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Yesterday, Pyongyang submitted a long-overdue declaration of its nuclear programs to China, in accordance with agreements made during the six-party talks. U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed the move as "one step in the multi-step process laid out by the six-party talks," immediately lifted the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act, and notified Congress of his intent to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

What does all this mean in practice? The Bush administration's moves are highly symbolic, and unlikely to have any immediate, practical impact. Most U.S. sanctions based on the Trading with the Enemy Act (pdf) were already lifted in 2000, and most of those still in place are authorized by an overlapping hodgepodge of other laws and regulations. Minor changes will go into effect -- for instance, some imports from North Korea will no longer require licenses -- but for the most part trade policies will remain unchanged.

Bush's intention to remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terror list is a similarly symbolic gambit; the actual removal cannot go into effect for 45 days after the notification to Congress, and in any case it is probably contingent on verifying North Korea's nuclear declaration. Countries on the terror list cannot receive, among other things, U.S. economic aid or loans from the World Bank and other financial institutions. Removing North Korea from the list may allow more money to flow in, but, as a U.S. Treasury spokesman noted yesterday, sanctions aimed at preventing money laundering, illicit finance, and weapons proliferation will remain firmly in place.

Practicalities aside, this development has rightly been hailed as a diplomatic success; the New York Times today declared it a "triumph." The path to a denuclearized North Korea is still long and the process could easily be derailed at any point, but it is nice to finally have some reason, however slight, for optimism.

I see that Andrew Sullivan wants Barack Obama to keep Bob Gates as his secretary of defense if he wins in November. That would certainly be neat, but it remains highly implausible. Matt Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman suggest a few alternatives from within the Democratic Party, some more realistic than others.

The Telegraph reports on top Obama advisor Richard Danzig's recent talk at the Center for a New American Security. "Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security," Danzig began.

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children's classic, which says: "Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it."

Danzig was secretary of the Navy in the Clinton administration and would be a prime contender for national security advisor if Obama won in November.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright fears that it is:

THE Burmese government's criminally neglectful response to last month's cyclone, and the world's response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world's necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.

I'm not so sure Burma represents the best test case here. Can we really imagine a Haiti-style intervention in one of the world's most xenophobic countries? We're not talking about a failed state here, but a paranoid, Stalinist military junta that would need to be violently shoved aside in order for a Haiti-like receivership to take hold.

There's another thing Albright doesn't take into account: the China factor. Guess who is not too enthusiastic about humanitarian intervention in places like Burma, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and guess who's vastly more powerful than in the 90s?

UPDATE: Yglesias chimes in.

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Apparently you don't have to be an opposition leader seeking democratic reforms to get arrested in Zimbabwe -- just being a foreign diplomat can be enough. U.S. and British diplomats were seized by Zimbabwean police today while visiting victims of political violence carried out by the government of President Robert Mugabe, whom human rights groups accuse of creating famine and starvation for political purposes.

Here's James D. McGee, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, describing the incident to CNN:

Police put up a roadblock, stopped the vehicles, slashed the tires, reached in and grabbed telephones from my personnel, and the war veterans (Mugabe's supporters) threatened to burn the vehicles with my people inside unless they got out and accompanied police to a station nearby."

McGee added that his embassy felt the orders were "coming directly from the top." Whoever gave the orders, threatening to burn foreign dignitaries alive is a step beyond the usual Mugabe bullying. It's sickening. 

Will this be the moment when Thabo Mbeki finally stops covering for the crazy man next door? As the leader of the powerhouse, a country with a long history of friendship and cooperation with Mugabe, the South African president has unique leverage on Harare, but he has, if anything, shielded Mugabe from accountability. It's time for President Bush to pressure Mbeki and other African leaders to handle the mess in their own backyards, and if that doesn't work, take matters to the Security Council. The apologetics need to end now.

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On the subject of international media reactions to Obama's win, Le Monde's Corine Lesnes practically swoons over the Illinois senator, placing him in the same category as Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. Noting Obama's multinational family tree and appeal around the world, she also calls him America's first "global candidate." She can't help but note that "he doesn't speak any foreign languages (except Indonesian)," however.

It makes sense that a French newspaper article would be the first place I had ever seen the presidential candidates' foreign-language skills mentioned. But given that I already know more about Obama's basketball skills and the condition of John McCain's prostate than I ever really wanted to, it seems like this would have come up at some point. After a little Googling I found that Obama told The Hill that in addition to Indonesian, he speaks "a little Spanish." As far as I can determine, McCain doesn't speak any languages.

The leader of the free world probably doesn't actually need to know foreign languages to have a good grasp of foreign affairs (and for what it's worth, I've personally witnessed Nicolas Sarkozy attempt English and it wasn't pretty) but it might be something to keep in mind the next time candidates get all sanctimonious about educating America's youth to compete in the global economy.

Last night, seven Palestinians received word that their Fulbright scholarships would not be given away to other students. On Thursday, the students, who call the Gaza Strip home, had been notified that their scholarships were being "redirected." The reason? Since the June 2007 blockade began, Gazans have not been able to secure travel visas from the Israeli government for any reason other than pressing humanitarian concern. And although the Fulbright program is now optimistic because the Israeli government has finally acknowledged the visa applications and agreed to an interview process to take place in Jerusalem, the Israelis still reserve the right to deny the visas.

The very day before the students had their scholarships taken away, the Israeli Knesset's Education Committee had petitioned the Israeli Defense Ministry to reconsider restrictions on visas for students. Michael Melchior, chair of the Committee had this to say:

We are a nation that for years was prevented from studying - how can we do the same thing to another people?"

News of the reversal is good for Palestinians who wish to study in the United States, but there are reportedly around 670 students with similar scholarships for study in Europe and elsewhere whose fate is yet unknown. Today, the Israeli Supreme Court heard the petitions of two such students hoping to travel to Germany and Great Britain, and some of the justices have already made their positions clear:

Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein expressed discomfort with the ban on allowing students from Gaza to study abroad, telling the State Attorney that the ban seems 'no less harmful to the Israeli interest, because we have to live with the Palestinians in the future, too.'

If the Fulbright program weren't one of the crown jewels of American public diplomacy, Israel might never have come under real pressure to reexamine its restrictions on travel in and out of the Gaza Strip. But now that it has, the intellectual potentials of nearly 700 Palestinians hang in the balance.

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Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives voted 324-84 to permit the U.S. Justice Department to sue OPEC for manipulating oil supplies and prices. Fortunately, the White House opposes the measure, saying that going after OPEC countries "would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries."

Rep. Steve Kagen, a Wisconsin Democrat who sponsored the legislation, issued a press release that said, "American consumers remain at the mercy of OPEC nations." Hmmm … Americans, living in one of the wealthiest and most innovative countries on Earth, are helpless weaklings who survive at the mercy of others? Perhaps they should pay attention to columnist Thomas Friedman when he said:

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”

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If you were waiting to see who Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is supporting in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, it looks like you're going to be disappointed. Chavez sat down for an informal interview last Thursday with a group of visiting American newspaper editors and refused to bite:

Of the American presidential candidates, Chávez said, "It would be a lie to say I have no preference." But "I shouldn't say anything that would be used against someone."

The 20 editors spoke with Chavez for about 90 minutes on topics ranging from baseball (He's a Yankees fan, ironically.) to his relationship with Fidel Castro. He also stressed that the bombastic anti-American rhetoric he has used in the past is directed at the U.S. government, not ordinary Americans, and certainly not his friends in Hollywood:

I beg for forgiveness if in my speech I've hurt any feelings back in the States. I ask for forgiveness. When I speak about the United States, I do not refer to the people, to the citizens. I refer to the elite that is governing the United States - and not even referring to all of the elite governing the United States. Because we have friends among the elite governing the US. The economic elite, we have friends. We have friends among the cultural elite of the United States . . . Danny Glover. Kevin Spacey came over here. Sean Penn. Those are my friends, close friends . . . And when they come over here, they say what they like and what they don't like. And we still are friends. And that's what we want. We want to be friends. And I hope that with the new government we can then open new space for exchange - and discuss.

Chavez isn't getting too cozy though. He still worries about the U.S. invading to steal his country's oil wealth and is looking into buying more weapons from Russia to guard against this threat. He was also pretty evasive when asked about whether he planned to leave power when his term runs out in 2013, saying, "I don't think the Venezuelan people, at least part of the people, would allow me to get too far away from politics."

With his arch-nemesis on the way out, Chavez may be hoping to boost his appeal to the American population. But given how integral the image of Chavez as a third-world underdog railing against North American neoliberalism is to his appeal and legitimacy in Venezuela and throughout Latin America, it seems unlikely that he would ever get to friendly with the U.S., no matter who's sitting in the White House.

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President Bush's Knesset speech is getting a lot of attention today for what appeared to be a veiled swipe at Barack Obama, implying that those who suggest negotiations with Iran are repeating the mistakes made during the lead-up to World War II:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.''

Leaving aside whether the remark was aimed at Obama, (and Obama certainly thinks it was) is it really necessary for politicians to constantly invoke the Holocaust when speaking about international affairs with Jewish audiences, as if that's the only analogy through which they can understand security threats? For the record, some Israeli politicians are just as guilty of this. 

Anyway, Bush may claim to be horrified at the idea of negotiating with terrorist-supporting regimes, but his administration actually appears to have dropped its opposition to once-taboo negotiations between Israel and Syria in recent weeks. This would seem to support the view that Bush's remarks had more to do with U.S. politics than the reality of Israel's security.

Laura Rozen has much more on Bush's last chance to advance the peace process in her FP web-exclusive this week and today's photo essay explores Israel and Syria's continuing conflict over the Golan Heights.

In today's Washington Post, Mike Gerson quite rightly lambasts the "Coburn Seven" -- seven Senate Republicans who are all but blocking expanded funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Unfortunately, what Gerson ignores is the GOP's long history of failure and ignorance on the HIV/AIDS front. This sad history dates to the very founding of the contemporary conservative movement. It was Ronald Reagan, the revered Godfather, who remained silent as tens of thousands of Americans died and a pandemic was spread to more than 100 countries around the globe. Even as Reagan did nothing to combat AIDS, his surrogates in the extreme right opined that the disease was a divinely-inspired retaliation on liberalism. It was Pat Buchanan, Reagan's White House communications director, who called AIDS "nature's revenge on gay men." Such sentiments proliferated as the power of the GOP's religious right-wing coalesced in the 1990s. Former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, for instance, famously called for those infected with HIV/AIDS to be "isolated from the general population" in 1992. He stood by the statement in his 2008 presidential campaign.

When historians sit down to assess the modern conservative movement a generation or two from now, among the most severe tarnishes on the GOP's legacy will be Guantanamo and record deficits. There also will be the string of painfully ignorant policies the party has held on HIV/AIDS. To his credit, George W. Bush has probably done more than any conservative politician of his generation to reverse this tragic legacy -- more, perhaps, than any liberal politician, too. PEPFAR has provided life-sustaining anti-AIDS drugs to 1.4 million patients in the countries hardest hit by the disease. It may be the most favorably remembered foreign policy initiative of Bush's entire tenure. And in his January State of the Union address, the President proposed a long-overdue doubling of the effort.

It looked as though the GOP had finally found its moorings on combating a disease that, in a number of African countries, now affects more than 1 in 5 adults. But a small GOP minority once again appears poised to force the United States to take a backseat in the fight. As Gerson says, it will come at a price paid in lives. Unfortunately, it won't be the first time.

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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.

CIA Director Michael Hayden gave a smart talk earlier this week about where the world is headed and what role the United States will play in it (video). With the world population set to grow about 34 percent by mid-century, the agency will be especially attentive to demographic transitions in countries that can't sustain higher populations, he said. But Hayden also had a message for China:

China is a competitor—certainly in the economic realm, and, increasingly, on the geopolitical stage. But China is not an inevitable enemy. There are good policy choices available to both Washington and Beijing that can keep us on the largely peaceful, constructive path we've been on for almost 40 years now.

On a very hopeful note, Hayden also said Americans have to start putting themselves in others' shoes:

[A] greater number of actors will have influence on the world stage in this century. And that presents one overriding challenge to those of us responsible for our nation's security: We must do a better job of understanding cultures, histories, religions, and traditions that are not our own. We must broaden our understanding, and guard against viewing the world exclusively through an American prism. We must not rely exclusively on an American—or even more broadly, Western—lens in assessing foreign challenges and helping policymakers decide how to respond.

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The State Department has just released its annual report on global terrorism, as it does every April 30. Some highlights (read the AP synopsis here):

• On the strength of Al Qaeda: "It has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas ... and [restored] some central control by its top leadership, in particular Ayman al-Zawahiri."
• On Al Qaeda's leadership: "Numerous senior al-Qaida operatives have been captured or killed, but al-Qaida leaders continued to plot attacks and to cultivate stronger operational connections that radiated outward from Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe."
• Terrorist attacks in Pakistan doubled between 2006 and 2007 and the number of fatalities quadrupled
• In Afghanistan, the number of terrorist attacks rose 16 percent in 2007
• Terrorist attacks in Iraq declined slightly between 2006 and 2007, but still accounted for 60 percent of terrorism fatalities worldwide, including 17 of the 19 Americans killed in attacks last year
• More than 22,000 people were killed by terrorists worldwide in 2007, 8 percent more than in 2006
• Iran is the world's "most active" state sponsor of terrorism
• In Iraq: 13,600 noncombatants were killed in 2007; suicide bombings in country rose by 50 percent; suicide car bombings were up 40 percent and suicide bombings outside of vehicles climbed 90 percent over 2006

The conclusions on Pakistan are likely to garner the most attention, and quite rightly. Watch for more calls like this one for a three-front war.