I've finished my holiday shopping (at last), which means it's time for another round of hypothetical gift-giving for some important world leaders and political figures. If it were in my power, here's what I'd be sending some notables this year.

1. For Barack Obama: A dartboard. No, not so he can pin a picture of John Boehner on it, but so he can make some hard choices about his second-term priorities. Energy independence? Gun control? Rebuilding infrastructure? Middle East peace? A real negotiation with Iran? Climate change? Tax reform? The list is endless. Obama tried to do way too much during the first year of his first term, and I'm hoping he's learned his lesson and will focus more in the second term. Maybe a dartboard can help. 

2. For Syrian tyrant Bashar al Assad: A one-pound bag of Arabian coffee to wake up and smell. Or better still: a one-way ticket for himself and his immediate family to anywhere they want. As an added bonus, a recording of this classic song. Just go. Now.

3. For Dick Morris, Karl Rove, and all the other people who called the election for Romney: A copy of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise. Because it's never too late to learn.

4. For defeated GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney: Nothing. You've got five houses, a fleet of cars and boats, and a loving family. What could I possibly give you except my vote (and I'm afraid it's too late for that)?

5. For the people of America, and especially its children: A ban on assault weapons, and a Congressional resolution declaring that all the 2^nd amendment guarantees is the right to keep a muzzle-loading musket.

6. For Benjamin Netanyahu: A signed copy of Peter Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism. And a mirror.

7. For Hillary Rodham Clinton: A one-year membership in the spa of her choice, and a book contract that takes until 2017 to complete.

8. For the Republican Party: A roundtrip ticket to see the Wizard of Oz. Because the party desperately needs a heart, a brain, courage, and a way to get back home to its true conservative roots.

9. For the beleaguered people of the eastern Congo: A miracle. Because it appears that is what it will take to end their suffering.

10. For my readers: My thanks for continuing to engage with this blog (and now @StephenWalt on twitter). I wish you all a joyful holiday season, the warmth of love from friends and family, and a New Year that turns out better than realists normally expect. I'll be back online after Xmas.

I've been too busy to blog much this week, but I thought I"d mention that I've taken the plunge and signed up for Twitter (@StephenWalt). I'll probably use it sparingly, but who knows? Please bear with me until I get the hang of it. Brevity has never been my long suit, so this may take awhile.

Today's NY Times reported the death of Gladys Horton, lead singer of the Marvelettes, whose recording of "Please Mr. Postman" was Motown Records first No. 1 hit. I first heard the song in the Beatles' cover version (which ain't bad), but the original is even better: sharp, urgent, and it's got that classic Motown groove (courtesy of the immortal Funk Bros.)

There's something rather symbolic in the timing of Ms. Horton's death, especially in light of what's going on in the Arab world. You don't see the connection? Consider the lyrics of the song:

Please Mister Postman, look and see? (Oh yeah)?
If there's a letter in your bag for me?  (Please, Please Mister Postman)
Why's it takin' such a long time? (Oh yeah)?
For me to hear from that boy of mine?
There must be some word today?
From my boyfriend so far away?
Please Mister Postman, look and see?
If there's a letter, a letter for me
I've been standin' here waitin' Mister Postman?
So patiently...?
For just a card, or just a letter?
Sayin' he's returnin' home to me"

The song is an anthem to anticipation, uncertainty, and longing -- why hasn't she heard from that absent boyfriend? -- and the entire premise of the song depends on that fact she's waiting for an actual physical letter to be delivered. It's back in the era of snail mail, folks, when long-distance telephony was prohibitively expensive and there was no email, no Twitter, no Facebook, no way for ordinary people to communicate instantly on a regular basis over long distances. That also meant you were really dependent on whatever newspapers, TV, and radio chose to tell you.

I remember my first trip overseas in 1976, to study at Stanford's overseas campus in Berlin. Correspondence with my then-girlfriend took a minimum of three weeks (round-trip), and longer if one of us was slow in responding. Like the singer in the song: you waited for a letter, and wondered what no news meant. If a letter was delayed, you agonized over what it might imply. It was a world where events moved more slowly, precisely because it took time for news to spread. Today, my teenaged son and daughter are surprised and irritated if a friend doesn't respond to a text in five minutes.

Now consider what we're seeing in the Middle East. Whatever the ultimate outcome of events in the Arab world, the speed with which large numbers of people have responded to events far away is remarkable. Just as audiocassettes of the Ayatollah Khomeini's sermons served as a medium of transmission in Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979, here a combination of modern mass media (Al Jazeera, the Internet, email, Twitter, etc.) has clearly played a major role in driving the pace of events.

At the same time, we're living with a nearly unprecedented outpouring of previously hidden information, via Wikileaks and the "Palestine Papers." This is the wave of the future, I suspect, because the Internet is making it impossible to contain a secret once it's out. Even if governments convinced some news agencies to suppress a secret, somebody somewhere else would release it and then we would all find it on the Web. That gives leakers a bigger incentive to release classified information, precisely because they can be more confident that the leak will get noticed and have an impact. This situation is bound to have significant second-order effects, as governments have to choose between supporting greater transparency, taking harsher action against leakers, or being more reluctant to speak candidly or to record confidential exchanges in ways that could be leaked.

In "Please Mr. Postman," the Marvelettes began by exhorting him to "Wait!" In today's world, the mediasphere isn't waiting for anyone.  

The late George Carlin was a brilliant comedian and social critic, especially in his obsession with how language can be used to distort or deceive. He's also a lot funnier than Derrida or Bourdieu.  

In one of his best routines, Carlin began by noting:

You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American english is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. "

He then proceeds to trace how the same combat-induced condition once known as "shell shock" (two syllables, clear and evocative), gradually evolved into "battle fatigue" (four syllables), then "operational exhaustion" (eight syllables) and then into today's "post-traumatic stress disorder." (eight syllables plus a hyphen!). And in the process, its nature is concealed and its impact is quietly diluted.

The spirit of Carlin is probably smiling ruefully right now, because this tendency appears to be alive and well. According to the Associated Press, the Army has now dropped the term "psychological operations" (nine syllables, unless you use the two-syllable label "psy-ops").

The new term is -- are you ready? -- "military information support operations" (a whopping fourteen syllables).  Both the old term and the new one are euphemisms, but the latter is precisely the sort of bland and neutral phrase intended to conceal what is really going on.  

You know, just like saying "enhanced interrogation" (seven highly misleading syllables), instead of "torture" (just two syllables; clear, on point, and illegal).

Last week I had the privilege of visiting the USS Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier that was conducting training exercises off the coast of Florida in preparation for an overseas deployment. The other guests and I were flown aboard the carrier (on a C2 transport) for a tour of the ship and aseries of briefings about the ship’s operations. We also spent a good chunk of the afternoon and evening observing a variety of air exercises, including night-time takeoffs and landings by the F-18s, EA-6s, and E-2s that make up the ship’s air wing. The following day we breakfasted with members of the ship’s crew, flew via helicopter to the USS Winston S. Churchill (an ArleighBurke class destroyer operating in the area) and then returned to the Truman before catapaulting off the ship and flying back to shore. (Yes, we used a plane to do that, too).

As you can imagine, this was a pretty heady experience, especially for somebody who grew up around boats and spent a couple of years working for a Navy think tank (the Center for Naval Analyses) while in gradschool. I’m grateful for the opportunity and to the officers and crew -- who were terrific hosts during our visit -- and I’m absorbing a lot of the things I was told or that I observed while on board.  Here are 3 of the most vivid impressions and/or conclusions I took from the trip. 

First, whatever you might think of the U.S. military in general or the Navy in particular, the sheer technical and managerial skill involved in this sort of operation is damn impressive. As one crewman described it, carrier flight operations are “like a combination of NASCAR and ballet.” The more you watch the ship, planes and crew in operation, the more you realize that their expertise is the refined product of decades of organizational evolution. You couldn’t figure out how to operate a carrier battle group by putting a lot of smart people in a room and having them design the various pieces of equipment and the procedures used to operate them from scratch; the only way to develop these skills is to do it for a long time and to keep trying to get better.

The lesson, of course, is that effective military operations depend on accountability: The only way to improve over time is to learn from past mistakes, reward good perfomance, and penalize errors or incompetence. I’m not saying the military is perfect in that regard, but it does a better job than some other institutions I could name (including academia?). And wouldn’t it be nice if we achieved a similar level of accountability in the making of foreign policy itself? As I've harped on before, one of the reasons we keep making the same strategic mistakes is that we keep listening to the same people who screwed things up in the past (see under:Middle East policy, Iraq, etc.), instead of paying attention to those who’ve been proven right in the past or who offer alternatives to the failed status quo.  

So if you have growing doubts about Obama’s foreign policy, bear in mind that most of his key foreign policy appointees supported invading Iraq in 2003, and most of them are still deeply committed to a highly interventionist foreign policy. And let’s not even talk about neoconservatives, who remain a powerful influence despite having been wrong about nearly everything for at least two decades.

But I digress... 

Second, it is impossible not to be impressed by the youth and diversity of the crews we met. The composition of the Truman’s crew isn’ta perfect cross-section of American society, perhaps, but there are plenty of different ethnic groups represented and a fair number of women as well. No openly gay sailors or aircrews, ofcourse, but apart from that regrettable omission, it’s an impressive feat of integration. 

In Herman Wouk’s World War II novel The Caine Mutiny, one of the characters describes the Navy as “amaster plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.” The line is grossly unfair to officersand enlisted personnel alike (and the character who utters it in the book is later exposed as a coward), but in a way it does capture how effort, expertise and constant training can transform raw recruits into highly competent personnel and allow them to develop their skills over time. It was even more striking to see how young most of the crew was, especially given the responsibilities that they are given. I will be thinking about them the next time some Harvard College student says they need an extension on a 10-page paper because they have something else due that day. 

Lastly, I kept thinking about the crucial role of grand strategy. It is one thing to have an impressive set of military capabilities; it is another to know where to commit them and for what strategic purpose. Since the first Gulf War, the United States has become increasingly entangled in anambitious but dubious project to influence or reshape some of the most impoverished or dysfunctional countries on earth, largely via military force. This effort began with the Clinton administration's ill-conceived strategy of “dual containment” in the 1990s (which helped fuel the rise of al Qaeda), and later expanded into the Bush administration’s strategy of “regional transformation.” The latter goal led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and that same mind-set is now part and parcel of our efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and (maybe) Yemen.  

Like some parts of the old British Empire, these various commitments were to some degree undertaken “in a fit of absent-mindedness,” and certainly without a clear calculation of costs and benefits. This project was dreamed up by civilians in both parties and not by the armed services themselves (although parts of each branch have boughtinto it to some degree). Unfortunately, this scheme has forced the U.S.military take on a set of missions for which it is not particularly well-suited, that may in fact be impossible, and that are probably peripheral to America’s long-term interests. For example, we are currently using carrier-based aircraft to fly combat support missions in Afghanistan, which requires pilots to fly five-to-6 hour missions (with multiple aerial refuelings), and puts enormous wear and tear on airframes, engines, and crews alike. These commitments have also forced the United States into vast counterinsurgency and nation-building operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and this sort of activity inevitably produces civilian casualties as well as other abuses (e.g., Abu Ghraib). The result? More recruits for al Qaeda or the Taliban, and apparent confirmation of bin Laden's ravings about America's supposed desire to dominate the Islamic world.   

Equally important are the opportunity costs: the money weare pouring down the Central Asian and Persian Gulf rat hole isn’t available tomaintain the force levels and modernization upon which our global leadershipdepends. One suspects that this effect of our current global "strategy" is deeply appreciated in places like Beijing. And don’t forget all the presidential time and attention that this activity consumes, first by Bush, and now by Obama, at a time when there are plenty of other items that could use more attention. 

We have been able to sustain this effort by relying on an all-volunteer force and by borrowing the money, so that Americans back home don’t feel the pinch directly. But these expedients won’t last forever, and unless we start rethinking our entire approach to global leadership -- moving away from global "liberal evangelism" and back towards a more realist strategy of offshorebalancing -- Americans will one day look back on this decade as the era when they squandered their position of primacy on a set of ill-advised imperial endeavors. Bin Laden and his ilk will be dead and gone by then, and their fantasies of a restored caliphate will have been exposed as hollow dreams. But they will have inflicted immense harm on the United States in the process; not so much by what they were able to do to us, but by what they fooled us into doing to ourselves.  

I've posted on Valentine's, Father's Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day and Halloween, so at this point I assume a few readers are expecting me to offer up some thoughts on Thanksgiving. I'm happy to oblige, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not only do I enjoy helping produce a feast and welcoming friends and family, but I like the idea of a day to reflect on whatever blessings we may have received. In my own case, I've been blessed with a wonderful family and a lot of undeserved good luck, and I probably ought to be even more grateful than I am.

So in that spirit, here are the Top Ten things I'm thankful for this year. (For the "official" FP version, check out Josh Keating's list here). I've limited myself to items that relate in some way to foreign policy or international affairs.

1. The Foreign Policy team.  First off, I'm grateful for the invitation to write this blog, and especially for the terrific backup we get from the editorial and production team at FP. Special thanks to Rebecca Frankel (who finds all those great photos), to Susan Glasser, who keeps the whole operation running, and of course, the boundlessly inventive and fearless Moises Naim.

2. Free Speech. Every writer lucky enough to live in a country that protects free speech ought to give thanks for that good fortune every single day.   Compared to the millions of people who risk persecution (or worse) if they dare to express their own ideas, intellectuals in the United States have it pretty soft. We should never take that luxury for granted.

3. Great Power Peace:  Throughout history, wars between great powers have been one of the most potent causes of human misery.  Just think about World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, which together killed over 85 million people and impoverished millions more. Yet today, great power rivalries are quite muted and the danger of a true great power war seems remote.  There are plenty of other problems still remaining, of course, but I'm grateful that one of the big ones isn't troubling us right now. Let's try to keep it that way, ok?

4. Nuclear Deterrence.  Unlike some writers whose work I nonetheless admire, I think nuclear weapons did contribute to peace during the Cold War and remain a stabilizing force today.  As Churchill put it, safety has become the "sturdy child of terror." So despite some lingering reservations, I'm glad that nuclear weapons exist. But I'm not giving thanks for the number that we have, which is far in excess of what is needed for deterrence. 

5. Critics.  Some of my recent work attracted a lot of criticism, and I'm genuinely grateful for it. First of all, my co-author and I have been fortunate that our most vehement critics chose to misrepresent our work and to smear us with various baseless charges, thereby confirming some of our central arguments and helping us win over a lot of readers. At the same time, scholars who have challenged my various writings over the years in more serious ways helped me refine my ideas and gain a fuller understanding of numerous topics. And I'm always thankful for students who don't accept ideas at face value and push back, because we need more independent thinkers and vigorous discussion helps us all learn.

6. Supporters.  The controversy over The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy also brought me a legion of new friends, some of whom I would never have met otherwise. My thanks to inspired writers and activists like Phil Weiss, Tony Judt, M.J. Rosenberg, Jerome Slater, Avi Shlaim, Uri Avnery, Sydney Levy, and many, many more. I'm also grateful to the various people who faced pressure to cancel speaking engagements and didn't succumb to it, as well as the many friends who offered their support privately, in countless small ways.  You know who you are, and I won't forget.

7. The Fruits of Globalization. I don't know about you, but I'm grateful to live in a world that is increasingly interconnected. Indeed, this aspect of the modern world still strikes me as nearly miraculous, and I feel enormously lucky to be able to enjoy it. I've eaten hummus in Tel Aviv, camel in Abu Dhabi, fish head curry in Singapore, and tapas in Barcelona. My iPod contains music from all over the world, and the last two novels I read were by Orhan Parmuk (Turkey) and Haruki Murakami (Japan). My children attend a public high school where students speak over fifty different languages at home, and there are students from over 80 different countries where I teach. Cultural differences often create awkward tensions (or worse), but I'd feel terribly impoverished if I lived in an isolated mono-culture.

8. Bullets Dodged.  I am also thankful that we have thus far avoided some even more dire events in recent years. The world economy may have tanked in 2007-08, but we seem -- knock wood -- to have avoided a complete replay of the Great Depression. Swine flu has been a serious problem but is not a true global pandemic. Terrorists still conspire and sometimes succeed, but another 9/11 (or worse) has not occurred  And we have not been so foolish as to attack Iran (at least so far). We should not forget that many are suffering in today's economy, roughly 5000 people have died from H1N1, both soldiers and civilians are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are still influential voices clamoring for more war. But things could be much worse and for that we should all be grateful.

9. The Internet.  Boy, am I glad that Al Gore invented this! After all, this blog wouldn't exist without it. Not only has it revolutionized how many of us do research (and in a good way), but it is becoming the main engine of accountability in a world where it is often lacking. Bloggers are exposing the flabby fatuousness of mainstream media and politicians everywhere live in fear of their own "YouTube moment."  And whether it is a brutal crackdown in Tehran, torture at Abu Ghraib, or possible war crimes in Gaza, the Internet is helping bring misconduct to light in ways that governments cannot easily suppress.  I say: let the sunshine in!

10.  Readers.  Finally, a heartfelt thanks to all of you who've been reading this blog since its inception, and especially those who've taken the time to offer words of support. I've learned a lot in the process-including some of the more constructive comments that readers provide -- and I intend to keep going until the tank is empty. Tomorrow is a holiday, however, and I'm going to take the day off. You should too, and don't forget to give thanks.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

It's summertime, and some of you will be headed for the beach, or the country, or wherever you go to relax and recharge. You want to take along something fun to read, and you're not quite ready to tackle that new translation of War and Peace. But you're afraid you’ll feel guilty if you don't read something that is at least tangentially related to international politics. 

What’s the answer? Simple. Here’s a list of books for your summer vacation reading that are all entertaining and easy-to-devour, but will also keep at least a few of your foreign policy synapses alive while you're relaxing. These suggestions are from my own list of guilty pleasures, and I'm not claiming that these books are the "ten best" or anything like that. I'm sure I've missed a few obvious candidates, so feel free to offer up suggestions of your own.

1. Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy.

Yes, it's sci-fi, and the prose style isn't exactly Proust. But it's got lots of international (or more precisely, "interstellar") politics in it: balance of power, empire, deterrence theory, diplomacy, religion, economic interdependence, and you name it. The late Ernst Haas used to recommend it to grad students at Berkeley, and it's easy to see why. And the central premise of the book -- that mathematically inclined social scientists ("the psycho-historians") could forecast the future and guide it -- is certain to appeal to scholars who think that they could rule the world if they just got their models properly specified and had enough data. (Note: if Asimov's not-so-subtle leftwing politics bothers you, you can read Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers instead, which includes lots of chest-thumping patriotism as well as explicit denunciations of Marx.)

2. Graham Greene, The Quiet American. 

World-weary and cautionary tale about the idealism of American intervention, well worth re-reading in light of our current overseas adventures. And Greene is always easy to devour, even when dozing at the beach.

3. Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I must have read this book twenty times when I was in high-school, even though I didn't really understand it.  A dark and comic portrait of World War II, and Heller skewers many absurdities of military life. If you're worried that Heller will undermine your sense of patriotism, read Herman Wouk's The Winds of War as an antidote (another one of my faves -- see below).

4. John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People

Yes, I know the Cold War is over, which gives these books a rather dated quality. But the characters are beautifully crafted, the prose is elegant and seductive, and both books are real page-turners. The first time I read them, I stayed up to 3 AM to finish the damn thing and was next-to-useless the next day. (Cautionary note: the second volume of the trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy, is a bit tedious. But you'll probably want to read it anyway.) Le Carre is still churning them out, of course, but these three books remain his high point.

5. Alan Furst, The Polish Officer

I'd recommend anything by Furst, who has written a whole series of dark and romantic noir-ish novels that offer detailed and remarkably vivid portraits of life in Europe before and during the Nazi period. There's not a lot of "high politics" in these books, but they depict spies, politicians, military officials, and ordinary people caught up in the dark dealings of a horrific period. There's betrayal around every corner, and you’ll find them impossible to put down.

6. Orhan Parmuk, Snow

This was my "beach book" last summer, and I concede it's not directly about "foreign policy" at all. But it is a brooding and moving portrait of life in contemporary Turkey, and especially the growing role of Islam. If you think that phenomenon is important, this book will open your eyes and touch your heart.

7. Joseph S. Nye, The Power Game

How many major IR scholars have written a novel and actually gotten it published? (Kindly hold the snarky comments about all the political science books that you think are also "fictional"). It's a fun read, and you get to see how a distinguished scholar, government official, and former Harvard dean writes a sex scene. (And for another example of a Harvard scholar venturing into fiction, see the late John K. Galbraith's The Triumph: A Novel of Modern Diplomacy, a wicked satire about an ill-starred U.S. intervention in Latin America. It must be fiction, because something like that could never happen in real life, could it?)

8. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

A missionary family's experiences in the Congo, where misguided idealism and stubbornness eventually lead to tragic consequences. A powerful indictment of patriarchy, religion, and overzealous American righteousness.

9. Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy

An intense and inspired set of novels set in and around World War I, imagining the relations between soldiers -- including real-life figures such as the poet Siegfried Sassoon -- and the doctors charged with treating them in hospital.  Not exactly a lighthearted read, but it will grip you.

10. Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

I think I read every one of Wouk’s books when I was a teen-ager, and The Caine Mutiny is still my favorite (and his best). But this book (and its sequel, War and Remembrance) is broader, and includes cameo appearances by Churchill, Stalin, and other real-life figures. Wouk marches his characters around the world, and manages to get most of the global conflict in somewhere. It's not great art, but it will more than pass the time.  

Pack away a few of these, and you'll have plenty to read while you're relaxing. And you won't have to feel too guilty about it either.

Infrogmation/flickr

Last summer, the Israeli government announced a new effort to "rebrand" the country in the eyes of the world, and it hired a prominent British public relations firm to help out. In addition to various forms of cultural outreach designed to highlight Israel's achievements, this effort included having a men’s magazine publish a photo spread of several women from the IDF (including the former Miss Israel) in various fetching poses, a decision that didn't go over all that well back in Israel itself. You can read all about it here, here, or here.  

The Gaza operation, the sham peace process, and the recent election of the Netanyahu/Lieberman government aren’t making the "rebranding" effort any easier, of course. And if you want to know why this new hasbara campaign isn’t likely to work, start by reading English journalist and military historian Max Hastings's sobering account, published last week in the Guardian. Drawn from an appearance in Balliol College's Leonard Stein lecture series, Hastings recounts his own evolution from an enthusiastic cheerleader for Israel to a disillusioned critic who strongly supports Israel’s existence but openly opposes many of its present policies. Where once he "loved those people, and boundlessly admired their achievement," he now describes himself as "one of those foreigners who progressively fell out of love with Israel." I know the feeling.

The problem, as Hastings makes clear, is the reality of the occupation and the brutal treatment of the Palestinians that goes hand-in-hand with it. This situation can't be disguised by more energetic public relations efforts.  There are too many video cameras and human rights groups documenting Israel's actions -- including Israeli groups like B’tselem. There are too many bloggers willing to write about the conflict from varying perspectives, and too many scholars and journalists like Hastings -- plus a growing number in the United States -- who no longer accept the outdated image of Israel as a plucky and virtuous David facing a looming and bloodthirsty Arab Goliath.  That image was easy to sell in 1948, perhaps, and it remained fairly convincing after the Arab states offered the infamous "Three Nos" at the 1967 Khartoum summit. But it's a much tougher sell after Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, after Gaza in 2008-2009, and after the Saudi and Arab League peace proposals in 2002 and 2007 don't even elicit an official response from Jerusalem.  

Israel's achievements over the past sixty-one years are undeniable, and the officials responsible for the rebranding campaign won't have any trouble finding artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs to write feel-good stories about. But the dark side of the story won’t go away -- 40-plus years of an increasingly brutal occupation, the construction of the apartheid wall (or if you prefer,"separation fence"), much of outside the 1967 borders, thousands of dead Palestinian civilians, a series of failed wars since 1982, and the repeated squandering of genuine opportunities to make peace. And every year the number of settlers grows. I don't hold Israel solely responsible for this tragedy, but they are neither powerless nor blameless.

As Hastings observes, more in sadness than in anger, these policies have also had a deeply corrosive effect on Israeli society itself. In his words, "Morally, if not militarily, [the IDF] is a shadow of the force which fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, or 1973." Not to mention rising political corruption, the polarization of the body politic, once-impressive universities in decline, and a worrisome tendency for younger Israelis to seek careers abroad.  In an era when information flows freely and where anyone with an internet link can read Ha'aretz, the Jerusalem Post, the Daily Star, the Guardian, etc., the Israeli Foreign Ministry is not going to control the story.

In fact, trying to "rebrand" Israel through a one-sided PR campaign could be counterproductive, because offering a uniformly sunny image that leaves out much of the story just undermines the credibility of the messenger. My sense is that few Israelis believe Shimon Peres anymore, and I doubt many of them think Benjamin Netanyahu means it when he says he’s interested in a genuine peace. It's like when Bush and Cheney declared that United States doesn't torture, Bill Clinton told us that he "didn’t have sex with that woman," or Richard Nixon said "I am not a crook." After awhile, smart listeners learn not to accept anything they're told without double-checking it themselves. Even worse, when they hear one thing, they start to assume that the opposite is probably true.

Some readers may think that Hastings is employing a double-standard, or that he is "singling Israel out" for criticism. They could point out that Israel's adversaries have often lied or prevaricated too, and that they have done plenty of brutal things themselves. They could also remind us that Israel's neighbors are hardly models of tolerance or open discourse and that there is a far more open debate about these issues within Israel than there is in Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Syria. I agree, and the willingness of some Israelis to confront the past honestly and to question its present policies remains an admirable feature of Israeli society.  

But there is no double-standard at work here, and comparisons with states whose behavior may be worse miss the point. Israel's actions are not being judged against the conduct of a Sudan or Burma, but by the standards that people in the West apply to all democracies. It is the standard Americans expect of allies who want to have a "special relationship" with us. It is the standard Israel imposes on itself when it tells everyone it is "the only democracy in the Middle East." Israel is being expected to behave like Britain or Canada or France or Japan and not like some one-party military dictatorship, and it is certainly expected not to deny full political and civil rights to millions of Palestinians who now live under its constant control.  These other democracies eventually gave up their colonial enterprises; Israel is still trying to consolidate its own. 

As Americans have learned in recent years, whenever any country fails to live up to its own professed values, it is going to lose friends and admirers around the world. Barack Obama understood that he couldn’t restore America’s image in the wake of Abu Ghraib and the Bush torture regime by trying to change the subject or by talking about some cool or virtuous things Americans had done. ("OK, we tortured some people and invaded Iraq on false pretences, but weren’t the Founding Fathers great, aren't Tiger Woods and Kelly Clarkson amazing, and have you seen that new Star Trek movie?"). The way a country regains the world’s admiration in the aftermath of  misconduct is to stop doing it, admit it was wrong, express regret, and make it clear that it won't happen again. Restoring Israel's image in the West isn't a matter of spin or PR or "rebranding;" it's a matter of abandoning the policies that have cost it the sympathy it once enjoyed. It's really just about that simple.

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

Last week Tom Ricks offered us his "Top Ten list" of books any student of military history should read. The FP staff asked me to follow suit with some of my favorites from the world of international politics and foreign policy. What follows aren't necessarily the books I'd put on a graduate syllabus; instead, here are ten books that either had a big influence on my thinking, were a pleasure to read, or are of enduring value for someone trying to make sense of contemporary world politics. But I've just scratched the surface here, so I invite readers to contribute their own suggestions.

1). Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War.

An all-time classic, which I first read as a college sophomore. Not only did M, S & W provide an enduring typology of different theories of war (i.e., locating them either in the nature of man, the characteristics of states, or the anarchic international system), but Waltz offers incisive critiques of these three "images" (aka "levels of analysis.") Finding out that this book began life as Waltz's doctoral dissertation was a humbling moment in my own graduate career.

2). Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Combines biology and macro-history in a compelling fashion, explaining why small differences in climate, population, agronomy, and the like turned out to have far-reaching effects on the evolution of human societies and the long-term balance of power. An exhilarating read.

3). Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence.

He's a Nobel Prize winner now, so one expects a lot of smart ideas. Some of Schelling's ideas do not seem to have worked well in practice (cf. Robert Pape's Bombing to Win and Wallace Thies's When Governments Collide) but more than anyone else, Schelling taught us all to think about military affairs in a genuinely strategic fashion. (The essays found in Schelling's Strategy of Conflict are more technical but equally insightful). And if only more scholars wrote as well.

4). James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

This isn't really a book about international relations, but it's a fascinating exploration of the origins of great human follies (like Prussian "scientific forestry" or Stalinist collectivized agriculture). Scott pins the blame for these grotesque man-made disasters on centralized political authority (i.e., the absence of dissent) and "totalistic" ideologies that sought to impose uniformity and order in the name of some dubious pseudo-scientific blueprint. And it's a book that aspiring "nation-builders" and liberal interventionists should read as an antidote to their own ambitions. Reading Scott's work (to include his Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance) provided the intellectual launching pad for my book Taming American Power).

5). David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

Stayed up all night reading this compelling account of a great national tragedy, and learned not to assume that the people in charge knew what they were doing. Still relevant today, no?

6). Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics.

I read this while tending bar at the Stanford Faculty Club in 1977 (the Stanford faculty weren't big drinkers so I had a lot of free time). Arguably still the best single guide to the ways that psychology can inform our understanding of world politics. Among other things, it convinced that I would never know as much history as Jervis does. I was right.  

7). John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Why do bad things happen to good peoples? Why do "good states" do lots of bad things? Mearsheimer tells you. Clearly written, controversial, and depressingly persuasive.

8). Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

The state is the dominant political form in the world today, and nationalism remains a powerful political force. This book will help you understand where it came from and why it endures.

9). Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years & Years of Upheaval.

Memoirs should always be read with a skeptical eye, and Kissinger's are no exception. But if you want some idea of what it is like to run a great power's foreign policy, this is a powerfully argued and often revealing account. And Kissinger's portraits of his colleagues and counterparts are often candid and full of insights. Just don't take it at face value.

10). Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

Where did the modern world come from, and what are the political, economic, and social changes that it wrought? Polanyi doesn't answer every question, but he's a good place to start.

So that's ten, but I can't resist tossing in a few others in passing: Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War; Douglas North, Structure and Change in Economic History; Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population; Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars; T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars; R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War; Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies; Tony Smith, The Problem of Imperlalism; and Philip Knightley's The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth-Maker. And as I said, this just scratches the surface.  

So what did I miss? Keep the bar high.

(And for those of you who don't have time to read books, I'll start working on a "top ten" list of articles).