This afternoon in Shanghai, U.S. President Barack Obama held a townhall-style meeting with university students. It was an event that his staff had worked hard to include on his China trip itinerary. After a brief speech extolling the importance of core values to the success of the United States as a nation and Americans as individuals, Obama took questions from the audience and online.

It has since come to light that not all of the questions came from bonafide students. One questioner was a vice director of daily affairs for the Communist Youth League; another was a young-looking teacher. Obama's answers about Internet freedom weren't heard by most remote audiences because several networks, including CNN, mysteriously cut away for commentary at that moment. The response among expats in China was, by and large, negative -- with many complaining Obama had minced his words, talking for instance of "universal rights" rather than "human rights." If one is looking to be cynical, there's plenty of fodder.

On the other hand, from the point of view of most Chinese I've spoken, these official efforts at censorship might have been silly, or nefarious, but they didn't have much impact. The notion of a president taking questions, not a frequent occurrence in China, was itself the point. The symbolism was more arresting, to them, than the content. "Why does he want to talk to Chinese students?" one 29-year-old Chinese woman asked me, without irony. She was puzzled, impressed, and a bit amused at the spectacle. 

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential hopeful, has never been known for his foreign-policy prowess. Wonder why?

At a junket hosted by a far-right Israeli religious group, he rejected a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict. The two-state solution both Israeli and Palestinian leaders say they want. The two-state solution virtually every U.S. politician, conservative or liberal, supports. The two-state solution essentially the entire world agrees offers the best hope for peace.

Seven months ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton -- the powerful New York Senator, former First Lady, and runner-up in the brutally long Democratic primary competition -- became U.S. President Barack Obama's secretary of state. Since then, she's chastened North Korea, advocated on behalf of Burma, and rallied against Israeli settlement building. She's logged nearly 100,000 air miles. She's tirelessly pursued Obama's diplomatic agenda around the world.

And she's done it while fostering or demonstrating little friction with the White House she once hoped to occupy. Being secretary of state doesn't just require being a diplomat abroad. It requires being a diplomat in Washington. For, foreign policy is not and has never been the purview of State alone -- Clinton overlaps and dovetails and supports and creates policy with Obama, a spate of diplomatic envoys, the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, the national security advisers, Vice President Joe Biden, et cetera. By all accounts, she's done well at that as well.

Not that you'd know it reading the paper. Too often, coverage of Clinton neglects the fact that the secretary of state has never been the sole creator of U.S. foreign policy. It also, far too often, focuses hyper-intently on the perceived narrative of how Clinton feels about her relationship with the White House -- rather than the actual relationship between Clinton and Obama or how she's doing her job.

Here are some main offenders.

Two weeks ago, Tina Brown took to the pages of the Daily Beast to proclaim that "It's time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa." The article -- which makes a decent argument that Clinton's love of policy nitty-gritty means she's happy to play a supporting role -- is suffused with the speculative, the hypersensitive, and the hyperpersonal. It digresses into Clinton's relationship with her husband. And it seems shocked -- shocked! -- that Clinton might not mind being a good soldier in such a well-liked and well-run administration.

Other offenders come from less-opinionated sources.

On May 1, the New York Times' diplomatic correspondent Mark Landler published a profile of Hillary-in-situ, with the headline "Her Rival Now Her Boss, Clinton Settles Into New Role." The piece covered the secretary's tiring schedule and her jockeying for position amid other top foreign-policy thinkers in the administration.

But it also included a lot of strange diversions into Clinton's relationship with her husband and her family -- "Sad Hillary" anecdotes, as I like to call them. Take, for instance, this tart assessment of the way Clinton communicates her daughter, Chelsea: "[She] exchanges e-mail messages with her daughter, Chelsea, on her BlackBerry, which she is not allowed to use, for security reasons, at work."

Even worse was an April 1 story by the same author, about Clinton's participation at the G-20 meetings in London.  Here's the lede:

For Hillary Rodham Clinton, arriving here on Tuesday night from The Hague was a lesson in the difference between being a supremely important person and just a very important one.

Mrs. Clinton's government plane was put into a holding pattern in the skies over Stansted Airport because air traffic had been backed up by Air Force One and other planes carrying world leaders to the economic summit meeting here. Once on the ground, her blue-and-white Boeing 757 taxied past President Obama's much larger 747, parking at a respectful distance.

Does the NYT honestly think anyone's surprised that the President's plane gets to go first? And do they honestly believe that it taught Hillary Clinton a lesson? I don't think so. The piece concludes with an anecdote about how Clinton brought a bunch of the tulip varietal named for her back to her hotel room -- whereas Obama got to stay in some sort of plush castle.

Of course, Clinton's a fascinating personal figure. And of course her relationship with the White House remains a topic major news outlets need to cover. This weekend, for instance, Clinton strayed far from the White House's line on Iran, taking a much harder position than other proxies on the issue of enrichment while speaking with Meet the Press.

I look forward to reading stories on that. But such strained coverage on the made-up narrative of Clinton's dislike of the parameters of her current job? No, thank you.

Photo: Flickr user sskennel

Israel:

We share President Obama's hope that the American effort heralds the opening of a new era that will bring an end to the conflict and to general Arab recognition of Israel as the nation of the Jewish people that lives in security and peace in the Middle East.

Israel is committed to peace and will do all it can to expand the circle of peace while considering its national interests, first and foremost being security.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran:

You witness that in Afghanistan, American warplanes bomb people and kill some 150 not once, but 10 and 100 times. They kill people continually. So, terrorist groups, do what you are doing there.

If the new president of America wants a change of face, America should change this behaviour. Words and talk will not result in change.

Iraq:

The use of Koranic sayings plays a big part in a positive change of picture, but there is a necessity for action.

Hezbollah:

The Islamic world does not need moral or political sermons. It needs a fundamental change in American policy beginning from a halt to complete support for Israeli aggression on the region, especially on Lebanese and Palestinians, to an American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and a stop to its interference in the affairs of Islamic countries.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood:

There's an unjust perspective on the part of the American president toward the Palestinian issue, one that does not differ from former President Bush's and the neoconservatives' perspective.

Hamas:

Speaking about a policy of pursuing a war against extremism and working towards two states for peoples on Palestinian lands is no different from the policy of his predecessor, George W Bush.

Talking Points Memo:

Not only did the speech specifically reject western (and American) colonialism, its entire tone was the antithesis of colonial. This is a profoundly different American voice, one that will do much to advance American goals rather than to sabotage them.

Arab leaders who were listening to this speech might want to consider a similar speech of their own to their people.

Shimon Peres, president of Israel:

President Obama's journey to Saudi Arabia and Egypt could be an opportunity. It reflects both the need for an historic change in the Middle East and a unique chance of achieving it. 

Real Clear Politics:

The Middle East requires realpolitiks. It's indeed intriguing that Obama came to Egypt for this speech. The location and timing underline the moral choices made. And on the Middle East no less, where the means so often define the effort because the ends constantly prove elusive.

Matthew Yglesias:

This seems connected to me to the remarkable way in which this speech is being pushed out in multiple media—on television, but also on Twitter and on Facebook and via SMS and all in multiple languages—to a global audience. Part of the rise of Obama is the rise of a post-television, post-sound bite technological paradigm ... It creates a whole new world from one in which the point of a speech is just to field test a couple of zingers in hopes that one or two of them gets picked up for the evening news.

Stephen Hayes:

Perhaps the most curious passage was this one: "Given our interdependence, any world order which elevates any nation or group of people above any other will inevitably fail." This is nonsense, of course, as Obama seems to recognize several sentences later when he says that America will 'relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security.

The Economist:

Mr Obama has addressed Muslims before. ... But this speech fulfilled his pre-inauguration promise to make a bold bid to restore American prestige with a direct public address in a Muslim capital. ...

Yet the constant refrain, heard on Cairo’s streets as well as from media pundits, is that Arabs and Muslims would like to see Mr Obama’s words matched by deeds. 'To win our hearts, you must win our minds first, and our minds are set on the protection of our interests,' declared one of the reams of editorials, columns and open letters from across the region before Mr Obama spoke.

The Washington Times:

If they want respect, Muslim states must seek active ways to improve relations with the United States. We would like to see a generally more positive and welcoming tone, with fewer anti-American harangues in official media and firebrand sermons in state-controlled mosques. ... Respect for Islam would be much more palatable if the Muslim world decriminalized conversion to other faiths and allowed true religious freedom, as Muslims enjoy in America.

Stephen Walt:

The truest thing he said? "No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust."

Marc Lynch:

President Obama's speech today in Cairo met the bar he set for himself.

Hussein Ibish, senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine:

The ball is now in the Arab court – he needs and deserves their help, and they have a vital interest in providing it. Arab governments, organizations and individuals should, in their own interests, move quickly to do everything possible to reciprocate and support the President’s bold gestures.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Torture: it's a byzantine tale that unraveled over the course of eight years, and is only reaching its denouement this week. There are two strands, both vitally important, to follow. One's the story of what happened and when (for that, see FP's torture timeline). The other is the story of when we knew it.

Indeed, this week, it seems like the torture story's just breaking through. But, allegations of abuse and even prisoner death started emerging as soon as the United States had prisoners in custody. And reporters have doggedly covered it since then.

One of the first Washington Post stories on the treatment of detainees from the War on Terror arrived in January 2002, just months after 9/11 and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Already, there were 158 detainees from 25 different countries held in Guantanamo Bay, and two congressional delegations had traveled there to review conditions. The detainees were getting 2,400 calories a day, the Post story reported. "Some of them are getting medical attention for the first time in their lives," Senator Bill Nelson proudly noted.

There were also already allegations of prisoner abuse. Photos showing bound, blindfolded, and shackled detainees on their knees appeared as soon as prisoners arrived in Gitmo -- the International Committee of the Red Cross censured the U.S. for the photos, which violated the Geneva Conventions.

The following month, in February, President George W. Bush issued an executive order denying detainees the privileges and protections of the Geneva Conventions. The United States started down the road that culminated in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and the black sites -- secret overseas prisons, in countries like Egypt, where prisoners were sent via "extraordinary rendition" and the worst detainee abuse may have happened.

Reports of U.S. soldiers abusing persons they detained in Afghanistan emerged that winter as well -- kicking and beating them after they'd already been shackled. The military went on the defensive. "I don't believe that any of the detainees...were subject to beatings or rough treatment after they were taken into custody," General  Richard B. Myers told the New York Times. "All 27 detainees were medically screened upon arrival in Kandahar, and there were no issues of beatings or kickings or anything of that sort."

Over the next year, the trickle became a stream. The military admitted using harsh techniques on Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, high-ranking al Qaeda operatives we now know were repeatedly waterboarded.

At the time, officials told the New York Times "physical torture would not be used against Mr. Mohammed...They said his interrogation would rely on what they consider acceptable techniques like sleep and light deprivation and the temporary withholding of food, water, access to sunlight and medical attention."

It took the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, broken by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh and CBS News, to blow the door open -- that happened in April 2004.

It spawned a glut of media attention, as well as congressional hearings and a series of governmental reports: the Taguba report (on the Abu Ghraib scandal), the Schlesinger report (which described how harsh techniques from Afghanistan crept into Iraq), the Fay Jones report (on the Army personnel responsible for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib), the Church report (71 cases of abuse, six deaths). Over the next years came the Schmidt report (which said treatment at Guantanamo was humane, in 2005, after the waterboarding of Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee Report released this week. 

So, most of the foundational reporting on torture happened in late 2003, 2004, and 2005 -- by reporters like Dana Priest of the Washington Post and Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, describing extraordinary rendition and the black site prisons.

But it's crucial to remember that a small group of reporters -- at the New York Times, McClatchy, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, and the New Yorker -- had the story before it was a story. They worked with a slight and growing handful of congressional, White House, military, Justice Department, legal, and other sources. They used a list-serv started by lawyers working on detainee cases to learn information. And they opened the door for Abu Ghraib to open the door further.  

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Here at FP, we don't always pay much attention to U.S. domestic policy, obviously, and the tax-day tea parties confused us a bit. Why weren't the protesters dressed up as Native Americans (like in the Boston Tea Party) or Mad Hatters? Weren't top-bracket taxes higher under Reagan?

Regardless, we've glommed onto a U.S. domestic issue which suggests a foreign-policy disaster: the U.S. state of Texas threatening to secede. Texas Governor Rick Perry, angered, like the tea-bag-partiers, over Obama's spending and tax policies, has implied that Texas might leave the Union.

So what would Texas look like as a foreign country?

It would be the world's thirteenth largest economy -- bigger than South Korea, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia. But its worth would crater precipitously, after NAFTA rejected it and the United States slapped it with an embargo that would make Cuba look like a free-trade zone. Indeed, Texas would quick become the next North Korea, relying on foreign aid due to its insistence on relying on itself. 

On the foreign policy front, a seceded Texas would suffer for deserting the world superpower. Obama wouldn't look kindly on secessionists, and would send in the military to tamp down rebellion. If Texas miraculously managed to hold its borders, Obama would not establish relations with the country -- though he might send a special rapporteur. (We nominate Kinky Friedman.)

So, Texas would need to court Mexico and Central American nations as a trading partners and protectors. Those very nations would also pose a host of problems for Texas. President Perry might find friends in anti-U.S. nations like Venezuela and Cuba, but their socialist politics would rankle the libertarian nation. 

And Texas would become a conduit for drugs moving north to the United States from Mexico, maybe even becoming a narco-state. It would need to invest heavily in its own military and policing force to stop drug violence within its borders -- taking away valuable resources from, oh, feeding its people, fending off U.S. border incursions, and improving its standing in the world. 

In short: the state of Texas would rapidly become direly impoverished, would need to be heavily armed, and would be wracked with existential domestic and foreign policy threats. It would probably make our failed states list in short order. Probably better to pay the damn taxes.

And of course -- Texas isn't seceding. Only regions in civil war or self-governing areas in very weak states manage independence. Perry was floating a piece of asinine political rhetoric, running a heated race against fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson and courting small-government conservatives of all stripes. Plus, more importantly, Texas can't secede, according to the 1869 Supreme Court Case, Texas v. White. Ah well. 

IMPORTANT UPDATE:  Chuck Norris has offered to be President of Texas, greatly reducing the possible internal threat of unionists or external threat of U.S. military forces to the seceded country. (H/t Ezra Klein.) 

Photo: Flickr user Susan E. Gray

Scott Horton reports that Spanish prosecutors will indict high-ranking members of the Bush administration over allegations of detainee abuse and torture.

The six are: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee; former OLC lawyer John Yoo; former Defense Department lawyer William J. Haynes II; David Addington, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith.

Horton explains the context of the case:

The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. [They found sufficient evidence.]

The case won't come before Judge Real, though; he also was involved in a terrorism case against the five Spaniards held in Guantanamo. 

What does it all mean?

Well, John Yoo won't be vacationing on the Costa del Sol this summer. Were any of the Bush Six to step foot in Spain, they would be arrested. 

More importantly: Spain has said that it would drop the cases if the United States would investigate the claim. Thus far, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House haven't responded. But the indictment may force the administration's hand, spurring a response to the allegations.

For, ultimately, the issue may have more political potency than judicial importance. It's up to U.S. President Barack Obama to dictate whether and how the strong allegations of legal abuses in the Bush administration will be resolved. 

In a widely publicized move, the Obama administration is due to finally and officially announce its easing of restrictions to Cuba. U.S. citizens will now be able to travel and send money to the country more easily. (See FP's photo essay on Cuba for more details; and this FP article by Nestor Carbonell for a convincing argument against rushing into engagement.)

The Miami Herald says the announcement, to be made this afternoon, is meant to coincide with the Summit of the Americas, which starts on Friday in Trinidad and is attended by heads-of-state from North and South American countries.

Thankfully -- apparently the pet-poisoning revelation hasn't hurt relations.

The Hill reports that in 2007 Cuba poisoned the pet animals of U.S. diplomats working in the country:

The 64-page report written in 2007 states that the life of U.S. diplomats serving in the U.S. Interest Section (USINT) - which issues visas and performs other diplomatic services in Havana - was laden with poor morale "in part because USINT life in Havana is life with a government that ‘let's [sic] you know it's hostile'"....

"Retaliations have ranged from the petty to the poisoning of family pets. The regime has recently gone to great lengths to harass some employees by holding up household goods and consumable shipments. The apparent goal has been to instigate dissension within USINT ranks."  

The report comes just as the Obama administration is attempting to strengthen relations and ease strictures on the Communist country. Which begs the question: who decided it release it now?

Mike Allen of Politico's Playbook fame seconds our idea of renaming the pirates. "Pirates go from curiosity to crisis for 1600 and the Pentagon," his headline screamed, the suggestion of renaming them "maritime terrorists" within.

Matt Yglesias criticizes the letter of the suggestion, if not the spirit, with the rather unimpeachable logic that pirates are...pirates. 

The point I made last week -- that calling pirates "pirates" allows for a certain romanticization and fueled a media frenzy which too often overlooked the realities of the situation and the circumstance of failed-state Somalia -- thankfully seems passe.  

This weekend's rescue, which involved U.S. naval warships, millions of dollars, and pirate and civilian deaths, spurred an examination of the why and how behind the pirates. The sheen's worn off. They're criminals and a security concern. They redouble Somalia's problems.

Or, as someone will inevitably put it somewhere on the internet: pirates totally jumped the shark.

The United States is scrambling this morning to save a hostaged captain from Somali pirates -- calling in back up that includes FBI hostage negotiators, more warships, and just about every high-profile military and diplomatic figure who will reassure the American press. The drama is being scrupulously reported elsewhere (most recent update: the pirates want booty), so I'll save you the repetition.

I'm interested in a different question: Just how exactly have pirates managed to out-scramble the world's top navy? If neither the U.S. Navy, nor the EU, NATO, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian vessels were able to spot this pirate attacker coming on the vast seas... how do the Somali pirates find the ships they hijack? In theory, the sea is equally vast and equally sparsely populated on both sides of the looking glass.

One interesting theory comes from NightWatch: 

Several commentators highlighted the changed tactics by which some Somali pirate groups manage to seize ships far from the coast. What they do not provide is the hypothesis that this proves the existence of a well organized criminal syndicate with modern communications that link pirates to agents in port authorities from Kenya to the Suez Canal. The business is too big and rich to fail simply because modern frigates are present.  

It makes good sense. Why? Pirates have money and they can pay for tips. Port authorities, particularly in Kenya, are likely paid irregularly and poorly (particularly in comparison to pirate rates). The pirates have also shown that they are willing and able to infiltrate government authorities -- as they often do in their home in Puntland, Somalia.

No good news there. Cracking down on internal corruption among port authorities would be about as easy as, say, stopping a piracy epidemic in the Gulf of Aden. 

Photo: U.S. Navy

At VoxEU, economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke compare the current global recession and the Great Depression -- or, more accurately, parse the comparisons. They note that many commentators, like Paul Krugman, include only U.S. stock and economic indicators, in which case, some evidence suggests this downturn may be shorter and milder.

But, they argue, the Great Depression was a global phenomenon; it originated with the U.S. stock crash and soon engulfed the world economy. The current recession, likewise, is one of a globalized world. The U.S. led the fall, but didn't fall alone.

So, they write: "the global picture provides a very different and, indeed, more disturbing perspective than the U.S. case...which as noted earlier shows a smaller decline in manufacturing production now than then." And they demonstrate the effect, with a series of compelling and frightening graphs. 

Here's the global stock market, the blue line representing its value during the Depression and red during the current recession: 

And here is global trade volume, another indicator. They write, "This is highly alarming given the prominence attached in the historical literature to trade destruction as a factor compounding the Great Depression."

The one bright spot, they note: the policy responses have been far, far better this time around. Central banks have slashed interest rates earlier and lower, and increased the money supply more and faster. And, globally, there is heightened government deficit spending, intended to arrest decline.

Still, Eichengreen and O'Rourke's analysis demonstrates that the global recession may be worse than people think, even if the U.S. manages a recovery. 

By Gregory Shtraks and Andrew Polk

A day before the meeting of G20 leaders was set to begin in London, U.S.President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao met to discuss the increasingly important relations between the two countries. One key result of the meeting was the announcement of a "‘new' U.S.- China Strategic and Economic Dialogue" which will begin in Washington in a few months.

As opposed to the Bush administration's "Strategic Economic Dialogue" started by former Treasury Secretary Paulson, these meetings will have two distinct facets and will be lead by both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the U.S. side. With two well-known American leaders heading up the effort, here's a look at their Chinese counterparts:

Dai Bingguo makes almost a perfect synthesis of the two: He is a high-profile heavy-hitter like Clinton and seasoned bureaucrat like Geithner.  Dai's career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stretches back to 1974, with brief interruptions in posts as an ambassador and as Head of the International Department for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. 

Just as Hillary Clinton is the chief representative of the Obama administration's attempt to remake the U.S. reputation, Dai is often considered the international face of China's growing clout and increasingly pervasive charm offensive. In 2003, Evan Medeiros, writing in Foreign Affairs noted Dai as a leader in the country's growing sophistication in diplomatic affairs, as he deftly handled China's North Korea stance. He has also matched Clinton's hectic traveling schedule of late, making stops throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America. According to this Financial Times article from February, he seems to be a pretty smooth operator:

 
It takes quite a lot to throw Hillary Clinton off her stride, but Dai Bingguo, China's senior foreign policy official, just about managed. "You look younger and more beautiful than on TV," he told the US secretary of state, who seemed to momentarily blush.
 

Tim Geithner' understanding of Asia might pay prove useful in the discussion. Geithner completed high school in Bangkok (where his father Peter was director of Ford Foundation's Asia division) and then focused on Asian economics for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He is even said to speak decent Chinese and Japanese.

Geithner's counterpart in the Economic Dialogue, Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, also had some family help early in his career. During the Cultural Revolution Wang was sent to work as an "educated youth" in remote Shaanxi province and would have probably missed his chance at getting an education if not for the influence of his father-in-law, conservative Party leader Yao Yilin, who helped young Wang get accepted into a university. Wang is thus considered to be a "Princeling"- a cadre whose career had been accelerated by a family member who was a high-ranking member of the CCP. 

However, unlike other Princelings, Wang is widely respected by both the Party and the general public. He is known as "Chief of the Fire Brigades" for his role in effectively managing the SARS crisis as Beijing's mayor in 2003. Meanwhile, his reputation for economic prowess and steadfastness was cemented by his role in managing Guangdong's financial scandals in the late 1990's. He also spent a number of years conducting agricultural reforms and over a decade heading China's Construction Bank. The 59-year-old was elevated to the Politburo of the Chinese People's Congress Central Committee (CPCCC) in 2008.

With the Chinese-US relationship widely being seen as crucial to global financial stability, the stakes for the success of the dialogue for all parties involved couldn't be any higher.