February 3, 2008
A Frail Economy Raises Pressure on Iran’s Rulers

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
TEHRAN — In one of the coldest winters Iranians have experienced in recent memory, the government is failing to provide natural gas to tens of thousands of people across the country, leaving some for days or even weeks with no heat at all. Here in the capital, rolling blackouts every night for a month have left people without electricity, and heat, for hours at a time.

The heating crisis in this oil-exporting nation is adding to Iranians’ increasing awareness of the contrast between their growing influence abroad and frailty at home, according to government officials, diplomats and political analysts interviewed here.

From fundamentalists to reformists, people here are talking more loudly about the need for a more pragmatic approach, one that tones down the anti-Western rhetoric, at least a bit, and focuses more on improving management of the country and restoring Iran’s economic health.

The mounting domestic challenges, the most serious of which is a grinding period of stagflation, with inflation growing and the economy weakening, have apparently deepened tensions between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the religious establishment he ultimately answers to. And they have helped spur a collective rethinking of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s stewardship as Iran prepares to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution this month and to hold parliamentary elections on March 14.

“I think the Islamic Revolution is going through an identity crisis, and is trying to mature,” said Nader Talebzadeh, a filmmaker who supports Mr. Ahmadinejad. “We are maturing, gradually.”

There are increasing signals, however, that the government is not interested in hearing other voices and is geared instead toward maintaining power by silencing critics. For the parliamentary elections, so far about 70 percent of all reform candidates have been disqualified.

While the president’s supporters say the rejections were based on legal standards, like a lack of loyalty to the Islamic system or the idea of having a supreme leader, reformists say the rejections are an effort to keep them out of power.

Last week, the government shut down Iran’s most important feminist magazine, which had been published for 16 years. The authorities also arrested a small group of students after a protest at Tehran University over poor conditions in their dormitory.

In the middle of a snowy, icy winter, women have been arrested for not wearing proper Islamic clothing. Hats over head scarves, boots over pants, can bring trouble.

“Their harsh reaction to everything shows they feel very vulnerable,” said Morad Saghafi, a philosopher and writer in Tehran. “They arrest 10 students because they think if they don’t, 100 will come. Yes,(the government) they feel vulnerable.”

In recent weeks, even Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, changed his tone regarding the president, offering rare public criticism while reasserting his own standing as the steward of Iran’s foreign and nuclear policies.

“The present government, similar to any other government, has certain shortcomings which should be mentioned sympathetically,” Ayatollah Khamenei said recently before warning critics not to go overboard. “But some individuals attempt to criticize and insult every move by the government. The majority of these individuals are, however, negligent, that they are acting in line with the enemies’ propaganda.”

Sayeed Laylaz, an economist who was briefly a deputy minister in the former reform government, said: “The supreme leader realizes this economy, this country, doesn’t work anymore. He is trying to reconstruct it from within.”

An adviser to the supreme leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid a dispute with the president, added that “there is a consensus” on the need for better management.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s office refused requests to discuss events in Iran with the president or his advisers. The president’s new chief security adviser, Saeed Jalili, refused to be interviewed unless the entire content of the interview was printed in a question-and-answer format in the newspaper. Posting it on the Internet would not suffice, his office said.

But political analysts, politicians and supporters say that the president does not have to change as long as the mood for change stops with the political elite, and that the troubles so far have not undermined his support among the pious poor. He continues to be popular, they say, seen as a man of principle and good intention, though that may be wearing thin.

South of Tehran, near the Imam Khomeini International Airport, in a neighborhood called Robat Karim, people were without gas for days last month, and they continue to suffer cuts in power at midday and at night, residents said.

Iran’s natural gas shortage became a crisis when Turkmenistan, to the north, cut off supplies in December over a pricing dispute. Iran does not have the refining capacity to meet its own needs.

Robat Karim is a conservative neighborhood, wary of foreigners, and supportive of the president. But with streets that have not been cleared of snow, and the cold nights, nerves have frayed.

“I have a tenant in an apartment upstairs, and there was no gas for days,” said Nour Asadzade, 70, a shopkeeper in the neighborhood. “He asked me to help, but I said, What can I do, it’s in the hands of the government.”

Outside, a 52-year-old woman stepped carefully around the ice, the potholed road and the puddles. “I want to say, ‘No, they don’t pay attention to us.’ ” She said her name was Akram, then grew frightened and slipped into her house.

For years it seemed that Iran was evolving away from a state defined exclusively by revolutionary ideology. Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, himself a father of the revolution, emphasized pragmatic economic ties. His successor, Mohammad Khatami, eased up on social restrictions and called for a “dialogue of civilizations.”

Then came Mr. Ahmadinejad, who rose from a new generation, a class of men who fought in the eight-year war with Iraq, and who have since moved to roll back Iran to a time when revolutionary ideology defined the state. For example, Kaveh Bayat, a historian, said the desire to export the revolution was back.

“The idea that you have to export the revolution or you will cease to exist is another deeply ingrained element — it was dormant during Rafsanjani and Khatami but it is awake again,” Mr. Bayat said. “We tried to forget it, but it is back.”

President Ahmadinejad so changed the direction of the state that it has led many to assert that three decades after the revolution, Iran remains a place defined by individuals, not institutions.

Nearly everyone seems to recognize that one of the biggest problems is the nature of the political system — divided as it is among multiple factions, each striving for access to power. It is not one devised to build compromise, and the internal fighting can send confused messages to the outside world. “It would make our job a lot easier, if only they could agree,” said a Western diplomat based in Tehran who spoke on the condition of anonymity, which is standard diplomatic protocol.

Another diplomat said, “I am stunned by their emotion and antagonism they demonstrate in their fighting with each other.”

At least two views exist about where this is leading. One view is that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his radical allies needed to come to power to see that ideology cannot be a successful guide to running a modern state like Iran. The economic hardships, according to this view, will ultimately moderate or marginalize them. “They come into the center of power and they realize running a country like Iran is difficult,” said a business consultant and political analyst in Tehran who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retribution.

“This specific topic, the management of gas resources, hits every home,” the consultant said. “I think with this, the system as a whole has reached a climax.”

Another view holds that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his ideologically driven allies will not give up power, and will not be driven from power. “From a social point of view, we have a social structure in place for the emergence of fascism,” Mr. Bayat, the historian, said. “Like Europe in the 1920s, we have a dissatisfied proletariat looking for radical and extreme solutions. Ahmadinejad is not imposed on us.”

February 18, 2008
Kosovo Declares Its Independence From Serbia

By DAN BILEFSKY
Correction Appended

PRISTINA, Kosovo — The breakaway province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, sending tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians streaming through the streets to celebrate what they hoped was the end of a long and bloody struggle for national self-determination.

Kosovo’s intent to be recognized as Europe’s newest country — after a civil war that killed 10,000 people a decade ago and then years of limbo under United Nations rule — was the latest episode in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, 17 years after its dissolution began.

It brings to a climax a showdown between the West, which argues that Serbia’s brutal subjugation of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority cost it any right to rule the territory, and the Serbian government and its allies in the Kremlin, which counter that Kosovo’s independence is a reckless breach of international law that will spur other secessionist movements across the world.

In declaring independence, Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, a former leader of the guerrilla force that just over 10 years ago began an armed rebellion against Serbian domination, struck a note of reconciliation. Addressing Parliament in both Albanian and Serbian, he pledged to protect the rights of the Serbian minority.

“I feel the heartbeat of our ancestors,” he said, after paying tribute to Kosovo’s war dead and to the European Union and the United States. “We, the leaders of our people, democratically elected, through this declaration proclaim Kosovo an independent and sovereign state.”

Ethnic Albanians from as far away as America streamed into Pristina this weekend, braving freezing temperatures and heavy snow, to dance in frenzied jubilation. Beating drums, waving Albanian flags and firing guns into the air, they chanted: “Independence! Independence! We are free at last!” A 100-foot-long huge birthday cake was installed on Pristina’s main boulevard.

In an outpouring of adulation for the United States, the architect of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Serbian forces under President Slobodan Milosevic, thousands of revelers unfurled giant American flags, carried posters of former President Bill Clinton and chanted “Thank you U.S.A.” and “God bless America.”

The spirit of exaltation in Pristina contrasted sharply with the despair, anger and disbelief that gripped Serbia and the Serbian enclaves of northern Kosovo.

In Belgrade, up to 2,000 angry Serbs converged on the United States Embassy, hurling stones, smashing windows and lighting firecrackers.

In the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, long a flashpoint, three hand grenades were thrown at buildings of the United Nations and European Union. One exploded, causing minor damage.

Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister of Serbia, which has regarded Kosovo as its heartland since medieval times, vowed that Serbia would never recognize the “false state.”

In an address on national television on Sunday, he said Kosovo was propped up unlawfully by the United States and called the declaration a “humiliation” for the European Union. The Serbian government has ruled out using military force in response, but was expected to downgrade diplomatic ties with any government that recognized Kosovo.

Demonstrations are planned Monday in Serbian enclaves across Kosovo, with the expectation that Serbs will seek to entrench the parallel institutions they have set up as part of their rejection of Pristina’s rule.

European Union officials said that Britain, France and Germany were expected to recognize Kosovo 48 hours after the declaration, in part to try to prevent Russia and Serbia from rallying opposition to recognizing Kosovo. Recognition by the United States other European Union member states was expected to follow in the coming days.

Russia called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to be held Sunday. Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, said he would argue that the United Nations was obliged by existing resolutions and documents “to declare the unilateral proclamation of independence null and void.”

Serbia and Russia, he added, have asked the Council for a formal and open meeting on Monday which, he said, the president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, would address.

He said that Russia’s immediate concern was for “the safety of Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo” and warned against “any attempt at repressive measures should the Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence.”

President Bush, speaking Sunday in Tanzania on a tour of Africa, said the United States would continue to work to prevent violence in Kosovo, while reaching out to Serbia.

“On Kosovo, our position is that its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable,” he said. “We also believe it’s in Serbia’s interests to be aligned with Europe, and the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.”

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said in a recorded statement that the United States was “discussing the matter with its European partners.”

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, appealed for calm, while NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the alliance would respond “swiftly and firmly against anyone who might resort to violence.”

The Vatican called for “prudence and moderation.”

Ulrich Wilhelm, the spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germany would decide what to do on Monday. “The last open question of the breakup of Yugoslavia must be answered now, because it impedes the security, stability and economic development of the entire region,” he said.

Kosovo played a central role in the collapse of the Yugoslav federation built by the Communist strongman Josip Broz Tito after 1945. When Tito died in 1980, Western observers expected strife between Yugoslavia’s two biggest rival ethnic groups, the Serbs and Croats.

In fact, Albanian nationalism erupted first, leading to bloody clashes in 1981. As the ’80s wore on, Mr. Milosevic used Serbs’ enormous sense of grievance that their ancestral heartland was now dominated by Muslim Albanians to come to power in Serbia. By 1989, he had abolished Kosovo’s autonomy, fired tens of thousands of Albanians from their jobs, suppressed Albanian language education and controlled the territory with a heavy police presence.

In 1989, at celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, Mr. Milosevic delivered a thinly veiled warning that Serbs would fight to preserve their lands outside Serbia if rival republics such as Croatia declared independence.

In 1991, that occurred, plunging the Balkans into almost a decade of wars that cost more than 200,000 lives.

Ten years ago this month, Mr. Milosevic’s forces moved into Kosovo against the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, killing a guerrilla leader and his family at their compound. As violence escalated, NATO intervened in a 1999 bombing campaign that caused hundreds of thousands Albanians and Serbs to flee.

An estimated 10,000 civilians were killed in the 1998-99 conflict, many of them Albanians, while 1,500 Serbs perished in revenge killings that followed. Another 5,000 people were reported missing, of which half were never found.

Kosovo — a predominantly Muslim, poor, landlocked territory of two million — has been a United Nations protectorate since 1999, policed by 16,000 NATO troops.

For the ethnic Albanians who make up 95 percent of the population, independence marks a new beginning, after decades of repression and war.

“Independence is a catharsis,” said Antoneta Kastrati, 26, an Albanian from Peja, who said her mother and older sister were killed by their Serbian neighbors in 1999. “Things won’t change overnight and we cannot forget the past, but maybe I will feel safe now and my nightmares will finally go away.”

Newspapers in Belgrade lamented that the Albanians “have stolen Kosovo.”

In Mitrovica, small groups of Serbs gathered at the bridge between the town’s Serbian north the Albanian south. Serbs said they were under orders from Belgrade to ignore the independence declaration and remain in Kosovo in order to keep the northern part of the territory under de facto Serbian control.

“I will stay here forever ,” said a 70-year-old engineer who would give only his first name, Svetozar. “This will always be Serbia. I am not afraid of Kosovo’s independence because I don’t recognize it.”

When a knot of Albanians tried to cross the bridge into the Serbian part, they were held back by the police and 10-foot-high metal barriers wound with razor wire.

In Serbia, the police had to stop several hundred Serbian veterans of the 1998-99 Kosovo war from crossing into the territory before the independence declaration. The group, dressed in military uniforms, broke through a Serbian police cordon at the Merdare border crossing between Serbia and Kosovo before being held back.

Kosovo’s declaration created immediate ripples in the former Soviet Union, where small separatist areas — one in Moldova and two in the republic of Georgia — have existed since the early 1990s.

All three enclaves receive extensive political support from the Kremlin, and exist as Russian protectorates. Two of them — Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia — released coordinated statements announcing an intention to seek recognition as independent states by Moscow, the United Nations and members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the loose alliance of 11 former Soviet republics.

Conversely, several of the European Union’s 27 member states — including Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Romania — oppose recognizing Kosovo because they fear encouraging secessionist movements within their own borders.

In Brussels, where retaining European Union unity over Kosovo has proved as tortuous a foreign-policy challenge as any dealing with Yugoslavia’s breakup, officials were drafting a statement for a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday. Senior European Union officials said they expected it would acknowledge Kosovo’s independence declaration without explicitly endorsing it.

On Saturday, however, the European Union approved a police and judicial mission that will help Kosovo’s government run the territory after the United Nations leaves.

While the declaration of independence raises the prospects of a new constitution and emblems of nationhood, Kosovo’s sovereignty remains severely circumscribed, making it reliant on the international community.

Kosovo is desperately poor, with a war-torn infrastructure, an unemployment rate of about 60 percent and average monthly wage of $250. Electricity is so undependable that lights go out in the capital several times a day. Corruption is rife and human trafficking threatens to entrench a lawless state on Europe’s doorstep.

In a sign of how hard it will be for Kosovo to forge the kind of multiethnic, secular identity urged on it by foreign powers, the government held a contest for the new flag, a map of Kosovo topped by six stars of the European Union.

But the distinctive two-headed eagle of the red and black Albanian flag — displayed on the battlefield and reviled by Serbs — was everywhere Sunday, held by revelers, draped on horses, flapping out of car windows and hanging outside homes and storefronts across the territory.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed to President Bush a statement that he did not make. The president did not say “Kosovo is part of Serbia.”

Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations, Nicholas Kulish from Berlin and C.J. Chivers from Moscow.

Tom Barnett’s lays the framework for his upcoming book “The Coming Re-Alignment”.
Its amazing to me the rapid and required change in our world view in the last 10-20 since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the internet or as Tom Friedman has so popularized THE FLAT WORLD.

We are entering an age where warfare is defined far less by borders than by secured supply chains, working networks than tanks. All are needed but just in different balances.

The evolution of this great nations institutions will be among the great debates in the coming generation as America redefines its leadership in the world as it deal with its own aging population. The gap between DOD and State urgently needs to be merged, our Social Security ‘system’ desperately need to be overalled, our 17,000+ page tax code need MASSIVE overhaul to free the middle class and simplify wealth preservation by those who have figured the key in making significant monies. Our health care system needs attention. I mean both from expanding some level of minimum health care to controlling the rampant fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Personally I think we need a second tiered health care system manned by immigrants doctors who have a different category of qualifications to compete among this nation of immigrants... I digress.

I like the way Barnett thinks into the future. It reminds me of my interview with Dr. Akbar Ahmed, former Ambassador from Pakistan to the US and the UK, when he said that our partisan politics in this great country to score short term political points may cost us our influencial status in the world by thinking only toward the next election.

I will always remember when Dr. Ahmed, an Islamic Scholar, and dignitary, said that he wanted ‘America to be the moral and spiritual leader of the world by bringing democracy to the Muslim world which spans across some 57 nation/states ruled mostly by dictators and despots.’ (my paraphrase)...

Yes, America is at the crossroads in the coming re-balancing of global leadership and in my view it starts with our own accountability and transformation of the USA’s bureaucracies.
Its happening in the military as we speak, I hope it continues to move toward our domestic institutions as well.

Enjoy!
Cheers!
Dan
================================================================================

Realigning America's grand strategy to a world transforming
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 02/15/2008 - 11:56. By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, Scripps Howard News Service editorials and opinion
I'm writing a book right now that tackles the question, "What really constitutes grand strategy in the age of globalization?" By that I mean a vision of a desirable future world and your country's favorable position therein, plus a plan to get there that logically employs your nation's available resources. I ask that proximate question to explore the one that's ultimately on everybody's mind today: Where do we go from here?

America's current definition of grand strategy seems to be working the shoulders of globalization's Bell curve: obsessing over terrorists on one end and democracy on the other.

Global terrorism constitutes a tiny slice of reality, while democracy, sitting atop Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is hardly the historical showstopper right now that America thinks it is. Even without any additional wave of democratization, our world is transforming thanks to a tsunami of unleashed market activity, commodity demand and investment flows.

Today America sees a very different world than the rest of the planet does: We want it instantly tidied up with no terrorists and no autocrats and no environmental damage -- a "getting it right at all costs" grand strategy. Meanwhile, that young, ambitious non-Western chunk of humanity focuses on an entirely different agenda -- a "getting ahead at all costs" grand strategy. As a result, when our leaders speak to the world, they are not heard.

That's a big problem, not so much because America's the only nation capable of leading, but because it's a more uncertain world when we're perceived as losing our way. Our "go-go" economic philosophy has long been countered, as it should be, by Europe's "go slow" focus on successfully integrating its poorer neighbors. The world is a better place for having that debate, so long as both sides admit there's something to learn from one another.

But today, too much of the world seems to view our "go-go" as having got up and gone off the deep end of seemingly extreme, self-serving goals. Looking ahead, most emerging markets are emulating the Chinese model of development at all costs and no responsibility -- a sort of "don't start thinking about tomorrow" mindset.

That's not to condemn emerging markets for wanting all the same things we enjoy. Heck, we talked them into going down this path in the first place! Rather, it's just to point out how much all that non-Western economic activity is reshaping our world, because that's where we find the truly inescapable challenges of our age.

The world's population grows by roughly 50 percent between now and 2050, at which point it levels off at between 9 billion to 10 billion people. If we made that journey at current consumption rates, that alone would trigger huge planetwide changes. But the reality is that worldwide income will rise dramatically over time, thanks to globalization, and thus consumption will skyrocket.

Global energy use will increase by over 50 percent by 2030, but that number is deceiving. In the West, it will grow by only a quarter while in the non-West it will roughly double. With incomes growing twice as fast in the non-West, that's where we'll see the most growth in disposable income, meaning far more demand for oil to fuel transportation, coal to generate electricity, food to meet higher rates of caloric intake and water to grow food and lubricate industrial production.

Add that all up and it's no surprise that the non-West now generates -- for the first time in recorded history -- more carbon emissions than the West, and yes, that gap will grow dramatically in coming decades.

When I look across this century,

I see two global challenges:

how to get to 2050 without overheating the planet, and;

2) how to realign the international system for looming hyper-interdependency among states on resources. Frankly, all notions of clashing civilizations or global insurgencies pale before the inescapable reality,

which is why it's so essential that America redefine its currently narrow grand strategy of "defending the homeland" to something far broader, like "securing the future."

If we don't recalibrate this dialogue, America will continue to lose relevance in the world as a model for the way ahead. That would be an abdication of responsibility given our historical status as source code for this era's globalization.

After having joined this party, the world simply deserves better from its host.

(Thomas P.M. Barnett is a distinguished strategist at the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies and senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC. Contact him at tom(at)thomaspmbarnett.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Realigning America's grand strategy to a world transforming
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 02/15/2008 - 11:56. By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, Scripps Howard News Service editorials and opinion
I'm writing a book right now that tackles the question, "What really constitutes grand strategy in the age of globalization?" By that I mean a vision of a desirable future world and your country's favorable position therein, plus a plan to get there that logically employs your nation's available resources. I ask that proximate question to explore the one that's ultimately on everybody's mind today: Where do we go from here?

America's current definition of grand strategy seems to be working the shoulders of globalization's Bell curve: obsessing over terrorists on one end and democracy on the other.

Global terrorism constitutes a tiny slice of reality, while democracy, sitting atop Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is hardly the historical showstopper right now that America thinks it is. Even without any additional wave of democratization, our world is transforming thanks to a tsunami of unleashed market activity, commodity demand and investment flows.

Today America sees a very different world than the rest of the planet does: We want it instantly tidied up with no terrorists and no autocrats and no environmental damage -- a "getting it right at all costs" grand strategy. Meanwhile, that young, ambitious non-Western chunk of humanity focuses on an entirely different agenda -- a "getting ahead at all costs" grand strategy. As a result, when our leaders speak to the world, they are not heard.

That's a big problem, not so much because America's the only nation capable of leading, but because it's a more uncertain world when we're perceived as losing our way. Our "go-go" economic philosophy has long been countered, as it should be, by Europe's "go slow" focus on successfully integrating its poorer neighbors. The world is a better place for having that debate, so long as both sides admit there's something to learn from one another.

But today, too much of the world seems to view our "go-go" as having got up and gone off the deep end of seemingly extreme, self-serving goals. Looking ahead, most emerging markets are emulating the Chinese model of development at all costs and no responsibility -- a sort of "don't start thinking about tomorrow" mindset.

That's not to condemn emerging markets for wanting all the same things we enjoy. Heck, we talked them into going down this path in the first place! Rather, it's just to point out how much all that non-Western economic activity is reshaping our world, because that's where we find the truly inescapable challenges of our age.

The world's population grows by roughly 50 percent between now and 2050, at which point it levels off at between 9 billion to 10 billion people. If we made that journey at current consumption rates, that alone would trigger huge planetwide changes. But the reality is that worldwide income will rise dramatically over time, thanks to globalization, and thus consumption will skyrocket.

Global energy use will increase by over 50 percent by 2030, but that number is deceiving. In the West, it will grow by only a quarter while in the non-West it will roughly double. With incomes growing twice as fast in the non-West, that's where we'll see the most growth in disposable income, meaning far more demand for oil to fuel transportation, coal to generate electricity, food to meet higher rates of caloric intake and water to grow food and lubricate industrial production.

Add that all up and it's no surprise that the non-West now generates -- for the first time in recorded history -- more carbon emissions than the West, and yes, that gap will grow dramatically in coming decades.

When I look across this century, I see two global challenges: 1) how to get to 2050 without overheating the planet, and; 2) how to realign the international system for looming hyper-interdependency among states on resources. Frankly, all notions of clashing civilizations or global insurgencies pale before the inescapable reality, which is why it's so essential that America redefine its currently narrow grand strategy of "defending the homeland" to something far broader, like "securing the future."

If we don't recalibrate this dialogue, America will continue to lose relevance in the world as a model for the way ahead. That would be an abdication of responsibility given our historical status as source code for this era's globalization.

After having joined this party, the world simply deserves better from its host.

(Thomas P.M. Barnett is a distinguished strategist at the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies and senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC. Contact him at tom(at)thomaspmbarnett.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

February 17, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The World’s Worst Panderer

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Even for those of us who shudder at many of John McCain’s positions, there is something refreshing about a man who wins so many votes despite a major political shortcoming: he is abysmal at pandering.

What sets Senator McCain apart isn’t so much his physical courage in Vietnam; many of his fellow prisoners also showed immense bravery under torture. But the United States Congress tends to be a courage-free zone, so Mr. McCain’s orneriness toward Republican primary voters makes him a lionheart in the political world.

It’s a pleasure to see candidates who don’t just throw red meat to the crowds but try to offer vegetarian options.

Consider torture. There was nary a vote in the Republican primary to be gained by opposing the waterboarding of swarthy Muslim men accused of terrorism. But Mr. McCain led the battle against Dick Cheney on torture, even though it cost him donations, votes and endorsements.

Even more than his time as a prisoner in Hanoi, that marked Mr. McCain’s most heroic moment. He risked his political career to protect Muslim terror suspects who constitute the most despised and voiceless people in America.

Then there’s immigration. While other Republican candidates revved up the mobs by debating how high a limb is optimal for hanging illegal immigrants, he patiently explained that it’s a complex problem with unsatisfying solutions, including creation of a path to citizenship for illegals.

For years, Mr. McCain denounced ethanol subsidies, which exist mostly because every ambitious politician in America wants to win the Iowa caucuses someday. This year he claimed that he liked ethanol after all, but he was so manifestly insincere and incompetent in this pandering that the episode was less contemptible than amusing.

In Michigan, he dared to tell voters that some jobs “aren’t coming back.”

In Iraq, Mr. McCain argued that the solution to an unpopular war was to send more troops. He gets bonus points for almost never mentioning that his son Jimmy was a marine stationed in Iraq until this month.

Granted, his pride in “straight talk” may arise partly because he is an execrable actor. When he does try double-talk, he looks so guilty and uncomfortable that he convinces nobody.

It’s also striking that Barack Obama is leading a Democratic field in which he has been the candidate who is least-scripted and most willing to annoy primary voters, whether in speaking about Reagan’s impact on history or on the suffering of Palestinians.

All of this is puzzlingly mature on the part of the electorate. A common complaint about President Bush is that he walls himself off from alternative points of view, but the American public has the same management flaw: it normally fires politicians who tell them bad news.

It is true that Mr. McCain sometimes weaves and bobs. With the arrival of the primaries, he has moved to the right on social issues and pretended to be more conservative than he is. On Wednesday, for example, he retreated on his brave stand on torture by voting against a bill that would block the C.I.A. from using physical force in interrogations.

His most famous pander came in 2000, when, after earlier denouncing the Confederate flag as a “symbol of racism,” he embraced it as “a symbol of heritage.” To his credit, Mr. McCain later acknowledged, “I feared that if I answered honestly I could not win the South Carolina primary, so I chose to compromise my principles.”

In short, Mr. McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste. That’s preferable to politicians who are congenital invertebrates.

I disagree with Mr. McCain on Iraq, taxes, abortion and almost every other major issue. He has a nasty temper, which isn’t ideal for the hand holding a nuclear trigger. For a man running partly on biography, he treated his first wife, Carol, poorly. And one of the meanest put-downs in modern political history was a savage joke that Mr. McCain publicly related about Chelsea Clinton when she was 18 years old; it was inexcusable.

Yet Mr. McCain himself would probably acknowledge every one of these flaws, and he is a rare politician with the courage not just to follow the crowd but also to lead it. It is refreshing to see that courage rewarded by voters.

•

I invite you to enter a contest on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. In the next week, post your prediction for the popular vote in November’s presidential election, including the names of the nominees and running mates of each party. For example, you might say: “Barack Obama/Sam Nunn, 51 percent; John McCain/Kay Bailey Hutchison, 49 percent.” The person who gets the pairs right and comes closest to the percentages will be pronounced the winner in November and will win ... undying glory