Tiananmen Square, Thirty Years Later

The Tiananmen Square massacre occurred on my 16th birthday. I remember watching the news during the days before and after June 4 and knowing that the events were momentous, but not having any sense of how things would eventually play out. The images that I remember most vividly are of young men biking around the Square and of the particular man who stood in the path of a tank while holding grocery bags.

There's a good article in today's Post (here) that summarizes the evolution of China from 1989 to today. The primary takeaway is that China's leadership -- beginning with Deng Xiaoping and continuing through to Xi Jinping, has granted the Chinese people increasing economic freedom while consistently cracking down on their political rights and freedom.

The result is that -- despite its tremendous economic growth -- China is probably more repressive now than it was in 1989. Suppression of religious minorities (especially Muslims) and censorship of the internet are two dramatic examples.

Incredibly, however, per capita income has increased from $311 (in 1989) to $8,826 (today).

625. Should the United States feel ashamed that we have not done more to encourage democracy and political freedom in China? Or, to take the opposing viewpoint, have we been wisely realistic not to get overly involved (while making the mistake of becoming overly involved in various Middle Eastern nations)?

626. Will democracy come to China in the next 30 years? Or are they locked into their current path of limited freedom and authoritarian leadership?

Narendra Modi and the Kashi Vishwanath Temple

Last week, Narendra Modi was overwhelmingly re-elected as the Prime Minister of India (his first term began in May 2014; I wrote about Modi in this post).

Modi is an unapologetic Hindu nationalist. Here's is the Post's perspective on his victory:

Modi’s win is a triumph for the ideology he represents, which some critics say tears at the fabric of a country that includes many religions, languages and cultures. To Modi and his party, India is fundamentally a Hindu nation, where the priorities of the majority take precedence and the secularism promoted by the country’s founders has no place.

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Today, Joanna Slater describes Modi's ambitious new project in Varanasi (here). I am interested in the article not least because we study Varanasi, in my class, in the context of learning about religious pilgrimages and sacred places. Here is what I learned from Slater's article:

The Kashi Vishwanath Temple sits one-quarter of a mile from the Ganges. However, a maze of alleys and buildings prevents easy access. Combining religious symbolism and economic development, Modi is spearheading a $75 million project to demolish existing buildings and "carve a wide path" from the temple to the river. He says that God has chosen him for the task (the temple is dedicated to Shiva).

Some people (including both religious believers and historical preservationists) are upset about the project. I was surprised to learn that 29% of Varanasi's population is Muslim, and they are worried that an unspoken goal of Modi's project is to make it easier to tear down, eventually, a mosque that sits close to the temple.

622. Why is Narendra Modi so popular right now? Is it because his "strong man" tactics satisfy a desire for stability, particularly in a country/culture that is changing so rapidly? Or is it more because Hindus want to preserve their dominant place in Indian society?

623. How does India's recent economic growth compare with China's?

624. What is the United States government's current approach towards India? Modi seems like the kind of leader that Trump would love, but most of the media attention focuses on Trump's attitude towards China, so I am uncertain whether we are nurturing the relationship with India.

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Here are some details about India's election, from the BBC:

• Results so far show the Bharatiya Janata Party (Modi's party) is set to win about 300 of the 543 seats in parliament, exceeding expectations and building on the commanding majority it achieved in 2014.
• The main opposition alliance, headed by Rahul Gandhi's Congress party, has admitted defeat. Congress is set to win fewer than 60 seats.
• Mr Gandhi has also lost his Amethi seat in Uttar Pradesh. He has held it since 2004 and it is considered a stronghold of Congress and the Gandhi family in particular.
• The re-election of Mr Modi brings to a close the largest election the world has ever seen. More than 600 million people voted in the marathon six-week contest.

The Summit With North Korea: A Stumbling Block Appears

It appears that the North Korea-US summit has hit its first stumbling block. Today's lead article in the Post explains that the North's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Gye Gwan, has threatened to cancel the summit in light of:

Kim Gye Gwan

1. Recent US/South Korea military drills
2. John Bolton's stated insistence that North Korea denuclearize in the same fashion that Libya did in 2004

When Qaddafi negotiated with the Bush Administration in 2004, I gather that he agreed to completely terminate Libya's nuclear program. Seven years later, he was overthrown and assassinated. I imagine that the precedent is not appealing to Kim and his regime.

This new development reinforces my question from yesterday: How can the US agree to anything short of total denuclearization, and how can the North Koreans make that commitment? It seems like an unsolvable puzzle to me, but perhaps the diplomats will be able to finesse it.

Here's a painting from a North Korean artist named Jong Choi. I found it via a Huffington Post article about North Korean art.

North Korea's Nuclear Test

North Korea conducted its third nuclear test yesterday (the prior tests were in 2006 and 2009).  It is unclear whether the bomb was plutonium (like the earlier ones) or uranium (which, according to the Times, would be more problematic). 

 

International condemnation has been swift (including from Russia!), and the United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting at 9 AM this morning.

 

568. Kim Jong-un, the new leader, is 29 years old. Is he the youngest current leader (monarch/president/prime minister) of a nation?

 

569. What is Kim Jong-un like? Initially I had the sense that he might be progressive, but with the nuclear test he appears to be following precedent. Is he making decisions himself (for instance, the decision to conduct the test), or is he being controlled/manipulated by military leaders?

 

570. North Korea's action re-raises I question that I asked in May of 2009 (here):

What is it about North Korea that is making its government increasingly belligerent (externally) and repressive (internally) as compared to other Asian nations/peoples? This question came to mind over the weekend after I read Roger Cohen's piece, in the NYT (here), in which he argued that both China and Vietnam are evolving steadily towards more and more democracy ("Twenty years after Tiananmen Square, revolt is dormant and students docile from Beijing to Hanoi. They’ve bought into development over democracy for the foreseeable future. They may want more freedom, but not to the point that they will confront the system, as the Tiananmen generation did.").

The picture is from this morning's Times and was taken by Ahn Young-Joon. It shows South Korean soldiers on patrol near the demilitarized zone.  For me, the combination of the wintry weather and the small lookout shed evoke the 1970's.

The Tazreen Garment Fire

 Shima Akhter Pakh, a worker who survived the fire.
This picture is by Khaled Hassan.

112 people were killed in November in a fire at the Tazreen garment factory in Ashulia, Bangladesh.

Jim Yardley has an article about the fire in Thursday's Times (here).

This is an extremely sad article. It makes me think about blame and responsibility. There is direct blame (insufficient safety standards), and then there's the indirect blame that we all share as part of a consumption-first society.

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The workers at the factory made clothing for Sears, Wal-Mart, and C&A (a European chain), among others.  These businesses are claiming that the factory was not authorized to produce the clothes, but Yardley implies that there is a "see no evil, hear no evil" arrangement between the western chains and the local middlemen who contract with the factories:

The global apparel industry aspires to operate with accountability that extends from distant factories to retail stores. Big brands demand that factories be inspected by accredited auditing firms so that the brands can control quality and understand how, where and by whom their goods are made. If a factory does not pass muster, it is not supposed to get orders from Western customers. Tazreen Fashions was one of many clothing factories that exist on the margins of this system. Factory bosses had been faulted for violations during inspections conducted on behalf of Walmart and at the behest of the Business Social Compliance Initiative, a European organization. Yet Tazreen Fashions received orders anyway, slipping through the gaps in the system by delivering the low costs and quick turnarounds that buyers — and consumers — demand.

Some of the workers tried to escape when the fire alarms first sounded, but they were told by managers that the alarms were only being tested.

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There are approximately 4,500 garment factories in Bangladesh, and it is the second-largest apparel exporter in the world (behind China).  The government has increased safety inspections since the Tazreen fire, and at least 1/3 of the factories do not have sufficient fire protections.

564. What percentage of my clothes were made in Bangladesh?

565. Should I be doing things to be more responsible in deciding what to buy? Do I have enough energy to work on this?

566. Which societies/countries do the best job of prioritizing health and safety over cheap consumption?  Which societies do the worst?

This picture of the factory is by Andrew Biraj.

Chen Guangcheng; Same-Sex Marriage; An Ailing Economy

Chen Guangcheng

Some of the major stories of the past few weeks:

1. After appearing to gain momentum from January through March, the direction of the economy is again unclear.  The stock market has fallen during the past month or so, and jobs are not being created on a sufficient scale. Paul Krugman continues to advocate for pumping money into the economy, while David Brooks says the problems are structural and require a longer-term re-think. I tend to side with Brooks, and I remain doubtful that the American economy will rebound completely anytime soon.

2. The Greeks voted out their unity government last week. As far as I can tell, there's not a functioning majority at the moment, which cannot be good for stability there.

3. Spain is getting lots of attention as the next European economy to require a bailout. I gather that their real estate bubble was the biggest of all: Florida on a countrywide scale.

4. Chen Guangcheng is a blind Chinese lawyer/activist who escaped house imprisonment a couple of weeks ago and has been the center of diplomatic intrigue. The US and China have been debating whether he should/may leave the country.  It sounds like the face-saving solution (for China) is that he and his family will be given a student visa to study in the US. I am unclear as to whether Chen wants to leave China; I think that he does (for his safety), but some articles imply that he'll have less ability to influence the course of events if he is no longer living there.

5. President Obama came out in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in an interview with Robin Roberts, after Joe Biden did the same on Meet the Press last weekend. The pundit-debate of the week is whether Obama's decision demonstrates courage -- or, in the analysis of Ross Douthat this morning, is merely an attempt to change the national discussion away from the economy. The Post had a much-read long-form article about Mitt Romney's prep school days. The article focused on an episode where Romeny led a group of classmates in pinning to the ground a believed-to-be-gay student and forcibly cutting his long hair.

538. How important should political leaders' adolescent and young adult deeds/misdeeds be to voters, for purposes of evaluating their ability to lead and govern?

539. Are Krugman and Brooks friendly with each other in the Times' offices? Do liberal academic economists admire Krugman for his constant advocacy, or is he kind of the equivalent of a popular historian (Doris Kearns Goodwin, for instance) who some academics begrudge?

540. Mitt Romney spoke at Liberty University's commencement yesterday. How was he received?  Will Obama's change-of-position on same-sex marriage energize the religious right to support Romney more vigorously?

Obama in India

I have not thought about India for a while (more generally, it seems like foreign relations has been "off the front page" of American newspapers for quite some time, with the focus primarily on the recession instead).  But I've been thinking about India the past couple of days as Obama has embarked on a 10-day overseas trip that begins with 3 days in India.

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The visit started in Mumbai, with a remembrance at the Taj Palace where the terrorist attacks occurred during November 2008. 

A major focus of the trip is strengthening the business ties between the US and India, and the articles have focused on the issues of outsourcing and how the US should balance free trade with focusing on our own economy.

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When asked who he'd most like to have dinner with, Obama gave Gandhi as his answer. Jim Yardley of Times has a very interesting article (here) about the contradictions in both Obama's and the Indian nation's admiration for Gandhi at a time when economic (in particular, consumer) growth remains a foremost goal:

Now that Mr. Obama is visiting India for the first time, on a trip pitched as a jobs mission, his fascination with Gandhi is influencing his itinerary and his message as he tries to win over India’s skeptical political class. “He is a hero not just to India, but to the world,” the president wrote in a guest book on Saturday in Gandhi’s modest former home in Mumbai, now the Mani Bhavan museum.

Yet if paying homage to Gandhi is expected of visiting dignitaries, Mr. Obama’s more personal identification with the Gandhian legacy ... places him on complicated terrain. Gandhi remains India’s patriarch, the founding father whose face is printed on the currency, but modern India is hardly a Gandhian nation, if it ever was one.

His vision of a village-dominated economy was shunted aside during his lifetime as rural romanticism, and his call for a national ethos of personal austerity and nonviolence has proved antithetical to the goals of an aspiring economic and military power. If anything, India’s rise as a global power seems likely to distance it even further from Gandhi. 

India is inching toward a tighter military relationship with the United States, once distrusted as an imperialist power, even as the Americans are fighting a war in nearby Afghanistan. India also has an urbanizing consumer-driven economy and a growing middle class that indulges itself in cars, apartments and other goods. It is this economic progress that underpins India’s rising geopolitical clout and its attractiveness to the United States as a global partner.

Gandhi is still revered here, and credited with shaping India’s political identity as a tolerant, secular democracy. But he can sometimes seem to hover over modern India like a parent whose expectations are rarely met. 

What an interesting (depressing?) reflection. Whereas Gandhi led by his spiritual energy, Obama is compelled to focus on economic growth and power politics.

478. Does Yardley's piece look at Gandhi through rose-colored glasses, though?  Was Gandhi indeed all-idealist and none-realist?

479.  Which American corporation was the first to outsource jobs to India?  When did it occur?   Which American corporation currently has the most employees in India?

480.  Is Obama studying the history of the various nations during this trip?  If so, does he do so by reading himself, or does he have tutors who help him? 

481.  Had he ever been to India prior to becoming President?  What does he think of it -- and what were his expectations?  Has he experienced the traffic cacophony? Is he getting to have any genuine experiences or is he entirely "in the bubble"?

482. The Indian stock market has been on a tear during 2010 (at least based on the returns of the Matthews India Fund); will this continue?  What is driving the stock market gains there?

Afghanistan: Questioning the Mission

These are photos of the ten humanitarian aid workers who were killed by the Taliban last week while on a medical mission in remote villages in northern Afghanistan.

They were traveling from village to village on foot and it sounds like they had hiked a very long ways, and they were specifically working with people on their eyes.

Last year on August 14 I wrote about the upcoming elections in Afghanistan and two of the candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah.  I noted that the violence against US troops had increased substantially and asked whether the increase was viewed as necessary (by the Obama Administration) before things could improve.

Well, in the ensuing year, I'd say that the situation in Afghanistan has only gotten worse:

1. President Karzai is portrayed as, alternately, corrupt or incompetent. 
2. The violence against US troops has gotten even worse, with June and July of 2010 being the deadliest months of the entire war.
3. The US military has tried to implement "government in a box" in certain southern Afghanistan cities and the reporting is that the efforts have mostly failed.

Given these realities, I do not understand why President Obama persists on what seems a hopeless course, particularly since it seems that we are only counting down until we can begin some sort of drawdown in August 2011. 

Just take the past 12 months as a microcosm of the past decade: what have we accomplished?  Anything positive (I assume we must have built schools and civic buildings, though I think more of the building/development has done by the Three Cups of Tea man and other private individuals)?  Or have we just stirred up even more anti-American fervor at a huge cost in lives and money?

Brian Carderelli is the man on the far left of the second line of photos.  He was a 2009 graduate of JMU and had also grown up in Harrisonburg. It sounds like he was a dedicated humanitarian:

Carderelli, 25, of Harrisonburg, Va., worked for the International School of Kabul. He went to Afghanistan in September and also was compiling an album titled "The Beauty – It's Not All War."

"He loved people and was particularly concerned for the poor," the family said in a statement Monday.

Immigration, Part 2 (North Korea to China)

There's a fascinating article by Barbara Demick, in this week's New Yorker, about North Korea.

Demick focuses on several recent immigrants from North Korea to China - in particular, individuals who cross from the area around Musan into Yanji (a Chinese city 15 miles from the border).

It sounds like the situation in North Korea right now is very bad. 

I completely missed this story, but last fall they abruptly devalued their currency and wiped out many people's living savings with one fell swoop.  The economic ramifications have been awful - so bad, in fact, that Prime Minister Kim Yong-il apologized in Feburary for having caused so much pain (Kim Yong-il was later replaced, in June, as Prime Minister).

Now, some analysts are predicting that the current regime could actually topple, in particular if Kim Jong-eun succeeds his father and does not quickly gain the confidence of the people.  This is one of the first articles I've read that talks about the possibility of an internal regime change, and I wonder how much credence the American government is giving to Demick's reporting.

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Here's an excerpt from the article with a vivid description of a 17 year old girl leaving North Korea:

Song-hee left home early one morning without telling her parents. It was impossible to cross in Musan, so the girls walked past the main athletic stadium and into the mountains north of the city. After hiking three hours through the mountains, they descended to a bend about three miles from downtown Musan - a spot where the river is no more than a hundred feet across.  Although it was broad daylight, the border guards couldn't see this section of the river from their concrete pillboxes. They walked across the ice as quickly as they could and clambered up the embankment into China.

When I picture North Korea, I start with St. Petersburg in 1993 and then try to dial-back that image about 10 or 15 years. In my mind, I see a very different world.

Lithium in Afghanistan

Last week, the Post and other papers reported the discovery of huge mineral deposits (worth literally trillions of dollars?!!) in Afghanistan.

The minerals there include:

• Iron
• Copper
• Cobalt
• Gold
• Lithium

The lithium discovery is getting the most play (Afghanistan :: lithium as Saudi Arabia :: oil ?). Evidently lithium is used to make the batteries in laptops.  I'm not sure I'd even heard of lithium until about 10 years ago, but now it does get mentioned a lot.

Christopher Hitchens has a piece in Slate this week (here) in which he argues that westerners should be psyched about (rather than wringing their hands over) the mineral discoveries. 

He says the minerals provide the opportunity for real economic development in Afghanistan -- and for forging a closer alliance between Afghanistan and India (rather than Pakistan), which he says is the key to long-term stability there.

Ironically, I thought the most powerful portion of Hitchen's piece was his summary of the way in which mineral deposits have -- in the past -- brought trouble to countries:

The story of countries that are poor because they are rich is an old one: The Congo has been a scandalous example since the time of its private ownership by the Belgian royal family in the 19th century, and to the list of nations subject to depredation by resource exploitation one could also add Haiti, Angola, India, and (to be fair) China. Afghanistan has no infrastructure or professional civil service, no tradition of extractive industry, and no mechanism for sharing resources among its wildly discrepant provinces and regions. A Klondike beyond the Khyber could be the last thing it needs.

Afghanistan: Talking with the Taliban?

According to this morning's Post, Hamid Karzai extended an invitation to the Taliban to a peace conference to be held this spring or summer. The article is by Karen DeYoung and Joshua Partlow, here.

423. It seems like there are more co-written articles in the newspapers nowadays than several years ago. Is that right? Is this a function of the changing economics of the newspaper industry? Is there typically a lead "writer" and a lead "reporter," or is the writing really a collaborative effort? It seems to me like it would be hard to produce a co-written article on a short time deadline.

Evidently, the British are pushing for discussions with the Taliban sooner rather than later, whereas some Americans are arguing that we need to wait until there's been clearer progress from the recent offensive. I cannot tell whether the effort to control Marja is succeeding or not (the news has been absolutely dominated by health care this past week - lots of articles attempting to count Democrats' votes in the House).

Here's an excerpt about the Afghan government's back-and-forth approach to reconciliation:

The Afghan government has begun laying the groundwork for more significant accommodation with at least some Taliban members. At Kabul's urging in January, Russia lifted its opposition to removing five former Taliban members from the U.N. Security Council sanctions list, ending restrictions on their assets and travel. "In terms of reconciliation, these five people will be useful," said Zahir Faqiri, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

The government has also put into force a law granting amnesty to all those involved in fighting before and after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, provided they respect the Afghan constitution. The legislation, passed by parliament in 2007, had receded into the background after Karzai refused to sign it, only to suddenly emerge as law this year when it was printed in the official gazette without explanation.

More on Google vs. China

This story has stayed in the news. David Sanger and John Markoff have a report in today's Times, here.

Best I can tell, the fracas began when Google discovered that someone in China had attacked their systems/servers. It sounds as though Adobe, Yahoo, and a number of other American companies may also have been attacked.

The possible goals of the Chinese cyberattack:

1. Obtaining commercial/proprietary information.


2. Inserting spyware into Google's system.


3. Breaking into the gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents and American experts on China

The articles I've read do not make it clear whether Google thinks the breach was orchestrated by the Chinese government or was a private operation.

As far as the reason that China does not like Google (and/or vice versa), there'd been a dispute about "Chinese pressure on it to make sure Chinese users could not directly link to the American-based google.com site, to evade much of the censorship the company had reluctantly imposed on its main Chinese portal, google.cn."

Google vs. China; McGuire vs. Hall of Fame Voters; Pacquiao vs. Mayweather

Google announced yesterday that it may pull out of China. Evidently they're fed up with Chinese censorship and/or being pushed around by the bureaucracy there.

408. I do not quite understand what this means. How would a search engine stop doing business in an entire country? Couldn't Chinese people still link to other countries' Google sites? Or would they be firewalled somehow?

409. To what extent are the NFL playoffs being covered in China? Has the NBA become as popular in China as was envisioned with Yao Ming's superstardom?

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Tuck sent me a Wall Street Journal article (by Ian Johnson, here) about Google's move. It nicely summarizes the growing sense of frustration among western companies:

The Google syndrome caps growing complaints by foreign businesses over a deteriorating business environment. Both the European and U.S. Chambers of Commerce have issued reports sharply critical of China's business environment. During the 1980s and '90s, foreign businesses were assiduously courted by China's leaders and responded by bringing to China technology, training and international best practices.

In recent years, however, foreign businesses have complained that the official line has shifted. Younger bureaucrats are more nationalistic and skeptical of the value of letting in foreign companies, Mr. Wuttke says. Last year, for example, foreign executives said bidding practices for wind energy were rigged to exclude foreign companies.

Tuck, Liz and I had an extremely interesting conversation about business with China during Christmas. It made me second-guess my prior assumption that US entrepreneurs would stay full-steam ahead on the China connection, and the Google development is now reinforcing my second guess. Ultimately, though, I feel like China's got the money and therefore holds the cards in the economic relationship with (1) individual American business people and (2) our country as a whole.

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There are several big stories in the sports world this week:

1. Lane Kiffin unexpectedly bailed on Tennessee and took the head coaching job at USC. The Vols' fans are p-i-s-s-e-d.
   
   
2. Mark McGuire came out with an extended interview with Bob Costas (followed by a number of other interviews) in which he finally admitted to steroid use. He's stating that he used them only for medical reasons and they did not affect his performance, so some commentators remain quite critical.
   


3. Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather cancelled their much ballyhooed $50 million fight that had been scheduled for March. Evidently Mayweather accused Pacquiao of steroid use. Pacquiao is definitely the boxer about whom there's been the most buzz in the past couple of years, so I think this is a significant negative development for the sport of boxing (not that I care; although I have fun memories of watching two "event" boxing matches in my life (once at Borwhat's and once at Kimrey's in Annapolis), the sport does not do it for me.
   
   

India: Chandrasekhar Rao and the New State of Telangana

India is divided into 28 states and 7 territories. The map to the left shows the state boundaries.

In a fascinating article in today's Times (here), Jim Yardley reports that the federal government has preliminarily approved the creation of a new state -- Telangana -- which will be carved out of Andhra Pradesh. The current capital of A.P. -- Hyderabad -- will become the capital of Telangana.

A politician named Chandrasekhar Rao has been advocating for the creation of Telangana for a long time but had not gained any real traction until he embarked on a hunger strike:

"Rao's so-called fast-unto-death set off demonstrations on college campuses and plunged Hyderabad into a political crisis. Several universities were shut down, students were jailed and thousands of police and paramilitary officers arrived after a two-day general strike effectively paralyzed the city of four million people. With television trucks posted on a death watch outside Mr. Rao’s hospital room, the national government, led by the Congress Party, finally blinked. Late Wednesday night, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram announced that the 'process of formation of the state of Telangana would be initiated.'"

Yardley says that this change is indicative of India's still-evolving democracy and federal system. He says that the three newest states were created in 2000 and that the Congress Party will convene a commission to comprehensively examine the country's borders.

It sounds as though the impetus is that the Telangana people consider themselves a distinct group and they believe that they've been marginalized by other factions in Andhra Pradesh and have not equally benefited from the economic growth of Hyderabad.

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OTHER POSTS ABOUT INDIA:

1. September 26, 2009: Steve Coll argues that Obama should stress the connection between US efforts in Afghanistan and stability in India -- here
   
   
2. September 5, 2009: The drought in India -- here
   
   
3. May 17, 2009: The re-election of Manmohan Singh -- here
   
   
4. April 15, 2009: The elections -- here
   
   
5. April 7, 2009: Redevelopment in Mumbai's slums -- here
   
   
6. April 5, 2009: A profile of Narendra Modi -- here
   
   
7. February 9, 2009: Gender relations -- here

Asif Zardari Gives Up Control of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons

According to an article by Sabrina Tavernise and David Sanger in today's Times (here), President Asif Zardari has relinquished control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will now be in control of the 60-100 nuclear weapons in the country.

The Times article says that this change in control may portend further political turmoil and instability in Pakistan. However, the writers also state that American leaders actually prefer that the Pakistani military controls the nuclear arsenal:

In most nuclear-weapons nations, it is the civilian leadership, not the military, that is entrusted with nuclear control. But 62-year-old Pakistan has always been an exception. Its military has always been more powerful than its weak civilian governments, and American officials have always taken some solace in the fact that the military oversaw all elements of the nuclear program.

Some here argue the military wants it to stay that way. It protested vociferously when the Obama administration, which has said it wants to support democratic institutions here, extended a large civilian aid package to Pakistan this fall, the first in the history of the two countries.

Tavernise and Sanger also report that Zardari is weaker than at any point in his two years (so far) as President.

378. So, does the US have better relationships with Pakistan's military than its political leaders? That strikes me as very surprising, although I remember that David Ignatius wrote glowingly about the military chief of staff a year or so ago.

President Obama's Asia Trip

President Obama is in South Korea today -- I think this is the last stop on his trip (although I still think he may land in Afghanistan and talk to the troops on the way back to the US).

I've read a couple of articles this week which say that his trip has been unsuccessful because he has not really confronted the big "Asia issues" which confront the US (trade, debt, and - with respect to China - human rights). In this morning's New York Times, Helene Cooper and Martin Fackler summarize the trip's shortcomings:

Even his two sightseeing trips [to the Forbidden City and the Great Wall] ... were prominent, well-publicized examples of what Mr. Obama did not do in China. He steered clear of public meetings with Chinese liberals, free press advocates and even average Chinese, with his aides citing scheduling conflicts. Mr. Obama did, though, give an interview on Wednesday morning to Southern Weekly, one of China’s most popular newspapers, sometimes known for poking the authorities by breaking news on delicate subjects.

Still, for an American president who has tried to make openness a hallmark of his public persona, it was a departure, made more stark since Chinese authorities largely hijacked Mr. Obama’s one other attempt at a give and take with Chinese students, a town hall meeting in Shanghai, by stuffing the auditorium with young Communist Party aspirants.

Here's a picture of Obama at the Great Wall - it's by Stephen Crowley of The New York Times (like the other pictures I've seen of his walk along the Wall, the overall mood is rather gloomy):

Even with the bad reviews, I am glad that Obama has spent such an extended amount of time in Asia -- the lengthy trip is a concrete example of his trying to improve America's relationship with the rest of the world, after so much "America can go it alone" during the Bush Presidency.

Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry

Karl Eikenberry is the US Ambassador to Afghanistan. Prior to his appointment as Ambassador, Eikenberry was a lieutenant general in the Army and commander of US forces in Afghanistan (he was succeeded by David McKiernan, who was then succeeded by Stanley McChrystal).

Eikenberry grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina, went to West Point, and has degrees from Harvard and Stanford. He speaks Chinese.

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Eikenberry has been in the news this week because two cables from him were leaked to the press. In the cables, Eikenberry argues that President Obama should not send more troops until the Afghan government becomes more competent.

This was absolutely stunning news to me -- the American who would seemingly know more than anyone else about the reality of the military and political situations there is arguing against the imminent increase in troop levels!!

354. Is Eikenberry's opinion swaying Obama at all? The news this week has been that he's settled on 30,000 additional troops, but wouldn't (shouldn't?) Eikenberry's opposition influence his thinking?

According to an article in the Post (here), Eikenberry is particularly distressed by Hamid Karzai's erratic behavior and irresponsible public comments (for instance, Karzai recently told Jim Lehrer that whether or not the UN presence is reduced after the attack of a couple of weeks ago, "I don't think Afghanistan will notice").

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In other news about Afghanistan, Peter Baker has an article in this morning's Times (here) reporting that there have been delays in implementing Russia's agreement to allow the US military access to Russian airspace in order to supply the troops in Afghanistan. Baker says that the difficulties illustrate the problem of improving the US/Russian relationship:

The failure so far to translate words into reality amid bureaucratic delays, including one involving a Russian agency insisting on charging air navigation fees that the Kremlin had said would be waived, underscores the challenges of Mr. Obama’s effort to transform ties between Washington and Moscow. For all of the lofty sentiments expressed at high-profile summit meetings, actual change has never been easy to deliver.

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Obama is in Japan right now, for the start of a nine day trip in Asia. The Prime Minister of Japan is very tall.

Andrew Bacevich, Part II (Plus Brooks and Friedman on the Course Ahead in Afghanistan)

This past Wednesday President Obama went to Dover Air Force Base and watched as the bodies of 18 American troops were returned from Afghanistan. The picture above is by Doug Mills and is from Thursday's Times (here).

The discussion/predictions/analysis continued, this week, about how Obama will respond to McChrystal's recommendation of sending more US troops to Afghanistan. Dick Cheney argued that Obama is "dithering" and needs to make up his mind one way or the other, while Hillary Clinton -- in Pakistan during the week -- was fairly aggressive in her description of US anti-terrorism efforts.

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I read an article by Andrew Bacevich in the new Harper's in which he argued even more vehemently about the folly of the war in Afghanistan (I first learned of, and wrote about, Bacevich's critique in July (here)).

Bacevich says that policymakers are completely failing in explaining why we need to be there:

"What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention?

In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked.…with few exceptions, Afghanistan's importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. Today, as then, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny."

This is absolutely right. Obama talks in very broad terms about not letting al Qaeda reestablish a foothold in Afghanistan, but never articulates why an on-the-ground military effort is the most effective means of accomplishing that goal. He presents the "we need to be fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan" justification as a foregone conclusion. It's probably the most political thing he does -- on most issues he is so nuanced as to be (sometimes) frustrating, but on Afghanistan there's no nuance on this underlying assumption.

Bacevich then argues that preventing a recurrence of 9/11 requires more focus on internal security rather than overseas war-fighting:

Averting a recurrence of that awful day does not require the semipermanent occupation and pacification of distant countries…Rather it requires that the United States erect and maintain robust defenses.

This is the David Plotz line of thinking, I think: put all of this war money towards better security measures in the United States.

341. If you aggregated all of the federal money used for domestic security versus the money used for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the past eight years, what's the ratio? Have we spent more overseas? Or are the overseas expenditures just more visible?

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Thomas Friedman entered the Afghanistan-troop-level fray this week (here). Somewhat to my surprise, Friedman came down on the side of decreasing the American presence :

It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan

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Stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan ... is a 20-year project at best, and we can’t afford it. So our political leadership needs to insist on a strategy that will get the most security for less money and less presence. We simply don’t have the surplus we had when we started the war on terrorism after 9/11 — and we desperately need nation-building at home. We have to be smarter. Let’s finish Iraq, because a decent outcome there really could positively impact the whole Arab-Muslim world, and limit our exposure elsewhere. Iraq matters.

Very interesting that Friedman focuses so much on money; I generally interpret his view of federal government expenditure as similar to Krugman's: as long as the "end goal" is valid, then the means ($$$) are justified.

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David Brooks says (here) a major problem is Obama's lack of tenacity/determination on the question of the Afghanistan war.

Brooks contrasts Obama's hesitation with Lincoln and Churchill's full-on conviction about the rightness of their causes (and their resulting strong leadership that led to victories). Here's Brooks's money-line:

"I guess the president’s most important meeting is not the one with the Joint Chiefs and the cabinet secretaries. It’s the one with the mirror, in which he looks for some firm conviction about whether Afghanistan is worthy of his full and unshakable commitment. If the president cannot find that core conviction, we should get out now. It would be shameful to deploy more troops only to withdraw them later. If he does find that conviction, then he should let us know, and fill the vacuum that is eroding the chances of success."

John Kerry Opposes a Troop Increase in Afghanistan

John Kerry has been in Afghanistan for the past week or so, and this afternoon he announced that he does not support General McChrystal's request for additional troops, at least not right now. Kerry said that the following three conditions should be met prior to increasing the US troop presence:

1. Afghan governance must be improved
2. There needs to be more emphasis on civilian development
3. There needs to be a supply of dependable Afghan security forces

Kerry is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so his opposition to the troop increase is a fairly significant development.

While in Afghanistan, Kerry was given credit, according to several pieces I read, for convincing Karzai to agree to the runoff with Abdullah Abdullah.

Kerry opposed the surge in Iraq pretty vehemently, if I recall correctly, so he is being consistent in his position on Afghanistan. It will be interesting to see if the White House responds in any way tomorrow or whether they continue to hold their cards close to the vest.

Kerry also called the US civilian presence in Afghanistan "disgraceful," and an article in the Post makes it sound like he is right - we have fewer than 1,000 civilians working there and fewer than 200 of those are outside of Kabul.

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Yesterday 14 Americans (including soldiers and civilian drug enforcement officials) were killed in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan. It's not clear yet whether either crash was caused by enemy fire.

A Week of Violence in Pakistan

This picture was taken by Anjum Naveed (AP) and is in today's Post. It shows Pakistani troops in Rawalpindi, prior to their raid on army headquarters to regain control of the building from Islamic militants.

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The Pakistani Taliban has carried out a series of large-scale attacks in the past week. Karen Brulliard recounts them in today's Post (here). The attacks are viewed as retaliation for (1) the Pakistani Army's efforts to re-take the Swat Valley and (2) the US assassination of Baitullah Mehsud in August (which I wrote about here).

Brulliard reports on a new development in the fighting: some of the militants involved in the recent attacks are Punjabi:

Punjabi militant groups have long existed, but in the past they were nurtured by intelligence agencies to focus their attacks on Pakistan's archrival, India. Their alliance with the Pashtun-dominated Taliban indicates they are now "up for hire," and represent yet another foe, military analyst Shuja Nawaz said.

This reminds me of Dexter Filkins's account, in The Forever War, of the quickness with which different tribal groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan switch their allegiances depending on the state-of-play from day-to-day.

322. Is Richard Holbrooke over there right now? This seems like it is approaching a crisis moment, and I am curious as to how the Administration is coordinating US efforts with the Pakistani government.

323. What is the total number of US troops -- either "open" or special-forces/undercover -- in Pakistan currently? Are there any US forces there?

324. How many US civilians live in Pakistan? I remember meeting the woman from Baltimore, during my flight to Delhi in 2006, who was working on a water project in Kabul (at that time Afghanistan was considerably more peaceful than now). Are there similar projects going on in the Pakistani cities?

325. What is Pervez Musharraf doing nowadays? Does he have any continuing formal role in the Pakistani government? Does anyone in the Administration keep in touch with him in order to seek his input/counsel?