Don't read this blog. Read this article.

Sorry for the lack of blogging yesterday. True fact - I was unexpectedly late and excessively wine sloshed from attending the book launch dinner for my husband's former colleague's new book on Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. Yes, I live exactly the life that the populist right imagine I do.

But you shouldn't be reading my blog anyway - instead, if you haven't already, you should be reading Ryan Lizza's fascinating article taking a close look at the Obama administration's foreign policy.

Go on. Read it.

The piece isn't hagiographic towards the President, nor is it pointlessly critical - just an honest attempt to understand the different forces within the administration and how Obama himself is evolving as a foreign policy thinker.

I do think the piece is interesting and well written - the empty place at the heart of it, to me, is that so much of it seems based on the perceptions of people who witnessed the key events in the decision-making, but weren't themselves the main players. These "sources close to the White House" type articles always seem to me to overplay the degree to which the interpersonal politics is responsible for decision-making. Understandably, since people at that level spend a lot of time frustrated by the interpersonal politics. But I suspect that more often than not these relationship issues are caused by the policy positions, not the other way around. For instance, Lizza writes:

But the Afghanistan decision, like all government work, was driven by politics and ideology. Obama’s eagerness to keep his campaign promise, the military’s view that reducing troops meant a loss of face, Clinton’s decision to align with Gates, and Holbrooke’s inability to influence the White House staff all ultimately conspired to push Obama toward the surge.

OK. But wouldn't another way of putting it be to say that Obama had been persuaded by the need for a surge during the campaign (presumably that's why he made that promise, yes?) and the onus was now on the advisors who disagreed to prove their case. Hillary Clinton seems to have aligned herself with Gates because she agreed with him about a lot of policies, not just to bolster her position - although it may have had that effect. And the article then goes on to show that she had no compuction about strongly disagreeing with Gates later on in calling for Libyan intervention. And as for Holbrooke - another way of saying "inability to influence White House staff" would be "failure to persuade."

Anyway, the article sketches a fascinating fresh portrait of the age-old cross-party dispute between foreign policy realists and interventionists, and makes the case that Obama doesn't align with either party but focusses more on a situation-specific analysis of the plausible outcomes in each case. Lizza calls him "The Consequentialist".

The Week's Worst: Republicans block START treaty...

I'm having a little trouble keeping up with the unrelenting awfulness of Right Wing activity as, emboldened by their post-midterm strength they begin a full court press with their newly emboldened "everything that is bad for the President is good for us strategy." Obviously, things that are good for the President are quite often the things that are best for the country - economic recovery being one example. Or diplomatic successes overseas. Or improvements in Americans' health and life expectancy.

All of these things must now be halted in their tracks, argue the new Republicn insurgency, for they aid the President and therefore are bad for Republicans and thus, counter-intuitively, ultimately bad for the country. After all, would you really want to have a thriving  nation when you could have a Republican majority instead? Well, YOU AND I would, of course. But they wouldn't.

In any case, I have decided to start a little weekly feature just to try and get my head around one terrible Republican action per week. Each week I'll write a Week's Worst post highlighting the thing Republicans have done that seems most obviously worst for the country.

There was a lot to choose from this week, but in my mind a clear winner emerged:


Republican Senator John Kyl, who had been the point man with the White House appointed by Republicans to negotiate ratification of the new START treaty, after months of negotiation, and after the White House believed that they had secured a mutual agreement on all the key points, that he would not support ratification in the upcoming "lame duck" session of the Senate. He offered no rationale for this position.

The treaty has been described by many as President Obama's key foreing policy priority for this year - and that's accurate. But it would also be accurate to describe it as America's key foreign policy priority. Certainly, Republican Senator sees it as such - he recently begged his colleagues to come to their senses and vote for the treaty:

"Please do your duty for your country," Lugar said in a message to his colleagues. "We do not have verification of the Russian nuclear posture right now. We're not going to have it until we sign the START treaty. We're not going to be able to get rid of further missiles and warheads aimed at us.

"I state it candidly to my colleagues, one of those warheads ... could demolish my city of Indianapolis -- obliterate it! Now Americans may have forgotten that. I've not forgotten it and I think that most people who are concentrating on the START treaty want to move ahead to move down the ladder of the number of weapons aimed at us."

That's exactly right. After the previous START treaty expired in December last year, American inspectors have not been able to access Russian nuclear facilities to ensure that the weapons are secured and that they are complying with their commitment to reduce their arsenal.

The Russians think we have gone insane - they see the treaty as transparently in the US national interest, and they are gobsmacked that it might not pass. Frankly, so am I.

Yet another non-failure... Asia trip success

While we're on the subject of things that are working better than people say, it's worth pointing out that apparently Barack Obama's trip to Asia- though a miserable failure in the "not generating stories critical of Presidential bowing" competition - seems to have been rather successful in the lesser known "winning important concessions and agreement with major world powers" stakes.

James Fallows points out that following Obama's trip, China has now agreed to:

• Reduce greenhouse gases
• Criticising the Iranian weapons program
• Considering removal of weapons that threaten Taiwan
• Preparing to end the rigid currency control that has been harmful to the US

Fallows has lots more fascinating details of the trip on his blog. He concludes:

To sum it up: the Administration may or may not end up getting what it hoped for from this trip to Asia, especially China. But its members had a clearer idea of what they were after, how they could get it, and how to represent American interests and values than most coverage gave them credit for. The words that stick with me through this whole episode are those in the subtitle of Tish Durkin's piece last week: "Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama's visit than the US media did."