Christmas is traditionally thought of as a season of peace. Warring nations sometimes declare a Christmas ceasefire, the Pope's Christmas message is ordinarily a call for peace, and around the world churchgoers will hear sermons and offer prayers for an end to violence. Even as we watch the continuing struggles in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Colombia, Somalia, and elsewhere, and even as the world's nations continue to devote more than one-and-a-half trillion dollars each year to preparations for war, billions of people remain united in the hope that such tragic waste will one day end.

This will be my last post before Christmas Day, and though I'm not a believer, today I'm thinking about peace. Realists are often portrayed as grim and gloomy hawks who believe that human beings can never fully overcome the insecurities of the state of nature, but that's a misleading caricature at best. True, realists are mindful of human frailties, convinced that the lack of a central authority in world affairs creates powerful incentives for states to compete, and aware that sometimes this competition leads to the use of force. But realists take no joy in this situation -- as John Mearsheimer emphasizes, this feature of power politics is a tragedy -- and realists are therefore deeply concerned with finding ways to keep these dangerous and destructive tendencies in check. Because realists appreciate the evils that war brings, it is hardly surprising that they have been at the forefront of opposition to foolish wars such as Vietnam or Iraq.

Given all we know about the costs and risks of war -- a lesson that the past decade should have seared into our collective consciousness -- what I find both striking and depressing is the enthusiasm that so many commentators still have for more of the same. We still have a chorus of pundits eager for war with Iran, for example, and there's another well-populated choir convinced that the answers to contemporary global problems are more drone strikes, more energetic use of special forces and covert action, and greater secrecy here at home.

And what is equally striking is that the goal of peace plays a miniscule role in contemporary political discourse. As my colleague Nicholas Burns points out in a must-read column in today's Boston Globe, with the exception of libertarian Ron Paul, none of the current presidential contenders have made peace a central theme in their campaign. It was not always this way: our first president, George Washington, once said that "My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth," and Abraham Lincoln understood that "war at the best is terrible." Woodrow Wilson may have lent his name to the sometimes overweening U.S. effort to spread democratic ideals around the globe, but he also warned his countrymen to exercise the "self-restraint of a truly great nation, which realizes its own power and scorns to misuse it."  And let us not forget that Dwight D. Eisenhower, who knew as much about war as any American, once remarked that "America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment."

Yet such sentiments seem notably absent in the hearts of those who now seek to be commander-in-chief, including the present incumbent. As Burns observes, even Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize was mostly a defense of the necessity of force. And today, most of the presidential aspirants seem more interested in convincing voters that they know how to channel their inner Rambo and that they will not hesitate to use force wherever and whenever they deem it necessary. Frankly, I'd be happier thinking that they would hesitate, and think twice -- or even thrice -- before sending the nation to another war.

Part of the problem, as the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, admitted a couple of years ago, is that a reputation for tough-minded hawkishness has become a prerequisite for advancement and credibility in the foreign-policy establishment. Think about it: even though the United States is probably the most secure great power in history, an ambitious up-and-coming policy wonk in D.C. is more likely to advance rapidly if he or she is a vocal proponent of using American power than if he or she is seen as skeptical or even somewhat averse to flexing U.S. military might at every occasion. And God forbid that someone who aspires to rise in Washington gets a reputation for being seriously interested in peace. That might get you a job at AID or at some left-wing think tank, but you aren't going to make a lot of short lists for State, Defense, or the NSC.

This tendency to reward bellicosity pervades our politics, and not in a good way. Look at the venom that pollutes talk radio, and the scorched-earth partisanship (mostly flowing from the GOP) that has paralyzed the legislative branch on a host of vital issues. Read the talk-backs on virtually any political website -- including this one -- and observe how brave commenters, safely cloaked in internet anonymity, devote hours to flinging vile insults at each other. Or consider the ease with which prominent figures here and abroad will condemn whole categories of people -- gays, Muslims, Jews, foreigners -- without having met a single one or taking any time to consider how the world might look from someone else's perspective.  When one looks at political discourse -- even in America, this most secure and fortunate of countries -- it requires no great imagination to see why it is so hard to keep humans from fighting.

It is a discouraging picture, to be sure, but this is not the season for despair. For this week, at least, I choose to see the glass as half-full. This Christmas, I will reflect on the possibility that Steve Pinker, John Mueller, and others are right, and that humankind, for all its continued woes, is nonetheless moving away from its very violent past. I shall look for hopeful signs amid the tumult. I shall bask in the comforting embrace of family and friends, and think hard about what I can do better in the months and years ahead. I hope all of you do too. And whether you're someone who tends to nod in agreement when you read this blog, or someone who thinks I've yet to get anything right, may this season and the year to come bring you love, hope ... and peace.

And here, for your enjoyment, are two musical bonuses to accompany the title of this post:

Today I want to offer a few brief words of tribute to Paul Doty, who passed away yesterday at the age of 91. Paul was a distinguished biochemist and molecular biologist, as well as a pioneering figure in the field of arms control. He was head of the Federation of American Scientists, a founder of the Pugwash Conferences (which brought together scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain to discuss arms control and war prevention), and a key figure in the renaissance of security studies that began in the late 1970s. A more detailed account of his life and career can be found here and here.

I am one of the countless number of scholars who owe part of their professional success to Paul's vision and support. Back in the 1970s, Paul realized that his generation of policy-minded academics was not being replicated, and he convinced the head of the Ford Foundation, McGeorge Bundy, to finance new research centers at a number of prominent universities. This act led to the founding of the Center for Science and International Affairs (CSIA) at Harvard (with Paul as founding director), and to parallel centers at Stanford, UCLA, and Cornell.

The model for CSIA (subsequently renamed the Belfer Center), was a scientific lab. In addition to providing young scholars with the time and resources to conduct their research, these centers also provided an atmosphere where older scholars could mentor younger colleagues and where people with varying backgrounds could meet, exchange ideas, and build robust professional networks. Thus, a fellowship at CSIA was more than just an opportunity to finish or revise a dissertation. It was also a chance to interact with prominent academics and policymakers, to learn how to challenge a prominent expert with whom one disagreed and, in general, to comport oneself as an engaged and competent professional. My initial stint at CSIA (1981-1984) was central to getting my own career started, and there are now literally hundreds of CSIA alumni holding prominent positions in the academy and in key policymaking circles, including prominent Obama administration figures such as Michele Flournoy, Daniel Poneman, Kurt Campbell, and Ivo Daalder.

Paul had a lot of the "absent-minded professor" in him, and stories about some of his idiosyncrasies became legendary among his colleagues. But what I remember most was his rare ability to cut to the heart of an issue, and his quiet fearlessness in confronting those with whom he disagreed. I never saw him behave rudely to a visiting speaker, but he had little patience for arguments that didn't add up or for policy positions that made no sense. And it didn't matter if the person trying to sell some dubious idea was powerful or prominent; Paul would press the attack with quiet persistence. He was, in short, a truth-teller, who cared more about getting the right answer or the right policy than advancing his own personal fame or power. In that most basic of virtues, he was a model for us all.

It's Thanksgiving once again, and it's become something of a ritual for me to record what I'm feeling grateful for each year. For starters, I want to thank the various people who responded to my request for advice on "policy analysis" yesterday, both via the "comments" section and to me directly. I got some very good suggestions, and I appreciate the help. Whether my students will be similarly appreciative remains to be seen.

This year, I'm thankful that the euro hasn't collapsed - yet -- and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't. It's true that the unraveling of the eurozone would be a striking vindication of a broadly realist view of international relations, but it would also produce tremendous human suffering and that's way too big a price to pay to vindicate a theory. So I hope Europe's leaders manage to defy my usual pessimism and navigate through the crisis. If they do, I'll be even more thankful next year.

I'm also grateful that there's been no war with Iran. Whatever the Obama administration's other shortcomings might have been, those at the top seem to have understood the folly and futility of unleashing major military action against Iran. I won't give them high marks for imaginative diplomacy, but at least they haven't done great harm.

I'm also giving thanks that the United States is getting out of Iraq, and I wish I could believe that we will draw the right long-term lessons from the debacle. On that score, it is not a good sign that many of the architects of that war are still taken seriously as foreign policy "experts," and some are even advising GOP candidates. Doesn't say much for our national learning curve, does it? But even if historical amnesia sets in quickly, I'm pleased that we are finally leaving Iraq to its own leaders. Now if we can just draw a similar conclusion about that other exercise in imperial futility ... Afghanistan.

Like nearly everyone, I'm troubled by the continued turmoil in Egypt and by the Assad regime's brutal behavior in Syria. But I'm thankful that the situation in Libya has thus far defied my worst fears and made at least some modest progress toward the establishment of a more legitimate political order. The capture of former heir-apparent (and accused war criminal) Saif al-Islam Qaddafi and former security head Abudullah al-Senussi pretty much eliminates any possibility of a "loyalist" insurgency, which is a good sign too. The country still has a long way to go, but I will be keeping my fingers crossed.

On a purely personal note, I'm thankful for the courageous policy analysts, writers and bloggers who make it easier for me to do this blog. I'm talking about people who seek puncture conventional wisdom, challenge orthodoxies, and rock the boat on occasion. I value them because they are an antidote to the flood of cautious semi-official narratives that dominate most of the writing on foreign policy, and so they help me think outside the box. So heartfelt thanks to Carl Conetta, Phil Weiss, Juan Cole, Gordon Adams, Martin Wolf, Jerry Haber, Uri Avnery, Jim Lobe, Helena Cobban, Glenn Greenwald, M. J. Rosenberg, John Mueller, Andrew Sullivan, Spencer Ackerman, Jerry Slater, Gideon Rachman, and many others too numerous to list or even remember. I don't know a lot of the people just mentioned, and I don't always agree with any of them. Heck, I don't always agree with this guy either. But I'm glad they are doing what they do.

Of course, I cannot omit my annual word of thanks to the whole gang at FP, including the reporters, writers, and bloggers with whom I've occasionally tussled. The editors remain a delight with whom to work, and it's been a pleasure to be part of their team. And because all bloggers ultimately depend on readers, I'm especially grateful for those of you who take the time to read this stuff.

With each passing year, I've become more aware and more appreciative of my own good fortune. It's been a pretty soft gig to be born a white American male in the mid-1950s, in a country enjoying enormous geopolitical advantages and considerable prosperity. I like to think I've done ok with the advantages I was handed, and there's no doubt that the deck was stacked in my favor from the start. And that goes for a lot of my colleagues and contemporaries too.

More broadly, if you compare the era in which most of us have lived to the previous fifty years (1900-1950), there's little question that we've enjoyed a period of comparative benevolence. The first half of the 20th century witnessed two enormously destructive world wars, the worst economic depression in history, and several brutal genocides. The past sixty years has its own share of tragedies, to be sure, but the overall level of violence was much lower, economic growth was fairly steady (until recently), and many of us never had to endure the insecurities, travesties, and sacrifices that earlier generations experienced or that were still common in other parts of the world.

Most Americans ought to be especially grateful for their extraordinary good fortune, and Thanksgiving is an appropriate time for us to reflect upon it. And as I watch Europe teeter on the brink of financial collapse, observe the violent political contestation that is sweeping the Middle East, note the rapidly shifting balance of power in Asia, and contemplate the tragicomic follies of our so-called leaders in Washington, I do wonder how long it will last, and whether I will look back with regret at the tranquility we have lost.

But tomorrow, I will give thanks for the good that remains, and think about what can still be done to preserve and extend it.

I learned yesterday that my article "The End of the American Era" (in the current issue of The National Interest) was selected as one "ten favorite articles" for October by The Browser, a terrific online compilation service/magazine produced in Britain.   Readers are encouraged to vote for their favorites among the nominees, and they announce the results at the end of the month.  Here's a link to the list for October:

Sooooooo.... If you liked my article and want to vote for it, please feel free.  There are plenty of terrific pieces on their list as well, so I won't be upset if I don't win.  In fact, I'll be pleasantly surprised, if not downright shocked.  But it is nice to have been included.

As readers know, I've been on the road for most of the past week and thus missed a lot of big stories. Here are a few quick reactions to some things that happened while I was away.

1. Steve Jobs. I'm as fond of Apple products as anyone (I'm typing this on an iMac) and I found his life story pretty fascinating. But I'm with those who found the hagiography a bit off-putting, and I suspect the outpouring of adulation had a lot do with his passing at a relatively young age (I'm 56 too, so of course I think it's way too early). Jobs was clearly a wonderful business manager and an unusually imaginative entrepreneur, but he was also a pretty ruthless dealmaker and that trait extended to Apple's attitude towards its own customers. In general, my experiences with Apple's "customer service" bureaucracy were less-than-happy, and I wish a few of the commentaries had reminded us that he wasn't just a visionary philanthropist.

2. My IISS dues. I got the latest bill for my annual membership in the International Institutes for Strategic Studies, and it made me wonder if I want to stay a member. Dues have soared to more than $500 per year, and the only real benefits you get are IISS's various publications. The Military Balance is a very useful publication (the latest edition sits right next to my laptop at home), but we do have it at the Kennedy School library and I think it's available online too. I can't afford to attend the IISS annual meetings and they've only asked me to speak there once, so I'm not sure being a member is really worth it anymore.

3. The Wall Street Protests. Like a few other pundits, I find myself in broad sympathy with this group, and that view is reinforced by David Brooks' incoherent and patronizing attempt to dismiss them. IMHO, this movement is tapping into two important phenomena. The first is the general sense that there is a privileged class of elites -- mostly connected to the financial industry -- who have really screwed the country and have yet to be held accountable in any meaningful way. The second and related phenomenon is the absence of anybody in the political sphere (with the exception of new Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren) who seems to be sticking up for the people who got screwed. Instead, senators, congressmen, and secretaries of the Treasury seem more concerned with helping out those who need it least. Frankly, what is surprising is that it took this long for a true grass roots protest phenomenon to emerge (I don't count the Tea Party, which got co-opted by Establishment folks awhile ago). And a related problem is the culture of individual greed that has become so commonplace and even venerated in American society. Individual freedom is a good thing, and so is a reward for individual initiative, but we've gone overboard with the idea that society benefits most when everybody just pursues their own naked self-interest. The result is pig-at-the-trough behavior by countless interest groups and socially damaging levels of economic inequality. So if these protests put a few vertebrae back in some politicians' backbones, fine by me.

4. Infrastructure. As an addendum to my post on Korea, let's just say that there's a pretty vivid contrast between taking off from JFK airport (which is rather a dump), and landing at South Korea's Incheon airport. As one participant in our conference remarked, he used to think that flying from the US to Asia was going from the first to the third world; now he feels like flying home is going from the 1st world to maybe the second. There's no great mystery here: we've been systematically neglecting our national infrastructure -- another manifestation of valorizing individual wealth and neglecting collective goods that benefit all of us -- and it shows. If I had a billion dollars, I'd spend part of it taking every member of Congress on a trip to other countries, and then flying them back home via JFK, or Logan Airport, or maybe Newark, along with a detour onto Amtrak. And then I'd ask them if this is what they want a foreign visitor's first impression of America to be.

5. Mitt Romney at the Citadel. GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney gave a lengthy speech on foreign policy at the Citadel, and managed to repeat just about every banal right-wing foreign policy cliche I'd ever heard. There were the usual paeans to American primacy, to our many enemies, and to our unique mission in the world. I'd offer a point-by-point critique if I thought it was worth it, but mostly I'm hoping this is just an attempt to give the GOP base some red meat rhetoric and not a reflection of Romney's real views (assuming of course, that he has any). And for my own views on the whole "American Exceptionalism" issue, go here.

I've been in Berlin since last Thursday, and it's been an interesting exercise in slightly rueful nostalgia. I lived in West Berlin for a semester in 1976, as part of an undergraduate overseas study program. It was the first foreign country I'd ever visited and one of the great formative experiences of my early adult life.

I've been back for very brief trips twice (in 1991 and again in 2007) yet this time I've found that my memories from that first trip aren't very reliable, and even supposedly familiar haunts look odd. Of course, this is partly because Berlin has been transformed by reunification -- most obviously in the areas where the Wall was -- but also because it has been thirty-five years. Cities can change a lot in that time, and my own memories have clearly faded with the passage of time. There are moments when the past comes come back vividly, as when I read the U-bahn (subway) map and recall the names of the stations on the route from my apartment to class, or when I heard the recorded announcement saying "zuruck bleiben!" just before the subway doors close. But apart from those Proustian moments, it mostly feels like I am visiting an unfamiliar place.

I took a walk last Thursday after I arrived, strolling from my hotel through the Tiergarten to the Holocaust Memorial -- which is very effective and moving, though not without controversy -- and then onto Pariser Platz. This is the area just east of the Brandenburger Tor, and it was an abandoned zone during the Cold War, with large empty spaces around the Wall itself. It has now been transformed into a vast and inviting public square, complete with fancy hotels, a Starbucks, the "Kennedy Museum," and other classic tourist attractions. There's a wonderful bit of not-quite-accidental symbolism in the fact that the British, French, and American embassies are all located there. These were the three Western powers that governed different German zones after World War II, and it is probably no accident that they ended up with this choice real estate in the very heart of reunified Berlin.  

Yesterday I wandered through some old haunts in the center of what was West Germany (Kurfurstendamm, Savigny Platz, Zoologischer Garten, etc.), and then took the subway out to a trendy neighborhood in the old East Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg). There the contrast with 35 years ago was really striking; my overwhelming sense of the old DDR was drab and monotonal grey ... but today this neighborhood is funky and energetic and artsy. And I kept reflecting on how successive German governments made rebuilding and restoring Berlin a national priority and actually pulled it off, even if it hasn't become an industrial or financial center again. I wonder what it would take to get the United States to do something like that.

By the way, the conference I attended on "Social Science and the Public Sphere" was quite enjoyable, and I learned a lot from several of the papers and from the ensuing discussion. Sociologist Michael Burawoy gave two presentations, one on different modes of knowledge ("professional," "critical," "policy," and "public") and another on the threats facing the modern university (#1: excessive regulation, on the British model, and #2: excessive marketization, on the U.S. model). Not sure he persuaded me completely, but lots to think about. There was also a fascinating paper on the history of economic thought by Norwegian economist Erik Reinert, showing how economics evolved in a path-dependent fashion and that there were several forks in the intellectual road where the field could have gone in a more historical, institutional, and diverse direction, instead of the individualist, rationalist, and hyper-mathematical course the field has taken (at least in North America). He also quoted a passage from philosopher Francis Bacon' The Advance of Learning on "degenerate knowledge" which could easily apply to lots of social science today:

Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms;--so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit."

Yeah, what he said.

Economist Mark Thoma gave a nice presentation on his experiences as the author of a well-known economics blog, and historian Thomas Bender of NYU contributed a terrific paper on the evolution of the social sciences in the United States. Among other things, I learned from it that when Johns Hopkins University pioneered the Ph.D. degree here in America, it was not intended primarily as a credential for future academics. Instead, Bender writes, "it was intended to instill in [recipients] ‘the mental culture' that would serve them in careers in ‘civil service,' ‘public journalists' or, more generally, the ‘duties of public life.'" In other words, it took another few decades to create the inward-looking and frequent navel-gazing enterprises that the social sciences have become.

The audience offered up some challenging questions, and the other participants were a stimulating and likeable group. All in all, well worth the trip.  And then yesterday I gave a lecture at the Deutsche Gesellschacft fur Auswartiges Politik (DGAP, or "German Council on Foreign Affairs"), summarizing a forthcoming article on the "twilight of the American era." (You can get a preliminary sense of my argument here). I enjoyed the talk and especially the questions, and we could easily have continued the conversation longer. At dinner with some DGAP colleagues we spent a fair bit of time talking about the future of the Euro, and I would say that most of them were more optimistic than I have been. In particular, they emphasized the difference between public policy and public opinion: yes, German popular opinion is hostile to further bailouts, but German politicians understand that at the end of the day, letting Greece go down the tubes would be bad for everyone, including Germany. So long as they can make further aid conditional on genuine reforms, eventually the deal will get done. We'll see.

A final comment from the perspective of someone who bikes to work daily in Boston: Berlin is a wonderful city for bicyclists and there are lots of them. For one thing it's mostly flat, and doesn't get snow like we do in New England. But the Berliners have also gone to great lengths to make bike travel easy and safe, with dedicated lanes on streets and or sidewalks. And confirming stereotypes of Teutonic orderliness, you find most of the cyclists observing all the traffic regulations, including waiting a street lights even when there are no cars around and it would perfectly safe to cross. Definitely not instinctive scofflaws like me. Boston has been trying to do something similar for its cyclists, but let's just say we've got a ways to go. But once the price of gas gets high enough, maybe American cities will do more to encourage bicycle commuting. There will be less traffic, and we'd all be a lot healthier too.

I'm typing this from Lille, where I participated in a seminar on the "Arab spring" at the University and gave an evening lecture on U.S. Middle East policy and the role of the -- surprise -- Israel lobby.  We had a good discussion, and the students asked some excellent questions. And now home to Boston, where I have a pile of neglected duties waiting to greet me.

I haven't posted for a few days, and will be out of touch until sometime next week. My mother passed away unexpectedly last Monday, and I'm out in California for the memorial service. All I will say here is that she was a remarkably generous and loving woman who was devoted to her family and a great source of inspiration and wisdom, and my world will be emptier without her.

[NOTE: I originally drafted this post on July 3, but the FP staff was on holiday too so it didn't get posted in time for the Fourth. I've updated it and reposted, with appropriate changes of verb tense]

Independence Day is when Americans celebrate their two hundred year-plus experiment with self-government. After two centuries it's not really an experiment anymore, though it certainly feels like we are still making it up as we go along. On July 4th, my family read the Declaration of Independence outloud (an annual ritual) and talked about what we thought it really meant. And across the country, Americans grilled, drank, watched fireworks, and listened to John Philip Sousa, and probably spent a lot of time being grateful that they are not living somewhere else.

But what exactly are we celebrating these days? We are on a sour phase of our history, where hardly anyone seems happy about our condition at home or our position abroad. The economy remains dismal, where only the rich enjoy comfort and security, and our politics gets nastier and more dysfunctional with each passing day. Instead of working together to meet a growing array of challenges, a toxic combination of pundits, poseurs, and provocateurs is choking the life out of political system like so much kudzu. Our leaders continue to give speeches about our global responsibilities, but how many people now believe that America is leading the way to a safer, saner or more just world?  We don't bring peace to war-torn lands, we are not doing much to build more effective global institutions, and sometimes it feels like armed drones and special forces have become our primary export.

In such times, it is tempting to descend into world-weary fatalism, and merely chronicle the many ways that America's reality falls short of our Founders' hopes. But I am not going to succumb to that temptation-at least not today. For although the Founding Fathers were in many ways consummate realists--acutely aware of human frailties, mindful of the dangers facing a small, weak and new nation, and ruthless in pursuit of hemispheric dominance--they were also idealists who dreamt big.  On Independence Day, we can honor our past by indulging in some dreams of our own.

On this 4th of July, I dreamt of an America at peace, no longer squandering its wealth and power in unnecessary global crusades. I dreamt of an America that knows there are risks in the world, but that does not allow fear to dominate its foreign policy agenda or its domestic discourse. I dreamt of an America that has regained the world's respect, and where others trust our judgment and value our competence. I imagined an America where economic inequality is declining, not growing, and where people are judged, as Martin Luther King put it, by the content of their character and not by their race, religion, or sexual orientation. I thought about an America that is not afraid to talk to its adversaries, because it was confident that it wouldn't get bamboozled and knew that talking is often the best way to persuade others to change. I dreamt of an America that does not torture, and that has the integrity to prosecute anyone who does. I dream of an America that does not lead the world in the number of people in its prisons. Like Woodrow Wilson, I yearned for an America with the "self-restraint of a truly great nation, that knows its own strength and scorns to misuse it." I looked ahead to an America whose first concern is the well-being of all its citizens here at home, instead of trying to tell the rest of the world how to live. And I dreamt of an America where political debate is unfettered but civil, and where those who seek to win arguments by smearing their opponents or distorting their arguments are regarded by their fellow citizens with appropriate contempt.

Do I expect to see this America emerge?  Sadly, no (I am a realist, after all). But if we are truly the political descendants of the brave men and women of 1776, then we have to believe in the power of imagination and the ability of human beings to chart a new course. And in that knowledge lies hope.

I hope you all had a pleasant and inspiring Independence Day, and that in the next year we move a bit closer to the ideals we celebrated on Monday.

I'm off to Europe this evening, and blogging will be light-to-non-existent for the rest of the week, depending a bit on internet access. First stop is Dublin, where I'll be giving a lecture on Obama's foreign policy at the Institute for International and European Affairs. It's not a particularly upbeat assessment-though I will give Obama credit for some positive steps -- and more and more I think he's in for a real dog-fight in the 2012 election. 

We all know that he inherited a bleak economic picture, two losing wars, and an American whose global image was in free-fall. He's done a lot to repair America's overall image, and the administration's initial response to the financial crisis clearly averted a more serious and lasting meltdown. But with the passage of time, it's become clearer that Obama is more comfortable with bold rhetoric than bold action. With some rare exceptions -- the raid that took out Osama bin Laden being an obvious example -- it's been a pretty tepid and unimaginative presidency and at a moment in history where bigger and harder decisions were needed. He put together a financial rescue package, but it was smaller than necessary and it didn't do much to reform the overall financial system. He got a health care bill passed, but in a watered-down form that won't make that much difference to health care costs. And apart from the initial stimulus package, there wasn't a sustained focus on job creation, which is coming back to haunt him now.

On foreign policy, he's getting out of Iraq, but very slowly. Instead of cutting our losses in Afghanistan and focusing on more serious problems, he chose a half-hearted "surge" instead and will have trouble selling Afghanistan as a success story when he campaigns next year. He gives great speeches on the Middle East but doesn't follow through with policy change, so he can't claim any progress there either. He's done better in strengthening ties in Asia and I get the impression that he'd like to get us out of our current quagmires and focus even more attention there  (which would be smart), but then he sends us into a strategically pointless intervention in Libya.  

In short, it's not clear exactly what big achievements Obama is going to tout when he heads out on the hustings next year. You don't get much credit for helping avert disasters that didn't actually happen (like a spiral into another Great Depression), and it's already clear that the GOP field is going to beat him up repeatedly over the sluggish economy and the high unemployment numbers. And don't expect the Republican House to lift a finger to help on that front, no matter how many Americans suffer as a result. Foreign policy issues won't play much role in the campaign, but it's hard for me to think of any big wins that will sway many voters, and most people will have forgotten about our getting bin Laden by the time they enter the voting both. So if I were one of the people who write for FP's' "Shadow Government," I'd be keeping my CV up-to-date.

After spending Bloomsday sightseeing in Dublin (a city I've never visited), I'm off to a conference in France on Friday. The topic is "The Middle East and World Order: A Continued Focus of Transatlantic Concern," and there will be an interesting collection of people from Europe, the Middle East and the United States in attendance. I'm especially interested to hear how these problems look from outside the United States, and although the proceedings are "off-the-record", I'll try to pass along any pearls of wisdom (suitably anonymized) that I glean from the exchanges.   

I've been writing this blog for a couple of years now, and for the most part I'm satisfied with what I've had to say. But no social science theory is 100 percent accurate, and no social scientist is right 100 percent of the time, especially when reacting to rapidly moving events. Anybody who writes a blog and sticks their neck out is going to get a few big things wrong, which is why I tell prospective bloggers to start with a thick skin.

Case in point: My post on why the revolution in Tunisia would not spread. To say my prediction was wrong is an understatement, and some of the usual critics have seized on this opportunity to take a shot or two. Fair enough, but when I look back at what I actually wrote, I don't feel particularly embarrassed. After all, I began by noting that revolutionary events are inherently hard to forecast (for reasons that other scholars had already identified), and the actual post (as opposed to the provocative headline) made it clear I didn't think contagion was impossible, just unlikely.

Moreover, I still think my reasons for being skeptical about the possibility of contagion were cogent, even if my forecast was clearly wrong in this instance. Large-scale protests are hardly a rare occurrence in many parts of the world, but the vast majority of them do not lead governments to fall. And when a government is toppled, most of the time this does not lead to similar upheavals elsewhere, and certainly not within a few days or weeks. My original prediction was off the mark, but it would have been correct in most cases.

But not this time, which raises the obvious question: Why was this case an exception? What did I miss? Because we still don't know exactly why and how the upheaval in Tunisia caught fire so quickly, what follows is inevitably speculative. But with that caveat in mind, here's where I think I blew it.

First, although everyone knew that authoritarian regimes like the Mubarak government in Egypt were unpopular, I underestimated the degree of internal resentment. Of course, as Timur Kuran and others have shown, that is precisely why it is impossible to predict the timing of a revolutionary upheaval: Citizens in an autocracy won't express their true preferences (and especially their propensity to rebel) openly because doing so is dangerous. This tendency for what Kuran calls "preference falsification" makes it impossible for anyone to know exactly how likely a revolution might be. But with hindsight, it's clear that resentment against some of these governments was deeper and wider than we recognized.

Second, it now seems likely many commentators -- including yours truly -- were unaware of the level of anti-government organization that had already taken place in places like Egypt, and it seems clear that the Mubarak government didn't know about it either. Massive yet disciplined street demonstrations don't occur entirely by accident, and we now know that young activists had been quietly mobilizing and organizing long before the Tunisian revolt lit the fuse. Given Egypt's central place in Arab politics, Mubarak's unexpected ouster fueled the perception that change was possible elsewhere, thereby fueling similar responses elsewhere.

Read on

I'm just back from Southeast Asia, and a combination of accumulated email, looming deadlines, and jet lag will keep me from offering a lengthy account of the trip. Suffice it to say that I had a terrific time, with the highlight being my first visit to Vietnam. I gave lectures there on "China's Rise and America's Asian Alliances" and "Opportunities and Challenges in 2011" at the VNR500 Forum 2011 (a conference of the "top 500" Vietnamese companies), at the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City, and at the Vietnamese Diplomatic Academy in Hanoi. I did an online interview with Vietnam.net, an important online newspaper in Vietnam, and met with a number of Vietnamese officials, mostly from the Foreign Affairs and Information ministries.

My impressions? First, there's clearly a tremendous amount of energy in Vietnam and lots of signs of economic potential. In addition to a wide array of restaurants, shops, and small enterprises, there are a growing number of industrial enterprises and (to me, at least) surprisingly modern "downtown" sections in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam's growth potential remains limited by underperforming state-owned enterprises, corruption, and significant infrastructure challenges. But assuming those impediments can be overcome, I'd be bullish about its economic future (and it hasn't been doing all that badly in recent years, growing at about 7 percent).

Second, my visit coincided with the Party Congress, and though I'm hardly expert, I gather the results are something of a mixed bag. The new party secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, represents the old guard, which means that rapid reforms are less likely. On the other hand, I gather that reform elements are more numerous in the Central Committee and other party institutions, and the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, supports closer ties with the United States.

Which was another theme of my visit. The Vietnamese don't appear to have any hard feelings toward the United States (I didn't catch the slightest hint of any lingering resentments from the war), and it's probably noteworthy that virtually all the visitors at the war museum in Ho Chi Minh City were Westerners. This lack of resentment isn't all that surprising; as they see it, they beat us fair and square. Instead, the audiences at my talks (which included a fair number of students and intellectuals) and the officials with whom I met all sounded eager for closer ties with the United States. As I noted earlier, they were mostly concerned that the United States might cut some deal with China that would leave them isolated.

And China is a major long-term concern. That's hardly surprising either; all you have to do is look at a map and know a little bit about Sino-Vietnamese history. They have no desire for an open confrontation with Beijing, and Vietnam has a lot of important economic ties with China that could give the Chinese leverage in the future. But they are also under no illusions about the dangers of Chinese dominance (Vietnam was ruled by China for several hundred years), and I didn't sense much danger that Vietnam will bandwagon with Beijing. In that regard, the people with whom I spoke were clearly reassured and pleased by the tougher line the United States has taken regarding territorial issues in places like the South China Sea. So if Sino-American rivalry intensifies (as I expect it will), Vietnam will be an important U.S. ally.

All in all, it was a fascinating trip, and I'll be digesting my impressions for some time to come. And now it's time to catch up on what's been happening in the rest of the world; but first, I have to dig out the driveway.

This is the time of year when pundits (and party-goers) get asked to offer predictions for the New Year. I'm going to resist the temptation, because as Yogi Berra warned, "prediction is really hard, especially about the future." He was right.

In 1849, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "war is on its last legs, and universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism." In 1911, British scholar G.P. Gooch wrote that "even a successful conflict between states can bring no material gain. We can now look forward with something like confidence to the time when war between civilized nations will be considered as antiquated as the duel, and when the peacemakers shall be called the children of God." And we all know about the famous forecast that humanity had reached the "end of history," or the claim that globalization would eventually force other states to copy America's farsighted combination of markets, financial innovation, and "rule of law" if they wanted to enjoy economic prosperity. Yeah, right. 

But it's not just these optimistic forecasts that turn out to be off-base; fortunately, some pretty pessimistic predictions did not pan out either. In 1950, a smart guy named Albert Einstein warned that "unless we are able, in the near future, to abolish the mutual fear of military aggression, we are doomed." In 1961, physicist and novelist C.P. Snow predicted that "The nuclear arms race is accelerating: within at the most ten years, some of these bombs are going off. I am saying this as responsibly as I can. That is the certainty." The late Herman Kahn, another physicist and self-proclaimed futurologist, offered a similar forecast at about the same time, declaring that "unless we have more serious and sober thought we are not going to reach the year 2000 -- or even 1965 -- without a cataclysm."  

These failed forecasts might lead you to conclude that you simply shouldn't listen to predictions by physicists, but even a good realist like Hans Morgenthau got it badly wrong at times. In 1979, Morgenthau predicted that "the world is moving ineluctably toward a third world war -- a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it. The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long." All I can say is that I'm glad he was wrong.

For a longer list of failed predictions about war and peace, check out the appendix to John Mueller's Quiet Cataclysm, which was my source for the quotations offered above. I'm not saying that scholars, pundits, and prognosticators don't get it right from time to time, but trying to offer specific predictions for the next year or so strikes me as a harmless but not very serious exercise. Social scientists can forecast certain broad trends, and our theories can certainly identify recurring tendencies that can help us anticipate broad features of the emerging strategic landscape. But the combination of human imagination, agency, contingency, and unanticipated consequences generally plays havoc with efforts at crystal ball-gazing. 

Case in point: at a New Year's Eve party two years ago, I predicted that at least one country would leave the eurozone within the next year. I was clearly wrong about the specifics, but not about the general problems that the euro would face. Which merely goes to show that you can be broadly right but still be precisely wrong.

In any case, I'm not going to offer any predictions this year (at least not until I've had a glass or two of champagne). Instead, I'm taking the social scientist's normal cop-out and will look in the rearview mirror instead. And instead of just gazing back at 2010, here's my Top Ten Global Events of the past decade, in no particular order of importance:

1. January 2001: The inauguration of President Gore (oops, I mean Bush). The contested U.S. presidential election in 2000 proved even more momentous than we realized at the time, because it brought George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a gaggle of neoconservatives to power. I'm not saying Al Gore would have made a great foreign-policy president, but it's hard to imagine anyone doing a worse job than Bush and Co. All in all, a hell of a way to start a decade.

2. 9/11. No surprise here, of course. 9/11 altered the course of U.S. foreign policy as dramatically as Pearl Harbor in 1941, and mostly for the worse, and because the United States is so powerful, its response to 9/11 had far-reaching implications all over the world. As horrific as that day was, the real damage came in the form of self-inflicted wounds (such as the invasion of Iraq) that proved even more costly than al Qaeda's original attack.

3. The Beijing Olympics. I pick this as a symbol of China's emergence as a major player in global politics, which is of course precisely what the Chinese government intended. One could also argue that it marked the end of China's self-effacing strategy of a "peaceful rise," and the beginning of a more self-assertive approach to advancing Chinese national interests. In other words, they're starting to act a lot like the great powers of the past, which implies increased great-power security competition in the decades ahead.

4. The Crash Heard 'Round the World. When the history of the 21st century is written, the financial meltdown that began in 2007 is bound to receive plenty of scrutiny. Unless, the same institutions whose greedy machinations helped produce it -- and who are still largely in place -- manage to generate something even worse in the years to come.

Read on

Yesterday I learned that one of my posts-to be specific, my thoughts on the Cordoba House/Park 51 controversy -- is a finalist for 2010 Prize in Politics from the internet aggregator website 3Quarks Daily.

The winners will be chosen by journalist and writer Lewis Lapham, the former editor of Harper's, and announced on Dec. 21. I'm grateful to anyone who mentioned me during the nomination period and I feel honored to be among the finalists. I will now start preparing my "concession" post for Dec. 22.

See 3Quarks Daily nominations here.

I flying to a conference  in Kuwait this weekend, and won't be back until the end of the week. Blogging will be relatively light, therefore, but I will try to get online if and when I can. It's a long flight and I'm taking my Kindle, and will be reading Bruce Cumings's new book on the Korean War and Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands. You know: just the sort of cheerful reading that makes somebody a realist.