George W. Bush used to ask “why haven’t we found bin Laden?” with such regularity that an exasperated official once suggested sending a one-sentence reply back to the president. “Because he’s hiding.”
The announcement that General David Petraeus is going to run the CIA is interesting for lots of reasons. Some political pundits reckon that it is a clever way for President Obama to sideline a potential rivalry for the presidency. It is also a sign of the increasingly militarised nature of the CIA. By tradition the Agency is headed by a civilian. But in recent years, it has taken the lead in running the lethal drone strikes, targetting al-Qaeda and other militants based inside Pakistan. The CIA also has its own paramilitaries and special forces who were very much in evidence in the initial invasion of Afghanistan.
I think the biggest concern about Petraeus must be whether he will be capable of making impartial intelligence judgements about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – given that he played such a big role in designing the strategies there.
There has been a certain amount of sniggering about the fact that it was Obama’s female advisers who were most prominent in pressing for military intervention in Libya, while the men hung back. Amongst the interventionists were the evocatively-named pair of Power and Slaughter – that is Samantha Power on the National Security Council and Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recently stepped down as head of the Policy Planning staff at the State Department and tweeted effectively from her new perch at Princeton. And then there was Susan Rice, the US ambassador at the UN and, finally (and decisively), Hillary Clinton.
Last night, I did a discussion with Joseph Nye at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on the future of American power. You can watch the video here. The experience was mildly intimidating since Nye is an eminent Harvard professor, inventor of the term “soft power” and a former chair of America’s National Intelligence Council. But, what the hell, I’ve written a few newspaper columns.
President Obama sounded more like salesman-in-chief than commander-in-chief when he told Hu Jintao, his Chinese opposite number – “We want to sell you planes, we want to sell you cars, we want to sell you software.” And I’m sure the Americans could probably do the Chinese president a good deal on central heating, if he was interested.
With Hu Jintao about to arrive in the US, it seems like a good time to revisit this fascinating question. Americans seem rather confused about this topic. Some opinion polls suggest that most Americans believe that China is already the world’s largest economy. On the other hand some participants in this NPR radio discussion I took part in over the weekend, seemed to believe that the great ”sorpasso” is still many years away – thirty or forty years, at least. So what is going on?
The economic crisis has given new life to an old debate.
I have written a cover story for Foreign Policy magazine in the US on the great decline debate – and I take the gloomy view. Sorry about that. If you are wondering why I’m writing for people other than the FT, it’s a special dispensation to do with the publication of my book. It comes out in the US on February 1st.
The Wikileaks saga continues to dominate the foreign pages. So should I revise my opinion that it’s all a huge fuss about surprisingly little? A bit - but only a bit.
In my last post, I said that there was only one revelation that had half-surprised me – and this was the idea that the Saudis are urging an attack on Iran. Since then, there has one other thing that struck me as real news -and that is the suggestion that China is prepared to accept a reunified Korea, which still played host to American troops. But, even here, it’s not clear that how far the Chinese sources cited actually reflect a unified and settled position in Beijing. It sounds to me more like a single official, reflecting a policy discussion that is underway in China. It’s interesting to get a glimpse of that discussion. But, again, I think you could probably assume that in a sophisticated government like China’s, these kinds of option would be under discussion.
Follow President Obama’s press conference here live from 11am Washington time, with Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce.
12:23pm - Most of the pundits expected a press conference that would be more dominated by the president’s economic woes in the context of the upcoming mid-term elections. Certainly that was a key part of it – and the least convincing in terms of the president’s performance.
But in the event, the real theme that emerged was about 9/11, Afghanistan, the crazy pastor in Florida and the need to treat American Muslims as brothers and sisters. It was striking how good, impassioned and convincing President Obama was on the second half of the 77 minute press conference that was dominated by the Islam theme (for want of a better heading) against the very familiar and unconvincing answers he gave on the economy in the first half. As the conference moved from the first to the second, President Obama appeared to pick up the energy, verve and persuasiveness that had been so lacking in the first half.
| About this blog | About Gideon | Blog guide |
FT.com latest world news
For views and opinions on the European Union from Peter Spiegel, Joshua Chaffin, Alex Barker and Stanley Pignal, follow the FT's Brussels blog here.
The FT's Global Insight column
Older entries