ForeignPolicyAfter911

If you missed the course

Here is the url for the course calendar for the spring semester 2006.  If you missed the course, watch the videos which you can find there. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/911/courses/calendar.html The course will be offered again in spring 2006.

Harry Kreisler

Exam Questions without answers are posted

The exam questions without answers have been posted.  Go to the course home page.

Final Exam, Monday, May 8, 2006, 5p.m., 145 Dwinelle

The exam will be given on Monday, May 8th, in 145 Dwinelle during the regular class time beginning at 5 p.m. Bring scantron and pencil. 

The exam's multiple choice questions (without answers) will be posted on Thursday morning at the course web site. The exam will focus primarily on the lectures since the midterm and the assigned readings, including the interviews.

The video for all lectures is posted with the exception of the Larry Brilliant lecture. There will be questions on his lecture though the video will not be posted.

Monday, May 1, 2006, 5 p.m. Last Lecture, 145 Dwinelle

Ian Lustick, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennyslvania, will speak on "U.S. Foreign Policy and the War on Terror."

Monday, May 24th, 145 Dwinelle, 5p.m.

Our guest Monday will be Steve Walt, Academic Dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard.  He will be talking about "What Went Wrong with U.S. Foreign Policy."

Monday, April 17th, 5:00 P.M., 155 Dwinelle

Our guest for the next class will be Larry Brilliant, M.D., the new executive director of the Google Foundation.  He will be delivering the Sanford S. Elberg Lecture in 155 Dwinelle at 5 p.m.  His topic is "The Health of Humanity,"  and he will be talking about the issues of global health that are very much a part of a comprehensive foreign policy.  The world of pandemics and terrorist threats very much needs to hear voices like that of Larry Brilliant who was key figure in eradicating smallpox.

April 10, 2006 Class 7p.m 155 Dwinelle

Monday's class will be in 155 Dwinelle at 7 P.M. The session will be a panel on the Bush Presidency with

Michael Barone (Columnist, U.S. News and World Report), Michael Duffy (Assistant Managing Editor, Time), Michael Kinsley (Columnist, Washington Post), and Nelson Polsby (Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley)

April 3, 2006 Class

Our focus tonight will be U.S. policy toward Iran.  The session will provide insight into the current controversy over Iran's nuclear policy and also help us understand what the U.S. can and should do in the current situation with its military tied down in Iraq.  Our guest will be Dariush Zahedi who will offer insight into the foreign and domestic policy of Iran. Dariush was a political prisoner of the Iran regime and recently contributed this op ed to the New York Times

EDITORIAL DESK A Firebrand in a House of Cards By DARIUSH ZAHEDI AND OMID MEMARIAN (NYT) 973 words Published: January 12, 2006 New York Times Berkeley, Calif. - IN defying international monitors and breaking the seals on its nuclear facilities, Iran seems to be courting confrontation. But Western leaders would do well to consider what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bravado really says about Iran's likely posture in the region and at the nuclear talks that are scheduled to resume at the end of January. To continue down the path of conflict could be very costly, both for the regional interests of the United States and most of all, for the territorial integrity of Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad is surely motivated by ideology and the desire to solidify the position of the security faction within Iran's ruling elite. But he also appears to be acting on the perception that the United States is in a position of considerable, indeed unprecedented, weakness. America's military is overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington has focused on monitoring North Korea's nuclear program rather than Iran's. If threatened, Iran could wreak havoc in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. These observations may lead Mr. Ahmadinejad to an incorrect assessment of Iran's strength relative to any American threat. In fact, Iran has serious domestic frailties, including a shaky economy and its attendant unemployment and popular resentment, not to mention soaring levels of drug abuse and a brain drain. But President Ahmadinejad no doubt takes comfort not only in his belief in divine protection but also in the knowledge that Shiite religious parties aligned with Iran are now the dominant political forces in Iraq, while the American public hardly seems amenable to waging another war in the region. Moreover, Mr. Ahmadinejad very likely believes that the best way to guard against regime change from without is to emulate North Korea by swiftly advancing Iran's nuclear capacity. The new president also surely knows that even if Iran's nuclear dossier is referred to the United Nations Security Council, meaningful multilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic will most likely be vetoed by Russia or China. Flush with petrodollars, Iran has become a major purchaser of Russian technology, including roughly $1 billion worth of allegedly defensive weapons that Moscow recently agreed to sell to Tehran. Meanwhile, China, seizing on Iran as a key producer of oil and gas not beholden to the United States, has quickly emerged as one of Iran's largest trading partners. Given this favorable strategic picture, Mr. Ahmadinejad might even welcome an American or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Tehran could then retaliate against American and Israeli interests by mobilizing its Shiite allies in Iraq, the Persian Gulf countries and Lebanon -- or even by making common cause with some Sunni rivals. All the while, Mr. Ahmadinejad's faction in government would make full use of the war footing to marginalize its rivals at home and crush the remnants of Iran's civil society. But the Iranian regime is not invulnerable, and Washington knows this. Just as Iran can use the Shiite card to create mischief in the region, the United States could manipulate ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iran, which has significant, largely Sunni, minority populations along its borders. Many of Iran's ethnic and religious minorities see themselves as victims of discrimination, and they have not been effectively integrated into Iranian economic, political or cultural life. Some two million disgruntled Arabs reside mainly in the oil- and gas- rich province of Khuzestan. The United States could make serious trouble for Tehran by providing financial, logistical and moral support to Arab secessionists in that province. Other aggrieved Iranian minorities would be emboldened by the Arabs' example -- for example, the Kurds and the Baluchis, or even the Azeris (though the Azeris, being Shiites, are better integrated into Iranian society). A simple spark could suffice to set off centrifugal explosions. Furthermore, the plummeting Iranian economy will only worsen if the United States succeeds in referring Iran's nuclear file to the Security Council, whether or not meaningful sanctions follow. Such a referral would accelerate capital flight, deal a blow to the country's already collapsing stock market, devastate its hitherto booming real estate market, and wipe out the savings of a large part of the middle class. It would also most likely result in galloping inflation, hurting Iran's dispossessed, whom the Ahmadinejad administration claims to represent. In light of these ominous possibilities, both Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Bush would do well to avoid overplaying their hands. They should take a leaf from the book not of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini the ideologue, but of Ayatollah Khomeini the pragmatic politician. Like Mr. Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khomeini argued that the ''Zionist entity'' should be wiped off the map. But he chose regime preservation over ideology when he ended the Iran-Iraq war and even bought weapons from Israel. IRAN should endeavor to regain the trust of the international community by engaging in compromise, and the United States should allow this compromise to be sufficiently face-saving for Iran's ruling elite. To regain the confidence of the international community, Iran should accept the Russian offer to process Iranian uranium gas into fuel and voluntarily stop, for a specified time, insisting on its right to do so at home. In return, the United States should lift its unilateral sanctions from Iran. These sanctions, which include a ban on the sale of aircraft and spare parts to Iran, have absolutely no effect on the regime's nuclear capacity, but they harm Iranian civilians. Today the incentive for both sides to step away from the brink of conflict is even greater than it was at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. If the United States responds to a perceived Iranian threat by exploiting Iran's ethnic, sectarian and economic cleavages, it is not just the Islamic Republic that will be threatened -- Iran itself could be dismembered as well.

No class March 27: Spring Break

No class Monday, March 27th as Berkeley begins the spring break holiday.

Monday, March 20, 2006 Class

Monday's class will have a distinguished panel talking about what is being done in various countries and internationally to address global warming.  The class will be in 155 Dwinelle just across the hall from where we meet regularly.  Our guests include

Speakers

Lars-Erik Liljelund, Director-General of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket)

Arild Moe, Deputy Director of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway

John Wilson, Advisor to Commissioner Arthur H. Rosenfeld, California Energy Commission

Commentators

David Caron, William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley
John Harte, Professor of Energy and Resources and the Ecosystems Science Division of the College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

For more information, the url is at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/SpecialEvents/Sather2006/

Mid term exam

Here is the study guide for the mid term.  Your exam will consist of choosing the correct answers from 4 choices.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/911/courses/midtermS06.html

All the course lectures are now webcast ready and available at

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/archive.php?seriesid=1906978286

Remember to bring a  green scantron answer sheet for fifty multiple choice questions and a number 2 pencil

March 6, 2006

Pamela Constable, Deputy Foreign Editor of the Washington Post, will join us this evening for a discussion of the press and foreign policy.  I will also provide information about next week's mid term exam.

U.S-Europe Relations

The Conversations with History archive has just posted my interview with Lord Patten of Barnes, the former European Union Commissioner for External Affairs.  This is a must read for those of you interested in relations with Europe. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Patten/patten06-con0.html He has many interesting comments on Bush's foreign policy.

U.S. Planing for Iran Contingencies

The Financial Times' Guy Dinmore reports that

"Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the central Islamic government, and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq US intelligence experts suggested the marines' effort could represent the early stages of contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran . Alternatively, it could be an attempt to evaluate the implications of the unrest in Iranian border regions for marines stationed in Iraq , as well as Iranian infiltration. Others suggest it simply highlights competition between the various US intelligence organisations.Whatever the motive, the survey will add to Iranian anxieties about Washington's intentions."For the entire article, go to http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a8ab27ba-a4da-11da-897c-0000779e2340.html

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

The foreign policy consensus is that Iran must be stopped in its quest for nuclear weapons.  Realists don't accept that conclusion.  See my interview with Kenneth Waltz who makes the argument that even if  Saddam Hussein had had them he could have been deterred. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Waltz/waltz-con6.html In the New York Times, Barry Posen of MIT argues the same is true for Iran. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/opinion/27posen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Aftermath of Katrina

The blog at TPMCafe makes an interesting point--the failure at the heart of the Bush administration response to the storm was the conceptual failure that lead to the  creation of the Office of Homeland Security.  see

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27116  The idea to create the gigantic and unaccountable Department of Homeland Security originated with Democratic Senator Joe Liberman of Connecticut and then was embraced by the Bush administration.

Where. oh where, is Osama?

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, one of the most knowledgeable observers of the Taliban and the politics of the Afghan/Pakistan region, has some important clues about the whereabouts of Osama in today's Washington Post.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022401639.html For Ahmed Rashid's qualifications for clarifying whether Osama is, in the words of Secretary Rice, "on the run," see my interview with Ahmed Rashid.  http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Rashid/rashid-con0.html

Monday, February 27, 2006

This week the class will meet at the regular time and place:  5:00 p.m. in 145 Dwinelle.  Our guest will be Frontline Producer/Reporter Martin Smith.  He will show his documentary on the response to Katrina as a homeland security failure.  He will then answer questions.

Time to Move On

William F. Buckley, one of the founders of the conservative movement in the United States, has written an op ed piece that argues that Bush's goals in Iraq are not achievable. http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley.asp  This admission is a powerful demonstration  that President Bush is now losing the backing of his own supporters on the Iraq War.  Buckley wants Bush to see this reality so that the Wilsonian principle that informed the intervention (democratization brings freedom and peace) will be preserved. Will Bush heed the advice? Or will he interpret Buckley to mean, "Good by Iraq, Hello Iran?"  That reading of Buckley would imply that Bush is both incompetent and out of touch. 

Incompetence and its Consequences

Michael Hirsch writing in Newsweek sees incompetence at the heart of the strategic disaster confronting the United States.  He makes an unexpected comparison of Bush's decision on Iraq with Hitler's decision to attack the Soviet Union.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11238800/site/newsweek/

Proof in the Pudding

The Bush administration belief that a foreign policy built on democratization and military intervention was the appropriate response to terrorism emerging from the Middle East is not meeting the test of time.  The rationale is that democratization would bring freedom and with freedom would come markets and the benefits of globalization. What the Bush administration seems to have ignored is the power of tradition, of religion, and of tribal animosity for these forces have been unleashed in Iraq overturning many dimensions of secular life that had emerged since Iraqi independence from the British after World War I.  For an interesting account of the rise of the clerics in the wake of Bush's transformation efforts, see this article By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer in today's LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-clerics24feb24,0,405063.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Rumsfeld on the Information War

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave an important speech to the Council on Foreign Relations last week.  Excerpts are printed in today's LA Times in the form of an op ed.  Read it to get insight into the Secretary's thinking.  He says "Although the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media and using the tools of communications to its advantage, it should be noted that we have an advantage as well. And that is, quite simply, that truth is on our side. Ultimately, the truth wins out."  Read the entire piece at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rumsfeld23feb23,0,2026191.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Exam

Information about the mid term is here

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/911/courses/nuts&bolts.html

The exam will cover all the lectures including the ones on February 16th. It will also include all the interviews and books that were assigned for reading before the March 13th exam.  There will be multiple choice questions only.  Everyone must take the exam.

Webcasts of February 16th lectures

Here is the url for the webcasts of the February 16th lectures.

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/archive.php?seriesid=1906978286

No Class

Monday, February 20th is Presidents' Day so there will be no class.

No class Monday, February 13, 2006

No class on Monday but we have two lectures next week.  Both are on Thursday.  Here is the information on Thursday's lectures.

February 16, 2006: U.S. - Africa Relations Princeton Lyman, Senior Fellow Council of Foreign Affairs and former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, and Stephen Morrison, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations	Note: Thursday lecture 12:00 noon Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall
February 16, 2006: Terrorism: Suicide Terrorism Robert Pape, University of Chicago, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism	Note: Thursday lecture 5:00 p.m.

What did the President Know and When Did He Know It?

We will be focusing on the New Orleans disaster on February 27, 2006 when our guest will be Martin Smith from Frontline.  Take a look at this article in today's New York Times as preparation for that session. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/politics/10katrina.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Donald Rumsfeld had a Dream!

Donald Rumsfeld had a dream to transform the military by implementing the Revolution in Military Affairs.  Rumsfeld wanted to integrate the latest technolgies in guided weaponry and information technology.  Then the American military, through a combination of shock and awe and global reach, will be positioned to insure peace and security in the world. The vision is stated in the Pentagon's Quadriennal Military Guidance Document.  Alas, the Irish poet Robert Burns had it right: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley (awry).” The new defense budget DOES NOT provide funding for Rumsfeld's dream. Rather, it continues to fund a military to fight the threats we faced in the Cold War.  Neo- conservative Max Boot shows us why, for Rumsfeld's supporters, the budget fails to meet the challenges of an age in which terror and a "long war" has displaced communism and a Cold War as the main threat.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot8feb08,0,7903755.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Office Hours

Harry Kreisler kreisler@globetrotter.berkeley.edu will hold office hours every Tuesday from 2 to 4 p.m in 215 Moses Hall

Claire Perez c_perez@uclink.berkeley edu will hold office hours every Monday from 3 to 5 at the Starbucks at Oxford and Center Street

Democracy on the March--The Winner is Hamas!

---

The parliamentary elections in Palestine have provoked a debate over the Bush administration strategy to deal with the long term problem of terrorism by promoting democratization in the Middle East.  Here are two very different perspectives.  Max Boot is a prominent intellectual of the 2nd wave of neoconservativism, the group whose ideas are ascendant in Washington today.  Here is my interview with Boot.  http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Boot/boot-con0.html  The second article takes a very different perspective and was written by Anatol Lieven, a columnist for the Financial Times and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.  Here is my interview with Lieven:  http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Lieven/lieven-con0.html

From the Los Angeles Times

MAX BOOT

The weakness in backing strongmen

Hamas' victory shows the folly of relying on tyrants to repress Islamic extremists.

Max Boot

February 1, 2006

HAMAS' VICTORY in the Palestinian elections last week is widely seen as discrediting President Bush's desire to spread democracy. Actually, the electoral triumph of this pro-terrorist, anti-Western movement offers more evidence for the failure of the cynical approach that the United States pursued before Bush came into office — a pseudo-realistic policy of using supposedly benign dictators to repress Islamic extremists.

That, after all, was the rationale behind the Oslo process: Israel and the U.S. would support Yasser Arafat in the hope that he would deliver peace and crack down on the crazies. Fat chance. Instead, his Fatah party gave birth to the suicide bombers of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and he tolerated terrorists affiliated with competing groups, as a cudgel to pressure Israel into greater concessions. Palestinian television and radio stations, newspapers and schools never ceased to glorify suicide bombers (shahids, or martyrs) and to revile Jews and Americans. When Israel wasn't willing to deliver as much land as Arafat wanted, he unleashed the second intifada, an all-out terrorist offensive that took years to defeat.

In that time, conditions only got worse in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, leading to a precipitous fall in Palestinian living standards and considerable property damage and loss of life, without defeating the "Zionist entity." This failure increased disenchantment with the Palestinian Authority, which has all the disadvantages of a typical oligarchy (including extreme corruption) and none of the advantages (it provides no law and order). Disenchantment turned to disgust when Gaza descended into anarchy following the Israeli pullout. It was thus no great surprise that voters turned to Hamas, which has shown itself to be less venal and more adept at delivering social services than the incumbent Fatah party.

Polls indicate that most Palestinian voters aren't in favor of waging all-out war against Israel, which would result in ruinous retaliation. But there is no denying that this has been Hamas' agenda, notwithstanding occasional truces. It now has a choice — either suspend its war on Israel and concentrate on delivering mundane civil services, or risk a backlash among voters.

The Hamas militants, unlike their fellow fundamentalists in Iran, don't have the luxury of oil revenues. Much of the Palestinian Authority's budget comes from European, American and Israeli largesse, which presumably will be cut off unless Hamas comes out against violence and in favor of Israel's right to exist. If Hamas sticks to a rigid ideological agenda, it will become as unpopular as the Taliban. And if Hamastan becomes a breeding ground of international terrorism, it will be even more vulnerable to a military response than Afghanistan was.

Palestine, like Iran, may have to pass through a period of Islamist misrule before it arrives at something better, as Iraq and Afghanistan seem to be doing under relatively moderate religious parties. That's unfortunate, but what's the alternative? There aren't many well-intentioned strongmen who will overhaul Islamic societies along Western lines and pave the way for democracy, as Kemal Ataturk did in post-Ottoman Turkey.

Most of the dictators we wind up supporting or tolerating — not only Arafat but also Hosni Mubarak, Bashar Assad, Pervez Musharraf, the Saudi royals and, once upon a time, Saddam Hussein — have a symbiotic relationship with Islamic extremists. The radicals serve the dictators' purpose: They scare the West into endorsing an illiberal status quo. Mubarak, for one, extends more tolerance to the Muslim Brotherhood than to liberal critics such as Ayman Nour, now languishing in jail. When the mosque becomes the only outlet for dissent, the odds of an Islamic takeover increase once the tyrant leaves the scene.

Bush is right not to play the dictators' game anymore. The best way to avoid the Hobson's choice between different types of tyranny — secular or religious — is to pressure existing regimes to allow more dissent and eventually democracy. That never happened under Arafat, when all the major media outlets were controlled by the state and the judiciary was the handmaiden of the government. Anyone who publicly criticized Arafat's graft and incompetence risked a beating, or worse. Countless Palestinians were killed after being convicted in kangaroo courts of being Israeli "collaborators."

For years, the United States and Israel turned a blind eye to such abuses. And now we see the result: a brutalized society in which the most radical elements have taken over. We should work to avoid that outcome in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and other Muslim states by getting serious about human rights now — before it's too late.

Max Boot is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

From the International Herald Tribune

The gap between U.S. rhetoric and reality

By

Anatol Lieven

MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2006

Washington The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections ought to lead to a fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, especially since it follows electoral successes for Islamist parties in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The most important lesson of the elections is that the United States cannot afford to use the rhetoric of spreading democracy as an excuse for avoiding dealing with pressing national grievances and wishes. If the United States pursues or supports policies that are detested by a majority of ordinary people, then these people will react accordingly if they are given a chance to vote.

Above all, U.S. policy makers must understand that other peoples have their own national pride and national interests, which they expect their governments and representatives to defend. In Russia in the 1990s, the liberals helped to destroy their electoral chances by giving Russian voters the impression that they put deference to American wishes above the interests of Russia.

Today, Americans who want to support liberal revolution in Iran as a way of making Iran more responsive to U.S. and Israeli demands are making the same mistake. And in order to understand this, it is hardly necessary to study Russia or Iran. In the United States, if a political party were supported by a foreign country, and gave the impression of serving that country's interests, would it stand any chance of being elected to anything?

But in truth, the present centrality of the "democratization" idea to administration rhetoric does not come from any study of the Middle East, or of reality in general. Rather, the Bush administration has fallen back on this rhetoric in part because all other paths and justifications have failed or been rejected. The administration desperately needed some big vision that would give the American people the impression of a plan for the war on terror, promising something beyond tighter domestic security and endless military operations.

Thus spreading democracy was always one of the arguments used for the Iraq war, but it only became the central one after the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction. As a result of the Iraqi quagmire, the language of preventive war and military intervention, so prevalent in the administration's National Security Strategy of 2002, has also become obviously empty, requiring a new central theme for the forthcoming security strategy of 2006.

The road map toward a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been shelved, and Bush has admitted that his promise to create an independent Palestinian state by the end of his second term has been abandoned. Building Palestinian democracy therefore became in effect a diversion from a failure or refusal to make progress on addressing real Palestinian grievances.

Finally, demands for democratic regime change in Iran have been used as a way of avoiding making the very painful U.S. concessions that will be necessary if Iran's nuclear program is to be stopped by diplomatic means. These will have to involve U.S. security guarantees to Iran, a leading place for Iran in any Middle Eastern security order, a role for Iran in shaping the future of both Afghanistan and Iraq, diplomatic recognition and open trade and investment. Any Iranian government would have to demand all this in return for giving up the future possibility of a nuclear deterrent.

Given the mixture of extremism and chaos in the new Iranian government, such a deal may now be impossible as long as the popularly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains in office. But as Flynt Leverett, a former director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, has revealed, in 2003 the administration received a credible Iranian offer of comprehensive negotiations, which it brusquely rejected.

Democratic Party leaders, too, have failed utterly to support a diplomatic alternative to the failed strategy of the Bush administration, partly because they are too scared to confront the bitter anger among powerful groups in the United States that would attend any radical change of U.S. policy toward Iran.

The administration has also been able to neutralize domestic opposition to its "strategy" because its rhetoric appeals to a deep American belief in the U.S. duty to spread democracy and freedom. This is indeed in itself a noble aspiration, and has been until recently the source of much of U.S. moral authority in the world.

But the Bush administration's combination of preaching human rights with torture, of preaching democracy to Muslims with contempt for the views of those same Muslims, has not helped either the spread of democracy or U.S. interests but badly damaged both.

In fact, the distance between Bush administration rhetoric and observable reality in some areas is beginning to look almost reminiscent of Soviet Communism. And as in the Soviet Union, this gap is also becoming more and more apparent to the rest of the world.

(

Anatol Lieven

, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, Washington, is the author of ''America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism.'')

Big Bang Project

Here is the url for the Cal Monthly article mentioned by Harold Smith in last night's presentation http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/September_2005/COVER_STORY-_Berkeleys_Big_Bang_Project_.asp

The Battle of New Orleans II

An article from Saturday's New York Times demonstrates that the White House response to Katrina is significant for understanding our homeland security capability.  Note this quote:  "We are left with a picture of a White House that was plagued by the fog of war," said David Marin, the Republican staff director to the House Committee investigating the government's response to the hurricane. "The committee is likely to find a disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information--and that has consequences."  see the article http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/national/nationalspecial/28katrina.html?_r=1  We will be discussing this issue on February 27th when Frontline producer/reporter Martin Smith comes to class to show his documentary on the response to Katrina.

"Answered Prayers,"

The Middle East is the centerpiece of the Bush adminstration's foreign policy.  See the Conversations with History interview with Jonathan Clarke http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Clarke/clarke-con0.html  Under the influence of the neo-conservatives, this region becomes the testing ground for a commitment to democratizing the world. The region also is a testing ground for using military power to achieve this goal.  Bush's most articulate speech in this regard was his second inauguaral address which called for democratization of the region if not the world.  Recent elections in the Middle East suggest the policy is not working.  Bush's prayers are being realized but not with the consequences he envisioned suggesting that Garth Brooks was right to "Thank God for unanswered prayers."  This article from the Washington Post addresses the consequences of the Bush vision for the Israeli Palestinian conflict. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012701562.html For a discussion of the consquences of democratization in the Middle East generally see this article from the Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113836301014058138.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

Foreign Policy Narrative

Daniel Benjamin who is speaking to our class on February 6th has an op ed piece in today's New York Times.  Here is the link http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/opinion/25benjamin.html?_r=1 Remember that Neil Smelser concluded that terrorism will be a long term issue.  He used the metaphor of chipping away at a rock.  Benjamin is suggesting that another key element in our climb up this difficult mountain is to have a narrative, one that resonates not only with American audiences but also with audiences in the Muslim world.

Email addresses

Harry Kreisler kreisler@globetrotter.berkeley.edu

Claire Perez c_perez@uclink.berkeley.edu

Next Lecture: Harold Smith on Nuclear Terrorism

Next week we will be focusing on nuclear terrorism.  Our speaker will be Harold Smith.  His vita can be found here http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~gspp/people/affiliates/smith.htm In the interview with Smelser that I showed to the class on Monday, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Smelser/smelser-con0.html Smelser emphasized that terrorism will not go away--we are chipping away at a rock was his metaphor.  Given that reality, Smith will be talking about the greatest threat we face--terrorists with nuclear devices at their disposal.

Idealism

The Bush administration has embraced a Jacksonian/Wilsonian perspective on the world.  There is an analysis of the contradictions in the resulting strategy for dealing with the world.  See this blog by John Ikenberry. You can find it here, scroll down, date is January 22 for the entry

http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/

Welcome

I will post comments on ongoing events and offer links to interesting articles as I find them on the web.       Harry Kreisler