FOREIGN PRESS REVIEW (FPR)

U.S.

... a dry, one-page internal memo quietly issued by the White House is being viewed as a kind of eulogy for the once mighty Central Intelligence Agency. After nearly 60 years at the pinnacle of American intelligence—and at the elbow of Presidents—the CIA director is no longer automatically welcome at the President's NSC meetings. John Negroponte, the new director of National Intelligence, has taken his chair.

... CIA Director Porter Goss "will attend NSC and HSC meetings at the direction of the President."

That's the polite Beltway equivalent of saying, "Don't call us. We'll call you."

... (David Rothkopf): "If you're not in the room, you're not playing an influential role."

... Though he is no longer in charge of the President's daily intelligence briefing... (Goss) is spending more time focusing on needed reforms at the agency, visiting far-flung CIA spooks in the field and looking for ways to fill in gaps in the CIA's human intelligence and analysis. '

... Bush's ambitious vision of global democratic reform has begun to dominate the administration's foreign affairs agenda, in some cases pushing aside urgent international issues.

... So far, the president's plan has been driven mainly by high-level rhetoric, symbolic gestures and a handful of modestly funded development programs. But collectively, this mix has started to shift the focus in relations with key nations.

... nearly every meeting with foreign officials and many of the changes taking place within the Bush administration, ... key appointments, has reflected the priority of expanding the boundaries of democracy.

... buzz phrase: "practical idealism" ... (that) America's national security is tied directly to the spread of free and open societies

... some dismissed his plan as little more than fantasy. ... doubt that the U.S. had the credibility to advance such ambitious reforms — especially in the Islamic world.

"People in the Middle East already see it as a very powerful initiative," said Walter Russell Mead ...

... formidable hurdles ...

... In the Middle East, America's poor image and more urgent strategic concerns, such as assuring the welfare of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, diminish the administration's leverage to induce reform. Closer to home, bureaucratic resistance within parts of the U.S. government that are skeptical of the agenda threaten to blunt the effect of existing pro-democracy initiatives.

... a journey with no clear path to their goal.

"What we want is a world of democratic, market-oriented countries," said Stephen Krasner, head of policy planning at the State Department is to direct the search for future external challenges ... "The big challenge is how to get there."

"The simplistic notion that you talk a great deal about democracy and twist a few arms and it will somehow come magically on its own is absurd," said Zbigniew Brzezinski ...

..."transformational diplomacy."

... Krasner estimates he devotes about 75% of his time on how to extend the boundaries of democracy around the globe. "We're working actively to find the most effective ways to accomplish this goal," he said.

... jobs central to the push for democracy have been filled by people who have greater access to the upper levels of power. U.S. Embassy political officers ... question the wisdom of U.S. initiatives that aim to weaken an existing government's grip on power. ... reshape the bureaucratic machinery for its new top priority ...

"Rhetoric is very important when you're trying to push political reform," said Kenneth Wollack, head of the National Democratic Institute, a nongovernmental group with ties to the Democratic Party that promotes the expansion of democracy overseas. "It influences the debate in these countries."

But with growing frequency, America's nudges are more than verbal.

... the administration is merely "picking the low-hanging fruit." ... that the real test of Bush's commitment to change will come in strategically important nations, such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia ...

... (In Egypt) restrictions placed on potential candidates outside Mubarak's ruling party were so draconian that the law was in effect meaningless.

... that "prudence" is necessary in pushing nations to become more open politically, but they insist that the political will to move ahead is there because there is no other choice.

... politically stable allies who stifle basic freedoms may provide short-term security but pose serious dangers in the long term. '

... that multilateral cooperation will strengthen rather than weaken the United States. But there the similarities end. Haass expresses ambivalence about the United Nations and about championing human rights. Instead, his ideal is a kind of Kissingerian order and stability that supposedly prevailed after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when the high and mighty carved up the map of Europe. According to Haass, history ''is largely determined by the degree to which the major powers of the era can agree on rules of the road -- and impose them on those who reject them.'' This imposition can take place, Haass suggests, if the United States works harder to bring China and Russia into an international community, and sheds the delusive notion that it can, or should, remain the dominant world power.

The question, of course, is whether foreign affairs can really be arranged as neatly as all that. Henry Kissinger ... drew a rather misleading portrait of European stability in the 19th century. Germany alone, for example, launched three successive wars of unification. Present-day relations are just as complicated, given the profoundly conflicting interests of Western Europe, Russia, China and the United States on issues like human rights, the future of Taiwan and North Korea's and Iran's possession of nuclear weapons. It's hard to believe that matters could be arranged as tidily as Haass appears to hope. The trouble with the quest for order is that it tends to result in big countries running roughshod over little ones. It would mean, for instance, that the United States should accept a Chinese or Russian sphere of influence. Consistent with his embrace of realpolitik, Haass pours cold water on the notion that Washington should promote democratic reform. The issue should, he writes, ''be handled with sensitivity and perspective'' (by which he means America should butt out of other countries' affairs). Indeed, he continues, ''neither the United States nor anyone else should insist on any single or particular model of democracy or market.'' Well, why not? Nonetheless, Haass may be laying the groundwork for a counterrevolution. ... the realists have now become the embattled minority of the Republican Party....' '

... As Wolfowitz saw it, when faced with burgeoning threats, American policymakers have habitually tended to prevaricate. Yet putting off problems merely permits them to fester. Delay serves only to exacerbate danger. In the game of international security, the governing rule was a simple one: pay me now or pay me later. Wolfowitz believed that paying up front could markedly reduce the final tab. Well-conceived, adroitly executed action—with action necessarily implying the actual or threatened use of force—could nip threats in the bud. Although conceding that no action was without risk, he felt certain that “the risks of inaction ultimately are greater.”

...the project consuming Wolfowitz also possessed a teleological dimension. In the bold and skillful use of military power, he believed, lay the prospect of resolving the contradictions that had long made statecraft the realm of moral ambiguity and compromise.

... a series of influential thinkers—Hans Morgenthau, Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, and above all Reinhold Niebuhr —had each in different ways made the point that if the United States intended to play the part of a responsible great power then it had no alternative but to deal with the devil: the preservation of American freedom demanded that the United States tolerate, accommodate, and in some instances even collaborate with evil.

... Niebuhr “power cannot be wielded without guilt.” ... two implications: first, it rendered obsolete claims of innocence dating back to the founding of Anglo-America; second, it imposed sharp limits on the uses of power. According to Niebuhr, there was no escaping this vise. Any attempt to do so would produce dire consequences, practical but above all moral.

... McGeorge Bundy “Gray is the color of truth.”

... Wolfowitz ... refused to concede the impossibility of reconciling power and interests with moral purpose.

... Wolfowitz ... appreciate the military potential of advanced information technology. Computers could change the very nature of modern warfare—not by creating an impenetrable defensive shield as Reagan had hoped but by opening up new possibilities for offensive action.

... the concept of precision. ... accuracy promised to restore war’s political utility. ... accuracy would also ease moral inhibitions against choosing to employ force. ... In an information age, military supremacy was America’s for the taking.

... The intellectual godfather of precision warfare was Albert Wohlstetter

... If the New Rome, the United States also remained the New Jerusalem.

... America’s interests and American ideology were becoming indistinguishable.

... using American muscle to advance American values around the world became for Wolfowitz a moral imperative.

... Remaining passive in the face of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, genocide in Africa, or oppression in the Persian Gulf was not only wrong, but foolhardy.

... protecting human rights and advancing the cause of freedom, the United States could actually cement its position of global primacy.

... The aim was always to demonstrate the invincibility of American arms, thereby resetting in a fundamental way the international correlation of power globally, and especially in the Islamic world. Violence as such was a sine qua non, its use expected to endow the United States with greater reserves of leverage, influence, and respect.

... Shinseki was offering a last-ditch defense of the military tradition that Wolfowitz was intent on destroying, a tradition that saw armies as fragile, that sought to husband military power, and that classified force as an option of last resort. The risks of action, Shinseki was suggesting, were far, far greater than the advocates for war had let on. .... if the brass openly opposed the war, they could halt the march on Baghdad even before it began.

... (Wolfowitz) ... leaves behind unfinished business and unresolved questions related to precisely those matters about which he cared most: the political utility and moral implications of military power. The forces that he represented and the events that he helped set in motion have yielded at best mixed results.

... liberation and occupation, a crisp demonstration of “shock and awe” and a protracted, debilitating insurgency, the dramatic toppling of a dictator and horrifying evidence implicating American soldiers in torture and other abuses. The Iraq War ... taxing U.S. forces to the limit. ... divided the nation like no event since Vietnam. ... done immeasurable damage to our standing in the world.

... a dangerous combination of hubris and naïveté ... truth in matters of statecraft remains implacably gray. '

... to recognize the transformation of al Qaeda over the past three years into a far more amorphous, diffuse and difficult-to-target organization ... But critics say the policy review comes only after months of delay and lost opportunities ... counterterrorism jobs unfilled

... the enemy has adapted ... Nature abhors a vacuum.

... a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism...

... a heated debate that has been taking place inside and outside the government about how to target not only the remnants of al Qaeda but also broader support in the Muslim world for radical Islam.

... how central the ongoing war in Iraq is to the anti-terrorist effort, and how to accommodate State Department desires to normalize a foreign policy that has stressed terrorism to the exclusion of other priorities in recent years.

..."There's been a perception, a sense of drift in overall terrorism policy. People have not figured out what we do next, so we just continue to pick 'em off one at a time," said Roger W. Cressey, who served as a counterterrorism official at the NSC (under Clinton Bush).

... "No question this is the next stage, the phase two," another senior counterterrorism official said. "We are coming to the point of decisions."

... how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq ... hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries ... "If you don't know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?"

... the addition of public diplomacy efforts aimed at winning over Arab public sentiment

... many of the key counterterrorism jobs in the administration have been empty for months, including the top post at the State Department for combating terrorism...

... The counterterrorism center ... the main clearinghouse for terrorism-related intelligence but is not yet fully operational ... caught up in the broader wave of bureaucratic reorganization ... creation of the new directorate of national intelligence ...

... a new office of strategic and operational planning is slated to become the focal point for operations aimed at terrorists, but that, too, has yet to start working fully

"...a vacuum of leadership"

"... a dearth of senior leadership directing this day to day. No one knows who's running this on a day-to-day basis."

... the challenge is to reorient U.S. efforts when the immediate threat from al Qaeda seems to have receded, though it is still far from disappearing.

... Until recently, the Bush administration resisted any broadening of its mission against al Qaeda...

... "It's not going to be a matter of just trying to roll up more al Qaeda guys..."

... "I just don't accept the idea that the whole organization is completely gone and morphed into an amorphous global jihad movement," said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism analyst at the Congressional Research Service.

A new campaign targeting "violent extremism" could also prove controversial ... how to categorize groups such as Hezbollah ... and Hamas ... that act as political parties ... '

... called the U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the "gulag of our times."

... gives undemocratic regimes around the world an excuse to justify their own use of torture and indefinite detention ... damages the U.S. government's ability to promote human rights.

...The Soviet gulag ... a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin's lifetime

... On Monday, a bipartisan group of moderates forced the Republican-controlled Senate to compromise on the president's judicial nominees. On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives ignored Bush's veto threat and voted to expand federal stem cell research involving human embryos. Neither vote was a clear-cut defeat for Bush, but taken together, they remind that the president is racing against time. At risk is his ambitious agenda, including big changes to Social Security, an overhaul of the federal tax system and a new national energy policy. Even before he took the oath of office for a second term in January, Bush estimated that he had about 18 months, at most, before his power started to wane.

"...it certainly convinces the folks on the Hill that he's not invincible," said Stephen Hess... "second term looking like an hourglass with the sand running out."

Bush's setbacks in Congress came after several disappointing months for him. His quest to partially privatize Social Security is moribund. Iraq appears more unstable daily. Sky-high gasoline prices aren't helping his poll numbers either.

... only 40 percent of Americans agree with the president "on the issues that matter most."

The only other modern president who slipped below 50 percent approval at this point in his presidency was Richard Nixon

"Every president has frustrations. I think it's early to declare him a lame duck ," said Jack Pitney...'

... Although Bush knows his clout has a limited shelf life, he has promised to keep pushing his agenda until his final day in the White House.

... using the 11 September attacks as an excuse to ignore international law, and for creating a network of supplicant nations to "sub-contract" illegal detention and mistreatment.

Britain .... "blindly following the United States" down the path of abuse.

... "To argue that torture is warranted is to push us back to the Middle Ages." '

... obtuse criticism leading to imprudent change may make the nation less safe.

... Two cliches ... fast becoming dogma. ... that intelligence failed in the 9/11 and Iraqi WMD cases because the entire intelligence system is "broken."

... intelligence system cannot be fixed like a broken watch (although it can be improved) because the conditions that cause it to fail are inherent in the nature of intelligence. ... Intelligence seeks information about people — usually foreigners having their own language and a mentality that may be so alien as to be unfathomable by us — who are assiduously concealing it. Effective intelligence requires secrecy (particularly as to sources), which widespread sharing of intelligence data compromises — yet without that sharing, it may be impossible to assemble the data into a meaningful mosaic. Intelligence is collected and analyzed in a political context that may warp intelligence analysis. ... the unavoidable preoccupation with secrecy and security, the disdain of a democratic society for spies, and the asymmetry of failure and success in intelligence operations.

... James Bamford ..."During the half-century when Moscow sat fixed at the center of a giant bull's-eye of intelligence targets, prioritization was easy …. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the giant bull's-eye disappeared and was replaced by a shooting gallery with black silhouette targets popping up everywhere...

... The impression that the intelligence system can be "fixed" — implying that all intelligence failures are avoidable merely by the exercise of due care — leads to overselling intelligence as an element of national defense. To think that changes in organization, practices and personnel can make intelligence a fail-safe enterprise is a dangerous illusion, encouraging underinvestment in other, often more costly, means of defense, such as tightening our porous borders, screening foreign visitors more carefully and stocking vaccines against possible bioterror attacks.

The second cliche is that our intelligence services are excessively "risk-averse." ... The tendency to risk-aversion is exacerbated in the intelligence arena by the asymmetry of failure and success: Failures are vivid, frightening, unforgettable, while successes are taken for granted (when they are known, which often they are not). "Nothing happened" is the standard intelligence success.

..if ... risk-taking in recruitment and sharing improved the agency's performance, the improvement would be gradual and diffuse, and little or no credit would accrue to the official who had taken the risks. So it is best from a career standpoint to play it safe.... '

'Dear John:

You have been in office as the first director of national intelligence for about a month now... The law that created your job was filled with compromises designed to satisfy Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's backers in Congress. As a result, the law is, to be charitable, ambiguous about your authority over Defense Department intelligence agencies and the F.B.I.

... unless you clarify those ambiguities to make clear the director of national intelligence has real authority, you will have been a failure.... pick some fights. And win them. Here are a few ideas on things worth fighting for.

Shake up the C.I.A.: The C.I.A. has bad morale and a split personality: half spies, half analysts. Take the analysts out of it and have them report directly to you as the Office of National Assessments. Then rename what's left the National Clandestine Service. ... get someone who has actually done some spying in the last 30 years to run the new clandestine outfit. Forget the idea of doubling the number of spies; that was just a P.R. idea anyway. Go for quality, not quantity.

Implement the Silberman-Robb commission's idea about the F.B.I.: The president's commission on intelligence and weapons of mass destruction proposed creating the National Security Service within the F.B.I. by merging the counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence analysis units and then having them report to you, the director of national intelligence. ... new analysts (at the FBI) spend much of their time escorting visitors and emptying garbage.

Get Rumsfeld's toys: Outside experts estimate the American intelligence budget at more than $40 billion a year. They say that about 75 percent of that is for Defense Department agencies like N.S.A. (electronic spying), N.R.O. (satellites) and N.G.A. (pictures and maps). These independent fiefs are a result of cold-war bureaucratic fights. There is needless duplication and competition. Merge them into one Technical Collection Intelligence Agency. You will save billions, and you can organize the agency around our new priorities: counterterrorism, counterproliferation and war-fighting support. If Rumsfeld threatens to fall on his sword, let him. The president has to decide who is running these agencies, and if it's not you, walk.

Analytic excellence: That new Office of National Assessments should really be different from the old C.I.A. analytical unit. Stop recruiting kids straight out of college, giving them a portfolio they know nothing about and then moving them to a new topic seven or eight times over 20 years. Get some mature, real experts in their fields and sign them up for a fixed-time, renewable contract. You're getting too many similar people.

Forget the polygraph as an entry-level screening device....

Stop just saying you will pay attention to ''open source'' (i.e., unclassified) information and create a real program. Encourage debate and dissent and make room for risk takers who sometimes get it wrong. But keep track of who gets it right and who doesn't and why they got it wrong. Incorporate the lessons learned in future analyses. If you don't like these ideas, find some you do like. But don't just be a go-along, get-along guy as director, John.'

...'The Democratic Party has traditionally represented the have-nots, but these days a great many working-class and middle-class Americans with constant or declining incomes identify more with God, the armed forces and the Republican Party than with the Democrats..... less moved by the strain on their finances than by three other "F's" - faith, family and freedom - as promoted by Republicans.

... they refuse to support liberals portrayed by Republicans as "either high-born weaklings or eggheads." In this vision of things, America today is a country with wide swaths of its citizens drifting economically, using ever-increasing debt as a means to cushion the blow, but convinced that the Democratic Party has parted company with them by embracing values - same-sex marriage, abortion, secularism - that are unacceptable, not only in their eyes, but also in God's.

...Mr. Hu. Could the Chinese leader do what the Democrats have failed to do - get more ordinary Americans to focus squarely on the perils of their economic situation and conclude that it may be better to vote Democratic? '

... Today Kaifeng is grimy and poor, not even the provincial capital and so minor it lacks even an airport. Its sad state only underscores how fortunes change. In the 11th century, when it was the capital of Song Dynasty China, its population was more than one million. In contrast, London's population then was about 15,000.

... "China is booming now," said Wang Ruina, a young peasant woman on the outskirts of town. "Give us a few decades and we'll catch up with the U.S., even pass it." She's right. The U.S. has had the biggest economy in the world for more than a century, but most projections show that China will surpass us in about 15 years, as measured by purchasing power parity.

... So what can New York learn from a city like Kaifeng? One lesson is the importance of sustaining a technological edge and sound economic policies. Ancient China flourished partly because of pro-growth, pro-trade policies and technological innovations like curved iron plows, printing and paper money. But then China came to scorn trade and commerce, and per capita income stagnated for 600 years. A second lesson is the danger of hubris, for China concluded it had nothing to learn from the rest of the world - and that was the beginning of the end. I worry about the U.S. in both regards. Our economic management is so lax that we can't confront farm subsidies or long-term budget deficits. Our technology is strong, but American public schools are second-rate in math and science. And Americans' lack of interest in the world contrasts with the restlessness, drive and determination that are again pushing China to the forefront.

... American scholars have been reluctant to acknowledge and dissect their polity's brand of nationalism, while Americans at large still tend to view nationalism as a characteristic only of "the other."

... Americans, it is widely believed, only embrace patriotism, a more positive and generous emotion.

Yet ... a very powerful and distinctive national ideology that has been forged over the centuries.

... this nationalism is a composite of many different, sometimes contradictory influences. From the British the American colonists inherited a strong Protestant tradition, a conviction of superior liberties, a commitment to the rule of law, and a belief that they were the citizens of a new Israel. Victory in 1776 was seen as confirmation that Americans—and no longer Britons—were God's chosen people, the true city on the hill. At one level, this belief in America's uniqueness fostered introversion and isolationism, as in some respects it still does. At another level, however, this same conviction nourished an aggressive, missionary zeal towards the rest of the world. As Woodrow Wilson put it: "every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America"; or in Madeleine Albright's better known version: "We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future."

... because the US is such a vast, rich and successful country, possessed of many real virtues, such ideas there have proved especially durable and broad-based. As Lieven says: "Many Americans genuinely see their country's national interests and ambitions as coterminous with goodness, civilisation, progress and the interests of all humanity."

At its best, this conviction that America is a particularistic community of universal significance can lead to acts of great international generosity like the Marshall plan. At its worse, it fosters arrogance, an inability to cope with criticism from abroad and a kind of autism in regard to the sensitivities and aspirations of other, different, peoples ....

... The US has given shelter to many formerly marginalised, persecuted and embattled groupings: Scots-Irish, Catholic Irish, Russian Jews, Poles, anti-communist Cubans and more. Once ensconced in the land of the free, Lieven suggests, such folk and their descendants have shown "a certain tendency to compensate for past humiliations and suffering by glorying in American national power."

America's racialist past also continues to have an impact on its nationalism. The country was forged by wars and aggressive settlement at the expense not just of the old European empires, but of native Americans, African slaves and Mexicans. ... Suppressed and glossed over at home, nativist hostility to those perceived as culturally different has found vent instead in aspects of US policy abroad.

... The book is a warning to those who believe the more controversial aspects of current US policy will fade once the neocons and Bush himself leave the stage. On the contrary, Bush's political success is due in large part to the fact that he gives such effective voice to ideas and imaginings that have existed in parts of the US population for a very long time.

... people like Newt Gingrich claim that universities, liberals, feminists and others are perverting the nation—this at a time when Republicans control both houses of congress and a growing portion of America's media. Such accusations are part paranoia, part political calculation.... many of the Republicans' blue-collar supporters are under pressure not simply from fear of terrorism, but also from the state of the US economy—the falling dollar, cheap imports, rising healthcare costs and a tax system that increasingly favours the rich. '

... whipping up populist nationalism and fostering resentment against east coast and west coast elites supplies the US administration with a kind of opiate for its masses, a means to distract "unfashionable, poor, small town whites" from some of the real causes of their troubles.

... This strategy has been particularly successful in the American south. There is a sense in which southerners resemble Scottish Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Defeated and despoiled, Highland Scots compensated for their humiliation by becoming the shock troops of the British empire. In rather the same way, southerners have reacted to the successive blows of civil war defeat, northern contempt, poverty and the imposition of civil rights by becoming a disproportionate part of America's armed forces, and a disproportionate part of the Republican right's grassroots support.

... For Lieven, religious fundamentalism is the most potentially toxic ingredient of present-day radical American nationalism. To begin with, he insists, it fosters irrationality and further reinforces American exceptionalism. The US fundamentalist churches are intensely national institutions, quite different from worldwide denominations like Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism that have congregations in every continent, and so necessarily have to make some concessions to cultural relativism.

... fundamentalism feeds into America's insufficiently critical commitment to Israel. Even among Americans who are not on the Christian right, Jerry Falwell's claim can still strike a chord: "To stand against Israel is to stand against God"—so much so, that criticism of Israel is often dismissed as antisemitism.

... US national autism, an inability either to listen to others or to understand their reactions to US behaviour… This is a strange feeling to encounter in a country as powerful, wealthy and open as America. It is, however, characteristic of small and embattled nations, especially when their populations have in the past been subjected to ferocious massacre and persecution—as in the case of Israel. The aggrieved and embattled sentiments of Israel have spread back to the US and strengthened already existing tendencies to paranoia, resentment and chauvinism."

...Lieven is in no way anti-American, or even anti-American dominance. He accepts that "a relatively benign version of American hegemony is by no means unacceptable to many people around the world." His point is that instead of consolidating the status quo and buttressing its hegemony, America's hyperactivity and nationalism threaten to disrupt them.

Accordingly, he urges Americans to step outside their national myths "and look at [their]… nation with detachment, not as an exceptional city on a hill, but as a mortal nation among other nations."

... What if America, with all its power and centuries-old but newly radicalised nationalism, behaves in the future not just in an exceptionalist fashion but also in an unwelcome and disruptive one? Like the rest of western Europe, Britain has sheltered under America's umbrella for so long it has no answer to the question.

Here's how the U.S.-China economic relationship currently works:

Money is pouring into China, both because of its rapidly rising trade surplus and because of investments by Western and Japanese companies. Normally, this inflow of funds would be self-correcting: both China's trade surplus and the foreign investment pouring in would push up the value of the yuan, China's currency, making China's exports less competitive and shrinking its trade surplus.

But the Chinese government, unwilling to let that happen, has kept the yuan down by shipping the incoming funds right back out again, buying huge quantities of dollar assets - about $200 billion worth in 2004, and possibly as much as $300 billion worth this year. This is economically perverse: China, a poor country where capital is still scarce by Western standards, is lending vast sums at low interest rates to the United States.

Yet the U.S. has become dependent on this perverse behavior. Dollar purchases by China and other foreign governments have temporarily insulated the U.S. economy from the effects of huge budget deficits. This money flowing in from abroad has kept U.S. interest rates low despite the enormous government borrowing required to cover the budget deficit.

... Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.

... I'm not saying we should try to maintain the status quo. Addictions must be broken, and the sooner the better.

... But the negative effects of a change in Chinese currency policy will probably be immediate, while the positive effects may take years to materialize. '

... the administration is debating a range of major policy changes that would move in that direction -- transforming the military services, the State Department and other agencies in ways that would help the United States do better what it botched so badly in Iraq.

... Since the end of the Cold War ... the United States has embarked on stabilization and reconstruction operations every 18 to 24 months.

... they typically last five to eight years. The problem is that America has conducted these slow reconstruction efforts with military forces that are trained and equipped for rapid, devastating assault. That mismatch is at the heart of U.S. problems in Iraq.

... a new contingency planning process to identify countries where U.S. intervention might be necessary -- and to make sure U.S. forces have the necessary language skills, area knowledge and civil affairs expertise.

... the most influential defense intellectual writing these days, Thomas P.M. Barnett. He argued last year in "The Pentagon's New Map" that the U.S. military should be divided into two forces that reflect its differing missions: a "Leviathan" force, centered around the Air Force and Navy, that could apply overwhelming power quickly anywhere in the world; and what he called a "System Administrator" force, based in the Army and Marines, that could win the decisive battle to stabilize and rebuild nations in the aftermath of conflict.

Ferguson wondered in "Colossus" whether the United States had the aptitude, patience or financial resources to operate what would amount to a 21st-century imperial system. That remains the crucial question. It would be a mistake for America to transform its military services for a mission the public doesn't understand or support. Rumsfeld is asking the right questions about what America should learn from its setbacks in Iraq, but the country as a whole must join in the debate.

... The United States has already been convicted in the court of world opinion for its treatment of its prisoners, and that's the administration's fault, not Newsweek's. Shutting down Guantanamo and giving suspected terrorists legal protections would help restore our reputation abroad.'

When President Bush reshuffled his top team after reelection, Wolfowitz could probably have gotten the again-vacant ambassadorship to the UN had he wanted it. Instead he became president of the World Bank.

As Carnegie Mellon professor Allan Meltzer wrote, Bush's nomination of Wolfowitz to the post "recognizes that democracy involves more than the ballot box. Institutional reforms that encourage development of markets, the rule of law, protection of human and property rights, and openness to trade - all these sustain democracy by giving people opportunity, hope, and higher living standards." '

... The Air Force believes " we must establish and maintain space superiority," Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. "Simply put, it's the American way of fighting." '

The mission will require new weapons, new space satellites, new ways of doing battle and, by some estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars. It faces enormous technological obstacles. And many of the nation's allies object to the idea that space is an American frontier.

... A new Air Force strategy, Global Strike, calls for a military space plane carrying precision-guided weapons armed with a half-ton of munitions. General Lord told Congress last month that Global Strike would be "an incredible capability" to destroy command centers or missile bases "anywhere in the world."

... The Air Force's drive into space has been accelerated by the Pentagon's failure to build a missile defense on earth. After spending 22 years and nearly $100 billion, Pentagon officials say they cannot reliably detect and destroy a threat today.

... In April, the Air Force launched the XSS-11, an experimental microsatellite with the technical ability to disrupt other nations' military reconnaissance and communications satellites.

... the goal of developing space weaponry was to allow the nation to deliver an attack "very quickly, with very short time lines on the planning and delivery, any place on the face of the earth." '

On July 23, 2002, eight months before American and British forces invaded, senior British officials met with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss Iraq.

... "C" (head of MI6) offered a report on his visit to Washington, where he had conducted talks with George Tenet, his counterpart at the CIA, and other high officials. This passage is worth quoting in full:

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam [Hussein], through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Seen from today's perspective, this short paragraph is a strikingly clear template for the future, establishing these points:

1) By mid-July 2002, eight months before the war began, President Bush had decided to invade and occupy Iraq.

2) Bush had decided to "justify" the war "by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD".

3) Already "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".

4) Many at the top of the administration did not want to seek approval from the United Nations (going "the UN route").

5) Few in Washington seemed much interested in the aftermath of the war. '

We are a melting pot, not a salad bowl — a multiracial not a multicultural nation....

there is something morally wrong in inviting thousands of youths from central Mexico — without legality, English or education — to work cheaply in permanently unskilled jobs until they age and tire, only to be cast by employers onto the near bankrupt entitlement industry, while we invite a new cohort of healthier and younger workers in to replace them.'