Jonathan Stevenson says Obama should follow the Ireland model in Somalia.

Paul Ingrassia says the Big Three are already bankrupt.

Philip Stephens tells Obama to heed the NIC's warning of U.S. decline.

The Economist charts growing worries over deflation.

Tom Engelhardt it will take the U.S. military years to leave Iraq.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

Garry Kasparov tells Obama to look into Russia's interests, not Putin's soul.

Lionel Beehner & Vikram J. Singh say foreign policy ain't personal.

Anne Applebaum says it's time to realize Georgia's Saakashvili is no saint.

Peter Boone & Simon Johnson think TARP needs to be rethought.

Ginny Hill warns that Somali pirates are destabilizing neighboring Yemen, too.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

Martin Wolf says a depreciating U.K. sterling beats a stagnated euro.

Willem Buiter disagrees. Sterling is in crisis and should peg to the euro.

The Wall Street Journal wants a tough, new pirate policy to prevent more thuggery.

Simon Jenkins warns against moving a failed Iraq strategy to failing Afghanistan.

Margaret Wertheim says we're lucky to have sanitary toilets. Many don't.

(Today is World Toilet Day.)

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

At a time when no other rumored cabinet picks are talking, that's just what Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel did this morning at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. The Nebraska senator gave a speech entitled "Toward a Bipartisan Foreign Policy."

So first, why is Hagel talking? Marc Ambinder thinks this means Hagel is out of contention for a spot in the Obama cabinet. Michael Abramowitz still thinks Hagel is a "live possibility" for the cabinet -- and others consider secretary of defense the best option for the decorated Vietnam veteran.

The senator makes the GOP wish list for the cabinet, and that might mean more than we think given Obama's promises of bipartisanship -- especially since Hagel traveled to Iraq with Obama this summer and has broken with his party on the war.

From his comments today, I think he could still be in the running for a post. His remarks -- decidedly big-picture, painted a vision of foreign policy and domestic political cooperation for the next administration. A few key points:

• Today, the senator said, is "one of those historic confluences" where the world will have to "reorder, restructure, and redefine" the world order.
• Senator Hagel linked despair and desperation to much of the world's insecurity, suggesting that "quality of life and standards of living" were the foundations of stability in a world where nearly five sixths of the population live in developing countries.
• Hagel demonstrated a clear esteem for international institutions such as the United Nations, stating that he believes those bodies will be even more important in the next 25 years than in the past. The world, as he put it, is more interconnected, complicated, and "combustible."
• When asked about development, Senator Hagel praised Defense Secretary Robert Gates for his speeches throughout the country on the need to take militarization out of foreign policy. "Bob Gates understands this better than anybody at the White House," he said.

Sounds like a good pitch for succeeding Gates at the Pentagon to me.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Impressive. Somali pirates have now succesfully hijacked a Saudi oil tanker -- their biggest, though apparently not their first, such vessel. A crew of 25 is on board. This is just one of several pirate incidents this week.

Even more impressive? All this goes on under the watch of U.S., Russian, NATO, Indian, and now South Korean and EU ships. 

The world's largest shipping line, Odfjell SE, owns the ransomed tanker and now says that its shipping route will change -- steering around Africa's cape rather than across the perilous Gulf of Aden. Since 4 percent of the world's oil supply passes through the pirate-infested route, a change of direction would be no small shift. Two million barrels of oil were lost to pirates today, and now shipping costs -- and probably oil prices, to some extent -- will go up.

Under normal circumstances, the world would be pressuring the Somali government to reign in the renegade ship-lifters. But that government is no shape to do so. It's falling apart as Islamic insurgent groups gain terrority.

I can think of a few pirates who are smiling right now.

Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has erupted again over the last several weeks, continuing an ongoing war that has left more than five million people dead. But now, as many times before in Congo's rather dreary history, the region is getting sucked in.

Human Rights Watch reports today that Ugandan rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army are now pillaging northeastern Congo. Zimbabwean and Angolan troops are reported to be involved, too. Bravo to Angolan peacekeepers, who have volunteered for the ongoing U.N. mission there, but the whole thing harkens ominously to the late 1990s, a time when Angolan troops supported the Congolese government against Zimbabwean and Namibian troops in country.

In other words, neighbors of this conflict cannot be assumed innocent.

The stakes are high. Even in comparison to the last decade of Congo's history, today's conflict is worrisome. An already desperate humanitarian situation is now dire, as this week's photo essay demonstrates. UNHCR already reports that 250,000 people have fled their homes in the last two months, bringing the total displaced to 800,000. Camps are unsafe, and UNHCR is trying desperately to relocate 60,000 civilians from the front lines. At least 1,000 cases of cholera have been reported in over a month's time -- countless more no doubt go unrecorded.

The big picture: power-sharing is eroding in Zimbabwe, South African politics are a mess, and the West is in no mood to help. A regional conflict in Congo is the last thing Africa needs.

Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Taro Aso says Japan's experience can serve as a how-to-guide for fixing finance.

David Satter advises Obama to take a firm stand on untrustable Russia.

Ha-Joon Chang makes the rare economist's case for protectionism.

Patrick Bond says Obama-advisor Paul Volcker is bad for Africa. 

Keith Johnson thinks OPEC supply cuts might actually send prices lower.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

It must have been a century or so in coming. On Nov. 11, the British Royal Navy got into a gunfight with pirates off the coast of Yemen that left three dead on the pirating side. After circling the Somali vessel, known as a dhow, the British launched a small assault vessel. The pirates shot, and the British fired back. In the end, the Somali pirates gave in -- and members of the British Navy boarded the small ship with the pirates' reluctant permission. Quite the spectacle!

Just like times of old, leave it to the British Navy to relieve Somali pirates of the undue hubris they have acquired over the last several months. Still, 12 vessels currently being held hostage, which means 259 crew members are in pirate control.

But Somalia -- not just its seas -- is also looking more alarming by the day. The militant wing of the Islamic Courts, a religious-political group that ran Somalia briefly in 2006, is gaining territory and look set to reject any attempts at peace that the transition government hopes for. Pirates -- with tenuous links to the insurgents -- are keeping much-needed food shipments out of the country. The refugees fleeing to Kenya indicate a deeper panic about an increasingly violent and desperate place. 

One pirate boat is now neutralized. Hundreds to go. And then, if only the British could bring their royal justice inland...

Photo: Ministry of Defense

Qiao Yu says the Democrats need China to fund their spending priorities.

Business Day wants to see more monitors and peacekeepers in Congo, ASAP.

Sebastian Mallaby proposes the IMF run an insurance scheme for crises.

Israel Harel chides those using Yitzak Rabin's death to stoke political division.

Barack Obama opens up about his faith in a reposted interview from 2004.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

After hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work, the first malaria vaccine is ready to test. Sixteen thousand children are set to be vaccinated in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania -- African countries where malaria is a serious problem. 

Preliminary tests have shown that this particular vaccine -- one of several candidates funded partly through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- is 30 to 50 percent effective. Some worry those rates are too low to make a big impact.

But there is a strong case to make for any amount of effectiveness at all. Malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, is no small matter in countries where the disease is prevalent. Many experts argue that the economic impact in endemic countries contributes greatly to underdevelopment -- taking workers out of the workplace and reducing childrens' attentiveness in school.

And although malaria is a treatable condition, the best medicines are sometimes too expensive for poor victims of the disease. There is also a problem of quality: A recent study found that medicines in six African countries are either diluted or inneffective. And since there are multiple, constantly adapting strains of the disease, resistance to drugs is common. Quinine and chloroquine, used to treat malaria throughout colonial times, now have virtually no impact on the disease.

So, even if it's not 100 percent effective, a vaccine is a dream for public-health experts struggling to keep up with the changing disease that kills more than a million people every year and leaves many more sick. Here's hoping it works.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

The Washington Post says new arrests in Burma crush any hope of freedom.

Masoud Barzani claims Kurd-granted oil contracts don't threaten Iraqi unity.

Gideon Rachman thinks the upcoming financial summit will bring little change.

Roger McDermott says naval disasters exemplify Russia's weakness.

Jonathan Freedland predicts Obama's foreign policy as hawkish but humble.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

The Boston Globe says the United States must shun Georgia if it started the August war.

The Wall Street Journal thinks Hank Paulson should let private investors clean up AIG.

Jamshid Ahmadi warns that signs of a liberal Iran are only skin deep.

Powerline blog counsels Obama to cut ambiguous talk with foreign leaders.

Daniel Yergin says recession might see oil prices down and green energy up.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

It's not just Brazilian politicians and gun dealers who are riding the Obama wave to success. Rebel groups are getting down on the action. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) a rebel group in Nigeria, writes this today to its e-mail list of correspodents:

We are being informed that the JTF [an army taskforce], still reeling from the humiliating defeat of the first oil war and the recent embarrassment in the hands of trainee militants in Bayelsa and Rivers [two states in Nigeria] are planning to launch an attack on two major MEND camps in Delta and Bayelsa with all they have got.

This will be a big mistake as it will lead to another oil war (Hurricane Obama) where we are sure of a "landslide" victory.

Hurricane Obama will target the oil industry in a way never done before which will in turn make the Nigerian governments 2009 budget projections based on oil revenue an economic disaster."

Clever. The rebels even noticed that it was the financial disaster that kicked "Hurricane Obama" into electoral overdrive in the United States, and now believe the same collapse can work in their favor. I'm not quite sure if that was the "righteous wind" that Obama was talking about.

When Rwanda's chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye, stepped off a plane in Frankfurt Sunday, she was greeted with an arrest warrant. Kabuye and eight other associates of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame have been indicted by a French court for inciting genocide.

The row between France and Rwanda is about as ugly as a diplomatic feud can get. Rwanda accuses France of supporting the 1994 genocide that left 800,000 dead. France accuses Kagame of inciting the genocide in a bid to win power. Diplomatic ties have been hopelessly severed.

So where does the truth lie?

The timeline looks pretty straightforward: French troops defended and funded the Hutu government of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana in the years leading up to the genocide. In 1993 those troops left, but when the killing of the Tutsi minority spun out of control, the French again sent soldiers. This time the French "Operation Turquoise" carried a U.N. mandate to create safe humanitarian zones meant to guard the civilian population.

But Rwanda's current government begs to rewrite the details. A two-year investigation with hundreds of witnesses released this August found that more than 30 French government officials were involved in arming Hutu militias and planning the genocide. French troops used the safe humanitarian zones to help Hutu genocidaires escape. The French government was allegedly motivated by a near-paranoia about protecting a pro-French Hutu government from a n Anglophone Tutsi regime.

Then there is the French version: Paul Kagame, a former Tutsi rebel group leader, sparked the genocide of his own volition so that he could come to power.

That is all complicated enough, but here's the messy bit: Both sides probably tell some piece of the truth. The Rwandan investigation is robust and damning, and the French at least raise a good point that Kagame has proven something of an authoritarian in office, with a whole list of human rights abuses under his watch.

Think this is all just ancient history? Think again. The conflict following Rwanda's genocide never ended -- it just moved next door.

Earlier this week, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution to ban smoking in the New York halls of the U.N. -- with an optional extension to country branches. Vote yes, urged resolution sponsor Uruguay! Bravo, said the World Health Organization!

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Seventy-two countries have imposed smoking bans -- so why not guard the health of this international body? 

Apparently diplomats are a stubborn lot, clinging to their cigarettes and sovereignty. Kofi Annan, the previous secretary-general, tried to "discourage" smoking, to the obvious disregard of many:

As Reuters reported Thursday, many in the U.N.'s lounges doubt this latest resolution will have any effect. 

Sigh (cough). Looks like the body charged with "the responsibility to protect" world citizens could ironically fall victim to its own vices, as five million smokers do each year. For an organization so fond of statistics, this one would be worth listening to.

Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff see a pre-Obama opening to Tehran.

David Milne wonders how Obama's professorial advisors will handle government.

Johan Rossouw fears South Africa could be headed for civil strife, if not civil war.

Will Marshall wants Obama to be the new JFK on foreign policy.

Barry Ritholtz says to read economic data for trends, not headlines.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

Fred Kaplan suggests foreign-policy priorities for the president-elect.

Claus Christian Malzahn says the dovish Obama faces an unpeaceful term.

Meenakshi Ganguly thinks Indian elections stereotype and squash minorities.

Michael Costa explains why U.S. debt hurts Australia and the world. 

John Kocjan wants to see more private-sector involvement in the bailout.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

FP has had its turn, you have had your turn... now it is President-elect Barack Obama's turn to pick his "Dream Team" of cabinet officials.

The transition, which Kenneth Duberstein told FP this week leaves no margin for error, is just formally beginning. So far, a few possible names for top jobs have leaked out into the press. The good news for eager speculators is that we won't have to wait too long, with a few announcements expected this week. Already, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat from Illinois, has been offered the key position of White House chief of staff. Tom Daschle looks like the next go-to-guy, should Emanuel turn down the spot.

Meanwhile, former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta is putting together an economic team, the top priority for the incoming president. Politico thinks Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary and president of Harvard University, is a favorite for Treasury, while CNN puts Warren Buffett and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner in the running. For his White House economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman look like frontrunners, followed by Michael Froman, a former classmate of Obama's.

For defense, some speculate that Robert Gates could keep his secretary post, an appointment he gained late in the Bush administration, with former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig as an understudy. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is also in the running, though he may be only a second or third choice.

National security adviser could be former Clinton deputy Jim Steinberg or former Clinton counsel Gregory Craig, who was a foreign-policy advisor with the campaign. Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni is unlikely, but adds some nice military spirit to the mix.

Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. John Kerry, or Sen. Richard Lugar are among those pegged for secretary of state. Lugar, a Republican who took Obama under his wing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would make a nice bipartisan addition to the cabinet.

Other interesting names that pop up on Politico's predictions list include Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations. Reputed to be one of Obama's closest aides on foreign policy, she is likely to get a senior-level position, even if Turtle Bay isn't the one. Likewise, Obama might want to designate Al Gore as some kind of special ambassador on climate change.

All told, it looks like an experienced and well known Washington lot -- one that Obama might hope will meet little opposition and controversy in his opening days. Let the dream team take the stage.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Jonathan Zimmerman says the election outpaced world trends in race relations.

World leaders send congrats and olive branches to President-elect Obama.

Fred Kaplan sees more fallout than gain from a U.S. strike in Syria.

Bridget Johnson warns of the scary world awaiting the next U.S. president.

The Wall St Journal says warming China-Taiwan ties will cool regional tension.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.

The Financial Times: democracy wins if South Africa's biggest party fractures.

Michael Fullilove says the U.S. needs more than elections to reassure allies.

Shaukat Qadir thinks U.S. talks with the Taliban will complicate war for both.

Stephen Schwarzman lays out rules for reorganizing financial regulation.

Gregory Rodriguez: Korea's future, like its food, is now made in China.

For more news and commentary from around the world, check out FP's continually updated Must Reads feed every day.