military issues, Reed can walk right in -- or jump, since he was also a paratrooper. Levin rose through the committee during the Democrats' years in the wilderness as the party not trusted on national security. By contrast, Reed's time on the committee has been marked by the searing Iraq vote and conflict, and the political consequences which -- as the Hagel hearings showed -- are still playing out. (Reed voted against authorizing the use of force in Iraq, Levin for.) Inhofe has already demonstrated his distaste for committee bonhomie; Reed is a quiet man but a firmly independent one. Neither man seems likely to continue the tradition, described by a former SASC staffer, of putting "the institution [the committee] ahead of party or politics." Only one-third of SASC members were in the Senate for the Iraq vote. With McCain out of the chair, and even more so if Levin is gone, the Hagel hearing seems likely to have been a preview of how the committee functions in the future, rather than an aberration.

The Cool War - By David Rothkopf

We are now in the midst of what could be called the Cool War. This successor to the Cold War shares the trait that it does not involve hot conflict on the battlefield, but is different in the nature and expectations surrounding the sub-rosa thrusts and parries by which it is conducted.

This new war is "cool" rather than "cold" for two reasons. On the one hand, it is a little warmer than cold because it seems likely to involve almost constant offensive measures that, while falling short of actual warfare, regularly seek to damage or weaken rivals or gain an edge through violations of sovereignty and penetration of defenses. And on the other, it takes on the other definition of "cool," in that it involves the latest cutting-edge technologies in ways that are changing the paradigm of conflict to a much greater degree than any of those employed during the Cold War -- which was, after all, about old-fashioned geopolitical jockeying for advantage in anticipation of potential old-school total warfare.

The Cool War is largely different not only because of the participants or the nature of the conflict, but also because it can be conducted indefinitely -- permanently, even -- without triggering a shooting war. At least that is the theory.

The latest sign that this war is on-going is Tuesday's New York Times story focusing on the revelations produced by a U.S. cyber-security firm called Mandiant regarding China's People Liberation Army Unit 61398, a Shanghai-based operation that has allegedly been conducting "an overwhelming percentage" of recent attacks on U.S. companies and government agencies, according to the Times account.

What is striking about the story is that it has such a "dog bites man" feel to it. Everyone who is paying attention knows the Chinese are doing this -- as are other countries from Russia to Iran and beyond -- and no one has any sense that such attacks will cause the kind of rupture to the U.S.-China relationship that might have been expected in the era of spy scandals past. This feeling is pervasive, damaging, and, save for periodic demarches and statements of outrage from high officials, likely only to produce more business for companies like Mandiant and more resources for cyber-units in the U.S. Department of Defense to counter the nerd armies of our adversaries and rivals.

Sink or Swim - By Nicholas Kralev

Imagine the following scenario: A 29-year-old restaurant manager becomes a U.S. diplomat. Five years later, he is appointed the founding director of the Arabian Peninsula office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), a major State Department program aimed at creating and strengthening civil society in a region vital to global stability.

Even though he is considered a good officer in general, the young diplomat has little idea how to do his new job. He speaks no Arabic, and has never managed people or a budget outside a restaurant -- let alone $2 million of taxpayers' money. He has minimal knowledge of democracy promotion, institution-building, or grant-making, but he is expected to identify suitable NGOs in eight countries and award them grants to build an alternative to the authoritarian regimes across the Middle East.

Despite the diplomat's obvious inexperience, he is sent to his new post in Abu Dhabi without a day of training. The State Department expects him to learn how to do his job by osmosis -- to watch colleagues, figure things out on his own, improvise, and rely on luck.

There is no need to imagine this scenario -- it actually happened in 2004 to a U.S. Foreign Service officer named Hans Wechsel. Having completed his undergraduate degree in secondary education at Montana State University, Wechsel managed restaurants in Montana and Oregon before passing the difficult written and oral Foreign Service exams in 1999. He is the first to admit that his performance in Abu Dhabi suffered from lack of training.

According to Wechsel, his superiors in Washington provided "no guidelines" beyond "vague ideas about how this was supposed to work." In fact, he got the impression that they "hadn't really figured it out themselves, because they hadn't had a regional MEPI office before." Wechsel did quite well in Abu Dhabi given the circumstances, but he wishes he had arrived there with at least some of the knowledge and experience he acquired on the job.

Why did the State Department send a diplomat without the necessary skills -- and more importantly, without any training -- to a critical posting in the most volatile region in the world on the eve of the Arab uprisings? Could the U.S. response to those uprisings have been more effective had American diplomats there been better trained?

Wechsel's experience is actually very common in the Foreign Service, if not the norm. Many officers compare it to being thrown into the deep end and having to learn how to swim. Having good mentors helps greatly, they said, but that is largely a matter of luck; there are bad as well as good bosses in the Foreign Service. For decades, the State Department has considered training "a waste of time," said Grant Green, who was under secretary of state for management during the George W. Bush administration.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was shocked when he took office in 2001 that the "concept of professional development, particularly with respect to leadership and management," didn't exist in the Foreign Service. "There were many people in senior positions who didn't have not only leadership skills but training, either. They didn't know basic things," he told me shortly before leaving office in 2005.

The Curse of Stability in Central Asia - By Sarah Kendzior

Central Asia has a reputation for volatility. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the region has been referred to as a "hotbed" of destabilization, instability, violence, Islamic extremism, and other nefarious qualities that once led Zbigniew Brzezinski to dub it "the Eurasian Balkans." International observers cite Central Asia's crumbling infrastructure, brutal dictatorships, and remittance economies as evidence of the region's imminent demise. They watch as it hits new lows on indexes for corruption and repression. No regime with such problems can survive, they argue reasonably.

Yet year after year, the dictatorships of Central Asia do.

The slow, tortuous decline of Central Asia is something we should all pay attention to -- not because it will inevitably lead to state collapse, but because it might not. Central Asia shows how a country (Tajikistan) can spend decades sliding toward a failed state, yet never quite arrive. It shows how mass violence can claim the lives of hundreds, as in Uzbekistan in 2005, yet fail to alter the political structure that predicated it. Above all, Central Asia shows how quiet repression can be as damaging as violent conflict -- and more difficult to quell or contest. Central Asia's biggest problem is not conflict, but stagnation: the consistency of corruption, the chimera of change.

Some experts argue that 2013 could be a year of transformation. According to the International Crisis Group, which included the region on its list of conflicts to watch, 2013 could see Tajikistan succumb to separatism (national security forces have engaged in violent conflicts with armed militants), Kyrgyzstan suffer ethnic warfare (the government has never taken responsibility for the Uzbeks murdered in the southern city of Osh in 2010), Uzbekistan spur regional upheaval (the police state is run by an aging tyrant whose successor is unknown), and Kazakhstan come undone by socioeconomic grievances (oil wealth has been little applied to remedy crippling poverty in rural regions).

The problem is that this not only describes Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan in 2012. It also describes them in 2007, 2002, or 1997, making the region a perennial player in conflict forecasts. What experts tend to underestimate is how long a nation can remain on the brink.

The endurance of Central Asia's dictatorships serves as a reminder that the collapse of an authoritarian state is not inherently imminent, no matter how bankrupt it is fiscally or morally. Corruption, brutality, and censorship are not necessarily signs of vulnerability, but indicators of the lengths a government will go to preserve its power at the expense of its people. Central Asia's dictatorships are not surviving on luck, as some experts have claimed, but on fear.

Stability is a value cherished by most Central Asians, and those who lived through the Soviet collapse and the economic turmoil and lawlessness that accompanied it tend to be wary of political change. "Peace," or "calm" (tinch in Turkic languages, tinji in Tajik), is deeply valued, particularly in places like Tajikistan that have endured bloody civil strife, as social scientist John Heathershaw notes. Moreover a key part of tinji, he says, is "a strong aversion to the political sphere." All political actions -- joining a party, promoting a cause -- can be seen as an affront to peace; in Central Asian dictatorships, all actions can be politicized and all politics can be punished. Thus the social pressure to maintain tinji -- and the fear of government reprisals that may harm the whole community -- is strong enough that citizens deeply unhappy with their plight are reluctant to express it.

Central Asian state elites have both nurtured and exploited this predilection for "peace." In Kazakhstan, the most prosperous of the Central Asian states, government control is passed off as benevolence. "The state paternalism and authoritarianism in this vision is not seen [by Kazakhs] as a mechanism of repression of individual rights and autonomy," writes Kazakhstani anthropologist Alima Bissenova, "but as a mechanism of enabling these rights and entitlements." But in the rare case that Kazakh citizens revolt, as in Zhanaozen in 2011, the state responds with violence. Underlying the trade-off of rights for "peace" is the fear that force will be unleashed on those who dare to disturb it.

The Kingdom of No Surprises - By Michael Stephens

DOHA, Qatar ' After two years of trying to steer the course of the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia is turning inward. The past year has seen the octogenarian King Abdullah usher in a new generation of younger princes to replace rapidly aging and less competent members of the ruling house. Indeed, it's not the ripple effects from the uprisings across the Middle East that occupy the minds of Saudi watchers these days, but the management of the transition from the sons to the grandsons of Ibn Saud, the kingdom's founder.

Change is coming to Saudi Arabia -- but however it plays out, expect some basic truths about the kingdom to remain the same. Saudi Arabia will remain a strong Western ally, it will keep the oil flowing, and -- perhaps most importantly -- it will remain immune from the uprisings that have spread across the Arab world. While former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel made the case that "revolution in Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable," the truth of the matter is that for the vast majority of Saudis, a revolt is still an almost unfathomable event. And the House of Saud's approach to succession is designed to keep it that way.

Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, the former head of Saudi Arabia's foreign intelligence service -- and at 67, youthful compared to his brothers -- will most likely assume power in the coming years, after his brothers Abdullah and Crown Prince Salman have passed away. Muqrin was appointed second deputy prime minister this month, the traditional post for those third in line for the throne. Whether he becomes king in five months or five years depends on the health of the two men ahead of him.

But that's not all. Perhaps more important than Muqrin's appointment is Abdullah's elevation of competent younger princes to prominent roles within the kingdom. Their promotion is meant to improve governance, while also bolstering the foreign support that will allow Saudi Arabia to continue its domestic reform at its own pace.

Washington, London, and Saudi Arabia's other traditional allies should not be particularly perturbed by this transition. U.S. and British defense guarantees still underpin the kingdom's deterrence posture, particularly given the perceived threat of Iran and its nuclear program. No matter how the succession battle plays out among the younger generation, there is simply no constituency within the House of Saud for undermining the pillars of its foreign policy.

Saudi Arabia may not be the most palatable ally for some in the West. Its treatment of women and minorities leave much to be desired. But those who know the kingdom know that, in all walks of life, the Saudis move slowly but steadily forward -- be it in tendering construction contracts, political reform, or social change.

Reform is coming to Saudi Arabia -- albeit slowly. The appointment in January of 30 women into the Majlis al-Shura, a 150-member consultative council with the power to draft laws, was long overdue -- but nevertheless a huge step forward for the kingdom, particularly coming less than six months after female Saudi athletes were allowed for the first time to compete in the Olympics. Both moves mark a positive step forward for the country, and ones that will have fundamental and permanent effects on Saudi Arabia's social fabric.

They are also not steps that Abdullah undertook lightly. Through sheer force of personality, the aging monarch removed many obstacles in his way: The number of jobless conservative advisors and sheikhs who raised objections to these social reforms are a testament to the king's determination.

This Is Your Country on Drugs - By Peer Gatter

For Imam Yahya, one of the last kings of Yemen, qat was a delight, something to be praised in his poems. For his adversary, the revolutionary Mohammed al-Zubayri, the plant was "the devil in the shape of a tree."

That hardy tree -- famed among farmers for its drought resistance and whose leaves, when chewed, act as a psychoactive stimulant -- is today an integral part of Yemeni life. On average, 72 percent of Yemeni men chew the bitter leaves of the qat plant. The qat sector provides employment for one in every seven working Yemenis. The income qat provides allows many to remain in their rural hometowns instead of drifting into the cities to seek work. In some highland districts, over 90 percent of farmers are involved in qat agriculture.

Social life in Yemen revolves around qat. It is an accepted habit across all strata of society. Even afternoon sessions in the ministries or the consultative assembly are accompanied by chewing. Qat relaxes the chewer and helps stimulate mutual understanding and companionship. But there are also heavy social pressures to chew: Yemenis who might wish to abstain, for financial, family, or health reasons, fear exclusion and loss of respect.

Over the years I have observed how the chewing habit has proliferated in southern Yemen, in areas like Hadramawt, al-Mahrah, the Socotra Archipelago, where it was banned prior to the country's 1990 unification. I saw how the habit took hold of the coastal population and then slowly crept up the wadis to the herders of the highlands, how it spread from soldiers to fishermen, from traders to farmers, from adults to adolescents, and from husbands to wives. I watched how qat ravaged these regions' unique culture and how it changed social customs and society, how traditional leisure pursuits disappeared and how values and ethics have become diluted.

I have known Yemen for 20 years, have taken part in innumerable qat chews, and have interviewed several thousand people on the qat issue. For me, the leaves of the qat tree are not a narcotic drug. I hold the firm belief, however, that they are much more than the "mild social stimulant" to which literature so often refers. In my book, Politics of Qat -- The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen, I argue that qat is a potent social drug, holding Yemen and Yemeni life firmly in its grip.

Peer Gatter/The Politics of Qat

Will China Ever Be No. 1? - By Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill

Will China continue to grow three times faster than the United States to become the No. 1 economy in the world in the decade ahead? Does China aspire to be the No. 1 power in Asia and ultimately the world? As it becomes a great power, will China follow the path taken by Japan in becoming an honorary member of the West?

Despite current punditry to the contrary, the surest answer to these questions is: No one knows. But statesmen, investors, and citizens in the region and beyond are placing their bets. And U.S. policymakers, as they shape the Obama administration's pivot to Asia, are making these judgments too. In formulating answers to these questions, if you could consult just one person in the world today, who would it be? Henry Kissinger, the American who has spent by far the most time with China's leaders since Mao, has an answer: Lee Kuan Yew.

Lee is the founding father of modern Singapore and was its prime minister from 1959 to 1990. He has honed his wisdom over more than a half century on the world stage, serving as advisor to Chinese leaders from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping and American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. This gives him a uniquely authoritative perspective on the geopolitics and geoeconomics of East and West.

Lee Kuan Yew's answers to the questions above are: yes, yes, and no. Yes, China will continue growing several times faster than the United States and other Western competitors for the next decade, and probably for several more. Yes, China's leaders are serious about becoming the top power in Asia and on the globe. As he says: "Why not? Their reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force." No, China will not simply take its seat within the postwar order created by the United States. Rather, "it is China's intention to become the greatest power in the world -- and to be accepted as China, not as an honorary member of the west," he said in a 2009 speech.

Western governments repeatedly appeal to China to prove its sense of international responsibility by being a good citizen in the global order set up by Western leaders in the aftermath of World War II. But as Kissinger observes, these appeals are "grating to a country that regards itself as adjusting to membership in an international system designed in its absence on the basis of programs it did not participate in developing."