Published in Foreign Affairs

Regarding the major global security decision before the two countries today, Kissinger said that troop levels in Afghanistan needed to reflect the conditions on the ground and what is at stake.  We must act before we are confronted with far greater challenges.  We must not allow Pakistan to become a failed state.  If Pakistan should become a failed state, the crisis will quickly spread to India, with its large Muslim population and history of conflicts among groups.

• A growing 40 percent of all Americans self-identify as conservatives, about 36 percent as moderates, about 20 as liberal, according to Gallup.  I wonder whether they factored in the reluctance of Republicans/conservatives to speak to pollsters. 
• All politics is local: Local Chinese officials make school kids salute all cars on the road (as a safety measure).  (I can imagine the compelled salutes American kids might give.)  But the other examples of Chinese local tyranny are far less petty--killing dogs, compulsory liquor and cigarette purchases, licenses for harvesting one's own corn, and prohibiting women from being secretaries.
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is #15 on the NY Times trade paperback bestseller list and rising.  I'm not sure what this Zombie business means--it's all over comics strips, and kids talk about it.  Something to do with the "end of history," but there may be other meanings of brain-eating.

The report obtained by USA TODAY cites failures on biosecurity policy by the White House  which the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction says has left the country vulnerable. The commission, created last year to address concerns raised by post-9/11 investigations, warns that anthrax spores released by a crop-duster could "kill more Americans than died in World War II" and the economic impact could exceed $1.8 trillion in cleanup and other costs."

The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that.

Both major parties lost in popular votes, but the Social Democrat virtually collapsed when the seats were distributed.  The somewhat libertarian-like FDP rose, to produce a 70's-like coalition with the Christian Democrats (no, it's not the German version of our religious right; it's hard to make comparisons with the US).  I like this display of the results, and here is another graphic depiction--just click on the tabs in the box on the Bundestagswahl.  Ignorance of German is no problem.  (It's interesting that the more liberal paper emphasizes the popular vote, the more conservative one the number of seats won, the decisive element.)

For an explanation auf englisch try the NY Times.

Each German party has its own color (as each has its particular flag).  Only recently has American politics spoken in terms of a "red" and a "blue" party.  Obama's big selling point was his 2004 convention emphasis on a "red, white, and blue America."  But we reject not only European social policy but its class-based politics as well.  That's the tired politics that put the Social Democrats at their record low level and may bring down our Democrat socialists as well.

UPDATE:  This report notes the fall of the conservative CSU and the rise of the FDP in Bavaria, changing the direction of the governing coalition. 

Several people have already commented on President Obama's speech at the United Nations yesterday.  Reading over his speech, I was struck by his comment that "No balance of power among nations will hold."  Well, duh!  That is, and has always been true.  But, and here's where I suspect my analysis parts company with the President's, there still is no better way to maintain peace.  Balance of power, however imperfect, is the best tool available in the world we're given.  For over two centuries, radicals have disliked that solution, and sought to find another answer.  Perhaps some day they'll find it. Color me skeptical.

Wherefore this quest for a new and different world?  I think it might be connected to science. The President noted that "The technology we harness can light the path to peace, or forever darken it. The energy we use can sustain our planet, or destroy it. What happens to the hope of a single child - anywhere - can enrich our world, or impoverish it."  Modern science has made life easier (and longer) in countless ways.  But it has also increased the power of our arms exponentially.

If war is, like death and disease, an inescapable part of the human condition, then science is a mixed blessing at best.  Perhaps Thomas Jefferson put it best in an 1812 letter to John Adams: "if science produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable, as our neighboring savages are."  The presumption that deep progress, progress that fundamentally changes what it is to be human, is possible, is, perhaps, essential to modern liberalism.  The alternative, of balance of power as much as possibe and war sometimes, is, for many, too terrible to contemplate.

NY Times headline:  "General Denies Rift With Obama Over Afghan Strategy"  That would be General McChrystal of course.  These stories denying resignation talk don't look good.

Sarah speaks before an international business group in Hong Kong.  A couple Americans stomped out, a European praised the speech as "brilliant."  Here's one account, here another.  Excerpts.  She delivered a 75-minute defense of "common sense conservatism," for example:  "We engage with a hope that Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must take steps in the event that it goes in a different direction."

Today I heard Francis Fukuyama (of SAIS and "end of history" fame) present the second of a four-part series summarizing his most recent tour d'horizon book, to be published next year.  In a little over an hour he presented an extraordinary summary of the origins of the modern state in China and India, and how they reflect religion (or its absence) and kinship groups.  The first lecture, on evolutionary biology, can be found here.  Later ones will be posted as well.

From the latest Barron's:

The Center for Strategic and International Studies projects that China will have more than 438 million over 60 by the year 2050; more than 100 million of them will be age 80 and above. There will be just 1.6 working-age adults to support people 60 and older, versus 7.7 in 1975, when food scarcity and overpopulation were more pressing concerns.

What has happened is that Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe's creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren't many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones.

The issues that preoccupy most Europeans are overwhelmingly material ones: How many hours per week will I have to work? How much annual vacation time will I have? How many social benefits can I preserve (or increase)? How can my country avoid fighting against anyone or for anyone?