Terrestrial carbon (including trees, soil and peat) is a critical part of any response to climate change — up to 25% of the solution by one estimate. But keeping trees in the ground has proven a tricky issue right across the globe.

To deal with the challenge, the Terrestrial Carbon Group has come up with an incentive-based system designed to work under a range of climate mitigation models and which could be implemented even if states fail to agree to an approach at Copenhagen.

The convenor of the Terrestrial Carbon Group, Ralph Ashton, spoke with me yesterday about the group's model. The podcast of his and Warwick McKibbin's speech at the Wednesday Lowy Lunch can be downloaded from our website. 

This is a strange one. Al Qaeda has committed countless atrocities over the last couple of decades, yet Time Magazine's Joe Klein thinks Zawahiri's racial epithet is going to make a difference to how they are perceived:

The Zawahiri letter is one of the first real indications we have of the new international state of affairs...The terrorists are now exposed as racists, on top of everything else. We have many miles to go in Afghanistan and the northern and western precincts of Pakistan, and more blood to shed--and innumerable ways to screw up, since no one has ever gotten Afghanistan right--but the wind seems to have shifted slightly and is now at our back.

Was there ever really any doubt that al Qaeda is composed of troglodyte bigots?

It seems to me the key to winning the public relations battle against al Qaeda is not to convince the world that they are bad, but to convince the world that they don't matter. Inflating the group's significance has been a counterproductive strategy. So instead of making pious statement about al Qaeda's brand of evil, mockery might be a better strategy, or just silence.

Alan Dupont is right to remind readers of The Australian that we are still waiting for the Government to release its National Security Statement. The rumour I heard is that the PM was ready to launch the paper at the National Press Club on 15 October, but the financial crisis intervened, and he devoted his speech to the stimulus package instead. But that was over a month ago — what's the hold up now?

Guest blogger: Peter McCawley is a Visiting Fellow at the Indonesia Project, ANU, and former Dean of the ADB Institute, Tokyo.

As the economic crisis worsens, and hot on the heels of the latest attempt by political leaders to focus on the problem at the G20 meeting in Washington, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has written an op-ed for the New York Times.

But it's unlikely to do much to bolster confidence. He still looks as if he is floundering. More...

Iraq is one step closer to regaining its sovereignty and seeing the complete withdrawal of Coalition troops. This week, the Iraqi cabinet overwhelmingly approved a Status of Armed Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the US, ending nervous speculation that Iraqi lawmakers would let the 31 December deadline pass in favour of a renegotiating with a new US president. As usual in Iraqi politics, a resolution was reached in the nick of time and after tortured to and fro over the conditions. 

The approved draft calls for a 3-year timetable for withdrawal — meaning all troops must be out by 2011. This is a serious US concession. The Bush Administration repeatedly rejected strict timetables and insisted on complete command of its operations, control over Iraq’s borders, extrajudicial jurisdiction over its troops and detention of Iraqi citizens. In the final agreement, the US gets none of those things, leading many analysts to speculate that the 'client state' relationship between Iraq and the US is over.

The SOFA must pass through one final hurdle before its final passage. It must be approved by a  majority in the Iraqi parliament. Though Iraqi lawmakers who support the agreement are confident they have the numbers, there is reluctance to present it to parliament without a national consensus on the agreement. 

Sadrist lawmakers object to the pact in principle; they want US troops out of Iraq sooner rather than three years from now. And ironically, Sunni parties, the Coalition's erstwhile foes, are reluctant to see Coalition troops draw down for fear that Iraq succumbs to Iranian influence. Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's pre-eminent Shia cleric, has offered his tacit approval for the document, but he too states that all elements of Iraqi society must approve of the security agreement for it to succeed.  More...

• The NSW State Government cannot find the money for a proper Sydney metro. Baghdad authorities seem to be more visionary...
• 007, anti-imperialist: '(Daniel) Craig's Bond is an intimation of the sort of Britain that could have been, if Tony Blair had stood up to Bush...'
• Via Public Opinion, a thoughtful review of Tom Friedman's latest book on the coming 'green revolution'.
• And speaking of green revolutions, this looks like another bold move from Governor Schwarzenegger. Obama is also talking tough.

Will Clegg writes on how to regulate a financial system that Ken Henry described as 'so complex it defies understanding':

It would appear that 'emergent behaviours' (inherently unpredictable behaviour emerging from within very complex systems) are often the source of systemic volatility in financial markets. The mechanisms which translated an increased default rate in the sub-prime mortgage market into a systemic global liquidity and credit crisis, able to undermine international aggregate demand and the solvency of sovereign entities, were not predicted by people capable of (1) constructing a compelling analysis and (2) gaining adequate official attention for their views.

Similarly, the implications of any particular set of rules that might have prevented the sub-prime crisis cannot easily be estimated. The very complexity of our financial system, and the disaggregation of power within it, is one of the key reasons global leaders are emerging from the G20 meeting with such modest reform agendas. Will new rules produce public failures? What will their effects be on allocative efficiency? Will they generate new, disruptive incentives for regulatory arbitrage? Far easier, it would seem, for governments to defend the status quo and underpin an inherently volatile system with state guarantees. More...

Coming on top of recent reports that China is close to reaching a deal with Russia for carrier-based fighters, the Financial Times writes that a Chinese Major General, while not commenting on China's carrier ambitions specifically, has made  'the defence ministry’s most forthright statement yet on the issue':

“The navy of any great power . . . has the dream to have one or more aircraft carriers,” he said in the interview, which aides said was the first arranged by the defence ministry on its own premises. “The question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier.”

Major General Qian Lihua goes on to argue that China would use its carriers for offshore defence rather than global reach. Translated, that means they could be used in a Taiwan War scenario, but not to project power globally like the US does with its carriers.

As the FT says, such assurances are unlikely to reassure many, and they are unconvincing anyway, since carriers are probably not that useful to China in a Taiwan scenario. The island is well within range of Chinese air bases, and if China wanted to extend its air 'umbrella' over Taiwan, it would be cheaper to invest in air-to-air refuellers than carriers.

That doesn't mean we should leap to the opposite conclusion that China is racing toward a naval fleet to challenge the US. It will take China years (perhaps more than a decade) to actually build the carriers and escort ships, and to have crews trained to use them. They are only just starting this process by slowly refurbishing a half-finished ex-Soviet carrier (photo below courtesy of Sinodefence.com), which might be used as  training vessel.

So what we will see initially is a fleet similar in capability to that of France or the UK, rather than a competitor to the US.  Still, that would be a massive leap forward for a navy that was, until the 90s, a rather antiquated coastal defence force.

I was interested to read today that four Australian judges have been shortlisted to sit on two of the UN's new administrative tribunals, set up to replace the utterly shambolic former system.

I once interned in the UN Panel of Counsel which represented UN staff in administrative disputes under the old regime. On my first day, I was asked to help with the annual office spring clean, which consisted of checking the names of the hundreds of open case files lining the room from floor to ceiling against the New York Times obituaries from the previous year. That day we made short work of at least part of the giant backlog as we stacked up the cases of deceased former UN staff. 

Strangely, UN personnel gave the impression of being slightly demoralised when we told them they would need to wait around 25 years to have their case resolved and that if they were really lucky they could expect a few thousand dollars in compensation for being shot, harassed, underpaid or the like. That's why the noble sounding resolutions establishing this new system of internal justice are good news for abused UN staff. 

But one of the biggest obstacles to justice in the past was the significant financial implications of compensating so many staff who had been so poorly managed/abused for so long. States, it seemed, were reluctant to cough up for UN managerial incompetence. I am curious to see how the new justice regime deals with the issue of compensation, and how states respond.

After the revelation last week about Iran's diplomatic intervention in the Pacific, I was interested to find out a little more Middle Eastern financial links to the South Pacific and environs. East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao’s recent visit to Kuwait, for example, has highlighted a very low-key but sporadically active approach by Gulf nations to aid and investment  in our region. Prior to Gusmao’s visit, Ramos Horta made two visits to the country, ostensibly to seek development funds.

Through Kuwait’s overseas aid vehicle, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, other regional countries have sought development funds at concessional rates. Not that we are talking big sums. Since the early 1980s, for example, the Solomon Islands has received a little over $11 million. Western Samoa was another even smaller aid recipient over 20 years ago.

The PNG Government has sought investment from the Gulf, with an Abu Dhabi investment body to fund a stake in a Liquid Natural Gas project. However, it’s unlikely that PNG will become a tourist destination for Gulf Arabs any time soon, after Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal’s 15-minute tour of Port Moresby last year.

• The Interpreter is lucky to have one of the world's leading Burma experts guest blog for us occasionally. Today, Andrew Selth has an op-ed in The Age arguing that it is not realistic to try to remove the regime — we should put our energies toward helping the Burmese people.
• New Mandala is right to insist that the Government do more to help Harry Nicolaides, detained in Thailand over  book that sold ten copies.
• Five myths about the US election. Key points: the GOP is not dead, the Democrats do not have cart blanche, and the Palin pick was not the catastrophe you think it was.
• Before Mark Corcoran became a foreign correspondent with the ABC, he served in the Royal Australian Navy. Here he tells of his encounters with Vietnamese boat people as a sailor and a journalist.

The main storyline coming out of the first G20 leaders meeting was that it marks the end of the G7 (or G8) era and replaces it with a new inter-regional, North-South body, and one that includes Australia.

APEC also made this claim to inclusive novelty when it was set up 19 years ago.  Yet, the inaugural meeting of the leaders of the G-20 is eclipsing the upcoming APEC leaders meeting in Peru. Who has heard mention of it despite it being this week and despite the fact that Australia created it, under the last Labor Government, and hosted it last year? More...

I've never worked in finance, yet I found this oddly familiar (H/t Sullivan):

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. More...

Chris Skinner adds some valuable context to my brief remarks about Treasury Secretary Ken Henry's observations on financial complexity:

Ken Henry identified three dimensions of the global financial system:

1. Complexity and its cost;
2. Risk and uncertainty; and
3. Regulation and governance.

All of these are applicable, in the same way, to any interconnected large scale system. His comments could apply just as well to the internet, the international criminal intelligence system or the command and control system of military forces. There are significant commonalities in these three dimensions, and that should be the source of insight to better manage the system. More...

If it wasn't creepy enough that Clancy predicted the use of passenger planes to destroy iconic American buildings in Debt of Honour (1994), how about this bit of news:

In an official lunch with foreign diplomats, Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson shocked neighboring Nordic countries with inviting Russia to take use of the strategically important airbase. Foreign diplomats hardly believed what they heard when the Icelandic president said that his country needs “new friends” and that Russia should be invited to take use of the old U.S. airbase of Keflavik.

Clancy fans will recall that in the techno-thriller Red Storm Rising, Soviet forces invade Iceland and use Keflavik to stage air attacks against naval convoys crossing the Atlantic to supply NATO, which is battling it out against the Warsaw Pact in Europe.

In a nice modern twist on that Cold War tale, Russia did not have to use anything as crude as brute force to get this generous offer from Iceland. It just had to offer Iceland a loan.

Photo by Flickr user smperris, used under a Creative Commons license. H/t to NOSINT for the Iceland story.

• China wouldn't be increasing its troop presence on its North Korea border if it thought all was well in Pyongyang.
• Last week I argued that even if US automakers are developing greener cars, that's no reason to bail them out. Josh Marshall thinks they should be bailed out, for that very reason. But Matt Yglesias shoots Josh down.
• An Australian shipbuilder has won a major US Navy contract.
• George Packer interviews Austalian counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen about the war in Afghanistan, which Kilcullen describes as winnable, just.
• Last week I asked why Steve Clemons had removed a post carrying the now-widespread rumour that Obama had approached Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State. Here's Clemons' explanation, and an interesting afterthought: '...this is EXACTLY what George W. Bush did to his most serious rival...He gave Powell Secretary of State and then began to box him up.'
• New Atlanticist looks like a pretty useful blog.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner was right to complain about the ridiculous body language interpretation the media has lately been indulging in over one 'frosty' greeting. Yes, maybe Bush was snubbing Prime Minister Rudd over the leaked phone call affair. But maybe he'd just felt a touch of indigestion, or an aid had whispered in his ear that his favourite football team had lost. Who knows?

It is beneath the dignity of a proud nation to place so much stock in these tiny, insignificant gestures from a foreign leader. Isn't that right, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith? Oh, wait:

Now it's unambiguously the case that it's in Australia's national interest to continue with our alliance with the United States and Prime Minister Rudd and President Elect Obama have spoken by telephone; one of the first 10 or dozen foreign leaders to have a phone conversation with him.

Later in the same interview:

And those people who are suggesting that somehow such a report could have some lasting implications, I think a) have been proven wrong with the very speedy way in which Prime Minister Rudd has spoken to president elect Obama. And so for as one of 10 or 12 leaders to do so to date...

 And in parliament on 11 November:

Last time I looked, President-elect Obama had a telephone conversation with the Prime Minister as one of his first 10 conversations with world leaders.

In breaking news, President Bush did sign Kevin Rudd's menu after the G20 dinner, but his inscription apparently just read 'All the best', whereas President Sarkozy's said 'Thanks for coming, Sarki! Maybe we can whittle this forum down a bit in future and get some real work done!' The Prime Minister's office could not be reached for comment.

So the financial collapse is now more damaging than the 9/11 attacks,  at least in terms of retail sales.

We have discussed previously the possibility of terrorists launching attacks against financial systems, and when terrorists hear analysis like this from Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, they can only be encouraged:

The array of financial instruments deployed within the global financial system has become so complex that it defies understanding. It is not just that nobody understands the whole system; that's hardly surprising. What is worrying, though, is the very large number of senior finance sector executives who don't appear to understand the consequences of even their own decisions.

If we don't understand it, how on earth can we protect it?

Such has been the scale of the global financial crisis that it is increasingly assumed it will mark a watershed for the world economy. In particular, many observers seem to see it as heralding the decline of the West and the rise of the rest. That might well be turn out to be the case, but it seems to me far from a foregone conclusion.

At first sight, the argument that the financial crisis is accelerating the decline of US economic predominance and simultaneously stimulating the rise in relative power of the emerging world seems pretty straightforward. After all, the epicentre of the crisis has been the US, and much of the fallout has been concentrated around the Atlantic economies. Certainly, there can be little doubt that the blow to US prestige and credibility arising from the effective collapse of its financial system is substantial. Not to mention the looming cost in terms of foregone growth and increased government debt. 

Then there is the grinding of teeth occasioned in East Asia (and elsewhere) at the marked difference in the economic policies now being followed by Washington as opposed to those it propounded during the 1997-98 crisis. The decision to turn to the G-20 also reinforces the idea of a diffusion in global economic power. All of which seems a reasonable interpretation of events. And yet... More...

This is usually the time of the week I post a Friday Funny. But this clip isn't really 'funny'. It is fun and quirky, though, and it will make you think, so what else was I going to call it?

It also fits nicely with the green stimulus theme we've been debating this week. Have a good weekend.

(H/t Wilkinson.)

Kien Choong writes in response to my post and Fergus' post, both of which critiqued The Economist:

The Economist leader is right to say that the US government should not be subsidising renewables per se. However, this is not to say there is no room for government funding to correct 'market failure'. The examples cited by the Economist blog (eg. infrastructure investments, smart electrical grid, subsidies to basic research) are projects that may be subject to market failure. Thanks for raising the issue in your blog.  The public discourse around government subsidy of carbon reduction measures needs to be more sophisticated. 

This raises a small correction I wanted to make to Fergus' post. Fergus is, on the whole, correct to say that the US car industry has been resistant to innovation and fuel efficiency. But GM has made a bold move in this direction recently with the development of the battery-powered Chevrolet Volt. Read this Atlantic Monthly profile to see just how important this car is for the company and for a post-petroleum automobile industry.

This raises the question of whether there is more justification for bailing out GM because they are pursuing environmentally friendlier vehicles. I would still say 'no', for the reason Kiem cites. Perhaps GM's bankruptcy would put back the development of electric cars by a while, but there is lots of competition in this field, and perhaps GM's design was not the best one anyway. The US government is not in a good position to make such judgments; the market is.

Unfortunately, though, if GM does go under we would be denied a fairly attractive electric car...

Photo by Flickr user gmeurope, used under a Creative Commons license.

This weekend’s meeting of the G-20 leaders has been hailed as marking a new era for international governance. At long last, it seems, the time of the anachronistic G7 has passed, and the global architecture is being brought closer into line with the underlying realities of the world economy. 

Back in 2006, the year Australia hosted G-20 finance ministers in Melbourne, my colleague Malcolm Cook and I wrote a paper called Geeing up the G-20, which argued that the G-20 should replace the G7 as the steering committee for the world economy. So I view the elevation of the grouping as welcome news. Indeed, it has gone further than Malcolm and I hoped back then, when we thought the prospects for an L-20 (a G-20 leaders meeting) were poor. Which just goes to show the difference the worst international financial crisis since the 1930s can make...

What should we expect from this weekend’s gathering? After all the initial excitement about the possibility of forging a new Bretton Woods agreement, expectations seem to have receded somewhat in recent days. More...

Awhile ago, there was a debate on The Interpreter and the ANU’s East Asia Forum about the pros and cons of the latest deal struck between Washington and Pyongyang and then presented to the other members of the Six-Party Talks. I focussed on the potential strategic cons, while East Asia Forum retorted with the supposed pros.

Alas, for the supporters of the latest deal, pithily called the ‘get real’ school of diplomacy by East Asia Forum's Peter Drysdale, it appears Pyongyang believes it has reached a much different and more favourable agreement with Christopher Hill than the one American officials told us about. Basically, North Korea is saying it only agreed to what it has already offered before, nothing new, and only after it gets all the fuel it has been promised for progress it has not followed through on.

If this deal really has kept North Korea 'on track to denuclearisation', it seems that Pyongyang continues to be walking backwards on this track and not forward.

• Five reasons why we shouldn't expect too much from the G20 summit. I guess a sixth would be George Bush's lame-ducktitude.
• The NY Times reports rather gleefully on a Sarah Palin-related hoax that revealed 'the shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.' Fine, but the blogosphere is far more efficient at correcting mistakes than the traditional media.
• Superb photo essay of American troops in action in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. (H/t Peace like a River.)
• Awful, awful, awful: Somali girl raped and stoned to death.
• Here are seven pages of questions you need to answer if you want to work in the Obama Administration.
• Putin tells Sarkozy he wants to 'hang Saakashvili by the balls'. And the conversation only gets better from there... (H/t Passport.)

Shiro Armstong at East Asia Forum has misunderstood the point I tried to make yesterday about President Bush and the G20. I can see how he might, so let me try to state it more clearly.

I did not mean to argue that Bush was responsible for getting China into the G20. What I meant to say was that, by convening the G20 to address the financial crisis, Bush had potentially made an important move toward setting in place a concert of powers for the 21st century.

Shiro ends his post by saying that 'George W is not the one calling the shots anymore'. I think that's an exaggeration, but it still gets at the point I was clumsily trying to make. By choosing the G20 rather than the G7 or some other institution, Bush has acknowledged that China and other developing economies are going to be critical to resolving the current financial mess. And if the G20 performs well in this instance, we may just see it develop as an important institution for peacefully managing the new global order. 

If all that comes to pass (and that's a lot of 'ifs'), we might owe President Bush a debt of gratitude. That's all I meant.

Associate Professor Ian Wing writes:

I couldn’t agree more with your comments about the latest Cordesman appearance on the 7.30 Report. Cordesman was incorrect when he spruiked the benefits of the US President being at the ‘apex’ of US intelligence. Cordesman’s claims are generally way off the mark anyway – especially on Iraq and Afghanistan where, despite apparently sounding critical of the Bush Administration, he has consistently under-estimated our adversaries. 

The best thing Obama could do is keep the CIA and Dick Cheney’s other ‘groupthinked’ minions at arms length. Instead, Obama should receive his advice from a range of expert intelligence sources while tempering that advice with insights gained from others – area specialists, military experts, foreign intelligence services, journalists, businessmen, academics, activists etc. Perhaps if Bush had followed this advice we wouldn’t be in such a strategic mess.

Tehran and Honiara have little in common, but as Taiwan found out a long time ago, the Solomon Islands’ vote in the UN General Assembly is worth as much as that of the US. Hence the interest Iran has started to show in the welfare of Solomon Islanders. The two countries recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which may eventually lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations.

The Solomons Foreign Minister William Haomae recently returned from an official visit to Iran, where he led a delegation to discuss areas of future cooperation with the Islamic Republic. And even more recently, the Ministry of Health has left open the possibility of Iran funding the travel of Solomons students to Cuba for medical training (if only North Korea could get involved we'd have a trifecta of evil in the South Pacific).

So what does this all mean for the region? Iran’s revolutionary form of Islamic government is hardly going to find any adherents in Malaita or Guadalcanal, while the Solomons Government is grateful for aid money that is likely to come with only one string attached – a pro-Iran vote in the UN if and when required. Of more immediate interest is whether Iran’s largesse extends to any more of our Pacific neighbours, if the Solomons-Iran link proves fruitful for both parties.

...as I've been laid low by a cold.

Actually, it's a bit more serious than that. I don't wish to shock you, gentle reader, as I know you are concerned for my welfare. But I am, in fact, suffering from...gulp...a man cold.

Guest blogger: David Knoll researches US foreign policy in Washington, DC, and served as research assistant for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s last book, ‘Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West.’

During the US presidential campaign Barack Obama pledged to shift the foreign policy focus in Washington away from Iraq and toward the good fight in Afghanistan. Dealing with the safe haven that militants enjoy across the border in Pakistan is the key to achieving any sort of realistic stability in Afghanistan, yet even a fairly detailed search of Obama’s website does not reveal his Pakistan policy. A run through of his thoughts on Pakistan is therefore helpful.

The Bush Administration has a quiet understanding with the Pakistani Government to carry out US airstrikes on high value targets in Pakistani territory. The US has conducted 18 such strikes in Pakistan since August. An Obama Administration would probably continue the airstrike-only policy for the immediate future. Ground incursions by US troops seem to be off the table for now.

So how will the Obama Administration’s Pakistan policy differ? More...

Aviation journalist Stephen Trimble's blog, The DEW Line, has been an invaluable resource for following the controversy over the performance of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). I missed ABC's Lateline on Monday night, so thanks to Stephen for directing me to their latest report on the JSF.

It's more of the same: JSF critics (Carlo Kopp) line up to say it isn't good enough to beat the Russian Sukhoi fighters being purchased by our regional neighbours, and defenders like Lockheed Martin's Tom Burbage say it aint so.

My main complaint about this is one I've made before: that in treating this purely as a comparison between JSF and Russian Sukhois, Lateline is missing the bigger picture. There are a number of factors that go to create a military capability — maintenance, training, intelligence, command and control, mass. In terms of air power, Australia holds a big regional advantage in all those areas, but one-for-one performance comparisons account for none of them.

One other grumble: reporter Conor Duffy claims that 'With Asia spending on arms like never before, the right decision on the JSF is critical.' Duffy means to imply that we had better decide NOW in case we FALL BEHIND!!! And that's where, despite their differences, JSF critics like Kopp and JSF boosters like Burbage have common cause: they both want Australia to buy more jets. There's no one to argue the case that maybe we could get away with buying fewer JSFs and/or extending the life of our current fleet.

Dominic Meagher at East Asia Forum is far less kind to the Bush Administration's record on China than I was yesterday. Dominic's critique puts me in mind of this James Fallows anecdote, the moral of which is that, had it not been for 9/11, the same neoconservative faction that created the war in Iraq would have fomented a conflict with China.

We're never going to know if that's true, but because John McCain had so many of the same foreign policy instincts as President Bush, I argued some months ago that the danger of conflict with China would be higher under McCain than under Obama. Hugh White, some readers will recall, disagreed. He argued that, as a tough Republican, McCain had the political capital to 'do a Nixon' and create a sustainable modus vivendi with China.

What interests me, however, is the possibility that Bush may already have done this. It is way too early to say what will come of the G20 as an institution, but if, as Graeme Dobell speculates, it becomes a modern equivalent of the Concert of Europe, we may have George W Bush to thank for the decisive move that  makes China an active participant in the global order rather than a resentful and unsatisfied outsider.

According to WorldPublicOpinion.org, 74% of Americans believe it is the government's responsibity to ensure that people's basic food needs are met. That's in the home of free enterprise; in the twenty other countries surveyed, the figure is even higher.

I doubt this means Americans want the Department of Agriculture to create collective farms. In fact, most of the world has learnt that such basic needs are far better met by efficient open markets. And it's pretty clear that consumers around the world like the greater variety and higher nutrition offered by market-based food production.

So what's going on here? I reckon there's a clue in the survey question: 'Do you think the [country’s] government should be responsible for ensuring that its citizens can meet their basic need for food, OR do you think that is NOT the government’s responsibility?'

Perhaps that word 'basic' stuck in respondents' minds, and they took the question to mean, 'do you think governments should allow their people to starve?'

One further note on the Cordesman interview I linked to below. I take issue with this statement, which Cordesman made in response to a question about Obama's likely attitude to Iran's nuclear program:

A president who is the Commander in Chief operates at the apex of the American Intelligence Community, its military planning capabilities, its diplomacy. A candidate talks, really, in terms of sound bites. And that transition, which began with the first real intelligence briefing that the President elect got, which was all of 48 hours ago, is really what's going to determine his attitudes.

Whether Cordesman intended it or not, it sounds like he's saying that, with the pesky and distracting democratic process now safely out of the way, the national security bureaucracy can get on with the real work of securing the US.

But Obama's own ideas and convictions, and those of his advisers, should continue to play a decisive role. The intelligence and diplomatic communities are not all-knowing, and they are unlikely to offer blinding new insights that totally undermine everything Obama has learnt up to now about Iran. If they did, wouldn't they have solved the problem by now? 

In an interview with the 7.30 Report last night, Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggested the US is considering an even bigger Afghanistan troop surge than President-Elect Obama has called for up to now:

We don't have enough troops, it won't be solved by turning to our allies, we can't create Afghan forces that quickly. They've raised the requirement to some 20 to 25,000 reinforcements, they've talked about three brigades not one, some have gone as far as five.

My understanding is that Obama wants up to 15,000 more troops, so this would be a substantial additional effort.

By the way, I had all sorts of curly Afghanistan questions planned for Defence Minister Fitzgibbon, but his office just called me to cancel our interview. Not happy, Joel.

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,

They leave their trenches, going over the top,

While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,

Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

— Siegried Sassoon, as quoted in E. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes.