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James Fallows thinks Hillary Clinton's supporters need to come to terms with what the harsh realities of gender politics would mean for her foreign policy if she were elected president:

[H]aving voted five years ago for the war in Iraq, which she then continued to support for years, she went ahead this fall and voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which however you slice it was essentially a vote for legitimizing military action against Iran....

If she is sworn in as the first female president, she will still have to remove doubts about her "toughness." There will be the 2010 midterms to think of. And of course the 2012 reelection campaign. And if she is tough enough to get through that, then concerns about her legacy. Over the long run, is there any difference between a candidate who needs to "seem" hawkish on questions like Iraq and Iran, and a candidate who is an actual hawk?

I sympathize completely with her predicament: dealing with those atavistic voter emotions about the "weakness" of female candidates is a terrible problem. But here's the predicament it creates for voters. If I don't want the next president to be someone who had a hawkish outlook on both Iraq and Iran, do I say: Never mind, she's not really a hawk, she just has to vote like one?

This is the kind of phony trumpeting of the "gender issue" that is at once disappointing and completely unwarranted. Legitimate, substantive questions can and should be asked about Clinton's positions on Iraq and Iran. But to insinuate that as president she would attack Iran with no motive other than the fear of being called a sissy is preposterous. Andrew Sullivan apparently agrees with this cacophony, too. I know it's a boys club over at The Atlantic's blog shop, where just one of the seven "voices" is a woman, but come on, fellas. What century are you boys living in? It certainly hasn't played out that way with Condi Rice on North Korea and Iran. Angela Merkel, Germany's first female chancellor, helped convince Bush to exhaust all peaceful efforts with Tehran before seeking punitive steps. And when was the last time you saw Nancy Pelosi calling for a military strike lest she be considered weak? If you want to discuss Clinton's qualifications for the presidency, fine. But let's talk about the things that matter.

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U.S. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's pessimistic testimony to Congress on Thursday has caused increased handwringing around the world, with new reports questioning whether the subprime fallout will lead to a worldwide recession. The general consensus is no — the damage will be contained to the housing sector and hedge funds, which irresponsibly invested in subprime.

But what if subprime's use were actually more widespread? Some mutual funds have acknowledged small investments in the funds. This isn't a big deal, as some risk is to be expected in those vehicles. But what about money-market funds, where most personal savings are invested? They offer a low rate of return and are considered one of the safest investment. But according to a recent Bloomberg article, money-market fund managers have invested $11 billion in subprime, including managers at Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. In other words, about $11 billion worth of personal savings are at risk.

In the grand scheme of things, $11 billion is a drop in the bucket. But as we've seen over the last few months, small problems like this tend to be more widespread, so it's likely more money-market funds will be forced to acknowledge subprime investments, and peoples' savings, which are already at historic lows, could disappear. If this happens, recession would be inevitable, and depression a real possibility.

Tonight, Nicolas Sarkozy will address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Yesterday, a few of us from FP attended Sarkozy's address to the French-American Business Council, where the French president touched on a number of themes you're likely to see in tonight's speech. The bottom line? Here's a man on a charm offensive.

Some highlights:

• Sarkozy is looking to build bridges with France's socialists. "I want major reforms and for that I need a vast majority", he said. Expect the unity theme to reappear again in his comments on the Franco-American relationship. 
• Building on that topic, Sarkozy will also likely speak of France's own special relationship with the United States. Expect him to mention the portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette that hangs in the House chamber and the "eternal debt" France owes to the United States for its role in both world wars.
• Seven of the 15 ministers in Sarkozy's cabinet are women, a fact he emphasized in yesterday's meeting, describing the United States as a model of inclusion. Expect him to congratulate Nancy Pelosi on her position as Speaker of the House.
• Sarkozy is also likely to speak on the need for reforms in the world's international organizations. "The UN, IMF and G8 are all organizations of the twentieth century," he said yesterday, and it is likely that he will call for changes that would take into account the emerging powers of the developing world.
• On trade, expect Sarkozy to emphasize the need for free trade but a fair playing field. In other words, while Sarkozy may portray himself as a champion of the free market, expect France to continue to protect its domestic industries, especially agriculture.
• On Iran, the French President said that it is "unacceptable" that Iran be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon but that the country, like all others, did have the right to civilian nuclear power; he even dubbed nuclear energy the "technology of the future". He admonished those who are opposed to meeting with Iran's leaders, saying, "there's no contradiction between firmness and dialogue."

While he praised the United States, Sarkozy's overall message, like that of many recent French presidents, is one of restoring France to its former position of international grandeur. But this French leader brings a new twist:

If you want to be an example, you have to behave like an example. We've fallen too far behind, but we're catching up."

Editor's Note: This post coauthored by Joshua Keating.

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Remember the case of Shi Tao? He's a Chinese journalist who was imprisoned back in 2004 for supposedly leaking state secrets by writing an e-mail to a New York-based pro-democracy group, describing how the Chinese government planned to crack down on local media covering the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Yahoo supplied information about Shi's e-mail address to the Chinese authorities, leading to his arrest and 10-year prison sentence.

Finally, Yahoo is issuing a mea culpa for its role in the case. More specifically, Yahoo's top lawyer is apologizing for failing to tell the U.S. Congress that Yahoo knew more about the case than it claimed in testimony given last year. U.S. lawmakers have been querying Yahoo about its business practices in China for the past couple years. Last year, Callahan said that Yahoo had no information about the Chinese government's wishes for customer information. Lo and behold, it turns out Yahoo was in possession of an order from Beijing seeking information about Shi. Callahan's apology comes in advance of another Congressional hearing next week about the challenges and moral quandaries that U.S. companies like Yahoo face in doing business in authoritarian places such as China. It's great that Yahoo is starting to come clean, but that's undoubtedly little comfort to Shi Tao, who still has at least another seven years to go in prison.

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Steve Clemons gets his hands on a recent letter sent privately to U.S. President George W. Bush by Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last night for the first time at a New America Foundation "salon dinner" in his honor. In his often passionate speech, Hagel, who was an Army sergeant in Vietnam, appeared deeply troubled by the prospect of war with Iran and by the declining readiness state of the U.S. military. His letter reflects that concern. Here's the gist of his appeal to the president:

Now is the time for the United States to active consider when and how to offer direct, unconditional, and comprehensive talks with Iran. The offer should be made even as we continue to work with our allies on financial pressure, in the UN Security Council on a third sanctions resolution, and in the region to support those Middle East countries who share our concerns with Iran. The November report by IAEA Director General ElBaradei to the IAEA Board of Governors could provide an opportunity to advance the offer of bilateral talks.

An approach such as this would strengthen our ability across the board to deal with Iran. Our friends and allies would be more confident to stand with us if we seek to increase pressure, including tougher sanctions on Iran. It could create a historic new dynamic in US-Iran relations, in part forcing the Iranians to react to the possibility of better relations with the West. We should be prepared that any dialogue process with Iran will take time, and we should continue all efforts, as you have, to engage Iran from a position of strength.

We should not wait to consider the option of bilateral talks until all other diplomatic options are exhausted. At that point, it could well be too late.

I urge you to consider pursing direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran.

Thank you for considering my views.

Best wishes.

Sincerely,

Chuck H.

Chuck Hagel
United States Senator

cc: Condoleezza Rice

Robert M. Gates

Stephen J. Hadley

 Clemons notes:

I have since learned that the letter somehow made its way to US Central Command Commander William Fallon, perhaps through Defense Secretary Gates or other avenues, and Fallon allegedly communicated with the Senator that serious articulations of American interests and consideration of the options Hagel recommends are much needed in this current political and policy environment.

The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, believes that one of his primary responsibilities will be to persuade Congress and the American people that security only comes with deep pockets:

Military spending is hovering around 4 percent of gross domestic product, “and I would see that in the future as an absolute floor,” Admiral Mullen said.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the authorization of military force in Iraq. Twelve former Army captains who have served in Iraq have come to this conclusion:

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

Late yesterday news broke that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush will attend the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, at the U.S. Capitol next Wednesday. Now, ABC News is reporting that not only will Bush be attending the ceremony, he will be delivering remarks. It will be the first time Bush has made a public appearance with the Dalai Lama. Normally, the White House is careful to arrange "unofficial" meetings with His Holiness in the White House residence. No more. Bush will reportedly use his remarks to refer to His Holiness as, "a great spiritual leader who is seeking rights for the people of Tibet ... and to protect their land."

Beijing, as you might imagine, is furious. Even before news broke that Bush would be making remarks, China was denouncing the "so-called award," using state-controlled media to take pot shots at the Dalai Lama, and secretly accusing Tibetan Communist Party members of disloyalty. The Burmese junta can't be thrilled with this, either, given that the Dalai Lama is the spiritual shepherd of global Buddhism. Some folks, including the New York Sun's Nicholas Wapshott, are arguing that Bush is using the award as an opportunity to crank up the pressure on the junta. That may be so, although as Asia scholar Phillip Cunningham over at Informed Comment: Global Affairs points out today, interest in Burma is all but fizzled out. No doubt the first lady, who appears to be genuinely passionate about Burma, played a role in the decision to attend the event. Perhaps President Bush will take the opportunity to yet again condemn the junta's crackdown on Buddhist monks.

Judging from the brief excerpts of Bush's remarks released today, though, this looks mostly like a clever attempt by the White House to press the Chinese on human rights at a time when they have little choice but to sit back and take it. First, Beijing wants a quiet Communist Party Congress this year. In fact, Beijing is already cracking down on democracy advocates in advance of next week's sessions in order to ensure they go smoothly. And second, as was widely noted during the Burma protests, the bigwigs in Beijing don't want attention drawn to China's stance on human rights in advance of the Olympics.

So kudos to the White House for spotting a small window within which to deliver the message that booming exports and imports don't translate to democratic reform. Maybe the vaunted "freedom agenda" isn't dead after all.

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The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill, over White House objections, that would make private military contractors working in Iraq subject to U.S. law. It's about time something was done.

But in watching the Blackwater hearings the other day, I was more than a little disturbed by what military contracting expert Peter Singer rightly called "a fascinating, but also disturbing, lack of awareness in Congress about the private military industry." I couldn't help but be embarrassed at the "consistently weak grasp of the issues," as Singer put it.

So while I'm glad to see Congress taking an interest, finally, in addressing a glaring hole in the U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, I'm a little taken aback that a House that evinced such a lack of basic familiarity with the issue would rush to pass legislation that could have serious unintended consequences for U.S. national security. I understand how political timing works, but wouldn't it have made more sense to wait and think about this a little bit?

Moreover, the bill doesn't address, as far as I know, a problem that has gone little noticed amid the Blackwater fracas: More and more of the foreigners working as private military contractors in Iraq hail from Latin America. A new Web exclusive by Kristina Mani explains why this seemingly innocuous development could spell trouble:

The reliance on Latin American security contractors has worrisome implications for both the United States and Latin American countries. Uneven vetting procedures by some PMFs that recruit in the region contradict and potentially undermine official U.S. policies to promote respect for human rights by Latin American military and police forces. Moreover, lack of effective regulation of the private security industry has led to abusive labor practices by some PMFs; it has also encouraged corruption in some Latin American militaries eager to benefit from the recruitment of former soldiers—a development that undercuts efforts to achieve civilian control of militaries in the region’s new democracies.

Check it out. 

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Once upon a time, the White House budget director estimated the Iraq war might cost $50 billion. Today, $50 billion is a mere asterisk. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates went to the Hill and added nearly that amount to the $141 billion the president had already requested for fiscal year 2008. In other words, Iraq and Afghanistan will conservatively cost $190 billion next year alone.

Earlier this year, FP contributor Gordon Adams, a former national security budget official at the Clinton White House, examined just how much the Pentagon's books have spiraled out of control due to war spending. Here's what he has to say about Gates's most recent funding request:

The administration and the Congress are playing fiscal poker with Iraq: They're still "betting on the come' in funding the war. That's a poker term for putting incremental money on the table in the hopes that the hand will improve as you draw more cards. The administration "antes up" funding requests one at a time, with no long-term cost projection or position on how or when the war will end. And the Congress keeps "calling" the administration, matching the ante, and kicking confrontation down the road.

U.S. taxpayers have already spent at least $610 billion on the global war on terror. That's about $333 million a day. And with the new funding, the total will exceed $800 billion. So, what is this extra funding that Gates wants actually going for? The surge and safer hardware.

The big hardware piece is something called the MRAP—the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected Vehicle. This large, lumbering armored vehicle will replace the HUMVEE in Iraq (once MRAPs start to get there this winter), and it is designed to protect against the land mines and IEDs that have cost so many lives and limbs. Gates says there will be $16 billion in the additional budget request for MRAPs, bringing the total DoD order to more than 15,000 of them. [Ed:Each vehicle costs about $1 million.]

No matter how long the surge force stays in place, any returning brigades will cost additional funds to bring back home. Without a major reduction in forces below pre-surge levels, funding requirements for the war will simply continue to mount.

We're sliding fast to $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For perspective, the total GDP of the United States last year was just over $13 trillion.

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Nicholas Rajula is running for Kenyan Parliament, and he has a pretty novel campaign strategy: He claims to be U.S. Senator Barack Obama's distant cousin.

People in Kenya love Obama, whose father was from the African country. When Obama visited Kenya last year, throngs of singing and dancing Kenyans greeted him with a hero's welcome. His Kenyan roots may be why Kenya is one of three countries that love the United States more than Americans themselves do: 87 percent of Kenyans have a favorable view of the United States, compared with 80 percent of Americans, according to a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this year.

Obama's campaign denies that Rajula and Obama are related; Rajula and Obama's father just happen to come from the same Kenyan village. To Rajula's credit, though, Obama's paternal grandmother says she considers herself a grandmother to Rajula, and Rajula is known for organizing part of Obama's itinerary when he visited Kenya (although Obama's campaign wouldn't comment on this).

It's uncertain whether Rajula's campaign strategy will be successful. During one campaign stop, villagers got upset that Rajula wasn't doling out the cash too freely, violating a time-honored custom of Kenya's parliamentary campaigns (although he did quietly give money to village leaders later on). Echoing the language of his "cousin" from Illinois, Rajula explained that he aspires to "a new kind of politics." Such rhetoric hasn't been enough for Obama to keep up with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, and it probably won't put Rajula over the top in Kenya, either.

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Yesterday, Sen. Joe Biden's plan to split Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions received overwhelming bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate. The non-binding resolution that passed is doubtless part criticism of Bush and part criticism of Maliki, and really just an effort to show that at least someone has a plan for the future of the war.

But Toby Dodge, one of the foremost experts on modern-day Iraq, thinks partition is perhaps the most dangerous and historically ignorant solution for the country yet. He sat down with FP recently and had this to say about the Biden plan:

People are struggling to explain failure, to apportion blame, and to try to develop a policy that gets them out of the country. The most damaging outcome would be along the lines of the proposals that recommend partition, like the Gelb-Biden plan. I think those fundamentally misunderstand Iraq.

If you look at the three communities that are allegedly going to be partitioned, go down to the supposed Shiistan in the south. What we have in the south is a low-level civil war between the two main Shiite parties led by members of the Badr Brigade and al-Sadr. So, are we going to partition the south into a Badristan and a Sadristan? When we come up to supposed Sunnistan, we have a fight between al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely indigenous organization with foreign leadership, and the so-called sheikhs of Anbar— that is an intra-Sunni fight. Then we have Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan fought a vicious civil war in the 1990s, where the KDP actually asked Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard to come in and help them. The idea that we have three neat communities is sociologically and politically illiterate. It has deliberately ignored the sociological complexities of Iraq in order to get a neat policy prescription that allows America to get out of Iraq. That is dangerous and reckless, and it isn’t the solution. 

Deborah D. Avant, professor of political science and director of international studies at University of California, Irvine, and author of Think Again: Mercenaries from a few years ago, has this to say about the Blackwater contretemps in Iraq:

Is it accidental that the Iraqi government's reaction to the latest Blackwater incident comes on the heels of U.S. criticism of Iraqi progress?

The United States sent in an army of private-security contractors (PSCs) with only a whiff of controversy as the insurgency mounted in Iraq—contrasting sharply with the hoopla over the so-called surge. But this week's media frenzy demonstrates the political pitfalls of a reliance on companies like Blackwater. The Iraqi government is certainly justified in raising questions about how these companies operate, especially regarding the still unclear legal status of PSC personnel. But the Iraqi government has reacted mildly to the dozen or so previous incidents that have reached the Western press, making Maliki's outraged calls for the expulsion of Blackwater and a review of all PSCs working in Iraq seem puzzling at first. One wonders, though, if Maliki’s reaction to this incident is driven by a desire to take the spotlight off the Iraqi government's failures and buy it some bargaining room, both in domestic circles and with the Americans. Practically, the United States cannot operate in Iraq without PSCs—and Maliki knows this. The chance to point a finger at one of the more controversial elements of U.S. strategy and put the United States on the hot seat even while sticking up for Iraqi sovereignty in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad is probably too good for him to pass up.

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"There is no military solution."

It has become something of a mantra for leaders discussing the war in Iraq. We've heard it from everyone from Dennis Kucinich to Gen. David Petraeus. But lately, the conventional wisdom seems to have shifted. Emboldened by optimistic reports of an "Anbar Awakening," many of the war's supporters and opponents are now supporting a "bottom up" strategy for stability, enlisting local forces to fight the insurgency and give the political process time to work. It was clear from before yesterday's testimony that Amb. Ryan Crocker had a much harder case to make that progress was being made on a political level.

In light of this, New York Times reported David Sanger predicted that Republicans would back the bottom-up strategy, while David Ignatius urged the Democrats to get behind the idea and take credit for it. Of course, the idea that all of this is leading to political reconciliation in Iraq is totally bunk. As Passport has noted, when the idea of "soft partition" was first proposed by Senator Joe Biden back in 2006, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed it as antithetical to a "federal, democratic, pluralist and unified" Iraq.  He was right. Colin Kahl and Shawn Brimley wrote on this Web site last week about the difficulties that empowering local militias could cause for Iraq's central government. The "soft partition" strategy is the first step in abandoning the goal of political reconciliation in Iraq. Washington's new mantra might as well be, "There is no political solution."

Still, it's easy to see the idea's appeal. Empowering and befriending local militants takes the heat off of U.S. troops, sidesteps the dysfunctional Iraqi national army and puts the Sunnis in a stronger position for after the U.S. forces leave. After all, the possibility of a post-pullout genocide is a possibility war opponents would rather not think about. There's certainly evidence that dividing a population into ethnically homogeneous units can create stability: Just look at modern Europe. Of course, it took a half century of total war and genocide to make it that way. (Tony Judt's Postwar makes the counterintuitive argument that Hitler and Stalin are more responsible for Europe's current peace and prosperity than anyone else.)

Gen. Petraeus would love to give the surge credit for decreasing casualty numbers in Baghdad. But the Mahdi Army probably deserves more credit for ethnically cleansing Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods of their Sunni residents. By accepting "soft partition," the Bush administration is essentially banking on sectarian militias to do their job for them.