US foreign policy specialist Stephen Walt lists the top ten questions you won’t hear during tonight’s last presidential nominee debate. Iran will be a central focus, if not the most talked about issue, but we’re unlikely to hear serious discussion along these lines according to Walt:

8. The United States has [...]]]> via Lobe Log

US foreign policy specialist Stephen Walt lists the top ten questions you won’t hear during tonight’s last presidential nominee debate. Iran will be a central focus, if not the most talked about issue, but we’re unlikely to hear serious discussion along these lines according to Walt:

8. The United States has the world’s strongest conventional forces and no powerful enemies near its shores. It has allies all over the world, and military bases on every continent. Yet the United States also keeps thousands of nuclear weapons at the ready to deter hostile attack.

Iran is much weaker than we are, and it has many rivals near its borders. Many U.S. politicians have called for the overthrow of its government. Three close neighbors have nuclear weapons: Pakistan, India, and Israel. If having nuclear weapons makes sense for the United States, doesn’t it make sense for Iran too? And won’t threatening Iran with an attack just make them want a deterrent even more?

(Follow up: You both believe all options should be “on the table” with Iran, including the use of military force. Would you order an attack on Iran without U.N. Security Council authorization? How would this decision to launch an unprovoked attack be different from Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941?

Mr. President, you have said in all manner of ways that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be “unacceptable,” and that you will not take options off the table to prevent this outcome—a clear reference to the potential use of military force. But a bipartisan group of foreign policy heavyweights, in addition to numerous top former Israeli security officials, believe that attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities could engender grave consequences, with the maximum benefit being only a delay in Iran’s nuclear program. What’s more, many of these experts think attacking could actually spur the Iranian government to kick out nuclear inspects and actually build a weapon. Can an attack stop Iran?

Governor Romney, after going back and forth on where you would place the “red line,” which would trigger military action, on Iran’s nuclear program, you’ve settled on declaring that you would stop an Iranian weapons “capability.” On yourcampaign website, you say that if the Iranians get even a weapons “capability,” “the entire geostrategic landscape of the Middle East would shift in favor of the ayatollahs.” Other than appearing to be at some point short of nuclear weapons “production”—where the President Obama set his red line—”capability” is an ill-defined concept. How do you define a nuclear weapons “capability” and how would that change the Middle East?

And on the issue of Israel-Palestine, which thanks to Bibi Netanyahu’s relentless Iran campaign this year has virtually disappeared from mainstream press attention, Walt asks:

3. Both of you claim to support a “two-state” solution between Israel and the Palestinians. But since the last election, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has increased by more than 25,000 and now exceeds half-million people. If continued settlement growth makes a two-state solution impossible, what should United States do? Would you encourage Israel to allow “one-person, one-vote” without regard to religion or ethnicity — as we do here in the United States — or would you support denying Palestinians under Israeli control in Gaza and the West Bank full political rights?

The National Security Network also provides a wealth of additional resources for tonight’s event.

“U.S., allies in Gulf naval exercise as Israel, Iran face off”: Reuters reports on the mineclearing exercise scheduled to take place in the coming days in the Strait of Hormuz:

Publicly announced in July, the operation, known as IMCMEX-12, focuses on clearing mines that Tehran, or guerrilla groups, might deploy [...]]]> via Lobe Log

“U.S., allies in Gulf naval exercise as Israel, Iran face off”: Reuters reports on the mineclearing exercise scheduled to take place in the coming days in the Strait of Hormuz:

Publicly announced in July, the operation, known as IMCMEX-12, focuses on clearing mines that Tehran, or guerrilla groups, might deploy to disrupt tanker traffic, notably in the Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and the Arabian peninsula.

…. However, it was a clearly deliberate demonstration of the determination on the part of a broad coalition of states to counter any attempt Iran might make to disrupt Gulf shipping in response to an Israeli or U.S. strike on its nuclear facilities – a form of retaliation Iran has repeatedly threatened.

“Israeli PM makes appeal to US voters: Elect president willing to draw ‘red line’ with Iran”: Though some commentators judged that Netanyahu’s Meet the Press appearance was meant to dissociate himself from Republican criticism of the Obama Administration, the Associated Press did not accept that Netanyahu’s appearance was aimed at smoothing over the animosity between him and the president:

His remarks were an impassioned election-season plea from a world leader who insists he doesn’t want to insert himself into U.S. politics and hasn’t endorsed either candidate. But visibly frustrated by U.S. policy under President Barack Obama, the hawkish Israeli leader took advantage of the week’s focus on unrest across the Muslim world and America’s time-honored tradition of the Sunday television talk shows to appeal to Americans headed to the polls in less than two months.

Ali Gharib writes at the Daily Beast that with this appearance, Netanyahu is still trying to force the US to accept his definition of a “red line”:

This flap has not been about imposing a red line, but about shifting it—from actual weapons production to the capability to produce weapons—something elucidated even in the pages of the neoconservative Weekly Standard. Meet the Press host David Gregory asked U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice about it. Why, in an otherwise tough interview, he didn’t ask Netanyahu to expound the distinction is beyond me.

“Ambassador Susan Rice: U.S. Not ‘Impotent’ in Muslim World”: The US Ambassador to the UN told ABC’s Jake Tapper that the protests in Libya and other Muslims countries such as Egypt, Sudan and Yemen, were not evidence of a US decline in influence in these states:

I [Tapper] … asked Rice, “President Obama pledged to repair America’s relationships with the Muslim world. Why does the U.S. seem so impotent? And why is the U.S. even less popular today in some of these Muslim and Arab countries than it was four years ago?”

“We’re not impotent, we’re not even less popular, to challenge that assessment,” Rice said in response. “What happened this week in Cairo, in Benghazi and many other parts of the region was a result, a direct result, of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”

Rice further denied that the embassy storming in Libya was pre-planned to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, a point which the Washington Post says contradicts Libyan claims.

“Revolutionary Guard Chief Holds Press Conference”: Al-Monitor runs a summary translation of remarks made by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a widely-publicized Tehran speech. Jafari discussed the prescence of Iranian advisors in Syria but avoided making a firm commitment to the military defense of Assad’s government:

Regarding Syria, Jafari made a number of revealing comments. He said, “everyone knows the corps (sepah) had and has a unit by the name of the Islamic Movements, formed to help the oppressed and export the revolution, and which works in this direction. From the time the Qods force was formed, the goal of this force was the defence of innocent nations, particularly Muslims. A number of the Qods forces are present in Syria, but this isn’t the same as a military presence in this country.”

He continued, “if we compare the presence with Arab and non-Arab countries we will see that Iran doesn’t have such a presence. We are helping intellectually and advising Syria as a resistance group, as the Supreme Leader also indicated and Iran is proud of this issue and the help it is providing for it. The corps will partake in any kind of intellectual assistance or even economic support, but it does not have a military presence and this is at a point where some countries are not refraining from terror[ism] in this country. We of course forcefully condemn this matter, and don’t accept it.”

When Jafari was asked whether Iran would support Syria militarily in the event of a military attack, given the security agreement between the two countries he replied: “this issue depends of the circumstances. I can now say with assurance in the event of a military attack against Syria, whether Iran will also support militarily is unclear, and it completely depends on the circumstances.”

“The Innocence Protests Expose Deeper Tensions in Yemen”: TIME provides some context for the storming of the US embassy in Yemen, a country where the US (alongside Saudi Arabia) is participating in a Yemeni government counterinsurgency campaign, which is highly reliant on drone strikes, against Yemeni Islamists and elements of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP):

It would be naive to think that Thursday’s infiltration and wholesale destruction of one of the most, if not the most, highly secured buildings in the country was the product of a few hundred angry protesters. A fuller explanation seems to lie in the capital’s tense environment, where rival elites are jockeying for power in an uncertain political landscape.

…. On the eve of the U.S. embassy attack, the President dismissed stalwart Saleh loyalist Major General Abdul Wahab al-Anesi from his powerful posts as director of the Presidential Office and chairman of the National Security Bureau, as well as sacked four pro-Saleh governors across the country.

The following morning, CSF (Central Security Force) forces under the command of Saleh’s nephew Yahya were pictured at a checkpoint outside the embassy signaling the mob of angry protesters to enter the premises. Video footage of the waning moments of the embassy attack showed exhilarated rioters embracing a CSF soldier before sprinting out of the compound.

The always thorough Mark Hibbs has a smart piece regarding the meaning of the resolution passed last week by the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) Board of Governors regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The resolution was initiated by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The always thorough Mark Hibbs has a smart piece regarding the meaning of the resolution passed last week by the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) Board of Governors regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The resolution was initiated by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) and modified with South African input, with only Cuba dissenting and Egypt, Tunisia, and Ecuador abstaining.

Rather than interpreting it as a message of unity among the P5+1 , Hibbs sees the resolution as “a lowest-common-denominator product” whose main intention was to “emphasize that the diplomatic process should continue and that the war of words should not intensify.”

So the resolution was not merely intended for Iran. Its emphatic, twice-mentioned support for a “comprehensive negotiated, long term solution, on the basis of reciprocity and a step-by-step approach, which restores international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program consistent with the NPT,” Hibbs points out, was also directed at Benjamin Netanyahu who despite being told in no uncertain terms to let go of the idea of resolving the nuclear issue militarily at least for now, seems unable to do so.

By avoiding inflammatory language, the board in effect delayed serious conversation about the intricacies of dealing with Iran’s nuclear program until after the United States November 6 presidential election. In Hibbs’ words:

[T]he IAEA resolution was informed by the perspective that as long as Iran doesn’t know who will be in the White House next January, it can’t be expected to negotiate seriously with the P5+1 on a long-term solution that would require that the U.S. make some firm commitments to Iran.

In other words, the change of subject to the broad support for diplomacy versus war has in effect lent the Obama Administration a hand in keeping the real Iran question – which has to do with how it plans to address Iran’s insistence on its nuclear rights through negotiation – out of the presidential contest.

But “kicking the can down the road” does not necessarily mean progress in figuring out how to resolve thorny issues. From the looks of it, neither does the idea of “we are going to keep sanctioning until Iran decides to negotiate seriously.” To be sure, one can continue to hope that this is not so. In the words of the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, the Iranian economy is “beginning to buckle” under a new round of tough sanctions. “So we think that there’s still considerable time for this pressure to work,” she said. But even Rice has to acknowledge that “this is not an infinite window.”

The reality is that sanctions may or may not prod Tehran to accept a bad deal but, after almost 9 years of negotiations, it is highly unlikely that the Iranian leadership will back down from its repeatedly declared position even in the face of a deteriorating economy. This is especially so since Tehran’s declared stance — that it will not sign onto something that will permanently treat Iran differently than other countries in terms of its permitted enrichment activities and the kind of inspection regime that is required to oversee its nuclear program — is not an especially outrageous position.

This is why Hibbs is correct to assert that a long-term solution to the stand-off will require some sort of firm commitments to Iran, including for instance “permitting Iran to continue enriching uranium after the IAEA, having implemented Additional Protocol-plus, delivers its imprimatur that Iran’s nuclear program is clearly dedicated to peaceful use.”

But the way Hibbs has laid out the end game already hints at how difficult negotiations are going to be even if – a very big if – a re-elected Obama Administration gives firm commitments to permit Iran to continue enriching eventually. Tehran will have all sorts of concerns and questions. How can it be assured that the IAEA’s imprimatur will not take forever? What does the “Additional Protocol-plus” entail? Iran knows it includes the inspection of the military site at Parchin, but is that it? Will the “plus” remain permanent or in a state of constant flux? And how does this schedule of the IAEA giving a clean bill of health to Iran coordinate with the potpourri of sanctions imposed by the UN, US, and EU?

The United States for its part will have all sorts of concerns, the most important of which is the fear that Iran will play games if sanctions are lessened in a step-by-step approach pushed by the Russians and now included in the IAEA resolution. The decision to ease up, even a little, on an instrument that has been quite successful in cornering Tehran for the sake of continued negotiations will not be easy. It could even prove impossible. But, assuming a re-election, the Obama Administration will no longer have electoral politics as an excuse for not deliberating on it.

The New Yorker’s David Remnick explains why Benjamin Netanyahu’s “high-handed way” of dealing with US presidents serves neoconservative strategy:

…In his first term as Prime Minister, in the nineties, Netanyahu used to behave in such a high-handed way with White House officials that Bill Clinton left meetings with him [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The New Yorker’s David Remnick explains why Benjamin Netanyahu’s “high-handed way” of dealing with US presidents serves neoconservative strategy:

…In his first term as Prime Minister, in the nineties, Netanyahu used to behave in such a high-handed way with White House officials that Bill Clinton left meetings with him bewildered and bemused, wondering who, in their relationship, was the leader of a superpower. But Netanyahu’s arrogance, in the guise of Churchillian prescience, has hardly receded over the years. Obama, in an attempt to cool the latest crisis, called Netanyahu last night and spent an hour talking with him.

Adding to the outrage is the fact that Netanyahu is performing not just for his allies on the Israeli right but for those he perceives as his allies on the American right, including those in the Jewish community. His performance is in the same neocon voice as the one adopted by the Romney campaign and in its opportunistic reaction to the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outposts in Cairo and Benghazi, which left our Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other consular employees dead. Unbelievably, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, took to Twitter and wrote, “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.” Romney himself accused Obama of sympathizing with the attackers in Libya.

The neocon strategy, in both Israel and the U.S., is to paint Obama as naïve in the extreme. In this, Netanyahu and Romney are united—and profoundly cynical.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On today’s MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Israeli Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon disapproved of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments via Lobe Log

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On today’s MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Israeli Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon disapproved of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments regarding deadlines on Iran’s nuclear program. After claiming that “we know that Iran is building a nuclear bomb” and blaming President Obama for “deciding not to decide”, Danon said that the threat Israel perceives from Iran will come to “your [the US’s] shores” one day. He added that war against Iran should be a “joint effort”:

Danon: I want to make sure that our region is stable. In order to do that, we have to tell Iran, we will not allow you to become nuclear. And if it takes a military action, we are willing. And I say “we” – it’s not only Israelis, not only Jews against Arabs because of the values, because of democracy. And look at what’s happening right now in Egypt and in Libya. Those people are against the U.S. embassies because of the values that we represent.

Geist: Just to be clear, this is very important: you, as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, believe all other options have been exhausted and it’s time for military action in Iran?

Danon: Absolutely but it should be a joint effort of the Western societies and not only Israel should take the burden to deal with this threat.

Morning Joe later featured TIME’s Joe Klein on the same show. Responding to Danon’s remarks, Klein argued that the Netanyahu government is trying to push the US into a war with Iran that would not serve US or Israeli interests:

As for Israel, and the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and the Prime Minister, I don’t think I’ve ever, in the forty years I’ve been doing this – and I’m trying to search my mind through history – have heard of another example of an American ally trying to push us into war as blatantly, and trying to influence an American election as blatantly as Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud party in Israel is doing right now. I think it’s absolutely outrageous and disgusting. It’s not a way that friends treat each other. And it is cynical and it is brazen.

Klein contested Danon’s dismissal of the effectiveness of sanctions and argued that if Iran did make the decision to obtain a nuclear weapon, it would use it as a deterrent and not operationally “unless provoked.” He and his hosts also discussed the likelihood – without seeming to consider otherwise – that Netanyahu wants Mitt Romney to win the election because the Republican nominee would defer to the Likud government on most Middle East affairs.

Last month, from the polar opposite end of the ideological spectrum, neoconservative historian Michael Leeden wrote that Israel’s policy has been aimed at trying to get the US to initiate military strikes against Iran for decades:

…Israel does not want to do it.  For as long as I can remember, the Israelis have been trying to get U.S. to do it, because they have long believed that Iran was so big that only a big country could successfully take on the mullahs in a direct confrontation.  So Israel’s Iran policy has been to convince us to do whatever the Israelis think is best.  And while they’re willing to do their part, they are very reluctant to take on the entire burden.

Just read what Israeli leaders are saying and you’ll see that, I think.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marked Sept. 11 with “an unprecedented verbal attack on the U.S. government,” according to Barak Ravid ofHaaretz.

Netanyahu told reporters on Tuesday that “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marked Sept. 11 with “an unprecedented verbal attack on the U.S. government,” according to Barak Ravid ofHaaretz.

Netanyahu told reporters on Tuesday that “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

Netanyahu seems to be having a hard time keeping a lid on his temper these days. But the White House may also be losing patience with Netanyahu. A few hours after Netanyahu’s rant, the White House declined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to meet with Obama during a UN conference in New York in late September. A White House official said that Obama’s schedule does not allow for a meeting during the two and a half days Netanyahu will be in the United States. Ravid considers the White House’s response as marking  “a new low in relations between Netanyahu and Obama, underscored by the fact that this is the first time Netanyahu will visit the US as prime minister without meeting the president.”

From another perspective Bradley Burston points out:

…it’s not every day that the prime minister of an Israel whose very security depends on close cooperation with the White House, appears to work angles to try to see an incumbent president defeated – for example, announcing just at the climax of the Republican convention his intention to go to the UN to tell the world of the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program.

Only, in the case of Benjamin Netanyahu and his staff, it has been literally every day.

On August 14, the Israeli news daily Ma’ariv reported that Netanyahu had given Obama a deadline of September 25 to announce to the world that the US would be taking military action against Iran’s nuclear program. Israel would agree to defer a military attack on Iran if Obama publicly declared — at the UN General Assembly or any other public venue of his choosing — that the US will launch a war on Iran as soon as the US election results are in. No further elaboration — or corroboration — of the Sept. 25 “deadline”, which coincides with the eve of the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, has since appeared in Israeli or US press.

Then, Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers revealed that during his visit to Israel in late August, when he expected to discuss “intelligence and technical issues” with the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu was “at his wit’s end” and lashed out at US Ambassador Dan Shapiro over the Obama administration’s Iran policy. During a radio interview Rogers described the meeting to WJR’s Frank Beckmann as “Very tense. Some very sharp… exchanges and it was very, very clear the Israelis had lost their patience with the [Obama] Administration.” Rogers, a Republican who had issued a pro-Romney statement on July 25  declaring that “America’s national security officials should never allow politics to interfere with their vital work of keeping the American people safe,” nevertheless very publicly took the Israeli Prime Minister’s side against the US president, implicitly criticizing an ambassador for being a  diplomat and downplaying the altercation.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Bloomburg Radio that  the objective of the sanctions was “to do everything we can to bring Iran to a good-faith negotiation” and that the US is “not setting deadlines.”  But Netanyahu  insisted in an interview on Sunday that Israel was discussing red lines with the United States. Netanyahu chose a  press conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov on Sept. 11 to vent his rage.

“Now if Iran knows that there is no red line. If Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it’s doing. It’s continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs,” he said.

Burston views Netanyahu’s Sept. 11 outburst  as a response to Obama’s resurgence in the polls, which has short-circuited Netanyahu’s scheme for keeping the US president under his thumb by exploiting his ostensible political vulnerability:

As long as the Obama campaign seemed to be sputtering, there seemed no downside to hectoring, lecturing, and loudly, if indirectly, ridiculing the Obama administration for being soft on Iran. As long as the incumbent president seemed on the ropes, as he did after the sweeping Republican gains in the 2010 midterm elections, Netanyahu could view brinksmanship with the White House over Iran as a sure thing.

Take Netanyahu’s demand that the White House set red lines and deadlines, beyond which the United States would be committed to unleashing a military onslaught against Iranian nuclear facilities.

If President Obama failed to agree, Republicans could paint him as weak and open to appeasement. If, on the other hand, Obama did agree, both Netanyahu and the Republican Party could claim victory, taking Obama to task for lacking the leadership they themselves had shown.

That strategy, however, may be backfiring. Burston notes that a growing number of current and former Israeli security, diplomatic, nuclear and intelligence experts have voiced their opposition not just to a unilateral Israeli offensive, but to any attack on Iran. Even Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Ehud Barak appears to have backed away from supporting an Israeli attack, and is urging that differences of opinion between the US and Israel regarding how to deal with Iran be settled “behind closed doors.”

Furthermore, for several weeks Israeli pundits have been warning about the possible consequences of Netanyahu’s open hostility towards Obama if Obama wins re-election. While no US president can or will sever military ties to Israel or allow it to be “wiped off the map,” there are ways that an American president can show his displeasure that in no way jeopardizes the survival of the Jewish state, but can bode ill for the political fortunes of an Israeli leader who isn’t nearly as popular at home as he is among low-information and right-wing American Jews.

As for red lines, Burston (who lives in Israel) has this recommendation for the Israeli Prime Minister:

If immediate red lines are in order, Benjamin Netanyahu would be well advised to set them for himself, and the malice and abuse and disrespect he has heaped on the president. If deadlines are in order, he might consider his upcoming U.S. visit – and the White House rejection of a meeting with Obama – as an opportune moment to shut down entirely the verbal centrifuges he has set spinning in attacks on the president, the secretary of state, and other administration officials.

Disillusioned by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. public is becoming increasingly comfortable with a more modest and less militarised global role for the nation, according to the latest in a biennial series of major surveys.

That attitude is particularly pronounced in the so-called Millennial Generation, citizens between the [...]]]> via IPS News

Disillusioned by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. public is becoming increasingly comfortable with a more modest and less militarised global role for the nation, according to the latest in a biennial series of major surveys.

That attitude is particularly pronounced in the so-called Millennial Generation, citizens between the ages of 18 and 29, according to the poll. They are generally much less worried about international terrorism, immigration, and the rise of China and are far less supportive of an activist U.S. approach to foreign affairs than older groups, it found.

Political independents, who will likely play a decisive role in the outcome of November’s presidential election, also tend more than either Republicans or Democrats to oppose interventionist policies in world affairs, according to the survey, which was released at the Wilson Center for International Scholars here Monday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA).

The survey results suggest that more aggressive and militaristic policies adopted by Republicans at their convention last month may be out of step with both independents and younger voters.

“If you read the whole report,” noted Daniel Drezner, an international relations professor who blogs at foreignpolicy.com, “what’s striking is how much the majority view on foreign policy jibes with what the Obama administration has been doing in the world: military retrenchment from the Middle East, a reliance on diplomacy and sanctions to deal with rogue states, a refocusing on East Asia, and prudent cuts in defence spending.”

For the first time since the Council posed the question in 1994, a majority of its nearly 1,900 adult respondents said they believe that Asia is more important to the United States than Europe.

Reflecting perhaps the so-called “pivot” by the administration of President Barack Obama from the Middle East to Asia, 52 percent of respondents said Asia was more important, a 10-percent increase over the Council’s 2010 survey result. The Pew Research Center found a similar change in its own survey earlier this year.

The survey, which was conducted in late May and early June, also found strong resistance by the public to becoming more deeply involved – especially militarily – in the Middle East, despite the perception by seven in 10 respondents that the region is more threatening to U.S. security than any other.

For the first time since 9/11, majorities said they opposed the retention or establishment of long-term U.S. military bases in Iraq or Afghanistan.

At the same time, 70 percent of respondents said they opposed a unilateral U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and almost as many (59 percent) said the U.S. should not ally itself militarily with Israel if the Jewish state attacks Iran.

The survey, which was released on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Pentagon, suggested that the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with the continuing hardships of the 2008 global financial crisis, have soured much of the public on foreign intervention, especially military intervention.

“Ten years after 9/11, we see that Americans are in the process of recalibrating their views on international engagement and searching for less costly ways to project positive U.S. influence and protect American interests around the world,” said Marshall Bouton, CCFR’s long-time president.

“Now, with a strong sense that the wars have over-stretched our military and strained our economic resources, they prefer to avoid the use of military force if at all possible,” he noted.

Indeed, the survey found that a record 67 percent of the public now believes the war in Iraq was “not worth it”, while seven of 10 respondents agreed that “the experience of the Iraq war should make nations more cautious about using military force.”

Sixty-nine percent said the war in Afghanistan either made “no difference” to U.S. security (51 percent) or that it made the country “less safe” (18 percent).

The degree of disillusion with foreign affairs in light of the past decade was perhaps most starkly illustrated by the answers to the binary question of whether respondents thought it best for the U.S. to “take an active part in world affairs” or “stay out of world affairs”.

Led by the Millenials (52 percent), 38 percent of all respondents opted for the latter – the highest percentage since just after World War II and seven points higher than in 2010, according to the Council’s analysis. A majority of 61 percent said Washington should take an “active part” – the smallest majority since 1998.

Nearly eight in 10 respondents (78 percent) said they believe the U.S. is playing the role of world policeman more than it should – a figure that has been constant since 2004, a year after the Iraq invasion.

“While they see leadership as desirable,” according to the Council analysis, “Americans clearly reject the role of the United States as a hyperpower and want to take a more cooperative stance.”

Indeed 56 percent now agree with the proposition that Washington should be “more willing to make decisions within the United Nations” even if such decisions are not its first choice. That is a marked increase from a historic low of 50 percent in 2010.

Most respondents said they were not concerned about the growing influence of emerging nations in Asia and elsewhere. Asked for their reaction to increased foreign policy independence of countries like Turkey and Brazil, nearly seven in 10 respondents (69 percent) agreed that it was “mostly good” because of their reduced reliance on the U.S. rather than that it was “mostly bad because then they are likely to do things the U.S. does not support”.

The survey found persistent support for a large military – 53 percent said they believed “maintaining superior military power” is a “very important” foreign policy goal. But that was down from 67 percent in 2002, shortly after 9/11.

Contrary to Republican demands that the defence budget should be increased, two-thirds of respondents said it should be cut, and half of those said it should be cut the same or more than other government programmes.

And while Republicans continue to attack Obama for “leading from behind” during last year’s intervention in Libya, Bouton said his survey results found that the public was quite comfortable with the low-key role.

Only seven percent said Washington should have taken the “leading role” in the military campaign; 72 percent said it should have taken “a minor role” (31 percent) or “a major but not leading role” (41 percent). Nineteen percent said the U.S. should not have participated at all.

Republican politicans have also mocked Obama for offering to negotiate directly with hostile states. But more than two-thirds of respondents said Washington should be ready to hold talks with the leaders of Cuba (73 percent), North Korea (69 percent) and Iran (67 percent).

The survey found that self-described Republicans generally see the world as more hostile and threatening than Democrats.

The most striking differences between members of the two parties were found over immigration, climate change, and the Middle East, particularly on Israel-related issues, with Republicans siding much more strongly with Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran.

In the late 1940s, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg famously said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” In recent years, adherence to the axiom has fallen by the wayside. In 2005, President Clinton criticized the sitting Bush administration in a Dubai speech. And President Obama delivered a 2008 speech to [...]]]> via Think Progress

In the late 1940s, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg famously said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” In recent years, adherence to the axiom has fallen by the wayside. In 2005, President Clinton criticized the sitting Bush administration in a Dubai speech. And President Obama delivered a 2008 speech to cheering throngs in Berlin during a presidential race. But Obama’s Berlin speech focused on policy issues and avoided criticizing his Republican opponent Sen. John McCain (AZ) or the waning Bush administration.

This weekend, however, the Romney campaign took politics overseas in a much more explicit fashion: dispatching two advisers to foreign publications amid an established one-on-one presidential race to heavily criticize President Obama by name and build their case that Mitt Romney should be president.

In one of the salvos against President Obama, Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard took to the pages of the German business magazine Handelsblatt to sharply criticize the administration’s stance on the European fiscal crisis. According to a translated portions of the article in the New York Times, Hubbard lambasted Obama’s “ignorance of the causes of the crisis and of a growth trend in the future,” calling the president “unwise.” After taking the president to task by name, Hubbard contrasted him with Romney:

Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican opponent, understands this very well and advises a gradual fiscal consolidation for the U.S.: structural reform to stimulate growth.

According to the Times, the Obama campaign already took a shot at Hubbard’s op-ed:

In a foreign news outlet, Governor Romney’s top economic adviser both discouraged essential steps that need to be taken to promote economic recovery and attempted to undermine America’s foreign policy abroad.

The second overseas assault on President Obama came from Romney foreign policy adviser Amb. Richard Williamson. Speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Williamson zeroed in on Obama’s Iran and Israel policies. “Under Barack Obama, our national security capabilities have decreased,” he said, blasting “President Obama’s feckless and ineffective leadership.” He went on:

What the Governor has tried to make clear is that one of the unfortunate results of the Obama foreign policy is our friends and allies, including Great Britain, Israel and others, have not had their interests taken into account, have not been consulted closely, and there isn’t a constructive working relationship.

The claims are baseless. Indeed, Romney and his advisers are the ones who last month publicly trashed Great Britain, its leaders, and other European allies. And Williamson’s claim that “there isn’t a constructive working relationship” with Israel belie a reality where Israeli leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu note that Obama “rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented,” and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Obama is an “extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to its security” and that no one should “raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.”

With direct political attacks being waged overseas, the 1940s and Vandenberg are clearly in the rearview. But perhaps at least the Romney campaign could do America — and the world — a favor by maintaining a modicum of honesty in their attacks on Obama launched from overseas.

Photo: Newscom

It’s almost as if Mitt Romney adviser John Bolton is rooting for a war with Iran. That’s sure what it seems like when the hawkish former U.N. ambassador cheers the lack of concrete progress in diplomatic talks with Iran over its nuke program, and then goes on to fear-monger about [...]]]> via Think Progress

It’s almost as if Mitt Romney adviser John Bolton is rooting for a war with Iran. That’s sure what it seems like when the hawkish former U.N. ambassador cheers the lack of concrete progress in diplomatic talks with Iran over its nuke program, and then goes on to fear-monger about Iranian advances. And that’s exactly what Bolton did in a new Washington Times op-ed.

First, Bolton started off by expressing his relief that the last round of talks in Baghdad between Iran and the West yielded no breakthroughs:

Fortunately, however, the recently concluded Baghdad talks between Iran and the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany (P-5+1) produced no substantive agreement.

War isn’t the only alternative to immediate success in the diplomatic negotiations in Baghdad (indeed, there’ll be another round of talks for later this month in Moscow), but Bolton’s record indicates that’s clearly what he’s aiming for. Since at least 2008, Bolton has been calling for the U.S. to support an Israeli attack on Iran — even suggesting a nuclear attack. He’s also called for a U.S. attack, and any old excuse will do. (Mubarak falls in Egypt? Bomb Iran.) Bombing is, as Media Matters put it, his “default setting” — even though he acknowledges it might not work.

It’s no surprise, then, that Bolton turned to some baseless fear-mongering on the Iranian nuclear program. U.S., Israeli, and U.N. estimates all reportedly indicate that Iran has not made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. But Bolton, at every turn, asserts that objective without evidence. In the Washington Times, he cited the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s program:

The most eye-catching item was evidence from the deeply buried Fordow facility of U-235 enrichment up to 27 percent, which Iran quickly dismissed as a technical glitch. Alternatively, of course, Iran could have been experimenting to find the most efficacious path to weapons-grade U-235 levels.

Iran wasn’t the only one to dismiss this as a “technical glitch.” The AP, which published the initial report on the traces of uranium enriched to 27 percent purity, cited the “diplomats who had told the AP of the existence of the traces before publication of the confidential report” as saying that “the higher-enriched material could have been a mishap involving centrifuges over-performing as technicians adjusted their output rather than a dangerous step toward building a bomb.” And the New York Times reported that U.S. officials and nuclear experts shared this view:

“It’s definitely embarrassing but not nefarious,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research group that tracks the Iranian nuclear program, said in an interview.

A senior Obama administration official agreed that “the most likely explanation” for the discovery was technical.

Don’t count on Bolton, though, to explain those perspectives to his readers. Doing so wouldn’t bolster his long-standing calls for war. And don’t count on him for airing any of the possible negative consequences of war either (in line with the Romney campaign’s modus operandi), not least of which that an attack may spur Iran to actually build a bomb.

Those consequences and the intelligence estimates are the reasons the Obama administration, despite its view that a potential Iranian nuclear weapon would constitute a threat to the U.S., its allies and the non-proliferation regime, pursues its dual-track of pressure and diplomatic engagement. And that’s why the administration, instead of cheering for diplomacy to fail like Bolton, considers a negotiated diplomatic solution to be the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.

By Bill McKibben

Reposted by arrangement with Tom Dispatch

Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama’s announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the [...]]]> Is Global Warming an Election Issue After All?

By Bill McKibben

Reposted by arrangement with Tom Dispatch

Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama’s announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in — and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change.

The pipeline decision was a true upset.  Everyone — and I mean everyone who “knew” how these things work — seemed certain that the president would approve it. The National Journal runs a weekly poll of “energy insiders” — that is, all the key players in Washington. A month to the day before the Keystone XL postponement, this large cast of characters was “virtually unanimous” in guaranteeing that it would be approved by year’s end.

Transcanada Pipeline, the company that was going to build the 1,700-mile pipeline from the tar-sands fields of Alberta, Canada, through a sensitive Midwestern aquifer to the Gulf of Mexico, certainly agreed.  After all, they’d already mowed the strip and prepositioned hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pipe, just waiting for the permit they thought they’d bought with millions in lobbying gifts and other maneuvers. Happily, activists across the country weren’t smart enough to know they’d been beaten, and so they staged the largest civil disobedience action in 35 years, not to mention ringing the White House with people, invading Obama campaign offices, and generally proving that they were willing to fight.

No permanent victory was won. Indeed, just yesterday Transcanada agreed to reroute the pipeline in Nebraska in an effort to speed up the review, though that appears not to change the schedule.  Still, we’re waiting for the White House to clarify that they will continue to fully take climate change into account in their evaluation.  But even that won’t be final.  Obama could just wait for an election victory and then approve the pipeline — as any Republican victor certainly would.  Chances are, nonetheless, that the process has now gotten so messy that Transcanada’s pipeline will die of its own weight, in turn starving the tar-sands oil industry and giving a boost to the global environment.  Of course, killing the pipeline will hardly solve the problem of global warming (though heavily exploiting those tar sands would, in NASA scientist James Hansen’s words, mean “game over for the climate.”)

In this line of work, where victories of any kind are few and far between, this was a real win.  It began with indigenous activists, spread to Nebraska ranchers, and eventually turned into the biggest environmental flashpoint in many years.  And it owed no small debt to the Occupy Wall Street protesters shamefully evicted from Zuccotti Park last night, who helped everyone understand the power of corporate money in our daily lives.  That these forces prevailed shocked most pundits precisely because it’s common wisdom that they’re not the sort of voters who count, certainly not in a year of economic trouble.

In fact, the biggest reason the realists had no doubts the pipeline would get its permit, via a State Department review and a presidential thumbs-up of that border-crossing pipeline, was because of the well-known political potency of the jobs argument in bad economic times. Despite endless lazy reporting on the theme of jobs versus the environment, there were actually no net jobs to be had from the pipeline. It was always a weak argument, since the whole point of a pipeline is that, once it’s built, no one needs to work there.  In addition, as the one study not paid for by Transcanada made clear, the project would kill as many jobs as it would create.

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson finally demonstrated this late in the game with a fine report taking apart Transcanada’s job estimates. (The 20,000 jobs endlessly taken for granted assumed, among other stretches, that modern dance troupes would move to Nebraska, where part of the pipeline would be built, to entertain pipeline workers.)  Still, the jobs trope remained, and you can be sure that the Chamber of Commerce will run 1,000 ads during the 2012 presidential campaign trying to hammer it home. And you can be sure the White House knew that, which was why it was such a tough call for them — and why the pressure of a movement among people whose support matters to them made a difference.

Let’s assume the obvious then: that one part of their recent calculations that led to the postponement decision might just be the suspicion that they will actually win votes thanks to the global-warming question in the next election.

For one thing, global warming denial has seen its apogee. The concerted effort by the fossil-fuel industry to underwrite scientific revision met its match last month when a team headed by Berkeley skeptic and prominent physicist Richard Muller -- with funding from the Koch Brothers, of all people — actually found that, what do you know, all the other teams of climate-change scientists were, um, right. The planet was indeed warming just as fast as they, and the insurance companies, and the melting ice had been insisting.

Still, scientific studies only reach a certain audience.  Weird weather is a far more powerful messenger. It’s been hard to miss the record flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and across the Northeast; the record drought and fires across the Southwest; the record multi-billion dollar weather disasters across the country this year; the record pretty-much everything-you-don’t-want across the nation. Obama certainly noticed.  He’s responsible for finding the cash every time some other state submerges.

As a result, after years of decline, the number of Americans who understand that the planet is indeed warming and that we’re to blame appears to be on the rise again. And ironically enough, one reason may be the spectacle of all the tea-partying GOP candidates for the presidency being forced to swear fealty to the notion that global warming is a hoax. Normal people find this odd: it’s one thing to promise Grover Norquist that you’ll never ever raise taxes; it’s another to promise that you’ll defeat chemistry and physics with the mighty power of the market.

Along these lines, Mitt Romney made an important unforced error last month. Earlier in the primaries, he and Jon Huntsman had been alone in the Republican field in being open to the idea that global warming might actually be real. Neither wanted to do anything about it, of course, but that stance itself was enough to mark them as realists.  It was also a sign that Romney was thinking ahead to the election itself, and didn’t want to be pinned against this particular wall.

In late October, however, he evidently felt he had no choice but to pin himself to exactly that wall and so stated conclusively: “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.” In other words, he not only flip-flopped to the side of climate denial, but did so less than six months after he had said no less definitively: “I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer… And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”  Note as well that he did so, while all the evidence, even some recently funded by the deniers, pointed the other way.

If he becomes the Republican presidential candidate as expected, this may be the most powerful weathervane ad the White House will have in its arsenal.  Even for people who don’t care about climate change, it makes him look like the spinally challenged fellow he seems to be. But it’s an ad that couldn’t be run if the president had okayed that pipeline.

Now that Obama has at least temporarily blocked Keystone XL, now that his team has promised to consider climate change as a factor in any final decision on the pipeline’s eventual fate, he can campaign on the issue. And in many ways, it may prove a surprise winner.

After all, only people who would never vote for him anyway deny global warming.  It’s a redoubt for talk-show rightists. College kids, on the other hand, consistently rank it among the most important issues. And college kids, as Gerald Seib pointed out in the Wall Street Journal last week, are a key constituency for the president, who is expected to need something close to the two-thirds margin he won on campus in 2008 to win again in 2012.

Sure, those kids care about student loans, which threaten to take them under, and jobs, which are increasingly hard to come by, but the nature of young people is also to care about the world.  In addition, independent voters, suburban moms — these are the kinds of people who worry about the environment.  Count on it: they’ll be key targets for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Given the economy, that campaign will have to make Mitt Romney look like something other than a middle-of-the-road businessman.  If he’s a centrist, he probably wins. If he’s a flip-flopper with kooky tendencies, they’ve got a shot. And the kookiest thing he’s done yet is to deny climate science.

If I’m right, expect the White House to approve strong greenhouse gas regulations in the months ahead, and then talk explicitly about the threat of a warming world. In some ways it will still be a stretch.  To put the matter politely, they’ve been far from perfect on the issue: the president didn’t bother to waste any of his vaunted “political capital” on a climate bill, and he’s opened huge swaths of territory to coal mining and offshore drilling.

But blocking the pipeline finally gave him some credibility here — and it gave a lot more of the same to citizens’ movements to change our world. Since a lot of folks suspect that the only way forward economically has something to do with a clean energy future, I’m guessing that the pipeline decision won’t be the only surprise. I bet Barack Obama talks on occasion about global warming next year, and I bet it helps him.

But don’t count on that, or on Keystone XL disappearing, and go home.  If the pipeline story (so far) has one lesson, it’s this: you can’t expect anything to change if you don’t go out and change it yourself.

Bill McKibben is a founder of 350.org, a TomDispatch regular, and Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College. His most recent book is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Copyright 2011 Bill McKibben