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As the "elite 8" wrapped up an 18-course dinner in Hokkaido earlier this week, members of the developing countries summit, or "D-8," were also focusing on food -- or rather, the lack of it. Leaders of member nations Indonesia and Malaysia spoke out Wednesday about the need to curb biofuel production. Indonesian Prime Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was blunt:

The idea is to reduce greenhouse gases and to wean themselves away from dependence on fossil fuels... It is not a good idea: it has only worsened the global food crisis."

Yudhoyono knows a thing or two about this problem firsthand. Indonesia has lost vast swathes of rainforests due to the production of palm oil, an increasingly popular biofuel. But while a little hypocrisy might make his words ring hollow, it doesn't make him wrong.

As FP's own Editor in Chief Moisés Naím tells us, increased food demand from developing countries is hardly to blame for the global food crisis. The real culprit is biofuel production, he aruges, and the government policies that promote it at the expense of crops for human consumption. Biofuels may account for as much as 75 percent of the global increase in food prices since 2002, according to the latest World Bank estimate.

The G-8, to its credit, had something to say about the crisis. Problem is, as usual the group didn't address the real policy problem -- it only "requested" that developed countries open their food stockpiles. Quick fixes, though, aren't going to feed the hungry for long. G-8 countries need to brainstorm feasible, long-term policies. Here's a healthy start: Stop dumping millions of dollars into subsidizing biofuels before this man-made disaster spins out of control.

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While President Bush is spending his birthday week with "smart guy" Dmitry Medvedev, his secretary of state is embarking on you might call a tour of the front lines of Western-Russia tension. Tomorrow, Secretary Rice travels to Prague to formally sign an agreement on the construction of a U.S. missile-defense radar system in the Czech Republic. Later in the week, she heads to Georgia, an American ally locked in a standoff with Russia over its increasingly violent breakaway provinces.

Russia strongly opposes the building of the missile-defense shield and the Foreign Ministry has warned that "appropriate steps" will be taken to punish the Czechs. Since the Russians' amped-up support for the Georgian provinces began as retaliation for Western recognition of Kosovo, it's safe to assume they don't make such threats idly. But compared with historically unstable Geogia, there's not much Russia could do to push around the Czech Republic, a country where Moscow hasn't held much sway since the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

In fact, it's clear Czech leaders are excited to be under the U.S. military's protective wing, and the same goes for Georgia's efforts to join NATO. Poland, which the U.S. hopes will also host part of the missile defense system, is still holding out, but that seems to be mostly about the Poles negotiating a better deal.

These countries, even if purely for cynical reasons, see cooperating with the U.S. as a strategic advantage. Russia, on the other hand, only seems to influence other nations by undermining their governments or shutting off their energy supplies. This can work in bordering countries like Georgia or Ukraine, but places like the Czech Republic and Poland no longer have to fear Russian tanks rolling down the street.

There's a lesson here: For all the talk of the Putin/Medvedev tandem's international assertiveness, they seem to lose a lot more battles than they win. And despite everything that has gone wrong in the last eight years, the United States still seems to be much better at making and keeping friends than the Russians.

In the harshest criticism yet of the stolen election in Zimbabwe, neighboring Botswana called today for the African Union to ban Mugabe from its meetings:

In our considered view, it therefore follows that the representatives of the current government in Zimbabwe should be excluded from attending SADC (Southern African Development Community) and African Union meetings," a text of summit remarks by Vice President Mompati Merafhe said.

"Their participation in the meetings of the two organisations would give unqualified legitimacy to a process which cannot be considered legitimate."

"Botswana's position is that such a scenario would be unacceptable."

Unconfirmed reports claim that Nigeria has also refused to recognize Mugabe's government.

Botswana's stand came during closed-door proceedings today at the AU summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. It remains to be seen what effect it will have on Zimbabwe, but it's good to see that some rulers in Africa appear to be showing a little spine.

They'll need it. Mugabe has been defiant over last Friday's fraudulent election, where he was the only candidate running and many citizens were threatened with violence if they did not vote for the 84-year-old ruler. Responding to international criticism today, a Mugabe spokesman told the United States and other Western states to "go hang a thousand times."

U.S. State Department

The U.S. embassy in Cairo is a fortress-like compound, sequestered in the leafy, decaying neighborhood of Garden City along the east bank of the Nile. Merely to stand before the outer blast wall, you have to pass through a security checkpoint and explain your business.

But maybe the U.S. mission to Egypt isn't as impregnable as it seems. A body was recently discovered on the embassy's lush grounds, and Margaret Scobey, the new U.S. ambassador, has demanded a full-scale investigation. The body was sent out for autopsy to experts in Cairo and swiftly returned to the United States for burial.

Thing is, it's the ambassador's dog that we're talking about, not a person. The animal might have died accidentally after eating poison intended for feral cats. But Scobey wants to make sure, pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reports:

Americans in Egypt say that the ambassador's state of extreme anger has forced the embassy's security to cooperate [with] Egyptian authorities in spending considerable time on proving that the incident was not a premeditated attack and that the embassy's security measures, employees and the ambassador's home and household are safe. After all, a successful attempt to murder the ambassador's dog sends a message that it is possible to commit the same crime against Americans working at the ambassador's home or against the ambassador herself.

(Hat tip: Brian Whitaker)

This is what it's like to be the envoy of a lame duck. Time's Tim McGirk reports from Israel on U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's latest trip:

On Sunday, Rice just passed through Jerusalem again. Ghosted through might be a better description since this time there was no fanfare, no motorcades snarling up the city’s traffic, and the lady couldn't even book a room in her usual hotel, the David Citadel. She had to settle for a less grand hotel, though admittedly it wasn't one of those pilgrim fleapits in the Old City. But for me, that's a sign of how far how far her superpower status has fallen in the dwindling days of Bushdom.

McGirk also notes that Condi's name is now being used as a verb on Israeli television, "meaning to go endlessly around in circles, accomplishing nothing."

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With airfares continuing to skyrocket and all the bad news about airlines going bankrupt, there's actually one potential bright spot in the world of air travel: China and Taiwan are holding official talks about the possibility of charter flights across the Taiwan Strait. Led by Chiang Pin-kung (right), chairman of the quasi-governmental Straits Exchange Foundation, a 19-member delegation from Taiwan arrived in Beijing Wednesday for four days of discussions. Relations between the two sides have warmed considerably since Ma Ying-jeou, who favors closer ties with the mainland, was elected president of Taiwan in March.

This week's talks are the first time in nearly a decade that there have been formal negotiations between China and Taiwan. It's not Chiang's first visit to Beijing, though. Three years ago, I interviewed him in Taipei shortly after he returned from Beijing, where he was visiting as a member of Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT) party (but not as an official from Taiwan's government -- a fine distinction that's all too important in delicate cross-Strait relations). His visit was frowned upon by then-President Chen Shui-bian, who was in favor of the island's independence. Chiang told me that his goal was to develop relations with the mainland in a way that would benefit Taiwan's economy, and not to get overly bogged down in politics. But now with a KMT president in office, he's free to engage in both politics and economics.

This week's talks will probably focus exclusively on economic ties, however. Polls show that Taiwanese prefer to maintain the status quo of de facto independence, but want the economic opportunities that closer ties with China will provide. And the Chinese are not about to do anything drastic politically -- not with all international eyes on them after the earthquake and ahead of the Olympics in August. So, for this round, just expect lots of handshakes, photo ops, and quite possibly, a little more friendliness in the skies.

Here's an interesting excerpt from The China Diary of George H.W. Bush: The Making of a Global President. This is Bush writing on Saturday, November 20, 1974:

Kissinger is an extremely complicated guy. He is ungracious, he yells at his staff, he is intolerable in terms of human feelings. Dictatorial. 'Get people here.' 'Have those people here,' 'Where are they?' 'Why do I need these papers?' 'Where are my papers?' And yet all those petty little unpleasant characteristics fade away when you hear him discussing the world situation. He comes alive in public. Walk up the steps and the salute rings out from the PLA guard. He literally is so alive within, you can see it on the outside very clearly. He is like a politician with a roar of a crowd on election eve or the athlete running out at the 50-yard line just before the kickoff. The public turns him on.

"He does a first-class job on that whole press operation," Bush assesed. But "clearly he is not an administrator."

The book, edited by Texas A&M historian Jeffrey A. Engel, comes out next Wednesday.

As someone who used to live near the rodent-infested, abandoned embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I'm glad to see that the Washington Post is finally shining a light on the shameful local practice of countries abandoning parts of their diplomatic missions and allowing them to fester. Aside from the DRC, Pakistan, the Philippines, Malawi, the United Arab Emirates, Liberia, Malaysia, Bosnia, Argentina, Niger, and Togo, are all guilty, according to the Post.

But it doesn't have to be this way:

Developer Jim Abdo bought Ghana's vacant diplomatic residence -- rain was "cascading" through the roof when he visited, he said -- and turned it into his home. He paid a consultant to fly to Nigeria to persuade the country's leaders to sell him their shell of a mansion in Massachusetts Heights.

Abdo paid $3.2 million for the estate, including a family of raccoons scampering about its four floors. After a massive renovation that included a new swimming pool, he is selling the mansion for $6.95 million.

The raccoons have moved out.

It's easy to identify a global crisis, but much more difficult to resolve it when all parties act exclusively in their own self-interest.

At the U.N. food summit in Rome, heads of state and other global leaders met today to address skyrocketing global food costs. Among those in attendence? Zimbabwe's President-for-life Robert Mugabe, who should know a thing or two about food crises.

Surprisingly, the attendees may have reached a consensus as to what must be done to reverse the "silent tsunami":

There was little disagreement about how to resolve the spiraling costs of food and its impact on the world’s poor: more food aid to feed the world's hungry, additional seeds and fertilizer for poor farmers, fewer export bans and tariffs that restrict the flow of trade, and more research to improve crop yields.

Unsurprisingly, there was strong disagreement over the key causes of rising global food prices, particularly with regard to the so-called food vs. fuel argument. 

When developing countries blamed shortages on the transferring of crops from food to biofuels, leaders of countries investing heavily in ethanol and biolfuel production, notably Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, fired back:

Biofuels are not the villain menacing food security in poor countries ... It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean biofuels -- fingers tainted with oil and coal."

The debates on farm subsidies for biofuel production is unlikely to end anytime soon. Then again, with gas prices at $4 a gallon, I'd say you can safely bet that biofuels -- subsidized or no -- are here to stay.

In an op-ed he coauthored in Monday's Wall Street Journal Asia, McCain placed himself to the right of President Bush's policies on North Korea:

We must use the leverage available from the U.N. Security Council resolution passed after Pyongyang's 2006 nuclear test to ensure the full and complete declaration, disablement and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear facilities, in a verifiable manner, which we agreed to with the other members of the six-party talks.

The key words here are "full and complete," since the Bush administration has shown flexibility on that front. And as Glenn Kessler notes, "leverage" in this instance is code for "threaten sanctions," an approach the Bush team abandoned in favor of direct diplomacy. Conservatives are increasingly critical of the current plan, under which Pyongyang would merely acknowledge U.S. concerns about uranium enrichment but admit to nothing.

In his speech in Denver Tuesday, McCain again took a hawkish line, saying, "It is a vital national interest for the North Korean nuclear program to be completely, verifiably and irreversibly ended."

Matt Yglesias thinks this illustrates that, "on national security policy, McCain is, if anything, more hard core than Bush." But I don't think he's so easy to pigeonhole. The candidate's speech is sprinkled with words like "multilateralism" and "allies" often enough to make Charlie Kupchan's heart flutter. He even spoke about working more closely with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles. That doesn't sound like Bush 2.0 to me.

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The Bush administration is currently debating a plan to sell 66 advanced F-16 jets to Taiwan. The F-16 sale was a recurring theme in a panel discussion Monday at the Carnegie Endowment on cross-straits relations featuring Bonnie Glaser of CSIS, Michael Swaine of Carnegie, and Douglas H. Paal, Carnegie's new China program director.

The participants presented somewhat differing opinions on the diplomatically sensitive move. Swaine doesn't see a good time for U.S. approval of the sale in the near to medium term. Glaser, on the other hand, feels it will happen because postponing the sale until the next administration risks getting off on the wrong foot with China. She recommends the window after the Olympics but before Bush leaves office. Carnegie's Minxin Pei weighed in that if the sale goes forward, China would likely respond negatively to a request by Taiwan to withdraw some of the 1,000 balistic missiles aimed at it. But it's not as if jets and missiles are easily equated military capabilities in tit-for-tat negotiations, Glaser said.

Glaser also remarked how this underscores a differing approach to cross-straits negotiations where some, including the U.S., view defense aid to Taiwan as a necessary precursor to productive negotiations as it gives the island nation a more solid footing on which to withstand threats. Others, namely China, strongly respond to arms sales as obstacles to diplomacy which discourage cross-straits engagement.

The State Department wants to delay the F-16 issue until after the Olympics, but I agree that if the U.S. is going to do this, it would be much better to sweep it under the rug of the outgoing administration so the new administration can chalk it up to "change" or whatever they're into at that point.

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The U.S. needs the UN according to a new report by Alistair Millar and Eric Rosand, of the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation titled, Building Global Alliances in the Fight Against Terrorism. Both authors spoke on Friday afternoon at the New America Foundation along with Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens. The speakers point out that if we can stress the common security interests of all nations, the UN will once again function as an effective international body. Fighting terrorism is one issue that requires nothing less than the whole world's attention, but it is also a divisive issue. The UN has so far failed to even agree on a definition of terrorism, though Eric Rosand had a good working one: "Politically motivated violence against civilians."

The main argument is that the United States is missing an opportunity to work with the United Nations in its global fight against terrorism. The speakers were careful to stress they are not suggesting the fight be handed over to the UN. Instead, the U.S. should use the platform as underlying support for its existing efforts while maintaining sovereignty over U.S. interests. They believe that many bi-lateral negotiations are perceived as American sledgehammering and may be better received through the lens of third party. Policy recommendations include the appointment of a counterterrorism czar in the White House (non-military in nature), and the formation of a global counterterrorism body.

While I agree that the U.S. cannot "go it alone" in the war on terror, the bottom line is that unilateralism is a direct result of international lack of will. The United States has gone it alone in part because of the inaction of the UN and its member states. Hezbollah is a prime example of this inaction. Under UN resolutions enacted in 2004 and 2006, Lebanese militias were to be disarmed. In April of this year, the security council adopted a presidential statement reiterating this. Instead, over the past few days Hezbollah has taken over half of Beirut.

While I like the idea of a future with international cooperation and committment to fighting terrorism, I think we need to first make sure the international community is interested in bearing the costs to achieve results. And state-sponsored terror is going to be a big obstacle in this process.

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Think your job sucks? Try walking a mile in the shoes of Christopher Hill, who has been the U.S. envoy to the six-party talks since February 2005. For more than three years, Hill has been trying to convince North Korea to shut down its nuclear program and come clean about its nuclear activities.

He's had some success at the former, with the North Koreans agreeing to the dismantling of their plutonium reactor at Yongbyon. But Kim Jong Il's irascible regime has been notoriously coy about acknowledging just what it's been up to on the uranium and proliferation fronts. So, Hill negotiated a delicate workaround: North Korea would acknowledge U.S. concerns but admit to nothing. Then, the United States would remove North Korea from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that has all kinds of other legal and financial ramifications. On balance, it seemed like a good idea to at least mothball Yongbyon and learn as much as possible about the nuclear program. Why let the perfect become the enemy of the good? And on a factual level, North Korea hasn't actually sponsored terrorism since 1987.

But now, Hill's careful game of diplomatic Jenga may be coming apart. For months, North Korea has stalled, appearing to want to wait for a better deal from the next president. Last week's allegations about North Korea's nuclear cooperation with Syria appear to have only inflamed building congressional anger against the deal. And it's not just Republicans who were upset. Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously to require that the White House certify it has gotten a "complete and correct declaration" from Pyongyang. Hill's plan was, to be frank, to fudge it.

One congressional staffer told the Financial Times the White House would go "ballistic" over the committee's move, but the Bush administration still has a chance to convince the full House and the Senate to scuttle it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed, however, that the White House has let Chris Hill run point on these negotiations for a reason. If things fall apart -- as it seems they might -- he can be hung out to dry and blamed for the failure. That would be a shame, because Hill is a real star of the diplomatic corps and somebody America needs to keep around.

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You have probably already heard about protests in China over the weekend in several cities against French supermarket chain Carrefour and alleged Western media bias. But there were also demonstrations by the Chinese community on Saturday in five Western cities: Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London and Washington. Xinhua news agency reports thousands of participants in the European cities and hundreds here in Washington. With signs like "Love our China" and "You can't find this from BBC... Stop disrupting the Olympics" there is a clear, organized international effort to get the message out that many overseas Chinese also oppose the affronts to the Olympic games and the related media coverage. The silent protest in Britain attracted 3,000 participants and was the first public demonstration on the part of the Chinese community there.

Recent fervor has demonstrated a strong, unified voice on the part of the Chinese community. And said overtures are producing results: French President Nikolas Sarkozy sent a letter to "Wheelchair Angel" Jin Jing expressing sympathy and regret for her treatment in the Paris torch relay (but no apology).

But the strife continues as yesterday, the Paris city council went over Sarkozy's head and approved the Dalai Lama for honorary citizenship, in addition to recently jailed dissident Hu Jia. While many may call it misguided for its lack of respect for human rights, the Chinese position shows sophistication in political advocacy: Adopt a unified stance and get the widest possible coverage to spread your message. Though the synergy is the result of the people and the government touting the same line, it's an impressive campaign for a country with a state-run media. It's also worth pointing out that, unlike people within China itself, these expats have access to the gamut of information on their homeland, and yet they still feel strongly that the Western view is biased.