The U.S. economic recovery is in serious need of a course correction.

The policy measures pursued to date have failed to produce a sustainable recovery of demand and investment, have reflated financial assets but at the expense of much needed job creation, and have done little to correct the global imbalances that helped cause the crisis.

The New America Foundation/Economic Growth and Smart Globalization Program is hosting a national economic policy forum today to discuss these issues.

The event will STREAM LIVE here at The Washington Note.

Details below.

New America Foundation National Economic Policy Forum
THE U.S. ECONOMY: PLOTTING A COURSE CORRECTION
New America Foundation -- 1899 L Street NW, 4th Floor; Washington, DC

8:30 to 9:00am - Registration & Coffee

9:00 to 9:05am - Introductory Remarks

STEVE CLEMONS
Director, American Strategy Program
New America Foundation

9:05 to 9:45am
A No-Nonsense Discussion on U.S. Economic Growth and Jobs

THE HON. BYRON DORGAN (D-ND)
Chairman, Democratic Policy Committee
United States Senate

LEO HINDERY, JR.
Chairman, Economic Growth Program/Smart Globalization Initiative
New America Foundation

9:45 to 11:00am - Session 1
Jobs, Public Investment & Infrastructure: Serious vs. Non-Serious Policies

THE HON. BRUCE BRALEY (D-IA-1)
Chairman, House Populist Caucus
U.S. House of Representatives

MICHAEL LIND
Policy Director, Economic Growth Program
New America Foundation

ROBERT KUTTNER
Co-Editor, The American Prospect
Author (forthcoming), A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future

11:00am to 12:15pm - Session 2
Wrestling with Currency, Mercantilism & State Capitalism: Time for a New Plaza Accord?

SHERLE R. SCHWENNINGER
Director, Economic Growth Program
New America Foundation

JOSEPH GAGNON
Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

THE HONORABLE PAULA STERN
Chairwoman, The Stern Group
Former Chairwoman, International Trade Commission
Former Member, President's Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations

12:15pm - Closing Remarks

-- Ben Katcher

I always have time for entertainment/communications industry CEO Leo Hindery and Senator Byron Dorgan -- and this morning I will be with both of them at a New America Foundation forum on what is needed to chart a credible new course for the US economy.

Both have been important leaders in calling for a policy pivot in the way the Obama administration thinks about high wage job creation, strategic national investments, manufacturing competitiveness, and infrastructure development.

The event will stream live tomorrow morning starting at 9 a.m. eastern -- but I thought I'd share a video clip I did with Hindery a couple of weeks ago on the subject of green jobs -- as well as a Financial Times oped titled "America Needs to Invest in Jobs -- And Fast" that Leo Hindery co-authored with former U.S. Senator Donald Riegle.

If you are in DC, you are welcome to attend. Address information and schedule at this event link.

Congressman Bruce Braley (D-IA-1), among many other interesting policy practitioners, will be with us as well at the meeting just before going to the White House for the signing of the HIRE Act.

More in a few hours.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest note exclusive to The Washington Note by Iran expert and well-known diplomatic correspondent Barbara Slavin, author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation

What Iran Threw Away

A senior U.S. official Wednesday confirmed that the United States offered the first civilian nuclear cooperation with Iran in three decades under the terms of a deal that Iran walked away from last fall.

Daniel Poneman, Deputy Secretary of Energy, said that had Iran accepted the deal - under which it would have shipped out two thirds of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium for further processing abroad - the U.S. would have inspected a 40-year-old reactor in Tehran to see if it was operating safely.

"We would have been well disposed to be helpful," Poneman said at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "We were willing in support of IAEA efforts ... to help assure that the Tehran research reactor was safe."

Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, told reporters after the meetings with Poneman in October that "one of the aspects in addition to the fuel is the control instrumentation and safety equipment of the reactor" and that "we have been informed about the readiness of the United States in a technical project with the IAEA to cooperate in this respect."

A U.S. official said on background that the United States would examine the reactor, provided to Iran in the late 1960s when Lyndon Johnson was president and the Shah ruled Iran. However, Poneman's remark was the first on the record confirmation of this.

This deal sweetener was well received by those close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and allowed him to cast the package in a positive light.

Iranians much prefer U.S. technology to Russian nuclear knowhow. Some Iranians suggested that U.S. assistance might extend to the Bushehr reactor if a deal could be struck on the LEU. Bushehr, which was begun by the Germans in the Shah's time, is now a "mess," one official told me, a "hodge-podge of technologies" that Iran is afraid to run because it might "blow up."

Ahmadinejad's numerous opponents within Iran's complex political hierarchy attacked the LEU deal as a sell-out -- in large part because he had undercut their efforts to reach a nuclear understanding with the United States in the past.

Poneman said Wednesday that the offer remained on the table. Beyond the U.S. examination of the reactor, Russia and France would further refine 1200 kilograms of Iran's low-enriched uranium and turn it into fuel rods for use in the research reactor, which produces medical isotopes for treatment of cancer and other ailments and is due to run out of fuel by the end of this year.

"It has not been formally withdrawn," Poneman said of the deal. However, he confided later that the U.S. is "not chasing Iran" and that the Iranians know who to call if they are interested in coming back to the table. Otherwise, the United States will keep moving down "the pressure track" to increase the cost to Iran of its nuclear defiance, he said.

-- Barbara Slavin

(photo credit: Kidd Madonny)

First of all, this is NOT a Rahm-related blog post.

This is a five foot long barracuda that I came within inches of swimming into with my hand a few days ago off of St. John's Island in the Caribbean.

I stopped just in time, but the toothy fish might have done a job on me had I not stopped before ramming him, or her.

Internationally popular DJ Kidd Madonny snapped this picture. I appreciate very much his allowing me to post it -- and look forward to eventually discussing barracudas with him in Amsterdam.

-- Steve Clemons

CSIS is about to hold a very valuable meeting on President Obama's foreign policy, which I am going to stream live here at The Washington Note.

The meeting is part of the "Schieffer Series at CSIS" sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and TCU's Schieffer School of Journalism.

The line up includes BOB SCHIEFFER, Chief Washington Correspondent, CBS News; Anchor, CBS News' "Face the Nation", who will moderate.

Panelists are my colleague and friend STEVE COLL, President, New America Foundation; Staff Writer, The New Yorker; THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Foreign Affairs Columnist, New York Times; and DAVID IGNATIUS, Columnist and Associate Editor, Washington Post.

The meeting will run from 5:30 pm til 6:30 pm (9 minutes from now as I write) eastern time.

-- Steve Clemons

What motivates suicide bombers to sacrifice their lives and kill innocents?

That is one of the most complex and difficult questions that counter-terrorism officials have had to grapple with since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) - headed by University of Chicago Professor of Political Science Robert A. Pape - has assembled a comprehensive database of global suicide attacks from 1981 - 2001.

You can access that database here. Steve Clemons, fearless leader at The Washington Note and a poobah at the New America Foundation really loves Pape's site and spent a lot of his vacation last week addicted to running variable mixes through Pape's data.

Pape is also the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.

To discuss the rise of suicide terrorism and its implications for our policy in Afghanistan, the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program will host a public forum featuring Robert Pape TODAY from 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm eastern time.

Steve Clemons will moderate the event, which will STREAM LIVE here at The Washington Note.

-- Ben Katcher

The New America Foundation/American Strategy Program is hosting an event today with former Bush administration Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy James K. Glassman.

Glassman is now Executive Director of the George W. Bush Institute and previously served as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He was resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for twelve years and also previously served as president of the Atlantic Monthly, publisher of the New Republic and as executive vice president of U.S.News & World Report.

Last year, Glassman explored the arena of social networking and public diplomacy at a New America Foundation forum with Glassman titled "Public Diplomacy 2.0".

He and TWN publisher and American Strategy Program director Steve Clemons will be discussing the role strategic communications can play in helping the United States in Iran.

The event will run from 12:15 pm - 1:45 pm eastern time and will live stream here at The Washington Note.

-- Andrew Lebovich

Late yesterday afternoon, I participated in an hour long Alhurra discussion program with three other Middle East specialists: Edmund Ghareeb of American University, Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now, and David Schenker who directs the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The topic was the state of play in US-Israel relations after Vice President Biden's visit and Israel's alleged "insult" during his trip with the announced approval of 1600 new settlements in East Jerusalem.

During one of my times at bat during the interesting show, I suggested that Israel's continued settlement expansion was directly helping Iran and enhancing its pretensions and goals in the region. The Washington Institute's David Schenker responded that he really didn't see a linkage between the settlements and Iran's position. He stated that Iran really wasn't all that welcome throughout the broader Middle East today and that its nuclear activities were making other Arab states nervous.

In part, he is correct about Sunni Arab antipathy towards Iran but neglected to note that officially, all of the other major Arab states are as furious about Israel's settlements creep as the Obama national security team. But that's not the issue that most caught my attention in this exchange.

Schenker, who offered some interesting insights on the show, went on to assert that while he saw no linkage between Israel's settlement expansion and a boost to Iran's regional posture, he suggested there was a linkage between US-Israel relations and getting Obama's health care reform passed.

What?? Play that again.

So, David Schenker sees no linkage between what a huge number of observers see as Israel wrecking chances for a credible two state track -- and the use of this grievance by Iran in its support of transnational Arab networks in the region, but nonetheless sees linkage between President Obama's fragile health care reform position and the state of US-Israel relations?! Schenker's view was that Obama couldn't afford to have a testy, strained relationship with Israel because it would cost him support in Congress for his health care legislation.

If he is right, then the relationship with Israel has gone too far indeed.

The truth is that I believe that Schenker is wrong on both counts.

There is a linkage between Iran's ability to compete for the position as true defender of the Islamic faith and the controversial settlements, and on the other front, there must not be a connection between the fragile coalition Obama is building to try and achieve health care reform and the state of the US-Israel relationship.

Any US Congressperson or Senator who actually explicitly withdrew or withheld support for health care reform because of loyalty first to Israel and its needs would invite serious questions about his or her patriotism and oath to the US Constitution and American people.

I support Israel's right to exist, see it as an important ally, and believe that we should support its security -- but not at the continued expense of Arab interests in the region and certainly not at the expense of core American interests at home. The interests of Arab states and Israel must be balanced and mutually pursued. Not to do so is a false choice for the U.S., but even worse would be the practice of punishing American taxpayers and their pursuit of key social reforms in favor of Israel's interests.

I enjoyed the exchange with David Schenker and others -- but whereas David has every right to assert that he does not see a linkage between settlements and Iran's interests (though I disagree), I think that his second assertion that Obama might lose the health care battle by not keeping the Israel-tilting Members of Congress was hopefully wrong-footed.

If he's accurate, then it's time for political change in Congress again -- but this time with a different filter.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: When I wrote this piece, I tried to confirm that what I heard was heard by others on the program and had general confirmation from one of the other guests on the show. However, to be fair and up front, I also wanted to run this post by David Schenker -- who was perfectly fair and civil on the program and from whom I learned some new things.

David remembers things a bit different -- and we have not yet come up with a video segment or transcript, and I think that his own views on this should also be aired here.

I appreciate his fairness and balance in how he approached my post.

Here are his comments to me today:

Dear Steve:

I was surprised that you implied that I said the crisis with Israel would cause Congressmen or Senators to explicitly withdraw support for health care reform.

I didn't say that. What I did was point out the obvious domestic political implications that Democrats could face-in addition to their current problems-in light of the very public row with Israel, especially one concerning the disposition of Jerusalem. Considerations like the mid-term elections and controversial health care legislation, I said, would likely lead the Administration to try and end the very public spat with Israel sooner rather than later.

The linkage between foreign and domestic policy considerations is well established. (Walt has written, for example, that the escalation in Afghanistan might cost Obama democratic seats in the midterms that would make it more difficult to pass domestic legislation).

Until I read your blog, I thought my comments were uncontroversial.

Best regards,

David Schenker

I appreciate David sending this correction and wanted it posted publicly. Onward and upward.

-- Steve Clemons

I have written the mock press release below partly as farce and partly as hope for the kind of statement that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) might eventually issue in response to the provocative and disconcerting posture of the Israeli government this past week.

-- Steve Clemons

The Netanyahu Government's recent statements and posture regarding major settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the calloused disregard for the impact of these actions on Israel's relationship with the United States are a matter of serious concern.

AIPAC calls on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the U.S. government.

The United States is Israel's closest ally in the Middle East. The foundation of the U.S-Israel relationship is rooted in Israel's fundamental strategic interest, shared democratic values, and a long-time commitment to peace in the region.

Those strategic interests, which most Israelis acknowledge and share with the U.S., extend to every facet of Israeli life and its relationship with the United States.

Unfortunately, a relationship that has generally enjoyed vast bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people is now eroding because of the Israeli government's tendency to allow short term concerns and the incrementalism of its expansion in Occupied Territories to undermine its own long term security interests, its core relations with the US, and the security and safety of American men and women deployed today in the Middle East.

The Netanyahu government should make a conscious effort to immediately move away from actions that would further undermine any prospects for Israel-Palestine peace and a two state solution. While Israel complains about unilateral deadlines directed at the Jewish State, it is time for Israel to ante up on the peace process and demonstrate that it has the maturity to demonstrate that it will cooperate with and not undermine US basic, fundamental, and strategic interests.

The escalated rhetoric of recent days reminds how much substantive work needs to be done -- and how absent the Israeli government has been -- with regard to the urgent issue of Iran's rapid pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors.

Israel's provocative decision and announcement that it will greatly expand East Jerusalem settlements -- followed by revelations of tens of thousands more in process but as yet unannounce -- undermine the chances of securing normalization with Arab neighbors and only add to Iran's growing strength and powers of persuasion in the region.

We strongly urge the Netanyahu government to work closely and privately with the Obama administration, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address these issues between the two governments.

The strategic patience of the United States is being irresponsibly tested by Israel today, and it is time for all well meaning supporters of this relationship and of global stability and peace to encourage significantly more responsible behavior from the Israeli government in reigning in issues like settlement expansion that make a once seemingly unconditional relationship necessarily "conditional."

As Vice President Biden said last week in Israel,

"The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel's security." But with this kind of commitment also come mutual responsibilities.

"Bibi, you heard me say before, progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel. There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security."

But Bibi, you need to fix the space that is growing -- and fix it now.

It is time for Israel to fill that gap and to join President Obama's efforts to generate a new equilibrium in the Middle East that assures Israel's interests and security and that finally provides for a viable, stable State of Palestine.

One of the most fascinating things to come out of the recent dust-up over the embarrassment of Vice President Biden in Israel is the reasoning offered by many Israelis and supporters of Israel for why Israel needs American support now more than ever: in effect, "don't anger the U.S., we need their help on Iran."

But how, as The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg put it, to "neutralize the Iranian threat"?

In light of what they termed Biden's "debacle" in Israel, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett once again forcefully advocated strategic realignment and engagement with Iran's leadership, in part to get Israel to act towards pursuing peace. In the meantime, the Obama administration has continued pushing what are likely to be ineffectual sanctions on Iran, in the hopes of containing the country and its burgeoning nuclear program.

Yet as debate on Iran continues to stagnate, there is still the ever-present fear that something will snap in the Middle East, and war could break out in the event that Israel decides to act on Iran, with or without American help. It is in this context that I took another look at former Bush Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy James K. Glassman and Michael Doran's Wall Street Journal op-ed from January, arguing for a "soft-power" solution on Iran, with a combination of sanctions, support for the Green Movement, and strategic communications helping create a situation in Iran that is more favorable to the U.S. and its allies.

While I hesitate to accept this view or advocate for regime change in Iran, whether through force or soft power, Glassman's idea that the U.S. should be using all of its tools on Iran is an important one that deserves more attention.

For those interested in this debate, Glassman will be speaking at the New America Foundation Tuesday, March 16, discussing how he feels strategic communications can help the U.S. in Iran. The event will be moderated by Steve Clemons, and will be from 12:15 pm to 1:45 pm, and will also be webcast live here at The Washington Note.

-- Andrew Lebovich

This post also appears at The Race for Iran.

One of the biggest challenges that those of us proposing strategic rapprochement as a solution to the United States' diplomatic standoff with Iran face is the fact that many Americans cannot imagine how such a rapprochement would actually play out.

Fortunately Georgetown University Professor and Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Charles Kupchan has recently published a new book, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, and an accompanying article in Foreign Affairs that addresses exactly this question: how do enemies become friends?

The Foreign Affairs article provides some useful evidence to support the notion that engagement with the Islamic Republic could work, as well as historical lessons for how best to go about it.

According to Kupchan, reconciliations are normally the product of accommodation, rather than confrontation, and "are usually the product of necessity rather than altruism: facing strategic overcommitment, a state seeks to reduce its burdens by befriending an adversary."

Strategic necessity was certainly the motivating factor for Nixon's opening to China, and Kupchan shows that it was also the case in rapprochements between Norway and Sweden at the turn of the 20th century; Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1960s; and Argentina and Brazil during the 1980s.

The term "strategic overcommitment" could certainly be used to describe the United States position vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic today given Iran's "spoiler" capability on a range of key issues for the United States in the Middle East including stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan and reaching an equilibrium on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Next, Kupchan argues that "Washington should be prepared to exchange concessions that are timely and bold enough to send signals of benign intent; otherwise, each party will be unconvinced that the other is sincere in its quest for reconciliation."

The sincerity problem is clearly a key impediment to the Obama administration's engagement to date, and for good reason. President Obama's promises of engagement have been more rhetorical than substantive.

As Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett have pointed out, formally announcing an end to support for opposition groups within Iran, as Nixon told the CIA to stand down in Tibet in the 1970s, would be a good place to start.

One key finding that I found somewhat surprising is that rapprochement is primarily about diplomacy, not economic interdependence. In most cases, it is the former that leads to the latter.

Kupchan includes much more in his article about how the Obama administration should sequence an opening and how to manage the domestic political backlash at home.

You can find Kupchan's article here and the book here.

-- Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: Jan Paul Yap's Photostream)

This is a guest note by Anya Landau French. French directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

Two days before the House Agriculture Committee holds a hearing on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba (you can follow the hearing live today at 1pm), the U.S. Treasury Department has (coincidentally?) issued a rule that some observers have greeted with enthusiasm:

Today OFAC released a reinterpretation that is very favorable for US Cuba trade, specifically US agricultural companies and farmers. In simple terms, OFAC has amended the Cuban Assets Control Regulations that contains a rewording of the term "payment of cash in advance" for US agricultural sales to Cuba.

The new rule, issued by the Treasury Department office responsible for enforcing sanctions (oh, and tracking terrorist funding networks), seemingly gives Congress and the agriculture community a victory over a 2005 Bush Administration rule which dampened U.S. agriculture exports to the island.

And yet - it does no such thing. Why? Because the rule is limited to contracts entered into during fiscal year 2010, after which, the rule snaps back to where it was. And that makes this new rule virtually meaningless.

Since I've lost most readers already at this point in the post, I might as well feel free to "geek out" and explain exactly what this is all about. (If you bore easily, feel free to skip the next couple paragraphs and tune back in to why this all could lead to you booking a ticket to Havana before the year is out.)

Food sales up, food sales down

Back in 2000, Congress passed legislation to limit food export restrictions against any country, including Cuba. Proponents reasoned both that food should never be used as a weapon against a defenseless people, and that the U.S. government should facilitate, not obstruct, U.S. export growth around the world.

For several years, U.S. food sales grew to an average of $300 million per year - until in 2005 the Bush Administration issued a reinterpretation of the law guiding the sales. Congress had mandated that sales to Cuba could either be transacted by cash paid in advance or by foreign letter of credit (U.S. credits - government or private - were expressly prohibited for Cuba sales alone). U.S. exports prospered, many of them sold for cash in advance - of delivery. That is, the goods would be en route to Cuba, or even have arrived in Cuba, but the Cuban buyer could not take possession of the goods until payment had cleared in the U.S.

But the new Bush Administration rule required cash payment in advance of shipment, which Congress and the export community vehemently opposed. If Cuba pays for a cargo hold full of rice while the vessel is still docked in United States jurisdiction, the goods could be considered "Cuban assets" subject to seizure by U.S. courts to satisfy unrelated claims against the Cuban government (I recently wrote about a Florida woman who has twice seized stolen or hijacked Cuban planes landed in the U.S.). Cuban buyers refused to take the risk, and the Bush Administration refused to change the rule, resulting in less market share for American exporters and greater market share for U.S. competitors.

Congress has repeatedly tried to reverse the rule - which many reasoned was designed to halt a warming between the American farm belt and Cuba. Most recently, it passed a provision in the 2010 Omnibus Appropriations Act that would require Treasury to revise the rule at least for the current fiscal year. (So, Treasury complied this week, and nothing more.)

Further dampening U.S. food sales to the island is that in the wake of the global downturn, Cuba has less cash on hand to buy U.S. goods, and has increasingly been buying from Brazil, Vietnam, China and elsewhere on revolving credit - something the United States exporters can't do.

Bipartisan group pushing Cuba ag, travel reforms in Congress

Five years later, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, along with his colleagues, Jerry Moran of Kansas and JoAnn Emerson of Missouri, both Republicans, and Rosa DeLauro, a member of the House Democratic Leadership, has introduced a bill to change not only the cash in advance rule but two other policies that dampen U.S. food exports to Cuba. Peterson, whose committee is holding a Cuba hearing today, aims to let U.S. exporters collect their payments directly from the Cuban buyer, rather than routing payments through a third country financial institution (adding time and cost to the transaction). They also aim to end U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba.

Whereas some in Congress want to end U.S. travel restrictions because they imagine doing so will help open Cuban society for the better, and others simply chafe at U.S. government controlling its citizens movements abroad, Peterson and his colleagues see more direct benefits to their own constituents - namely more exports, and more jobs. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimated last year that U.S. food sales to Cuba could grow to more than $1.2 billion annually if we lift restrictions on the transactions and if we lift the travel ban.

Yet U.S. exports to Cuba have dropped - by fully one quarter - since 2008. Cuba is buying slightly less food, yes. But of greater concern to American exporters, it's turning to allied suppliers who offer credit (which Peterson does not propose for American exports to Cuba). Mr. Peterson hopes that American exporters can still win back the advantage if his bill is passed.

-- Anya Landau French

(Photo Credit: International Monetary Fund Photograph/Stephen Jaffe)

This post is cross-posted at The Race for Iran.

Over at the National Interest, Nikolas K. Gvosdev has a piece on the "BRIC Wall" that is developing in opposition to many U.S. policies, particularly the U.S. drive for further sanctions on Iran.

As Secretary Clinton's unsuccessful visit to Brasilia last week along with recent statements by Turkish officials indicate, the world's rising powers - even those that are democracies - are lining up to oppose U.S. policies that they view as overly confrontational, destabilizing, and threatening to their economic interests.

According to Gvosdev's analysis, the proper analytic distinction is not between democracies and non-democracies, but between established status-quo powers supportive of (American) intervention and emerging nations more keen to support a stricter definition of state sovereignty.

From Gvosdev's piece:

Two years ago, Washington was abuzz once again with the prospects for a "League of Democracies" that would support U.S. global leadership. But in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Burma/Myanmar, a very clear rift opened up between the democracies of the advanced north and west, which advocated an intervention on humanitarian grounds, and the democracies of the south and east, which proved to be far more receptive to China's call for defending state sovereignty. In the Doha round of trade talks and in the ongoing climate change negotiations, the leading democracies of the south and east--Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India and Indonesia among them--have tended to line up with Beijing instead of joining Washington's banner.

The lonely U.S. drive for sanctions on Iran is highlighting these divisions, starkly delineating the limits of American power and laying bare the inefficacy of Washington's anachronistic approach to foreign policy.

-- Ben Katcher

This is a guest note by Kalie Pierce, a research intern at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

The parliamentary elections in Iraq began tragically last Thursday with a series of attacks in Baghdad on security officers. Two suicide bombers and a hidden bomb killed 12 people, including 7 soldiers, and wounded at least 55 other people. The violence continued over the weekend and into Sunday, the day of the vote; the New York Times reported that as many as 100 explosions rocked Baghdad during the early days of the election. The Washington Post reported that at least 38 people were killed and 89 wounded Sunday morning alone.

This rocky affair can be compared with Ukraine's most recent presidential election which took place only a few weeks ago. Like the Iraqi vote, the Ukrainian one was closely watched by international observers and domestic officers. For Ukraine, the elections were peaceful and smooth. International monitors declared the poll clean and observers around the world applauded Viktor Yanukovich's peaceful transition to power, hailing his inauguration on February 25, 2010, as a symbol of Ukraine's strengthening democracy.

However, just as with Iraq, it is difficult to wholeheartedly embrace Ukraine's election. After all, it was Viktor Yanukovich's campaign team, back in 2004, which committed mass electoral fraud in a bid to make him president. Although the 2010 democratic election process itself can be considered a success, it is hard to celebrate democracy, as an institution, when it brings back the man who tried to cheat Ukrainian citizens of their vote only six years ago.

These struggles with democracy remind me of a Freedom House article which summarized the findings of Freedom House's 2009 "Freedom in the World" survey, an annual assessment of human rights and liberty existing in the world. Freedom House's 2009 survey reported that democratic states are decreasing in number while authoritarian states have become not only more numerous, but also more self-aware and more influential. This is hardly surprising, considering the attention authoritarian states have been receiving in the last decade. More and more, countries around the world are taking note that states such as China and Iran have managed to grow economically and exert their power abroad without becoming democracies.

In 2009, even states not typically dubbed authoritarian reduced freedoms. Italians saw increased media concentration under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Macedonians experienced parliamentary elections distorted by violent harassment of party members. The government of Singapore meddled in the judicial handling of defamation cases. The Vietnamese government repressed political opposition, persecuted human rights advocates, and refused to create an independent judiciary. Although citizens typically value democracy for its principles, governments have long viewed democracy as a means to gaining economic aid and trading partners. In the face of alternative routes to prosperity, countries may now be discarding the democratic model for other systems.

The elections in Ukraine and Iraq are two examples of democracy's struggle to remain dominant in today's world. In Ukraine, the government's inability to produce the needed changes caused a tired Ukrainian public to discard the leaders of the Orange Revolution and return to the politician who provoked the revolution in the first place. This rejection is discouraging because experts and organizations like Freedom House consider the Orange Revolution to be the most enduring of the so-called "color revolutions" that peacefully overturned fraudulent elections in the 2000s. Iraq's election, jolted by bombs, demonstrates the dangers of introducing democracy to a country with still-developing institutions. It could well be that democracy's allure is weakening.

But in a world increasingly darkened by authoritarian regimes, Ukraine's presidential election offers some hope. The run-off demonstrated one of the greatest goods of democracy, an institutionalized, peaceful transition of power. During a time when other countries experience regime crackdowns, sudden disruptions of human rights, and violence in the streets whenever power changes hands, Ukraine's fraud- and violence-free election is, in itself, a strong case for democracy everywhere. Indeed, occurring so soon after a deeply fraudulent and turbulent 2004 election, Ukraine's recent one may give hope to nations such as Iraq still struggling to exercise a peaceful vote.

-- Kalie Pierce

(Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Last week, I referred to the remarkably high level of anti-Americanism in Turkey in the context of H.R. 252 - the House Resolution accusing Turkey of committing genocide against Armenians in 1915 that passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee last Thursday.

The widespread distrust of the United States (14% of Turks view the U.S. favorably according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey) in Turkey is somewhat surprising given the strategic alliance that has bound the two states together since President Truman's pledge in 1947 to protect Greece and Turkey from communist subversion.

The roots of this phenomenon are multifarious, but a new paper by Ioannis Grigoriadis in The Middle East Journal offers some insight into why Turks view the United States so negatively.

Grigoriadas distinguishes among several types of anti-Americanism and concludes that anti-Americanism in Turkey is best understood as the "sovereign-nationalist" variety. This means essentially that Turks disapprove of the United States because of "what we do" in the region rather than the values that make us "who we are."

In other words, Turks object to our foreign policy in the Middle East. More specifically, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was immensely unpopular in Turkey because of its destabilizing impact on the Turkish-Iraqi border and the perception that the invasion exacerbated Turkey's "Kurdish problem." The importance of the Iraq war is underscored by this graph, which shows that the United States' unfavorable numbers rose dramatically from 54% to 83% from 2002-2003 and remain at 69% as of the 2009 survey.

In addition to the unpopularity of American foreign policy, there is a more nuanced but no less important aspect of this phenomenon.

The division in Turkish politics and society between the secular elite composed of the military, judiciary, and bureaucracy and the more religiously-inclined, conservative majority personified by the ruling, "moderately Islamist" Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the defining feature of Turkish politics.

Unfortunately, many Turks on both sides of this divide seem to believe that we are supporting their political rivals. While these claims are exaggerated, the perceptions have real consequences.

On the one hand, the United States' support for Turkey's European Union membership is perceived by many secular Turks as support for political Islam in Turkey and as legitimizing the AKP government. More importantly, circumscribing the military's role in politics is a key element of the European Union accession criteria. Therefore, many secular Turks blame Washington and Brussels for providing political cover for the arrests of scores of high-level military officials over the last several years.

At the same time, many supporters of the ruling AKP government are suspicious of the United States' long-standing ties to the Turkish military. As Grigoriadis points out in his paper, these suspicious were underscored - after the Turkish Parliament voted on March 1, 2003 not to allow the United States to open a northern front along the Turkish-Iraqi border - by this ironic statement from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who ostensibly supported the invasion of Iraq in order to bring democracy to that country:

Many of the institutions in Turkey that we think of as the traditional strong support...were not as forceful in leading in that direction...particularly the military. I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected.

This not-at-all-subtle call for the military to meddle in Turkey's politics was widely perceived as hypocritical and was resented by the government and many of its supporters.

To be fair, managing the internal conflict within the Turkish political system is a supremely difficult task and a dilemma for which there is no quick and easy solution.

However, what Washington can do is refrain from taking steps that will exacerbate the problem. Last week's Foreign Affairs Committee vote on H.R. 252 will likely strengthen anti-American sentiment across the Turkish political spectrum.

-- Ben Katcher

This is a guest post by Lawrence B. Wilkerson exclusive to The Washington Note. Wilkerson is the former Chief of Staff at the Department of State during the tenure of Secretary of State Colin Powell, for whom Wilkerson was a 16 year aide. Wilkerson is a member of the Director's Council of the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

David Corn (in Mother Jones, "Rove Protects the Rear") has already responded to Karl Rove's comments reported this week in several places and coming from his new book, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Corn takes Rove to task, as well he should.

The taking-to-task is over Rove's cavalier contention that President Bush likely would not have gone to war in Iraq if he had known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it", Rove writes. Rove then goes on to say that "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat."

According to Karl Rove, then, the intelligence about Iraq's WMD that was cherry-picked, manipulated -"fixed around the policy", as the Downing Street Memo recorded - and otherwise tampered with was thus treated so that Congress would support the war.

Yet I agree with Rove that the President did not lie outright. He, like the vast majority of the members of the U.S. intelligence community led by the cock-sure Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, actually believed Iraq had WMD. As a result, any cherry-picking of, manipulation of, or tampering with the evidence (as Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office did daily), was acceptable because once the invasion occurred, WMD would be found. There was simply no doubt about that among this majority or among the President's team.

In fact, there was no doubt about it among the several intelligence communities around the world with whom the U.S. regularly did business, including those of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, and Britain. This, as in the case with France, despite the contrarian rumblings of certain of their political authorities.

I was at the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia, for five days and nights sequestered with Mr. Tenet and his gang of analysts and had an earful of these different but unanimous intelligence entities around the globe, as well as Mr. Tenet himself and his "WMD experts". After these deliberations, I too believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD.

So the administration - led by Cheney and Rumsfeld - had worldwide support in twisting the truth, exaggerating the findings, and pushing bits and pieces of them without any context.

Today I am even quite certain that, under Vice President Cheney's expert guidance, certain members of agencies of the US Government, or contractors working therefor, tortured people at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere in an attempt to reinforce the already twisted intelligence message with the smoking gun of high-level al-Qai'da testimony that connected Baghdad and the tragedy of 9/11.

And the torture worked - in the only way torture ever works. They got confessions. They got their smoking gun. Of course, like the confessions that torture produces for draconian regimes all over the world, it was all false information.

But it didn't matter then because everyone knew that Saddam Hussein had WMD - Rumsfeld told us that several times and Cheney was utterly dogmatic about it - so what did it matter if the intelligence were manipulated a bit because, in the end, we would invade and find the WMD and all would be right with the world.

It was the same with al-Qa'ida: there just had to be a connection with Baghdad. The expert Cheney knew it. The fact that for the moment the administration had, through torture and otherwise, largely invented such a connection was thus irrelevant; the real connection would be discovered after the invasion.

There are, of course, several problems with this sort of leadership from Washington.

First, as a soldier, I have to object to the cavalier manner in which Mr. Rove dismisses the fact that we went to war for a purpose that was false, whether his boss intentionally made it so or not.

How do we relay this message to the families of the 4,380 dead Americans and the more than 31,000 wounded Americans, some of them horribly scarred for life? How do we convey this message to the families of the allied soldiers who have met similar fates? How do we square this with the deaths of a quarter million Iraqis who have perished and the millions of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, and elsewhere?

How to couch that message? "You would not have lost your son, daughter, brother, sister, wife, husband - if the intelligence had been right." How terribly comforting!

"You would not be in Jordan now, having expended your life's savings and with no place to go - and be destabilizing Jordan by your presence - if the intelligence had been right."

Mr. Tenet, wherever he is hiding, must feel the burden of nearly all the evil done in the world in the last decade resting upon his shoulders. Mr. Rove has indirectly characterized it so.

This is what happens when the President, and the men and women who advise him, are utterly disconnected from the realities accompanying their fateful decisions to send young men and young women into harm's way for state purposes.

And Mr. Rove wants to burnish his former boss's legacy on such a note?

Second, how do we reconcile Mr. Rove's message with the certain knowledge that the critical national security decisions in the first Bush administration were not being made by the President but by the Vice President?

Cheney's reason for invading Iraq was oil, plain and simple. Yes, he believed there were WMD. Yes, he believed it was time for Saddam to go. But he had believed that for years without advocating an invasion of Iraq by US armed forces.

Cheney changed his mind because of his work with the President's Energy Task Force early-on in the administration. Cheney knew where the price of oil was headed; he knew the growing doubts about Saudi Arabia's ability to continue to do America's work with regard to these oil prices; and Cheney knew how much oil was in Iraq - in proven reserves and in potential. It was oil, and all its many manifestations - to include the many political and financial supporters of Bush and Cheney in the oil community - that drove Cheney to reverse himself and push for Baghdad.

It is clear from just the excerpts of Rove's book that have been revealed that Mr. Rove believes he put Bush in the Oval Office in the election of 2000. And indeed he did - for superficial purposes.

Because the man who was really making the decisions that counted was Cheney.

And it is quite clear that Cheney lied. Not about WMD. Not about connections with al-Qa'ida. These things he only cherry-picked, twisted and manipulated, fully expecting to be vindicated after the invasion, not in the particulars but in the overall picture. Cheney actually believed these things to be true.

What Cheney did lie about was the real reason he decided to invade: oil.

To this day no national security decision document that records President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq has been found.

That's because there isn't one. He did not make the decision.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

This article originally appeared at Al Jazeera English.

Joseph Biden, the US vice president, left on Sunday for a head-scratching trip to the Middle East and many are wondering what he is up to.

After all, the vice president has a lot on his plate already.

Biden has been the person behind the White House scenes who has helped nudge forward the tenuous deals between Shia, Sunnis and Kurds which secured Sunday's historic elections in Iraq.

Almost as hard for Biden was brokering a truce between Ray Odierno, the commanding general of US forces in Iraq, and Christopher Hill, the US ambassador to Iraq, who had more than a few turf scuff-ups.

He has also been working hard on the less sexy parts of President Obama's national security vision - tying together key international stakeholder agreements to help contain the spread and actually reduce nuclear weapons materials and other WMD relevant assets globally. Obama will host a summit in April built on work that Biden has done.

Biden and his team have also done a great deal of prep work on the Obama economic plan's jobs and infrastructure components - topics that for the first year were largely ignored by key economic policy architects Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, the national economic advisor.

Biden and his chief economist, Jared Bernstein, have struggled hard on the employment challenge and offered suggestions on small business financing, a variety of hiring incentives for firms, smart grid infrastructure development, high speed rail investments, and have done some very good work advocating a new 21st century, jobs and infrastructure-focused "industrial policy" (two words which seem to be taboo in government now).

Showing face?

Of all Obama's senior level cabinet members and advisers, Biden has exceeded expectations and performed better than virtually any other member of the team in generating ideas and pushing the policy needle.

And now he is off to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan.

Why is he adding this issue to his plate when there is a specific presidential envoy, George Mitchell, tasked with working to get the Palestinians and Israelis back on a credible negotiating track towards a two state solution?

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and Obama tried hard to kick-start an arrangement that would get some sizzle by forcing the Israelis to stop all new settlement construction in the Occupied Territories. That did not work out so well.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, General Jim Jones, the national security adviser, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, and others have been giving the Israel-Palestine portfolio a lot of time and have made many a trip to the region.

Nothing much has happened as of yet - so it makes one wonder whether dispatching Biden to the region is just doubling down and throwing more of America's diminishing credibility at a failed approach.

Is Biden just a big personality to "show face" in the region and to try to assure regional leaders that the US still cares?

Alternatively, Biden may be there to really do something, or at least try.

Biden is emerging as the Obama administration's fixer - the person who can quietly walk into a situation and survey it in a dispassionate, smart way in order to think about a new approach.

As James Traub wrote in a recent New York Times Magazine profile about Biden, quoting this writer in part, Biden straddles two worlds of foreign policy - that of the values-driven idealists, on one hand, who want to do good in the world and who tend to ignore realistic assessments of interests and the costs and benefits in securing those interests; and on the other, the pragmatic, do what it takes approach to foreign policy that focuses on the prioritisation of hard policy choices.

Global fault line

The Israel-Palestine process has broken down. And George Mitchell does not understand that the time he keeps asking for is time the region does not have.

Behind closed doors, Mitchell tells foreign leaders and ministers about his experiences negotiating with the parties in Northern Ireland. What he does not realise is that that terrible conflict could have lasted through a couple more centuries of his patient deal-making and the world would still be getting on.

The Israel-Palestine standoff is a globally consequential fault line that will blow sooner rather than later if the problems and pressures there are not seriously addressed.

Biden gets this. But I have no idea which direction he will go in his discussions during the trip.

Ultimately he knows that resolving the Israel/Palestine situation is a necessary requirement to confronting Iran and robbing Iran of room to run and meddle in the Middle East.

A deal on an Israel/Palestine two track reality is also a vital part of demonstrating to a doubting world that the US can achieve the objectives it sets for itself and is able again to be a sculptor of global affairs.

Obama did not mention much about foreign policy in his State of the Union address this year and did not mention Israel-Palestine at all. We hope that "Biden as fixer" is the mission - rather than using Biden to just put in face time with a region that doubts Obama's commitment as of late.

Hopefully, Biden can help create opportunities and momentum in a region that poses a defining challenge for the US - even though most of his Obama administration colleagues seem for all of their efforts to be out of ideas and out of steam.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm traveling this week, but still paying close attention to Iraq's parliamentary elections, where it seems things are holding fairly steady despite the fears of instability before the election and heinous terrorism up to and on election day itself.

Iraq has a long way to go, and the outcome of the elections for Iraqi and American policy are far from clear. But it is heartening not only to see the determination of the Iraqi people to resist violence in order to make their voices heard, but also the steadfastness of President Obama in refusing outside pressure to change our timeline for withdrawal.

In the coming days, I will be getting much of my news on Iraq from The Middle East Channel, a fantastic and brand new joint venture of the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine.

Managed by my colleagues Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah in cooperation with scholar, blogger and Middle East expert Marc Lynch, this new venture will provide an important forum for informed, needed comment on Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine, and many other issues of vital importance in today's policy debates.

Here's part of Lynch's election analysis from today:

The other main headline of the Iraqi election campaign has to be the overwhelmingly nationalist tone of all major politicians and the marginal American role in the process. The election campaign (as opposed to the results, which we still don't know) showed clearly that Iraqis are determined to seize control of their own future and make their own decisions. The U.S. ability to intervene productively has dramatically receded, as the Obama administration wisely recognizes. The election produced nothing to change the U.S. drawdown schedule, and offered little sign that Iraqis are eager to revise the SOFA or ask the U.S. to keep troops longer. Iraq is in Iraqi hands, and the Obama administration is right both to pay close attention and to resist the incessant calls to "do more." This doesn't mean ignoring Iraq -- the truth is, the Obama administration has been paying a lot more attention to Iraq than the media has over the last year. It means moving to develop a normal, constructive strategic relationship with the new Iraqi government, with the main point of contact the Embassy and the private sector rather than the military, and adhering in every way possible to the SOFA and to the drawdown timeline.

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons

Politico's Laura Rozen paints a disturbing picture of the chain of events that ultimately led the House Foreign Affairs Committee to pass the Armenian "genocide" resolution last Thursday.

Until last week, it appeared that the White House had made a calculated decision not to ask House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman to refrain from bringing the resolution to a vote. Previous administrations have often made such requests in order to prevent damage to the U.S.-Turkey alliance.

The decision to acquiesce to the vote appeared to be motivated by politics and the administration's desire to keep Obama's campaign promise that he would recognize the Armenian genocide.

But, as Rozen details in her piece, the story is more complicated. Secretary of State Clinton called Berman last Wednesday night - the evening before a vote that had been on the legislative calendar for a month - to indicate that the vote could jeopardize U.S-Turkey relations. But it was too late. Berman called the vote and it passed by a single vote.

Rozen's sources suggest that the White House simply dropped the ball. The only other plausible explanation I can conceive is that Clinton's last-minute phone call was a purposefully ineffective ploy designed to persuade the Turks that the administration tried to prevent the vote. If that is the case, it is not working.

It is worth nothing that State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley indicated Saturday that the White House opposes bringing the resolution to a full House vote.

Another aspect of this story that is important to emphasize - and that Center for Strategic and International Studies Turkey Project Director Bulent Aliriza makes toward the end of the clip above - is that the impact of last weeks' vote cannot be found on any one specific issue such as the United States' use of Turkey's Incirlik airbase or Ankara's diplomatic cooperation on Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.

Rather, the effect will be broader and more difficult to measure. Votes of this kind will likely strengthen anti-American elements within the Turkish political system and make it more difficult for the Turkish government to undertake unpopular decisions in support of American objectives.

-- Ben Katcher

Jonathan Guyer, who blogs at Mideast by Midwest, is the official toonist for The Washington Note.

The Obama administration's flirtation and probable decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal -- which even the military thinks is a bad idea -- has been one of the many issues that has Guyer on the edge of wanting to break up with Obama.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest note by Parag Khanna, a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global Competition in the 21st Century (Random House, 2009).

Fly American - Unless You Know Better: Geopolitical Humor for the Oscar's

In "Up in the Air," George Clooney portrays uber-frequent flier Ryan Bingham, who reaches ten million American Airlines miles--without ever leaving the United States. American Airlines is portrayed as the grand old silver lady of flying, and that's precisely the problem. It's certainly old, but far from grand. What does Clooney's Oscar hit have to do with U.S. foreign policy?

Most Americans simply don't realize just how "brand America" no longer carries much weight in the world unless you are looking for an iPhone or a Hollywood blockbuster.

Our cars, political system, and economic practices have become a joke, and the Obama glow wore off before his administration's one-year mark. Our ignorance is best captured by the same American Airlines linked Mastercard's apparent policy to block usage of the card as soon as you commit the crime of trying to use it in a foreign country. Yet we still think we're the best because we don't know much about the rest.

American Airlines is a great metaphor for America itself.

A recognizable brand that provides plenty of connections, but whose value and quality of service is greatly diminished. Its 757 planes rattle like roller-coasters, the in-flight entertainment system constantly conks out, and it's so loud in the cabin that Bose noise-cancelling headsets are no match. And try making a booking over the phone or online without the agent's keyboard freezing or system crashing.

Meanwhile, emerging market airlines from the UAE's Emirates and Etihad to India's Jet Airways are providing better services at lower prices. Their flight attendants dress in style, their food is hot, and they arrive on time.

In Europe - yes, the same socialist sclerotic Europe conservatives love to bash - there are twice as many airlines as there are EU member countries. Following on the success of Ireland's Ryan Air, imitators galore have sprung up, driving more connections at lower costs. Most of the price of any flight within Europe is taxes that maintain first-rate infrastructure, not airfare. And you don't have to pay for peanuts.

One year into the Obama administration the very necessary debate about our national competitiveness is taking shape. We are falling behind in educating future innovators, meaning our economic edge is fading fast. In web-tech, we have Google, Amazon, and Twitter, but local preferences are gaining ground in Asia (a fact which lies at the heart of the Google vs. China face-off), where 4G speeds make American mobile operators look like the equivalent of a rotary dial.

In bio-tech, we've ended Bush-era bans on stem-cell research, but new patents are pouring in from India and Korea where researchers are going after mainstream health problems and not just specialty drugs. And in clean-tech, save for some promising pockets of experimentation with electric cars and smart grids, we are the world's dirtiest per capita.

Globalization means that the gap between "Invented in America" and "Made in China" is shrinking rapidly. Technological know-how is spreading faster than ever--multinational corporations have to transfer the latest techniques and skills to foreign managers a condition of setting up shop overseas. It's no surprise that China just debuted the fastest inter-city bullet-train in the world just a few years after German industrial giant Siemens build China its first one.

Feel-good rhetoric can't reverse this greatest shift in geopolitical and geo-economic conditions: Globalization once extended America's edge, now globalization accelerates its undoing. America's share of the global economy is shrinking from close to an unnatural fifty percent at the end of World War II past the steady 25 percent mark held for about a decade towards a far more modest 20 percent.

We are not a big enough market to set global standards--instead we're somewhere between Europe, which raises environmental and industrial quality control regulations, and China which undermines them.

If we want to re-capture global leadership for the sake of our economic competitiveness and national self-esteem, it starts by flying overseas and learning how the world's new markets live: what they drive (smaller and cleaner), what they eat (organic and with trans-fat optional), and what their values are (not church vs. state but rather a community-based politico-economic-spiritual synthesis).

Today there are probably several thousand young and unemployed American MBAs making that trip to the booming Persian Gulf emirates, India, China, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and other emerging markets.

Maintaining America's vaunted capacity for self-renewal hinges on them coming back with fresh ideas on how to make in America and sell in the rest of the world. Any American who can afford to should follow their lead.

But start the trip right: don't fly American Airlines -- unless perhaps you are trying to get from Tulsa to Texas.

-- Parag Khanna