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It was quite clear by the time President Obama got to the end of his State of the Union speech last night that it was very much—the state of America, not the state of the world. Barely 10 minutes—roughly 900 of 7,500 words—were devoted in his hour-long address to global issues, a passing nod, an odd rhetorical flourish, a vague threat to America’s enemies—North Korea and Iran, al-Qaeda and the Taliban (not even by name, in the latter’s case). Controlling global warming? Good. Withdrawal from Iraq? Leaving behind a democratic government? Well, we shall see in the wake of the coming elections.

Among the few accomplishments he cited? Thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan and a big multilateral conference opening in London today to prop up the government of President Hamid Karzai. But within hours, this latter president undercut Obama’s whole message, suggesting it would be five to ten years before his nation could stand on its own against its many enemies, foreign and domestic. No route home soon for those 30,000 additional men and women apparently.

So what was on the agenda of the American president, and what was not?

Certainly not the Middle East. Despite his stem-winding speech in Cairo nearly a year ago, and the appointment of a master envoy, George Mitchell, Israelis and Palestinians are as far apart as ever. “If we had anticipated some of [the] political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high,” Obama admitted to Time’s Joe Klein last week.

A quick laughline over global warming. (“I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change….”) But no mention of the buzz-saw he walked into in Copenhagen which all but collapsed, leaving environmentalists puzzled at best, bitter at least.

Global trade? A pledge to double U.S. exports in the next five years—and move toward some Doha accord. Hardly a message many of America’s trading partners would like to hear. And especially those who were somehow left out of the message entirely:

“And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.”  What happened to China? India? Brazil? Clearly straw men, purely passing cautionary tales: “China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting.” Look out America, the world is out there breathing down our backs, waiting to steal our first-place position:

“These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America. (Applause.)”

Nuclear disarmament? “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.” When? No deadline. When they’re finished.

And Iran?  “As Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise. (Applause.)” Which consequences, when and who will accompany us? Empty rhetoric does not go a very long way in Tehran or Qom.

And before his peroration reaffirming America’s “ideals and values,” there was a final summary of his global agenda:

“That’s the leadership that we are providing—engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We’re working through the G20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. [The only suggestion in the speech that our economic melt-down, which we helped touch off, is a global problem needing global solutions.] We’re working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science and education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We’re helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease—a plan that will counter threats at home and strengthen public health abroad. As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores.”

Last week, I was asked on the PBS broadcast WorldFocus to sum up the president’s first year in international relations. He has, I replied, substantially improved our global image. We are, in many parts of the world, no longer a pariah nation. But concrete results, real accomplishments, changing the course of history or even peoples’ lives? Not much yet. As the anchor Martin Savidge observed, great progress in the most deeply divided regions, particularly the Middle East, is only rarely achieved without the undivided focus and attention of the president of the United States—a president who is now more than ever distracted by a packed domestic agenda.

Where the president has weighed in, it is only in the form of a quick fly-through in Copenhagen, a one-off speech in Cairo, a brief stopover in the chairman’s chair at a UN disarmament session. Then he’s gone. Whoosh. Another item on his daily agenda ticked off and then on to his next stop.

The world, led by Americans who are globally engaged, is still waiting for results, and focus. He has the innate talent, the prayers of the world, all the good will imaginable. Now, in his second year, the debut, as he so quite rightly observed, of a bright new decade, it is time to buckle down and deliver on at least a few of his brightest promises.

David A. Andelman is the editor of World Policy Journal and The World Policy Blog. A veteran domestic and foreign correspondent and editor of The New York Times, CBS News, and most recently Forbes.com, he is the author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.

The investigations of U.S. Army major Nidal Malik Hasan’s November 5 murder of 13 soldiers at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, and of the December 25 failed attempt by a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate a bomb inside a 300-passenger plane en route to Detroit, have revealed links between these terrorists and a spawning Al Qaeda network in Yemen.

Major Hasan reportedly exchanged e-mails and sought spiritual guidance from a radical U.S.-born Islamic cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, who grew up in Yemen. Mr. Abdulmutallab, for his part, said he received training and explosive devices from the Al Qaeda operatives during his four-month stay in Yemen last year.

Yemen’s involvement in these terrorist acts has also shed light on its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, whom Washington urged to launch a vast antiterrorist operation, now underway in the volatile Arab nation.

Mr. Saleh is a seasoned war horse. He served as North Yemen’s president for 12 years, before merging the north and south in 1990, following decades of colonial and ideological division. He has been president of this Sunni-dominated nation ever since, although the real extent of his authority is questionable.

The government repeatedly clashed with separatists in the south through the 1990s, and the insurrection flared again in 2008. Moreover, violence has escalated in the country’s northwest, along the border with Saudi Arabia, and repeated attempts to quash these Shiite insurgents (led by Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi) have been largely unsuccessful. In the northwest, Al-Houthi insurgents crossed into Saudi Arabia last month, murdering two Saudi patrol guards and triggering a joint Saudi-Yemeni airstrike against guerrillas. Today, the government’s control is effectively limited to the areas surrounding the capital, Sana’a.

Although newspapers and 24-hour news channels seem keen to highlight Yemen as the new front in the “war on terror,” the nation actually surfaced as a breeding ground for international terrorists in the early 1990s, when impoverished refugees escaping violence in neighboring Somalia were recruited by Al Qaeda in Yemen. In October 2000, Al Qaeda terrorists blasted a hole in the American Navy destroyer USS Cole harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors. And, in September 2008, Al Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, killing ten non-American citizens.

For the most part, the Bush administration’s engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq prevented it from allocating resources to confront the burgeoning terrorist network in Yemen. One critical mark of escalation in the Bush administration’s counterterrorism tactics was a CIA-sponsored drone strike in Yemen at the end of 2002 that killed six Al Qaeda operatives, including Qaed Sinan Harithi, the suspected organizer of the USS Cole incident. Today, the reoccurrence of domestic terrorism puts pressure on Obama to eradicate the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before it gathers strength and threatens the stability of that nation.

Indeed, the “systemic problems” that President Obama referenced in his speech about intelligence failures leading up to Mr. Abdulmutallab’s attempted bombing could just as well describe the state of affairs within Yemen. The country is plagued by numerous socioeconomic and political ills, including an excessive reliance on rapidly dwindling oil resources, severe water shortage, pervasive corruption, inter-regional tensions, and illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, and population growth rates that are among the highest in the Middle East. While protracted sectarian and territorial disputes have made the task of state-building increasingly difficult for Mr. Saleh, most of the problems the country faces today are the product of his own heavy-handed and short-sighted policies. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few months, a public opinion firestorm has ravaged the German government as the weight of a tragic event in Afghanistan continues to press down hard on the collective conscience of the nation. The impetus for the current uproar was the bombing of two trucks in Kunduz, Afghanistan on September 4, which was ordered by German forces and resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians (estimates range from 17 to 142). Yet, what seemed to be an ugly but collateral blip on the nation’s broad foreign policy radar has turned into a veritable crisis of the first order for the lawmakers in Berlin, with the future of Germany military engagement in Afghanistan at stake. The debate could not come at a more embarrassing moment for the government.

When Germany initially committed itself to sending troops to Afghanistan, it did so wanting to be the “good guy” in the war effort—the country that would “stabilize” Afghanistan with its contingent of soldier-humanitarians while the Americans did the majority of the fighting. But now, with its soldiers both in harm’s way and inadvertently doing harm, the presence of German troops on Afghan soil has become infinitely more difficult to justify to a skeptical public at home, a majority of who now want a complete withdrawal. Moreover, there’s a growing perception within Germany that the government no longer even pulls its own strings, having recently re-committed its 4,400 troops in Afghanistan to another year of duty, while lacking a significant voice either in Washington or at NATO headquarters.

Still, the new strategy proposed by President Obama is promising for those in Germany who have a political stake in the intervention. The more hawkish voices within the German government have held that domestic security and freedom are being defended in the Hindu Kush. But this argument has gained little traction lately, especially among a populace that is now so ill-at-ease about Germany’s role in Afghanistan—a role that appears to be moving toward full-fledged participation in a war not of its own making.

Thus, it is welcome that the new American strategy is placing greater focus on the Afghan people and society. Likewise, the military components embodied in the upcoming Afghan “surge” seem to be more rational and targeted than under Bush, while the civil programs are stronger and likely to be less scatter-shot than in the past. But even with some good news coming out of Washington these days, Berlin still needs a clear humanitarian and civil society mission to bolster the legitimacy of its involvement in the conflict. Unfortunately, new signals from both the American and German governments are blurring the lines.

First, there’s the insistence on the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, as again reiterated by General Stanley McChrystal in the halls of the U.S. Congress on December 8, 2009. But of what use is such a goal, whether as part of the broader Operation Enduring Freedom or as related to policies against Al Qaeda? This goal is profoundly unpopular in Germany, both due to the lack of a clear rationale and the echoes of President Bush’s bellicose ideology. Read the rest of this entry »

After sharing “gallons of tea” and endless platters of lamb with U.S. Senator John Kerry, Afghan President Hamid Karzai reluctantly accepted the findings of a UN-backed panel that showed massive fraud had occurred during the Aug. 20 presidential vote and agreed to a Nov. 7 runoff. His challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has also agreed to participate, but he said he would not accept an election conducted like the previous one and was preparing a list of conditions for election organizers. Some 200 of the 2,950 election chiefs have already been sacked after complaints by candidates and observers about voting irregularities and misconduct in their regions, and the United Nations announced that half of the most senior Afghan election officials would be fired. Karzai, who was hesitant to agree to a runoff even though final counts showed neither candidate with a majority of the vote, was finally persuaded after numerous meetings with Sen. Kerry. According to the Associated Press, Kerry talked on personal terms with Karzai about his own troubles during the 2004 U.S. presidential election and his decision not to pursue charges of voting irregularities in Ohio.

Iranian negotiators have agreed to a draft of an agreement that would reduce its stockpile of nuclear material, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Wednesday. The agreement; which comes after days of talks between the UN, Iran, the United States, Russia, and France; would arrange for Iran to temporarily export 75 percent of its uranium stockpile to Russia and France for enrichment. Though details have yet to be officially released, insiders from Russia’s nuclear industry told the BBC that under the proposed scheme, Iran will first send its uranium to the IAEA, which will forward it to Russia to be enriched. Russia will then return the uranium to the IAEA, which will give it to France to add the “cell elements” needed for Iran’s civilian nuclear reactor before returning it to Tehran, they said. The deal, which must be signed by Friday by the participating countries if it is to go into effect, aims to dispel Western suspicions that Iran is enriching uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. “Of course you are well aware that we have mastered enrichment technology,” said Iranian negotiator Ali Asghar Soltanieh, emphasizing that the deal was a gesture of Iranian goodwill. “We can produce the fuel for ourselves on this reactor for 20% enrichment, but we’ve decided that we will receive the fuel from the potential suppliers which are willing to do that instead,” he continued. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradai was optimistic about the plan’s potential to engage Iran with the rest of the world. “I very much hope that people see the big picture that this agreement could open the way for a complete normalization of relations between Iran and the international community,” he said.

Poland is ready to take part in the United States’ reconfigured missile defense system, said Polish Prime Minster Donald Tusk on Wednesday. The new missile defense system “is a very interesting concept and a very much needed one and we are ready to participate in this project on the necessary scale,” he told reporters following a meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Warsaw. “We are ready for joint responsibility.” Last month, Obama announced plans to scrap former President W. Bush’s plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe—which would have deployed ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic—in favor of a sea-based system to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. The news upset many Poles, who worried for their own security and saw the move as a concession to Russia, which vehemently opposed the original plan. But at the meeting, Biden emphasized the United States’ friendship with Poland; “Make no mistake,” he said flatly. “Our commitment to Poland is unwavering . . . Simply put, our missile plan is better security for NATO and it’s better security for Poland, not only better security for the United States of America.” Under Obama’s plan, the United States will station sea-based defense shields in the Mediterranean Sea by 2011 before implementing a land-based shield in Eastern Europe after 2015. SM-3 interceptors, which are at the heart of the plan and are smaller and more mobile than the interceptors under Bush’s plan, will be stationed in Poland in 2018. Biden is also expected to brief Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Washington’s revised missile plans during his trip. For more on Poland’s strategic and geopolitical interest on the issue, see Polish journalist Wojciech Lorenz’s vivid reportage in “Poland: Straddling the Nuclear Frontier” (World Policy Journal, Fall 2009).

The president of the Marshall Islands was ousted by legislators in the first successful vote of no-confidence in the western Pacific nation’s history. Opposition to President Litokwa Tomeing had been building after he sacked Foreign Minister Tony deBrum and other cabinet ministers earlier this year, replacing them with opposition United Democratic Party senators and causing a split in the ruling party. This accelerated a power struggle between Tomeing and former President Kessai Note, who lost the presidency in 2007. The 17-15  vote barely reached the required majority, and the acting president, Ruben Zackhras, called for Parliament to reconvene Friday to elect a new president. Tomeing survived two earlier no-confidence votes. The former U.S. Trust territory, which won its independence from the United States in 1986, has a population of about 55,000.

The following is excerpted from a talk Nicolaus Mills will deliver Oct. 24, 2009, at the Marshall Foundation. It is part of a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the General George Marshall’s death.

Fifty years ago this month, George Marshall, army chief of staff throughout World War II and in Winston Churchill’s words, “the organizer of victory,” died as a result of a crippling stroke. Marshall, at the request of Eleanor Roosevelt, was responsible for planning the funeral of President Franklin Roosevelt, but he had no desire for a state funeral of his own. In the instructions he wrote out for the arrangements at his own death, he forbade a funeral service in the National Cathedral, ruled out lying in state in the Capital Rotunda, and asked that no eulogy be said for him.

This modesty was consistent with the way Marshall conducted his life and is one reason why he is not as well known today as many of the generals who served under him. Throughout World War II, Marshall refused all United States decorations. Even at his Pentagon retirement ceremony in 1945, he relented only long enough to allow President Truman to add a second Oak Leaf cluster to the Distinguished Service Medal he had been awarded in 1919.

In this era of self-promotion, Marshall’s personal example sends a powerful message. But as the United States struggles with how to engage in nation building in a post-9/11 world, it is Marshall’s crowning achievement as secretary of state—the post-World War II Marshall Plan that from 1948 to 1952 provided the foreign aid essential to Europe’s economic recovery—that really shows what national modesty can achieve. Read the rest of this entry »

The dollar rebounded slightly Friday morning following a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke after falling to its lowest level in 14 weeks a day earlier. It’s lost 11.5 percent of its value in the last six months. Bernanke acknowledged that “we will need to tighten monetary policy to prevent the emergence of an inflation problem down the road,” in an effort to persuade investors that the Fed was prepared to target inflation. Analysts suggested that the dollar would strengthen, with higher interest rates that could attract investments from abroad. Most analysts believe the slide, to about the same level of two years ago, is a result of investors’ increasing acceptance of risk and the prospects of interest rates rising more rapidly outside the United States. Gold, other precious metals, and oil have also been rising as the dollar has plummeted.  Several Asian nations have responded to the dollar’s fall by devaluing their own currencies to support their export markets–intervention that has led to tensions between the United States and China in recent weeks. This week the United States began an intensive investigation of Chinese steel exports, following an earlier sharp increase in U.S. tariffs on imports of Chinese tires. The U.S. Treasury is preparing an announcement next week concerning its stand on Chinese manipulation of its currency. Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly fell 3.6 percent in August. Despite a 16.3 percent increase the previous month–the sharpest rise in ten years–U.S. trade deficits have been falling substantially as the recession has slowed global trade, especially in oil, industrial manufactures, and other consumer items.

The Nigerian rebel group MEND announced that it would resume its attacks on oil pipelines and installations in the Niger Delta, calling the alleged success of a government amnesty plan for rebel fighters “a glaring untruth.” The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) warned in a statement that “we will fight for our land with the last drop of our blood” once its ceasefire expires on Oct. 15, and that it “considers this next phase of our struggle as the most critical . . . We intend to end 50 years of slavery of the people of the Niger Delta by the Nigerian government, a few individuals and the Western oil companies once and for all.” Lucky Ararile, the federal government’s amnesty program coordinator, affirmed that the government would react appropriately if attacks were carried out, and MEND will not be represented at Friday’s amnesty meeting between militant leaders and Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. So far, more than 8,000 militants are reported to have laid down their arms under the amnesty program, and authorities estimate that number could more than double once all have been officially registered. Meanwhile, prominent human rights group Amnesty International called on Western oil firms to make amends for degrading the environment and disregarding human rights in the Niger Delta. “With the Nigerian federal government, the oil industry is one of the key players that has had a considerable responsibility for at least 50 years in the catastrophic situation in the Niger Delta,” said Francis Perrin, a member of the rights group’s executive bureau, to a press conference in Paris on Friday. “We see a direct link between oil exploitation, the degradation of the environment, and the violation of economic, social, cultural, civic and political rights.”

Leaders around the world reacted with praise and condemnation to President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, with most publicly praising the decision, but some saying it was premature and undeserved. Not surprisingly, spokesmen for the Taliban and Hamas quickly denounced it, with the Taliban saying they had seen no change in his strategy for peace in Afghanistan, and Hamas calling the award “undeserved.” But unexpectedly, an aide to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacted positively. “We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order,” said Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a media aide to Ahmadinejad. “We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world.” German chancellor Angela Merkel said President Obama’s goal for a world free of nuclear weapons, one of the issues cited by the Nobel Prize Committee for the award, is something “we must all try to achieve in the coming years.” French president Nicolas Sarkozy said the prize marked “America’s return to the hearts of the world’s peoples.” While some criticized the decision because the president is presiding over two wars, the Nobel committee hailed Obama’s efforts to “strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

As the United States withdraws military forces from their nation, Iraqis are finding difficulty sustaining political and economic development. Periodic bombings in recent weeks have become a pattern, following two of the bloodiest truck bombings at Baghdad government ministries on August 19 that killed 95, but the senior U.S. commander, General Raymond Odierno, denied that it represented a systemic security failure, acknowledging only “a clear security lapse.” The U.S. military is in the process of withdrawing 75,000 soldiers by August 2010, paring the number of American military to a residual training and advisory force of 50,000. This pace that could even accelerate if Iraqi elections, scheduled for January, go well. Politically, many Iraqis feel abandoned by the American withdrawal and the councils of local nationalist Iraqis fear that, without U.S. support, they may no longer be safe, much less effective, prompting concern about whether a relatively dramatic increase in security in recent months will be solidified by political reconciliation.  Many Iraqis are looking to get back to work, but are still finding jobs hard to find. In the oil sector, international bidding last year proved disappointing as few firms showed much interest in returning to oil production in Iraq. One Chinese company paid $3 billion dollars to established itself in Wasit Province, but imported its own Chinese labor, spurning local Iraqis who offered to work.  And beyond oil, Iraqi firms are finding difficulty attracting foreign investment.  Security is a serious impediment, but management corruption and the inefficiencies of old, decaying factories and the bureaucracy of a centrally planned economy have deterred further investment.

Iranian monarchist Mohammad-Reza Ali Zamani was sentenced to death for his participation in protests following this summer’s elections. According to semi-official Iranian news agency Mehr, Zamani was part of a group that sought to restore Iran’s monarchy, and was accused of fighting against the Islamic establishment and active membership of a “terrorist” royalist association, among other crimes. The conviction, which was first reported by the reformist Web site Mowjcamp, is the first death sentence in the trials of more than 100 opposition supporters accused of fomenting street violence after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s disputed presidential elections in June. But human rights groups have denounced the proceedings as “show trials” meant only to intimidate the populace.

Let’s exaggerate. Iran has been singled out for persecution over its alleged nuclear bomb making program because in 1979 its Revolutionary Guards took the staff of the U.S. embassy hostage, causing outrage in America with even the esteemed Walter Cronkite ratcheting up the tension, putting up on the screen, as he read the nightly news, the number of days they had been incarcerated. The sitting president, Jimmy Carter, was deposed, tarred with the brush of utter failure.

Something of an exaggeration that this was the sole or even the most important factor in building a pro bomb lobby in Iran. Still it has a grain of truth: Iran has been singled out unfairly. The West and Russia are engaged in discriminating against it.

Brazil has had a nuclear enrichment program for decades (including a large ultracentrifuge enrichment plant, several laboratory-scale facilities, a reprocessing facility to make plutonium, and a missile program). In the 1980s it built two nuclear devices. Three years ago I asked the chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Brasilia if Washington was worried about Brazil. “Not at all,” he replied. “In the early 1990s Brazil dismantled its nuclear weapons program, and Argentina, its supposed enemy, has done the same.” “But,” I insisted, “Brazil still has its enrichment program and a reprocessing facility”. “We have no worries about Brazil,” he answered. “We see eye to eye.” However, Brazil still resists, in part, the probing eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog.

In 1979 the attitude of the Carter administration toward Pakistan, then attempting to build its own bomb, was almost as harsh as is the attitude of the United States toward Iran today. All American military aid was suspended, even though the Taliban were a lurking potential threat. However, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December of that year, Carter persuaded Congress to restart a large-scale arms program. For the next decade, in return for Pakistan’s help building up the anti-Soviet mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan (who later went to work for Osama bin Laden), Washington turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s effort to build nuclear weapons.

Read the rest of this entry »

The White House’s National Strategy for Innovation, a white-paper from the National Economic Council and the Office of Science and Technology, was accompanied in September by a speech on innovation from President Obama in Troy, New York. Together, these efforts represent the Obama administration’s first attempt at a unified national innovation policy.

This is not the first time an administration has unveiled an innovation policy. President Bush released a more limited plan in April 2004, but the latest effort is unquestionably the most comprehensive. This in itself is encouraging; globally, economic innovation policy is a sprawling issue deserving of thorough treatment. More immediately, though, the new American strategy is grounded in an understanding that innovation is not just a business phenomenon to be encouraged—it is central to the nation’s economic survival in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. If the United States is to compete in the twenty-first century economy, its national innovation policy must be internationally competitive.

The administration’s strategy can certainly help the United States gain on its competitors. It focuses on increasing government funding for research and development, making the research and experimentation tax credit permanent, improving the country’s technical infrastructure, and producing a better-educated workforce. It also takes a page from President Bush’s 2004 plan, singling out alternative energy and healthcare information technology for special government attention while placing a new emphasis on advanced vehicle technology.

Though its recognition of the importance of the issues is commendable, much of the National Innovation Strategy is simply a retroactive reclassification of existing policies. Read the rest of this entry »

After announcing the existence of a previously undisclosed nuclear facility last week, Iran successfully test-fired surface-to-surface Shahab-3 long-range missiles. Iran declared the nuclear plant to the International Atomic Energy Agency last Monday after reportedly learning that U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the plant for some time. President Obama intended to reveal its existence at the opening of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh as diplomatic leverage in upcoming negotiations. The plant is located about 100 miles south of Tehran in the mountains near the holy city of Qom; Iran maintains the plant is for low-enriched uranium suitable only for domestic energy production and not highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, and Iran conceded to allowing the IAEA to inspect the plant. But on Sunday and Monday, one week after Iran’s nuclear declaration and two weeks after President Obama refashioned President Bush’s missile defense shield, Iran began a series of successful missile launches of its short-, medium-, and long-range missiles, which could reach a maximum distance of 2,000 kilometers. This is far enough to strike Israel or U.S. military bases in the Gulf.  Iran is scheduled to meet Thursday in Geneva with the P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany—for preliminary negotiations on a range of issues including proliferation, though Iran insists its domestic nuclear program is not negotiable.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the Iranians must “present convincing evidence as to the purpose of their nuclear program. We don’t believe that they can present convincing evidence, that it’s only for peaceful purposes, but we are going to put them to the test.”  The United States is preparing to impose additional sanctions on Iran through the U.N. Security Council should negotiations fail, though the U.S. is also quietly assembling a coalition outside the Security Council should China or Russia veto a sanctions package. Russia and China maintain economic interests in Iran and many European nations believe existing sanctions against Iran have proven ineffective in persuading the Iranian government, only negatively affecting the people of Iran.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic party won a 33.8% plurality and maintained majority control in parliamentary elections in Germany on Sunday. Center-left Social Democrats posted their worst ever showing and the pro-business Free Democrats earned their best ever showing since World War II. Merkel will proceed to form a new coalition with the Free Democrats, which she believes will be a less strained coalition than in the past four years with liberal parties. The new coalition will focus on reducing unemployment and stimulating the economy with a two-stage $22 billion tax cut, even as public debt continues to increase.  The two parties may find some friction in upcoming talks as the Free Democrats campaigned for far more conservative policies, seeking deeper tax cuts, restricting Merkel’s healthcare reform efforts, and nuances of Germany’s foreign policy. “We’ll have to argue over several issues,” Merkel said Sunday evening, but stressed to Germans that the government would not dismantle the welfare state. Because all major parties endorse the 4,200 German presence in Afghanistan, excepting the far left, the election is unlikely to change that commitment in either direction.

The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan failed to agree at the United Nations last week on resuming general negotiations and Indian FM SM Krishna rejected a Pakistani proposal to conduct informal discussions even absent formal negotiations.  After fighting three wars with each other over the disputed border land of Kashmir since 1947, the two nuclear-armed nations began a peace process in 2004 but discussions have been strained by rival interests in Afghanistan and, especially, since November 2008 when India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for killing 174 in the Indian financial capital, Mumbai.  India requests that Pakistan apprehend and prosecute those responsible.  Pakistani FM Qureshi announced the arrest of seven people connected to the attacks, with prosecution scheduled to begin October 3.  Indian FM Krishna acknowledged, “Pakistan has taken some steps within its own legal system against those directly responsible for the attack on Mumbai, and the process thus instituted must gather further momentum.”  Meanwhile, India announced that it has built highly destructive nuclear weapons, enabling what Indian officials consider a “proper strategic deterrent” in its international relations.  Senior Indian officials say their weapon yields 200 kilotons; a nuclear weapon with a yield of 50 kilotons is considered “high yield.”  The test is likely to further strain relations with Pakistan and perhaps jeopardize the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement enacted last October under President Bush.  President Obama proposed at the U.N. General Assembly that nations, such as India, joint the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear nations, a proposal India quickly rejected.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey will formally sign an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia on October 10, furthering a roadmap agreed upon in April toward normalizing relations. Though Turkey still disputes Armenia’s claim that mass Turkish killings of Armenians during World War I constitutes genocide, it seeks “zero problems with neighbors,” to quote the motto of Turkish academic and Minster of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu. Turkey, a member of NATO and prospective member of the European Union, has engaged as a mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, most notably the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the 2008 Gaza War, and is also seeking to improve relations with its Kurdish citizens. The Kurds, after rebelling twenty-five years ago, prompted Turkey to ban the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the United States lists as a terrorist organization. Turkey’s reconciliation with the Kurds could dramatically improve its relation with Iraq, where a large number of Kurds settle in the autonomous northern region, projecting Turkey further into Middle Eastern affairs.

Closing Remarks: President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson of Iceland

Summary by Josh Sanburn, World Policy Journal

After three days in which global leaders, academics and entrepreneurs addressed the world’s most pressing problems, the closing keynote speaker identified the financial crisis, the need for a green energy revolution and climate change as the three most important issues, all of which are irreversibly linked. “None of these three crises can be solved without solving the other,” he said.

The financial crisis has shown that people around the world fell victim to the notion that the market is paramount, he said. Icelanders have learned how fragile that idea really is. “It threatened the complete breakdown of of the social fabric of our society,” he said, citing riots and social unrest that occurred soon after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the United States last year.

President Grimsson called on leaders around the world to create a new philosophical and moral framework to avoid repeating the same mistakes. He tied the rise of a green energy revolution to stabilizing the economic sector, saying that Iceland now has a 100 percent clean energy economy. And greening the energy sector will naturally lead to a reduction in emissions.

To solve these problems, President Grimsson said countries around the world should place more regulations on financial institutions in order to rein in the excesses of a market economy, and he also challenged the United States and other countries to harnass geothermal energy to limit the use of fossil fuels.

“The political system was tested to its limit,” he said. “Even in the most stable and secure democracies, it almost resembled the revolutionary situations we read about in history books. But we have the capability and the mandate to solve these problems.”