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As the space debris settles from the U.S. operation to take out its own satellite, the policy repercussions are quite clear: We have entered a new space age. Here's why, according to International Herald Tribune:

[O]fficials and experts have made it clear that the United States, for better or worse, is committed to having the capacity to wage war in space. And that, it seems likely, will prompt others to keep pace... What makes people want to ban war in space is exactly what keeps the Pentagon's war planners busy preparing for it: The United States has become so dependent on space that it has become the country's Achilles' heel."

This refers to the U.S. military's heavy use of satellite capabilities. So, was the United States wrong in brushing aside recent calls for de-weaponization of space? Not according to Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Space weapons are not the problem, he argues, nor is it effective to ostensibly ban them as Russia and China have proposed:

The biggest deficiency in the Russian-Chinese draft treaty is that it focuses on the wrong threat: weapons in space. There aren't any today, nor are there likely to be any in the immediate future. The threat to space assets is rather from weapons on earth -- the land- and sea-based kinetic, directed-energy and electromagnetic attack systems. The treaty entirely ignores these."

The United States' technological capabilities and needs are contributing to a loss of innocence in how the country approaches space. U.S. space policy has become a nearly impossible balancing act of maintaining defensive capabilities without becoming a strategic menace. If Tellis's argument -- that a treaty cannot provide the sweeping restrictions and enforcement necessary to keep space peaceful -- proves true, it implies an uncertain, worrisome future. The U.S. satellite shootdown may thus herald a bigger change than was anticipated. Could this have been "the kinetic kill vehicle heard 'round the world?"

That's how Randy Scheunemann, who is overseeing foreign policy issues for John McCain's campaign, just summed up the obvious in a Council on Foreign Relations event here in Washington. After Mara Rudman, who is advising Hillary Clinton, very briefly addressed the issue of Clinton's foreign policy experience, Scheunemann chimed in with:

Please keep running those 3:00 A.M. ads about who you want to answer the phone, because we like those."

In other words, the more Clinton and Obama keep talking about how inexperienced the other is, the more it sticks for both.

Interestingly, Rudman highlighted Clinton's "travel and experiences on the ground" as first lady as proof that she's ready to answer that phone. If that's the "commander in chief threshold" that Clinton keeps talking about, it sounds pretty thin to me. At least as thin as Obama's argument that he lived for a while in Indonesia, and that somehow qualifies him to handle the complexities of the Middle East peace process, serve as commander in chief, and execute the other national security responsibilities of the Oval Office. In a dogfight with John McCain, Clinton and Obama had better have more bullets in the gun than that.

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It's puzzling to me why it's so difficult for some to let go of the old 1990s formulation that the economy still matters most in elections.

"[I]t's really about the economy," declared a BusinessWeek headline yesterday morning. To be sure, the economy has played an important role in the campaign over the last couple weeks. But if Hillary Clinton's victories in Ohio and Texas last night prove anything, isn't it the opposite? Voters are still very much in a Sept. 11th mindset. Clinton won last night in large part by beating Barack Obama two to one among voters who made their decision within the last three days of the race. And she did that by attacking his preparedness to handle national security, not the subprime crisis. Most notably via the now-infamous, and apparently effective, "It's 3:00 A.M...." ad.

Why did that strategy work? Because, as Michael Gerson points out in today's Washington Post, this is really the only issue on which Obama is beatable. Clinton insiders have, it appears, finally grasped this fact. "His vulnerability is experience and judgment on national security," Harold Ickes and Mark Penn wrote in a memo last night.

I suspect foreign policy is now the issue on which Obama's political future will live or die. This morning, he told reporters aboard his campaign plane, "Over the coming weeks we will join [Clinton] in that argument. Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crisis? The answer is 'no.'"

John McCain is already signaling that he intends to make November a referendum on national security. Like it or not, it's a foreign-policy election.

I'm a pretty reliable critic of the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East, but I can usually see the logic behind them. I have to admit, though, that the decision to send the U.S.S. Cole to the Lebanese coast has stumped me. U.S. officials say their intent is to bolster the embattled Lebanese government, force a long-delayed decision on a new president, and show Syria that America means business. But what is a missile destroyer supposed to actually do in this situation? Shoot at Hezbollah? The only things this boneheaded move will accomplish are to remind the Lebanese of 1983, when U.S. warships ineffectually shelled the Chouf mountains, and embarrass Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's government. The Syrians know this well, and they will use this incident to their advantage.

It's the starkest example I've yet seen of trying to use the U.S. military to solve a political problem. The good news is that Lebanon doesn't matter as much as many people seem to think it does, so any damage done here will be limited.

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In today's WaPo, David Ignatius rightly calls Marc Sageman's new book, Leaderless Jihad, required reading for politicians as they stump on the terrorism threat. Better yet, they can read Sageman's feature in the new issue of FP, "The Next Generation of Terror."

In the piece, Sageman, whose resume, Ignatius writes, would "suit a postmodern John le Carré," profiles the new wave of global jihadists. They are younger than their forebears, self-recruited, lacking in any leadership, globally connected through the Web, and anxious for the action that they believe will make them heroes. They are, in essence, terrorist wannabes, and the absence of any overarching control or physical network makes this new generation all the more dangerous and difficult to detect. But, as Sageman shows, this leaderless movement also contains the keys to its own demise.

It's a fascinating piece that challenges many of today's conventional wisdoms about terrorism and demands a rethink of who poses the greatest threat in the years to come. Sageman will be answering readers' questions in just a few weeks. Just send any questions you have for him to letters@ForeignPolicy.com by Mar. 25 and we'll post his responses here on Mar. 31.

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During Tuesday evening's debate, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama seemed especially comfortable discussing Russia's heir apparent, Dmitry Medvedev. You could tell from the impish delight with which moderator Tim Russert sprang his surprise question -- "What can you tell me about the man who's going to be Mr. Putin's successor?" -- that a revealing exchange would follow.

First, Sen. Clinton correctly noted that "he's a hand-picked successor... who is obviously being installed by Putin." Then, she weighed in on the side of Russia analysts who view Medvedev as little more than Vladimir Putin's puppet, characterizing the former as having "very little independence" (some experts say the jury's still out on this). She concluded, "I have no doubt, as president, even though technically the meetings may be with the man who is labeled as president, the decisions will be made by Putin." (Again, an open question.)

Mischievously, Russert then asked, "Who will it be? Do you know his name?" Clinton responded with a couple sorry attempts to pronounce "Medvedev," and finally gave up and said "whatever." [UPDATE: Check out Russia Today's video clip of Clinton's slip-up here.]

Russert then turned to Clinton's rival, asking, "Senator Obama, do you know anything about him?" Obama's answer, essentially, was "not really":

Well, I think Senator Clinton speaks accurately about him. He is somebody who was hand-picked by Putin. Putin has been very clear that he will continue to have the strongest hand in Russia in terms of running the government."

Obama went on to criticize President Bush's Russia policy, complaining, "[W]e did not send a signal to Mr. Putin that, in fact, we were going to be serious about issues like human rights, issues like international cooperation that were critical to us. That is something that we have to change."

If Obama thinks that beating up on the Russians over human rights is going to have a positive impact on the Russian political landscape or elicit more cooperation at this point, he's sorely mistaken. The next U.S. president is going to have to come to grips with a Russia that is saying, "Screw you, West. You messed up our country in the 90s, and we're going to do things our way now." It's a Russia that is deeply paranoid about NATO expansion and U.S. involvement in its traditional sphere of influence in Central Asia, worried about missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe, and increasingly aggrieved about not getting its perceived due in the world. And it's a Russia that is flush with petrorubles and no longer needs handouts from anyone.

The United States needs to convince this Russia to cooperate on a number of key fronts -- Iran's nuclear program, loose nukes, and counterterrorism, to name a few. I'm sorry to say it, but human rights just isn't the top U.S. priority right now. It may not make for good campaign rhetoric, but the smart play is to welcome Medvedev and encourage him to be the liberal reformer he has hinted he might become. Maybe he does turn about to be Putin's mini-me, but there's no need to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Although President Bush's achievements in fighting poverty and disease in Africa have been lauded by popstar and social activist Bob Geldof as well as many Africans during Bush's recent tour of the continent, Brookings senior fellow Homi Kharas offers a "reality check" on U.S. aid to Africa under Bush. Kharas points out:

• U.S. economic aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased from $2.1 billion to $5.4 billion between 2000 and 2005. But EU countries gave $21.9 billion to Africa in 2006, and the United Kindgom alone gave $5.2 billion -- with an economy one-sixth of the size of the U.S. economy.
• $1.3 billion in U.S. aid to Africa was in the form of food aid, which Kharas describes as "a form of assistance which is so questionable in terms of its impact on development that several large U.S. charities, including CARE, have stopped dealing with it."
• The United States' economic assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006 (and this isn't even touching upon the enormous military expenditures on this region) was more than $6 billion, which is more than what was given to all 45 sub-Saharan African countries combined.

Kharas concludes:

So while we should celebrate the U.S. contributions to Africa, we should also keep in mind the fact that it is Europe, not the United States, that is leading the international fight against African poverty."

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The scenes on CNN today of Serbian political and religious leaders holding candles at a vigil to protest Kosovo's independence, as well as the rogue protesters setting fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, bring to mind Graham Fuller's January/February FP cover story, "A World Without Islam." In the piece, Fuller cautions Islam's critics not to assume that a Middle East dominated by Orthodox Christianity would be any more accepting of Western influence than today's Middle East. With Serbian Christians now fighting to retain what they they view as their religious homeland, maybe he was on to something:

The culture of the Orthodox Church differs sharply from the Western post-Enlightenment ethos, which emphasizes secularism, capitalism, and the primacy of the individual. It still maintains residual fears about the West that parallel in many ways current Muslim insecurities: fears of Western missionary proselytism, a tendency to perceive religion as a key vehicle for the protection and preservation of their own communities and culture, and a suspicion of the “corrupted” and imperial character of the West. Indeed, in an Orthodox Christian Middle East, Moscow would enjoy special influence, even today, as the last major center of Eastern Orthodoxy. The Orthodox world would have remained a key geopolitical arena of East-West rivalry in the Cold War. Samuel Huntington, after all, included the Orthodox Christian world among several civilizations embroiled in a cultural clash with the West.

Whatever you think of Fuller's characterization, it certainly seems noteworthy that the United States and the EU are about to go the mat with Russia for a Muslim country at the expense of a Christian one. If the rift between an increasingly religious Russia and the West continues to grow, can it be long until the op-eds start appearing on "The Orthodox Threat" or "The Failure of Political Orthodoxy"? "Orthofascism" doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?

I'd been wondering if there were anyone willing to mount a semi-coherent defense of the U.S. embargo of Cuba. Enter Gordon Chang on Commentary's blog:

An embargo helped kill communism in Europe, and it can also end it in the Caribbean. One day we will establish normal trading relations with Cuba, but that should not be before the people there govern themselves. “The post-Fidel era is clearly at hand, and the Bush administration has done almost nothing to prepare for it,” the New York Times said. Prepare for what? The embargo has been working all along, and it is up to the Cuban dictators to relax their grip, not us.

Fifty more years!

UPDATE: A commenter chez Yglesias fires off this gem:

Maybe the embargo's goal was to force Castro to grow old and ultimately retire after almost five decades in power. In which case: success! Just think how much younger he'd still be if we'd traded with him.

She [Condoleezza Rice] can lick her elbow* if she thinks that Khartoum will kneel down to her conditions and accept pressure from her or the international community.

That's a quote from Nafi Ali Nafi, the advisor to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in charge of the Darfur file. "It is not clear why the Sudanese official chose Rice as a target for fierce criticism using this slang language," the Sudan Tribune dryly notes. According to the paper, to tell someone to lick their own elbow in Sudanese is to describe "something that is very unlikely to happen."

We don't yet know how Raúl Castro plans to govern Cuba. Will he cling to the old ways? Or now that his brother Fidel is formally stepping down, will he be more bold in pursuing economic and political reform? And what role will the United States play in this process, especially in an election year with Florida and its Cuban population in play?

Chances are high that U.S. politicians will choose the easy route and continue a policy of isolation that has failed for five decades. But hope springs eternal! Perhaps the United States will choose to engage rather than punish. If that happens, U.S. policymakers will need a strategy. FP Editor in Chief Moises Naim had a perceptive column a few years back on the lessons would-be Cuba reformers need to remember in thinking about how to help that country transition from communist dictatorship to a free society. It still rings true today:

Lesson one: Failure is more common than success in the transition to a democratic market economy. Lesson two: The less internationally integrated, more centralized, and more personalized a former communist regime was, the more traumatic and unsuccessful its transition will be. Lesson three: Dismantling a communist state is far easier and faster than building a functional replacement for it. Lesson four: The brutal, criminal ways of a powerful Communist party with a tight grip on public institutions are usually supplanted by the brutal, criminal ways of powerful private business conglomerates with a tight grip on public institutions. Lesson five: Introducing a market economy without a strong and effective state capable of regulating it gives resourceful entrepreneurs more incentive to emulate Al Capone than Bill Gates.

It is therefore safe to assume that if the Castro regime suddenly implodes, Cuba will end up looking more like Albania than the Bahamas.

As Blake pointed out earlier, Barack Obama has taken aim at free trade in the run-up to the upcoming blue-collar-dominated primaries in Ohio and Wisconsin. The attack that began in earnest last night in Obama's Potomac Primary victory speech will continue at noon today in Janesville, Wisconsin, where Obama is promising to deliver a detailed speech on economic policy. The Illinois senator, who is big on hopes and dreams but not so big on details, apparently plans to tell suffering Americans that globalization is to blame for their plight. Here's a sneak preview:

The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was... the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy and the growing inequality it's produced...

[D]ecades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear...

I also won't stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements...

I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for... American workers."

This is the same guy who keeps promising to heal America's relationship with the world, right? Maybe it's just me, but forcing protectionist agreements down our trading partners' throats doesn't sound like such a good start. Neither does blaming them for America's subprime fiasco, a home-grown crisis fueled by Alan Greenspan and the Fed, which now threatens to wreak havoc on many of the globe's biggest economies. Good luck with that line, Barack.

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The liberal blogosphere is all in a tizzy over John Bolton's endorsement of John McCain, leading some to speculate that the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations would be tapped to serve as secretary of state in a McCain administration.

I doubt it. Is McCain a neocon? Maybe. Maybe not. Supporting the surge does not a neocon make, friends. It's true that since the late 1990s, McCain has increasingly surrounded himself with foreign policy minds sympathetic to the neocon cause, including Bill Kristol, Mark Salter, Daniel McKivergan, Marshall Wittmann, and Randy Scheunemann. His closeness to Kristol, in particular, has been well documented. But McCain casts a wide net. He also seeks advice from Henry Kissingers and Brent Scowcrofts, and occasionally -- gasp -- Democrats, too. And any way you slice it, McCain and Bolton don't exactly see eye to eye.

Here was McCain's answer to a question posed in 2006 by the New Republic's John Judis on a preemptive strike against Iran:

We haven't taken the military option off the table, but we should make it clear that is the very last option, only if we become convinced that they are about to acquire those weapons to use against Israel.... I think that if they are capable with their repeatedly stated intention, that doesn't mean I would go to war even then. That means we have to exhaust every possible option. Going to the United Nations, working with our European allies. If we were going to impose sanctions, I would wait and see whether those sanctions were effective or not. I did not mean it as a declaration of war the day they acquired weapons."

That doesn't exactly sound like John Bolton to me.

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We're in the midst of the most exciting presidential race in decades here in the United States. Pakistan's legislative elections are coming up on Feb. 18. And within the next two months, we'll also see elections in Russia, Spain, and Taiwan. But there's one more upcoming election that you probably haven't heard much about: the presidential race in Cyprus that takes place in two rounds on Feb. 17 and 24. Right now, there's a virtual dead heat between the top three candidates. Check out this poll here. It's in Greek, but the colors on the chart show it all: 30.0 percent to 30.1 percent to 30.5 percent.

You might be asking: Why should you care about a presidential election taking place on a tiny island that's home to fewer than one million people? We'll get there, but first, a little background.

Cyprus has been split into two entities ever since 1974, when Turkey invaded the island in response to a military coup that was backed by Athens. The northern part is currently recognized as a state by only Turkey. Everyone else recognizes the southern Greek-speaking part as the official government. As the EU expanded, there were hopes that Cyprus could enter as a united island, but unification talks sponsored by the U.N. were unsuccessful. Cyprus joined the EU, still divided, in May 2004. Current Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos, who is running for re-election, is considered by many to be a hardliner when it comes to Greek-Turkish rapprochement. One of his opponents, Communist Dimitris Kristofias, was previously in a ruling coalition with Papadopoulos, but decided to run on his own this time. The other front-runner is Ioannis Kasoulides, a member of the European Parliament and someone who is largely in favor of unification. The winner will be tasked with determining how unification talks move forward. 

So, the Cypriot elections mean a lot for the future Europe as a whole, and not just for the island itself. Turkey will never be able to accede to the EU so long as Cyprus is opposed, and Cyprus will continue to oppose it so long as Turkey still recognizes the north as legitimate. Cyprus also plays a major role in how the EU approaches prospective independence for Kosovo. Cyprus is opposed to independence for Kosovo because it's viewed as a vote against U.N. legitimacy. Greek Cypriots are also worried that Kosovar independence would be a rubber stamp for Turkish Cypriots to gain legal recognition. The most powerful states in the EU are in favor of independence for Kosovo. But as long as Cyprus remains opposed, the EU's goal for a common foreign policy remains stymied. The elections in Cyprus may seem like small peanuts compared to other happenings in the world, but there are a lot of people who are watching closely.