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.”

Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan:

To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, as General McChrystal pointed out in his assessment, since 2001, international forces operating in Afghanistan have “not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley.” To succeed, the United States must “redouble efforts to understand the social and political dynamics of…all regions of the country and take action that meets the needs of the people, and insist that [Afghan government] officials do the same.”

and the counter-terrorism strategy advocated recently by Vice President Joe Biden:

There are narrower objections that should be registered about the “counterterrorism-only” or “counterterrorism-mainly” argument. It is probably impractical over a long period of time to wage an intelligence-derived counterterrorism campaign along the Pakistan-Afghan border if a cooperating Afghan government does not have access to the local population; if American forces are not present; and if the Pakistani state has no incentive to cooperate. This is exactly the narrative that unfolded during the 1990s and led to failure on Sept. 11 for the United States.

The article is chock-full of intriguing observations about the situation in Afghanistan and is well worth your attention. I certainly agree with him that we should focus our energies in Afghanistan on objectives we can actually accomplish and that further real American interests. In the light of this I wonder if the bar has not been set too low for Gen. McChrystal? I read Gen. McChrystal’s report as a recommendation for averting defeat. Are they the same as the requirements for achieving success? Or will that require significantly more resources? Gen. McChrystal does say that both more resources and a definite change in strategy are necessary for success:

Success is achievable, but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or “doubling down” on the previous strategy. Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely. The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.

and

Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it. Resourcing communicates commitment, but we must also balance force levels to enable effective ANSF partnering and provide population security, while avoiding perceptions of coalition dominance. Ideally, the ANSF must lead this fight, but they will not have enough capability in the near-term given the insurgency’s growth rate. In the interim, coalition forces must provide a bridge capability to protect critical segments of the population. The status quo will lead to failure if we wait for the ANSF to grow.

However, I don’t see a commitment in the report that if the general receives what he’s requested that it will achieve the desired outcome. Am I being too critical? Or, as Stephen Coll proposes, should we be seeking more humble objectives in Afghanistan?

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.

As has been anticipated, the man who murdered 270 people by bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, has been given a compassionate release from prison so that he may spend his dying days with his family.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi (L) walks up the stairs to a waiting jet at Glasgow airport August 20, 2009. The Scottish government decided on Thursday to free Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi from prison on compassionate grounds as he is suffering from advanced prostate cancer and he will return home to Libya. Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years in prison in 2001 for his part in blowing up New York-bound Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. REUTERS/David Moir (BRITAIN CRIME LAW POLITICS IMAGES OF THE DAY)

I’ve written a lengthy roundup of the matter, “Lockerbie Bomber Released Over U.S. Objections,” for New Atlanticist.

Alex Massie argues that there’s nothing gained by keeping Abdelbaset al-Megrahi locked up, especially since we’re pretty sure he didn’t act alone.

Perhaps. Then again, he is the only person to actually be convicted in the mass murder of these 270 people. Surely, his part in that merits spending more than eight years in prison.

The decision, of course, is rightly with the UK Scots.  They, not the United States, have the jurisdiction here and, while our government has every right to express its wishes, they have the right to carry out the policy they think best.  Certainly, al-Megrahi would have been allowed to rot in prison were he in American custody; indeed, he may well have been executed for his crimes.  Despite our common law origins, there is quite a bit of divergence in the criminal justice cultures of the two countries and, indeed, within the Western democracies generally.

Also, is it just me or is it rather surreal that he’s flying home on a commercial airliner (not Pan American, which ceased operations long before al-Megrahi ever went to trial) and climbing stairs saying “Next time …Relax before you fly”?

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman has a nice roundup as well.

UPDATE II: I have corrected the above to note that the sovereignty here is with the Scots, not the UK central government.  Interestingly, all of the papers cited in the piece — mostly British but also the American Christian Science Monitor — treat the subject otherwise, writing about it in terms of US-UK relations and US-UK cultural disparity.

Photo: Reuters Pictures.

Kevin Drum seconds Alex Massie that a British-style nationalized health system is not a politically feasible option in the United States.  Indeed, even Democrats don’t want that:

[W]ith the exception of a few outliers, the liberal community really, truly doesn’t want a fully government owned and operated healthcare system like the NHS.  We want a government-funded healthcare system like Medicare or most of the world outside of Britain.  And unless I’m mistaken, this isn’t a ruse in any way.  That’s really what most of us want: basic care funded by taxes, with additional care available to anyone who wants to pay for more.  France and Holland, not Britain or Canada.

I do think that’s what most want.  HillaryCare was a single-payer system.  That’s what ObamaCare would be, too, if it were politically viable.  Since it’s not, he’s willing to settle for a “public option,” essentially a government-run insurance program that would “compete” against privately run insurance companies.  And he might have to settle for less than that — a system that expands Medicaid and/or Medicare and patches some holes in the existing system.

For a variety of reasons, the public simply doesn’t seem to understand these distinctions.  First, Canada and the UK are the logical comparison points in that they’re fellow Anglosphere countries and the ones with which we’re most familiar.  Second, those who oppose the reform for various reasons have a strong incentive to elide the differences and capitalize on fears people reasonably have about an NHS-style system.  (To say nothing of the silly fears of the “They’d let Stephen Hawking die!” variety.)

Many of the leaders of the pro-reform side are rather dishonest in their presentation, however. They insist that what’s written in the bill should be the limit of legitimate debate when, as Kevin admits and Obama once did, single-payer is the ultimate goal.   The current “as much as we can get” measure is not only a step in that direction but one that will make it inevitable over time as it kills off the existing system of employer-financed insurance.   So, while it’s dishonest to argue against the proposed legislation as if it were NHS-style “socialized medicine,” it’s perfectly legitimate to treat it as HillaryCare Returns.

An honest debate on this is vital. The current system is on a collision course with collapse because the rate of growth in health costs is unsustainable, especially with so many about to hit the retirement rolls.  And there really are significant problems with our hodgepodge public-private system where those of us not on the government dole are reliant on the vagaries of care by whatever provider our current employer offers.

I’m naturally more skeptical than Kevin of government-run anything.  But I’m prepared to be convinced that a French- or Dutch-style system would be an improvement over the status quo.  But pretending that we can simultaneously cover everyone, cut costs, not ration, and retain the current private system for those who want it isn’t a very effective method of persuasion.

Matt Yglesias notes that Shanghai has a long-term plan for expanding their subway system and laments that we’re not so forward thinking here in America.

What’s striking is the extent to which we don’t operate like that here in the United States. I think everyone believes that over the next couple of decades the Washington, DC metro area will continue to add population. And people likewise clearly envision there being additional square feet of office space in the District and they’re also envision an increase in the District’s population. On top of that, we’re also trying to envision a less carbon-intensive future. All this pretty clearly implies that there ought to be some sort of plan in place for building additional Metro capacity through the central city.

My initial reaction was that, yeah, authoritarian states run by Communist parties tend to be better than democracies at producing long-term plans. After all, it’s easier to plan if you are going to be in office for the foreseeable future and don’t have to worry about public reaction to your policies.

Amusingly, however, his commenters have already pointed out that:

• The Census Bureau [Excel spreadsheet] actually predicts a significant decline in DC’s population over the next two decades.

• U.S. metropolitan areas with subway systems, including DC, in fact have plans locatable in seconds via the Internet.  LA.  NYC.  DC. Seattle.

As I understand it, you can also get good Chinese food in those cities.

Norm Geras (who just celebrated his 6th blogging anniversary) points us to this hilariously annoying SPIEGEL interview with Wired editor Chris Anderson:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let’s talk about the future of journalism.

Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don’t use the word journalism.

SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.

Anderson: Sorry, I don’t use the word media. I don’t use the word news. I don’t think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?

Anderson: There are no other words. We’re in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don’t have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Anderson compounds his obnoxiousness, as Norm points out, by going on “to use all of the words ‘media’, ‘news’, ‘newspapers’ and ‘journalists.’”  Naturally.

Slightly apropos of the above, it occurred to me recently that the thesis of Anderson’s new book, Free, was stated more than thirty years ago by Ted Nugent:

Well I don’t know where they come from
But they sure do come
I hope they comin’ for me
And I don’t know how they do it
But they sure do it good
I hope they doin’ it for free

I’m guessing Nugent isn’t getting any royalties, however.

Word cloud via Alfred Hermida

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.

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.

Over the weekend North Korea fired a volley of short range missiles into the Sea of Japan in defiance of UNSC resolutions, heightening tensions between North Korea and its neighbors, South Korea and Japan. The Guardian Council has certified the election results in Iran and President Ahmadinejad and the “hardliners” that he represents seem even more firmly in control of Iran than they were before the election. He blames us and the Brits for the protests against the patently phony election that overwhelmingly returned him to office. Even as the U. S. envoy returns to Venezuela, Venezuela’s President Chavez blames the United States for the coup in Honduras that has ousted its president.

Today President Obama landed in Moscow to meet with Russian President Medvedev and other Russian leaders:

MOSCOW — President Obama arrived in Moscow Monday for a summit meeting with Russian leaders that is aimed at reaching an agreement to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads, but is also expected to touch on the war in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, terrorism and the jousting for influence in other former Soviet countries.

The summit meeting comes less than a year after the conflict in Georgia caused the worst tensions between the United States and Russia since the end of the cold war. Mr. Obama has called for a “reset” in relations, and the summit meeting will offer the most telling evidence so far about how difficult it will be to achieve this goal.

In opening remarks at the Kremlin, Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev said they hoped that the meeting would improve relations in both tone and substance. Mr. Obama noted that he and Mr. Medvedev had met previously at the Group of 8 summit meeting in April in London.

“We are confident that we can continue to build off the extraordinary discussions that we had in London,” Mr. Obama said, “and that on a whole host of issues — including security issues, economic issues, energy issues, environmental issues — that the United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences, and that if we work hard during these next few days, that we can make extraordinary progress that will benefit the people of both countries.”

There is no more important bilateral relationship between nations than that between Russia and the United States. Between them the two nations have at least 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons. We literally have the ability to destroy the world.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much basis for a good relationship between Russia and the United States. Russia’s population is dwindling, its economy languishing, it survives largely by selling its natural resources. Russia would be a difficult market for American goods and its natural customer for its oil and gas is Europe. We don’t really need Russia’s cooperation on pressing world issues like climate change.

Russia has had consistent and clear interests over the period of the last 200 years or more: annexing or at least neutralizing its neighbors.

The viewpoint of Russians, expressed neatly by Fyodor Lukyanov in the Russian Gazeta, is that it’s all our fault:

On Moscow’s part, too, there’s a desire to break the deadlock, but Russia doesn’t feel it bears any blame for creating it. A common opinion is that Americans have made a pile of mistakes, so now the ball will be in their court for a long time to come. Moscow doesn’t believe it needs to change anything, but is more than ready to respond more constructively to U.S. proposals. Russian representatives acknowledge that that the climate of negotiations has changed for the better, and so two angry monologues have given way to a difficult dialogue.

There’s a grain of truth to that. When you consider the expansion of NATO membership into some of the countries that made up the old Warsaw Pact, U. S. participation in what many Russians viewed as anti-Slav military actions against Yugoslavia, the overtures made to countries like Georgia or Ukraine in Russias “near abroad”, and the plans to deploy missile defense in the Czech Republic or Poland which Russians characteristically view as being directed against them, the view isn’t completely without basis.

While nuclear arms reduction is certainly a vital interest of the U. S. is it our only interest? Very nearly all that we have to offer Russia other than our own arms reduction is to give them a free hand in their dealings with their neighbors. Is arms reduction important enough to us that we should stand on the sidelines as Russia re-assembles the old Soviet Union or creates a chaotically weak buffer zone around it?

The title of this post was inspired by Clive Crooks’s column in the Financial Times:

So much for soft power. Mr Obama’s friendly outreach to other states – be they hostile, unco-operative or even supposedly friendly – has been no more productive, say the critics. China is about as implacable, North Korea just as deranged, Europe just as feckless. Russia, which Mr Obama visits this week, bullies and bribes its near-abroad with as little finesse as usual. What a surprise: the world is not smiling back.

He is not attacking President Obama’s foreign policy but rather defending it:

In foreign policy, Mr Obama is muddling through. He can do no more. He never exaggerated the transformational power of a handshake. His supporters did, to be sure, and he did not go out of his way to disabuse them. But the oddest thing, after Iran, is where some of those supporters have ended up. They stupidly believed that the president’s face was all it would take to change the world. Suddenly they want him to be less like Barack Obama and more like George W. Bush.

In my experience nearly every president has come into office convinced that the foreign policy mess he inherited is largely the fault of his predecessor and has left office disabused of that notion, largely reaffirming the decisions of his predecessor. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been four different American administrations, two Republican and two Democratic. Each has come into office with the full intention of revitalizing and improving the relationship between Russia and the United States. Three have left office with relations no better than that of his predecessor or possibly even worse. That includes George W. Bush.

What have been constant through the period are Russia’s perceived national interests and the character of Russia’s government. I wish President Obama the very greatest of success in his meetings with President Medvedev. He has his work cut out for him.

Yesterday Glenn Reynolds linked to an article in Der Spiegel complaining about “Obama’s mistakes”:

Just as the US public initially rallied behind the war President Bush — even to the point of re-electing him — Americans have now thrown their support behind the debt president Obama. The mistakes of the Bush administration are now widely accepted. The mistakes of the Obama administration are still not recognized as such. They are seen as the truth.

Glenn follows the link with a quote from a reader:

“The piece drips with der Spiegel’s typical anti-Americanism, but when your spending alarms even the Europeans, it’s time to reconsider.”

The article is worth reading if only because it illustrates nicely a point I made before the election: Germans will be suspicious of the American president because he’s the American president, not merely because of the policies he’s supported. Any foreseeable American president is bound to make decisions that won’t make Germany happy.

Frankly, I doubt that the Germans are particularly concerned about our spending. Rather, I suspect they’re complaining that we don’t tax ourselves enough.

According to the OECD the tax to GDP ratio in the United States is about 28.3% as of 2007, the most recent year for which they have statistics, while for Germans it’s about 36%. By German standards we’re undertaxed and getting more so rapidly. Our public debt to GDP ratio is rising rapidly, too, from where it is now (which has been roughly the same as Germany or France) into the same territory as Belgium’s or even Japan’s.

Would Germany be happier if we behaved more like Germany? Frankly, I doubt it. If we did we’d be spending less than 2% of our GDP on our military which means that there would be little counterbalance to a resurgent Russia. Further, until very recently Germany has been one of the few countries running a trade surplus with China. Simply stated the Chinese factories producing consumer goods for sale in the United States are built and stocked with German machines. If we behaved like Germany we’d have been running a trade surplus with China which means that the Germans wouldn’t have been able to sell all that heavy machinery to the Chinese.

In my view the bottom line is that very little that we could do would make Germany happy and, consequently, what they think isn’t that interesting to us.

This morning there’s an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post by three leading Russian intellectuals, urging the Obama Administration not to allow a return to realism in foreign policy between the United States and Russia to become a rubric under which “American experts serve as the “conservators” of Russian authoritarian traditionalism”:

MOSCOW — As intellectuals and liberal Russians, we have read with great interest many recommendations American experts have compiled for President Obama regarding the U.S.-Russian relationship. While there are several constructive ideas, many of these reports reflect a serious misunderstanding of the situation in Russia and the course it is following.

We object, for example, to the basic proposition of calling for a return to realpolitik because some believe that the worsening of Russian-American relations was mainly caused by Washington’s insistence on “tying policies to values.” The result, some American “realists” argue, is that the United States needs to build a new relationship with Russia based on “common interests and common threats.” Yet in blaming the Bush administration for trying to “teach” Russia about democracy, these realists appear to accept the official Russian position. In our view, America has ignored the problems of democracy and civil society in Russia, but even turning a blind eye did not prevent the breakdown in the U.S.-Russian relationship — and now Obama is essentially being asked to treat Russia as though it is incapable of democratic transformation.

While there is anti-democratic sentiment here, such feelings are not ubiquitous. In fact, nearly two-thirds of Russians would like to see the establishment of democracy and the rule of law, according to a 2008 Levada Center poll. The ruling elite oppose the development of democratic institutions, but the key is that members of the elite are more than ready to integrate into the Western world on an individually beneficial basis; they will do everything in their power to “protect” the rest of Russian society from the perils of such integration.

There is a two hundred year tradition of Russian liberals and intellectuals being out of touch with what the Russian people want. If Russians want democracy so badly, why do they elect autocrats and why are the autocrats so popular? The issue is less what Russians’ priorities are and more what their subpriorities are. I’m sure that the Russian people do want the establishment of democracy and the rule of law but I suspect they also want to put food on the table, peace and security, and even a return to some aspects of the old days when the Soviet Union was a world power. Nationalism is not a dirty word in Russia today.

It’s how they establish the relative priorities among democracy, the rule of law, economic well-being, and so on that will determine Russia’s future course.

The course of action that the authors are urging on us seems to be something along the following lines:

Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott helpfully proposed in February that the West “should create conditions that will, over time, convince the Russians that their post-Marxist, post-Soviet, Hobbesian experiment is, in fact, unrealistic. It simply won’t work.”

I can’t help but recall that during the period in which Strobe Talbott was Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States that the foundations of the current Russian system were laid with the assistance of a flood of Western experts. At the time I was concerned that Russian institutions had to be grown on Russian roots and that foreign grafts were unlikely to flourish. This has proven to be the case and I suspect it will remain to be true.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that we have the patience or, honestly, the interest to follow the course of action prescribed by the authors that will allow native Russian institutions to create the conditions that will lead to a more benign Russia.

Andrew Gelman looks inside the methodology used to construct the widely-circulated “Human Development Index” map and concludes that it’s bunk.

It turns out that the “index” considers only three elements:  Life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and education, and a variant of GDP per capita.   It seems that the first two of these are so uniform across the 50 states as to be negligible, making the last the main determinant of the ranking.  Additionally, Mississippi’s .799 makes it just barely fit into the arbitrary color breakdowns, making it appear to those looking at the map to be massively less “developed” than West Virginia and Louisiana, at .800 and .801, respectively.

What Gelman does not add is that “the natural logarithm of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in United States dollars” is actually a rather poor measure of “standard of living” given that it’s not normalized for local housing prices.

Does anyone really think that there’s a significantly different level of “development” between North and South Carolina?  Or that Michigan is better off than Missouri?

This is yet another instance of a trend that I’ve long found aggravating: the ordinal ranking of relatively similar bodies to create the illusion of substantial disparity.  We usually see it in the form of international comparisons, which have the United States ranked 35th on some attribute despite being essentially the same as the country ranked 1st.  Here, we’re doing the same with states. It’s junk social science.

North Korea has moved what they have called a satellite launch vehicle and Japan, South Korea, and the United States believe is a long-range missile into position for launching as early as next week. Japan has announced its intention of shooting the missile down should it near Japanese territory. Japan, South Korea, and the United States are putting their heads together to figure out what to do next:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top nuclear envoys from Japan, South Korea and the United States are set to meet in Washington on Friday, signaling growing concern over North Korea’s plans to launch a long-range missile.

State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid announced the meetings between envoys from the three nations — the first substantive talks on the North Korea issue since U.S. President Barack Obama took office in January.

He said U.S. diplomats responsible for the North Korea nuclear dossier would meet the Japanese and South Korean envoys separately and then all three parties could meet informally too.

Duguid had no details of the agenda but the talks are expected to focus on a long-range missile North Korea has in place for launch, which Washington and its allies say would violate U.N. sanctions imposed on the reclusive state for past weapons tests.

“A launch of any type of vehicle we would consider to be in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions,” said Duguid. “This provocative type of action would … not go unnoticed,” he told reporters.

Right at the moment the Obama Administration has quite a bit on its plate. The economy still needs attention, there are several important meetings going on in Europe next week including an international conference on Afghanistan. And North Korea will not be ignored.

Paul Hockenos, editor of Internationale Politik-Global Edition, argues in an intriguing Spiegel piece that the United States should rethink its relationship with NATO and instead focus on the EU.

In my New Atlanticist piece “Should Obama Abandon NATO for the EU?,” I argue against his false dilemma and point out reasons why it benefits the United States to work with both institutions.  I propose a better (but equally implausible in the short term) idea:

Perhaps one day we’ll merge NATO and the EU, creating a North Atlantic Union or some such.  It only makes sense to have the two largest economies remove barriers to trade and travel within their zone and there would certainly be an efficiency created by the merger.   Of course, that only makes sense if the EU decides to pull back from its ambitions to be a United States of Europe and instead decide that it’s better off as a cooperative among sovereign nation-states who share common values and interests but yet sufficiently distinct cultures to make full merger undesirable.

Comments and suggestions welcome.