World Report

From time to time I round up global events in a little ditty I like to call "World Report." I'm going to write it for you now.

• There's little in the way of actual news coming out of Cuba, where the transition from brother Fidel Castro to brother Raul appears to be fairly seamless. There's some great commentary around the Web, however. Steve Clemons calls the situation a "historic opportunity" to change American Cold War-era policies with Cuba, lift the embargo and move toward normalized relations. Tony Karon discussing, in a fascinating way, the allure of Castro to foreign leaders, as someone willing to stick it to the Americans. And both Matt Yglesias and ">Ezra Klein synthesize these two perspectives:

"for good reasons and for bad ones, the romance of thumbing one's nose at the USA has powerful and important resonance for a lot of people around the world. Under the circumstances, it rarely serves our interests to get into dramatic confrontations with leaders who are far too puny to objectively threaten our interests. After all, what significance would Castro have without his superpower adversary? US persecution of the Communist regime in Havana is really the only thing it has going for it."

A corollary to that point is that the more unpopular America is, the more political appeal opposing us will have. So the more we do to stoke anti-American sentiment, the more we strengthen the domestic political hands of the very leaders we oppose. It's a vicious circle, and one the Bush administration has been pursuing with all the zeal of a kid who just discovered ring-around-the-rosie.

• In Pakistan, the two leading opposition parties, Benazir Bhutto's former Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League-Q, will form a coalition government. This puts even more pressure on the Pervez Musharraf, who is trying to cling to power with an assist from the United States. Meanwhile, the opposition parties want to enter into dialogue with the militants who have been stepping up their attacks, in addition to restoring a free press and an independent judiciary.

• Angry crowds in Belgrade, Serbia attacked the US Embassy in protest of American recognition of an independent Kosovo. Riot police eventually secured the embassy. This bears watching.

• Where have I read a story like this before?

An exiled Iranian opposition group has claimed that Tehran was speeding up a program to develop nuclear weapons.

"The Iran regime entered a new phase in its nuclear project," Mohammad Mohaddessin, of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, said Wednesday.

So you have an exile group that wants to overthrow a Middle Eastern government, hyping fears about a nuclear arsenal in their home country.

And it starts with an "I".

• Oh yeah, that's it, Iraq!!! It's unclear whether or not our troops are going to be having to dodge a larger stream of bullets come Saturday, when the deadline for Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire is reached. The LA Times says that the truce may not be extended, because US forces haven't been cooperative, particularly by bombing Shiite outposts and arresting Mahdi Army members. But Reuters claims that Sadr will actually extend the truce for another six months. So we'll see.

At any rate, the fact that prospects in Iraq are so definitively tied to whether or not a militant who seeks our destruction keeps his fighters off the battlefield is ominous, to say the least. Russ Feingold says a bit more.

Since the beginning of this disastrous war, people have asked me repeatedly why we are in Iraq, instead of going after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. It's clear to many Americans that this war has warped our national security priorities. And top U.S. military commanders have started to acknowledge the same thing, indirectly, as they identify the serious threat to our security in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the strain that the war in Iraq is putting on our military force.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned that an attack on the U.S. will most likely come from al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan. This solemn warning, from the senior ranking member of the Armed Forces, demands that we focus our energy and resources on eliminating this threat to our country. The resurgence of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a grave threat to our national security, yet our military is stretched so thin because of Iraq that we don't have enough resources to address it. As U.S. military General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, said, "The Army today is out of balance," and "We're deploying at unsustainable rates." [...]

The administration can't seem to get its national security priorities straight, even with the increasing threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. But Congress is to blame, too -- we've been sitting by and watching as the administration bungles our national security strategy. The administration has had blinders on for too long, focusing on Iraq at the expense of our overall security. We have to force them to take the blinders off and come up with a new strategy, one that focuses on going after the threats we face, not staying mired in the mistakes they've made.

I know that most Democrats in Congress have given up on changing course in Iraq, but Russ Feingold has a little more integrity than that.

How Dare Obama Suggest Stated US Policy!

I had exactly the same reaction as Matt Yglesias about John McCain's speech tonight. He opened up a couple new lines of attack (we need to get rid of the unemployment system?), and one of them was accusing McCain of "threatening to bomb our ally Pakistan." Um, does McCain understand that American law permits strikes of this type? And does he get the papers?

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan's national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government's formal permission beforehand.

Clearly, John McCain is deeply unserious about the war on terror and Barack Obama is. If it were up to McCain, the #3 in Al Qaeda would still be alive. He wants us all to die.

(Hopefully David Axelrod picks this up and runs with it.)

...also, if it was up to John McCain and we waved the white flag of surrender in Serbia, those Kosovars wouldn't be celebrating their independence in the streets today.

The 2008 Election Just Turned

Three major developments globally have the potential to really change the dynamic in the Presidential election. Fidel Castro's resignation, the declaration of independence in Kosovo, and the resounding defeat of General-Dictator Pervez Musharraf's party in elections in Pakistan, are major, world-changing events that could be extremely positive for the world and the people in those nations, or profoundly destabilizing, over the next several years. Will Castro's exit usher in political and economic reforms? Will the counter-productive embargo finally be lifted? Or will US policy toward Cuba remain in its 50-year stasis, and will more sinister possibilities reveal themselves? Will Kosovo receive their independence and spark other democratic movements in the region, or will Serbia and Russia start another war in the Balkans? Will the opposition movements force Musharraf from power in Pakistan, or will the military render the will of the people moot, and will the society remain under martial law or worse? These are important political questions, and the next President will have an opportunity to really alter the global landscape, with smarts and savvy and the use of soft-power diplomacy.

Whether you see now as a time to stick with someone with the experience to make these tough and delicate decisions, or to go with someone with a different mindset on foreign policy, this is certainly a momentous occasion. And certainly, contrasting the two candidates we have left on the Democratic side to Bush's third term proxy John McCain, the difference is stark. Here's an example of what can be done right now, in this case with respect to Pakistan.

Now that Musharraf is for all practical purposes about to be dispensed with, the Bush administration needs to take a new approach.

A good start would be to adopt Sen. Joseph Biden's proposal to triple U.S. economic aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion per year. A second step should be to acknowledge that flooding military aid into the country -- to the tune of $10 billion since the beginning of the Bush presidency -- has done more harm than good. In this administration -- if possible -- and certainly in the next, the United States needs to shift from "democracy promotion" to "democracy support." Instead of trying to impose pro-U.S. regimes by force, U.S. policy should involve supporting indigenous democratic forces with non-military assistance, taking its cues from the needs of these movements rather than trying to manipulate the results.

These really are the fundamental questions. Are we going to stick with a foreign policy of the neoconservative consensus, with bullying and unilateralism and warmongering, are we going to attempt to better our position in the world through cooperation and mutual support.

When you shrug off the posturing and the day to day of the campaign, these are the stakes.

UPDATE: The initial statements of the leading candidates on Castro's resignation does not make me particularly hopeful, though there are some vague claims about reaching out and talking on the condition that Cuba takes legitimate steps to reform, particularly by releasing political prisoners. Sadly, our Cuba policy is still tied to electoral politics, particularly with respect to Florida.

Color Me Surprised

Either we had a fair election in Pakistan, or Dictator Musharraf is so reviled that the results couldn't be countermanded:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.

Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him [...]

The results were interpreted here as a repudiation of Mr. Musharraf as well as the Bush administration, which has staunchly backed Mr. Musharraf for more than six years as its best bet in the campaign against the Islamic militants in Pakistan. American officials will have little choice now but to seek alternative allies from among the new political forces emerging from the vote.

It's amazing how you impose martial law and remove the independent judiciary and all of a sudden people get their back up.

Based on unofficial results, the Pakistan Peoples Party (the party of the late Benazir Bhutto) would have 110 seats in the National Assembly (out of 272), the Pakistan Muslim League-N (the party of Nawaz Sharif) would have 100, and Musharraf's party (the Pakistan Muslim League-Q) would have just 20 or 30 seats. Turnout was low, as voters feared violence, but the violence was also mercifully low.

The question of course is whether or not the opposition parties will attempt to remove Musharraf, and if so what resistance they will get from the military, and how the Bush Administration will react. Of course, with Musharraf losing badly the Administration looks even sillier for hitching their wagons to his star. In fact, it was likely that the main effect of that hitching was this crushing electoral defeat. If Musharraf leaves the country, as appears possible, the possibility exists for a leader in Pakistan hostile to American interests. All because, as Joe Biden is fond of saying, we don't have a Pakistan policy, we have a Musharraf policy.

Meanwhile, the Islamist parties lost in the areas around the tribal region where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are prominent. This, of course, is probably because they don't need the validation of the vote to rule when they have the machine gun.

Still, this is quite hopeful, that a dictator was so fully rejected that he could not even hold back the challenge to his own power. Between this and Kosovo's independence being recognized by the US and other leading European countries, I'm almost hopeful about democracy.

At Long Last, Kosovo

Change your maps:

Kosovo's parliament declared the disputed territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an "independent and democratic state" backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Serbia immediately denounced the declaration as illegal, and Russia also rejected it, demanding an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

This could end up as a thorny situation, but the people of Kosovo deserve it. This may raise Russia's hackles, but key European countries are going to recognize the vote, and while I'd like to see the United Nations take role in the recognition process, this uneasy peace with Serbia wasn't likely to hold. The balkanizing of the Balkans has often been extremely messy, but this was a formal process taken with the view of both the people and the Parliament.

Finally, it seems to me that this is the best practice of a true democracy, not what we're currently seeing in Iraq. While the world stepped in to stop Kosovo from being bombed out of existence, in the interim they set their minds to a declaration of independence that did not come from an occupying power but the people themselves. Democracy at the barrel of a gun, just like escalation in the face of insurgency, never works. Building democratic societies is about empowering individuals to take action.