La situación política actual en Estados Unidos está tan polarizada que los esfuerzos para lograr un consenso nacional, ya sea en la legislación o en el lenguaje, parecen quijotescos. Muchos ciudadanos se defienden contra lo que consideran intromisiones utilizando la palabra política como término despectivo. Piensan que gran parte de lo que ven y oyen es irrelevante para la marcha general de la sociedad y su propio destino dentro de ella. Los debates de los candidatos presidenciales republicanos permiten pensar que tal vez tienen razón. El propio presidente ha abandonado su imagen anterior de alguien que resolvía problemas y estaba por encima de las disputas, si bien su nuevo entusiasmo por dar al Gobierno una función económica positiva y por el Estado de bienestar está muy contenido. Aun así, le critican duramente por intentar europeizar Estados Unidos e importar su socialismo. Al decir socialismo, sus adversarios se refieren muchas veces a los mínimos requisitos de cohesión y decencia que exige cualquier Estado moderno: servicios educativos, sanidad, atención a los jubilados, cierta regulación de la economía, un sentido de que debe buscarse el bien común en la esfera pública. Su ignorancia del pasado y el presente de Europa es total. Tanto católicos como protestantes desprecian la democracia cristiana y su tradición de solidaridad social. Es curioso que el socialismo europeo, que en Europa está luchando para recuperar su importancia, florezca de tal modo en la imaginación de sus enemigos estadounidenses.

Pero los republicanos, sin quererlo, han dado con algo. Ha habido un movimiento transatlántico en favor de la socialdemocracia. Se remonta al siglo XIX, a la Guerra de Secesión, que se libró por la libertad de los esclavos trabajadores. El ascenso del capitalismo en Estados Unidos a finales del XIX y principios del XX llevó a decenas de millones de europeos a Norteamérica, muchos de ellos cargados de ideas y sensibilidades socialistas. La codicia sin fin y la capacidad de destrucción social del capitalismo estadounidense contemporáneo podrían provocar un renacimiento del equivalente americano al socialismo europeo, el progresismo estadounidense en la tradición del New Deal. Eso es lo que muchos de los que ahora se sienten decepcionados esperaban de Obama, hasta que empezó a ignorar a los sindicatos y los intelectuales críticos, los alcaldes de las grandes ciudades y los gobernadores de los Estados industriales, para rodearse de tecnócratas formados en el servicio al capital. Está por ver hasta qué punto el presidente, movido por necesidades electorales, recuperará el legado social de los demócratas. Tampoco está claro, si gana una elección que va a estar muy igualada, qué hará con su victoria.

Los socialistas europeos podrían tomar en serio a los republicanos en un aspecto. Si el socialismo occidental revive, será internacional. Los republicanos tienen razón al intuir, aunque sea vagamente, que una Europa integrada socialmente es una amenaza para ellos. En el apogeo de la prosperidad y el compromiso de clases de posguerra, entre 1945 y 1975, Europa occidental trabajaba con un Estados Unidos en el que dominaban la política de Franklin Roosevelt y las ideas de Keynes. La salida de capital estadounidense al extranjero abre la posibilidad de que surjan nuevas formas de cooperación entre el sector público y el privado en nuestro país. El debate actual, aparentemente técnico, sobre un nuevo régimen regulador es quizá la primera batalla de una guerra nueva y mal articulada para dar a luz un nuevo modelo social norteamericano. El hecho de que el presidente Obama haya aplazado su decisión sobre la construcción del oleoducto Keystone desde Canadá es prueba de la insistente presencia del movimiento ecologista. Y esa también es una vía hacia un futuro diferente, con más conciencia social, para Estados Unidos.

Mientras tanto, los partidarios de la reforma social en Estados Unidos y los socialistas europeos se enfrentan a la ideología de mercado de las últimas décadas armados con el argumento de que, cuanto más empeño haya en seguir adelante, más desastrosas serán las consecuencias. Una posibilidad es trasladar el debate a un terreno nuevo. En lugar de la conocida oposición entre mercado y Estado, los estadounidenses y los europeos podrían centrarse en proyectos locales y regionales. Eso podría reanimar las alianzas interclasistas que a los partidos socialistas europeos tanto les ha costado llevar a cabo, movilizando a los ciudadanos en programas de desarrollo económico y social. En Estados Unidos, derivaría en un federalismo socialmente constructivo. En Europa, podría otorgar nuevas dimensiones a la Unión Europea.

Existe una objeción frecuente: el movimiento de capitales que salen de Estados Unidos y Europa pone a ambas sociedades a la defensiva en el terreno económico, y eso deja escasos recursos y poca energía para experimentos sociales. Es cierto que el desarrollo económico de Asia y Latinoamérica (y pronto de África y Oriente Próximo) proporciona cientos de millones de trabajadores nuevos y más baratos. Las tribulaciones de las economías de Europa y Estados Unidos hacen que sea necesario recurrir a una planificación social y económica a largo plazo. Sus avances científicos y tecnológicos han beneficiado a ciertos fragmentos de sus poblaciones, mientras que el resto ha vivido de la redistribución de esos beneficios. Los grandes proyectos de mejora educativa tienen sentido desde el punto de vista económico y contribuyen a la integración social. El desempleo no siempre produce protestas como las de los indignados y el movimiento Occupy Wall Street. A veces puede derivar en xenofobia, tanto en Europa como, en una variedad muy violenta, en Estados Unidos, y lo hace independientemente de las generaciones.

La idea de que el socialismo puede sobrevivir como un ideal de ciudadanía compartida sin un nuevo enfrentamiento con el capitalismo es falsa: la arrogancia y la estupidez de las agencias de calificación son una agresión no solo contra el Estado de bienestar sino contra la propia democracia. Y eso forma parte de un problema más amplio. El Partido Demócrata y los partidos socialistas europeos prometen formas cada vez más especiales de representación de intereses. No han sabido, por más que hagan proclamaciones retóricas y ceremoniales, desarrollar una nueva concepción del bien público en una época de enorme diferenciación social y económica. Una nueva generación de líderes tendrá que redefinir la esfera pública.

Marx dijo irónicamente que Rousseau pretendía pasar del sujeto humano al ciudadano, cuando el problema consistía en crear las condiciones para una nueva humanidad. En nuestro caso, una nueva idea de ciudadanía ya sería revolución suficiente. Una nueva Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen exigiría la eliminación de la riqueza como patente de nobleza. Sería el principio de la lucha por la auténtica igualdad política. Los griegos, reducidos casi a la nada en su existencia cívica y material, son los nuevos ilotas, los nuevos esclavos. La lucha por los derechos en Europa es la expresión de una crisis europea tan profunda como la desmoralización y la despolitización de gran parte de la vida en Estados Unidos. Por desgracia, las vulgaridades provincianas de los republicanos tienen ciertas connotaciones universales. El senador Kennedy dijo en una ocasión que, si los europeos pudieran votar en Estados Unidos, él habría sido presidente. El hecho de que los republicanos denigren a Europa y expresen su miedo a la empresa pública y a la igualdad económica y social debería servir para que los europeos recuerden los mejores aspectos de sí mismos.

When the United States announced last week that its combat troops in Afghanistan would be withdrawn by mid-2013, there was obvious relief. But it was followed by familiar concerns.

One of the biggest of those concerns is the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among the tens of thousands of returning veterans, which according to some media reports runs as high as 35 percent. These reports have incited fears that we will soon face a PTSD epidemic. But are such fears justified?

According to mounting scientific evidence, they are not. In fact, the prevalence of PTSD among veterans of recent wars is about 10 percent — substantially lower than is commonly believed. Indeed, the picture emerging is one of remarkable psychological resilience among the military.

This story of resilience has been ignored, partly because many assume that humans are inherently vulnerable to trauma. That belief makes us receptive to messages, most delivered by the media, that reinforce this perspective.

A growing body of scientific research, though, is telling another story: in short, that a traumatic event does not necessarily sentence a person to PTSD. Although an exact figure cannot be determined, a series of population-based studies has provided estimates that it occurs in just 5 percent to 20 percent of service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, with most studies hovering around 10 percent. In a representative study soon to be published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, my colleagues and I examined stress responses among more than 7,000 members of all United States service branches, before and after their deployments. The respondents were not seeking treatment and were representative of the military as a whole. Perhaps most important, their reports were confidential and had no bearing on their military careers.

About 83 percent of respondents showed a pattern of resilience: they exhibited a normal-range ability to cope with stress both before and after deployment. By contrast, fewer than 7 percent showed signs of PTSD following deployment. Surprisingly, these numbers improved among those with multiple deployments, with 84.9 percent showing resilience and only 4 to 5 percent with PTSD. Predictably, those with more severe combat experiences, like witnessing death and injury to others, were at greater risk.

Statistics like these are unlikely to generate headlines for understandable reasons. We do not want to stigmatize those with the disorder. Nor do we want to suggest that war is easily managed or that the problem is not of the utmost importance. Even an estimate of 1 in 10 represents a public health issue of the first magnitude, requiring our full attention and resources.

War exacts immense demands on the human capacity to cope, but a forthright recognition of our capacity for resilience does no disservice to the afflicted.

With these challenges ahead of us, we should remember that PTSD is a treatable condition and that a realistic and informed understanding of our inherent coping abilities can only assist treatment and, perhaps one day, even prevention of this debilitating disorder.

Just after the first anniversary of the onset of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration announced in December an enormous arms sale to Saudi Arabia, with a price tag greater than the annual gross domestic product of more than half the countries in the world. The administration hailed the sale as a “historic achievement” that “reinforces the strong and enduring relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.” The close juxtaposition of the anniversary and the apparent repair of the temporary rough patch in U.S.-Saudi relations highlights crucial overlooked realities about the Arab Spring and the U.S. response.

Although accounts of the Arab Spring often refer to a wave of political change washing across the Middle East, the reality is otherwise. The wave has bisected the region, swamping one half while leaving the other barely damp. Governments in the majority of the region’s republics, namely Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have been toppled or have faced serious domestic siege. In startling contrast, however, all of the region’s monarchies appear secure, with the possible exception of Bahrain. Most have enough oil money to keep their citizens well off, and some have a special religious legitimacy.

We should keep in mind that the various autocrats in the region who fell from power last year also looked to be well-entrenched, for all sorts of solid and frequently elaborated reasons, right up until the moment they no longer were. In this time of political surprises, which often stem from sudden, roiling popular protests, betting on reliable autocrats is more perilous than ever.

President Obama says that he recognizes this reality. He declared in May that “after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be” and that it will be “the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region.” And it is true that where political upheaval has hit, the United States has usually backed democratic change, sometimes actively, as in Libya; sometimes hesitantly, as in Egypt. But where autocratic stability continues to reign, the administration sticks to the decades-old U.S. policy of uncritical support for friendly dictators who are helpful on matters of security and economics.

When the government of Bahrain cracked down harshly on the massive protest movement within its borders last spring, the administration basically folded. The United States was unwilling to risk jeopardizing the convenient Persian Gulf home of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet for the sake of its commitment to Arab democracy. Saudi Arabia’s military participation in Bahrain’s crackdown and its steadfast opposition to even a glimmer of liberalization within its own borders has not deterred the administration from enthusiastically reaffirming the intimacy of U.S.-Saudi ties. Consider also that, despite having taken no serious steps toward democratic reform in response to popular demands for change, Jordan’s King Abdullah has received only praise and aid from Washington.

A stark division underlies U.S. policy in the Middle East. Serious efforts to bolster democratic transitions in parts of the region are carried out alongside firm support for most of the remaining non-democratic governments. This two-faced stance, little remarked on in Washington but glaringly evident in the region, badly undercuts the persuasiveness of our democracy promotion efforts.

The realpolitik logic that drives the continuing attachment to friendly Arab monarchies is clear enough. The interests at stake — from oil to counterterrorism to containing Iran — are weighty. Yet the logic is so clear precisely because it is so familiar. It is exactly the same logic that we hurriedly disavowed last year after it suddenly looked terribly hollow in country after country.

The United States regretted then being caught so unprepared for historic change and having done so little to pave the ground toward a more democratic Middle East. We lamented our failures to push harder on autocratic friends to take reform seriously, to widen and deepen our support for pro-democratic civil society activists, and to broaden our knowledge of and dialogue with new societal forces that we understood only dimly.

If only we had taken seriously the daunting but not insurmountable challenge of finding a way to combine useful partnerships with regional autocrats with real attention to their political liabilities.

So as we move beyond the first anniversary of the Arab Spring, we might pause from congratulatory toasts to getting U.S.-Saudi relations back on track and think hard about how to avoid potential future regrets in a region that has barely opened a historic period of change.

“If you deal in camels, make the doors high,” an Afghan proverb cautions. As the dangers mount in the confrontation between the United States and Iran, both sides will have to raise the doors high for diplomacy to work, and to avoid conflict.

A diplomatic strategy must begin with the United States’ setting its priorities and then defining a practical path to achieve them. To achieve its top priorities, it will have to learn what Iran needs. Since the United States will not get total surrender from Iran, it must decide what it can put on the table to assure that both sides can reach a deal that will be durable.

American leaders have been masterly at diplomatic strategies — “building high doors” — to make deals. Franklin D. Roosevelt opened relations with the Soviet Union in 1933 to balance the ascendance of menacing forces in Germany and Japan. He was acting for geopolitical reasons, and in spite of his objection to Communism. Richard M. Nixon opened relations with China to enhance American leverage in dealing with the Soviet Union. He re-framed — but did not give up on — the American commitment to Taiwan to accomplish his objective. In each case, the presidents were acting against the advice of most of their close advisers.

In our own time, President Obama’s initial instincts on Iran were correct: only he can lead the United States to agreements with Iran that advance American national interests.

The first question is how to get such diplomacy started, and on that, Nixon’s strategy toward China is instructive.

Before traveling to Beijing in 1972, Nixon outlined on his ubiquitous yellow pad three analytical pillars of his strategy: What do they want, what do we want and what do we both want? The Chinese, he continued, wanted to “build up their world credentials,” to recover control of Taiwan and to get the United States out of Asia, while the United States wanted to succeed in Indochina, establish communication “to restrain Chinese expansion in Asia” and, in the future, “reduce threat of confrontation by China Super Power.” The United States and China both wanted “to reduce danger of confrontation and conflict, a more stable Asia, a restraint on U.S.S.R.”

In the Shanghai Communiqué, issued at the culmination of the meeting in Beijing, the continuing differences were highlighted, but both sides agreed to expand the common ground between them.

In developing a diplomatic strategy toward Iran, President Obama might respond to Nixon’s three questions as follows: Iran wants recognition of its revolution; an accepted role in its region; a nuclear program; the departure of the United States from the Middle East; and the lifting of sanctions. The United States wants Iran not to have nuclear weapons; security for Israel; a democratic evolution of Arab countries; the end of terrorism; and world access to the region’s oil and gas. Both Iran and the United States want stability in the region — particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan; the end of terrorism from Al Qaeda and the Taliban; the reincorporation of Iran into the international community; and no war.

With those assumptions as a skeleton, the shape of a final agreement with Iran is imaginable. The United States would agree to full recognition and respect for the Islamic Republic, and Iran would agree to regional cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both sides would agree to address the full range of bilateral disputes.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council could accept an Iranian civil nuclear program in return for Iran’s agreeing to grant inspectors full access to that program to assure that Iran did not build a nuclear weapon. Once international agencies had full access to Iran’s nuclear program, there could be a progressive reduction of the Security Council’s sanctions that are now in effect. Iran would agree to cease making threats against Israel, and the United States would agree to support efforts toward achieving a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

It would be important to make arrangements for Israel’s security; the exact shape of those measures would have to be worked out in the negotiations. An agreement in which there would be full access to Iran’s nuclear program, with a monitored limitation of 5 percent enrichment, would offer Israel additional reasons for confidence in the deal.

Both sides would agree to cooperate in reducing the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; in combating drug trafficking; and in keeping open the routes through which energy flows to the world from the Persian Gulf. Both sides would agree that while wide differences between the two nations remained, those differences must be resolved peacefully.

The China analogy for American-Iranian relations falls short in some areas. The most important is that Mao was ready for an American approach, while Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not. Instead, he is convinced that the United States will not work with Iran until his regime is gone.

For Iran’s leadership, the notion that the United States is bent on overthrowing its rulers is rooted in historical experience: the United States did overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, supported the Shah afterward, supported Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran in the 1980s, and now backs increasing efforts to weaken and isolate Iran.

Reducing the malign influence of this legacy on the thinking of Ayatollah Khamenei will be essential to achieving any deal. Simply “keeping the door open to diplomacy” will not be sufficient. So the Iranian leader must be approached directly, but discreetly, by someone he trusts who conveys assurances from President Obama that covert operations and public pressure have been demonstrably reduced. The interlocutor might be a leader from a country in the region, enlisted when the American president felt the time was right.

Ayatollah Khamenei will have to be convinced by actions, not just messages. Just as Nixon halted covert action in Tibet before approaching China, a similar signal will be needed with Iran.

There is no guarantee that diplomacy will succeed. But that is also true of war. And only diplomacy can offer Iran’s current rulers a stake in building a secure future without a nuclear bomb. Only diplomacy can achieve America’s major objectives while avoiding the mistakes committed in Iraq or Vietnam.

Schumpeter, un economista austriaco refugiado en Estados Unidos desde 1932 y profesor en Harvard, dejó en sus biógrafos y sus discípulos el recuerdo de un seductor, pero, ante todo, una expresión importante que resume su obra: «La destrucción creadora».

Demostró que el progreso en el régimen capitalista exige que lo antiguo deje paso sin cesar a lo nuevo. Contrariamente a lo que sostenían Marx y Keynes, consideraba que las crisis eran inherentes al desarrollo económico: gracias a las crisis y en periodo de crisis, escribía, la innovación se manifiesta. Para corroborar su teoría, recordemos que la crisis de los años 1974-1980 originó la revolución informática y el nacimiento, entre otras, de Apple y Microsoft. Según Schumpeter, solo la innovación, y nunca la intervención del Estado, reactiva el crecimiento.

En contraposición con sus tesis sobre el papel de la innovación y las virtudes de la destrucción creadora, he conservado el vivo recuerdo de la economía soviética, con Breznev, y china, con Mao Zedong. En estos países socialistas nunca se destruía una fábrica: cada complejo industrial se asemejaba a un milhojas de técnicas anteriores a las que se les añadían las innovaciones recientes, ya que destruir un establecimiento antiguo, me explicaban, en los años ochenta, habría significado que los planificadores anteriores se habían equivocado y no habían sido omniscientes. Esta arqueología industrial bastaba por sí sola para explicar el fracaso del socialismo: los planificadores solo pueden proyectar algo nuevo y no pueden plantearse suprimir una actividad, porque no saben predecir el ciclo de la innovación. No destruir nunca y construir siempre es una asimetría suicida que vale también para la forma edulcorada del socialismo en democracia que se denomina «política industrial». Como sabemos, la consecuencia que ello tuvo para las economías socialistas fue el estancamiento que llevaba aparejado una especie de pleno empleo, o más bien de salario garantizado, pero justo a un nivel de subsistencia.

El capitalismo occidental, como explicaba Schumpeter, se basa en el principio inverso: en Estados Unidos especialmente, donde el capitalismo es más visible, ni siquiera se toman la molestia de destruir para reconstruir. Ciudades enteras se han convertido en ruinas industriales, las fábricas abandonadas bordean las vías de ferrocarril, mientras que los empresarios y la mayoría de los trabajadores se van a explorar a otro lugar, como hacían los antiguos pioneros. Esta destrucción creadora es globalmente progresista, generadora de empleos y de riquezas. Pero es muy posible que lo que es «global» arruine, de paso, algunos destinos individuales. Sin duda, si uno se pasa estos días por Francia, donde el transporte marítimo está en quiebra, ya no se necesita el transbordador entre Calais y Dover, pero vayan a explicárselo a un viejo marinero afiliado a un sindicato. La consecuencia necesaria del principio de Schumpeter en democracia es que le corresponde al Gobierno autorizar la destrucción del aparato anticuado y, al mismo tiempo, ayudar personalmente a los hombres afectados por esta destrucción. En el capitalismo schumpeteriano, el Estado ayuda a los hombres, no a las empresas: el apoyo a la economía de mercado es lo contrario de la salvación de las empresas en dificultades.

Imprevisiblemente, en Estados Unidos, la campaña presidencial de Mitt Romney, que ya es el probable candidato republicano y posible presidente, gira en torno a este principio de Schumpeter. Imaginábamos que Mitt Romney tropezaría con su religión mormona, pero los mormones son considerados ahora unos cristianos como los demás, en un país donde el cristianismo se divide en una infinidad de cultos. Romney, por tanto, hace campaña basándose en su experiencia como empresario privado en un momento en el que el desempleo atormenta a los estadounidenses. Pero resulta que es un empresario de una especie singular: la empresa de la que fue presidente, Bain Capital, es un fondo de inversión privado que compra empresas en dificultades para reestructurarlas y revenderlas. Los adversarios de Romney, unos republicanos más conservadores que él, emiten en la televisión un documental con testimonios de parados víctimas de la destrucción creadora, gestionada y acelerada por Bain.

Resulta difícil defenderse frente a semejante campaña de información/desinformación porque lo que se destruye se ve y lo que se reconstruye no se ve necesariamente. Mitt Romney asegura que, cuando estuvo al frente de Bain Capital, creó 100.000 empleos. Pero ¿dónde están? El propio Romney no sabe cómo los capitales poco rentables, invertidos en las empresas que destruyó, se reinvirtieron a continuación en actividades más rentables y más creadoras. Ya en 1830, el economista francés Frédéric Bastiat había subrayado esta asimetría entre lo que se ve y lo que no se ve. Y Milton Friedman retomó a menudo este argumento: una fábrica que cierra aparece en televisión, las empresas que se crean pasan inadvertidas.

Pero también se le debe a Mitt Romney, cuando era gobernador de Massachusetts, la instauración en su estado del régimen más completo de seguro de enfermedad de todo Estados Unidos. Esto también se lo reprochan los ultraconservadores, pero resulta coherente que el principio de Schumpeter se compense mediante la solidaridad social: es incluso un requisito político y humano para que funcione.

Por tanto, Mitt Romney deberá hacer gala de talentos pedagógicos excepcionales para hacer que los electores acepten el principio de Schumpeter: su elección depende de ello, ya que es en este terreno movedizo donde ha elegido verse las caras con Barack Obama. Pero si releemos a Schumpeter, es una batalla perdida de antemano: el capitalismo le parecía al mismo tiempo eficaz e impopular y vaticinaba que moriría a causa de esta impopularidad en beneficio del socialismo. Schumpeter dudaba especialmente de la capacidad intelectual de la burguesía capitalista para defender su legitimidad. Dudaba aún más de las capacidades de los herederos de los empresarios capitalistas y pensaba que los intelectuales lograrían destruir el capitalismo. Es cierto que el socialismo tal como lo imaginaba Schumpeter (en los años cuarenta) ha desaparecido, pero la resistencia al principio de destrucción creadora perdura, aunque con el nombre de keynesianismo, ecologismo y altermundialismo.

En Estados Unidos, la más schumpeteriana de las economías, ¿podrá ganar el candidato más abiertamente schumpeteriano1 Si Romney pierde, la economía estadounidense se europeizará (una tendencia que Barack Obama ilustra y pone en práctica con su inclinación por las políticas industriales estatales y los seguros sociales generalizados). Si Obama, que idealiza el modelo social europeo, venciese a Romney, que, por su parte, cree en el excepcionalismo estadounidense, Estados Unidos podría unirse a la decadencia europea, al crecimiento lento y al desempleo permanente.

In democracies like ours, there have always been deep bonds between the public and its wars. Citizens have historically participated in decisions to take military action, through their elected representatives, helping to ensure broad support for wars and a willingness to share the costs, both human and economic, of enduring them.

In America, our Constitution explicitly divided the president’s role as commander in chief in war from Congress’s role in declaring war. Yet these links and this division of labor are now under siege as a result of a technology that our founding fathers never could have imagined.

Just 10 years ago, the idea of using armed robots in war was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Today, the United States military has more than 7,000 unmanned aerial systems, popularly called drones. There are 12,000 more on the ground. Last year, they carried out hundreds of strikes — both covert and overt — in six countries, transforming the way our democracy deliberates and engages in what we used to think of as war.

We don’t have a draft anymore; less than 0.5 percent of Americans over 18 serve in the active-duty military. We do not declare war anymore; the last time Congress actually did so was in 1942 — against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. We don’t buy war bonds or pay war taxes anymore. During World War II, 85 million Americans purchased war bonds that brought the government $185 billion; in the last decade, we bought none and instead gave the richest 5 percent of Americans a tax break.

And now we possess a technology that removes the last political barriers to war. The strongest appeal of unmanned systems is that we don’t have to send someone’s son or daughter into harm’s way. But when politicians can avoid the political consequences of the condolence letter — and the impact that military casualties have on voters and on the news media — they no longer treat the previously weighty matters of war and peace the same way.

For the first 200 years of American democracy, engaging in combat and bearing risk — both personal and political — went hand in hand. In the age of drones, that is no longer the case.

Today’s unmanned systems are only the beginning. The original Predator, which went into service in 1995, lacked even GPS and was initially unarmed; newer models can take off and land on their own, and carry smart sensors that can detect a disruption in the dirt a mile below the plane and trace footprints back to an enemy hide-out.

There is not a single new manned combat aircraft under research and development at any major Western aerospace company, and the Air Force is training more operators of unmanned aerial systems than fighter and bomber pilots combined. In 2011, unmanned systems carried out strikes from Afghanistan to Yemen. The most notable of these continuing operations is the not-so-covert war in Pakistan, where the United States has carried out more than 300 drone strikes since 2004.

Yet this operation has never been debated in Congress; more than seven years after it began, there has not even been a single vote for or against it. This campaign is not carried out by the Air Force; it is being conducted by the C.I.A. This shift affects everything from the strategy that guides it to the individuals who oversee it (civilian political appointees) and the lawyers who advise them (civilians rather than military officers).

It also affects how we and our politicians view such operations. President Obama’s decision to send a small, brave Navy Seal team into Pakistan for 40 minutes was described by one of his advisers as “the gutsiest call of any president in recent history.” Yet few even talk about the decision to carry out more than 300 drone strikes in the very same country.

I do not condemn these strikes; I support most of them. What troubles me, though, is how a new technology is short-circuiting the decision-making process for what used to be the most important choice a democracy could make. Something that would have previously been viewed as a war is simply not being treated like a war.

The change is not limited to covert action. Last spring, America launched airstrikes on Libya as part of a NATO operation to prevent Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government from massacring civilians. In late March, the White House announced that the American military was handing over combat operations to its European partners and would thereafter play only a supporting role.

The distinction was crucial. The operation’s goals quickly evolved from a limited humanitarian intervention into an air war supporting local insurgents’ efforts at regime change. But it had limited public support and no Congressional approval.

When the administration was asked to explain why continuing military action would not be a violation of the War Powers Resolution — a Vietnam-era law that requires notifying Congress of military operations within 48 hours and getting its authorization after 60 days — the White House argued that American operations did not “involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof.” But they did involve something we used to think of as war: blowing up stuff, lots of it.

Starting on April 23, American unmanned systems were deployed over Libya. For the next six months, they carried out at least 146 strikes on their own. They also identified and pinpointed the targets for most of NATO’s manned strike jets. This unmanned operation lasted well past the 60-day deadline of the War Powers Resolution, extending to the very last airstrike that hit Colonel Qaddafi’s convoy on Oct. 20 and led to his death.

Choosing to make the operation unmanned proved critical to initiating it without Congressional authorization and continuing it with minimal public support. On June 21, when NATO’s air war was lagging, an American Navy helicopter was shot down by pro-Qaddafi forces. This previously would have been a disaster, with the risk of an American aircrew being captured or even killed. But the downed helicopter was an unmanned Fire Scout, and the story didn’t even make the newspapers the next day.

Congress has not disappeared from all decisions about war, just the ones that matter. The same week that American drones were carrying out their 145th unauthorized airstrike in Libya, the president notified Congress that he had deployed 100 Special Operations troops to a different part of Africa.

This small unit was sent to train and advise Ugandan forces battling the cultish Lord’s Resistance Army and was explicitly ordered not to engage in combat. Congress applauded the president for notifying it about this small noncombat mission but did nothing about having its laws ignored in the much larger combat operation in Libya.

We must now accept that technologies that remove humans from the battlefield, from unmanned systems like the Predator to cyberweapons like the Stuxnet computer worm, are becoming the new normal in war.

And like it or not, the new standard we’ve established for them is that presidents need to seek approval only for operations that send people into harm’s way — not for those that involve waging war by other means.

WITHOUT any actual political debate, we have set an enormous precedent, blurring the civilian and military roles in war and circumventing the Constitution’s mandate for authorizing it. Freeing the executive branch to act as it chooses may be appealing to some now, but many future scenarios will be less clear-cut. And each political party will very likely have a different view, depending on who is in the White House.

Unmanned operations are not “costless,” as they are too often described in the news media and government deliberations. Even worthy actions can sometimes have unintended consequences. Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, was drawn into terrorism by the very Predator strikes in Pakistan meant to stop terrorism.

Similarly, C.I.A. drone strikes outside of declared war zones are setting a troubling precedent that we might not want to see followed by the close to 50 other nations that now possess the same unmanned technology — including China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran.

A deep deliberation on war was something the framers of the Constitution sought to build into our system. Yet on Tuesday, when President Obama talks about his wartime accomplishments during the State of the Union address, Congress will have to admit that its role has been reduced to the same part it plays during the president’s big speech. These days, when it comes to authorizing war, Congress generally sits there silently, except for the occasional clapping. And we do the same at home.

Last year, I met with senior Pentagon officials to discuss the many tough issues emerging from our growing use of robots in war. One of them asked, “So, who then is thinking about all this stuff?”

America’s founding fathers may not have been able to imagine robotic drones, but they did provide an answer. The Constitution did not leave war, no matter how it is waged, to the executive branch alone.

In a democracy, it is an issue for all of us.

Recently I had jury duty, and during jury selection something remarkable occurred. Early in the proceedings, the judge posed a hypothetical question to the 60 or so potential jurors in the room: “If I were to send you out now and ask you to render a verdict, what would it be? How many of you would vote not guilty?” A few raised their hands. “How many would vote guilty?” A few more raised their hands. “And how many would say you didn’t know enough to decide?” Every remaining hand — about 50 people — went up immediately.

That, of course, was the wrong answer, and the judge proceeded to explain why. In the American system of justice, there is a presumption of innocence. Because no evidence had been presented, the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and we would have to render a verdict of not guilty. After her explanation, she posed the question again, and (except for a few who clung to guilty and were sent home) we all raised our hands for not guilty.

Jury duty was in some ways difficult, but in one respect, it was easy: We were given clear instructions by a recognized authority and we followed them. No one argued about who had the burden of proof. No one suggested that the judge was not an appropriate authority, or that we should reject her instructions. On the contrary, when the time came to deliberate, we referred on more than one occasion to her instructions, and when the time came to vote, we had little trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. Driving home, I found myself contrasting this with the issue on which I work in my professional life: climate change.

I study the history of climate science, and my research has shown that the think tanks and institutes that deny the reality or severity of climate change, or promote distrust of climate science, do so out of self-interest, ideological conviction or both. Some groups, like the fossil fuel industry, have an obvious self-interest in the continued use of fossil fuels. Others fear that if we accept the reality of climate change, we will be forced to acknowledge the failures of free-market capitalism. Still others worry that if we allow the government to intervene in the marketplace to stop climate change, it will lead to further expansion of government power that will threaten our broader freedoms.

But most Americans do not work for the fossil fuel industry, and most Americans accept that there is an appropriate role for government to protect human and environmental health. So why has the denial of climate change achieved so much traction?

In my travels, I have met many, many people who have told me that they are not in denial about climate change; they simply don’t know enough to decide. It strikes me that these people aren’t unlike my fellow jurors at the start of jury selection. They are trying to keep an open mind, something that we are routinely enjoined to do in many other aspects of daily life.

But just as open-mindedness can be the wrong answer in jurisprudence, it can also be the wrong answer in science and public policy. Since the mid-1990s, there has been clear-cut evidence that the climate is changing because of human activities: burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. For the last decade or so it has been increasingly clear that these changes are accelerating, and worrisome.

Yet many Americans cling to the idea that it is reasonable to maintain an open mind. It isn’t, at least not to scientists who study the matter. They have been saying for some time that the case for the reality and gravity of climate change has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. But there’s the rub. The public seems to view scientists as the equivalent of the prosecuting attorney trying to prove a case. The think tanks, institutes and fossil fuel corporations take on the mantle of the defense.

We have to get over that flawed notion. Scientists don’t play the role of prosecutor trying to prove a case. Rather, they are the jury trying to evaluate the evidence. And they have rendered their verdict. The problem is not that scientists have become advocates, as some have claimed. The problem is that there is no judge, no recognized authority giving us instructions we accept, and no recognized authority to accept the scientists’ verdict and declare it final.

Consider for a moment the case against tobacco. There too scientists were nearly unanimous in their conclusion, based on research, that tobacco use had serious health consequences. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry tried to play the role of defense attorney, offering up denials and dodges and pseudo-scientific studies denying a link between smoking and lung cancer. So how did Americans decide whom to believe?

In that case, there was a judge whose instructions had a large effect on public consciousness: the U.S. surgeon general. Without a scientist general to instruct us on climate change, we as a nation have been adrift, looking for leadership and not finding it.

But there is one notable exception: California. In the absence of federal leadership, in the absence of a scientist general, our state has acted on the scientific verdict. Both our current Democratic and our previous Republican governor understood the need for brisk action on climate change to prevent costly damage, and they have also seen economic opportunities available to those offering solutions. This bipartisan effort has made a difference.

As we enter 2012, California is the only state in the nation to be implementing controls on greenhouse gas emissions. As of Jan. 1, California has adopted a legal framework to reduce such emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and ultimately achieve an 80% reduction by 2050.

It is possible to move forward, even without a judge in black robes telling us what to do.

In late 2010, on the eve of the Arab Spring uprisings, a Tunisian blogger asked Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah what democratic nations should do to help cyber­activists in the Middle East. Abdel Fattah, who had spent time in jail under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, argued that if Western democracies wanted to support the region’s Internet activists, they should put their own houses in order. He called on the world’s democracies to “fight the troubling trends emerging in your own backyards” that “give our own regimes great excuses for their own actions.”

The ominous developments that Abdel Fattah warned about are on display in Washington today in the battle over two anti-piracy bills. This fight is just the latest example of how difficult it is for even an established democracy to protect both intellectual property and intellectual freedom on the Internet — all while keeping people safe, too. It is a challenge that Congress has historically failed to meet.

But Washington is waking up to the new reality: Politics as usual is not compatible with the Internet age, especially when it comes to laws and regulations governing the Web. And the Internet’s key players — along with millions of passionate users who have tended to view Washington as disconnected from their lives — are realizing that they can’t ignore what happens on Capitol Hill. Both sides must now face the long-simmering culture clash between Washington and the Internet, with implications that go far beyond a temporary Wikipedia blackout.

Politicians started fighting over Internet policy in earnest in the mid-1990s, when the Web emerged as a serious platform for commerce, as well as activities from pornography and crime to artistic expression and political activism. The first battles illustrated the perpetual problem with Internet laws: In seeking to protect people, they tend to be shortsighted and overly broad. To most critics, those were the main problems with the Senate anti-piracy bill under consideration, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which has been delayed pending changes, and the similar House measure, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which has been put on indefinite hold in the wake of a massive public outcry. Similar problems of scope and consequences trace back to the early days of Internet regulation.

Take the bruising political battles over online pornography and indecency. In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, making it a crime to “transmit” indecent material to minors over the Internet. In 1997, the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional. According to Justice John Paul Stevens, the law threatened to “torch a large segment of the Internet community” because its language was too vague and would infringe on the free speech rights of adults.

In 1998, Congress tried again with the Child Online Protection Act, requiring all operators of commercial Internet services to restrict access by minors if their sites contained “material harmful to minors” as defined by “contemporary community standards.” The authors of the bill argued that the same legal logic that works in the physical world should work in the digital world and that protecting minors wouldn’t limit adults’ free expression.

A decade-long legal battle ensued. The law was never enforced because the Supreme Court found that its definitions and remedies were too broad to avoid infringing protected speech among adults on the Internet.

The cost of getting the law wrong and failing to keep up with technological change is high. In 1986, at the dawn of the e-mail era and several years before the World Wide Web as we know it was invented, Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows law enforcement authorities to request the contents of anybody’s e-mail without any court order or warrant if it is stored on the servers of a commercial third-party service for longer than 180 days. Why? Because back in 1986, long before the advent of Gmail, Hotmail and other Web-based services, let alone “cloud computing,” nobody imagined that people would want or need to store confidential data on remote servers for longer than that. Thus anything older than 180 days was considered abandoned.

In an effort to update the law, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, AT&T and a number of other companies have teamed up with civil liberties groups to lobby Congress. They are fighting with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who are concerned about the political consequences of appearing soft on crime.

The fight this past week is a prime example of lobbying in action. According to the campaign finance research company MapLight, during the 2010 election cycle the 32 congressional sponsors of SOPA received nearly $2 million in campaign contributions from the movie, music and TV entertainment industries, which support the bill, vs. slightly more than $500,000 in donations from the software and Internet industries, which oppose it.

The Internet industry — with its large percentage of start-ups and young businesses — has been slow to lobby, but the big players, led by Google, are scrambling to catch up. Google spent nearly $6 million on lobbying in 2011, according to Opensecrets.org. It threw a lavish holiday party for congressional staffers in December. Facebook has beefed up its Washington office from next to nothing in 2010. Twitter hired a former Congressional staffer to set up the company’s office here this past year.

But as Alexis Ohanian of Reddit said this past week: “We spend our money innovating, not lobbying.”

That hands-off attitude is partly responsible for SOPA and PIPA. For years, members of Congress have heard from constituents who want them to protect the nation from crime, terrorism and intellectual property violation. They have not faced equally robust demands that online rights and freedoms be preserved. Congress may not get the Internet, but the Internet doesn’t get Congress, either.

More than a decade ago, Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig wrote a book about how computer code acts as a kind of law, in that it shapes what people can and cannot do in their digital lives. And, as our digital lives become increasingly intertwined with the physical, it shapes our freedoms as well.

The faith that brilliant and fast-moving feats of engineering and computer code will ultimately triumph over Washington’s legal code is one of many reasons most people in Silicon Valley have been inclined to focus on technical solutions to problems, rather than spending their time and money on politics.

Internet companies created the social-media tools that fueled the tea party and Occupy Wall Street insurgencies, and that have helped political candidates rally grass-roots support. Yet before this past week, those companies had not really tapped the power of their own tools to lobby against legislation that runs counter to their interests. Wednesday’s Internet “strike” changed that, allowing Web firms to show political muscle in ways that the entertainment industry cannot easily duplicate.

In 1996, Grateful Dead lyricist and Internet activist John Perry Barlow wrote “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace,” he wrote. “On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

In the 16 years since, the government has certainly not left cyberspace alone — because many of “us” have sought its protection from the criminals, pedophiles, bullies, industrial spies, racists, terrorists and others who have invaded the Internet.

Most of us do want the government, which shapes legal code, and the companies, which shape computer code, to defend us against attack and theft: We pay them to do so by giving up a little of our freedom and giving them our taxes, subscription dollars and mouse clicks.

However, the lawmaking norm leans more toward eliminating rather than managing threats online — be they cyber-attacks or intellectual property theft. It has somehow become acceptable to pass laws that presume Internet users are guilty until proven innocent. The Patriot Act and other legislation enable government agents to access a vast range of U.S. citizens’ private digital communications without a warrant — or even a suspicion that a specific individual may be involved in a crime, as the law requires for most physical searches.

SOPA also erred on the side of eliminating threats. To protect intellectual property, the law sought to make Web sites liable for their users’ activities. This would mean sites would have to monitor all users and block any transmissions or postings that could possibly result in a copyright violation charge.

Cyberspace, as Justice Stevens pointed out in his 1997 opinion striking down the Communications Decency Act, is a “unique medium . . . located in no particular geographical location but available to anyone, anywhere in the world, with access to the Internet.”

Thus a congressman from Iowa can vote “yea” on a bill that ends up affecting Internet users in Bahrain, who have no way of holding him accountable. That is in part because many globally popular online platforms are headquartered in the United States. Moreover, Web services based outside the country that want to be accessible to American users must also comply with U.S. legislation, affecting their users everywhere else.

To make things worse, governments around the world tend to copy regulations and laws enacted in North America and Europe, particularly when they provide an opportunity to exercise government power through the Internet. In Tunisia, where a new democracy is striving to take root after toppling a dictator one year ago, Islamists and other conservatives point to laws recently passed or proposed in Western democratic countries as evidence that they are in the global mainstream as they seek to reinstate censorship.

For these reasons, activists around the world had good reason to worry that an anti-piracy bill such as SOPA would force overseas Web sites, if they want American audiences, to set up monitoring and censorship mechanisms. Once in place, these would give governments a new set of excuses to demand user information and removal of content.

For neither the first time nor the last time, Washington is trying to wield power over the Internet in a manner that many Americans believe lacks the consent of the governed, let alone the consent of the networked. After Wednesday’s protests, SOPA is effectively dead and PIPA is in critical condition. But that doesn’t mean the revolution has succeeded.

The computer coding pros — and the millions who depend on their products — have said “no” to legal code they hate. But killing a bad bill is only the first step. The next and more vital step is political innovation. Without a major upgrade, this political system will keep on producing legal code that is Internet-incompatible.

AT this moment, all over the United States, consumers are buying tickets to games, concerts and other live events under the impression that they have the right to give away, donate or resell the tickets they purchase. They assume that they can do so whenever and with whomever they wish and (as long as they don’t violate the few remaining laws against scalping) at whatever price they choose.

But those consumers may be mistaken. In recent years ticket sellers, along with promoters, producers, artists and sports teams, have increasingly taken a new approach to selling tickets. This approach, marketed in the name of innovation, convenience and protecting purchasers, restricts those fundamental freedoms long rightly taken for granted.

The practice is so-called paperless ticketing: tickets are purchased by credit card, and to gain entry to an event, the buyer must present the same credit card and a photo ID. You cannot readily give your paperless concert ticket to a friend or sell it to a colleague or buy one for your grandchild to use. In no other format — traditional paper ticket, printable e-ticket or digital ticket delivered on a smartphone — are live-event tickets subject to such transfer restraints, and no product other than airline tickets (for which there is a security rationale) involves such restrictions.

Ticketmaster, the dominant seller of live-event tickets, and to a lesser extent its much smaller competitor Veritix, both engage in this practice. Ticketmaster says its restrictions on the resale and “gifting” of its paperless tickets act as safeguards against various practices: scalping; the bulk purchasing of tickets by automated software bots; and the use of counterfeit, stolen or lost tickets.

But in reality, the restrictions represent an effort to control the secondary-ticketing market and stifle competition from independent resellers and resale marketplaces like StubHub, where tickets are often sold for less than face value. (The American Antitrust Institute, of which I am president, received a modest contribution, in the form of sponsorship of a conference last year, from an advocacy group financed in part by StubHub.) Paperless tickets bought through Ticketmaster may be resold, for example, only through its own resale Web site, which often prohibits sales below face value, sets maximum sale prices and charges a fee for transfers.

The scope of the problem — how many fans are affected, how much money is involved — is difficult to quantify. Paperless tickets are estimated to represent only about 1 percent of the well over 100 million live-event tickets sold each year. But in the absence of strong consumer resistance, they are likely to become increasingly common.

This week, the American Antitrust Institute is releasing a report on the paperless-ticket market by James D. Hurwitz, an institute fellow and former policy analyst at the Federal Trade Commission. The conclusion: restrictive paperless-ticket practices depart from bedrock market principles by unjustifiably limiting consumer choice and suppressing free competition. They also might violate federal and state antitrust and consumer-protection laws. And they may warrant legislation to protect the market and consumers.

As it happens, a number of states are weighing ticket reforms. In 2010, New York became the first state to pass legislation to protect the right of consumers to transfer tickets to others as they see fit. Similar legislation has been introduced in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, North Carolina, Florida and New Jersey.

We urge reform of these ticketing practices. Specifically, we call on the Federal Trade Commission, along with state attorneys general, consumer-protection agencies and legislators, to investigate the growing threat of restrictive paperless-ticketing practices for live events. Perhaps the threat of an investigation will spur the industry to reform itself.

These practices undermine a free, fair, informed and competitive market. Consumers should be enabled to transact with others.

We who love the Internet love the fact that so many people contribute to it. It’s hard to believe that skeptics once worried about whether anyone would have anything worthwhile to say online.

There is, however, an outdated brand of digital orthodoxy that ought to be retired. In this worldview, the Internet is a never-ending battle of good guys who love freedom against bad guys like old-fashioned Hollywood media moguls. The bad guys want to strengthen copyright law, and make it impossible to post anonymously copied videos and stories.

The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which is being considered in the House while the Senate looks at a similar bill, is deemed the worst thing ever. Popular sites like Wikipedia staged a blackout on Wednesday to protest the bills. Google put a black banner over its name. Nothing quite like that has ever happened before. This is extraordinary, because it shows that belief in the priority of fighting SOPA is so absolute as to trump the stated nonpartisan missions of these sites.

The legislation has indeed included draconian remedies in various drafts, so I join my colleagues in criticizing the bills. But our opposition has become so extreme that we are doing more harm than good to our own cause. Those rare tech companies that have come out in support of SOPA are not merely criticized but barred from industry events and subject to boycotts. We, the keepers of the flame of free speech, are banishing people for their speech. The result is a chilling atmosphere, with people afraid to speak their minds.

Our melodrama is driven by a vision of an open Internet that has already been distorted, though not by the old industries that fear piracy.

For instance, until a year ago, I enjoyed a certain kind of user-generated content very much: I participated in forums in which musicians talked about musical instruments.

For years, I was warned that old-fashioned control freaks like media moguls might separate me from my beloved forums. Perhaps a forum would be shut down because it was hosted on some server with pirated content.

While acknowledging that this is a possible scenario, a very different factor — proprietary social networking — is ending my freedom to participate in the forums I used to love, at least on terms I accept. Like many other forms of contact, the musical conversations are moving into private sites, particularly Facebook. To continue to participate, I’d have to accept Facebook’s philosophy, under which it analyzes me, and is searching for new ways to charge third parties for the use of that analysis.

At the moment that wouldn’t bother me much, because I know a lot of people at Facebook and I know they are decent. But I’ve seen what happens to companies over time. Who knows who will be using my data in 20 years?

You might object that it’s all based on individual choice. That argument ignores the consequences of networks, and the way they function. After a certain point choice is reduced.

And it’s not Facebook’s fault! We, the idealists, insisted that information be able to flow freely online, which meant that services relating to information, instead of the information itself, would be the main profit centers. Some businesses do sell content, but that doesn’t address the business side of everyday user-generated content.

The adulation of “free content” inevitably meant that “advertising” would become the biggest business in the open part of the information economy. Furthermore, that system isn’t so welcoming to new competitors. Once networks are established, it is hard to reduce their power. Google’s advertisers, for instance, know what will happen if they move away. The next-highest bidder for each position in Google’s auction-based model for selling ads will inherit that position if the top bidder goes elsewhere. So Google’s advertisers tend to stay put because the consequences of leaving are obvious to them, whereas the opportunities they might gain by leaving are not.

The obvious strategy in the fight for a piece of the advertising pie is to close off substantial parts of the Internet so Google doesn’t see it all anymore. That’s how Facebook hopes to make money, by sealing off a huge amount of user-generated information into a separate, non-Google world. Networks lock in their users, whether it is Facebook’s members or Google’s advertisers.

This belief in “free” information is blocking future potential paths for the Internet. What if ordinary users routinely earned micropayments for their contributions? If all content were valued instead of only mogul content, perhaps an information economy would elevate success for all. But under the current terms of debate that idea can barely be whispered.

To my friends in the “open” Internet movement, I have to ask: what did you think would happen? We in Silicon Valley undermined copyright to make commerce become more about services instead of content — more about our code instead of their files. The inevitable endgame was always that we would lose control of our own personal content, our own files. We haven’t just weakened Hollywood and old-fashioned publishers. We’ve weakened ourselves.

Alan Solomont, embajador de Estados Unidos en España, tuvo la osadía de enviar, el pasado 12 de diciembre, una durísima carta de reprobación política al entonces aún presidente José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. El motivo de la misma era quejarse por la debilidad y el incumplimiento de los «compromisos adquiridos por España ante los dueños de los derechos y ante el Gobierno de Estados Unidos». Se fundamentaba en que el último Consejo de Ministros del Gobierno en funciones no aprobó, tras un fuerte debate sobre su rechazo social en internet, la llamada ley Sinde. El embajador se atrevió a afirmar: «El Gobierno, por desgracia, ha fracasado a la hora de terminar el trabajo debido a razones políticas, en detrimento de la reputación y la economía de España».

El tono amenazador y descalificador de la misiva se tornó en felicitaciones públicas, por parte del mismo diplomático, cuando ¿unos días después¿ el Gobierno de Mariano Rajoy aprobaba (a propuesta del ministro José Ignacio Wert) la misma norma sin modificación alguna.

Mientras esto sucedía, el Gobierno del presidente Barack Obama presentaba públicamente su propuesta de ley antipiratería (la denominada ley SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act). Pero lo que en España fue, fundamentalmente, una masiva reacción de usuarios de internet contra la ley Sinde ¿con el apoyo de algunas populares páginas de descargas de películas que cerraron para expresar su rechazo¿, en EEUU ha tenido otro tipo de respuesta. A mediados de noviembre, Facebook, Google y Twitter (Net Coalition), junto a otros gigantes de internet como Amazon, Yahoo o PayPal, mostraban su oposición a la iniciativa con un contundente anuncio en The New York Times y una estudiada y eficaz campaña en las redes. En diciembre anunciaban su disposición a «cerrar» sus servicios globales como muestra del profundo rechazo a una ley que regula mal lo que dice proteger e ignora la profunda transformación de creación de valor y, con ello, la evolución de los legítimos derechos de creadores y de la industria cultural en la nueva sociedad del conocimiento.

La amenaza de apagón digital por parte de Net Coalition, prevista inicialmente para el 23 de enero, no fue un gesto táctico. La unidad de sus promotores y la amenaza de huelga en internet eran reales, y sus consecuencias, imprevisibles y con altísimo impacto social y económico.
Finalmente, el pasado fin de semana el Congreso de EEUU anunció la congelación de la votación de la ley, prevista para el día 24, hasta «alcanzar un alto grado de consenso». La Casa Blanca hizo pública una nota en la que, tras defender la necesidad de combatir la piratería, se criticaba que «determinados aspectos de la ley» pudieran «dañar la libertad de expresión e introducir inseguridad en los negocios sobre internet». Mientras aquí el embajador Solomont nos daba un repaso sin pudor ni respeto, tirándonos de las orejas y aplaudiendo según sucedían los acontecimientos, allí su Gobierno ha cedido, buscando consensos para evitar fracturas.

Siendo candidato presidencial, Obama dijo con solemnidad y ambición durante una visita a la sede central de Google en el 2007: «Ayúdenme a cambiar el mundo, de la misma forma en que Google lo ha cambiado». Cinco años después, es discutible si él ha cambiado el mundo, pero nadie duda de cómo lo ha hecho Google y todo el ecosistema de internet. De las 10 empresas más innovadoras en el mundo en el 2011¿según la selección y análisis de la publicación Fast Company¿ (Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Nissan, Groupon, Google, Dawning Information Industry, Netflix, Zynga y Epocrates), ¡ocho no existían hace 10 años! La lista, además, está copada casi totalmente por empresas tecnológicas que desarrollan el núcleo principal de operaciones a través de internet, y la mayoría son norteamericanas.

La tecnología social (que construye relaciones, comunidades e intereses en base a una fuerte emancipación personal y profesional) nutre el ecosistema de internet y es mucho más que mera tecnología. Se trata de una nueva cultura que cambia grandes ecuaciones, como, por ejemplo, la percepción entre valor y precio, o las relaciones con los productos y servicios entre propietarios o usuarios.

Wikipedia, que sigue financiándose y desarrollándose sin publicidad y con la aportación de unos 100.000 redactores, es el paradigma de la nueva sociedad, según Don Tapscott y Anthony Williams, autores del libro Wikinomics.La popular web cerró ayer sus puertas digitales en inglés, junto a 10.000 portales más que se sumaron a la protesta a pesar del paso atrás del Gobierno y el Congreso de EEUU, para seguir con la presión cívica y global sobre una política miope y equivocada. El anuncio de la huelga tenía un mensaje muy elocuente: «¡Aviso para estudiantes! Terminad vuestros deberes pronto. ¡Wikipedia cerrará el miércoles contra una ley maligna!». La primera gran huelga de internet cambiará la relación de fuerzas entre usuarios y propietarios. Los segundos deberán aprender a hacer negocios con los primeros sin que estos sean clientes. Todo un reto. Un cambio histórico.

It’s one of the most contentious but least understood issues now before Congress. It’s one that does not align neatly along party lines and has split the business community.

The issue is online piracy – the illegal sale of copyrighted and trademarked products on rogue pirate websites. Proposals aimed at putting these rogue websites out of business, now pending in the House and Senate, would strengthen restrictions on foreign-based rogue websites, while imposing new obligations on U.S.-based firms that facilitate their operation.

These proposals address a legitimate problem. But they may have unintended negative consequences on the operation of the Internet and on free speech.

There is no doubt that websites selling counterfeit goods, including digital goods such as Hollywood movies, have proliferated on the Internet. Such activity is a form of theft, and the federal government has a legitimate role in preventing it. Currently, U.S. authorities can and do shut down domestically based pirate websites by seizing control of their domain names under asset forfeiture laws.

But a large number of rogue sites are located outside the United States, putting them largely out of the reach of U.S. authorities.

The bills now being considered in the House and Senate. The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act would undercut such rogue sites by prohibiting third parties from dealing with them.

This is how they would work: First, they allow the U.S. attorney general as well as individual intellectual property right holders to sue the alleged foreign pirate website in court. If the site is found to be dedicated to infringement, a range of third-party restrictions would go into effect.

The most controversial of these has been a requirement that Internet service providers such as Verizon directly block requests from the United States to connect to such sites. But that idea was received with a hailstorm of criticism from Internet engineers and others because it would disrupt the operation of the net, as well as weaken Internet security. Congressional leaders recently stated they would withdraw the idea.

But the bills are still flawed. Among the most troublesome provisions is a ban on search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, from including pirate sites in their search results. In effect, the search engines would be placed under a gag order, prohibiting them from disclosing the Web location of rogue websites.

This remarkable restriction goes well beyond current law, which requires the “takedown” of content that infringes on intellectual property rights. Under the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, no portion of a rogue website may be linked – even pages that contain no infringing content.

The constitutionality of this provision is uncertain. Many legal scholars argue this requirement directly violates the First Amendment. Although First Amendment protections usually don’t apply to restrictions on the use of copyrighted content such as movies, songs and books, the bills would ban links to all content on infringing websites.

Under current case law, it is unclear how a court would rule on the constitutionality of such action. But whatever the legal argument, the restrictions erode freedom of communication on the Web.

Why should anyone care? After all, few would defend the activities of these pirate sites. But limits on speech here are almost certain to be extended to other cases. If links to pirate sites are banned, why not links to sites disseminating national security secrets? Or sites facilitating violence by propagating extreme political positions?

Moreover, other countries, such as China, who have pursued content controls of their own, may be encouraged by steps in the United States to limit content.

Congress should carefully consider the consequences of – and alternatives to – these bills before moving forward.

My mother, reacting to the recent spate of alarmist headlines about “raging” violence and increased security measures affecting Peace Corps volunteers in Central America, has taken to calling me on a near-nightly basis.

“Just needed to hear your voice,” she says to explain the call.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I respond.

Frankly, it’s getting annoying.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the chance to speak with my mother. What bothers me is knowing that she is seriously worried. No matter how much I try to persuade her otherwise, she is convinced my life is in constant danger. Never mind that only one volunteer has been murdered in Guatemala in the 40-plus years the Peace Corps has operated there; as far as she’s concerned, it’s a war zone. Let me tell you (and her, for the thousandth time!): Guatemala is not Afghanistan. Not even close.

Americans who ride the bus in Guatemala are indeed often targets of pickpockets on the hunt for money, cellphones, cameras and iPods. Volunteers are no exception to this rule, and most of us have been fleeced at least once. It’s usually a nonviolent affair, though, and, aside from the hassle of having to fill out Peace Corps reimbursement slips, it’s not a big deal.

Officially, however, every such incident is misleadingly categorized as a robbery, a term that by definition implies violence, real or threatened, and that makes the incidents seem much worse than they actually are. Consequently, the media latches on to the upward trend in this scary category of crimes and vaguely connect it to the real but unrelated horrors of the drug cartels — and scare the bejesus out of my mom.

Unfortunately, stoking the false perception of a volunteer population under siege has ramifications beyond my mother’s ongoing descent into madness. The Peace Corps director decided last month to take a step back from the programs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. He has evacuated all Peace Corps workers from Honduras and is suspending the induction of new volunteers in Guatemala and El Salvador. From my perspective, based on being here, speaking to other volunteers and reading the Guatemalan press every day, these decisions seem unnecessary, even cowardly.

I am not saying violence against Peace Corps volunteers is unheard of or to be taken lightly. Serious calamities have affected some of my friends here. One of them was on a bus that was in a fatal accident, but he walked away uninjured, thank goodness. Assaults, sexual and otherwise, are probably more likely to happen to us here in Guatemala than in the U.S. (depending on where in the States we hail from), but that’s sort of part of the deal. There is no Peace Corps draft, after all; we sign up and agree to come, fully cognizant of the risks. Furthermore, if we decide once we get here that it’s more than we’d bargained for, we can leave at any time. Unlike in the case of the military, there is no such thing as a dishonorable discharge from the Peace Corps.

Before the Peace Corps’ inception, some Americans wondered whether our “young men and tender young girls, reared in air-conditioned houses,” could handle life in a poor country for two years. Fifty years later, with more than 200,000 current and former volunteers, the Peace Corps remains as clear evidence of America’s best intentions with regard to foreign policy. Volunteers working in countries such as Guatemala do much to improve the United States’ image abroad and often make significant contributions to the development of their host communities. The Peace Corps has proved itself to be a phenomenal idea, and, in contrast to our military endeavors over the last 50 years, its mission has never lacked approval from the American people, liberal and conservative alike.

As the U.S. passes through adverse times, it’s important that we not lose sight of the ideals that made us great in the first place. The Peace Corps is a paragon of these ideals, and any decision to scale it back should be taken with full awareness of the damage that doing so would cause. In the case of those of us who are now finishing up our service, much of the work we started will be left unfinished because there will be no one to continue it, but it’s more than that. Young Americans, and those young at heart, deserve the opportunity to venture unarmed and un-air-conditioned into developing countries to experience life as it presents itself to the majority of the human population. To deprive them of that opportunity unnecessarily is cowardly, and such cowardice — although perhaps appreciated by their mothers — is inexcusable considering the courage that potential volunteers exhibit just by signing up.

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

Indefinite detention

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)

Arbitrary justice

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)

Warrantless searches

The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)

Secret evidence

The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.

War crimes

The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)

Secret court

The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)

Immunity from judicial review

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)

Continual monitoring of citizens

The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)

Extraordinary renditions

The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.

These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.

Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”

Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”

And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.

The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.

Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.

Just 13 minutes into his presidency, Barack Obama indirectly reached out to Iran in his inaugural address, offering America’s hand of friendship if Tehran would unclench its fist. After eight years of the George W. Bush administration’s ideological contempt for diplomacy with America’s foes, it was a bold move born out of necessity, not desire.

But Obama’s diplomacy has fallen short. After two rounds of talks in October 2009, in which Tehran refused to accept a U.S. confidence-building measure to exchange its low-enriched uranium in return for fuel for a medical research reactor, the sanctions track was activated. Ever since, Iran and the United States have been on a confrontational path. Washington has imposed unprecedented economic sanctions and isolated Iran politically. In turn, the Iranians have threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, amassed more low-enriched uranium and begun enrichment at a facility deep underground.

Rather than resolving the nuclear issue, Iran and the United States are inching closer to a military confrontation. But war is not inevitable. Diplomacy, which the Obama administration prematurely abandoned, can still succeed.

“Our Iran diplomacy was a gamble on a single roll of the dice,” a senior State Department official told me in 2010. In short, it either had to work right away or not at all. In fact, six months after the U.S. talks collapsed, Turkey and Brazil secured a version of the fuel swap that Obama had sought.

Fearing that the failure of the U.S. talks would eventually lead to war, Turkey and Brazil stepped in to persuade Iran to accept the American benchmarks for the fuel swap. To the surprise of many in the White House, Turkey and Brazil succeeded.

But by then, it was too late. The Obama administration was already on the path to sanctions. Brazil and Turkey felt snubbed, temporarily chilling their relations with Washington. (Brazil has since turned its focus to other issues, but Turkey is still involved as an occasional mediator with Iran.)

Instead of continuing toward a war the U.S. military doesn’t want, we should double down on diplomacy, in part by emulating Turkey and Brazil’s efforts. In light of news reports this past week that Iran would be open to talks later this month with the P5+1 negotiating group — China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and the United States — here are five ways we can learn from Turkey and Brazil’s interactions with Iran.

Talk to everyone — and talk a lot

A paralyzing question often asked in Washington is: Who do we talk to in Iran? The futile search for a sole authoritative Iranian partner often causes diplomacy to be rejected before it even begins. Turkey and Brazil did not fall into this trap. Instead, they recognized that there are many power centers in Iran — including the supreme leader’s office, the parliament, the president’s circle of advisers, the National Security Council and influential clergymen — all of which need to be included in the process.

Just as no country expects to sign a significant deal with the United States without addressing the concerns of the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress, no major decision is likely to be made in Iran unless a range of decision-makers is brought into the discussion. Brazil and Turkey built confidence with the relevant Iranian players and won their support for mediation.

“There is one country that resembles the Iranian power structure,” a prominent journalist close to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told me. “It’s the United States of America. [To get a deal], talking to the president is not enough. You have to talk to everyone.”

Brazil and Turkey did not put time constraints or other limits on their diplomacy, as the United States did by adopting an unrealistic deadline for talks to produce results and by making the fuel swap a condition for expanding diplomacy into other areas.

Between the collapse of the U.S. talks in October 2009 and Brazil and Turkey’s successful mediation in May 2010, Brazil and Turkey spent more time talking to the Iranians than did the entire P5+1 negotiating group. Brazil’s and Turkey’s foreign ministers shuttled in and out of Iran for months before the formal negotiations, building trust and political space for their mediation.

Respect and tone matter

After three decades of mutual demonization, the United States and Iran have been trying to coerce one another into submission rather than negotiating toward compromise. When addressing each other, Washington and Tehran tend to use the vocabulary of conflict and war. The Bush administration’s inclusion of Iran in an “axis of evil”effectively terminated a very useful collaboration between the United States and Iran against the Taliban in 2002. Respect for the other side is rarely expressed, out of fear that it would be interpreted as weakness — especially in an election year.

Turkey and Brazil adopted a different approach. “Iran listens because we respect them,” a senior Turkish diplomat involved in the 2010 talks told me. “When you put intimidation and coercion ahead of respect, it falls apart.”

Don’t limit the agenda

Reducing 30 years of wide-ranging U.S.-Iran tensions to negotiations focused on one variable — the development of nuclear weapons — is not a formula for success. A larger agenda that includes other issues, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, regional security, and human rights, would provide greater maneuverability. We could overcome a stalemate in one track through headway in another.

For example, Brazil raised the issue of human rights, a sensitive topic for Tehran. Defense Minister Celso Amorim, who was Brazil’s foreign minister during the negotiations, told me how, behind the scenes, he used his many trips to Iran to secure the release of a French student accused of espionage. For future talks to be successful, the agenda should be expanded — and even sensitive issues such as human rights should be included. Not only would this help strengthen relations with the Iranian people, it would also enable the United States to address the plight of Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Put nuclear inspections and verification at the center

Negotiating whether Iran can enrich uranium has been a losing proposition from the outset. There is a greater chance for success if the focus is shifted toward how enrichment can be inspected, verified, limited and controlled. This would require a clear acceptance of enrichment in Iran — a step the West has refused. In Amorim’s assessment, his success in getting Iran to agree to the fuel swap was largely because the deal tacitly accepted enrichment on Iranian soil.

“Iran would never agree to anything, any kind of arrangement that would in theory or in practice deprive them of the right to enrich uranium,” Amorim told me in 2010.

Get by with a little help from your friends

Iran’s relationships with every one of the P5+1 countries range from bad to worse. Not a single member of that negotiating group trusts Iran — and vice versa. Resolving the nuclear dispute through a mechanism nearly devoid of trust is a formidable task. Although the Security Council negotiation track cannot be sidestepped, it can be complemented by relying on states that — because of their cordial relations with both the permanent members and Iran — can bring trust to the diplomacy. Beyond Turkey and Brazil, nations such as Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Oman and Qatar can help overcome the current impasse, primarily by bridging the trust gap between Iran and the P5+1. Enlisting their assistance is particularly critical in the next 15 months because there’s a heightened risk that tensions could escalate during the U.S. and Iranian election seasons.

Moreover, trust is an outcome, not a precondition. Rather than putting their trust in Iran, Brazil and Turkey put their trust in the enforcement mechanisms of the fuel-swap agreement, realizing that the talks leading to a deal would help build a strong rapport.

“It’s not about trusting anyone,” an adviser to then-Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told me in 2010. “It’s about generating the mechanics under which people can prove that they deserve that trust.”

Sustained, persistent diplomacy remains untested between the United States and Iran. It is superior to war and sanctions for the simple fact that, if successful, it not only could prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but the reduced tensions would lessen Iran’s demand for nuclear deterrence. War and sanctions may limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but at the expense of increasing Iran’s desire to have those capabilities. At some point, the desire will overcome these obstacles.

One simply cannot threaten or sanction a country into a sense of security.

It may be fair to argue that the last thing the nation needs at the start of an election year is yet another budget crisis and another decade of war. Yet this is the path the United States appears to be taking in Afghanistan. U.S. officials are talking about removing all American troops from Afghanistan and about massive cuts in military spending as part of the “transition” to Afghan control of combat and civil governance operations in 2014. Given the lead times involved in funding and implementing such massive changes within two to three years, Washington really has only a few months in which to decide whether we will take on the burden of funding the Afghan government through 2014 and beyond, and whether we will provide most of the funds, advisers and partners that Afghan forces will need until 2020 and beyond.

There has been near silence about these issues from the Obama administration and every Republican presidential candidate. Yet working studies from the U.S. and British governments, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank show that the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan could plunge that country into a recession or depression by the end of 2014 unless Kabul receives a massive new aid package. Afghanistan would need major assistance to compensate for the phaseout of U.S. and allied military spending that has kept its economy alive during the past 10 years of war, to pay for the services its government must provide to win and retain the loyalty of its people, to pay for the military and security forces it must develop, and to sustain the government until the Taliban and other insurgents are defeated or accept a political settlement.

The Afghan government raised this need in a paper circulated at the international conference in Bonn, Germany, last month, but its call for aid got little attention in the international media or among U.S. politicians. President Hamid Karzai requested some $10 billion a year through 2025 for a program that set ambitious goals for security and development. He called for equally ambitious reforms and improvements in governance and for the Afghan government to achieve full independence by 2030.

The Afghan government paper tracked closely with World Bank studies showing just how critical such aid will be, given that U.S. and allied forces are due to leave in 24 to 36 months and that an Afghan presidential election is to be held in 2014.

The Karzai government estimated that the cost of continued spending on development and governance would equal 14 percent of the Afghan economy in 2015 and that at least 9 percent of its gross domestic product would have to come from foreign aid. The government further estimated that the cost of security would amount to 26 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product — costs driven by the 357,000 men in the Afghan forces we are seeking to create.

The money the Afghan government estimates it will need to pay for the required military and civil spending in its budget equals about half of the Afghan economy in 2015. That figure rises to 62 percent if the development spending needed in addition to other spending in the budget is considered. This is far more than the $10 billion a year in the Afghan aid request. And the Karzai government is all too correct in warning in its paper that “Substantial funding cuts in any of these areas undermine our ability to achieve our shared goal of a secure, sustainable Afghanistan.”

The question for the United States and its allies — particularly the American people, who would have to pay 80 percent or more of the necessary aid — is whether they are willing to make a $140 billion commitment in assistance to cover the period through at least 2025. In addition, will they provide U.S. and allied forces  to fight on through 2014 and then provide the thousands of military advisers and partners — some of whom will have to go into combat? Afghanistan will need such military support for more than a decade after 2014 — unless Pakistan puts an end to insurgent sanctuaries within its borders and/or the insurgents accept a political settlement that is less than victory. Without such continued spending and military aid, the war in Afghanistan is certain to be lost. And given the track records of the Pakistan government and the poor and corrupt quality of Afghan governance, it may be lost in any case.

Now is the time to debate these issues and the future level of the U.S. commitment in money and forces. We do not need more good intentions and vague promises from the Obama administration. We do not need a vacuous set of positions from Republican presidential candidates who either do not understand the issues or fear addressing their cost. If the United States is to make this commitment we need to start making it now in every part of our posture and spending in Afghanistan — and be clear that we will do so through 2025. If not, we need to be honest about the consequences for some 30 million Afghans and their country.

Barack Obama recibió de su predecesor, George W. Bush, una herencia bélica envenenada. Aunque distinguiera entre Irak como una guerra “elegida” y Afganistán como una guerra “necesaria”, en ambos casos prometió la retirada.

La primera retirada ya ha tenido lugar, y seguramente ha sido mucho más honrosa de lo que Obama jamás pudo imaginar. La retirada de Irak no salva el desastre que fue la invasión ni convalida la pérdida consiguiente de vidas, como tampoco deja detrás una democracia estable, pero permite pasar una difícil página, reducir costes presupuestarios en época de crisis y, sobre todo, permitir a la Administración de Obama centrarse en su verdadero objetivo estratégico: Asia-Pacífico.

La segunda retirada también está en marcha: tiene una fecha militar (2014) y unos plazos políticos que, bien que mal, parecen estar cumpliéndose. Negociar con los talibanes que ampararon a Bin Laden no parece la mejor manera de cerrar el 11-S, pero visto desde Washington, todas las alternativas son peores. Por tanto, aunque plantee muchas dudas, el consentimiento otorgado por Washington a la apertura de una oficina de intereses talibán en Catar significa que Obama descuenta que su salida no será victoriosa sino, en el mejor de los casos, solo honrosa, sin victoria ni derrota (aunque, eso sí, con un legado muy incierto dada la debilidad de Karzai).

Lo quiera o no, el historial bélico de este presidente premio Nobel de la Paz no acaba aquí. Al tiempo que Obama se zafaba del legado de Bush hijo, se enredaba en tres conflictos bélicos de baja intensidad, como si para un presidente fuera imposible sustraerse del influjo magnético del inmenso poder militar que Estados Unidos pone a su disposición.

La primera guerra de Obama ha sido, sin duda, Pakistán, donde, desde el comienzo de su mandato, el presidente apostó por un incremento radical de las operaciones de bombardeo en el noroeste del país. Esta campaña contra los líderes de Al Qaeda y talibanes allí basados (que habría supuesto la muerte de unos 1.500 activistas) ha requerido, día tras día, torcer el brazo de políticos y militares paquistaníes, sumamente reacios a la presencia y actividades estadounidenses en su territorio. Después de que 26 militares paquistaníes murieran tras una reciente incursión estadounidense (y con el recuerdo fresco de la humillación sufrida como consecuencia de la operación para matar a Bin Laden), el Gobierno paquistaní ha suspendido el permiso a la CIA para utilizar la base de Shamsi para las operaciones de sus aviones no tripulados. Por eso, aunque esta guerra está vinculada a Afganistán y muy bien podría continuar una vez llevada a cabo la retirada de allí, su final es sumamente incierto.

La segunda guerra de Obama se desarrolló en los cielos de Libia. Obama dijo que se sentaba “en el asiento de atrás”, dejando a franceses y británicos la conducción de la guerra, pero lo cierto es que, una vez más, la participación de EE UU fue absolutamente determinante, hasta el punto de que los europeos no hubieran podido sostener la campaña más allá de los días iniciales. La guerra no fue secreta, aunque sí opaca, dado el deseo de Obama de no involucrar visiblemente a Estados Unidos en otra guerra contra otro país musulmán.

La tercera guerra de Obama está cuajando, al parecer, en torno a Irán. Los 8.000 pilotos y técnicos aéreos estadounidenses desplazados a Israel en los últimos días con el objeto de realizar maniobras conjuntas ofrecen una respuesta muy clara al anuncio de Irán de que va a enriquecer uranio por encima de los niveles requeridos para su uso civil. A su vez, la ristra de atentados contra científicos iraníes, aunque supuestamente se lleve a cabo mediante actores interpuestos, bien sean opositores iraníes, los servicios de inteligencia israelíes o, ¿por qué no?, Arabia Saudí u otros que también consideran el programa nuclear iraní como una amenaza de primer orden, no es algo que pueda ocurrir sin la aquiescencia, aunque sea implícita, de Estados Unidos. Sumados a la tensión generada por las sanciones al sector petrolero iraní y las amenazas de Teherán sobre el estrecho de Ormuz, todo indica que los actores involucrados han decidido elevar sus apuestas y, en consecuencia, las posibilidades de un conflicto abierto.

Hasta ahora, igual que Bush hijo, Obama no ha dudado en emplear la fuerza para defender lo que percibe que son los intereses de Estados Unidos. Pero, en contraposición a Bush, ha preferido siempre utilizar la fuerza del modo menos visible posible, no comprometer fuerzas terrestres y permitir que otros asuman el protagonismo. Hasta la fecha, las guerras de Obama han sido de baja intensidad: pero según avanza 2012, las cosas pueden cambiar.

El año 2011 será recordado como la época en que muchos estadounidenses que siempre habían sido optimistas comenzaron a renunciar a la esperanza. El presidente John F. Kennedy dijo una vez que la marea alta eleva todos los botes. Pero ahora, con la marea baja, los estadounidenses no solo comienzan a ver que quienes tienen mástiles más altos han sido elevados mucho más, sino que muchos de los botes más pequeños han sido destrozados por el agua.

En ese breve momento en que la marea creciente estaba, efectivamente, subiendo, millones de personas creyeron que tenían buenas probabilidades de cumplir su «sueño americano». Ahora también esos sueños están retirándose. En 2011, los ahorros de quienes habían perdido sus empleos en 2008 o 2009 ya se habían gastado. El seguro de desempleo se había terminado. Los titulares que anunciaban nuevas contrataciones –aún insuficientes para incorporar a quienes habitualmente se suman a la fuerza laboral– significaban poco para cincuentones con pocas ilusiones de volver a tener un empleo.

De hecho, las personas de mediana edad que pensaron que estarían desempleadas por unos pocos meses, se han dado cuenta a esta altura de que, en realidad, fueron jubiladas a la fuerza. Los jóvenes graduados universitarios con decenas de miles de dólares de deuda en créditos educativos no podían encontrar ningún empleo. La gente se mudó a las casas de sus amigos y los parientes se han convertido en sin techo. Las casas compradas durante la burbuja inmobiliaria aún están en el mercado, o han sido vendidas con pérdidas. Más de 7 millones de familias estadounidenses han perdido sus hogares.

El oscuro punto vulnerable de la burbuja financiera de las décadas anteriores también ha quedado completamente expuesto en Europa. Los titubeos por Grecia y la devoción de los gobiernos nacionales clave por la austeridad comenzaron a implicar una pesada carga el año pasado. Italia se contagió. El desempleo español, que se había mantenido cerca del 20% desde el comienzo de la recesión, trepó aún más. Lo impensable –el fin del euro– comenzó a verse como una posibilidad real.

Este año parece encaminado a ser aún peor. Es posible, por supuesto, que Estados Unidos solucione sus problemas políticos y adopte finalmente las medidas de estímulo que necesita para reducir el desempleo al seis o siete por ciento (el nivel previo a la crisis de cuatro o cinco por ciento es demasiado pedir). Pero esto es tan poco probable como que Europa se dé cuenta de que la austeridad por sí misma no resolverá sus problemas. Por el contrario, la austeridad solo exacerbará la desaceleración económica. Sin crecimiento, la crisis de la deuda –y la crisis del euro– solo empeorarán. Y la larga crisis que comenzó con el colapso de la burbuja inmobiliaria en 2007 y la recesión que la siguió, continuarán.

Además, es posible que los países con los mercados emergentes más importantes, que capearon exitosamente las tormentas de 2008 y 2009, no sobrelleven tan bien los problemas que se perciben en el horizonte. El crecimiento brasileño ya se ha detenido y eso genera ansiedad entre sus vecinos latinoamericanos.

Mientras tanto, los problemas de largo plazo –incluido el cambio climático y otras amenazas ambientales, y la creciente desigualdad en la mayoría de los países del mundo– continúan allí. Algunos incluso han empeorado. Por ejemplo, el alto desempleo ha deprimido los salarios y aumentado la pobreza.

La buena noticia es que solucionar estos problemas de largo plazo ayudaría a resolver los de corto plazo. Una mayor inversión para adaptar la economía al calentamiento global ayudaría estimular la actividad económica, el crecimiento y la creación de empleo. Impuestos más progresivos, que redistribuyan desde los ingresos altos hacia los medios y bajos, simultáneamente reducirían la desigualdad y aumentarían el empleo al impulsar la demanda total. Los impuestos más elevados a los ricos podrían generar ingresos para financiar la necesaria inversión pública, y proporcionar cierta protección social para quienes menos tienen, incluidos los desempleados.

Incluso sin ampliar el déficit fiscal, esos aumentos de «presupuesto equilibrado» en los impuestos y el gasto reducirían el desempleo y aumentarían el producto. Lo que preocupa, sin embargo, es que la política y la ideología en ambos lados del Atlántico, pero especialmente en EE. UU., no permitirá que nada de esto ocurra. La fijación en el déficit inducirá recortes en el gasto social, empeorando la desigualdad. De igual manera, la persistente atracción hacia la economía de oferta, a pesar de toda la evidencia su contra (especialmente en períodos de alto desempleo), evitará que se aumenten los impuestos a quienes más tienen.

Incluso antes de la crisis hubo un reordenamiento del poder económico –de hecho, una corrección de una anomalía con 200 años de historia, en la que la participación asiática del PBI global cayó desde cerca del 50% a, en cierto punto, menos del 10%. El compromiso pragmático con el crecimiento que se percibe actualmente en Asia y otros mercados emergentes destaca frente a las equivocadas políticas occidentales, que, impulsadas por una combinación de ideología e intereses creados, parecen casi reflejar un compromiso para evitar el crecimiento.

Como resultado, la reestructuración económica global probablemente se acelere. Y casi inevitablemente dará lugar a tensiones políticas. Con todos los problemas que enfrenta la economía global, seremos afortunados si estas presiones no comienzan a manifestarse dentro de los próximos doce meses.

The launch of trilateral strategic consultations among the United States, India, and Japan, and their decision to hold joint naval exercises this year, signals efforts to form an entente among the Asia-Pacific region’s three leading democracies. These efforts – in the world’s most economically dynamic region, where the specter of a power imbalance looms large – also have been underscored by the Obama administration’s new strategic guidance for the Pentagon. The new strategy calls for “rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific” and support of India as a “regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region.”

At a time when Asia is in transition and troubled by growing security challenges, the US, India, and Japan are seeking to build a broader strategic understanding to advance their shared interests. Their effort calls to mind the pre-World War I Franco-British-Russian “Triple Entente” to meet the threat posed by the rapid rise of an increasingly assertive Germany.

This time, the impetus has been provided by China’s increasingly muscular foreign policy. But unlike the anti-German entente a century ago, the aim is not to contain China. Rather, US policy is to use economic interdependence and China’s full integration into international institutions to dissuade its leaders from aggressively seeking Asian hegemony.

Indeed, the intention of the three democratic powers is to create an entente cordiale without transforming it into a formal military alliance, which they recognize would be counterproductive. Yet this entente could serve as an important strategic instrument to deter China’s rising power from sliding into arrogance. The three partners also seek to contribute to the construction of a stable, liberal, rules-based regional order.

After their recent first round of strategic dialogue in Washington, the US, Japan, and India will hold more structured discussions in Tokyo, aimed at strengthening trilateral coordination. Over time, the trilateral initiative could become quadrilateral with Australia’s inclusion. A parallel Australia-India-US axis, however, is likely to precede the formation of any quadrilateral partnership, especially in view of the earlier failure to launch such a four-party coalition.

Important shifts in American, Japanese, and Indian strategic preferences and policies, however, are needed to build meaningful trilateral collaboration. Japan, America’s treaty ally, has established military interoperability only with US forces. Following its 2008 security-cooperation declaration with India, Japan must also build interoperability with Indian naval forces, so that, as former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said, “Japan’s navy and the Indian navy are seamlessly interconnected.”

American and Indian forces have conducted dozens of joint exercises in recent years, but some US analysts complain that India still hews to “nonalignment” in power politics by guarding its strategic autonomy. In reality, India is just being more cautious, because it is more vulnerable to direct Chinese pressure from across a long, disputed Himalayan border. Whereas Japan is separated from China by an ocean and the US is geographically distant, China has sharply escalated border violations and other incidents in recent years to increase pressure on India, even as the US has maintained tacit neutrality on Sino-Indian disputes.

But, in view of America’s dire fiscal challenges, the Obama administration has just announced plans for a leaner military and greater reliance on regional allies and partners. This demands that the US transcend its Cold War-era hub-and-spoke system, whose patron-client framework is hardly conducive to building new alliances (or “spokes”). India for example, cannot be a Japan to the US. Indeed, the US has worked to co-opt India in a “soft alliance” devoid of treaty obligations.

The hub-and-spoke system, in fact, is more suited to maintain Japan as an American protectorate than to allow Japan to contribute effectively to achieving the central US policy objective in Asia: a stable balance of power. A subtle US policy shift that encourages Tokyo to cut its overdependence on America and do more for its own defense can more effectively contribute to that equilibrium.

Such a shift is likely to be dictated by the US imperative to cut defense expenditure further, in order to focus on the comprehensive domestic renewal needed to arrest the erosion in its relative power. If the US is to rely less on prepositioned forward deployments and more on acting as an offshore balancer, it will need to make fundamental changes in its post-1945 security system.

The three entente parties must also understand the limits of their partnership. The broad convergence of their strategic objectives in the Asia-Pacific region does not mean that they will see eye-to-eye on all issues. Consider, for example, their earlier contrasting approaches toward Burma, or their current differences over the new US energy sanctions against Iran.

Building true military interoperability within the entente will not be easy, owing to the absence of a treaty relationship between the US and India, and to their forces’ different weapon systems and training. But, given that no formal tripartite alliance is sought, limited interoperability may mesh well with this entente cordiale’s political objectives. Indeed, the entente’s political utility is likely to surpass its military value.

Even so, the deepening cooperation between the US, India, and Japan can help to strengthen maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region – the world’s leading trade and energy seaway – and shape a healthy and stable Asian power equilibrium.

During a Dec. 8 news conference, President Obama rebuked his Republican foreign policy critics: “Ask Osama bin Laden … whether I engage in appeasement,” Obama fired back.

The president has a point, of course. The special forces raid to get Bin Laden deep in Pakistan was an extremely gutsy call. So too the extrajudicial death sentence that Obama imposed on U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki in Yemen. More generally, the president has been a veritable killing machine when it comes to anti-American jihadists, escalating drone attacks tenfold against our most fanatical enemies. And for all the complaints about “leading from behind,” the bottom line in Libya was indisputable: Obama said Moammar Kadafi must go, and then put U.S. military power to the task of making it so — swiftly, without quagmire and at minimal cost to the U.S.

On the face of it, then, the president appears to have displayed sufficient steeliness of spine — a readiness to wield force wisely — to insulate himself against the brickbats of his political opponents. Vulnerable as Obama may be on the economy, national polling suggests much greater approval for his stewardship over foreign affairs. For the majority of Americans, doubts about Obama’s fitness to serve as commander in chief have largely been laid to rest.

And yet.

And yet it would be a serious error to conclude that criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy are without foundation. Though the American public may have reached a certain comfort level with the president’s leadership, beyond these shores — especially in the world’s most volatile region, the Middle East — faith in U.S. power, credibility and resolve has dangerously eroded. There, concerns run deep over the administration’s lack of strategic vision, its instinct for retreat and its complicity in the unraveling of a benevolent imperium that has for decades underwritten the region’s security.

The signposts are there for anyone who cares to notice. In a November article, a senior Middle East correspondent for the New York Times referred matter-of-factly to an Arab world “where the United States is increasingly viewed as a power in decline.” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, no enemy of the president, has reported from Riyadh on a new activism in Saudi Arabia’s policy born of “the diminished clout of the United States.” Indeed, Ignatius concludes that the Saudis consider Obama “a relatively weak leader” and no longer view the United States as a guarantor of their security — a “striking” shift in the kingdom’s security doctrine, which had stood for more than 60 years.

So acute is the crisis of confidence that America’s closest allies now openly question Washington’s reliability and mettle. Months after Obama’s rapid embrace of an Egyptian revolution that toppled the United States’ most important Arab partner, Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah II was asked whether the region’s leaders could still depend on the U.S. With shocking candor, Abdullah responded: “I think everybody is wary of dealing with the West…. Looking at how quickly people turned their backs on Mubarak, I would say that most people are going to try and go their own way.”

No less remarkable was the alarm over U.S. policy that Bahrain’s foreign minister expressed in October. Clearly unnerved by a deepening sense of U.S. irresolution, the Bahraini minister implored Obama to at long last push back against Iran’s repeated provocations, including an attempted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington: “We’re asking the U.S. to stand up for its interests and draw the red lines…. How many times have you lost lives, been subject to terrorist activities, and yet we haven’t seen any proper response. This is really serious. It’s coming to your shores now.”

In private conversations I’ve had with Middle Eastern officials, the sense of unease and dread expressed are only more severe. Fairly or not, these leaders appear to have taken Obama’s measure and found him wanting. Their bill of indictment includes retreat from Iraq and, soon, Afghanistan; betrayal of longtime U.S. allies, especially Mubarak; indulgence of enemy regimes in Tehran and Damascus; overblown promises to end the Palestinian conflict; and a persistent failure to mount the type of credible military option that these leaders believe is necessary for addressing the region’s most urgent threat — Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The hardening conviction that the U.S. is disengaging from the Middle East should be cause for real concern. The region already finds itself on the verge of a nervous breakdown, racked by revolutions, violent repression and the specter of Iranian theocrats wielding the world’s most dangerous weapons. Growing doubts about U.S. reliability and resolve only add fuel to the fire. The resulting strategic vacuum is an open invitation for miscalculation and conflict — Iran’s recent threats in the Strait of Hormuz being Exhibit A.

No good can come from the perception of the United States in retreat, a willing accomplice in the dismantling of a regional order — Pax Americana — that has been the linchpin of Mideast security for decades. It’s a dangerously corrosive narrative, one that left unchecked will breed uncertainty, instability and even war. Disabusing friend and foe alike of its accuracy should be a top priority for Obama.

En el incierto mundo en que vivimos se insinúan, sin embargo, algunas certidumbres por lo que se refiere al futuro inmediato. Ninguna casa de apuestas londinense aceptará una apuesta como la de quién será elegido presidente de Rusia el próximo mes de marzo, ya que todo el mundo sabe el resultado. A menos que pierdan el testigo en el camino, los jamaicanos ganarán la prueba de relevos 4×100 en los Juegos Olímpicos. Cabe estar menos seguro sobre quién será el próximo presidente francés el próximo mes de mayo (para no hablar de la elección del presidente islandés en las mismas fechas) o sobre si se avanzará en la unificación política europea. Y hoy por hoy, resulta incluso muy arriesgado hacer conjeturas sobre las elecciones estadounidenses en noviembre.

El 2011 no ha sido un buen año para Estados Unidos. Se creía que tras la recesión del periodo 2008-2010 llegaría una recuperación económica, pero esta fue levísima. La verdad es que –con razón o sin ella– se echan las culpas al partido y al presidente en el poder cuando la economía va mal. Y a ello se debe que la expresión “¡es la economía, estúpido!” se convirtiera en la frase empleada con mayor frecuencia en el lenguaje político estadounidense. Si es así, las perspectivas republicanas deberían calificarse de magníficas, pero no lo son porque no han propuesto un programa convincente ni han presentado candidatos que susciten admiración.

Los republicanos se hallan divididos entre una corriente principal relativamente sensata y moderada y una estridente ala extremista (especialmente chillona en años electorales). Lo propio puede aplicarse a la política exterior y a la semejanza entre los extremistas demócratas y republicanos que coinciden en afirmar que Estados Unidos debería optar por el aislacionismo, distanciándose de los conflictos del mundo exterior. Aunque es un fenómeno llamativo, no es nuevo; se experimentó en diversos momentos históricos. Por ejemplo, en 1940, cuando ambos extremos coincidieron en adoptar la postura de que Estados Unidos bajo ningún concepto debía involucrarse en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Fue menester Pearl Harbor para modificar esta postura.

Si se admite que la economía reviste suma importancia, ¿qué perspectivas ofrece el 2012? Los departamentos de estudios de las grandes empresas estadounidenses han trabajado a toda prisa para preparar sus pronósticos con numerosas estadísticas y gráficos. Se muestran prudentes y, aunque admiten que podría suceder cualquier cosa, coinciden en afirmar que resultan improbables tanto una grave depresión económica como una recuperación espectacular. The Economist cree que en otras crisis el menor gasto público se compensaba mediante un aumento de las exportaciones, pero en este caso la depresión es mundial. Sin embargo, el desapalancamiento privado estadounidense ha mejorado en grado considerable; el término desapalancamiento, que no se empleaba hasta fecha reciente fuera del mundo financiero, se ha puesto muy de moda últimamente. Significa, sencillamente, saldar las deudas. Pongamos algunos ejemplos. Wells Fargo solía ser el banco de los cowboys en el Lejano Oeste y sigue siendo en la actualidad uno de los cuatro mayores bancos del país. Sus expertos están de acuerdo, en general, con los pronósticos de The Economist y se muestran tal vez algo más optimistas con relación a las exportaciones estadounidenses a los países en vías de desarrollo. Goldman Sachs no cree que haya a la vista otra recesión en Estados Unidos, pero resulta más probable un crecimiento inferior que lo contrario, debido a una ligera restricción superior del gasto público en unión de otros factores. Los analistas coinciden en afirmar que la situación en Europa (la zona euro) ejercerá un inmediato impacto sobre la economía estadounidense. Moody’s, destacada agencia de calificación, junto con Standard and Poor’s, ha trabajado en el sector durante más de un siglo, igual que su homóloga, y calculó en un principio que habría un crecimiento del 3% en el 2012, estimación probablemente exagerada, y subsiguientemente la rebajó al 2%, que sigue siendo superior a lo estimado para la mayoría de los países de la zona euro.

¿Cómo afectará la situación económica, sobre todo el índice de paro, a la política estadounidense? La tendencia general es inequívoca. En la actualidad, el paro se halla por debajo del 9% en Estados Unidos; Obama ha pronosticado que puede bajar al 8% en el 2012… Hay una especie de sabiduría popular que dice que ningún presidente estadounidense ha resultado reelegido cuando el paro superaba el 7%. Pero la sabiduría popular puede equivocarse. Roosevelt y Reagan, de hecho, fueron reelegidos cuando el paro superaba el 7%. Todo depende de la oposición a que ha de hacer frente el presidente; por otra parte, los republicanos no constituyen, ahora, un rival muy convincente. Acusan al presidente y a los demócratas de incitar al país a la guerra de clases. No se trata de un eslogan muy atractivo en momentos de creciente desigualdad en materia de renta, cuando la clase media –cuyo apoyo necesitan– pasa más apuros que en mucho tiempo.

Over the last three years, as I delved into the world of American nuclear weapons, I felt increasingly as though I had stepped into a time warp. Despite the nearly total rearrangement of the international security landscape since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rise of Islamic terrorism and the spread of nuclear materials and technology to volatile nations like Pakistan, North Korea and Iran, the Defense Department remains enthralled by cold war nuclear strategies and practices.

Barack Obama took office determined to change that. He has made progress on many fronts. Last week, he outlined a new, no-frills defense strategy, downsizing conventional forces. He now needs to double down on his commitment to refashion nuclear forces. He should trim the American nuclear arsenal by two-thirds to bring it down to a sensible size, order the Pentagon to scale back nuclear war-fighting plans so they are relevant to contemporary threats, remove most American intercontinental, land-based missiles from high alert and drop the quaint notion that a fleet of aging B-52 bombers can effectively deliver nuclear weapons to distant targets.

This agenda is not only desirable, it is doable without undercutting American security. It would save tens of billions of dollars a year, a relatively small amount by Pentagon standards, but every billion counts as Leon E. Panetta, the defense secretary, trims his budget. And the steps can safely be taken without requiring reciprocal moves by Russia that must be codified in a treaty.

For the last few months, the Obama administration has been conducting a classified review of the doctrines and operations that determine the shape and potential uses of America’s nuclear armaments. If the president pushes back against the defenders of the old order at the Pentagon and other redoubts of the nuclear priesthood, he can preserve American security while making the United States a more credible leader on one of today’s most critical issues — containing the spread of nuclear weapons. Like a chain smoker asking others to give up cigarettes, the United States, with its bloated arsenal, sounds hypocritical when it puts pressure on other nations to cut weapons and stop producing bomb-grade highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a crude nuclear weapon.

American actions alone won’t end the proliferation danger, but American leadership is essential to any hope of containing the threat.

Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and anything but a dove over the years, rightly warns that the spread of weapons and the means to make them may soon reach a combustible stage where New York, Washington, Moscow, Tokyo or London is at risk of a nuclear terrorist attack.

Mr. Nunn and other keepers of America’s cold-war armory, George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger, former Republican secretaries of state, and William J. Perry, a former Democratic defense secretary, have banded together in recent years to press, among other things, for cutting nuclear forces, de-alerting missiles and, ultimately, eliminating nuclear arms. Mr. Obama has embraced their aims and welcomed them to the Oval Office. Their high-powered, bipartisan alliance, if adroitly employed by the White House, ought to provide some political cover as Mr. Obama reshapes nuclear policy while running for a second term.

There is no national security rationale for maintaining an arsenal of some 5,000 warheads, with nearly 2,000 arms ready to use on short notice and the rest in reserve. We don’t need thousands of warheads, or even hundreds, to counter threats from countries like Iran or North Korea.

The only conceivable use of so many weapons would be a full-scale nuclear war with Russia, which has more warheads than the United States. But two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even Vladimir V. Putin, with his authoritarian bent, is not about to put Russia on a collision course with the United States that leads to nuclear war. China, equally unlikely to escalate tensions to the nuclear brink, probably has fewer than 400 warheads and a policy to use them only in self-defense. Pakistan has roughly 100, North Korea fewer than 10 and Iran, so far, zero.

The United States could live quite securely with fewer than 1,500 warheads, half in reserve. Defenders of the nuclear faith claim we need 5,000 weapons as a hedge against warheads that may become defective over time. But an elaborate Energy Department program to maintain and refurbish warheads, the Stockpile Stewardship Program, has proved highly effective.

Another oft-cited reason for increasing our arsenal is that the Pentagon’s nuclear war-fighting plans still call for striking hundreds of targets in Russia and China, as well as dozens of sites in a number of other publicly unidentified nations — presumably Iran, North Korea and Syria — considered potentially hostile to the United States and eager to possess unconventional weapons.

Washington’s current nuclear war plans remain far too outsize to deal with any plausible attack on America. Mr. Obama could remove some nations from the hit list, starting with China, and tell his generals to limit the number of targets in the countries that remain.

The oversize American nuclear arsenal features an equally outdated reliance on long-distance bombers. The days when lumbering B-52 bombers could play a central role in delivering nuclear weapons — memorably spoofed in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” — ended decades ago. Mr. Obama should ground the bombers and depend on land- and sea-based missiles.

The high-alert status of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles is another anachronism. There are few circumstances that might require the United States to quickly launch nuclear-tipped missiles, and missiles on high alert are an invitation to an accident, or impulsive action. In the first year of his presidency, Mr. Obama outlined an ambitious nuclear weapons agenda. Absent new action, Washington will remain frozen in a costly cold war posture.

Here we go again. President Obama made the same mistake Thursday in announcing his new military strategy that virtually all of his predecessors have made since the end of World War II. He said:

“Moreover, we have to remember the lessons of history. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past — after World War II, after Vietnam — when our military was left ill-prepared for the future. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again. Not on my watch.”

Unfortunately, Obama’s plan does exactly that. It forgets the lessons of history. Some facts: Harry Truman seeking to never repeat the costs of World War II reduced the Army from 8 million soldiers to fewer than half a million. Without the intervention of Congress, he would have eliminated the Marine Corps entirely. The result was the evisceration of both land services in Korea, a war Truman never intended to fight.

With Dwight Eisenhower came the “New Look” strategy that sought to reduce the Army and Marine Corps again to allow the creation of a nuclear delivery force built around the Strategic Air Command. Along came Vietnam, a war that Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson never wanted to fight. But by 1970 our professional Army broke apart and was replaced by a body of amateurs. The result was defeat and 58,000 dead.

After Vietnam, the Nixon administration broke the Army again. I know. I was there to see the drug addiction, murders in the barracks and chronic indiscipline, caused mainly by a dispirited noncommissioned corps that voted with its feet and left. Then came Jimmy Carter’s unique form of neglect that led to the “hollow Army” of the late ’70s, an Army that failed so miserably in its attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran.

The only exception to this very sad story was the Reagan years, when the land services received enough funding to equip and train themselves to fight so well in Operation Desert Storm. Then tragedy again as the Clinton administration reduced the ground services, intending to rely on “transformation,” a program that paid for more ships and planes by reducing the Army from 16 divisions to 10. In the George W. Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld continued a policy that sought to exploit information technology to replace the human component in war. Had it not been for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Army would have gone down to fewer than eight divisions.

So, here we go again. The Obama administration will reduce its long-service, professional land force to pay for something called “Air Sea Battle,” a strategy that seeks to buy more ships and planes in order to confront China with technology rather than people. This strategy shows a degree of a-historicism that exceeds that of any post-World War II administration. So much for remembering “the lessons of the past.”

Here’s what the lessons of the past 70 years really teach us: We cannot pick our enemies; our enemies will pick us. They will, as they have always done in the past, cede to us dominance in the air, on sea and in space because they do not have the ability to fight us there. Our enemies have observed us closely in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have learned the lessons taught by Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Saddam Hussein: America’s greatest vulnerability is dead Americans. So our future enemy will seek to fight us on the ground, where we have traditionally been poorly prepared. His objective will be to win by not losing, to kill as an end rather than as a means to an end. And we will enter the next war again tragically short of the precious resource that we have neglected for six administrations: our soldiers and Marines.

For six decades the United States has planned for the capacity to conduct two nearly simultaneous major ground-combat operations. During the Cold War, one of those campaigns was assumed to be an all-out struggle against the Warsaw Pact in Europe, the other a conflict in Asia. Since the Cold War, defense secretaries Dick Cheney, Les Aspin, William Perry, William Cohen, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates have adopted some variant of this framework as well. It is time for a change.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s new strategic guidance, unveiled Thursday, moves in this direction, stating that the future U.S. military “will be capable of defeating a major act of aggression in one theater while denying the objectives of — or imposing unacceptable costs on — an opportunistic aggressor in a second theater.” Panetta and President Obama are right to reduce the requirements for a second possible war, which in this era would probably not be a ground war in any case.

The case for scaling back is strong. Let’s consider the major concerns: Saddam Hussein is gone, and whatever threat Iraqis may one day pose to themselves and the region, they are unlikely to invade anyone. Farther from home, North Korea has acquired nuclear capabilities, but its conventional forces have weakened, and South Korea’s army is greatly strengthened. Russia remains problematic on multiple issues but not because of its military menace to NATO territory. Threats from Iran or China, at least in the short term, are much more likely to involve U.S. naval, air and special forces (which should retain a capacity for handling more than one major operation at a time). The uncertainty and instability from Syria to Yemen to South Asia, however potentially worrisome for American interests, are unlikely to again require large-scale U.S.-led action.

All that said, budget hawks should beware of pushing this argument too far. The one-war paradigm is not a prescription for cutting the Army and Marine Corps by a third or more. Cuts in force structure and personnel should not exceed 15 to 20 percent, relative to current levels, and could be made only gradually, after the Afghanistan campaign winds down. Ten-year savings would reach perhaps $150 billion. That is much of the roughly $400 billion mandated by the August provisions of the Budget Control Act but hardly a dent in the (ill-advised) nearly trillion-dollar target required by sequestration.

To carry out this approach responsibly, the United States would still need an active-duty Army and Marine Corps almost as large as those of the Clinton years. Then, we thought we had a two-war capability, a fallacy underscored by events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Within a one-war paradigm, we could no longer rely on the force package intended for a second war to compensate for any underestimations made in planning for a first war. Nor could we rely primarily on the National Guard, as rapid response would be even more critical to addressing problems before they could metastasize.

The United States would still need capabilities for possibly simultaneous additional missions, which would probably be smaller in scale than full-fledged war but could be long in duration. Rather than a two-war paradigm, we would want a “1+2” framework for sizing ground forces — the “1” referring to a substantial regional war; the “2” being smaller, multinational but potentially long-lasting contingencies such as a stabilization effort in Afghanistan (or Syria or Yemen).

Some critics will argue that capacity for even one war is too much, that the nation is tired and broke, that counterinsurgency is passe and ground combat obsolete. We convinced ourselves of a similar argument about counterinsurgency after Vietnam, only to be unready for Iraq and Afghanistan a quarter-century later. No new ground wars may be likely, but we must be ready for the unlikely. If, say, tensions between North and South Korea escalate or the North collapses, leading to large-scale mayhem, U.S. forces would have to move fast, along with South Korean units, to stem any bombardment of Seoul and to prevent nuclear materials from leaving the peninsula.

U.S. forces should also retain a capability to remove Iran’s regime. We would consider such an operation only under the most grave circumstances — say, after a direct Iranian attack against the American homeland rivaling Sept. 11 in scale. We would not have enough ground forces to occupy Iran after a march on Tehran, but we should nonetheless have a conventional military counter to possible large-scale terrorism supported by the Iranian state. A robust one-war potential within the nation’s ground forces, plus some capabilities for lesser concurrent missions, is therefore necessary — but also enough for this moment in history.

Critics will also argue that a one-war paradigm could weaken deterrence. We do not want to trigger aggression from those who believe that America is powerless to deal with more than one ground conflict at a time. Part of the answer to this valid concern, shared by Obama and Panetta, is to plan, should we become engaged in a major land war, to promptly activate part of the National Guard and start enlarging the active-duty Army and Marine Corps. The George W. Bush administration took such action belatedly a few years ago, resisting it even after wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were underway; we need not repeat that mistake.

Ultimately, strategy is about minimizing, not eliminating, risk. The threats from maritime contingencies in the Western Pacific and Persian Gulf, and from fiscal weakness, exceed those from simultaneous ground wars. The U.S. defense budget should be adjusted accordingly.

La opinión generalizada en EEUU es ésta: la reelección del presidente Obama está amenazada por la precaria economía y la elevada tasa de paro. Esto es lo que podría suceder: la situación económica mejora de forma gradual, y aunque el paro permanece elevado (por encima del 8%), lo que pesa a nivel político es la sensación palpable de que las cosas van encaminadas. Esto permite a Obama afirmar, como ya hace, que sus políticas están reparando lentamente la catástrofe económica que heredó de los republicanos. A lo cual ellos replican: la retórica y las legislaciones antisector privado por parte de Obama han obstaculizado la recuperación; la Ley de Atención Asequible (Obamacare) y los nuevos reglamentos generan incertidumbres que frenan la nueva contratación; y Obama no ha abordado la proliferación del gasto público federal.

La versión exacta de los acontecimientos que se imponga muy bien puede determinar el resultado electoral. Si Obama convence a los estadounidenses de que él ha marcado el rumbo de una recuperación fortalecida, entonces ganará. Si los republicanos presentan sus políticas como productoras del prolongado estancamiento, ganan ellos. Aunque el debate importa, los resultados reales de la economía -para bien o para mal- van a decidir la impresión de muchos estadounidenses. Y esto va a depender de fuerzas y acontecimientos sobre los que los candidatos tienen escaso o ningún control.

¿Cuáles son entonces los pronósticos para el ejercicio 2012? Muchas previsiones hablan de un crecimiento modesto. He aquí unas cifras de IHS Global Insight, una importante consultora: en EEUU la economía va a crecer al 1,8%, casi al mismo ritmo que en 2011. La nueva contratación crecerá a unos 145.000 contratos mensuales, de forma gradual; es decente pero probablemente no vaya a reducir de forma sustancial la tasa de paro. En la práctica, el crecimiento normal de la población activa y las perspectivas de que algunos trabajadores desanimados empiecen a buscar empleo indican que la tasa de paro (del 8,6% en noviembre) podría alcanzar una media del 8,7%, ligeramente por debajo del 9% de 2011.

Este pronóstico plasma una economía que avanza con muchas dificultades, y de hacerse realidad favorecerá a los republicanos. «El consumidor se enfrenta a demasiado pesimismo para posibilitar una recuperación robusta del consumo: mercado laboral precario, importante endeudamiento, precios que todavía no han tocado fondo, subidas de los precios que han superado el crecimiento de los salarios, y una ausencia de confianza en la capacidad del Estado para mejorar las cosas», reza el informe de IHS.

Pero el pronóstico convencional podría ser demasiado triste. Partiendo de la crisis económica de 2008, las predicciones económicas han quedado en evidencia de forma rutinaria. A estas alturas del pasado ejercicio, eran demasiado optimistas; hoy podrían ser demasiado pesimistas. Múltiples indicadores están superando las expectativas. La cifra semanal de solicitudes iniciales de la prestación por desempleo, que alcanzó su apogeo por encima de los 600.000 nuevos parados, se sitúa por debajo de las 400.000 altas -nivel asociado a menudo a una tasa de paro baja o en descenso-. La construcción aumentó en noviembre el 9,3% con respecto a octubre y un 24,3% con respecto a noviembre de 2010.

Para Obama, la tesitura económica presenta dos enormes ventajas potenciales. En primer lugar, existe una enorme demanda reprimida de casas y vehículos, porque ambos sectores se derrumbaron durante la recesión. La venta de vehículos pesados y ligeros, que en 2004 y 2005 rondó los 17 millones en total, se desplomó en 2009 hasta los 10,4 millones. En 2011, se sitúa en los 12,7 millones según IHS. La caída de la nueva construcción fue todavía más acusada, de unos dos millones de viviendas al año en 2004 y 2005 hasta alrededor de 600.000 en 2011.

En segundo lugar, la deuda del consumidor está descendiendo de forma notablemente rápida. Las familias han amortizado algunas deudas. Otras han sido financiadas; los tipos de interés de muchos préstamos en vigor han bajado. De media, las familias han abonado el 16,15% de su renta en forma de préstamos, alquileres y arriendos durante el tercer trimestre de 2011, según datos de la Reserva Federal. Es el mínimo desde 1993 y a la baja con respecto al máximo del 18,85% del tercer trimestre del ejercicio 2007.

El resultado: más estadounidenses pueden estar en posición de endeudarse para comprar una casa o un coche, dando salida a parte de la demanda reprimida. La compraventa de viviendas podría estar volviendo a la vida. En noviembre, el número de ventas registró su máximo en 19 meses.

En contraste, Europa y China plantean enormes riesgos. En Europa, España e Italia tienen casi 500.000 millones de euros en deuda que vence en 2012, según el Instituto de Economía Internacional. Si no pueden volver a financiarla -si el mercado de deuda pública no renueva los préstamos a tipos de interés asumibles- se enfrentarían a la quiebra o precisarían de rescate. Sea como fuere, Europa se enfrenta a una mayor austeridad y una recesión profunda. Esto perjudicaría a la exportación norteamericana y a la rentabilidad de las multinacionales estadounidenses.

El peligro que viene de China reside en el colapso de su burbuja inmobiliaria que, de tener lugar, redundaría en la quiebra de promotoras, pérdidas en los préstamos de las entidades bancarias y crecimiento económico más lento. Los efectos se contagiarían más allá de China, porque la construcción alimenta su demanda de cemento, aceros, cobre y demás materias primas adquiridas en los mercados mundiales. De nuevo, la exportación estadounidense podría acusar las consecuencias.

Teniendo en cuenta todas las posibilidades, hacer pronósticos electorales en función de la tesitura económica es un ejercicio prácticamente vano. La economía es la baza política de 2012 que puede demostrar ser el triunfo decisivo, si bien accidental.

Los ‘caucus’ de Iowa ya tienen ganador: Mitt Romney, con el 24,6% de los votos. No es una sorpresa. Sí lo es, en cambio, que en segundo lugar, y a tan sólo ocho votos, haya quedado Rick Santorum (un outsider al que, por sus convicciones y resultado electoral empieza a llamársele «divina sorpresa» y que el tercer puesto haya sido para Ron Paul (la «anarquía al poder»), con el 21,5%.

El maratón de las primarias en EEUU a veces acaba convirtiéndose en un sprint para algunos candidatos: los que se retiran al poco tiempo por falta de fondos o de apoyos. Esto puede suceder con Perry (10,3%) y Huntsman (0,5 %). Bajo sus pies se ha abierto en Iowa un cráter del que les costará salir. Perry ya ha dicho que se va a Texas a meditar. Y Bachman (5%) presentó ayer mismo su renuncia.

Los estadounidenses tienen una extraña manera de elegir candidato presidencial. Un pequeño Estado del medio oeste (Iowa), con menos del 1% de la población de todo EE UU y con un 88% de población blanca, ha sido objeto de la máxima presión mediática de toda la campaña electoral. Y otro Estado aún más pequeño (New Hampshire, un millón de habitantes), con una composición multiétnica atenuada y poco representativa del país, producirá un efecto casi definitivo el próximo martes. He aquí un curioso proceso de contaminación informativa y de explotación mediática del triunfo. Un fenómeno que convierte a los corresponsales de las grandes cadenas de televisión o de los influyentes periódicos de la costa Este en los grandes nominadores.

Romney era el heredero legítimo del título. En 2008 fue un fuerte candidato electoral y es natural que ahora encuentre los frutos. Esto lo sabían otros republicanos que hubieran podido ser candidatos sólidos, como el senador por Florida Marco Rubio, o el gobernador Chris Christie, de New Jersey, que se hicieron a un lado para preparar las elecciones de 2016. Lo que explica que hace unos días Romney recibiera el apoyo del patriarca George H.W. Bush, padre y del antiguo vicepresidente Dan Qualey. Este empate Santorum / Romney en Iowa puede ser solamente una ilusión. La realidad es que New Hampshire espera con los brazos abiertos al ex gobernador Romney. Según la CNN aventaja en casi 30 puntos a los restantes candidatos. Es cierto que luego vienen Carolina del Sur y Florida, donde las cosas le serán menos fáciles. Pero el triunfo final del candidato de Wall Street se dibuja con fuerza en el horizonte. Los conservadores parece que le han perdonado sus pasadas veleidades centristas, pero aún así no ha logrado capturar el alma del Partido Republicano. Su victoria ha sido un triunfo del sentido común sobre el corazón. Lo contrario que Santorum y Paul.

El primero es un católico coherente con sus convicciones, con una visión alentadora del matrimonio, un provida decidido y con siete hijos educados en casa. Su problema será aguantar el largo tirón que queda hasta la convención republicana de Tampa Bay en agosto. Puede que esta victoria -fruto de una remontada fulminante por la adhesión de un buen número de protestantes evangélicos- haga concentrar sobre el joven católico los votos social-conservadores obtenidos por Bachmann, Perry e incluso Gingrich. Esto lo convertiría en un duro adversario para Romney. Pero también puede ocurrir que su estrella palidezca, como sucedió con Huckabee en 2008.

Quedan Ron Paul y Newt Gingrich. El primero es uno de los fenómenos más notables que ha producido la política estadounidense. El único verdadero antisistema de los candidatos. Un indignado que quiere eliminar la Reserva Federal y cinco ministerios, que defiende el aislamiento internacional y la liberalización de las drogas. Es prácticamente seguro que nunca será nominado. Puede acabar siendo un tercer candidato independiente. Gingrich es comparado por algunos con la mujer del Evangelio que tuvo cinco maridos y Jesús la perdonó. Pero no todos le perdonan sus veleidades matrimoniales y su caótica campaña. El caso es que Gringich piensa que hay vida después de Iowa y se prepara a dar la batalla en New Hampshire, abriendo una guerra de trincheras contra quien cree que es el origen de todos sus males: Mitt Romney.

Los republicanos siguen diciendo que Obama puede ser presidente de un solo mandato. Y señalan a Taft, Hoover, Carter y Bush padre como presidentes electos derrotados. Pero no añaden que sus adversarios fueron, respectivamente, Wilson, Roosevelt, Reagan y Clinton. El problema de los republicanos es si alguno de los supervivientes de Iowa tiene la talla de estos últimos.

The end of the Iraq war occasioned few reflections on the scale of destruction we have wrought there. As is our habit, the discussion focused on the costs to America in blood and treasure, the false premises of the war and the continuing challenges of instability in the region. What happened to Iraqis was largely ignored. And in Libya, the recent investigation of civilian casualties during NATO’s bombing campaign was the first such accounting of what many believed was a largely victimless war.

We rarely question that wars cause extensive damage, but our view of America’s wars has been blind to one specific aspect of destruction: the human toll of those who live in war zones.

We tune out the voices of the victims and belittle their complaints about the midnight raids, the house-to-house searches, the checkpoints, the drone attacks, the bombs that fall on weddings instead of Al Qaeda.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks famously said during the early days of the war in Afghanistan, “We don’t do body counts.” But someone should. What we learn from body counts tells us much about war and those who wage it.

More than 10 years after the war in Afghanistan began, we have only the sketchiest notion of how many people have died as a consequence of the conflict. The United Nations office in Kabul assembles some figures from morgues and other sources, but they are incomplete. The same has been true for Iraq, although a number of independent efforts have been made there to account for the dead.

But such numbers, which run into the hundreds of thousands, gain scant attention. American political and military leaders, like the public, show little interest in non-American casualties.

Denial, after all, is politically convenient. Failing to consider the mortality figures, the refugees, the impoverished, the demolished hospitals and clean water systems and schools is to deny, in effect, that the war ever happened.

The American military cannot afford to be so cavalier about the dynamics of war. The consequences of how we fight wars reveals a great deal about how and why others fight us.

In Iraq, for example, the causes of the Sunni resistance were often attributed to lost social status; the role of American violence against civilians early in the conflict was rarely discussed. Yet many of the captured Iraqis said they were defending their communities by resisting the occupying forces. Roughing up, detaining or killing suspected enemy fighters — as the coalition forces did in countless operations — prompted some Iraqis to take up the gun, the I.E.D. and the suicide bomb. The more violence from the occupiers, the more ferocious their reaction.

Gen. David H. Petraeus recognized this and sought to reform Army practice. In a field manual he co-authored in 2006, he explained that when “forces fail to provide security or threaten the security of civilians, the population is likely to seek security guarantees from insurgents, militias or other armed groups. This situation can feed support for an insurgency.”

In several opinion polls, Iraqis identified American forces as the primary cause of the violence besetting their country. And although the violence of war and occupation was a proximate cause of the Iraqi resistance, we have few metrics to understand its scope. WikiLeaks released military documents in October 2010 that included accounts of Iraqi fatalities, but such reports are incomplete and sometimes biased, and they reflect only what the troops actually witnessed. News media reports are similarly limited. And our political and military leaders barely consider these numbers anyway.

They dwell instead in a make-believe world of vastly less mayhem, oblivious to what actually besets the civilian population. In 2006, two separate household surveys, by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, found between 400,000 and 650,000 “excess deaths” in Iraq as a result of the war. At the time, however, the commanding general in Iraq put the number at 50,000 and President Bush had claimed in late 2005 that it was just 30,000.

If our leaders are unwilling to grasp the scale of death and social disruption, and the meaning of this chaos for the local population, then American war efforts are likely to end badly and relationships with allies will become strained, as has happened with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai’s repeated complaints about NATO actions that cause civilian casualties are often dismissed in the West as political posturing, but his persistence on this issue indicates how deeply it resonates with Afghans. While we dismiss it, Muslims around the world take note.

Ignoring the extent of civilian casualties and the damage they cause is a moral failing as well as a strategic blunder. We need to adopt reliable ways to measure the destruction our wars cause — an “epistemology of war,” as another general, William Tecumseh Sherman, called it — to break through the collective amnesia that has gripped us.

If we do not demand a full accounting of the wages of war, future failures are all the more likely — and warranted.

Iran’s threat to close a vital international waterway if stricter sanctions are imposed on Iranian oil exports is more than just bellicose and provocative. It is also a test of U.S. will and commitment in the Persian Gulf at a time when our role in the region is changing.

The world has grown used to chest-thumping by Tehran, and there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the exercises conducted by Iranian armed forces last week to demonstrate their ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. But how the U.S. reacts to the threats is crucially important.

Iran’s large arsenal of mines would certainly present a challenge to shipping in the region if Tehran makes good on its threat. Iran has the ability to lay mines from many platforms: small boats, combatants, submarines, midget submarines, even merchant ships. And Western navies, including America’s, have long underinvested in minesweeping technology. The U.S. Navy and its allies would be challenged, therefore, to sweep the strait clear of mines laid in large numbers.

But there is no doubt that the United States can prevent Iran from closing the shipping route, through which much of the world’s oil travels. The U.S. and its allies could ultimately clear traffic lanes and destroy Iranian vessels attempting to lay minefields. As long as the major stakeholders in the global economy remain confident that the U.S. and its allies will keep the strait open, the impact of any Iranian attempt to close it will probably be mitigated.

It is important, therefore, for the United States to declare its commitment to using all necessary force to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Such a declaratory policy would be explicitly defensive: If Iran violates international law by attacking shipping in transit through the strait, the U.S. will act in defense of international law to stop the illegal action and eliminate the capabilities of the violator to persist in such behavior.

Tehran would portray any such declaration as an act of aggression on the part of the “global arrogance” — as it calls the United States — and an escalation in the conflict. The Iranian regime has illegally seized a series of small islands in the strait belonging to the United Arab Emirates, and it uses them to claim that the whole Strait of Hormuz is Iranian territorial water. But even if Iran rightfully owned those islands, the argument that they constitute an archipelago under the principles of maritime law sufficient to grant Iran sovereignty over the strait is tenuous if not nonsensical.

International law has settled the question of who owns the strait: no one. All nations have the right of free transit for both military and civilian ships and aircraft. That is one reason it is important for the U.S. to announce its commitment now to defending international law by force if necessary.

Another reason to make such a declaration now is to ensure that Iranian bombast does not rattle the shaky global economy. The threat to close the strait is a form of terrorism aimed at generating a response based on fear rather than fact. The effectiveness of the terrorist tactic can be significantly reduced if the U.S. reassures the world that it can and will do what is necessary to keep international waterways open.

The last reason to make a strong declaration now is to eliminate one possible source of confusion between the U.S. and Iran during a time of rising tension. No American president would have any choice but to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and destroy Iran’s ability to threaten it further. But as tension between the U.S. and Iran increases, the risk of miscalculation will also increase. This is one of those moments when stability is best served by what might seem a provocative statement. The Iranian leadership at every level must be convinced that any attempt to close the strait will both fail and lead to disaster for Iran. The more the U.S. and its partners do to drive that fact home in Tehran, the less likely Iran’s leaders will be to try.

Iran’s leaders, finally, will look to actions behind America’s words. Now is the time to concentrate additional American naval and air power in the Persian Gulf region, as well as ensuring that U.S. forces already there have all necessary means of reconnaissance and surveillance to avoid surprises. If America’s ability to clear mines in the Strait of Hormuz is insufficient — as it appears to be — then we should immediately invest in that capability ostentatiously.

Some, even outside Tehran, would portray such actions as an escalation of conflict. They would not be. We must respond to provocation with absolute reassurance to the world that we will keep the strait open and with a stern warning to the Iranians that any attempt to close it will inevitably and disastrously fail. Displaying any kind of hesitation at this moment would be the real and dangerous provocation.

Una de las tantas paradojas actuales es que mientras en la periferia muchas sociedades y Gobiernos intentan ampliar los derechos ciudadanos, en varios países centrales se pretende desvertebrar el Estado de derecho. En América Latina y, en tiempos recientes, en Oriente Próximo y el norte de África con la llamada primavera árabe, se observan impulsos y logros importantes en el reclamo y la extensión de derechos y garantías de diverso tipo. Inversamente, en países clave de Occidente, y desde el 11 de septiembre de 2001, en Estados Unidos se denota un esfuerzo desde el Ejecutivo y el Legislativo (y con pocas limitaciones por parte del Poder Judicial) de recortar y suprimir derechos alcanzados con enorme esfuerzo colectivo. Con el presunto objetivo de proteger la seguridad nacional en Estados Unidos se ha gestado una compleja estructura jurídica, burocrática e institucional cívico-militar que ha configurado de hecho una condición de inseguridad permanente; meta que al parecer ha logrado alcanzar el terrorismo transnacional a una década de los atentados en Nueva York, Washington y Filadelfia.

En ese contexto, la poslegalidad tiende a imponerse: se trata de una situación en la que el derecho interno e internacional se manipula, se desconoce o se quiebra a expensas de un bifronte Estado gendarme que opera con escasa rendición de cuentas hacia adentro y con excesivo despliegue militar hacia afuera. Lo poslegal no es patrimonio exclusivo de Estados Unidos -recientemente la secretaria del Interior de Reino Unido, Theresa May, sugirió la necesidad de deshacerse de la Ley de Derechos Humanos de 1998-, pero tiene su manifestación más elocuente e inquietante en aquel país.

La poslegalidad se exacerba en Estados Unidos en medio de una fenomenal crisis económica y ante una ciudadanía que, ante la incertidumbre y de modo confuso, se expresa contradictoriamente frente al delicado balance entre seguridad y libertad. Por ejemplo, en junio de 2010 una encuesta a cargo de Rasmussen Reports indicaba que el 28% de los estadounidenses consideraba que era una mala idea el control civil de los militares y apenas el 44% consideraba bueno dicho control. Pero, a su vez, en una encuesta de Gallup efectuada en septiembre de 2011 un 49% de los entrevistados consideraba que el Gobierno federal era “una amenaza inmediata a los derechos y libertades individuales”.

La poslegalidad, por vía de presuntos términos legales, rápidamente asimilados por los medios de comunicación y los principales líderes políticos nacionales, naturaliza un nuevo lenguaje que facilita el desprecio por los derechos. Así, en vez de referirse a la tortura se habla de “técnicas acrecentadas de interrogación”; el secuestro extraterritorial de personas, realizado de manera clandestina por funcionarios, se denomina “entrega extraordinaria”; las ejecuciones extrajudiciales se justifican en el marco de las “hostilidades” contra “militantes”; y a las guerras punitivas contra países que no han atacado a Estados Unidos se las llama “acción militar cinética”.

La poslegalidad tiene símbolos: Guantánamo y Abu Ghraib. Tiene puntos clave de construcción conceptual: las oficinas del Legal Advisor del Departamento de Estado, del General Counsel del Departamento de Defensa y del Special Counsel de la Casa Blanca. Tiene un mapa de referencia para su racionalización y justificación: la “guerra contra el terrorismo”. Y tiene continuidad política bipartidista: desde George W. Bush a Barack Obama.

Ahora bien, tres asuntos han puesto en evidencia el desbordamiento de la poslegalidad de Estados Unidos. Primero, el incesante uso de vehículos aéreos no tripulados (unmanned aerial vehicles), los denominados drones, en Asia (Irak, Afganistán y Pakistán) y África (Libia, Somalia y Yemen). El recurrente uso de aquel medio de combate -al que hay que sumar un fracasado intento reciente en Irán- ha llevado a debatir en torno a la “guerra de los drones”; un modo de enfrentamiento a distancia, sin grandes contingentes en condición de combate frontal, presuntamente de alta precisión y más económico que el despliegue de tropas. El recurso a los drones ha implicado, entre otras, cierta facilidad para lanzar ataques en los que las bajas propias son casi inexistentes, bastante indiferencia de una opinión pública que apenas si conoce el tema y que, en general, no padece costo alguno inmediato después de su utilización, y un ascendente papel militar de los órganos de inteligencia dado que es la CIA la encargada del sistema de lanzamiento. Si bien en 2009 el Informe del Relator Especial de la ONU para Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales, Philip Alston, sugería que los drones podrían violar el derecho internacional humanitario, nada parece haber conducido a replantear su uso por parte de Washington.

Segundo, en septiembre pasado el Gobierno de Barack Obama fue un paso más adelante en esta materia. En un “panel secreto”, y con aval presidencial, autorizó dar de baja a dos estadounidenses, Anwar al Awlaqi y Samir Khan, mediante misiles lanzados desde un vehículo aéreo no tripulado. En los dos casos no hubo una acusación formal, no se pretendió su arresto ni se buscó poner en marcha el debido proceso. Ni la Constitución ni las enmiendas 5, 6 y 14 fueron tenidas en cuenta para llevar a cabo este targeted killing.

Y tercero, más recientemente, en la Ley de Autorización de Defensa Nacional de 2012 y con una votación de 93 a 7, el Senado aprobó que cualquier estadounidense sospechoso de terrorismo puede ser detenido indefinidamente por autoridades militares (al tiempo que aumenta las restricciones para no trasladar los prisioneros de Guantánamo a territorio continental estadounidense). Para algunos observadores esta legislación es un serio revés al Estado de derecho. Organizaciones de derechos civiles y voces liberales demandan y se consuelan con un eventual veto del presidente Obama.

Los tres ejemplos mencionados apuntan a subrayar que en Estados Unidos la legalidad está en entredicho y que lo poslegal se está tornando en lo habitual. Más temprano que tarde esto tendrá un efecto devastador sobre la democracia en aquel país. Lo que tendrá, y de hecho ya tiene, reverberaciones por fuera de Estados Unidos. En ese caso se habrá dado un paso abismal: del acoso democrático al ocaso democrático.

Remember America’s triple-A credit rating? The benchmark that was eroded during the debt-ceiling standoff last year? The highest-quality measure of creditworthiness matters greatly in this country and beyond. Yet it is still disturbingly unclear who is responsible for safeguarding what remains of this important national attribute.

A triple-A credit rating is what economists call a public good. By reducing borrowing costs and increasing the availability of financing, it is “consumed” and is of benefit to many. But this public good is also difficult to value holistically or to sustain properly.

America’s triple-A rating is vulnerable. Two of the three major rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have given it a “negative outlook,” signaling real possibility of a downgrade in the next two to three years. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating late last summer in the context of the debt-ceiling debacle and, adding insult to injury, placed the nation’s lower, AA-plus, rating on review for possible downgrade.

With few sovereign triple-As remaining in the global economy, those deemed to have superior credit collect a consequential rent for providing “risk-free assets.” Indeed, some triple-A securities, such as short-dated German government instruments, carry negative interest rates.

The U.S. credit rating not only benefits financial conditions at home but matters to the global economy. It facilitates the intermediation of surpluses and savings today and for future generations. It is a key component of the nucleus of the international monetary system.

Further damage to America’s credit would weaken the global economy. It would push even more countries and companies to shift from “pooled insurance” to less efficient self-insurance. It would accelerate the disorderly transition to a global system with multiple, ill-defined, partial and incomplete reserve currencies. And it would further undermine the legitimacy of multilateral institutions.

In the aftermath of the S&P downgrade, some questioned the value of these considerations. After all, the global economy continued functioning without interruption; and rather than rise, the yields on U.S. government securities have fallen.

But skeptics should not question the value of what remains of America’s triple-A credit rating. What has happened so far — or, put another way, the calm that has been maintained — is a reflection of some peculiar factors that are unlikely to persist for many years.

The downgrade’s direct impact on U.S. Treasury yields was more than offset by the lowering of consensus growth projections and announcement-driven expectations that the Federal Reserve would keep policy rates floored at zero through at least June 2013. Both of these factors serve to lower the term structure of interest rates.

The United States benefited from at least three other factors: First, the European debt crisis has channeled to this country funds from investors seeking safety and liquidity. Second, because many investors use the ratings of two agencies as benchmarks, rather than just one, S&P’s downgrade did not automatically trigger widespread guideline restrictions. And, third, the U.S. and global economy benefited from the truism that you cannot replace something with nothing. No sufficient triple-A options exist to take over the national and global role of the U.S. economy. This leaves the U.S. and global economies insulated, at least in the short term.

Over time, though, these factors will shift and erode. That points up the need for more focused efforts to safeguard America’s rating, as does the fact that precedents suggest it takes at least nine years to restore a credit rating downgraded from triple-A.

The bad news? Few could say with certainty which, if any, public officials or agencies wake up every day worrying about America’s credit rating. This persistent vacuum is noteworthy at the national and multilateral levels. That must be addressed.

The good news is that the necessary actions are totally in line with the other major interests of the U.S. and global economies. Essentially, they involve reducing the medium-term burden of indebtedness while enhancing the economy’s ability to grow and prosper. America needs to work seriously at both.

Maintaining the U.S. credit rating should figure prominently among the new-year goals and resolutions of Congress, the administration and Washington’s bureaucracy. By addressing these issues, more will be accomplished than merely safeguarding a rating. The aspirations of millions frustrated by unemployment and underemployment, an increasing number of those in poverty, and the well-being of the global economy will all be better served, as they urgently should.

As if undermining the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of global free-trade talks was not bad enough (the last ministerial meeting in Geneva produced barely a squeak), the United States has compounded its folly by actively promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). President Barack Obama announced this with nine Asian countries during his recent trip to the region.

The TPP is being sold in the US to a compliant media and unsuspecting public as evidence of American leadership on trade. But the opposite is true, and it is important that those who care about the global trading system know what is happening. One hopes that this knowledge will trigger what I call the “Dracula effect”: expose that which would prefer to remain hidden to sunlight and it will shrivel up and die.

The TPP is a testament to the ability of US industrial lobbies, Congress, and presidents to obfuscate public policy. It is widely understood today that free-trade agreements (FTAs), whether bilateral or plurilateral (among more than two countries but fewer than all) are built on discrimination. That is why economists typically call them preferential-trade agreements (PTAs). And that is why the US government’s public-relations machine calls what is in fact a discriminatory plurilateral FTA, a “partnership” invoking a false aura of cooperation and cosmopolitanism.

Countries are, in principle, free to join the TPP. Japan and Canada have said they plan to do so. But a closer look reveals that China is not a part of this agenda. The TPP is also a political response to China’s new aggressiveness, built therefore in a spirit of confrontation and containment, not of cooperation.

The US has been establishing a template for its PTAs that includes several items unrelated to trade. So it is no surprise that the TPP template includes numerous agendas unrelated to trade, such as labor standards and restraints on the use of capital-account controls, many of which preclude China’s accession.

From the outset, the TPP’s supposed openness has been wholly misleading. Towards this end, the TPP was negotiated with the weaker countries like Vietnam, Singapore, and New Zealand, which were easily bamboozled into accepting such conditions. Only then were bigger countries like Japan offered membership on a “take it or leave it” basis.

The PR machine then went into overdrive by calling the inclusion of these extraneous conditions as making the TPP a “high-quality” trade agreement for the twenty-first century, when in fact it was a rip-off by several domestic lobbies.

American regionalism closer to home shows the US now trying to promote the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). But its preferred template was to expand the North America Free Trade Agreement (Canada, Mexico, and the US) to the Andean countries and include huge doses of non-trade-related issues, which they swallowed. This was not acceptable to Brazil, the leading force behind the FTAA, which focuses exclusively on trade issues. Brazil’s former President Luiz Lula Inácio da Silva, one of the world’s great trade-union leaders, rejected the inclusion of labor standards in trade treaties and institutions.

The result of US efforts in South America, therefore, has been to fragment the region into two blocs, and the same is likely to happen in Asia. Ever since the US realized that it had chosen the wrong region to be regional with, it has been trying to win a seat at the Asian table. The US finally got it with the TPP, simply because China had become aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the South China Sea, and vis-à-vis India and Japan.

Many Asian countries joined the TPP to “keep the US in the region” in the face of Chinese heavy-handedness. They embraced the US in the same way that East Europeans rushed to join NATO and the European Union in the face of the threat, real or imagined, posed by post-Soviet Russia.

America’s design for Asian trade is inspired by the goal of containing China, and the TPP template effectively excludes it, owing to the non-trade-related conditions imposed by US lobbies. The only way that a Chinese merger with the TPP could gain credibility would be to make all non-trade-related provisions optional. Of course, the US lobbies would have none of it.

Troops in Iraq will complete their withdrawal by the end of the year. Troops may no longer be stationed there, but they carry a piece of the war with them everywhere they go. While the nation may be moving on, for our troops, the Iraq War remains an ongoing battle as some work to overcome their injuries while others struggle to assimilate back into the workforce and with their families.

If you’ve turned on the television this month, you’ve seen the videos, sometimes more than once. A group of service members proudly marches into a gymnasium, salutes the U.S. flag, and then the troops are overwhelmed by the cheers and hugs of their friends and family members. For many Americans, this will be the image they hold of the end of the Iraq War. With thousands of troops scheduled to return home by the end of the month, the perception is that this long and difficult military conflict is finally coming to a close.

This is only partly true. As a military engagement and a public-policy issue, the Iraq War definitely is moving from the news pages to the history books. But for these troops, the ongoing battle isn’t a chapter they can close quickly. It’s an inflection point that will affect everything moving forward. It’s part of who they are now.

The videos of the troops returning home are heartwarming, especially during the holiday season, and a lot of us will find this satisfying after a long war. But they don’t tell the whole story.

What we don’t see is video of the next day and the day after that. The day a veteran has trouble learning to walk again at a Veterans Affairs hospital while also figuring out how to provide day care for his or her children. The father struggling to pay the monthly bills as he looks for a new job. The family that burned through its savings while mom was overseas and needs an emergency loan. The family working to re-connect after putting lives on hold for a year or more.

The problems of returning troops aren’t on the top of Americans’ minds these days. A recent CBS News-New York Times poll showed most think the biggest problem the country is facing is the economy and the poor jobs market. The wars in Iraq and Afghan-istan, once among Americans’ top concerns, didn’t even make the list. Yet as Americans turn to more domestic priorities, we should not forget that those affect our returning troops just as much, if not more. A poor economy makes it hard for a veteran to find a job.

The Iraq War will continue to have an effect on our veterans for years to come. Those who have fought have been injured physically and mentally. Just because they are no longer physically in Iraq doesn’t mean they no longer carry the conflict of Iraq inside them. Just as these troops left their mark on Iraq, the country left its mark on them, and they will carry their experiences with them, mentally and physically, for the rest of their lives.

That is why it’s important for us to make a commitment to helping these troops get back some of what they lost, restart their lives and recover from their injuries. Consider making a donation this holiday season to one of the many nonprofits working to support returning troops and their families to show that we care.

The more than 30,000 troops injured in the Iraq War over the past nine years will need ongoing care, some for the rest of their lives, and those who were lucky not to sustain an injury still need help picking up where they left off. So let’s make one of our New Year’s resolutions to help the thousands of troops who are returning home from Iraq and give them the care and support they need and deserve.

Among global big thinkers, never a bashful crowd, the notion of a United States in decline has become conventional wisdom. In late 2011, this narrative has crescendoed, with experts arguing that China has surpassed the United States economically, Niall Ferguson declaring that we are at “the end of 500 years of Western predominance” and The National Interest proclaiming “the end of the American era.” Even the National Intelligence Council’s coming Global Trends 2030 study reportedly assumes an America in decline.

As 2011 draws to a close, the U.S. military’s exit from Iraq and challenges in Afghanistan along with American vulnerability to the European crisis provide further confirmation of the decline narrative.

We agree with some of these views. The United States has neither the willingness nor the capability to provide the kind of global leadership that it has provided in the past several decades, and other countries are increasingly less willing to follow America’s lead.

But the conventional wisdom obscures as much as it reveals. Specifically, the declinists overlook the inconvenient truth that global power is relative. And comparing America’s year to that of our present and potential adversaries paints an interesting picture: 2011 was not the year when the United States fell off the wagon. Instead, a look back at the past 12 months suggests that U.S. power is more resilient than the narrative of inevitable decline portrays.

Take Al Qaeda, our most consistent adversary (by their definition and ours) since the 9/11 attacks. Despite some severe missteps, we have in 10 years degraded Al Qaeda’s capabilities to the point that they are having difficulty mounting attacks against significant targets. In 2011, the United States killed Al Qaeda’s most effective propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki; its operating chief, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman; and of course its founder, chief executive and spiritual leader, Osama bin Laden. Moreover, the Arab Spring undercut the notion that political change in the Middle East requires the violent jihad that Bin Laden spent his career espousing.

The fight against extremist Islam is an impossible one in which to declare success. Yet the fact remains that while Al Qaeda began the War on Terror with a horrific assault on the foremost symbols of U.S. economic and military power, it leaves 2011 effectively leaderless, rudderless and reduced to boasting about kidnapping defenseless U.S. aid workers.

Iran’s leaders also exit 2011 in worse shape than they entered it. Early in the year, they viewed the demise of Middle Eastern potentates as accelerating their rise to regional dominance. Turkish anger over the Mavi Marmara incident continued to draw Ankara closer to Tehran. Saudi anger at the perceived lack of U.S. support for Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak seemed to threaten a permanent rupture in the U.S. relationship with a key ally, and Iran assumed that it would be the beneficiary of declining American influence in the Arab World.

But the Arab Spring has unfolded very differently. Iran’s closest, most vital, and in some ways only Arab ally, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, ends the year leading an embattled, isolated regime facing a combination of civil war and economic sanctions that his government is unlikely to survive. Iran’s relationship with Turkey has deteriorated sharply, and, along with Saudi Arabia, Ankara has in fact drawn closer to the United States. Indeed, the nascent U.S.-Turkey-Saudi troika is one of the most important but least noticed trends of the past few months.

Combined with another year without nuclear weapons — the program apparently thwarted significantly by covert operations — and a tightening vise of economic sanctions, these events have left Iran’s leaders disoriented. After years of growing consensus, Iran’s elites are now increasingly fragmented and at one another’s throats.

Moreover, Tehran spent the past few months engaged in a stunning series of blunders: plotting with Mexican drug dealers to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and allowing regime supporters to storm the British Embassy in Tehran, the combination of which has re-energized global efforts to squeeze Iran financially. The assumption that Iran is the emerging regional power has shattered.

China, which most of the declinists identify as America’s greatest future rival, has likewise had a difficult 2011. With U.S. willingness to lead receding, the international spotlight has fallen on Beijing. And on every issue — the euro zone crisis, climate change and rebalancing the global economy — China has declined to take the lead, to criticism and dismay at home and abroad.

Beijing has failed to reconcile rising domestic nationalism with assuaging its neighbors’ increasing alarm over Chinese economic sustainability and strategic hegemony. China’s miscalculations in Northeast and Southeast Asia have allowed the United States to reassert traditional alliances in the region (with Japan and South Korea), establish new beachheads (placing a permanent U.S. Marine Corps presence in Australia), and create a process and institutions (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) for a balanced Asia–Pacific regional architecture, rather than one dominated by the Middle Kingdom.

Compared to this, 2011 has not been a bad year for America. It is a stretch to call the Iraq war a victory, but the endgame in the Afghan quagmire is slowly coming into focus. And for all our fiscal problems, global funding has to flow somewhere, and our capital markets are still unparalleled. China won’t internationalize the renminbi, the euro is fragile and gold is not a country. As a result, the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, and U.S. Treasury bills the global financial safe haven.

This will inevitably change in the long term, but not for quite some time.

The unipolar moment is over. But for 2011 at least, the world order has remained the United Sates and the rest.

When I was growing up in Damascus, the notion that a little Syrian girl could become a scientist seemed like an impossible dream. Then I read the story of Marie Curie and her move from Poland to France to study physics, and I became obsessed with the thought of some day going to Paris to study science. One evening, my parents were indulgently telling a family friend about my wild ambitions when he turned to me and said: “If you want to dream big, dream about going to America. That’s where great science happens these days.”

Just like that, America became my promised land. I gathered evidence of its amazing scientific and technical prowess. I watched with rapture as it launched the space program while I fervently hoped that I too could become part of its great scientific adventure. Yet today, I wonder if I would give the same advice to a little girl from Damascus with that same dream.

I’m worried about the possibility that in science and technology, we in America might be losing our mojo. I see signs of it everywhere, both in what is happening elsewhere and what is not happening in the U.S. But of all the bad omens, the one I find most distressing is how strenuously we have to argue for the value of science and technology – for discovering the truth about our world and using that knowledge toward a better life.

Nowadays, if we want politicians to be remotely willing to listen, we need to sell the value of science using only pragmatic arguments – the potential for job creation, the need for better medical cures, our standing as world leaders. I understand the import and truth of these arguments. I live in Michigan, and I only have to look around me to realize that the economy has been in terrible shape and that job creation is essential. I work on brain-related disorders, and I am reminded daily that their tragic burden on humanity is nothing short of staggering. Any approach that can potentially alleviate human suffering, be it physical or mental, and simultaneously help our economy ranks as one of the best ideas to consider for addressing our woes.

But there is a more fundamental reason, I believe, to support science in this country and to keep on doing so even during tough times. A reason that the world seems to recognize but we in America seem to be forgetting: Discovery is at the heart of what America is. It represents an attitude that rings American – a fundamental belief that when you seek, you discover, and when you discover, you transform. In this culture, unlike older cultures, truth is not fully defined by what is handed down. Truth is sought, and new knowledge is prized but held with the expectation that a greater depth of understanding is always around the corner. In America, more than in any other place I know, it is not only possible, but it seems essential, to know more and do better.

The reason this attitude appears magical in its power to inspire and transform is because it happens to be the best way to improve the lot of humankind. We can wish with all our hearts to cure Alzheimer’s disease, depression, AIDS, diabetes or cancer. But we scientists are simply not smart enough to do this in a systematized manner – to set our collective minds to it and figure out the perfect linear strategy for getting there. We have to explore, get lost, beat our heads against the wall, be proved wrong, and, suddenly, miraculously through this meandering mess, something new and unexpected emerges – something that helps in ways that we never could have imagined.

Of course, we need to have a prepared mind in order to recognize the potential, and we need to set priorities and organize implementation strategies and execute them with thoughtful effectiveness. But this is all downstream from that unplanned bit of magic, that uncharted discovery – the setting out to find a better route to the Indies and discovering America.

Who cares, you might ask, when the deficit is so huge it is beyond our comprehension? Who cares about science and technology when Congress is grappling with real, everyday life – taxes and jobs and the next election? Can’t we set research aside and return to it when we can afford it? These are precisely the kinds of questions that trigger the scientific community’s well-reasoned responses about the need for better cures, for job creation, for maintaining America’s leadership position. But my answer is much simpler: In trying to solve our everyday problems, can we afford to lose the essence of who we are? Should we not fight to remain that incomparable nation, the one that always has believed in the limitless power of seeking the truth and living by it?

En Washington –y en otras muchas capitales– suele presentarse un balance político a final de año. Ni los logros ni los fracasos empiezan el 1 de enero o terminan el 31 de diciembre. Pero los hábitos permanecen, así que afirmemos lo obvio: el 2011 no ha sido un buen año para Estados Unidos. La única consolación, desde la perspectiva de Washington, se apoya en dos columnas: la primera, que podría haber sido peor; la segunda, que a los rivales y enemigos de EE.UU. tampoco les va muy bien.

A comienzos de año dio la sensación de que la economía se recuperaba de la crisis que empezó en el 2008 y que la reelección de Obama mostraba visos de ser segura. Al término del año, da la sensación de que la recuperación es, en el mejor de los casos, lenta y de que las crecientes divergencias políticas entre los dos partidos entorpecen el proceso de toma de decisiones; en otras palabras, la adopción de medidas susceptibles de promover una recuperación más rápida. Ambos partidos coincidieron en afirmar que la deuda interna es excesiva, el crecimiento debería ser superior y se deberían recortar gastos, pero la manera de lograr todo esto es materia de enconadas polémicas.

Aunque el índice de crecimiento en EE.UU. es mayor que en Europa (las previsiones indican un crecimiento de un 1,5%-2% en EE.UU. y ningún crecimiento en Europa en el 2012) y el índice de paro es ligeramente inferior en EE.UU. que en Europa (8,6% frente al 9,6% respectivamente), no es decir mucho dada la situación de crisis que vive Europa. El cambio del dólar apenas ha variado: a principio del 2011 un dólar equivalía a 1,36 euros mientras que la proporción es actualmente del 1-1,34. A mitad de camino, en junio, un euro eran 1,48 dólares. El dólar se ha ido debilitando respecto de otras monedas durante bastantes años; los chinos y otros han sugerido que el dólar debería ser sustituido por otra moneda (o mezcla de ellas) como estándar mundial (“moneda de reserva”). Sin embargo, a la vista de la incertidumbre general esto no ha ocurrido aún.

Sobre la cuestión del estatus de EE.UU. en el mundo, se ha hablado por activa y por pasiva del declive espectacular del país en el mundo, pero es una cuestión de la que se ha hablado durante mucho tiempo. Esta perspectiva hace diana en la medida en que Estados Unidos dejó de ser la superpotencia tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial o tras la caída de la URSS, pero dado que EE.UU. no hizo uso de su poder para cambiar el mundo cuando poseyó prácticamente el monopolio del poder, no se produjo un cambio espectacular en el equilibrio mundial de poder. El progreso a gran escala de China ha convertido a este país en un factor político más fuerte y activo y no sólo en Asia oriental, pero también ha reforzado los temores entre sus países vecinos y, en el plano económico, parece inevitable el advenimiento de una ralentización. En ciertos momentos ha podido suceder que EE.UU. mostraba demasiada debilidad frente a China, dando pie a la sensación de que es un país al que fácilmente se puede pasar por alto o desafiar. Errores de este calibre podrían propiciar, por improbable que parezca, inesperados y peligrosos conflictos.

La ejecutoria de la Administración Obama, de alguna manera, ha alcanzado cotas más elevadas en la política exterior que en la interior durante el año 2011. Ha desplazado, de modo notable, su foco de atención de Europa a Asia. Ha liquidado la guerra de Iraq y –muy lentamente– hace lo propio en Afganistán. Las relaciones con Rusia y con Oriente Medio han adolecido de cierta candidez. Las esperanzas de un reajuste de las relaciones con Rusia estaban fuera de lugar al sobrevalorar la disposición de Rusia a establecer estrechas relaciones con Washington. Con relación a Oriente Medio, se han suscitado erróneas ideas y expectativas sobre el carácter democrático de la primavera árabe. Más bien parecería que ha habido una primavera islamista.

Aunque, en conjunto, Obama ha sido un presidente prudente y ha promovido iniciativas importantes, se han cometido varios errores de calado. La política estadounidense se ha visto eclipsada por la campaña para las presidenciales del 2012, un año y medio antes de la coyuntura. Se trata de una tónica muy negativa que incluso se ha acentuado en los últimos años; comporta una parálisis en numerosos terrenos así como una falta de disposición al compromiso por parte de los dos partidos. Hace muchos años, Nixon reparó en la circunstancia de que en la fase inicial de la campaña electoral los candidatos republicanos rivalizan por ser los más radicales a fin de resultar elegidos por los militantes del partido inclinados al extremismo y el liderazgo del partido. Pero, una vez el candidato es elegido, ha de avanzar con celeridad hacia el centro y la moderación. El año 2011 ha sido el año de los tea parties; los candidatos rivalizaban entre sí a ver quién lanzaba la propuesta más radical. Esta competición en materia de ideas y promesas mal concebidas o precipitadas durará, desgraciadamente, hasta el 27 de agosto del 2012, fecha de la convención republicana en Tampa, Florida. Luego habrá llegado el momento de discursos responsables y con visión de estadista.¿qué cabe decir sobre la política estadounidense en el año 2012, año electoral? Tal será la materia de un próximo artículo.

Ahora que se da tanto eso de las encuestas bien pagadas sobre qué opinión tiene usted de tal o cual cosa, que luego ya se encargan ellos de convertirla en una herramienta muy útil para la institución que las subvenciona, propondría un reto. ¿Sabe usted quién fue Dreyfus, Alfred Dreyfus? ¿El “affaire Dreyfus”? Saldrían las cosas más inverosímiles.

Bradley Manning cumplió 24 años el sábado pasado en Fort Meade, cerca de Washington, donde el día anterior se inició el consejo de guerra que le puede llevar a la pena capital o a la cadena perpetua. Curioso destino para un Sagitario. Aseguran, quienes saben de eso, que suelen ser gente propensa a la simpatía y a la buena suerte. Nació en un pueblo de Oklahoma, Crescent City, que no figura en los mapas. De padre gringo, veterano de guerra en la Marina, y madre británica. Cosecha del 87, carne de crisis a partir de la separación de sus padres, errancia doméstica y luego el aprendizaje de la vida; estudios sin interés, descubrimiento de su homosexualidad, búsqueda de algo en lo que merezca la pena aposentarse. Talento natural hacia la informática. Era lo suyo.

El ejército de Estados Unidos descubre en ese muchacho rarito que acaba de apuntarse a los marines y que se manifiesta descaradamente gay, un futuro guerrero. Lo envían a Iraq, a la 10.ª División de Montaña, unidad especialmente activa frente a la insurgencia iraquí y afgana. La guerra más alucinante con la que abrimos nuestro siglo XXI. Lo del soldado Manning eran los ordenadores; le ascienden y se ocupa de los secretos peor guardados del imperio. Por mucho que se quieran proteger de los hackers, los misterios de la informática sólo los puede salvaguardar otro hacker.

Tenía 21 años cuando fue destinado a Iraq y tarda apenas otro en descubrir esa cosa terrible, abrumadora, que consiste en sentirse ayudante del verdugo. Es algo que no está al alcance de todos, porque hay gente que puede hacerlo durante toda su vida adulta y no apreciar su singularidad. El valiente soldado Manning parece que lo pilló enseguida. Primero fueron las filmaciones de las matanzas de civiles en Iraq, luego esas evocaciones nazis filmadas por divertidos torturadores en Abu Graib, y por fin, nuestra Lubianka contemporánea que lleva por nombre Guantánamo. No cuesta imaginar a un soldado sensible ante la impunidad criminal de sus superiores. Lo difícil es resolver la ecuación vital; por salvar el honor y la dignidad, destrozaré mi vida para siempre. ¿Y si sólo fuera la vida? Será la calumnia, la traición, la humillación pública, y como colofón, la difamación cotidiana a manos de los depositarios de la verdad histórica.

Cuando detienen al soldado Bradley Manning a finales de mayo de 2010 ha conseguido pasar miles de informes secretos a la red Wikileaks para que se hagan públicos. Ahí está el condensado de una política de Estado en su carácter ruín, desalmado, de bandoleros de lujo. Y sobre todo, impunes. Algunos de nuestros talentos locales, en la inopia de su frivolidad, hicieron el símil con Anacleto, agente secreto; nunca pedirán perdón, son funcionarios, y los funcionarios al uso se distinguen por su capacidad para no asumir responsabilidades. El Poder sin embargo lo tuvo muy claro desde el primer momento. Con la colaboración de un soplón, Adrian Lamo, al que el incauto Manning confesó su hazaña, empezó la caza, implacable.

Ni siquiera los diarios más importantes de nuestro mundo occidental, ilustrado y liberal, pudieron soportar la presión del Departamento de Estado norteamericano. Una cosa es la decadencia y otra conservar todavía el poder real sobre vidas y haciendas. La lectura de Gibbon y su imperio romano en descomposición exige una lectura lenta, nada espasmódica. Aún quedan muchos años para un cambio de ciclo real, y nadie puede garantizar que sea para mejor. El soldado Manning fue encarcelado en condiciones de la Inquisición, como ocurrió siempre, en la antigüedad y la modernidad, sea nazi, estaliniana o imperialista. Y como siempre, también empezó la demolición ética de los protagonistas. Julian Assange, el comunicador, se convirtió en un violador de suecas. Violar suecas es el límite del machismo occidental, reconozcámoslo nosotros, españoles criados en el subdesarrollo. La narrativa de esos coitos con condón o sin condón, voluntarios o involuntarios, se hará algún día un clásico de la comedia picante. Nunca dos polvos tuvieron tanta trascendencia histórica. Lo de Homero y La Iliada se reduciría a una cuestionable violencia de género.

Probablemente ante la figura de Bradley Manning muchos volverán a repetir las frivolidades que se llegaron a decir de Alfred Dreyfus, un caballero burgués y judío, tan diferente de este Manning de la marginalidad. ¿Evitamos rememorar los comentarios periodísticos de entonces, tan similares a estos de hoy sobre la conspiración, el intento de minar la civilización occidental, la ofensa al ejército más poderoso de la tierra, defensor de la libertad allí donde se encuentre? Manning fue encarcelado en la base de marines de Quantico (Virginia) en condiciones infrahumanas y allá pasó casi un año, durmiendo en calzoncillos, sin sábanas ni mantas, y con la luz encendida. ¿Les recuerda alguna vieja historia, hoy tan justamente denostada?

Probablemente libre la vida, e incluso se le atenuará la cadena perpetua si asume denunciar a Julian Assange y le convierte en reo de la justicia norteamericana. Su abogado, David Codmas, empezó preguntando al tribunal militar: ¿dónde está el daño?, ¿dónde el peligro? Y tenía razón, el daño y el peligro era el del poder no el de la ciudadanía. Ahora, al parecer, se debate a un nivel más bajo y se plantean si el soldado Manning era un travesti o sencillamente un discapacitado. Lo único que no cabe admitir ante un tribunal militar es que obró como un soldado consciente de su conciencia democrática. La invasión de Iraq fue un crimen que hubiera debido llevar a los tribunales a aquel trío que la promovió y se inventó las mentiras para la masacre. Bush, Blair y Aznar son más susceptibles de un tribunal de guerra que el honorable soldado Bradley Manning, que acaba de cumplir 24 años y al que nunca jamás le dejarán ser joven, valiente y digno.

En una de esas crónicas que hacen historia, Christophe Ayad, en Le Monde, describía el final del ejército de Estados Unidos en Iraq: “Se han ido como ladrones, en mitad de la noche, sin decir adiós y sin mirar atrás”. Así abandonaba el 18 de diciembre, al alba, un centenar de vehículos y los últimos 500 soldados de la 1.º división de caballería, el país que habían invadido en 2003, con el alborozo de tantos, hoy taciturnos. Cruzaron el puesto fronterizo de Kuwait y cerraron, o creyeron cerrar, una página miserable de la historia de EE.UU. Dejan un país más destrozado, corrupto, dividido y sumido en la miseria, del que encontraron con Sadam Husein, su veterano aliado de antaño.

Y en esas páginas de mierda y sangre que ellos escribieron, y cuya huella no se borrará en décadas, habrá al menos un capítulo digno, un apartado dedicado al valor del soldado Brandley Manning, de Oklahoma, que fue capaz de poner al descubierto esos fondos que jamás aparecen en los discursos. La verdad de una guerra, los motivos de una invasión, las razones para cubrir una mentira. Lo pagará a un precio que nosotros no seríamos capaces de asumir.

As developing nations begin building dozens of nu- clear reactors to meet growing energy demands, the United States is on the verge of losing its leadership in one nuclear segment that will weaken our national security: our ability to provide energy and our capacity to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons.

Right now, approximately 60 nuclear reactors are under construction around the world, many of them in developing countries. China plans to grow from 9 gigawatts to as much as 200 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2030, and the Gulf Cooperation Council is weighing growing from zero to 50 gigawatts over the same time period. That growth comes on top of the 104 reactors that provide about 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs and the 329 reactors currently operating in other parts of the world.

Those plants will need fuel made using uranium-enrichment technology, the same basic process that makes weapons-grade uranium. The ability of this technology to produce fuel for power plants as well as weapons is why it is closely guarded and why it becomes a major problem when it ends up in the hands of nations such as North Korea and Iran.

The United States has argued that emerging nuclear nations should forgo their own enrichment programs in exchange for an assured U.S. supply of enriched uranium to fuel their nuclear power plants. That is possible because the U.S. has maintained its own domestic sources of enriched uranium production for almost 60 years. While the one remaining U.S. enrichment plant operates at the end of its useful life, guzzling as much electricity every day as the state of Maine, the Europeans have moved to modern, energy-efficient centrifuge-based enrichment technology. One European facility already is operating in the United States, and another is proposed. Those plants are foreign-government owned and based on non-U.S. technologies.

Once the last U.S.-owned enrichment plant closes, our country for the first time will find itself completely dependent on foreign-controlled sources for all of its nuclear fuel. That will make 20 percent of U.S. electricity reliant on foreign sources of fuel, will rob the United States of its standing to provide an assured supply of enriched uranium to developing countries to fill their power needs, and will raise the odds of emerging nuclear countries seeking their own enrichment capacity.

The national security issues tied to the loss of U.S. domestic enrichment capability go beyond proliferation concerns, extending to the reliable operation of our own nuclear deterrent. Of immediate concern is our need to produce domestically a component essential to the working of certain weapons in our nation’s nuclear arsenal that deteriorates with time and therefore must be replenished periodically. The U.S. government has not produced any such material on its own since 1988 and instead has relied on reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to produce it.

Because of peaceful-use restrictions on foreign enrichment technologies, the fuel for the TVA reactors must come from a U.S. source. Once the lone U.S.-owned enrichment plant closes, the nation will lack the domestic source needed to maintain the effectiveness of a substantial part of America’s deterrent nuclear force.

With energy and national security ranking high on our nation’s list of national priorities, it would be folly for the United States to back itself into such a corner.

Fortunately, there is a solution. The United States possesses its own centrifuge technology – developed and demonstrated by the Department of Energy in the 1980s and resurrected about 10 years ago by USEC Inc., a part of the Department of Energy privatized during the Clinton administration.

USEC has invested about $2 billion in upgrading the U.S. centrifuge technology using state-of-the-art materials and control systems so that the American Centrifuge, as it is called, has nearly eight times the output per centrifuge of the European technology while consuming 95 percent less electricity than the old U.S. enrichment technology. USEC seeks to install these centrifuges at a ready-made facility in rural southern Ohio, along the way creating nearly 8,000 jobs.

The Department of Energy and USEC have determined that the best path forward for commercializing the American Centrifuge technology is a cost-shared demonstration program to further reduce the technical project execution and financial risks by demonstrating and verifying key systems as they actually would operate at the scale necessary for full commercialization. Unfortunately, this demonstration program has become caught up in the federal budget quagmire. Unless this impasse is resolved soon, the project faces potential demobilization, and our nation faces the loss of this critical technology.

The American Centrifuge, like all development projects, has faced its share of technical and financial challenges, but it has accumulated hundreds of thousands of machine run-time hours, met key performance objectives for production and plant reliability, and generally enjoyed bipartisan support.

Since the beginning of the nuclear age, the United States has pioneered the peaceful use of atoms to light and heat the world while it has kept the peace through the power of a nuclear deterrent. Now, with the potential sunset of domestic nuclear fuel production, both of those principles are at risk.

«No seas tonto. Es la economía (It´s the economy, stupid)». Así rezaba textualmente, en mayúsculas bien negras, la famosa pancarta que presidía el despacho de Bill Clinton en su campaña electoral a la presidencia de Estados Unidos en 1992, para contestar a la pregunta de siempre: «¿Cuál es el tema principal que preocupa a los votantes?». Ahora, con el paro a niveles históricamente inquietantes en EEUU y con un déficit presupuestario bastante peor que el de la Eurozona, todo el mundo piensa que en las elecciones de 2012 el asunto clave será el mismo: la economía, vamos, no seas tonto. Sin embargo, me temo que no ocurrirá.

En el caso de que así fuera, el candidato con más apoyo en las encuestas, y con las mejores perspectivas de ganar la presidencia desde las filas republicanas, sería Mitt Romney, el antiguo gobernador del Estado de Massachusetts. Su perfil es el de un dirigente capaz de arrinconar la ideología en favor del pragmatismo y con una eficaz gestión económica a sus espaldas. Es el único candidato que ha ejercido altos cargos tanto empresariales como políticos. Hasta ahora, su campaña se ha desarrollado centrándose en la competencia financiera del candidato y su supuesto realismo frente a la grave situación del país. Los comentaristas están de acuerdo con su estrategia. También los políticos más experimentados de su partido. Jeb Bush, el hermano del ex presidente y una de las figuras más respetadas de la elite republicana, ha aconsejado a los demás candidatos que no se distraigan con otros asuntos, ya que la economía tendrá que ser decisiva en los comicios.

En cambio, los sondeos demuestran que los votantes del Partido Republicano no están entusiasmados con Romney, y parece que siguen empeñados en apoyar a otros candidatos ideológicamente más apetecibles, a pesar de que es cierto que en los últimos sondeos ha experimentado una subida.

Cuando el pasado verano se inició la campaña para elegir al candidato, preferían a la representante de la extrema derecha, Michele Bachmann, miembro del Congreso del Estado de Minnesota. Cuando el público se dio cuenta de que esta señora conseguía reunir ignorancia profunda con irracionalidad espantosa, fue sustituida como candidato soñado por otro derechista, Rick Perry, el gobernador de Texas. Cuando éste mostró en público su incapacidad, el elegido -siempre según las encuestas- fue Herman Cain, antiguo empresario de una cadena popular de pizzerías. Y tras la dimisión de Cain, acosado por varias acusaciones de delitos sexuales, los sondeos consagraron a Newt Gingrich, candidato antes calificado por casi todos los comentaristas como «inelegible», con una biografía oscurecida por toda una serie de escándalos y divorcios, y que tiene fama de ser un extremista a ultranza: hasta propone la abolición de las leyes que prohíben el empleo de menores de edad por ser incompatibles con el capitalismo.

Así que los republicanos siguen resistiéndose a elegir a Romney, a pesar de las actuales exigencias de la economía. Y la explicación sencilla es que otros asuntos -ideológicos y, sobre todo, religiosos- cuentan más en el escenario político estadounidense. Las elecciones, al fin y al cabo, tendrán poco que ver con la economía, porque ninguno de los partidos tiene soluciones fehacientes para los problemas presupuestuarios, y tanto demócratas como republicanos, según la óptica de la gran mayoría de los votantes, son culpables de haber buscado su propio bien, o su propia ventaja electoral, o los intereses de los millonarios cuyas contribuciones les pagan las campañas, en lugar de responder a las necesidades del pueblo. La economía sí preocupa a los votantes, pero no les empuja de manera decidida a votar a tal o cual candidato. Y tampoco le vale a Romney su digna reputación moral. Los votantes hablan mucho de los valores morales, pero lo que más les interesa es algo que, desgraciadamente, tiene poca relación con lo moral: la religión.

En Europa nos parece mentira que la religión influya decisivamente en la vida política. Pensamos que sólo en países en vías de desarrollo o en el mundo islámico los partidos religiosos son capaces de ganar elecciones. Pero lo cierto es que en Estados Unidos la religión está entrañablemente vinculada a la política. Se trata de un fenómeno históricamente ineludible. En los años 30 del siglo XIX, Alexis de Tocqueville, el estudioso francés que interpretó la democracia estadounidense para lectores europeos, llamó la atención sobre la religiosidad excesiva de gran número de ciudadanos. En la década siguiente, según las investigaciones del historiador Lee Benson, el mejor índice para pronosticar los resultados electorales era conocer la religión de los votantes. Desde el inicio de la democracia norteamericana, concluía este autor, «las diferencias políticas han surgido por regla general de las diferencias religiosas». Hacia finales del siglo, según el sociólogo Richard Jensen, la religión vino a ser «la fundación de las agrupaciones tanto políticas como culturales en Estados Unidos». En términos generales, en el siglo XIX, tras la guerra civil de 1861-1865, los fieles de las sectas protestantes radicales, que practicaban el pietismo y la experiencia religiosa individual, solían votar a los republicanos, mientras que los que pertenecían a tradiciones cristianas más tradicionales -anglicanos, católicos, luteranos y otros, seguidores de los ritos y sacramentos- favorecían a los demócratas.

Faltan datos sobre el siglo XX hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pero en 1940, por primera vez, un grupo de estadísticos preguntaron a los votantes por su afiliación religiosa. Cuando se analizaron los resultados de la elección a la presidencia en el Estado de Ohio aquel año se comprobó que los católicos casi en su totalidad votaban al presidente Roosevelt, mientras que los protestantes radicales tendían a votar a su rival republicano. George Gallup, el rey de las encuestas, no quiso admitir el hecho, tal vez por haber invertido tanto en una metodología que calificó a la religión como «una práctica científicamente desdeñable».

Desde 1964, empero, los sondeos han preguntado por la religión de los encuestados. Por tanto, consta indiscutiblemente que para explicar las opciones electorales de los votantes, la religión cuenta más que cualquier otro índice -clase social, grado de educación, nivel económico, tipo de trabajo o raza-.

En la política actual, la religión, tal vez, tiene más peso que nunca. Romney sufre por ser un mormón. Nadie quiere reconocerlo, por ser políticamente incorrecto, pero he aquí el motivo del rechazo que despierta entre los fieles de su partido. En su gran mayoría, los devotos esforzados que se sacrifican para votar en las elecciones primarias, saliendo a aguantar los extremos mordientes del invierno norteamericano, son evangélicos -que odian a los mormones-. En Iowa, el primer Estado donde se votará en enero, las encuestas revelan que la mayoría ni quiere reconocer que los mormones sean cristianos. En New Hampshire, que seguirá de cerca a Iowa, los evangélicos son menos numerosos, y, a juzgar por sus declaraciones ante las encuestas, muestran bastante menos enemistad hacia el mormonismo. Aun allí, empero, los votantes simpatizan más con todas las demás religiones citadas en las encuestas, menos el islam. En las encuestas nacionales, el mormonismo se califica junto al islam como la religión menos respetada entre los ciudadanos. Entre los evangélicos el grado de menosprecio es más alto que entre otros grupos.

El odio y sospecha tradicionales que hasta tiempos muy recientes se dirigía hacia los católicos en Estados Unidos parece haberse trasladado a los mormones. El siglo XIX en EEUU fue el del Kulturkampf, cuando el anticatolicismo animaba al Ku Klux Klan; vino a ser la política oficial del tal llamado Partido Americano de los años 40 y 50, que luego se unió al Partido Republicano.

Para lograr ser presidente en 1960, John F. Kennedy tuvo que luchar contra el mismo prejuicio. Su victoria era una muestra de que las cosas empezaban a cambiar. Desde entonces, el catolicismo se ha establecido como una religión respetable, aunque los católicos tienen que seguir insistiendo en su patriotismo por si acaso se les acusa de pertenecer a una organización internacional y desleal a la patria. Las banderas nacionales se guardan en los santuarios de las iglesias católicas. En la puerta de la enorme basílica que sirve de capilla a mi universidad reza la leyenda «Dios, Patria, Nuestra Señora». Los mormones no han conseguido la misma aceptación a pesar de ser una secta de origen estadounidense, que jugó un papel destacado en la historia del país y en la colonización del interior del continente -un proceso liderado por mormones en 1840-.

Es difícil comprender lo que les falta a los mormones para ser aceptables para altos cargos estatales. Tal vez son demasiado endógamos, o es que están excesivamente concentrados en ciertas zonas del país. La gente les teme por no conocerles. El hecho, empero, es innegable. Por paradójico que sea, en la presente campaña presidencial, los evangélicos aprueban más a Gingrich, quien hace un par de años se convirtió al catolicismo, que a Romney, su rival mormón. Así que la economía influye mucho menos de lo que se debía de esperar. No seas tonto: el factor decisivo es la religión.

Muchos de los comentarios sobre la economía americana actual dan la impresión de que los economistas deben solucionar sus problemas, pero Washington rebosa de economistas inteligentes y los problemas continúan.

Una economía es como una nube: sólo cuando se está dentro de ella, se comprende lo difusa que es y que lo que importa son las partículas de vapor que la componen.

Del mismo modo, una economía es una acumulación de transacciones relativas a bienes y servicios, la mayoría de ellas llevadas a cabo por empresas comerciales. Lo que importa son sus funcionamientos, que sólo se pueden apreciar desde la distante perspectiva de los modelos y las estadísticas económicos, pero sólo en el terreno, donde se construye una economía, donde se rompe y donde se debe repararla.

En el terreno, hay dos clases de empresas: las que se basan en la exploración y las que se basan en la explotación. Todas las economías cuentan con esas dos clases, pero una economía sana favorece a los exploradores, cosa que fomenta el espíritu de empresa que hizo de los Estados Unidos el motor económico que es. Lamentablemente, la economía americana ahora favorece a los explotadores.

El desarrollo económico recorre un ciclo que comienza con jóvenes empresas exploradoras que presentan nuevos productos, servicios y procesos. Sin embargo, con el tiempo, al triunfar, muchos exploradores se vuelven explotadores. Saturan sus mercados, se quedan sin ideas nuevas y se vuelven perezosos. Entonces amplían sus líneas de producción, en lugar de crear productos nuevos, reducen costos presionando a sus trabajadores, cabildean con los gobiernos para conseguir un trato favorable, se fusionan con competidores para reducir la competencia y manipulan a los clientes para exprimir hasta el último penique.

Naturalmente, con ello esas empresas resultan vulnerables ante las amenazas creativas de la siguiente oleada de exploradores –las nuevas empresas veloces que se enfrentan a las viejas y engordadas grandes empresas– y el ciclo de destrucción y reconstrucción vuelve a empezar.

Comparémoslo con los Estados Unidos de los rescates, en los que las engordadas están consideradas “demasiado grandes para quebrar”. En realidad, muchas son demasiado grandes –o al menos demasiado mal administradas– para triunfar. ¿Cómo explicar, si no, el caso de bancos y empresas de seguros importantes que se juegan su futuro por hipotecas-basura, como habría revelado una pequeña investigación? O bien sus directores superiores no lo sabían o bien pensaron cínicamente que podían salir impunes, mientras que a los demás les daba igual o no pudieron convencer a sus jefes al respecto.

Ese problema americano no se limita a los rescates. Por cada Apple y Google, exploradores par excellence, hay que contar las empresas energéticas con sus cómodos acuerdos impositivos, los contratistas de suministros para la defensa, que viven de los presupuestos gubernamentales, y las empresas farmacéuticas que compran sus innovaciones y ponen los precios que el mercado pueda soportar, gracias a las patentes que conceden los gobiernos, pero sin vigilar a sus titulares.

Además, ahora muchas de las empresas nacientes de los EE.UU. saltan a la explotación. Mientras que los empresarios de este país se habían inclinado tradicionalmente por crear legados sostenibles, ahora muchos de ellos se esfuerzan por obtener una oferta pública inicial que les permita obtener una rentabilidad rápida, cosa que puede ser enormemente contraproducente, al interrumpir lo que aún debían aprender.

Cuando los economistas se jactan de la gran productividad de los Estados Unidos, se refieren a la exploración: encontrar formas de hacer las cosas mejor, en particular mediante procesos superiores, pero gran parte de esa “productividad” ha sido, en realidad, destructivamente explotadora. Piénsese en todas las grandes empresas que han despedido a gran número de personas porque hubiera bajado la cotización de sus acciones y se han quedado con empleados con exceso de trabajo y escasez de sueldo y a gestores quemados, mientras que los directores generales escapaban con sus primas.

Para ver adónde conduce eso, imagínese una empresa que despida a todos sus trabajadores y después atienda todos sus pedidos a partir de las existencias. La estadística económica la registraría como sumamente productiva… hasta que, naturalmente, la empresa se quedara sin existencias. La empresa americana se está quedando sin existencias.

Visto así, no hay una solución rápida para los problemas económicos actuales de los Estados Unidos. Despedir a trabajadores o incluso imprimir moneda puede ser fácil; cambiar el comportamiento disfuncional no lo es. La economía de los EE.UU. tendrá que ser reparada por sus empresas, una por una, en el terreno. Las actitudes tendrán que cambiar, lo que requerirá una gran dedicación y paciencia, rasgos que parecen escasear en los EE.UU. de hoy.

Se debe comenzar con el personal ejecutivo, en el que se debe prescindir de los mercenarios para fomentar la verdadera capacidad de dirección. Ése es el aspecto fácil: al acabar con las remuneraciones obscenas, desaparecerán los mercenarios. Después pueden ocupar su lugar personas a las que interese construir y mantener empresas decentes y que comprendan que se trata de una tarea en equipo.

Para crear empresas con éxito, hace falta tiempo, con el que inventar productos mejores, servir a los clientes más eficazmente y apoyar a los trabajadores de modo que aumente su compromiso. Los símbolos también son importantes: se debe abandonar, por ejemplo, el término “recursos humanos”, porque una gran empresa es una comunidad de seres humanos comprometidos, no un cúmulo de capital separado.

El apoyo público debe pasar de proteger a las grandes empresas establecidas a fomentar el crecimiento de empresas más nuevas. Y se debe disuadir a las empresas nacientes de apresurarse a echarse en brazos de analistas del mercado bursátil cortos de miras (y se debería animar a más de una gran empresa establecida a deshacerse de ese abrazo). Al mismo tiempo, se debería utilizar la reglamentación y la fiscalidad para poner coto a las destructivas operaciones bursátiles intradía y otras formas de especulación explotadora que expulsan del mercado la inversión sostenible y alteran las actividades comerciales normales.

Por encima de todo, lo que la economía americana necesita ahora es gestores que conozcan sus negocios y los cuiden. Los ejércitos de licenciados en Administración de Empresas que han aprendido a gestionar todo en general, pero nada en partícular, son parte del problema, no de la solución, como también los economistas que estudian las nubes sin mojarse nunca.

A veces simplemente no aprendemos.

Tras la crisis financiera, en los Estados Unidos se promulgó la Ley Dodd-Frank  para renovar la regulación financiera de ese país con el objetivo de reducir el riesgo de otra recesión financiera. Sin embargo, no se hizo nada para reformar las operaciones de recompra de créditos (créditos “repo”) –de las que se puede afirmar son la parte más endeble de la cadena financiera. Y como resultado hemos visto como quiebra otra importante firma financiera.

Un acuerdo de recompra es la venta de un valor (a menudo una obligación que emite el Tesoro estadounidense) que el vendedor promete recomprar después –usualmente, un día después de la venta principal- a un precio ligeramente mayor. Por lo tanto, el comprador otorga un préstamo al vendedor, en donde la diferencia entre el precio original de la obligación y su precio futuro de recompra representa el interés del préstamo.

Estos créditos de recompra proporcionan a las empresas –generalmente firmas financieras- acceso a numerosos fondos de financiamiento asequible (que a menudo procede de los fondos del mercado de dinero estadounidense). Es un mercado en el que se estima se realizan operaciones billonarias.

MF Global, la firma financiera mundial que se declaró en quiebra en octubre, es tan sólo el ejemplo más reciente que vale la pena mencionar de cómo los créditos de recompra pueden terminar mal. Al igual que Bear Stearns & Lehman Brothers antes de su quiebra, MF Global tenía una enorme deuda de tipo de recompra de corto plazo. Bear quebró en 2008 debido a que sus crecientes pérdidas inmobiliarias le impidieron renegociar rápidamente su deuda de tipo recompra, que representaba una cuarta parte de su hoja de balance. Un año más tarde, Lehman quebraba, con una deuda tipo “repo” que representaba una tercera parte de su balance. Dicha deuda parecía haber ascendido a un sorprendente 50% del balance total de MF Global.

Las reglas del juego financiero favorecen, más que cualquier otro, el financiamiento de tipo recompra, y en la Ley Dodd-Frank no se hizo nada para arreglarlo. Primero, las reglas normales que rigen la quiebra no se aplican a los acuerdos de recompra. Segundo, hay un enorme flujo de financiamiento en la forma de acuerdos de recompra hacia las firmas que toman grandes riesgos como MF Global, Lehman, y Bear Stearns mediante los fondos del mercado de dinero, que tienen que invertir a muy corto plazo porque sus depositantes quieren liquidez inmediata.

En Los Estados Unidos, las normas habituales que regulan las quiebras permiten que los reguladores y los tribunales mantengan las operaciones de las empresas el tiempo suficiente para determinar si valen más muertas que vivas. Las leyes impiden que los acreedores se apoderen de los activos de las empresas tras las quiebras y exigen muchos de los pagos efectuados a acreedores en los 90 días anteriores a la declaración de quiebra, de modo que todos los acreedores contribuyan a la supervivencia de la empresa.

La exención de que gozan los acreedores de los acuerdos de recompra con respecto a estas normas los favorecen frente a los demás acreedores de la empresa quebrada. La razón original era que permitiendo que los acreedores en los acuerdos de recompra recuperaran su dinero rápidamente se reducirían las corridas, los contagios y la paralización del crédito. No obstante, parece que está sucediendo lo contrario: si se aplicaran las normas habituales, los participantes en los acuerdos de recompra serían más cautelosos. Se cuidarían de empresas como MF Global, que tienen enormes pasivos a corto plazo y reservas de capital muy escasas para absorber las pérdidas. Cobrarían más y limitarían los préstamos a corto plazo, o ambas cosas, e insistirían en que empresas como MF Global mantuvieran mayores reservas de capital. Si cobraran más, otras fuentes de capital –deuda y valores a largo plazo—serían más atractivas.

El resultado es que la economía obtiene demasiados acuerdos de recompra de la noche a la mañana, y todos los demás pagamos por ello ya que optar por la deuda de corto plazo significa la quiebra de más empresas como Bear, Lehman y MF Global. Es cierto que al principio los acreedores, propietarios y gerentes de las empresas quebradas llevan la peor parte de las pérdidas. No obstante, cuando las empresas que son sistémicamente esenciales realizan excesivas operaciones de tipo recompra, todos pagamos, primero como contribuyentes cuando el gobierno las rescata y después cuando sufrimos debido a los desórdenes y desaceleraciones económicos resultantes.

La segunda norma financiera que privilegia a los acuerdos de recompra o “repos” es que los fondos del mercado de dinero deben mantener carteras extremadamente líquidas porque sus clientes giran cheques sobre sus depósitos. Por lo tanto, el efectivo se dedica a inversiones de corto plazo –a menudo, “repos” para empresas financieras con inversiones de riesgo.

No podemos  prescindir de esta vía de financiamiento de corto plazo, pero no hay razón para que sea tan grande. Cuando hay sacudidas en un sistema financiero frágil, como sucedió en 2007 y 2008, el gobierno tiene motivos para garantizar los fondos del mercado de dinero, como lo hicieron las autoridades estadounidenses. Estas garantías implícitas del gobierno atraen más dinero proveniente de vías no garantizadas a estos canales financieros y las empresas como MF Global, Lehman y Bear reciben más capital volátil mediante operaciones de recompra.

No hay una salida fácil para este problema, pero demos tratar de encontrar una.

Una mejora sería reformar las leyes de quiebra que favorecen “repos”. Otra sería aumentar los requisitos de capital de las instituciones financieras. No obstante, estas medidas deben tomarse a la vez, puesto que las empresas y los acreedores trataran de sortear los requisitos de capital si encuentran fuentes alternativas de ingresos atractivas –como el financiamiento tipo “repo” que no está regulado.

Hay otra solución también: podría obligarse a los participantes de los acuerdos de recompra a pagar por sus privilegios y por los costos que imponen al resto de la economía. Podría cobrárseles unos cuantos puntos de base anuales por concepto de derechos gubernamentales a fin de hacer que correspondan los precios privados de los acuerdos de recompra con sus costos sociales. Hacerlo podría dar una mayor disciplina a esta parte del mercado financiero sin tener que reglamentar demasiado.

El colapso de Bear Stearns y de Lehman Brothers exacerbó la recesión  en los Estados Unidos y el mundo.  La quiebra de MF Global es una advertencia de que apenas tres años después, e incluso tras las importantes reformas financieras de la Ley Dodd-Frank, los Estados Unidos aún no han resuelto los problemas esenciales que provocaron la quiebra de dichas firmas.

En la actualidad (y esto no cambiará a corto plazo) sólo hay una anotación en la agenda política de Washington: la situación de la economía. ¿Cómo marcha la economía? A principios de año, se nombró una supercomisión del Congreso estadounidense compuesta de doce miembros, seis demócratas y seis republicanos, para elevar propuestas destinadas a reducir la deuda estadounidense en una cuantía de 1,3 billones de dólares durante los próximos diez años. Los debates acabaron en fracaso total. Las diferencias entre los dos partidos eran demasiado grandes. Todos los partidos coinciden, prácticamente, en que para alcanzar el objetivo en cuestión hay que reducir el gasto y aumentar los ingresos. Aumentar los ingresos significa mayores impuestos a los ricos; es decir, en términos generales, a los que ganan más de 200.000 dólares al año. El fracaso en alcanzar algún tipo de acuerdo revierte negativamente sobre el Congreso y sus funcionamiento. La popularidad de Obama ha disminuido pero el respeto por el Congreso ha bajado aún más y se sitúa en un 9%, un mínimo histórico.

Algunos demócratas sostienen que si se pusiera punto final a las guerras de Afganistán e Iraq y se recortara el presupuesto de Defensa no habría crisis. De hecho, los gastos en cuestión son elevados y los recortes drásticos revertirían en un ahorro de bastantes millardos de dólares al año. No obstante, son reducidos en comparación con los denominados derechos sociales (jubilaciones, atención sanitaria, subsidio de paro), de coste mucho más alto. Los demócratas se muestran renuentes a la imposición de recortes importantes que afecten al gasto social, lo que añadiría mayor desgracia a la situación de quienes ya sufren suficientes penalidades.

Deberían reformarse de forma radical diversas cuestiones: EE.UU. gasta actualmente casi un 17% de su presupuesto en sanidad (unos 8.000 dólares por persona), dos veces más (o aún más) que otros países desarrollados. Este gasto podría tal vez justificarse si los estadounidenses disfrutaran de mejor salud, de una vida más larga y de una calidad de vida más elevada que la de otros países. Pero la atención sanitaria europea abarca prácticamente la totalidad de la población, cosa que no sucede en el caso estadounidense. Las razones del elevado coste de la sanidad estadounidense son bien conocidos, pero ninguna Administración se ha atrevido hasta ahora a abordarlas y a introducir cambios.

Pero si bien los demócratas hacen frente a espinosos problemas y proponen un programa eficaz y realista para reducir la deuda interna, los republicanos han salido del debate en mucha peor situación. Los candidatos opuestos a los líderes del partido y a su candidatura a la presidencia distan de resultar espectaculares. Hacen caso omiso de la política exterior que, a su entender, carece de importancia, ya que a su juicio habría que centrarse en la política interna. Su programa económico es de cortas miras, si no absurdo. Coinciden en un punto, no subir los impuestos (que descendieron con Bush). Por ello, se han ganado la reputación de ser un partido que defiende los intereses de los muy ricos, y como hay muchos que no pertenecen a esa categoría, tal estrategia cobraría posiblemente el aspecto de una conducta suicida desde el punto de vista político: ¿cómo pueden esperar un triunfo electoral con una plataforma como esta? Sólo jugando con la hipótesis de que la mayoría de electores no llegue a comprender el alcance de las cuestiones en liza, pero tal suposición resulta arriesgada. Su argumento de que subir impuestos obstaculizaría la inversión e inhibiría el crecimiento no se ha demostrado en época de crisis.

Esta política incomoda en grado sumo a figuras republicanas con visión inteligente sobre la situación; de hecho, varias de las personas más ricas han dicho que los riquísimos deberían pagar más impuestos, pero de momento no moldean la política del partido. ¿Cómo acabará todo esto? Dado que la supercomisión no logró alcanzar un acuerdo, las próximas semanas presenciarán una lucha enconada por el presupuesto del año próximo; por ejemplo, sobre la cuantía de fondos que cabe asignar al departamento de Defensa y sobre los recortes en derechos sociales. la mayoría de republicanos quiere unos Estados Unidos fuertes y, aunque insisten en la cuestión de los recortes gubernamentales radicales en otros sectores, dicen que no debería tocarse todo lo referente a la potencia militar del país.

En materia de pronósticos a largo plazo, hay amplias diferencias de opinión. Para algunos, es demasiado tarde para emprender reformas radicales y el capitalismo, tal como se practica en EE.UU., está condenado debido a los excesos, la codicia y la estupidez. Son menos explícitos sobre qué sistema podría reemplazarlo; el socialismo, no, tras sus fracasos en Rusia y China.

Los optimistas dicen que nadie debería infravalorar la capacidad de recuperación de EE.UU. incluso de una crisis muy grave. A principios de los ochenta, el país afrontó una honda crisis económica; el paro era entonces aún mayor. Pero a ello siguió el más prolongado auge económico de su historia, que duró unas dos décadas (por cierto, ¿no se financió en parte el auge gracias a la acumulación de la deuda nacional, el mayor problema actual?).

Tal es el principal debate en Washington. Ya que la economía afecta a todo el mundo, todo el mundo se ha convertido en economista, siendo así que en otros tiempos se contaban con los dedos de una mano. Será un debate largo y enconado.

Nine months after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan and set off the world’s worst radiation crisis since Chernobyl, the Japanese government finally announced on Friday that the plant’s reactors had been stabilized.

But federal regulators have yet to absorb the lessons from this crisis. The owners of the Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester County, 25 miles north of New York City, are asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend their operating licenses for 20 years. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo strongly opposes those renewals.

However unlikely, the possibility of a major meltdown at a plant in the United States can’t be dismissed. And yet Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Bloomberg last week that there would be enough time for millions of people in the region to get away “because nuclear accidents do develop slowly, they do develop over time, and we saw that at Fukushima.”

But even if that were true, many might never be able to return. Some 160,000 Japanese are still displaced because the radioactive contamination — in an area far less populated and less dense than the New York area — was so intense and far-reaching. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s cost-benefit analyses for Indian Point and other nuclear plants in the United States do not factor in these possibilities. The consequences of land contamination should be weighed in any decision to re-license the plant’s two reactors, which are up for renewal in 2013 and 2015.

The reason the contamination is so long-lasting is that Cesium 137, the most dangerous isotope released in a severe accident, has a half-life of 30 years. A contaminated area — one that was, say, four times above the maximum permissible post-accident radiation level for human habitation — would stay above that level for nearly a human lifetime.

The standard for a mandatory evacuation at Fukushima was set at about 20 times the maximum radiation level allowed for normal operation. That is not a life-threatening level, but it is high enough that the International Commission on Radiation Protection warns against year-round human habitation.

Hundreds of square miles around Chernobyl, site of a meltdown in 1986, are still off-limits. The Japanese evacuated a comparable area northwest of the Fukushima site. It’s not practical to decontaminate an area that large, and few people are going to want to live there even if they are allowed to.

Dr. Jaczko said it was unlikely that a nuclear accident would require prompt action beyond “more than a few miles.” That might be correct in terms of avoiding immediate health effects from radiation (though after Fukushima, he advised United States citizens in Japan to stay at least 50 miles away from the reactors). But his remark does not begin to capture the human and economic devastation in Japan. At Fukushima, some areas more than 25 miles from the reactors were contaminated beyond the mandatory evacuation level.

The lack of attention to possible land contamination is a major gap in the American system of nuclear safety regulation. After Fukushima, it should be the main safety concern — and one that is not addressed by evacuation, no matter how efficient.

A severe accident at Indian Point, whose two reactors opened in 1974 and 1976, is a remote but real possibility. We’ve had two severe accidents with large releases of radioactivity in the past. The Chernobyl accident was dismissed in Western countries on the grounds that it was the product of Soviet sloppiness and “couldn’t happen here.” But the Fukushima accident involved reactors built to American designs.

The essential characteristic of this technology is that the reactor’s uranium fuel — about 100 tons in a typical plant — melts quickly without cooling water. The containment structures surrounding the reactors — even the formidable-looking domes at Indian Point — were not designed to hold melted fuel because safety regulators 40 years ago considered a meltdown impossible.

They were wrong, and we now know that radioactive material in the melted fuel can escape to contaminate a very large area for decades or more. It doesn’t make sense to allow such a threat to persist a half-hour’s drive from our nation’s largest city.

When the last remaining American forces withdraw from Iraq at the end of this month, they will be leaving behind a country that is politically unstable, increasingly volatile, and at risk of descending into the sort of sectarian fighting that killed thousands in 2006 and 2007.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has overseen a consolidation of military force, but the core of his government is remarkably unrepresentative: it is made up of mostly pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists. The secular Iraqiya Party, which won a plurality of votes in the March 2010 parliamentary elections, has been marginalized within the cabinet and was not represented when Mr. Maliki visited Washington on Monday.

This Shiite Islamist government bodes ill for the country’s future. And unfortunately, it is a direct product of America’s misguided thinking about Iraq since the 2003 invasion — an approach that stressed proportional sectarian representation rather than national unity and moderate Islamism.

This flawed policy has been more important in shaping today’s Iraq than the size of the original force that occupied the country in 2003, the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal in 2004 or the “surge” of 2007. And it is to blame for the precarious condition in which the United States is leaving Iraq today.

In the 1990s, America envisaged post-Saddam Hussein Iraq as a federation of Arabs and Kurds. At the time, Kurds focused on their own autonomy; Shiite Islamists rejected federalism south of Kurdistan; and many other Shiites explicitly ruled out an Iranian model of government for fear that it might alienate secularists and the Sunni minority.

The fateful change in American thinking came in 2002 as the Bush administration was preparing for war. At conferences with exiled Iraqi opposition leaders, Americans argued that new political institutions should reflect Iraq’s ethno-sectarian groups proportionally. Crucially, the focus moved beyond the primary Arab-Kurdish cleavage to include notions of separate quotas for Shiites and Sunnis.

When Americans designed the first post-Hussein political institution in July 2003, the Iraqi governing council, the underlying principle was sectarian proportionality. What had formerly been an Arab-Kurdish relationship was transformed into a Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish triangle. Arabs who saw themselves first and foremost as Iraqis suddenly became anomalies.

Remarkably, Iraqis themselves turned against this system. After the violent sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, Iraqis rediscovered nationalism. The American surge and growing nationalist criticism of the country’s new constitution provided the necessary environment for Mr. Maliki to emerge in 2009 as a national leader who commanded respect across sectarian lines. Some Sunnis even began considering a joint ticket with Mr. Maliki.

But in May 2009, with President Obama now in the White House, Shiite Islamists who had been marginalized by Mr. Maliki in the local elections regrouped in Tehran. Their aim was a purely sectarian Shiite alliance that would ultimately absorb Mr. Maliki as well. The purging of Sunni officials with links to the former government, known as de-Baathification, became their priority.

By this time, however, Washington was blind to what was going on. Instead of appreciating the intense struggle between the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s sectarian Shiite followers, and moderate Shiites who believed in a common Iraqi identity, the Obama administration remained steadfastly focused on the Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish trinity, thereby reinforcing sectarian tensions rather than helping defuse them.

After faring poorly in the 2010 parliamentary elections, Mr. Maliki switched course and adopted a pan-Shiite sectarian platform to win a second term as prime minister. But Obama administration officials failed to see how Mr. Maliki had changed. Nor did they appreciate the chance they’d had to bring Mr. Maliki back from the sectarian brink through a small but viable coalition with the secular Iraqiya Party — a scenario that could have provided competent, stable government to Iraqi Arabs and left the Kurds to handle their own affairs.

Instead, an oversize, unwieldy power-sharing government was formed, with Washington’s support, in December 2010.

The main reason Mr. Maliki could not offer American forces guarantees for staying in the country beyond 2011 was that his premiership was clinched by pandering to sectarian Shiites. As a result, he has become a hostage to the impulses of pro-Iranian Islamists while most Sunnis and secularists in the government have been marginalized. His current cabinet is simply too big and weak to develop any coherent policies or keep Iranian influence at bay.

By consistently thinking of Mr. Maliki as a Shiite rather than as an Iraqi Arab, American officials overlooked opportunities that once existed in Iraq but are now gone. Thanks to their own flawed policies, the Iraq they are leaving behind is more similar to the desperate and divided country of 2006 than to the optimistic Iraq of early 2009.

On the morning of May 6, 1783, Guy Carleton, the British commander charged with winding down the occupation of America, boarded the Perseverance and sailed up the Hudson River to meet George Washington and discuss the British withdrawal. Washington was furious to learn that Carleton had sent ships to Canada filled with Americans, including freed slaves, who had sided with Britain during the revolution.

Britain knew these loyalists were seen as traitors and had no future in America. A Patriot using the pen name “Brutus” had warned in local papers: “Flee then while it is in your power” or face “the just vengeance of the collected citizens.” And so Britain honored its moral obligation to rescue them by sending hundreds of ships to the harbors of New York, Charleston and Savannah. As the historian Maya Jasanoff has recounted, approximately 30,000 were evacuated from New York to Canada within months.

Two hundred and twenty-eight years later, President Obama is wrapping up our own long and messy war, but we have no Guy Carleton in Iraq. Despite yesterday’s announcement that America’s military mission in Iraq is over, no one is acting to ensure that we protect and resettle those who stood with us.

Earlier this week, Mr. Obama spoke to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., of the “extraordinary milestone of bringing the war in Iraq to an end.” Forgotten are his words from the campaign trail in 2007, that “interpreters, embassy workers and subcontractors are being targeted for assassination.” He added, “And yet our doors are shut. That is not how we treat our friends.”

Four years later, the Obama administration has admitted only a tiny fraction of our own loyalists, despite having eye scans, fingerprints, polygraphs and letters from soldiers and diplomats vouching for them. Instead we force them to navigate a byzantine process that now takes a year and a half or longer.

The chances for speedy resettlement of our Iraqi allies grew even worse in May after two Iraqi men were arrested in Kentucky and charged with conspiring to send weapons to jihadist groups in Iraq. These men had never worked for Americans, and they managed to enter the United States as a result of poor background checks. Nevertheless, their arrests removed any sense of urgency in the government agencies responsible for protecting our Iraqi allies.

The sorry truth is that we don’t need them anymore now that we’re leaving, and resettling refugees is not a winning campaign issue. For over a year, I have been calling on members of the Obama administration to make sure the final act of this war is not marred by betrayal. They have not listened, instead adopting a policy of wishful thinking, hoping that everything turns out for the best.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis who loyally served us are under threat. The extremist Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr has declared the Iraqis who helped America “outcasts.” When Britain pulled out of Iraq a few years ago, there was a public execution of 17 such outcasts — their bodies dumped in the streets of Basra as a warning. Just a few weeks ago, an Iraqi interpreter for the United States Army got a knock on his door; an Iraqi policeman told him threateningly that he would soon be beheaded. Another employee, at the American base in Ramadi, is in hiding after receiving a death threat from Mr. Sadr’s militia.

It’s not the first time we’ve abandoned our allies. In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford and Henry A. Kissinger ignored the many Vietnamese who aided American troops until the final few weeks of the Vietnam War. By then, it was too late.

Although Mr. Kissinger had once claimed there was an “irreducible list” of 174,000 imperiled Vietnamese allies, the policy in the war’s frantic closing weeks was icily Darwinian: if you were strong enough to clear our embassy walls or squeeze through the gates and force your way onto a Huey, you could come along. The rest were left behind to face assassination or internment camps. The same sorry story occurred in Laos, where America abandoned tens of thousands of Hmong people who had aided them.

It wasn’t until months after the fall of Saigon, and much bloodshed, that America conducted a huge relief effort, airlifting more than 100,000 refugees to safety. Tens of thousands were processed at a military base on Guam, far away from the American mainland. President Bill Clinton used the same base to save the lives of nearly 7,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1996. But if you mention the Guam Option to anyone in Washington today, you either get a blank stare of historical amnesia or hear that “9/11 changed everything.”

And so our policy in the final weeks of this war is as simple as it is shameful: submit your paperwork and wait. If you can survive the next 18 months, maybe we’ll let you in. For the first time in five years, I’m telling Iraqis who write to me for help that they shouldn’t count on America anymore.

Moral timidity and a hapless bureaucracy have wedged our doors tightly shut and the Iraqis who remained loyal to us are weeks away from learning how little America’s word means.

Nearly three years after the U.S.-Russia “reset” was announced in February 2009, the fragility of relations between Moscow and Washington is on full display. Even though the two countries have deepened their collaboration in a number of key areas — particularly in facilitating the NATO mission in Afghanistan — it seems that old habits of suspicion and recrimination die hard.

Thus, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton branded Russia’s recent State Duma elections as unfree and unfair — both preempting and exceeding the assessment of the O.S.C.E. observer mission in which the United States participated — she in effect denied the legitimacy of the Russian government that is ostensibly our partner in the U.S.-Russia “reset.”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s sharp response — and President Dmitri Medvedev’s threat to target U.S. missile-defense installations in Europe with nuclear weapons — has raised concerns that U.S.-Russia relations could again deteriorate to pre-reset levels, or worse.

Certainly, change is in the air: Tens of thousands on the streets of Moscow and other Russian cities are demanding a recount of the Dec. 4 election and an end to the authorities’ monopoly on power. But what has not changed is the centrality of U.S.-Russia cooperation to addressing urgent U.S. national interests, including advancing nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, combating terrorism and drug trafficking, and managing the drawdown of NATO forces while maintaining security in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Unfortunately, the romance of change has swept many in Washington off their feet, and some have forgotten what it takes to keep the underlying U.S.-Russia relationship strong and stable.

Mutual respect and mutual legitimacy are key to productive relations. Taken by itself, Clinton’s frank assessment of the Duma elections was not wrong. The problem is the sensitivities it provoked on the Russian side.

It should be no surprise that Russians, including not just Putin but many of those protesters calling for his ouster, reject the notion that Americans should sit in judgment of Russian domestic politics. They feel this way whatever the issue de jure of American outrage: Electoral transparency, rule of law and human rights are the usual suspects.

The problem is not that Americans have these concerns. Whether Russians like it or not, U.S. representations about human rights and democracy are part and parcel of the bilateral relationship. But it is the way in which such concerns are raised and responded to that poses a danger to preserving, sustaining and even extending cooperation on issues that matter to both sides. A Russian government that feels that its U.S. counterpart is secretly rooting for its overthrow is not going to offer sustained cooperation in the security and economic dimensions of the relationship.

In turn, the Russian side needs to understand how its statements and actions — both in terms of its domestic policy as well as its relationships with its neighbors — can make it difficult for Americans who support closer engagement with Moscow to mount a full-throated defense of the reset.

The Obama and Medvedev administrations have taken steps to formalize the basis for the relationship, notably via the Bilateral Presidential Commission, which links U.S. departments and Russian ministries in work groups ranging from clean energy cooperation to counterterrorism. But it is essential to turn this commission from an Obama-Medvedev initiative that may die once one or both of its principals leaves office into a permanent intergovernmental body that can continue its work as presidents come and go.

The potential of domestic political debates to precipitate crises for the relationship must also be checked. In Washington, the reset is identified with Obama, which has meant that most Republicans — and even many Democrats — refuse to take responsibility for its success. In Moscow, anti-Western nationalists, who gained seats in the Duma in the elections, continue to see reset as a fig leaf for continued U.S. bullying.

We should now broaden the dialogue so that people on both sides, even those who are the most skeptical — and usually also the most ignorant — of the other have the ability to meet and engage.

This process could be helped along by a more deliberate public relations strategy for the reset. Right now, the public narrative is one of disappointed expectations and mutual suspicion. Instead, the focus should be on getting the publics in both countries to understand the benefits of cooperation for both sides.

Russia’s latest post-election upheaval combined with America’s pre-election politicking threaten to amplify normal differences of opinion to crisis levels. The danger if this destroys the reset is that the damage may be irreparable.

Instead of permitting this slow motion disaster to occur, Moscow and Washington must now make a concerted effort to consolidate the gains of the past three years and build fuller ties between citizens, political parties and bureaucracies. Old habits may die hard, but with less fear and more trust in the air they will soon breathe their last.

As the United States completes its withdrawal from Iraq, it is worth pausing to remember the determined peace activists who opposed the war from the start, including one who took up their cause and became president.

On Friday, some of them will gather in Chicago at the Federal Plaza, where in October 2002 Barack Obama, then a member of the Illinois Senate, stepped onto the stage to oppose the looming Iraq war. The plaza should be remembered as the place where the long march to peace began.

At the time, neoconservatives were riding high. Not only had the president, George W. Bush, embraced many of their ideas; powerful figures in the Democratic Party were echoing them as well. Obama was not among them.

“I don’t oppose all wars,” he said that day, noting that he would take up arms himself to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”

Obama expressed outrage at “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” The saber-rattling, he said, represented an “attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market which has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.”

It was a brave stance to take for an ambitious politician at a time when American support for war with Iraq was building. He went on to become the first president to campaign on a promise to end an ongoing American war, and the peace movement helped put him into office.

In the years leading up to the 2008 election, there were at least 10 national antiwar demonstrations that drew more than 100,000 participants each. The movement helped Rep. Barbara Lee to rise from a lone war opponent in Congress to the leader of a bloc of as many as 200 representatives calling for an end to the wars in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Those combined forces — the peace movement and lawmakers who opposed continuing the Iraq war — created a political climate that enabled Obama to end the Iraq war over the objections of many in the Pentagon and most of his Republican presidential rivals.

Obama’s position on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shifted occasionally during the decade, illustrating the powerful conflict of forces in play. In 2008, he seemed ready to accept the advice of the establishment-oriented Iraq Study Group, which recommended leaving a residual force of 10,000 to 15,000 troops in Iraq. After being elected, though, he surprised everyone by announcing in early 2009 that all U.S. forces would be pulled out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

In recent months, the administration seemed to be considering leaving behind a few thousand troops to continue training Iraqi forces, but it abandoned the idea after failing to reach a deal with the Iraqi government on legal immunity for the American troops.

Some peace activists view the fact that thousands of advisors and contractors will remain in Iraq on the U.S. Embassy payroll as evidence of a secret plan to continue the war by other means. But the war is as over as a war can be, and the peace movement should celebrate. Removing troops from Iraq will save tens of billions of dollars a year, and it will also save lives.

Now the challenge will be to bring the war in Afghanistan and the drone strikes over the border in Pakistan to an end as quickly as possible. Obama may have convinced himself that these are not “dumb wars” carried out by mindless conservatives, but the PhDs at the Pentagon and the State Department cannot prevent a deepening calamity.

This year, Rep. Lee orchestrated a Democratic National Committee resolution calling for a more rapid Afghan withdrawal, but so far the president has committed only to handing over responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014. The peace movement should push for a faster pace.

And if the president finds himself nostalgic for battle, I’d remind him of some largely forgotten — and prophetic — words from his 2002 speech: “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East — the Saudis and the Egyptians — stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

“You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves of Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon or Mobil.”

Those are the kinds of battles even a peace movement could embrace.

The Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.

But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.

Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.

And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, “green” institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.

Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.

Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.

Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.

Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government “set aside” procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.

If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.

It’s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.

During the populist and progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.

And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.”

A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.

In September 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced a series of sweeping measures fundamentally reshaping the American nuclear arsenal. One of them called for all U.S. ground-force tactical nuclear weaponsto be returned from overseas bases and dismantled. Similarly, all tactical nuclear weapons on surface ships and attack submarines, as well as those associated with land-based naval aircraft, were to be withdrawn.

Eight days later, President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocated, declaring that similar steps would be taken for Soviet nuclear forces.

As a result of these so-called Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, or P.N.I.’s, thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides were ultimately taken out of service and in some cases eliminated altogether — all based on unilateral, parallel actions, and all without an arms control treaty.

Presidents Bush and Gorbachev succeeded in bypassing the time-consuming treaty process largely because of the momentous changes taking place at the time. A year earlier, Germany had been reunited and the Warsaw Pact dissolved. The month before the P.N.I.’s were announced, Soviet hard-liners had attempted a coup against the Gorbachev regime, raising serious questions about who was really in charge of the country and its vast nuclear weapons stockpile. Crises create opportunities for bold action; both presidents rightly seized the moment.

Now, 20 years later, the subject of reducing tactical nuclear weapons has again come to the fore. Signing the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in April 2010, President Obama announced that the United States intended to pursue further reductions in all categories of nuclear weapons — including, for the first time, tactical and nondeployed warheads. Voting to approve the treaty, the U.S. Senate called for negotiations with Russia to address the disparity in U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons and to secure and reduce those weapons in a verifiable manner.

The specific size of that disparity is a matter of debate. Neither the United States nor Russia has publicly disclosed the number and locations of the tactical nuclear weapons they possess.

Unofficial estimates vary widely. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies credits the United States with 500 operational warheads, with fewer than half of those deployed in Europe. The 2009 report of the bipartisan U.S. Strategic Posture Commission cited reports that Russia has 3,800 operational tactical nuclear warheads, plus numerous reserves. Although others offer different estimates, Russian weapons clearly outnumber U.S. weapons by an overwhelming margin.

As the United States and Russia continue to reduce long-range, strategic nuclear weapons to increasingly lower levels, this disparity in tactical nuclear weapons looms larger, with potentially serious implications for the overall nuclear balance between the two countries and the continued efficacy of the U.S. nuclear umbrella for its allies.

Moreover, Russian military doctrine and public statements by senior Russian officers suggest that Moscow places high value on a large tactical nuclear force for deterrence and potential escalation in military conflicts.

Negotiating a reduction in tactical and nondeployed nuclear weapons won’t be easy. There are serious technical challenges related to verifying compliance, and U.S.-Russian differences on a range of strategic issues, especially missile defenses, cloud the prospects for “getting to yes” in formal negotiations anytime soon.

There is, however, some unfinished business concerning the 20 year-old P.N.I.’s that both governments could take up now to help lay the foundation for future talks.

The U.S. government has been quite open about the steps taken to implement the P.N.I.’s. The day after Bush’s announcement, the Pentagon provided a very detailed account of the number and types of American tactical nuclear weapons deployed abroad and on ships. More recently, in May 2010, the United States made public the actual size of its nuclear weapons stockpile for each year since 1962, as well as the specific number of weapons dismantled annually since 1994.

The Russians have been far less forthcoming. As a result, serious questions have existed almost from the outset about Russian implementation of the P.N.I.’s, as well as the role of tactical nuclear weapons in their military strategy.

By way of contrast, the United States and Russia have grown accustomed to sharing considerable information about their longer-range strategic nuclear forces. For years, they have routinely exchanged and updated information on the disposition of retiring nuclear-capable bombers and missiles. Similar processes could be applied to the types and numbers of tactical nuclear systems affected by the P.N.I.’s. Lingering doubts about actual implementation would be reduced; the overall relationship would benefit from greater openness.

The next logical step would be for both countries to disclose, on a reciprocal basis, the location, types and numbers of tactical nuclear weapons that remain.

This should pose few problems for the United States and its allies; well-informed accounts of deployed American weapons have been around for years. But disclosing such data might prove difficult for Russia, given its penchant for secrecy and the political risks of confirming it does indeed possess a far greater number of these weapons.

If such difficulties can be overcome, these two steps would enhance transparency and mutual confidence. In the process, they could help pave the way to future negotiations on reducing both tactical and nondeployed nuclear weapons.

In his inaugural address, President Obama called on us to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” We agree. Now, to protect both, he must veto the National Defense Authorization Act that Congress is expected to pass this week.

This budget bill — which can be vetoed without cutting financing for our troops — is both misguided and unnecessary: the president already has the power and flexibility to effectively fight terrorism.

One provision would authorize the military to indefinitely detain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, including United States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be a thing of the past. Some claim that this provision would merely codify existing practice. Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States — and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.

A second provision would mandate military custody for most terrorism suspects. It would force on the military responsibilities it hasn’t sought. This would violate not only the spirit of the post-Reconstruction act limiting the use of the armed forces for domestic law enforcement but also our trust with service members, who enlist believing that they will never be asked to turn their weapons on fellow Americans. It would sideline the work of the F.B.I. and local law enforcement agencies in domestic counterterrorism. These agencies have collected invaluable intelligence because the criminal justice system — unlike indefinite military detention — gives suspects incentives to cooperate.

Mandatory military custody would reduce, if not eliminate, the role of federal courts in terrorism cases. Since 9/11, the shaky, untested military commissions have convicted only six people on terror-related charges, compared with more than 400 in the civilian courts.

A third provision would further extend a ban on transfers from Guantánamo, ensuring that this morally and financially expensive symbol of detainee abuse will remain open well into the future. Not only would this bolster Al Qaeda’s recruiting efforts, it also would make it nearly impossible to transfer 88 men (of the 171 held there) who have been cleared for release. We should be moving to shut Guantánamo, not extend it.

Having served various administrations, we know that politicians of both parties love this country and want to keep it safe. But right now some in Congress are all too willing to undermine our ideals in the name of fighting terrorism. They should remember that American ideals are assets, not liabilities.

As recent events underscore the growing Iranian nuclear threat, the Obama administration appears to be pivoting toward a policy of containment. The emphasis of its rhetoric has shifted from preventing an “unacceptable” nuclear Iran to “isolating” it. When coupled with recent weaker action against Iran, we fear it signals a tacit policy change.

A few days after his election, President Obama called a nuclear Iran “unacceptable.” In February 2009, he pledged “to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” By the next year, after a first round of negotiations with Iran had failed and the United Nations and Congress passed tougher sanctions, that pledge had softened. “The United States,” Obama said in July 2010, is “determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

The administration did not dwell publicly on Iran until the Oct. 11 announcement that it foiled an Iranian terrorist plot on U.S. soil — against the Saudi ambassador — and the International Atomic Energy Agency presented damning evidence of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The president’s response, a Nov. 21 statement announcing new sanctions, marked another subtle, yet significant, rhetorical shift. It downgraded the Iranian threat from “unacceptable” to one of the several “highest national security priorities.” Obama concluded: “Iran has chosen the path of international isolation. . . . [T]he United States will continue to find ways . . . to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime.” Yet isolation now appears a goal in its own right, uncoupled from the objective of preventing nuclear capabilities.

The same rhetoric was more explicit in a speech the next day by national security adviser Thomas Donilon. “Iran today,” he declared, “is fundamentally weaker, more isolated, more vulnerable and badly discredited than ever.” Left unsaid was that Iran’s nuclear program is more advanced, more capable and closer than ever to achieving nuclear weapons.

Despite citing Obama’s July 2010 speech, Donilon’s overwhelming theme was isolation. He used some form of the word “isolate” 17 times, “prevent” only three and “unacceptable” not once. Donilon’s thesis was: “We will continue to build a regional defense architecture that prevents Iran from threatening its neighbors. We will continue to deepen Iran’s isolation, regionally and globally.” Reminiscent of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2009 promise to extend a “defense umbrella” over Iran’s neighbors, Donilon’s comments reveal a focus on managing, rather than neutralizing, the Iranian threat.

Administration actions reflect this rhetorical shift. Initially, while pledging to prevent a nuclear Iran at all costs, the administration focused on diplomacy and then a dual-track approach, including sanctions. The latter reached its apogee in mid-2010 with tough U.S. and international sanctions. The administration has not sufficiently enforced these sanctions, nor pressed for full-fledged sanctions against Iran’s central bank, a move backed this month by all 100 senators. Faced with international resistance, the administration’s resolve weakened, and it failed to persuade China, Russia and other countries to support measures firm enough to potentially compel Iran to cease its nuclear program.

Moreover, the administration’s lack of support for a military option undermines its commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran and undercuts its ability to achieve broader international support for sanctions. Despite repeated assertions that they are keeping “all options on the table,” officials seem to be conditioning Americans to view the prospect of a military strike negatively. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his predecessor, Robert Gates, have effectively ruled out U.S. military action by constantly highlighting its risks. Twice recently, Panetta emphasized a strike’s “unintended consequences.” He listed five categories of them in a Dec. 2 speech in which he also referred, many times, to some form of “isolation.” This suggests the administration isn’t prepared to prevent a nuclear Iran at all costs. Nor has it made any credible preparations, such as military exercises and deployments, for a strike.

The administration’s alternative to prevention — isolation — implies containment. But a nuclear Iran could not be contained as the Soviet Union was. Containment requires credibility, a resource United States will have drained if, after numerous warnings to the contrary, we permit Tehran to cross the nuclear threshold. And no matter how isolated, a nuclear Iran is likely to spark a destabilizing cascade of proliferation. Despite its own isolation, North Korea shares its nuclear technology with its terrorist proxies. Iran might, too. Tehran’s enemies, led by Saudi Arabia, would seek safety behind their own nuclear deterrent. And Iran and Israel, as former defense undersecretary Eric Edelman has argued, would have incentives to initiate a nuclear first strike, potentially dragging the United States into the conflict. All this would severely diminish U.S. influence and drive up oil prices.

The Obama administration needs to regain its clarity and refocus its rhetoric and action toward preventing a nuclear Iran. It should do so, if necessary, by “all elements of American power.”