Politics at the Pump - By Scott Clement

The poll-watcher analysis series on American public opinion on foreign policy is cross-posted at the Behind the Numbers blog. 

Gas price spikes at home have the potential to focus American voters on global issues like limited oil supply, potential conflicts in the Middle East, and economic growth in China and India. Indeed, economists point to all three of these as key factors in gas prices.

But foreign policy has taken a backseat in the debate over gas prices, which continue to flirt near $4 a gallon, and polls show Americans blame domestic culprits just as much as global factors for higher pump prices.

Part of the domestic focus can be chalked up to the belief that the federal government is capable of solving the problem: 50 percent of Americans in a March Washington Post-ABC News poll said the Obama administration can "reasonably" do something to reduce gas prices, and 54 percent in a CBS News/New York Times poll said Obama "can do a lot about" gas prices.

From the street level, the way Americans experience gas price hikes doesn't lend itself to an international outlook. Drivers fill up at their local station, wince as they swipe their cards or dig deeper into their wallet to pay the cashiers, and drive away with less money. No part of that experience reminds drivers of an unstable Middle East, global oil markets, or the world's limited petroleum supply.

Political gamesmanship also may feed the idea that Washington can temper the ups and downs of gas prices. Public opinion isn't formed in a vacuum, and voters may be taking cues from their leaders that government is responsible for gyrations at the pump. Republicans have attacked Obama for high gas prices this year, just as President George W. Bush took heat when he was in office. Obama's presidential campaign has taken aim at likely challenger Mitt Romney, accusing him of supporting tax breaks for big oil companies. Polls show plenty of evidence of partisan assessments: Two-thirds of Republicans in the March Post-ABC poll said the Obama administration is capable of reducing gas prices, a view shared by just one-third of Democrats. Those positions were flipped when George W. Bush, a Republican, was in power.

Complexity of the issue is yet another factor. While a violent conflict in an oil-producing nation is sometimes an obvious cause of a gas price increase, the causes are much less clear on other occasions, like this year. One in four Americans in a February Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll did not name anyone as the main culprit for the recent rise in gas prices.

Despite the focus on domestic bogeymen, some of the public is connecting the dots between rising prices and international demand or conflict. More than eight in 10 Americans in a recent CNN/ORC poll said foreign oil-producing countries deserve at least some blame for increases in gas prices. In the Post-Pew poll, just over one in 10 Americans named Iran, Middle East unrest, and the threat of war together as the No. 1 culprit for rising gas prices, ranking third in an open-ended survey question. Some respondents also named China, India, or global demand.

And as long as the public debate and public opinion are focused domestic causes to heightened gas prices, few will look for foreign policy remedies.

Patriot Games - By J.M. Berger

In 1990, the FBI began picking up on rumors about an effort to reconstitute a notorious terrorist-criminal gang known as The Order.

The group's name was taken from the infamous racist 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, which told the story of a fictional cabal carrying out acts of terrorism and eventually overthrowing the U.S. government in a bloody, nihilistic racial purge. The book was an inspiration to a generation of white nationalists, including Timothy McVeigh, whose path to radicalization climaxed in the Oklahoma City bombing 17 years ago Thursday.

During the 1980s, extremists inspired by the book began robbing banks and armored cars, stealing and counterfeiting millions of dollars and distributing some of the money to racist extremist causes. Members of The Order assassinated Jewish talk radio host Alan Berg in 1984, before most of its members were arrested and its leader killed in a standoff. Less than 10 percent of the money stolen by The Order was ever recovered, and investigators feared members of the group who were still at large would use it to further a campaign of terrorism.

To prevent the rise of a "Second Order," FBI undercover agents would become it.

Starting in April 1991, three FBI agents posed as members of an invented racist militia group called the Veterans Aryan Movement. According to their cover story, VAM members robbed armored cars, using the proceeds to buy weapons and support racist extremism. The lead agent was a Vietnam veteran with a background in narcotics, using the alias Dave Rossi.

Code-named PATCON, for "Patriot-conspiracy," the investigation would last more than two years, crossing state and organizational lines in search of intelligence on the so-called Patriot movement, the label applied to a wildly diverse collection of racist, ultra-libertarian, right-wing and/or pro-gun activists and extremists who, over the years, have found common cause in their suspicion and fear of the federal government.

The undercover agents met some of the most infamous names in the movement, but their work never led to a single arrest. When McVeigh walked through the middle of the investigation in 1993, he went unnoticed.

PATCON is history, but it holds lessons for today. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a series of arrests for homegrown terrorism has put a spotlight on the secretive world of government infiltration, especially in the Muslim community. Some critics have charged that these investigations, in which suspected jihadists are provided with the means and encouragement to carry out terrorist attacks before being arrested, constitute entrapment and set plots in motion that would never have emerged on their own. But these controversial tactics were around long before the FBI was restructured to prioritize terrorism. And Muslims aren't the only targets.

Most undercover operations remain secret, especially if they do not result in prosecutions. PATCON stayed under wraps for nearly 15 years, until it was discovered in Freedom of Information Act requests by the author. The account that follows is based on thousands of pages of FBI records on PATCON and the groups it targeted, as well as interviews with FBI agents who worked on the case, former FBI informants, and members of the targeted groups. The documents and interviews reveal important lessons for the modern use of undercover agents and informants.

PATCON had its origins in the investigation of Louis Beam, an infamous racial ideologue with connections to the original Order. In 1987, the government prosecuted him for sedition in connection with the group's activities, but he was acquitted and subsequently moved to the Austin, Texas, area.

The FBI was keenly interested in Beam's activities and his associates. In 1990, agents in Texas opened an investigation into his activities within the "Texas Light Infantry" (TLI). With branches throughout the Lone Star state, the TLI was a paramilitary militia that styled itself as an emergency backup for the Texas State Guard. Although the case file expansively included the whole organization -- most of which was not racist in nature -- investigators were primarily interested in a handful of Austin-area members and associates tied to Beam.

The New Arab Oz - By Aaron David Miller

Dorothy had it right. We're not in Kansas anymore. In little more than a year, a powerful tsunami of rebellion and revolt has washed away much of what was familiar to America in a region it thought it had finally come to understand.

But for the United States, life in this new Middle Eastern Oz differs from Dorothy's tale in one fundamental respect: It's bereft of wizards and witches.

Many of the big and not-so-big men who held America in thrall and their own people hostage are now gone or going. Indeed, none of the larger-than-life leaders who dominated Arab politics for nearly half a century still strut the Arab stage.

Their passing carries enormous consequences for Arabs -- and for Americans, too. The real danger is not that the United States will confront Arab strongmen, but that it will confront regimes without truly democratic institutions or strong, responsible leaders.

Once upon a time, two kinds of Arab leaders held sway. The first type were the acquiescent authoritarians, those presidents and kings on whom America depended to help protect its interests. They were constant, if not always agreeable, companions. Egypt's Mubarak, Jordan's King Hussein, Tunisia's Ben Ali, Yemen's Ali Saleh, Morocco's King Hassan II, Saudi Arabia's kings Fahd and Abdullah. The PLO's Yasir Arafat rounded out the group photo.

America's arrangements with the acquiescents (and their sons, relatives, and successors) weren't pretty, but they were clear: In exchange for their cooperation in matters of war, peace, oil, and security, the United States supported them and looked past their prodigal ways, human rights abuses, authoritarian behavior, and faux reforms.

Then there were the adversarial authoritarians. Here, a smaller group photo featured Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Syria's Assads (father and son), and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi. America sought to check and constrain their power, even removing one through invasion. But at times, the United States found common ground with them too. (See: cooperation with Saddam against the Iranian mullahs, and dancing with Assad on the peace process.) As pure and unadulterated dictators, however, they were incorrigible, beyond reform and redemption.

From Washington's vantage point, the Arab world wasn't so much divided into countries as it was broken down into personalities. Each of Americas' authoritarians had a role to play and a dramatic persona to accompany it. There was the good King Hussein, the wily but indispensable Arafat, the enigmatic yet much-courted Assad, the cruel Saddam, the crazy (like a fox) Qaddafi, and the plodding but reliable Mubarak.

The United States built its policies on these men and their regimes without much regard to broader political and social forces within their societies. At best, parliaments, parties, trade unions, and public opinion were of interest to regional specialists, academics, and human rights advocates, but not terribly relevant to presidents and secretaries of state. We did pay attention to the Islamists, but only because we feared them.

Punching Above their Weight - By James Manyika, Jaana Remes, and Javier Orellana

There's a cliché that young Americans head to the bright lights of the big cities to find their fame and fortune. It's still true, except that those cities aren't necessarily just the big ones anymore. And let's be thankful for that, because it's the U.S. mid-tier cities that are surprisingly generating the growth that will spur the global economy over the next decade.

Collectively, large cities -- which we define as metropolitan areas with a population of 150,000 plus -- in the United States are the center of gravity of the economy, generating almost 85 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly 20 percent of global GDP today. While New York and Los Angeles, the two American megacities with populations of more than ten million, have continued to tower above all others among the 259 large U.S. metropolitan areas, it's the 257 "middleweight" cities -- with populations of between 150,000 and 10 million -- that generate more than 70 percent of U.S. GDP today. The top 28 middleweights alone account for more than 35 percent of the nation's GDP.

It is America's large cities, and particularly the broad swath of middleweights, that will be the key to the U.S. recovery and a key contributor to global growth in the next 15 years. Large cities in the United States will contribute more to global growth than the large cities of all other developed countries combined. We expect the collective GDP of these large U.S. cities to rise by almost $5.7 trillion -- generating more than 10 percent of global GDP growth -- by 2025. While New York and Los Angeles together are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 2.1 percent between 2010 and 2025, the top 30 middleweights (measured by GDP) are expected to outpace them with a growth rate of 2.6 percent.

What is behind the clout of middleweights in the United States? For a start, there are simply more of them than in other developed regions. Of more than 600 middleweight cities around the developed world, the United States is home to 257 of them. East Asia (Japan and South Korea) has 123 and Western Europe 183, both regions with GDP levels comparable to the United States. But it's not just that the United States has more middleweights than other developed regions -- its middleweights also have relatively high per capita GDP. Taking both their number and their relative prosperity into account, U.S. middleweights generate a much higher share of the country's total GDP -- more than 70 percent -- than those, say, in Western Europe, where they contribute just over 50 percent.  

It is the dynamism of American middleweights that is behind their collective strength; but it is the diversity of their performance -- not the similarity -- that is striking.

Although New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago maintained their top three positions between 1978 and 2010, many middleweights among the top 30 cities measured by GDP have undergone considerable change. Five cities dropped out -- New Orleans, Louisiana; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Buffalo, New York -- and were replaced by Riverside, California; Portland, Oregon; Tampa and Orlando in Florida; and Sacramento, California. Within the top 30 there are changes as well: Cleveland, Ohio, for instance, dropped from 17th place to 27th, while Phoenix, Arizona, rose by 15 places, from 28th to 13th.

Overall, differences in population growth explain the most as to why some cities have grown faster than others, rather than differences in per capita GDP growth. Cities that have achieved the strongest economic growth have expanded their populations by two and a half times the rate of the national average. While slowing population growth and mobility will make it harder for U.S. cities to sustain rapid population growth rates, cities that want to grow their GDP will need to pay attention to attracting and supporting expanding populations. Many observers argue that it is the mix of local industries in a city that determines its ability to grow. This is true -- but to a much lesser extent than often assumed. Our analysis suggests that the mix of sectors explains only about one-third of the above-average growth of America's most rapidly growing cities.

Even when narrowing our focus to the strongest performing cities, again there is no single path to success -- no unique blueprint that all urban leaders should pursue. The cities that outperform their peers simply find ways to make the most of the economic opportunities they face, get lucky, or both. Some cities have been able to reinvent themselves; many others make the most of their endowments or their location.