Pakistan braces for more attacks

Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - A day after militants stormed a police academy in the eastern city of Lahore, security officials on Tuesday were still trying to make sense of conflicting details of the brazen operation. But on one issue there is consensus - more attacks are expected on high-profile targets, such as military installations, jails, the presidency and even parliament.

A group of militants once associated with the Harkat-e-Jihad-i-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Taiba - groups with strong roots to the struggle over divided Kashmir - a few days ago traveled to Lahore from a militant camp in the North Waziristan town of Razmak, a year-round hill station situated at the crossroads of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the Afghanistan border.

According to militant contacts who spoke to Asia Times Online, after surveying a few potential targets, the militants selected the police training center for the attack on Monday morning. Several of the main gunmen were dressed in police uniforms, backed by juniors to provide them with cover.

After killing a number of cadets and taking many others hostage, the lead militants slipped away from the scene, leaving behind a few men to keep the shootout with security forces going, which they did for eight hours. The fugitives most likely went to southern Punjab cities, such as Multan.

These are the bare facts, all others, including the number of cadet casualties - anywhere from eight to 60 - the number of militants and how many of them were killed or captured remain guesswork.
Pakistani security forces claim to have killed four militants and captured four. But the Deputy Inspector General Operations (Punjab), Mushtaq Sukhaira, officially confirmed the arrest of only one person. He was named only as Hijratullah, an Afghan national from Paktika province, and was caught with a few grenades and a dagger. He is said to have been living in North Waziristan and does not speak Pakistani Urdu or Punjabi languages. In light of statements made by some cadets, intelligence agencies maintain that some of the militants came from Pakistani Punjab and spoke three languages - Urdu, Punjabi and Seraiki. (Seraiki is spoken in southern Punjab.)

Hijratullah is being held at a secret location for interrogation by a Pakistani joint investigation team comprising the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence.

On Tuesday, according to a Reuters report, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan), Baitullah Mehsud, claimed responsibility for Monday's attack. "Yes, we have carried out this attack," Mehsud is reported to have said. He is based in North Waziristan and is traditionally anti-Pakistan. He added that the attack was "in retaliation for the continued [Predator] drone strikes by the US in collaboration with Pakistan on our people" and that the attacks would continue "until the Pakistan government stops supporting the Americans".

Militant blowback
The latest attack, and most likely the one on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier this month, mark ominous muscle-flexing by Pakistan's "original" jihadis, mostly Punjabis trained by the military in the 1990s as the first line of defense for the country, especially in Kashmir.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, they stayed neutral, only joining the Taliban's fight against foreign forces in Afghanistan in 2004, helping with training and logistics. During the Pakistani military's operations in the tribal areas over the past few years, they kept out of the fight. (See 'Pain has become the remedy' Asia Times Online, November 14, 2007.)

In a critical phase of the "war on terror", for the first time these militants are fully operational and are turning their attention to operations inside Pakistan. The top military brains at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, the garrison city twinned with the capital Islamabad, are acutely aware of what these highly trained and dedicated militants are capable of: they cut their teeth in operations inside India and in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Dealing with the problem is another matter. To start with, unprecedented pressure from the United States has forced Pakistan to sever communication with the militants.

US Central Command chief General David Petraeus, speaking on US television on Monday, reiterated that the US military was putting additional focus on rooting out ties between Pakistan's intelligence services and the Taliban. He continued, "The US military will reserve the right of last resort to take out threats inside Pakistan, but it would prefer to enable the Pakistani military to do the job itself."

After the attack on the Sri Lankan team, Pakistani military officials met with Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the chief of the Jamaatut Dawa, which is linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi. They asked the men, both of whom are under house arrest, to use their influence to get the militants to agree to a ceasefire.

But Saeed and Lakhvi said they no longer had influence, and that if they ventured into North Waziristan it was most likely they would be captured or killed by the militants as they were now seen as Islamabad's proxies.

"This is an attack on Pakistan. There are two choices: to either let the Taliban take over your country or to fight it out," said Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior ministry chief.

But this new breed of "renegade" militants, broken free from their former masters, poses a formidable new threat, and the authorities are braced for more attacks sooner rather than later.

U-20: Will the Global Economy Resurface?

Walden Bello

The Group of 20 (G20) is making a big show of getting together to come to grips with the global economic crisis. But here's the problem with the upcoming summit in London on April 2: It's all show. What the show masks is a very deep worry and fear among the global elite that it really doesn't know the direction in which the world economy is heading and the measures needed to stabilize it.

The latest statistics are exceeding even the gloomiest projections made earlier. Establishment analysts are beginning to mention the dreaded "D" word and there is a spreading sense that a tidal wave just now gathering momentum will simply overwhelm the trillions of dollars allocated for stimulus spending. In this environment, the G20 conveys the impression that they're more commanded by than in command of developments (In addition to the seven wealthy industrial nations that belong to the G7, the G20 includes China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, and South Africa.).

Indeed, perhaps no image is more evocative of the current state of the global economy than that of a World War II German U-Boat depth-charged in the North Atlantic by British destroyers. It's going down fast, and the crew doesn't know when it will hit rock bottom. And when it does hit the ocean floor, the big question is: Will the crew be able to make the submarine rise again by pumping compressed air into the severely damaged ballast tanks, like the sailors in Wolfgang Petersen's classic film Das Boot? Or will the U-Boat simply stay at the bottom, its crew doomed to contemplate a fate worse than sudden death?

The current capitalist crew manning the global economy doesn't know whether Keynesian methods can re-inflate the global economy. Meanwhile, an increasing number of people are asking whether using a clutch of Social Democratic-like reforms is enough to repair the global economy, or whether the crisis will lead to a new international economic order.

A New Bretton Woods?

The G20 meeting has been trumpeted as a new "Bretton Woods." In July 1944, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, representatives of the state-managed capitalist economies designed the postwar multilateral order with themselves at the center.

In fact, the two meetings couldn't be further apart.

The London meeting will last one day; the Bretton Woods conference was a tough 21-day working session.

The London meeting is exclusive, with 20 governments arrogating to themselves the power to decide for 172 other countries. The Bretton Woods meeting tried hard to be inclusive to avoid precisely the illegitimacy that dogs the G20's London tryst. Even in the midst of global war, it brought together 44 countries, including the still-dependent Commonwealth of the Philippines and the tiny, now-vanished Siberian state of Tannu Tuva.

The Bretton Woods Conference created new multilateral institutions and rules to manage the postwar world. The G20 is recycling failed institutions: the G20 itself, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), the Bank of International Settlements and "Basel II," and the now 65-year-old International Monetary Fund (IMF). Some of these institutions were established by the elite Group of 7 after the 1997 Asian financial crisis to come up with a new financial architecture that would prevent a repetition of the debacle brought about by IMF policies of capital account liberalization. But instead of coming up with safeguards, all these institutions bought the global financial elite's strategy of "self-regulation."

Among the mantras they thus legitimized were that capital controls were bad for developing economies; short-selling, or speculating on the movement of borrowed stocks, was a legitimate market operation; and derivatives - or securities that allow betting on the movements of an underlying asset - "perfected" the market. The implicit recommendation of their inaction was that the best way to regulate the market was to leave it to market players, who had developed sophisticated but allegedly reliable models of "risk assessment."

In short, institutions that were part of the problem are now being asked to become the central part of the solution. Unwittingly, the G20 are following Marx's maxim that history first repeats itself as tragedy, then as farce.

Resurrecting the Fund

The most problematic component of the G20 solution is its proposals for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The United States and the European Union are seeking an increase in the capital of the IMF from $250 billion to $500 billion. The plan is for the IMF to lend these funds to developing countries to use to stimulate their economies, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposing that the Fund supervise this global exercise.

If ever there was a non-starter, this is it.

First of all, the representation question continues to exercise much of the global South. So far, only marginal changes have been made in the allocation of voting rights at the IMF. Despite the clamor for greater voting power for members from the global South, the rich countries are still overrepresented on the Fund's decision-making executive board and developing countries, especially those in Asia and Africa, are vastly underrepresented. Europe holds a third of the chairs in the executive board and claims the feudal right to have a European always occupy the role of managing director. The United States, for its part, has nearly 17% of voting power, giving it veto power.

Second, the IMF's performance during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, more than anything, torpedoed its credibility. The IMF helped bring about the crisis by pushing the Asian countries to eliminate capital controls and liberalize their financial sectors, promoting both the massive entry of speculative capital as well as its destabilizing exit at the slightest sign of crisis. The Fund then pushed governments to cut expenditures, on the theory that inflation was the problem, when it should have been pushing for greater government spending to counteract the collapse of the private sector. This pro-cyclical measure ended up accelerating the regional collapse into recession. Finally, the billions of dollars of IMF rescue funds went not to rescuing the collapsing economies but to compensate foreign financial institutions for their losses - a development that has become a textbook example of "moral hazard" or the encouragement of irresponsible lending behavior.

Thailand paid off the IMF in 2003 and declared its "financial independence." Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina followed suit, and Indonesia also declared its intention to repay its debts as quickly as possible. Other countries likewise decided to stay away, preferring to build up their foreign exchange reserves to defend themselves against external developments rather than contract new IMF loans. This led to the IMF's budget crisis, for most of its income was from debt payments made by the bigger developing countries.

Partisans of the Fund say that the IMF now sees the merit of massive deficit spending and that, like Richard Nixon, it can now say, "we are all Keynesians now." Many critics do not agree. Eurodad, a non-governmental organization that monitors IMF loans, says that the Fund still attaches onerous conditions to loans to developing countries. Very recent IMF loans also still encourage financial and banking liberalization. And despite the current focus on fiscal stimulus - with some countries, like the United States, pushing for governments to raise their stimulus spending to at least 2% of GDP - the IMF still requires low income borrowers to keep their deficit spending to no more than 1% of GDP.

Finally, there is the question of whether or not the Fund knows what it's doing. One of the key factors discrediting the IMF has been its almost total inability to anticipate the brewing financial crisis. In concluding the 2007 Article IV consultation with the United States, the IMF board stated that "[t]he financial system has shown impressive resilience, including to recent difficulties in the subprime mortgage market." In short, the Fund hasn't only failed miserably in its policy prescriptions, but despite its supposedly top-flight stable of economists, it has drastically fallen short in its surveillance responsibilities.

However large the resources the G20 provide the IMF, there will be little international buy-in to a global stimulus program managed by the Fund.

The Way Forward

The North's response to the current crisis, which is to revive fossilized institutions, is reminiscent of Keynes' famous saying: "The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones." So, in Keynes' spirit, let's try to identify ways of abandoning old ways of thinking.

First of all, since legitimacy is a very scarce commodity at this point, the UN secretary general and the UN General Assembly - rather than the G20 - should convoke a special session to design the new global multilateral order. A Commission of Experts on Reforms to the International Monetary and Financial System, set up by the president of the General Assembly and headed by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, has already done the preparatory policy work for such a meeting. The meeting would be an inclusive process like the Bretton Woods Conference, and like Bretton Woods, it should be a working session lasting several weeks. One of the key outcomes might be the setting up of a representative forum such as the "Global Coordination Council" suggested by the Stiglitz Commission that would broadly coordinate global economic and financial reform.

Second, to immediately assist countries to deal with the crisis, the debts of developing countries to Northern institutions should be cancelled. Most of these debts, as the Jubilee movement reminds us, were contracted under onerous conditions and have already been paid many times over. Debt cancellation or a debt moratorium will allow developing countries access to greater resources and will have a greater stimulus effect than money channeled through the IMF.

Third, regional structures to deal with financial issues, including development finance, should be the centerpiece of the new architecture of new global governance, not another financial system where the countries of the North dominate centralized institutions like the IMF and monopolize resources and power. In East Asia, the "ASEAN Plus Three" Grouping, or "Chiang Mai Initiative," is a promising development that needs to be expanded, although it also needs to be made more accountable to the peoples of the region. In Latin America, several promising regional initiatives are already in progress, like the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and the Bank of the South. Any new global order must have socially accountable regional institutions as its pillars.

These are, of course, immediate steps to be made in the context of a longer-term, more fundamental and strategic reconfiguration of a global capitalist system now on the verge of collapsing. The current crisis is a grand opportunity to craft a new system that ends not just the failed system of neoliberal global governance but the Euro-American domination of the capitalist global economy, and put in its place a more decentralized, deglobalized, democratic post-capitalist order. Unless this more fundamental restructuring takes place, the global economy might not be worth bringing back to the surface.

US Lawmakers Press Fed for Minority Access to Bailout

by Corbett B. Daly
WASHINGTON - A group of African-American lawmakers summoned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to Capitol Hill on Monday for a closed-door meeting aimed at making sure minorities and women get their share of the billions of dollars in federal bailout funds."We are not going to sit back and allow billions of dollars to be dumped into this economy and watch the same old players be advantaged by it," said Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and the co-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Economic Security Taskforce.
"We are not going to sit back and watch some of the players who are responsible for the economic mess that we are in today be the recipients of these taxpayer dollars and provide services and make even more money despite the fact they have mismanaged their own businesses," said Waters, who also heads the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity.
The Los Angeles congresswoman told reporters at a press conference after the meeting that the Fed chief was receptive to their concerns, but offered no concrete promises. Many of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus and hundreds of other leaders from various trade associations representing minorities and women in dozens of sectors related to financial services listened to Bernanke and other key government officials at the all-day session.
WARMER RECEPTION FROM OBAMA
She noted that the Obama administration, headed by the first African-American president in the nation's history, has been more receptive to the concerns of women and minorities than the Bush administration has been in the past eight years.
"Having said that, even though we now have Democratic administration to work with, we still have to push to make sure that minority and women-owned businesses are included," she said, vowing "aggressive" policy action.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did not attend the meeting, though Gary Grippo, deputy assistant secretary for fiscal operations and policy, represented Treasury at the meeting. Officials from the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were also there.
The Congressional Black Caucus members said Monday's meeting was just the first in a series of meetings designed to keep pressure on the administration and other key officials as they disburse what could be as much as $10.925 trillion in federal money to jumpstart the weak economy.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Black Caucus Economic Security Taskforce with Waters, said including a broader array of citizens in the process is in the country's best economic interests.
"In the end, it will make sure that all are included in this economic recovery and it is also the best way to ensure the taxpayers get their money back," Meeks said.
Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat, called for more transparency of the process of doling out government bailout funds and buying up so-called toxic assets.
Asked why the meeting was then closed to reporters eager to hear Bernanke's views, Waters said some attendees were not used to dealing with media and she did not want them to be misquoted.

G20: Nature Doesn't Do Bailouts

Climate Camp in the City allows us to come together and learn about the problems of global warming, so we can take action

by Jody Boehnert

There is a broad consensus across the political spectrum that we need to reduce carbon emissions. We finally agreed on this basic first step. Now, if we could only get past the next big hurdle soon enough, we might just have a chance of stopping the current trajectory: business as usual, which is driving full steam ahead into climate disaster. While the need to reduce emissions is accepted in mainstream opinion, we still lack the momentum and the political will to take action and make the necessary changes.
Part of this inability to act is caused by the fact that our economic system is based on infinite growth yet reliant on a planet with finite resources. We are hitting the geophysical limits of the earth's ability to provide us with stable conditions. The economic system drives climate change because it is dependent on using huge amounts of energy from the burning of fossil fuels. Green products cannot solve our problems due to fundamental problems with the system itself. This economic model is unsustainable and will collapse. And while financial collapse is painful, ecological collapse is terminal.
Action on climate change is also delayed because of an ideological commitment to solving every problem through the market. The financial crisis demonstrates how markets are subject to corruption and speculation that creates instability for the system as a whole. Meanwhile, this faith in markets has lead to the perverse policy of carbon trading as a means of dealing with climate change. Carbon trading has not only failed to reduce net emissions, but has given polluting industry the ability to make enormous profits from selling these emissions' "rights". Traders speculate on future price of the "right" to put emission in our atmosphere. Carbon trading is yet another financial bubble waiting to pop over our heads - but nature doesn't do bailouts. Furthermore, carbon trading is a distraction from real solutions to climate change, which will leave fossil fuels in the ground. We won't reduce emissions by trading in theoretical savings; we will reduce emissions by not emitting.
If those with political and economic power were serious about climate change they would be planning for energy descent. We would be exploring options for dramatically lowering our energy use and building the capacity for communities to thrive in a post-fossil-fuel era. There are credible strategies to make this happen, but they get virtually no political or financial support. Both grassroots efforts such as transition towns and larger-scale measures such as wind farms are thwarted by a lack of political will to move forward in a systemic manner.
We need to learn from the financial crisis. I am involved with Climate Camp because we create space to investigate possibilities for structural change on the level that could plausibly reduce emissions enough to get us out of this crisis. I am going to Climate Camp in the City on 1 April because I want to demonstrate that the solution lies in people coming together, learning about the problems, and taking action.
We know what we needs to be done: no new runways, no new coal-fired power stations, a real deal in Copenhagen: so let's start to make it happen. I am going to the 24-hour "flash-camp" to take part in the workshops, attend the ceilidh and have some fun with a committed group of people. The stakes could not be higher: we need to delegitimise political and economic systems that are destroying the climate, and build a movement that can offer something better.

Le cyberespace sous l’œil de Pékin ?

Des chercheurs canadiens ont localisé sur l’île de Hainan plusieurs serveurs utilisés lors d’attaques contre les cercles tibétains, des ambassades et des ONG.
par Pascale Nivelle PÉKIN, de notre correspondante
La Chine est-elle au cœur de la plus grosse affaire de cyberespionnage de l’histoire d’Internet ? C’est ce qu’avance une équipe de chercheurs canadiens dans un rapport publié ce week-end. Ils ont baptisé l’opération « Ghost Net » et le programme espion « Ghost Rat ». Depuis juin 2007, ce « rat fantôme » aurait infiltré 1 295 ordinateurs dans 103 pays différents. Parmi les cibles, les organisations tibétaines en Inde, à Bruxelles, Londres et New York, mais aussi des ambassades, des sièges de gouvernement. Les auteurs du rapport reconnaissent ne disposer d’aucune preuve impliquant l’Etat chinois. Mais ils rappellent que la doctrine de « défense active » , développée par Pékin depuis la fin des années 90, accorde une importance stratégique à la guerre informatique pour contrer la puissance américaine.
« A ce jour, écrivent les chercheurs, aucune des attaques n’a pu être reliée ni à l’Etat chinois, ni à aucun individu spécifique, bien que beaucoup d’entre elles aient bénéficié à la politique et aux intérêts de l’Etat chinois. » Les spécialistes du centre Munk pour les études internationales de l’université de Toronto rappellent les récurrentes accusations d’espionnage virtuel par la Chine, notamment des gouvernements et services secrets américains et britanniques.
Ensuite, ils affirment avoir localisé les adresses IP de quatre serveurs utilisés lors des attaques. Le plus fréquemment cité se trouve sur Hainan, une île dans le sud de la Chine qui, rappelle l’étude, abrite la base de renseignement de Lingshui, l’une des plus grandes de l’Armée populaire de libération. Les chercheurs en font le constat, sans s’aventurer plus loin : « La difficulté d’identifier les auteurs donne aux Etats un alibi plausible et la possibilité de se distancier officiellement de ces attaques. » Prudents, ils n’excluent aucune hypothèse. Ni l’offensive d’un groupe « sans agenda politique » ni le « hasard » qui aurait frappé simultanément « des cibles de haute importance stratégique pour la Chine ». Des « hackers patriotiques », comme la Chine en compte par dizaines de milliers, pourraient aussi avoir agi de leur propre initiative. Il n’est pas inconcevable non plus que ce réseau ait été créé par un autre Etat, mais hébergé sur des serveurs chinois pour brouiller les pistes. L’île de Hainan serait ainsi la fausse base de hackers déguisés en Chinois. Les scénaristes du prochain James Bond trouveront une mine d’inspiration dans ce rapport « Ghost Net ».
La réaction du porte-parole du consulat de Chine à New York a été dans le ton : « Ce sont de vieilles histoires qui n’ont aucun sens », a dit Wenqi Gao au New York Times, qui a révélé l’affaire samedi. « Le gouvernement chinois s’oppose à tous les cybercrimes et les interdit. »
Tout est parti d’un appel des Tibétains en exil en Inde. En juin 2008, à la veille des Jeux olympiques, les pseudo-pourparlers entre le dalaï-lama et la Chine piétinent. A Dharamsala, on craint que l’un des 23 ordinateurs du bureau particulier du dalaï-lama ait été piraté, comme cela s’est déjà produit à plusieurs reprises. L’enquête commence, elle va durer dix mois et conduire ses auteurs bien au-delà des cercles tibétains. Après avoir identifié le « Ghost Rat » qui permet à l’attaquant de piloter l’ordinateur à distance, d’y subtiliser des fichiers et même d’y faire tourner une webcam, le tout à l’insu de son utilisateur, ils ont installé un ordinateur « pot de miel » pour attirer les pirates. Ils ont ainsi pu remonter vers les serveurs utilisés : trois sur quatre se trouvent en République populaire de Chine (à Hainan, dans le Sichuan et le Shandong). Ils ont mis la main sur la liste complète des 1295 ordinateurs infectés : ils se trouvent dans des ministères des Affaires étrangères de pays d’Asie du Sud-Est (pour la plupart), des ambassades (Allemagne, Inde, Pakistan, Corée du Sud…), des organisations internationales (Asean, Otan…), des médias et des ONG. De tous ces ordinateurs, « “Ghost Rat” a pu prendre le contrôle complet » pendant des durées allant de quelques heures à six cents jours.
Selon l’étude publiée sur Infowarmonitor.net, la découverte de ce réseau met en lumière la fragilité d’Internet. « La prolifération de systèmes informatiques dans les gouvernements, les associations, les entreprises représente une mine pour les cyberespions en puissance. Hormis chez les professionnels du secret, la conscience de la cybervulnérabilité est faible. » L’affaire démontre la facilité avec laquelle un programme informatique espion peut être utilisé pour « construire à faible coût un système d’espionnage efficace ». « Internet a permis à des individus ou à des petits groupes d’acteurs non étatiques d’infiltrer les réseaux informatiques dans des domaines qui étaient autrefois du seul ressort des services secrets. Nous sommes entrés dans l’ère de l’espionnage “do it yourself”. »

Climate crunch

The economic crisis is leading to falling carbon emissions - so why is it not good for the climate? By Oscar Reyes

Production lines falling silent, a slump in global trade and lower demand for power: the economic crisis has already done more to reduce carbon emissions than the past 10 years of climate policy. But don't bank on the recession to save the planet, or to redistribute responsibility for tackling climate change more justly.

In fact, the carbon market approach that is intended to encourage polluters to change their ways is more likely to throw them a lifeline in the short term, and contribute to a further financial collapse in the longer term. No wonder, then, that the European Climate Exchange in the City of London is the target for the next Camp for Climate Action on 1 April.

'We're in the midst of an economic crisis based on wild speculation and blind faith in the market,' says Climate Camp activist Matt Megerry. 'If we want a viable future for everyone on this planet, we can't let City traders be the guardians of our climate system.'

The carbon crash

Climate change is 'the greatest market failure the world has ever seen', according to Sir Nicholas Stern, lead author of the British government's influential review, The Economics of Climate Change. Carbon markets are supposed to address that failure. The idea is that governments give out a limited number of permits to pollute; the scarcity of such permits should encourage their price to rise; and the resulting additional cost to industry and power producers should then encourage them to pollute less.

It is a neat-sounding theory, but the practice is considerably messier. In the first phase of the European Union's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS), which is the world's largest carbon market, the 'cap' on emissions was set so high – as a result of industry lobbying – that it failed to cap anything. Prices collapsed, and no pollution was reduced.

In the second phase of the scheme, which began in 2008, prices rose to around €30 per 'ton of CO2 equivalent' emissions, but have since crashed to around one-third of that level. The explanation is relatively simple. Allocations were made on the assumption that European economies would keep growing, but the recession has reduced output and power consumption, leaving companies with a surplus of permits. Since these were mainly given out for free, the net effect is directly opposite to the scheme's intention: polluting industries are offered a lifeline by cashing in their unwanted permits, while the 'price signal' that is meant to change their polluting ways is rendered largely meaningless.

Repackaging pollution

The failure of carbon markets at a time of general economic turmoil is perhaps unsurprising – a market-based corrective to market failure is hardly likely to go against the grain of current trends. But the failings of carbon trading run deeper, and bear a disturbing resemblance to the conditions that triggered the financial crisis in the first place.

The 'carbon' that is traded is in fact a euphemism for a range of greenhouse gases produced in very different ways. The uncertainties involved in comparing these processes are overlooked in order to ensure that a single commodity can be constructed and exchanged.

It doesn't take a climate scientist to see that burning more coal and oil is not eliminated by building more hydro-electric dams or capturing the methane in coal mines. Funding the latter to 'cancel out' the former can end up subsidising the very industries that need to change if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

As the market matures, even this set of equivalences becomes harder to measure. The EU ETS is now witnessing the development of more complex carbon market products, which package together credits from several installations, then slice these up and resell them. In essence, this is the same structure that brought the derivatives market to its knees, and the same problem: carbon markets involve the selling of a product that has no clear underlying asset – fertile conditions for the creation of a new 'bubble'. Not only do traders not know what they are selling, but it becomes increasingly meaningless to talk about 'emissions reductions' in this context, since what is reduced on paper is so far removed from any process of any measurable change in industrial practice or energy production.

Sub-prime carbon

The integrity of the EU ETS has been further watered down by allowing 'offset' credits from the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM) to be traded within it, contradicting its basic purpose. The ETS, as a 'cap and trade' scheme, is meant to limit the availability of pollution permits, while the offsets approach is a licence to print new ones. One system applies a cap and the other lifts it.

Carbon offsets from the CDM are issued for projects in the global South that would 'not otherwise have happened' – rewarding companies and consultancies for turning stories of an unknowable future into bankable carbon credits. They are treated as directly equivalent to actual reductions, even though a recent survey by the NGO International Rivers found that 76 per cent of CDM projects were already completed by the time they were approved as eligible to sell credits – and they therefore were clearly not 'additional'. Such failings can in themselves contribute to market failures, as Marc Stuart of EcoSecurities, a leading offset project developer, admitted last year: 'In many ways it's akin to sub-prime ... You keep layering on crap until you say, "We can't do this anymore."'

Ultimately, the whole approach distracts from effective solutions – trapping us within a framework that sees the climate problem in primarily financial terms, restricting our horizons to 'emissions reductions' while sidestepping the key questions of how and when these are made. As Larry Lohmann of the Corner House research and advocacy group explains, carbon trading 'disembeds the climate problem from the challenge of initiating a new historical pathway to overcome current dependence on fossil fuels, which are by far the major contributor to human-caused climate change'.

A Green New Deal

So what should we do instead? In the face of failing carbon markets, talk of a Green New Deal (modelled on President Roosevelt's 'New Deal' package for reviving the US economy in the 1930s) might seem to offer a welcome alternative. Advocates of such schemes, such as the New Economics Foundation, suggest that massive investment in renewable energy projects could stimulate renewed economic growth as well as providing thousands of new 'green collar' jobs. But most actual stimulus packages so far have not followed this model.

The car industry bailout, which in the UK alone could be worth up to £2.3 billion in loans, is one obvious case in point. Around £1 billion of this will come in the form of soft loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) – expenditure that was earmarked for 'lower carbon initiatives'. At present, it remains unclear whether this means any more than simply obeying new EU laws on fuel efficiency – which were anyway significantly watered down as a result of a long lobbying campaign by the car industry.

The EIB, which is Europe's main vehicle for such bailouts, is also 'alone among international financial institutions in having no binding operational standards, nor an independent accountability mechanism for affected people,' says Greig Aitken of CEE Bankwatch. In fact, the EIB lacks any clear environmental or social safeguards, and it bankrolled fossil fuel extraction across the globe to the tune of €3 billion in 2007 alone.

Elsewhere, the United Nations Environment Programme has announced what it calls a 'Global Green New Deal'. This recommends, among other things, investment in biofuels and the channelling of money through the World Bank's controversial clean investment funds, whose remit includes subsidising new coal plants and large-scale hydroelectric dams.

Such schemes might seem a long way from the good intentions of the more progressive Green New Deal advocates, but they do flag up some of the problems of advocating for massive public investment in a context of unaccountable global financial institutions. Even where 'state' expenditure is envisaged it is often channelled through these unaccountable bodies, and accompanied by requirements to partner with the private sector.

There is a further question, too, about how and which 'green' technologies are being promoted. Public funding for research on new energy technologies remains lower in real terms than in the 1970s, while public research agendas are today set by corporate 'stakeholders' whose leading concern – as witnessed in the case of biofuels and 'carbon capture and storage' – is to create mildly greener versions of their same basic business-as-usual approaches.

To wrest control of such processes and put them to more genuinely progressive ends ultimately requires them to be embedded in a political response. Unless we understand and reproduce 'the real social force relations that gave rise to the original New Deal', including social movement militancy, it is likely that such proposals will be reduced to 'little green fig leaves', says Tadzio Müller, author of a forthcoming Rosa Luxemburg Foundation report on green capitalism. Even then, he concludes, 'None of the proposals for a Green New Deal ... has shown convincingly that it is at all possible to delink global economic growth from massive continued greenhouse gas emissions.'

The Climate Camp Against Carbon Trading takes place on 1 April at the European Climate Exchange in the City of London

The Imperial Unconscious

By Tom Engelhardt

Afghan Faces, Predators, Reapers, Terrorist Stars, Roman Conquerors, Imperial Graveyards, and Other Oddities of the Truncated American Century

Sometimes, it's the everyday things, the ones that fly below the radar, that matter.

Here, according to Bloomberg News, is part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's recent testimony on the Afghan War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

"U.S. goals in Afghanistan must be 'modest, realistic,' and 'above all, there must be an Afghan face on this war,' Gates said. 'The Afghan people must believe this is their war and we are there to help them. If they think we are there for our own purposes, then we will go the way of every other foreign army that has been in Afghanistan.'"

Now, in our world, a statement like this seems so obvious, so reasonable as to be beyond comment. And yet, stop a moment and think about this part of it: "there must be an Afghan face on this war." U.S. military and civilian officials used an equivalent phrase in 2005-2006 when things were going really, really wrong in Iraq. It was then commonplace -- and no less unremarked upon -- for them to urgently suggest that an "Iraqi face" be put on events there.

Evidently back in vogue for a different war, the phrase is revelatory -- and oddly blunt. As an image, there's really only one way to understand it (not that anyone here stops to do so). After all, what does it mean to "put a face" on something that assumedly already has a face? In this case, it has to mean putting an Afghan mask over what we know to be the actual "face" of the Afghan War -- ours -- a foreign face that men like Gates recognize, quite correctly, is not the one most Afghans want to see. It's hardly surprising that the Secretary of Defense would pick up such a phrase, part of Washington's everyday arsenal of words and images when it comes to geopolitics, power, and war.

And yet, make no mistake, this is Empire-speak, American-style. It's the language -- behind which lies a deeper structure of argument and thought -- that is essential to Washington's vision of itself as a planet-straddling goliath. Think of that "Afghan face"/mask, in fact, as part of the flotsam and jetsam that regularly bubbles up from the American imperial unconscious.

Of course, words create realities even though such language, in all its strangeness, essentially passes unnoticed here. Largely uncommented upon, it helps normalize American practices in the world, comfortably shielding us from certain global realities; but it also has the potential to blind us to those realities, which, in perilous times, can be dangerous indeed. So let's consider just a few entries in what might be thought of as The Dictionary of American Empire-Speak.

War Hidden in Plain Sight: There has recently been much reporting on, and even some debate here about, the efficacy of the Obama administration's decision to increase the intensity of CIA missile attacks from drone aircraft in what Washington, in a newly coined neologism reflecting a widening war, now calls "Af-Pak" -- the Pashtun tribal borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since August 2008, more than 30 such missile attacks have been launched on the Pakistani side of that border against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban targets. The pace of attacks has actually risen since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, as have casualties from the missile strikes, as well as popular outrage in Pakistan over the attacks.

Thanks to Senator Diane Feinstein, we also know that, despite strong official Pakistani government protests, someone official in that country is doing more than looking the other way while they occur. As the Senator revealed recently, at least some of the CIA's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cruising the skies over Af-Pak are evidently stationed at Pakistani bases. We learned recently as well that American Special Operations units are now regularly making forays inside Pakistan "primarily to gather intelligence"; that a unit of 70 American Special Forces advisors, a "secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command," is now aiding and training Pakistani Army and Frontier Corps paramilitary troops, again inside Pakistan; and that, despite (or perhaps, in part, because of) these American efforts, the influence of the Pakistani Taliban is actually expanding, even as Pakistan threatens to melt down.

Mystifyingly enough, however, this Pakistani part of the American war in Afghanistan is still referred to in major U.S. papers as a "covert war." As news about it pours out, who it's being hidden from is one of those questions no one bothers to ask.

On February 20th, the New York Times' Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger typically wrote:

"With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government... Under standard policy for covert operations, the C.I.A. strikes inside Pakistan have not been publicly acknowledged either by the Obama administration or the Bush administration."

On February 25th, Mazzetti and Helene Cooper reported that new CIA head Leon Panetta essentially bragged to reporters that "the agency's campaign against militants in Pakistan's tribal areas was the 'most effective weapon' the Obama administration had to combat Al Qaeda's top leadership... Mr. Panetta stopped short of directly acknowledging the missile strikes, but he said that 'operational efforts' focusing on Qaeda leaders had been successful." Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal reported the next day that Panetta said the attacks are "probably the most effective weapon we have to try to disrupt al Qaeda right now." She added, "Mr. Obama and National Security Adviser James Jones have strongly endorsed their use, [Panetta] said."

Uh, covert war? These "covert" "operational efforts" have been front-page news in the Pakistani press for months, they were part of the U.S. presidential campaign debates, and they certainly can't be a secret for the Pashtuns in those border areas who must see drone aircraft overhead relatively regularly, or experience the missiles arriving in their neighborhoods.

In the U.S., "covert war" has long been a term for wars like the U.S.-backed Contra War against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s, which were openly discussed, debated, and often lauded in this country. To a large extent, when aspects of these wars have actually been "covert" -- that is, purposely hidden from anyone -- it has been from the American public, not the enemies being warred upon. At the very least, however, such language, however threadbare, offers official Washington a kind of "plausible deniability" when it comes to thinking about what kind of an "American face" we present to the world.

Imperial Naming Practices: In our press, anonymous U.S. officials now point with pride to the increasing "precision" and "accuracy" of those drone missile attacks in taking out Taliban or al-Qaeda figures without (supposedly) taking out the tribespeople who live in the same villages or neighboring compounds. Such pieces lend our air war an almost sterile quality. They tend to emphasize the extraordinary lengths to which planners go to avoid "collateral damage." To many Americans, it must then seem strange, even irrational, that perfectly non-fundamentalist Pakistanis should be quite so outraged about attacks aimed at the world's worst terrorists.

On the other hand, consider for a moment the names of those drones now regularly in the skies over "Pashtunistan." These are no less regularly published in our press to no comment at all. The most basic of the armed drones goes by the name of Predator, a moniker which might as well have come directly from those nightmarish sci-fi movies about an alien that feasts on humans. Undoubtedly, however, it was used in the way Col. Michael Steele of the 101st Airborne Division meant it when he exhorted his brigade deploying to Iraq (according to Thomas E. Ricks' new book The Gamble) to remember: "You're the predator."

The Predator drone is armed with "only" two missiles. The more advanced drone, originally called the Predator B, now being deployed to the skies over Af-Pak, has been dubbed the Reaper -- as in the Grim Reaper. Now, there's only one thing such a "hunter-killer UAV" could be reaping, and you know just what that is: lives. It can be armed with up to 14 missiles (or four missiles and two 500-pound bombs), which means it packs quite a deadly wallop.

Oh, by the way, those missiles are named as well. They're Hellfire missiles. So, if you want to consider the nature of this covert war in terms of names alone: Predators and Reapers are bringing down the fire from some satanic hell upon the peasants, fundamentalist guerrillas, and terrorists of the Af-Pak border regions.

In Washington, when the Af-Pak War is discussed, it's in the bloodless, bureaucratic language of "global counterinsurgency" or "irregular warfare" (IW), of "soft power," "hard power," and "smart power." But flying over the Pashtun wildlands is the blunt-edged face of predation and death, ready at a moment's notice to deliver hellfire to those below.

Imperial Arguments: Let's pursue this just a little further. Faced with rising numbers of civilian casualties from U.S. and NATO air strikes in Afghanistan and an increasingly outraged Afghan public, American officials tend to place the blame for most sky-borne "collateral damage" squarely on the Taliban. As Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen bluntly explained recently, "[T]he enemy hides behind civilians." Hence, so this Empire-speak argument goes, dead civilians are actually the Taliban's doing.

U.S. military and civilian spokespeople have long accused Taliban guerrillas of using civilians as "shields," or even of purposely luring devastating air strikes down on Afghan wedding parties to create civilian casualties and so inflame the sensibilities of rural Afghanistan. This commonplace argument has two key features: a claim that they made us do it (kill civilians) and the implication that the Taliban fighters "hiding" among innocent villagers or wedding revelers are so many cowards, willing to put their fellow Pashtuns at risk rather than come out and fight like men -- and, of course, given the firepower arrayed against them, die.

The U.S. media regularly records this argument without reflecting on it. In this country, in fact, the evil of combatants "hiding" among civilians seems so self-evident, especially given the larger evil of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, that no one thinks twice about it.

And yet like so much of Empire-speak on a one-way planet, this argument is distinctly uni-directional. What's good for the guerrilla goose, so to speak, is inapplicable to the imperial gander. To illustrate, consider the American "pilots" flying those unmanned Predators and Reapers. We don't know exactly where all of them are (other than not in the drones), but some are certainly at Nellis Air Force Base just outside Las Vegas.

In other words, were the Taliban guerrillas to leave the protection of those civilians and come out into the open, there would be no enemy to fight in the usual sense, not even a predatory one. The pilot firing that Hellfire missile into some Pakistani border village or compound is, after all, using the UAV's cameras, including by next year a new system hair-raisingly dubbed "Gorgon Stare," to locate his target and then, via console, as in a single-shooter video game, firing the missile, possibly from many thousands of miles away.

And yet nowhere in our world will you find anyone making the argument that those pilots are in "hiding" like so many cowards. Such a thought seems absurd to us, as it would if it were applied to the F-16 pilots taking off from aircraft carriers off the Afghan coast or the B-1 pilots flying out of unnamed Middle Eastern bases or the Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia. And yet, whatever those pilots may do in Afghan skies, unless they experience a mechanical malfunction, they are in no more danger than if they, too, were somewhere outside Las Vegas. In the last seven years, a few helicopters, but no planes, have gone down in Afghanistan.

When the Afghan mujahedeen fought the Soviets in the 1980s, the CIA supplied them with hand-held Stinger missiles, the most advanced surface-to-air missile in the U.S. arsenal, and they did indeed start knocking Soviet helicopters and planes out of the skies (which proved the beginning of the end for the Russians). The Afghan or Pakistani Taliban or al-Qaeda terrorists have no such capability today, which means, if you think about it, that what we here imagine as an "air war" involves none of the dangers we would normally associate with war. Looked at in another light, those missile strikes and bombings are really one-way acts of slaughter.

The Taliban's tactics are, of course, the essence of guerrilla warfare, which always involves an asymmetrical battle against more powerful armies and weaponry, and which, if successful, always depends on the ability of the guerrilla to blend into the environment, natural and human, or, as Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong so famously put it, to "swim" in the "sea of the people."

If you imagine your enemy simply using the villagers of Afghanistan as "shields" or "hiding" like so many cowards among them, you are speaking the language of imperial power but also blinding yourself (or the American public) to the actual realities of the war you're fighting.

Imperial Jokes: In October 2008, Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, refused to renew the U.S. lease at Manta Air Base, one of at least 761 foreign bases, macro to micro, that the U.S. garrisons worldwide. Correa reportedly said: "We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base. If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

This qualifies as an anti-imperial joke. The "leftist" president of Ecuador was doing no more than tweaking the nose of goliath. An Ecuadorian base in Miami? Absurd. No one on the planet could take such a suggestion seriously.

On the other hand, when it comes to the U.S. having a major base in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian land that not one in a million Americans has ever heard of, that's no laughing matter. After all, Washington has been paying $20 million a year in direct rent for the use of that country's Manas Air Base (and, as indirect rent, another $80 million has gone to various Kyrgyzstani programs). As late as last October, the Pentagon was planning to sink another $100 million into construction at Manas "to expand aircraft parking areas at the base and provide a 'hot cargo pad' -- an area safe enough to load and unload hazardous and explosive cargo -- to be located away from inhabited facilities." That, however, was when things started to go wrong. Now, Kyrgyzstan's parliament has voted to expel the U.S. from Manas within six months, a serious blow to our resupply efforts for the Afghan War. More outrageous yet to Washington, the Kyrgyzstanis seem to have done this at the bidding of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has the nerve to want to reestablish a Russian sphere of influence in what used to be the borderlands of the old Soviet Union.

Put in a nutshell, despite the crumbling U.S. economic situation and the rising costs of the Afghan War, we still act as if we live on a one-way planet. Some country demanding a base in the U.S.? That's a joke or an insult, while the U.S. potentially gaining or losing a base almost anywhere on the planet may be an insult, but it's never a laughing matter.

Imperial Thought: Recently, to justify those missile attacks in Pakistan, U.S. officials have been leaking details on the program's "successes" to reporters. Anonymous officials have offered the "possibly wishful estimate" that the CIA "covert war" has led to the deaths (or capture) of 11 of al Qaeda's top 20 commanders, including, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, "Abu Layth al-Libi, whom U.S. officials described as 'a rising star' in the group."

"Rising star" is such an American phrase, melding as it does imagined terror hierarchies with the lingo of celebrity tabloids. In fact, one problem with Empire-speak, and imperial thought more generally, is the way it prevents imperial officials from imagining a world not in their own image. So it's not surprising that, despite their best efforts, they regularly conjure up their enemies as a warped version of themselves -- hierarchical, overly reliant on leaders, and top heavy.

In the Vietnam era, for instance, American officials spent a remarkable amount of effort sending troops to search for, and planes to bomb, the border sanctuaries of Cambodia and Laos on a fruitless hunt for COSVN (the so-called Central Office for South Vietnam), the supposed nerve center of the communist enemy, aka "the bamboo Pentagon." Of course, it wasn't there to be found, except in Washington's imperial imagination.

In the Af-Pak "theater," we may be seeing a similar phenomenon. Underpinning the CIA killer-drone program is a belief that the key to combating al-Qaeda (and possibly the Taliban) is destroying its leadership one by one. As key Pakistani officials have tried to explain, the missile attacks, which have indeed killed some al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban figures (as well as whoever was in their vicinity), are distinctly counterproductive. The deaths of those figures in no way compensates for the outrage, the destabilization, the radicalization that the attacks engender in the region. They may, in fact, be functionally strengthening each of those movements.

What it's hard for Washington to grasp is this: "decapitation," to use another American imperial term, is not a particularly effective strategy with a decentralized guerrilla or terror organization. The fact is a headless guerrilla movement is nowhere near as brainless or helpless as a headless Washington would be.

Only recently, Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez of the New York Times
reported that, while top U.S. officials were exhibiting optimism about the effectiveness of the missile strikes, Pakistani officials were pointing to "ominous signs of Al Qaeda's resilience" and suggesting "that Al Qaeda was replenishing killed fighters and midlevel leaders with less experienced but more hard-core militants, who are considered more dangerous because they have fewer allegiances to local Pakistani tribes... The Pakistani intelligence assessment found that Al Qaeda had adapted to the blows to its command structure by shifting 'to conduct decentralized operations under small but well-organized regional groups' within Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Imperial Dreams and Nightmares: Americans have rarely liked to think of themselves as "imperial," so what is it about Rome in these last years? First, the neocons, in the flush of seeming victory in 2002-2003 began to imagine the U.S. as a "new Rome" (or new British Empire), or as Charles Krauthammer wrote as early as February 2001 in Time Magazine, "America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome."

All roads on this planet, they were then convinced, led ineluctably to Washington. Now, of course, they visibly don't, and the imperial bragging about surpassing the Roman or British empires has long since faded away. When it comes to the Afghan War, in fact, those (resupply) "roads" seem to lead, embarrassingly enough, through Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, and Iran. But the comparison to conquering Rome evidently remains on the brain.

When, for instance, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post recently, drumming up support for the revised, age-of-Obama American mission in Afghanistan, he just couldn't help starting off with an inspiring tale about the Romans and a small Italian city-state, Locri, that they conquered. As he tells it, the ruler the Romans installed in Locri, a rapacious fellow named Pleminius, proved a looter and a tyrant. And yet, Mullen assures us, the Locrians so believed in "the reputation for equanimity and fairness that Rome had built" that they sent a delegation to the Roman Senate, knowing they could get a hearing, and demanded restitution; and indeed, the tyrant was removed.

Admittedly, this seems a far-fetched analogy to the U.S. in Afghanistan (and don't for a second mix up Pleminius, that rogue, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, even though the Obama-ites evidently now believe him corrupt and replaceable). Still, as Mullen sees it, the point is: "We don't always get it right. But like the early Romans, we strive in the end to make it right. We strive to earn trust. And that makes all the difference."

Mullen is, it seems, the Aesop of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, in his somewhat overheated brain, we evidently remain the conquering (but just) "early" Romans -- before, of course, the fatal rot set in.

And then there's the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks, a superb reporter who, in his latest book, gives voice to the views of Centcom Commander David Petraeus. Reflecting on Iraq, where he (like the general) believes we could still be fighting in "2015," Ricks begins a recent Post piece this way:

"In October 2008, as I was finishing my latest book on the Iraq war, I visited the Roman Forum during a stop in Italy. I sat on a stone wall on the south side of the Capitoline Hill and studied the two triumphal arches at either end of the Forum, both commemorating Roman wars in the Middle East... The structures brought home a sad realization: It's simply unrealistic to believe that the U.S. military will be able to pull out of the Middle East… It was a week when U.S. forces had engaged in combat in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- a string of countries stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean -- following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the Romans and the British."

With the waning of British power, Ricks continues, it "has been the United States' turn to take the lead there." And our turn, as it happens, just isn't over yet. Evidently that, at least, is the view from our imperial capital and from our military viceroys out on the peripheries.

Honestly, Freud would have loved these guys. They seem to channel the imperial unconscious. Take David Petraeus. For him, too, the duties and dangers of empire evidently weigh heavily on the brain. Like a number of key figures, civilian and military, he has lately begun to issue warnings about Afghanistan's dangers. As the Washington Post
reported, "[Petraeus] suggested that the odds of success were low, given that foreign military powers have historically met with defeat in Afghanistan. 'Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of empires,' he said. 'We cannot take that history lightly.'"

Of course, he's worrying about the graveyard aspect of this, but what I find curious -- exactly because no one thinks it odd enough to comment on here -- is the functional admission in the use of this old adage about Afghanistan that we fall into the category of empires, whether or not in search of a graveyard in which to die.

And he's not alone in this. Secretary of Defense Gates put the matter similarly recently: "Without the support of the Afghan people, Gates said, the U.S. would simply 'go the way of every other foreign army that's ever been in Afghanistan.'"

Imperial Blindness: Think of the above as just a few prospective entries in The Dictionary of American Empire-Speak that will, of course, never be compiled. We're so used to such language, so inured to it and to the thinking behind it, so used, in fact, to living on a one-way planet in which all roads lead to and from Washington, that it doesn't seem like a language at all. It's just part of the unexamined warp and woof of everyday life in a country that still believes it normal to garrison the planet, regularly fight wars halfway across the globe, find triumph or tragedy in the gain or loss of an air base in a country few Americans could locate on a map, and produce military manuals on counterinsurgency warfare the way a do-it-yourself furniture maker would produce instructions for constructing a cabinet from a kit.

We don't find it strange to have 16 intelligence agencies, some devoted to listening in on, and spying on, the planet, or capable of running "covert wars" in tribal borderlands thousands of miles distant, or of flying unmanned drones over those same borderlands destroying those who come into camera view. We're inured to the bizarreness of it all and of the language (and pretensions) that go with it.

If The Dictionary of American Empire-Speak were ever produced, who here would buy it? Who would feel the need to check out what seems like the only reasonable and self-evident language for describing the world? How else, after all, would we operate? How else would any American in a position of authority talk in Washington or Baghdad or Islamabad or Rome?

So it undoubtedly seemed to the Romans, too. And we know what finally happened to their empire and the language that went with it. Such a language plays its role in normalizing the running of an empire. It allows officials (and in our case the media as well) not to see what would be inconvenient to the smooth functioning of such an enormous undertaking. Embedded in its words and phrases is a fierce way of thinking (even if we don't see it that way), as well as plausible deniability. And in the good times, its uses are obvious.

On the other hand, when the normal ways of empire cease to function well, that same language can suddenly work to blind the imperial custodians -- which is, after all, what the foreign policy "team" of the Obama era is -- to necessary realities. At a moment when it might be important to grasp what the "American face" in the mirror actually looks like, you can't see it.

And sometimes what you can't bring yourself to see can, as now, hurt you.

Father and Son

SYRIA CALLING

The Obama Administration's chance to engage in a Middle East peace.

by Seymour M. Hersh

When the Israelis' controversial twenty-two-day military campaign in Gaza ended, on January 18th, it also seemed to end the promising peace talks between Israel and Syria. The two countries had been engaged for almost a year in negotiations through intermediaries in Istanbul. Many complicated technical matters had been resolved, and there were agreements in principle on the normalization of diplomatic relations. The consensus, as an ambassador now serving in Tel Aviv put it, was that the two sides had been "a lot closer than you might think."

At an Arab summit in Qatar in mid-January, however, Bashar Assad, the President of Syria, angrily declared that Israel's bombing of Gaza and the resulting civilian deaths showed that the Israelis spoke only "the language of blood." He called on the Arab world to boycott Israel, close any Israeli embassies in the region, and sever all "direct or indirect ties with Israel." Syria, Assad said, had ended its talks over the Golan Heights.

Nonetheless, a few days after the Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, Assad said in an e-mail to me that although Israel was "doing everything possible to undermine the prospects for peace," he was still very interested in closing the deal. "We have to wait a little while to see how things will evolve and how the situation will change," Assad said. "We still believe that we need to conclude a serious dialogue to lead us to peace."

American and foreign government officials, intelligence officers, diplomats, and politicians said in interviews that renewed Israeli-Syrian negotiations over the Golan Heights are now highly likely, despite Gaza and the elections in Israel in February, which left the Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the head of a coalition that includes both the far right and Labor. Those talks would depend largely on America's willingness to act as the mediator, a role that could offer Barack Obama his first—and perhaps best—chance for engagement in the Middle East peace process.

A senior Syrian official explained that Israel's failure to unseat Hamas from power in Gaza, despite the scale of the war, gave Assad enough political room to continue the negotiations without losing credibility in the Arab world. Assad also has the support of Arab leaders who are invested in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last month when I saw him in Doha that Assad must take any reasonable steps he can to keep the talks going. "Syria is eager to engage with the West," he said, "an eagerness that was never perceived by the Bush White House. Anything is possible, as long as peace is being pursued."

A major change in American policy toward Syria is clearly under way. "The return of the Golan Heights is part of a broader strategy for peace in the Middle East that includes countering Iran's influence," Martin Indyk, a former American Ambassador to Israel, who is now the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, said. "Syria is a strategic linchpin for dealing with Iran and the Palestinian issue. Don't forget, everything in the Middle East is connected, as Obama once said."

A former American diplomat who has been involved in the Middle East peace process said, "There are a lot of people going back and forth to Damascus from Washington saying there is low-hanging fruit waiting for someone to harvest." A treaty between Syria and Israel "would be the start of a wide-reaching peace-implementation process that will unfold over time." He added, "The Syrians have been ready since the 1993 Oslo Accords to do a separate deal." The new Administration now has to conduct "due diligence": "Get an ambassador there, or a Presidential envoy. Talk to Bashar, and speak in specifics so you'll know whether or not you've actually got what you've asked for. If you're vague, don't be surprised if it comes back to bite you."

Many Israelis and Americans involved in the process believe that a deal on the Golan Heights could be a way to isolate Iran, one of Syria's closest allies, and to moderate Syria's support for Hamas and for Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department. There is a competing view: that Assad's ultimate goal is not to marginalize Iran but to bring it, too, into regional talks that involve America—and perhaps Israel. In either scenario, Iran is a crucial factor motivating each side.

These diplomatic possibilities were suggested by Senator John Kerry, of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who met with Assad in Damascus in February—his third visit since Assad took office, in 2000. "He wants to engage with the West," Kerry said in an interview in his Senate office. "Our latest conversation gave me a much greater sense that Assad is willing to do the things that he needs to do in order to change his relationship with the United States. He told me he's willing to engage positively with Iraq, and have direct discussions with Israel over the Golan Heights—with Americans at the table. I will encourage the Administration to take him up on it.

"Of course, Syria will not suddenly move against Iran," Kerry said. "But the Syrians will act in their best interest, as they did in their indirect negotiations with Israel with Turkey's assistance—and over the objections of Iran."

President Assad was full of confidence and was impatiently anticipating the new Administration in Washington when I spoke to him late last year in Damascus. Trained as an ophthalmologist, partly in London, he took over the Presidency in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez Assad, who amassed enormous personal power in thirty years of brutal rule. Bashar had not expected a life as the Syrian leader—his older brother, Basil, who was killed in an accident in 1994, had been groomed to replace their father. Bashar, thirty-four when he became President, was said to be a lesser figure than either of them. He has since consolidated his position—both by modernizing the economy and by suppressing domestic opposition—and, when we spoke, it was clear that he had come to relish the exercise of power.

Assad said that if America's leaders "are seeking peace they have to deal with Syria and they have to deal with our rights, which is the Golan Heights." In the Six-Day War, in 1967, Israel seized the Golan Heights, about four hundred and fifty square miles of territory that is rich in Biblical history and, crucially, in water. It includes part of the Jordan River Valley and a plateau overlooking the river which extends to Mt. Hermon, in the north. Syria was left with no access to the Sea of Galilee and the upper Jordan River. Roughly twenty thousand Israeli settlers live there, and they have built towns, vineyards, and boutique hotels in its valleys and strategic heights.

Assad said, "The land is not negotiable, and the Israelis know that we are not going to negotiate the line of 1967." But he suggested that compromises were possible. "We only demarcate the line," he said. "We negotiate the relations, the water, and everything else." Many who are close to the process assume that an Israeli-Syrian settlement would include reparations for the Israelis in the Golan Heights, and, for a time, the right of access to the land. Assad said, "You discuss everything after the peace and getting your land. Not before."

If Israel wants a settlement that goes beyond the Golan Heights, Assad said, it will have to "deal with the core issue"—the situation in the West Bank and Gaza—"and not waste time talking about who is going to send arms to Hezbollah or Hamas. Wherever you have resistance in the region, they will have armaments somehow. It is very simple." He added, "Hezbollah is in Lebanon and Hamas is in Palestine. . . . If they want to solve the problem of Hezbollah, they have to deal with Lebanon. For Hamas, they have to deal with Gaza. For Iran, it is not part of the peace process anyway." Assad went on, "This peace is about peace between Syria and Israel."

In his e-mail after the Gaza war, Assad emphasized that it was more than ever "essential that the United States play a prominent and active role in the peace process." What he needed, Assad said, was direct contact with Obama. A conference would not be enough: "It is most natural to want a meeting with President Obama."

If the Netanyahu government is to trade land for peace, it needs to be assured of domestic political support—and help from Washington. In September, 2007, Israel destroyed what it claimed was a potential Syrian nuclear-weapons reactor during a cross-border raid, an action that won the approval of the Israeli public. (Syria insisted there was no reactor on the site.) At the time, the two countries were already laying the groundwork for the indirect negotiations. In December, 2008, Ehud Olmert, who was then Prime Minister, flew to Ankara, Turkey, and conducted more than five hours of intense talks on the return of the Golan Heights, with the mediation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was often in direct telephone contact with Bashar Assad. But Olmert's standing was tarnished, both inside Israel, by a series of criminal investigations that led to his resignation (he has denied any wrongdoing), and outside Israel, by the Gaza war, which began days after he left Ankara.

Netanyahu's coalition government will include, as Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the Israel Beytenu Party, who has argued for a measure, aimed at Israeli-Arabs, requiring citizens to take loyalty oaths or forfeit many of their rights, and has rejected any land-for-peace agreement with Syria (though he is open to trading other territories); and, as Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, the Labor Party leader, who has consistently supported talks with Syria. Current opinion polls indicate that the majority of Israelis do not support a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Netanyahu himself—in what was widely seen as a plea for votes—declared two days before the elections that he would not return the Golan Heights.

Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who served on Israeli peace delegations in 1995 and 2001 and also as an adviser to Prime Minister Barak, said that Netanyahu "may have huge coalition problems, not least within his own Likud Party," and that he "may have to publicly disavow any land-for-peace agreement, given his political position. Can the Syrians swallow that? If they can't, it means that the only option left will be secret talks." Levy added, "Barak's appointment does not change the fundamental dynamics of the coalition, but it means that Bibi [Netanyahu] has a Defense Minister who will be on board for dealing with Syria, who wants to deal with Syria—and who also will be on board for doing it in secret."

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, who was Israel's chief negotiator with Syria under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and informally advises his government on Syrian issues, argued that the war in Gaza had not changed Israel's essential interest in a Golan Heights settlement: "Gaza is Gaza, and I say that Bashar Assad definitely wants to go ahead with the talks. And he may find a partner in Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi would prefer to make a deal with Syria rather than with the Palestinians."

But if the talks are to proceed, Rabinovich said, "they will have to be transformed to direct negotiations." This would require the support and involvement of the Obama Administration. Rabinovich said that he thought Obama, like Netanyahu, "after weighing the pros and cons, will see a Golan Heights settlement as being more feasible" than a deal with the Palestinians. "The talks are serious, and there is a partner."

The former American diplomat, who is an expert on the Golan Heights, said that it would take between three and five years to evacuate Israelis living there. "During that time, if there is a party moderating the agreement—the U.S., perhaps—it would be necessary for that party to stay engaged, to make sure that the process stays on course," he said. This factor may explain why Assad wants the U.S. involved. "The key point is that the signing of an agreement is just the beginning—and third parties are needed to reinforce the agreement."

Obama's Middle East strategy is still under review in the State Department and the National Security Council. The Administration has been distracted by the economic crisis, and impeded by the large number of key foreign- and domestic-policy positions yet to be filled. Obama's appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as his special envoy for Middle East diplomacy, on January 22nd, won widespread praise, but Mitchell has yet to visit Syria. Diplomatic contacts with Damascus were expanded in late February, and informal exchanges with Syria have already taken place. According to involved diplomats, the Administration's tone was one of dialogue and respect—and not a series of demands. For negotiations to begin, the Syrians understood that Washington would no longer insist that Syria shut down the Hamas liaison office in Damascus and oust its political leader, Khaled Meshal. Syria, instead, will be asked to play a moderating role with the Hamas leadership, and urge a peaceful resolution of Hamas's ongoing disputes with Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Syrians were also told that the Obama Administration was reëvaluating the extent of Syria's control over Hezbollah. (The White House did not respond to requests for comment.)

The United States has been involved in negotiations over the Golan Heights before, notably those brokered by Bill Clinton in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in 2000. Those talks, despite their last-minute collapse over border disputes, among other issues, provided the backbone for the recent indirect negotiations. Martin Indyk, who advised Clinton at Shepherdstown, said that those talks were about "territory for peace." Now, he said, "it's about territory for peace and strategic realignment."

During the long campaign for the White House, Obama often criticized Syria for its links to terrorism, its "pursuit of weapons of mass destruction," and its interference in Lebanon, where Syria had troops until 2005 and still plays a political role. (Assad dismissed the criticisms in his talk with me: "We do not bet on speeches during the campaign.") But Obama said that he would be willing to sit down with Assad in the first year of his Presidency without preconditions. He also endorsed the Syrian peace talks with Israel. "We must never force Israel to the negotiating table, but neither should we ever block negotiations when Israel's leaders decide that they may serve Israeli interests," he said at the annual conference, last June, of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "As President, I will do whatever I can to help Israel succeed in these negotiations."

The differences between Obama's Syria policies and those of the Administration of George W. Bush have attracted relatively little attention. In December, 2006, the Iraq Study Group called for direct talks with Syria. In a speech soon afterward, Bush explained why he disagreed. "I think it would be counterproductive at this point to sit down with the Syrians, because Syria knows exactly what it takes to get better relations," he said. The President then provided a list: stop its support for Hamas and Hezbollah; stop meddling in Lebanon; coöperate in the investigation of the murder, in 2005, of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's former Prime Minister; and stop serving as "a transit way for suicide bombers heading into Iraq." (The Bush Administration accused Syria of failing to monitor its long border with Iraq, and, last October, staged a raid into Syria, killing eight people, one of whom was said to be a senior Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia operative. A huge number of Iraqi refugees have also fled to Syria, straining the economy.) Bush added dismissively, "When people go sit down with Bashar Assad, the President of Syria, he walks out and holds a press conference, and says, 'Look how important I am. People are coming to see me; people think I'm vital.' "

An official who served with the Bush Administration said that late last year the Administration thought it was unrealistic to engage Syria on the Golan Heights. "The Bush view was, if we support the talks, with no preconditions, what are we going to say to our supporters in Lebanon who are standing up to Hezbollah? 'You stood up to Hezbollah'—and where are we?"

Assad noted late last year that the Bush White House did not "have to trust me, because they are not involved in peace anyway. . . .They created a lot of problems around the world and they exacerbated the situation in every hot spot [and] made the world more vulnerable to terrorism. This is the most important thing," he said. "Nobody can say the opposite."

As the Bush era wound down, U.S. allies were making their own openings to Syria. In mid-November, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, distressed the White House by flying to Damascus for a meeting with Assad. They agreed that Britain and Syria would establish a high-level exchange of intelligence. Vice-President Dick Cheney viewed the move by Britain—"perfidious Albion," as he put it—as "a stab in the back," according to a former senior intelligence official.

In his e-mail, Assad praised the diplomatic efforts of former President Jimmy Carter. "Carter is most knowledgeable about the Middle East and he does not try to dictate or give sermons," Assad said. "He sincerely is trying to think creatively and find solutions that are outside the box." Carter's calls for engagement with Hamas have angered many in Israel and America. In "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land," published in January, Carter described Syria as "a key factor in any overall regional peace." Last December, Carter visited Syria, and met not only with President Assad but with Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader.

A senior White House official confirmed that the Obama transition team had been informed in advance of Carter's trip to Syria, and that Carter met with Obama shortly before the Inauguration. The two men—Obama was accompanied only by David Axelrod, the President's senior adviser, who helped arrange the meeting; and Carter by his wife, Rosalynn—discussed the Middle East for an hour. Carter declined to discuss his meeting with Obama, but he did write in an e-mail that he hoped the new President "would pursue a wide-ranging dialogue as soon as possible with the Assad government." An understanding between Washington and Damascus, he said, "could set the stage for successful Israeli-Syrian talks."

The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, "Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama" when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a "pro-Palestinian," who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would "never make it in the major leagues"). But the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of "smart bombs" and other high-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel. "It was Jones"—retired Marine General James Jones, at the time designated to be the President's national-security adviser—"who came up with the solution and told Obama, 'You just can't tell the Israelis to get out.' " (General Jones said that he could not verify this account; Cheney's office declined to comment.)

Syria's relationship with Iran will emerge as the crucial issue in the diplomatic reviews now under way in Washington. A settlement, the Israelis believe, would reduce Iran's regional standing and influence. "I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Bashar goes to Tehran and explains to the Supreme Leader that he wants to mediate a bilateral relationship with the United States," the former American diplomat said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

An Israeli official acknowledged that his government had learned of "tensions between Syria and Iran in recent months." Before Gaza, he said, there had been a noticeable change in the Syrian tone during informal contacts—"an element of openness, candor, and civility." He cautioned, however, "You can move diplomatically with the Syrians, but you cannot ignore Syria's major role in arming Hamas and Hezbollah, or the fact that it has intimate relations with Iran, whose nuclear program is still going forward." He added, with a smile, "No one in Israel is running out to buy a new suit for the peace ceremony on the White House lawn."

Martin Indyk said, "If the White House engages with Syria, it immediately puts pressure on Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah." He said that he had repeatedly sought, without success, to convince the Bush Administration that it was possible to draw Syria away from Iran. In his recent memoir, "Innocent Abroad," Indyk wrote, "There is a deep divergence between Iran and Syria, captured in the fact that at the same time as Iran's president threatens to wipe Israel off the map, his Syrian ally is attempting to make peace with Israel. . . . Should negotiations yield a peace agreement, it would likely cause the breakup of the Iranian-Syrian axis." When we spoke, he added, referring to Assad, "It will not be easy for him to break with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran, but he cannot get a peace deal unless he does. But, if he feels that things are moving in the Middle East, he will not want to be left behind."

Thomas Dine, who served as the executive director of AIPAC in Washington for thirteen years, said, "You don't have to be Kissingerian to realize that this is the way to peel the onion from Iran." Dine went on, "Get what you can get and take one step at a time. The agenda is to get Syria to begin thinking about its relationships with Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah." A Pentagon consultant said, "If we ever really took yes for an answer from Syria, the Iranians would go nuts."

The official Syrian position toward Iran, which Assad repeated to me, is that Iran did not object to the Golan Heights talks, on the principle that any return of sovereign land was to be applauded: "They announced this publicly . . . and I went to Iran and I heard the same." But there is some evidence that the Syrians may be, in Dine's terms, reassessing the relationship. The senior Syrian official said that an opening to the West would bring the country increased tourism, trade, and investment, and a higher standard of living—progress that would eventually make it less reliant on Iran. If Israel then attacked Iran, he asked, "what will Syria do?" His answer was that Syria wouldn't do more than condemn the attack. "What else could we do?"

In an interview in Berlin, Joschka Fischer, the former German Foreign Minister, who has continued to closely monitor Middle Eastern affairs, argued that the Iranians would "have to make a public move" after a settlement. "Yes, they will react to an Israeli-Syria deal, because they do not want to be isolated, and do not want to lose their last ally to the West." In other words, serious regional diplomacy could be possible.

However, Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence officer who operated in the Middle East and later served as an adviser to the European Union and a staff member for a fact-finding committee on the Middle East headed by Mitchell, said that the new Administration should not assume that Bashar Assad could be separated easily from Iran, or persuaded to give up support for Hamas and Hezbollah. "Bashar now has enormous standing in the Arab world, and it comes from these pillars—he was among the first to oppose the American war in Iraq and his continued support for Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas," Crooke said. "He cannot trade the Golan Heights for peace with Israel, and cut off his allies. What Syria can do is offer its good standing and credentials to lead a comprehensive regional settlement." But, he said, "the Obama Administration is going to make it really painful for Syria. There will be no bouquets for Syria."

He went on, "The real goal of Assad is not necessarily an agreement on the Golan but to begin to engage America and slice away the American demonization of his state." The changed political landscape in Israel would complicate this process for the Syrians. He said, "They're starting all these processes to break their isolation and change their strategy. It's going to be bloody difficult for them to manage this."

Robert Pastor, a former National Security Council official who has visited Damascus with former President Carter, similarly said that he believed the Syrians had no intention of ending their relationship with Iran. "The Syrians want bilateral talks with Washington and they also want America to be involved in their talks with Israel on the Golan Heights," Pastor said. "They also believe their relationship with Iran could be of help to the Obama Administration. They believe they could be a bridge between Washington and Tehran."

Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, works in an office in a well-protected, tranquil residential area of Damascus. In recent years, he has met privately with Jewish leaders and Americans. Meshal is seen by Israel as a sponsor of suicide bombers and other terrorist activity. In 1997, he survived a botched assassination-by-poisoning attempt by Israeli intelligence which Netanyahu, then the Prime Minister, had ordered. Under pressure from Jordan and the U.S., the Israelis handed over the poison's antidote, saving Meshal's life.

Speaking through a translator, Meshal said that he believed that the Iranians would not interfere with negotiations between Israel and Syria, although they were not enthusiastic about them. Meshal also said he doubted that Israel intended to return the Golan Heights to Syrian control. But, he said, "If we suppose that Israel is serious, we support the right of Syria to negotiate with Israel to attain its legitimate rights."

Hamas's presence in Damascus had, he knew, been a contentious issue in Syria's relations with both the United States and Israel. "Bashar would never ask us to leave," he said. "There are some who believe that Hamas would react defensively to an agreement, because of our presence in Syria. But it does not make a difference where our offices are. We are a street movement and our real power is inside Palestine, and nothing can affect that. We are confident about Bashar Assad, and we would never risk being a burden to him. . . . We can move at any time, and move lightly. The Hamas movement will not work against the interests of any other country, and any agreement can be concluded, whether we like it or not. But, also, we don't want anyone to interfere in our affairs."

Farouk al-Shara, the Vice-President of Syria, was, as Foreign Minister, his nation's chief negotiator at Shepherdstown. When he was asked whether Syria's relationship with Iran would change if the Golan Heights issue was resolved, he said, "Do you think a man only goes to bed with a woman he deeply loves?" Shara laughed, and added, "That's my answer to your question about Iran."

There are other impediments to a new relationship between the United States and Syria, including the still unresolved question of who killed Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, who was assassinated in February, 2005. Years of investigation have produced no criminal charges. The Bush Administration suggested that the Syrians were at least indirectly responsible for Hariri's death—he had been a sharp critic of Syria's involvement in Lebanon—and it wasn't alone; Hariri's murder exacerbated tensions between Syria and France and Saudi Arabia. But the case is clearly less important to French President Nicolas Sarkozy than it was to his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who was close to Hariri. ("This was personal for Chirac, and not political," Joschka Fischer said.) An adviser to the Saudi government said that King Abdullah did not accept Assad's assurances that he had nothing to do with the murder. But there has recently been a flurry of renewed diplomatic contacts between Damascus and Riyadh.

One issue that may be a casualty of an Obama rapprochement with Syria is human rights. Syrians are still being jailed for speaking out against the policies of their government. Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said that Assad "has been offering fig leafs to the Americans for a long time and thinks if he makes nice in Lebanon and with Hamas and Hezbollah he will no longer be an outcast. We believe that no amount of diplomatic success will solve his internal problems." The authorities, Whitson said, are "going after ordinary Syrians—like people chatting in cafés. Everyone is looking over their shoulder."

Assad, in his interview with me, acknowledged, "We do not say that we are a democratic country. We do not say that we are perfect, but we are moving forward." And he focussed on what he had to offer. He said that he had a message for Obama: Syria, as a secular state, and the United States faced a common enemy in Al Qaeda and Islamic extremism. The Bush White House, he said, had viewed the fundamentalists as groups "that you should go and chase, and then you will accomplish your mission, as Bush says. It is not that simple. How do you deal with a state of mind? You can deal with it in many different ways—except for the army." Speaking of Obama, he said in his e-mail, "We are happy that he has said that diplomacy—and not war—is the means of conducting international policy."

Assad's goal in seeking to engage with America and Israel is clearly more far-reaching than merely to regain the Golan Heights. His ultimate aim appears to be to persuade Obama to abandon the Bush Administration's strategy of aligning America with the so-called "moderate" Arab Sunni states—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan—in a coördinated front against Shiite Iran, Shiite Hezbollah, and Hamas.

"Of course, the Iranians are nervous about the talks, because they don't fully trust the Syrians," Itamar Rabinovich said. "But the Assad family does not believe in taking chances—they're very hard bargainers. They will try to get what they want without breaking fully from Iran, and they will tell us and Washington, 'It's to your advantage not to isolate Iran.' " Rabinovich added, "Both Israel and the United States will insist on a change in Syria's relationship with Iran. This can only be worked out—or not—in head-to-head talks."

The White House has tough diplomatic choices to make in the next few months. Assad has told the Obama Administration that his nation can ease the American withdrawal in Iraq. Syria also can help the U.S. engage with Iran, and the Iranians, in turn, could become an ally in neighboring Afghanistan, as the Obama Administration struggles to deal with the Taliban threat and its deepening involvement in that country—and to maintain its long-standing commitment to the well-being of Israel. Each of these scenarios has potential downsides. Resolving all of them will be formidable, and will involve sophisticated and intelligent diplomacy—the kind of diplomacy that disappeared during the past eight years, and that the Obama team has to prove it possesses. ♦