Today marks the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U. S. embassy in Tehran by factions of the revolution that overthrew the shah. President Obama has issued a statement on the occasion which I will reproduce in full here:

Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice.

This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.

Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.

I find the statement strangely detached. In every action and statement, including its non-responsive retort this very week to the offer to end its nuclear enrichment program made by the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, the leaders of the Iranian government have demonstrated that they have already made their choice. Ray Tayekh of the Council on Foreign Relations states the situation quite plainly:

Dealing with Iran has always been a complicated enterprise with moral hazards. The persistent mistake that the West has made is to place the nuclear issue above all other concerns. The Iran problem is not limited to illicit nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal domestic repression. Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions are the only source of disagreement. Iran’s hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values.

Iran’s support for terrorist organizations and domestic repression are manifest this very day. Its leaders have made their choice and the time for counter-offers is over while the time for consequences has arrived.

We should implement consequences for Iran as stern as we can make them, non-violent in nature but punitive in quality. We should muster all of the permanent members of the Security Council to participate in these measures but be prepared to proceed without them. A peaceful, prosperous, and just Iran is in Russian and Chinese interests as it is in ours and, if they elect to support tyranny in Iran, Russia and China should be made aware that this latest tyranny in Iran will eventually end and the Iranian people will know who supported the tyrants and who opposed them.

Starting in two weeks, users from countries who don’t use the Latin alphabet will find using the Internet much easier, FT reports.

Latin script’s monopoly in internet domain names will end next month, a development that could usher in a fresh wave of internet usage from Bulgaria to China.

So far, finding web addresses has required some basic familiarity with Latin letters – a deterrent for many, particularly older users. Fully opening cyberspace to scripts ranging from Amharic to Tamil will also give even greater prominence to search engines, say experts. The country designation of addresses – such as .ir for Iran and .kr for South Korea – has always been written in Latin. But at a meeting in Seoul, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit group that co-ordinates website domains, said it would start from November 16 to take applications for national codes written in Cyrillic, Arabic, Korean and Chinese. Other scripts will follow and the first non-Latin domains will go live in 2010.

“This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and a historic move toward the internationalisation of the internet,” said Rod Beckstrom, Icann’s president. “We just made the internet much more accessible to millions of people in regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Russia.”

About half of the world’s 1.6bn internet users are speakers of languages that do not use Latin script, said Icann. China has the world’s greatest number of internet users, estimated at 340m. “This is a huge and positive change in internet history. This will bring access for more people to get to know the internet without even a basic knowledge of English letters, for example many of our senior citizens,” said Wang Peng, senior project manager at HiChina, the country’s leading internet service provider

Changing two letters such as .cn may appear a small step, but computer experts say many people in China do not know how to switch the keyboard to Latin letters, instead finding websites by following links. Being able to type addresses themselves could take users to more minority interest sites, a factor with important political implications in China.

My initial reaction was that this will really undermine the connectedness of the Web, turning URLs into a Tower of Babel.  But, having never encountered a keyboard problem more significant than wishing there were an easier way to type umlauts, it never occurred to me how much of an inhibition the Latin alphabet was.  Having to switch between keyboard sets and having to recognize long strings of characters in foreign symbols is a rather huge barrier to entry.

UPDATE:  PC World’s Jacqueline Emigh points to some drawbacks, some of which occurred to me but go beyond my technical expertise.

Yet on the other hand, the new names carry risks for new security concerns and general user confusion. Some fear the Web might grow increasingly fragmented into areas easily accessible only to those conversant in local languages.

[...]

How will you be able to type the domain names of international Web sites when your keyboard doesn’t support their character sets? It would be logistically just about impossible for a PC maker to supply a keyboard supporting the Western “ABC” alphabet, along with the disparate character sets used in all of these tongues, for example: Japanese, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and the Central and European languages.

[...]

It looks as though we could see the development of a whole new class of Web domains that most people won’t be able to get to easily — even though they might be able to find those Web sites with a search engine.

Certainly language translation services and technology may be the biggest winners with today’s news. I predict both will flourish along with an international land grab for variations of the word “sex” dot-com.

Of the last, there’s not much doubt.

My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online.

Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe.

[...]

It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

Supporting arguments at the link.

UPDATE: As one might expect, this piece is generating some strong rebuttals.

Daniel Larison argues:

You cannot gauge the importance or unimportance of Europe to the United States on the largely cosmetic, superficial and procedural clashes Washington has had with various European states in the last nine months. Under the previous administration, Europe continued to be “important” to the U.S. even when major EU powers opposed administration policy in very public, dramatic ways. To the extent that Obama is losing ground with Europeans, he had far more goodwill and support to lose; in almost every European country, he continues to rate higher after the drop-off from unrealistic expectations than Bush did at almost any point. Obviously relations were and remained far more strained under the last administration than they have been so far under this one. We notice the minor clashes that have taken place because there was a widely-shared, unreasonable expectation that amity and concord with Europe would prevail under Obama.

[...]

European and especially German interests were flatly ignored by Bush when it came to handling Russia. Promises to Ukraine and Georgia of eventual membership in NATO were given over strenuous German opposition. Were European interests and opinions being heeded then? No. The missile defense ploy prompted Moscow to threaten abandoning its commitments under the European conventional forces treaty and elicited a great deal of bluster from Medvedev about targeting Russian missiles on European soil. Was European security strengthened by any of this? No. What matter then if Bush went through the motions and observed the right formalities when he was getting the major decisions wrong?

Most western European allies were not seriously consulted, nor were their objections given much weight, when the Bush administration decided to push ahead with the missile defense plan. In all of the new commentary claiming that Europe has soured on Obama, this seems not to count at all.

Judah Grunstein adds:

[I]f George W. Bush learned to listen to Europe, and in particular NATO, it was largely after he’d been chastened by the failure of the Iraq war and the 2006 mid-term elections. Up until his final NATO summit, Bush continued to talk loudly about the largely unpopular measures of NATO expansion and missile defense. He listened in the sense that he allowed the alliance — led by France and Germany — to turn him back, but it was out of weakness, not out of strength. There was no movement at all when it came to climate change, which is a major driver of public opinion here.

As for Obama’s handling of Europe, I’d agree with the characterization of his aloofness, especially with regard to the current Afghanistan strategic review. But while my sympathies would normally be with Europe on this sort of thing, I do think that Obama invited the NATO allies last April to assume greater ownership of the Afghanistan war. Given their refusal to do so, I don’t blame him for the freeze-out now. That said, Obama’s brush-off of the U.S.-EU summit is inexcusable and reflects a myopic view of the EU’s potential, especially with the advent of the Lisbon Treaty.

I actually don’t disagree with either Dan or Judah on most of these points and think some of the disagreement comes from the provocative  title the FP folks chose.  My argument is neither that the Europeans have tired of Obama or even that Bush was particularly adept at transatlantic diplomacy.  Rather, it is that Bush cared more about Europe — and particularly the UK and New Europe — than Obama and therefore invested more of himself in the relationship.

It’s true that Obama’s stance on, for example, missile defense and NATO expansion is more popular in some quarters than Bush’s.  Indeed, I prefer his approach on the latter and quibble with him on the former mostly on how the rollout was done vice the policy itself.  But the policy differences are  a reflection of Obama’s prioritizing Russia’s views over that of Europe, especially East and Central Europe.   I think Bush was ultimately wrong in his zeal to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO but it was a policy preference motivated by the stated ideals of the Alliance of “a Europe whole and free.”

I was rather surprised at the uproar in some corners of the blogosphere following the publication in Izvestiya of an interview with Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council. In the interview Mr. Patrushev mentioned a new doctrine regarding the Russian Federation’s use of nuclear weapons (hat tip: Nathan Hodge). Meteor Blades notes that the old Soviet Union had renounced nuclear first strikes during the Cold War. He continues:

Current Russian doctrine says nuclear weapons can only be used in response to a nuclear attack or large-scale war against Russia.

I don’t believe that’s completely accurate. I believe that the Russian Federation abandoned the Soviet doctrine more than fifteen years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, has not re-adopted it. I would welcome a correction on this. As I understand the doctrine that the Russian Federation adopted it is, shall we say, somewhat permissive:

In the document of November 1993, alongside pledges of allegiance to international law and disarmament agreements, the substantive part had a number of peculiar points. The main points were: an emphasis on rapid deployment of interventionist forces, to be used on post-Soviet territory; a renewal of the traditional accent on offensive conventional operations; legalization of stationing Russian forces abroad (in the CIS) and – what was most striking – of their potential employment in domestic situations. Not a single word mentioned civilian or Parliamentary control over the armed forces and military policy (the President is the sole chief), military reform, or further reductions of force levels(2).

The nuclear part included several notable innovations. First, the document states unequivocally: “The goal of Russian Federation policy regarding nuclear weapons is to remove the threat of nuclear war by deterring its initiation against the Russian Federation and its allies.”(3) After several years of utopian concepts about substituting deterrence with something different, this was a positive and realistic point, clearing the issue and theoretically allowing a focus on real problems without confusion or wishful thinking. Nonetheless, the concrete formula of deterrence was much more dubious and controversial.

In particular, and this was the second point, the 1982 non-first-use (NFU) pledge was officially revoked. The PGMD elaborately states that the Russian Federation would not employ nuclear weapons against any other state-party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which (1) is not a nuclear power, (2) is not an ally of a nuclear power, (3) is not engaged in joint operations together with a nuclear power in aggression against the Russian Federation, its territory, its allies or its forces. To put it in a different way, Russia would feel free to use nuclear weapons against any nuclear power; any non-nuclear ally of a nuclear power; any non-nuclear non-aligned state, acting militarily together with a nuclear power; and any non-nuclear, non-aligned state, not acting together with a nuclear power, if that state is not a party to the NPT Treaty of 1968.

Third, there was more confusion, because from the text of the PGMD it did not follow whether this highly permissive formula meant first use/strike or second/retaliatory strike. However, further elaborations from the highest officials of the Ministry of Defense and Security Council made it clear that it was exactly a first strike (not first use), that was the subject of this doctrinal part.(4)

The emphasis is mine. I haven’t sat down and made a checklist but it doesn’t appear to me that very many countries actually qualify as exempt from nuclear first strike under that doctrine.

What is the U. S. policy on first strike? I would say it is one of deliberate ambiguity. The U. S. has never specifically renounced the possibility that it would resort to a first strike with nuclear weapons but it hasn’t said that it would resort to such a strike, either. That doesn’t seem terribly different from the Russian position to me.

Just how this new doctrine differs from the old doctrine isn’t completely clear to me, either. It may never be clear or we may see some clarifications emerge which will help us make a determination. At the very least Mr. Patrushev’s comment would appear to be a caution to Georgia or other former Soviet republics not to get too cozy with the United States or its allies.

In this morning’s Washington Post Prince Turki al-Faisal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, former director general of their intelligence service and also their former ambassador to the United States offers President Obama some advice on how to proceed in Afghanistan with which I find I am in almost complete agreement. His advice consists of six action items:

• There is no viable opposition to Karzai in Afghanistan. He is a fact. Deal with it.
• Concentrate on fighting foreign terrorists and build bridges with the Taliban.
• Fix the Durand Line.
• Meet with the security and intelligence departments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, China, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to devise ways of eliminating Al Qaeda’s leadership. Nobody has more on the line than the Saudis in that battle and Russia and China are at greater risk than we are from them.
• Exert influence to induce Pakistan and India to resolve the matter of Kashmir.
• Use measures similar to those used in Turkey (in which the U. S. bought the entire crop directly from farmers, something I’ve been suggesting, and allowed them to plant alternative crops).

Read the whole thing. I’m hoping that John Burgess will weigh in on this. John, are you there?

As I noted yesterday, based on what I’d seen of Russian Federation President Medvedev’s comments in reaction to the revelation that Iran was covertly building an additional uranium enrichment plant, I was a bit skeptical that Russia would change course and support a new sanctions regime against Iran despite the hints in that direction I was reading in the Western press. Therefore, I decided to take a glance at the Russian language press to see if I could get a clearer picture of official Russian reactions there.

Most of the accounts differed little from what I was reading in the New York Times or the Washington Post. However, this quote on Novosti from President Medvedev caught my eye:

“The construction of a new plant was not expected by any country. It was a secret construction and, consequently, it’s even more troubling in this case.”

[…]

“We should create circumstances that are comfortable for Iran so that it may begin to comply, create a system of incentives; if the incentives do not work and cooperation is not forthcoming, then other mechanisms can be undertaken.”

That’s my not completely literal translation of President Medvedev’s remarks. I don’t think I can construe that in such a way that it means that Russia will support either more stringent economic sanctions against Iran not to mention the use of force in the foreseeable future, if ever.

General Brent Scowcroft issued a statement through the Atlantic Council at noon:  “I strongly approve of President Obama’s decision regarding missile defense deployments in Europe. I believe it advances U.S. national security interests, supports our allies, and better meets the threats we face.”

Given that I work at the Atlantic Council and have blogged on its site taking a different view, I felt compelled to examine the situation.  I do so in “Brent Scowcroft Supports Obama’s Missile Defense Decision.”

As in those old E.F. Hutton commercials, when General Scowcroft talks, I listen. Scowcroft was, of course, National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. Less famously, he’s the Chairman of the Atlantic Council International Advisory Board and served as Chairman of the Board of the Council itself from 1998-1999.  While there may be four or five people whose views on international security I take as seriously, there’s simply no one I respect more.

After tracing Scowcroft’s words and actions on this subject over the past quarter century, I conclude:

As for myself, I remain agnostic on the technical and strategic merits of the move to sea-based systems vice the previous land-based plan.  Nathan Hodge and Robert Haddick do a good job lining up the pros and cons and there are just too many variables and unknowns.  And, frankly, I’m rather dubious of the threat of either a Russian or an Iranian nuclear attack, which strike me as woefully overplayed.

So, were we simply starting anew with two options, the Bush plan and the Obama plan, it would be a coin flip.  And General Scowcroft’s weighing in on the side of the latter might well tip the scales for me.

My concern, however, is that we weren’t starting from scratch but rather from a status quo where the United States has quite recently promised two allies that we’d put a system in their country that the extant governments considered a significant boost in their security (although, as noted in my earlier roundup, this is not a view universally shared in those states).  Further, the Russians have been both demanding that we rescind that deal and behaving badly toward its neighbors.  In my view, the optics very much matter in this case.

With General Scowcroft on the other side, though, I hold that opinion with rather more unease and less confidence than I did this morning.

Much more at the link.   I’d actually forgotten a lot of Scowcroft’s earlier work on the nuclear issue which, in hindsight, made today’s statement seem inevitable.

I’ve been critical of the optics of President Obama’s decision to abandon missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. But I disagree with Jim Geraghty’s assertion that it also represents breaking a promise made in April. Here’s what he said in Prague:

So let me be clear: Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran’s neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven. [emphasis mine]

He can quite reasonably argue that he’s done precisely that in dropping an expensive and unproven land-based system for a cheaper and proven (albeit  less comprehensive) ship-based system.  While the Poles and Czechs — or, at least, their governments — are far from thrilled (more on that later) Obama may will have been intentionally signaling yesterday’s move in April.

Nathan Hodge has a good backgrounder on the technology.

On the 70th Anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that he was abandoning Bush era plans to install ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, pleasing Moscow and igniting fear among our Eastern European allies.

In my New Atlanticist essay “Obama Abandons Poland and Czech Missile Defense,” I take exception to the strategic rationale offered by the president and his ministers and chalk it up to ideology, instead.

The strategic situation has not changed radically in the thirteen months since the system was first announced, although May’s launch of a Sejil-2 missile did change the urgency of getting a system in place. What has changed is the political landscape. Obama is continuing the Democratic Party line, going back to the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative by Ronald Reagan, of skepticism on the merits of missile defense.

While I believe Russia had little to nothing to do with this, they will see it as appeasement and a reward for bullying.

Back in 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously noted that while “Old Europe” (particularly France and Germany) was hard to work with, America could count on “New Europe.”   Fast forward to 2009 and we may have reversed polarity.

My latest New Atlanticist essay, “Losing New Europe, Too?” explores this evolution, including why Western Europe is back in the fold and why Eastern Europe has every reason to be disappointed.

The eagerness of “New Europe” to side with the U.S. came from the combination of the cold shoulder they were receiving from their Western neighbors and the warm rhetoric from across the Atlantic.  But it now seems obvious that the talk will not be backed with action at the cost of risking war with Russia, especially for those states in its “near abroad” that have not yet been admitted into the NATO club.  That realization obviously and reasonably puts a damper on “New Europe’s” enthusiasm.

Relations with “Old Europe,” meanwhile, will return to what they have been for the postwar period: a mature engagement between peers that will ebb and flow as the situation warrants.  Such a relationship can withstand sharp disagreements, angry words, and hurt feelings.  Resentments and rifts will occasionally arise but they will be temporary.  Our shared values and interests, however, are permanent.

Much more at the link.

Graphic via Economist.

Monday, Samoa will switch to driving on the left side of the road in order to benefit from cheap used cars from Australia and New Zealand.  This gave Time’s Randy James to explain, “Why Don’t We All Drive on the Same Side of the Road?”  It’s especially odd that two-thirds of the world drives on the right, since most of us are right-handed and driving on the left is not only much more convenient but was the norm for centuries.

Theories differ, but there’s no doubt Napoleon was a major influence. The French have used the right since at least the late 18th century (there’s evidence of a Parisian “keep-right” law dating from 1794). Some say that, before the French Revolution, aristocrats drove their carriages on the left, forcing the peasantry to the right. Amid the upheaval, fearful aristocrats sought to blend in with the proletariat by traveling on the right as well. Regardless of the origin, Napoleon brought right-hand traffic to the nations he conquered, including Russia, Switzerland and Germany. (Hitler, in turn, ordered right-hand traffic in Czechoslovakia and Austria in the 1930s). Nations that escaped right-handed conquest, such as Great Britain, preserved their left-handed tradition.

Nor was the U.S. always a nation of right-hand drivers; earlier in its history, carriage and horse traffic traveled on the left, as it did in England. But by the late 1700s, the theory goes, teamsters driving large wagons pulled by several pairs of horses began prompting a shift to the right. A driver would sit on the rear left horse in order to wield his whip with his right hand; to see opposite traffic clearly, they traveled on the right.

One of the final moves to firmly standardize traffic directions in the U.S. occurred in the 20th century, when Henry Ford decided to mass-produce his cars with controls on the left (one reason, stated in a 1908 catalog: the convenience for passengers exiting directly onto the curb, “especially… if there is a lady to be considered.”) Once these norms were set, many countries eventually adjusted to conform to the right-hand standard, including Canada in the 1920s, Sweden in 1967 and Burma in 1970. The United Kingdom and former colonies such as Australia and India are among the western world’s few remaining holdouts.

One would think that the holdouts would switch to right-hand driving if simply for the ability to market their cars more easily.  But, as the decades-long effort to switch the United States to the near ubiquitous and much simpler Metric system demonstrate, people fight very hard to hang on to cultural norms.

President Obama is set to address the nation’s schoolchildren next week, presumably to propagandize them into his evil agenda of turning the country into Communist Russia (pronounced “roo-shuh”) and offing granny to save money on health care just as they do in his native Kenya. There are even instruction manuals to enlist the support of the teachers unions in brainwashing our youth.

Michelle Malkin has a huge exposé on this scandal:

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

What is it that something they’re supposed to do?  They’re not saying but apparently they want the kids to figure it out for themselves.

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

And that’s without the cult-inducing powers of a presidential speech!

Stephen Green would keep his son out of public school that day if his son were old enough and he urges you to do the same.

Nope, Obama can’t just say hey to the kiddies and encourage them to do their homework. He has to make this a — what does the Left call it? — a teachable moment. A speech-in, if you will. Teachers have even been given handy instructions on how best to integrate The One into the classroom.

AllahPundit thinks this is overreacting a mite,

One pap-filled 20-minute speech about working hard and serving others is so lethal a threat to tender minds that they have to be yanked off the premises for the day to shield them from it?

[...]

If this turns out to be some hamfisted attempt by The One to pitch his agenda to kids — which would be politically insane given the outcry it would cause, a sneak preview of which may be found here — there’ll be ample time for outrageous outrage later. For all the media fainting spells over Obama’s oratory, you can count on one hand the number of truly memorable lines he’s uttered; I doubt he’s going to come up with such a corker next week that kids will be planning their lives around it. Remember, this is the same guy who can’t sell universal health care, the virtual raison d’etre of the Democratic Party these days, to the Blue Dogs.

Steve retorts:

Yes, the speech itself will almost certainly be harmless. I don’t expect anyone’s kids to be coming home and berating their parents for being against this program or that agenda. I do expect Allah has it quite right, that this speech will be just another Daddy Speech, meant to encourage my son to work hard in school.

But you know what? The President of the United States — whether an Obama a Bush or a Lincoln — is not my son’s daddy. That’s my job. We’ve had enough nannystatism, and enough daddystatism, too.

I actually agree with every word of that. Granted, “stay in school” is such an innocuous message that it’s hard to object to its being presented.  But do we really need to add to the already inflated sense of the president of the United States as our national daddy?  The man’s in charge of one branch of the federal government; he’s not king.

Still, as Doug Mataconis points out, this is hardly new.  Why, Ronald Reagan himself gave such as speech. So did both Presidents Bush.  Indeed, Reagan went to far as to answer questions from the kiddies on federal budget priorities and gun control!

MichaelW thinks the whole thing is “creepy” and says it’s different than what Republican presidents have done.  For example, Bush 41 was telling kids to stay off drugs.  He sees a more nefarious agenda from Obama:

President Obama has already shown that he’s not above using children to advance his political agenda, so it’s not surprising that those opposed to his aims would be a bit skeptical of his speech. Adding to the wariness is the fact that he only seems to make these speeches when he needs help with bolstering his political capital (e.g. the “race speech” after Jeremiah Wright blew up in his face). After the battering his health care insurance reform plans took in August, it almost seems too convenient that he would suddenly want to address all the school kids in the nation, right about when he’s planning to try and save the one program he truly wants to enact.

But Allah’s right on this.  Not only is it hard to believe Obama is going to say anything that rises above the level of pabulum but, if he does, the national outrage will make the health care town halls look like love-ins.

I tend to agree with Joanne Jacobs that the whole thing is innocuous, if unlikely to much matter: “I think the president is going to ask kids to work hard in school and teachers will try to get them to pledge to work hard in school and most of them will work just as hard this year as they did last year.”

AP Photo

This morning in the Washington Post Stephen Stromberg echoes a point I made over at my place yesterday about President Obama’s flat joke about the purchase of Alaska, made during his Moscow visit:

But Obama probably also shouldn’t have said this. The president joked to a group of Russian businessmen about how Czar Alexander II gave America “a pretty good deal on Alaska,” which the United States bought from Imperial Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million in gold.

It’s still a sore subject. The first time I visited the post-Soviet Europe as an exchange student in western Ukraine, Alaska came up as I was speaking to a classroom full of high school students. NATO was in the midst of bombing Serbia — on whose behalf Russia entered the First World War — and the ethnic Russian teacher explained that the military action wasn’t the only thing Russians wanted the United States to roll back. Alaska, she said to my astonishment, should be Russia’s again. “We are hoping,” she said earnestly, explaining that this could be a way to deepen trust and respect between Cold War rivals.

That has been my experience, too. I haven’t found the subject to be one about which Russians have much of a sense of humor. I’d appreciate hearing others’ experience to the contrary.

It’s also what’s come out in the scanty Russian language media coverage of President Obama’s visit. Most Russian commentators were more likely to complain about President Obama’s referring to PM Vladimir Putin as “president”. They appeared more predisposed to attribute it to ignorance rather than a slip of the tongue, as I did.

President Obama’s speech was covered live by any of Russia’s major news outlets and the flavor of the coverage it’s received was captured pretty well in this article in the New York Times:

“We don’t really understand why Obama is such a star,” said Kirill Zagorodnov, 25, one of the graduates. “It’s a question of trust, how he behaves, how he positions himself, that typical charisma, which in Russia is often parodied. Russians really are not accustomed to it. It is like he is trying to manipulate the public.”

Others suggested that after decades of social turmoil, Russians were simply exhausted with politics, and had been so often disappointed by Western leaders that they were not inclined to get excited by the latest one. Asked by one Moscow newspaper what they expected to come out of Mr. Obama’s visit, most respondents had the same answer: traffic jams.

It may not come out in my writing but I am, generally speaking, not unfavorably disposed to President Obama, particularly in the area of foreign policy. When an error is made I think that gentle criticism is warranted and that’s how I saw the incident: an unforced error.

The picture above is of the check for $7.2 million issued by the United States for the purchase of Alaska.

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern.

Dave Schuler and I will be talk about President Obama’s trip to Russia, the G8 summit, the Afghanistan surge, and anything but Michael Jackson.

We’ll also be taking calls at (646) 716-7030. Owing to a high trolls to legit callers ratio, however, we’ll be using the BTR chat feature to screen for legit calls.

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Yesterday Presidents Obama and Medvedev called for sharp reductions in the numbers of nuclear weapons in each of their countries arsenals:

July 6 (Bloomberg) — U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev called for a reduction of their nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads and between 500 and 1,100 delivery vehicles, according to a “joint understanding” reached today in Moscow.

Under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December, and a 2002 Moscow agreement the maximum allowable number of warheads is 2,200 and the maximum number of launch vehicles is 1,600, according to the document.

There are apparently differences of opinion on the wisdom of this move. In an editorial this morning the LA Times hails it:

The agreement of the two presidents to cut deployed nuclear warheads from the range of 1,700-2,200 each to 1,500-1,675 each, and to reduce delivery systems, sets the stage for negotiations to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expires in December. This is a far more modest goal than we would have liked, but perhaps the numbers are less important than the goal itself. The two sides renewed their commitment to pursuing nuclear arms reduction, and that’s what matters.

while professor of defense and strategic studies Keith Payne is more skeptical:

In the first place, locking in specific reductions for U.S. forces prior to the conclusion of the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review is putting the cart before the horse. The Obama administration’s team at the Pentagon is currently examining U.S. strategic force requirements. Before specific limits are set on U.S. forces, it should complete the review. Strategic requirements should drive force numbers; arms-control numbers should not dictate strategy.

Second, the new agreement not only calls for reductions in the number of nuclear warheads (to between 1,500 and 1,675), but for cuts in the number of strategic force launchers. Under the 1991 START I Treaty, each side was limited to 1,600 launchers. Yesterday’s agreement calls for each side to be limited to between 500 and 1,100 launchers each.

According to open Russian sources, it was Russia that pushed for the lower limit of 500 launchers in negotiations. In the weeks leading up to this summit, it also has been openly stated that Moscow would like the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched missiles (SLBMS), and strategic bombers to be reduced “several times” below the current limit of 1,600. Moving toward very low numbers of launchers is a smart position for Russia, but not for the U.S.

I’ll hold my water until we can take the Senate’s temperature on this issue. Recall Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. The president makes treaties but two-thirds of Senate must concur. Any number of treaties negotiated and signed by presidents have languished for lack of the Senate’s support.

UPDATE (James Joyner): I add my two cents’ worth at New Atlanticist:  “Russia Summit Achieves Little, As Expected.”  The upshot:

Ultimately, then, the two men practiced classic Realpolitik, foregoing public talks about irreconcilable differences while striving to make some advances in areas of mutual interest.   That, frankly, falls far short of a “reset” in the relationship that the Obama administration has been touting.  But it not nothing.

More at the link.