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.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker announced that diplomats and staff could finally move into the massive, new U.S. embassy as early as May. But thanks to a gross underestimation of housing needs, some embassy staff will be forced to remain in their trailers until more rooftop-protected housing can be secured inside the compound.

Apparently this snafu resulted from housing figures, calculated in 2005, that failed to predict the more than doubling in embassy staff that occured between the start and end of the embassy's construction.

To make matters worse, a portion of the staff that will remain in the trailers, currently parked behind Saddam Hussein's former palace (turned U.S. command center) will not be provided with rooftop reinforcement. They will receive some "enhanced protection," though (read: sandbags).

Without rooftop coverage, the Green Zone's looking like an awfully rough place to be these days.

Reader Jonathan Hendry wrote in with some interesting backstory related to my post about Apple, Inc. becoming a defense contractor:

Actually, [Steve] Jobs isn't a stranger to selling to the Pentagon. While his products are thought of as consumer electronics, there was a time when his best customers were in very serious industries like defense and high finance (UBS, Swissbank, Merrill Lynch, First Chicago, Soros, etc).

Jobs' company NeXT Computer (which Apple bought in 1997, bringing him back into the fold) sold quite a few machines to the spooks in the early 90s. The spy agencies liked how quickly software could be developed on the NeXT operating system. I personally interviewed for a defense-oriented NeXT programming job with, I think, Lockheed-Martin back in 1994, my senior year of college. (I don't recall what the system was, but I know I would have needed a security clearance - they gave me the forms to fill out. I wound up taking a job in Chicago that put me on a contract at Swissbank.)

Around 1993, NeXT stopped making computers, changing to an OS-only strategy. Supposedly they had to run the assembly line for a little while longer, in order to fulfill the spare-parts stock requirements of their defense contracts.

I expect Mr. Jobs is feeling a little deja vu right now.

Jonathan's email reminded me that the Pentagon has recently begun integrating Apple computers to bolster its network security. So, high-profile defense contracts are nothing new to the most powerful man in business.

Steve Jobs's shop recently announced the $278 million purchase of a small computer-chip maker named P.A. Semi—a takeover that most analysts assumed was designed to shore up efficient chip technology for future versions of the iPhone.

But it turns out some of P.A. Semi's best customers are defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, and they're not at all comfortable with the company's new latte-drinking, yoga-practicing, peacenik boss. Rumors are flying that Apple will shut down production of a key processor used in "more than 10" different defense systems.

EE Times reports: 

Apple Inc. may have to face the ire of the U.S. Department of Defense following its planned acquisition of P.A. Semi Inc. The startup's PWRficient processor is designed into DoD programs in every major branch of the armed services, said one P.A. Semi customer who expects Apple will end production of the parts.

"We've had customers saying they are going to the DoD on this one," said a source in one of the several companies making embedded computer boards with the processor.

Lends new meaning to the term "iPod Killer," doesn't it?

Anthony Cordesman; Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Yesterday, I attended the Jane's U.S. Defense Conference, an annual gathering bringing together American and European defense industry representatives with national-security officials. The theme of this year's conference was "the outlook for policy and defense business under the next presidency," an appropriate enough subject for the day of the Pennsylvania primary.

There was an overwhelming sense at the conference that despite billions more dollars in defense spending, the United States is not adequately preparing for the threats of the 21st century, nor is it giving the "warfighters" the resources they need to achieve victory. Major General Charles J. Dunlap of the U.S. Air Force, for instance, worried that an overemphasis on counterinsurgency was leading the U.S. to ignore the possibility of warfare with a "peer country" (read: China). Former Under-Secretary for Defense Acquisition Jacques Gansler argued that protectionism and the prioritization of congressional pork projects were causing the misuse of defense resources, necessitating a law stipulating that "Congress should not be making defense-acqisition decisions." The State Department's Deputy Director of Policy Planning Kori Schake lamented the miniscule size of her own agency's budget relative to defense, saying that every one of State's problems could be "traced back to chronic underfunding."

Oddly enough in a discussion of current national-defense priorities, Iraq and Afghanistan hardly came up until near the end of the day, when the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Anthony Cordesman gave a briefing on both conflicts. Given the weakness of both countries' political institutions, Cordesman feels that the term "counterinsurgency" ought to be abandoned altogether in favor of "armed nation-building." Since Cordesman sees far more progress toward this goal in Iraq, I asked him if troop withdrawal there would increase the likelihood of success in Afghanistan:

If we can move forward in Iraq in ways that seem possible, we may be down to 10 brigrades by 2009. You can't suddenly move those brigades to Afghanistan. They require retraining. They will have to be re-equipped and restructed to fight a different kind of war on different terrain, dealing with a different culture with different values.

I also have to say that while troops are important... far more important are the aid teams and advisory teams... rapid turnover of deployments in a country where personal relationships are even more important than they are in Iraq, the inability to take aid workers out into the field where they are really needed... The problem isn't troop levels and it won't be solved by moving out of Iraq."

It seems ironic that the takeaway message of a national-defense conference was that what we traditionally think of as defense can only do so much. The next president's foreign-policy team will need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time if it wants to begin to address the problems left over from the current one.

Salah Malkawi/Getty Images

Every two years, military and government VIPs from around the world descend on Amman, Jordan for the Special Operations Forces Exhibition, the Middle East's largest military equipment trade show. Exhibitors and buyers from the United States and Britain rub shoulders with their counterparts from Libya and Syria, all in the name of superior military capability.

For more images from the convention floor at SOFEX 2008, check out the new FP photo essay, "Where the World Shops for Weapons."

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

It's been one of the recurring themes of the Bush administration: a rejection of the traditional concept of diplomacy as a game of give-and-take in which trading away concessions allows you to get what you want on your top priorities.

Nowhere is this more evident than in U.S. policy toward Russia. Allow me to explain what I mean. The United States and Russia differ starkly on a few discrete issues: NATO enlargement in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Georgia, the ABM Treaty and the proposed U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, the Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) Treaty, Kosovo, the Nabucco trans-Caspian pipeline, and democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, the United States has sought cooperation from Russia on Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, the six-party talks with North Korea, and a host of other issues large and small.

Normally, you might think that the United States would prioritize these issues and make tradeoffs to achieve its most important objectives. But, as President Bush made clear in Ukraine last week, when he said, "There's no tradeoffs, period," U.S. officials don't believe they have to make any concessions. Each issue should be viewed separately and on its merits, they argue, rather than linked. Ukraine and Georgia should be admitted to NATO because it's the right thing to do. Russia should not feel threatened by U.S.-backed "color revolutions" in former Soviet republics or by American defense installations in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria. Russia should accept Kosovo's independence. Russia should cooperate in preventing Iran from going nuclear because a nuclear Iran is not in Russia's interests. And so on.

The only problem is, the Russians have a vastly different view of their own interests. They see U.S. moves, such as trying to convince Turkmenistan to sell its gas to Europe or pushing to bring Georgia into NATO, as extremely hostile acts reminiscent of the cold war. It makes them less willing to cooperate on other issues; it heightens their paranoia and feeling of besiegement, and it strengthens the elements within the Russian strategic class who see geopolitics as a zero-sum game with the United States as their chief adversary. (By the way, these are the same guys who aren't so into the whole democracy thing.) For many years, a failure to take Russian interests into account wasn't an obvious problem because the Russians were weak and took their lumps. But as we're seeing nowadays, they are willing to make provocative moves such as pulling out of the CFE treaty or threatening to split Ukraine when they don't get their way.

Now, maybe Russia is still a paper tiger and its bluster shouldn't dissuade the United States from strongly backing pro-Western governments in Ukraine and Georgia or trying to cut Gazprom off at the knees in Central Asia. Maybe some degree of democratic backsliding was inevitable after the chaos of the 1990s. I tend to think, though, that the United States underestimates how these issues interrelate at its peril. In the real world, there are tradeoffs, and we can't wish them away.

Blake Hounshell is Web Editor of ForeignPolicy.com. He has been blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

If you've been following the Olympic flame's troubled progess (it braves hostile crowds in San Francisco today), you've no doubt noticed the phalanx of Chinese guards in blue track suits, baseball caps, and fanny packs who follow it everywhere. As Der Spiegel's Alexander Schwabe reports, the guards are just as sinister as you might imagine:

The agents are described as "employees of the Beijing Organizing Committee," which founded a "flame protection squad" in August 2007. [...]

According to Chinese media, the agents are members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police, which in China is responsible for fighting unrest and maintaining internal stability. Tens of thousands of the "Wujing," as the People's Armed Police are called in Chinese, recently took part in crackdowns against demonstrators in Tibet and neighboring regions.

"These men, chosen from around the country, are each tall and large and are eminently talented and powerful," the squad's leader Zhao Si was quoted as saying. "Their outstanding physical quality is not in the slightest inferior to that of specialized athletes."

They're also racking up an impressive list of complaints from protesters as well as relay organizers for their rude conduct and heavy-handed tactics. In some cases they've even gotten into fights with local police. Sebastian Coe, the head of Britain's organizing comittee, repeatedly described them as "thugs" to the media. Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently stated that the guards would not be welcome for the Australian portion of the relay.

Eighty-five thousand miles never felt so long.

The Department of Homeland Security has quietly eased restrictions on U.S. companies looking to hire looking to hire non-immigrant science and technology students. It's probably a step in the right direction for immigration policy, since there's always more demand for these visas than supply. But it's unfortunate that that DHS had to use administrative procedures that are normally reserved for emergencies in order to get around Congress.

For this week's Seven Questions, "Waiting for a Cyber Pearl Harbor," FP asked Richard A. Clarke, former U.S. counterterrorism chief and former special advisor to the president on cybersecurity, about what offensive capabilities the new U.S. Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) should have. He succinctly replied: "Highly classified ones."

Though Clarke isn't interested in mentioning specifics, someone else is. Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder of the U.S. 8th Air Force, under which AFCYBER will be housed once it's officially launched this fall, has revealed how the United States plans to "hit back" in cyberspace.

In an interview with ZDNet.co.uk, he said offensive capabilities that AFCYBER is working on include denial of service, confidential data loss, data manipulation, and system integrity loss. These "cyberpunches" will be paired with kinetic (physical) attacks. Elder said:

Offensive cyberattacks in network warfare make kinetic attacks more effective, [for example] if we take out an adversary's integrated defence systems or weapons systems. This is exploiting cyber to achieve our objectives.

Now that the U.S. military has put on its cyber boxing gloves, it looks like it'll be no holds barred in the online world.

CLAUS FISKER/AFP/Getty Images

At the current NATO summit, countries' troop contributions to the effort in Afghanistan has been a hot topic. Last week's FP List "Who's Left in Afghanistan?" listed the top five and bottom five countries in terms of the number of troops they had committed to Afghanistan. At the time, the top five were the United States (29,000 troops), Britain (7,800), Germany (3,210), Italy (2,880), and Canada (2,500), while the bottom five were Singapore (2 troops), Austria (2, sometimes 3), Ireland (7), Luxembourg (9), and Iceland (13*).

But these numbers can be somewhat misleading when it comes to determining who is pulling their weight, given that, for example, the U.S. population is about 1,000 times that of Iceland. So, another measure would be troop contributions relative to military-age population (defined as those between 20 and 39 years old**). When expressed this way, using updated troop numbers, it's tiny Denmark that comes out on top!

The Top 5 (troops per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Denmark -- 0.55
2. Britain -- 0.47
3. Norway -- 0.43
4. Netherlands -- 0.39
5. United States -- 0.35***

The Bottom 5 (troops per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Ukraine -- 0.0002
2. Georgia -- 0.0008
3. Austria -- 0.0009
4. Singapore -- 0.0016
5. Ireland -- 0.0053

Yet another way to crunch the numbers would be to look at troop fatalities relative to the military-age population. (Just the top five, and not the bottom five, are listed here because there are several countries with zero fatalities.) Sadly for Denmark, it's at the top again:

The Top 5 (troop fatalities per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Denmark -- 0.0099
2. Canada -- 0.0090
3. Britain -- 0.0056 (includes Ministry of Defense civilians)
4. Estonia -- 0.0053
5. United States -- 0.0051 (includes fatalities in Pakistan and Uzbekistan)

Creative Commons photo via Flick user oceanhug

Kiev may have greeted U.S. President George W. Bush with several thousand "Net-NATO" (No to NATO) Ukrainian protesters, but NATO member Romania offered a far scarier welcome committee: thousands and thousands of feral dogs, running rampant in its capital city.

The NATO summit convened in Bucharest today, and while Bush was calling on transatlantic leaders to strengthen military resolve in Afghanistan inside the meeting, outside, his security detail was busy protecting nearby streets from roaming canines.

Bucharest's wild dog problem is no laughing matter, nor is it new. It began in the 1980s when Romania's brutal, inept dictator Nicolae CeauÅŸescu displaced thousands of city residents in his decision to flatten almost a fifth of the center city and build the People's House (picture the Pentagon being built on top of Georgetown). Today the monstrosity -- though an ideal spot for a NATO summit -- stands surrounded by desolate blocks, the perfect terrain for wild dogs.

In 2000, Bucharest's Mayor Traian Basescu (now Romania's president) launched a massive euthanasia campaign against what was then hundreds of thousands of wild, disease-carrying dogs. But aging French actress Brigitte Bardot staged an international hissy fit, forcing the city to turn to sterilization. Bad move. Today, the city still reports 9,000 dog bites a year. In 2006, a Japanese businessman actually died after taking one to the femoral artery.

But let's just hope security can keep the dogs in check for the summit –- President Bush has enough to worry about in the coming days as is.

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Secret Service agents perform a security sweep on Ukrainian cultural performers before Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko and U.S. President George W. Bush arrive at St. Sophia's Cathedral in Kiev, April 1, 2008. 

(Hat tip: On Deadline)

RUSLAN ALKHANOV/AFP/Getty Images

Nine people were killed in small village in Chechnya last night in an hourlong gunfight between separatist rebels and the police.

The violence is something of an anomaly in the troubled region, which has been relatively stable in recent years under the authoritarian rule of ex-rebel Ramzan Kadyrov (shown at right with Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev), though the number of rebel attacks in neighboring Russian provinces has increased.

Does last night's violence indicate that Chechnya's fragile stability, one of the Putin administration's main accomplishments, is coming undone just in time for his successor to inherit the mess? I asked Jonas Bernstein, senior research associate at the Jamestown Foundation and Russian defense expert, if the attacks could be in any way connected to the transfer of power in Moscow:

This does seem to be a deliberate uptick on the part of the rebels. My guess is that the rebels may be trying to send a message to the new administration that, 'We're still here.'

Russia has maintained order in Chechnya largely by arming Kadyrov and his fellow ex-rebels, an approach not unlike the U.S.'s "Anbar awakening" strategy in Iraq. According to Reuters, Russian military analysts now worry that they may have created a force they can't control if Kadyrov's loyalties shift. Kadyrov is a staunch Putinist (he even delivered a dubious 99.5 percent voter turnout for the ruling party in parliamentary elections), but could he turn against his bosses in Moscow with Medvedev in power? Bernstein doesn't see this as likely. In fact, Kadyrov is probably quite satisfied with Putin's choice:

If anything, the victory of the Medvedev faction within the Kremlin is actually to the benefit of Kadyrov. It's the harder-line, so-called siloviki, who have always been suspicious of Kadyrov... because he's a former rebel from the first war. So in that sense, depending on how things play out in Moscow, it may actually be to his benefit.

Of course, the Chechen conflict never really went away. For the most part, it simply seeped over into neighboring provinces. It would be a tragic irony if the same conflict that helped Putin consolidate his power at the beginning of his presidency re-emerged just at its end.

Paul Kane/Getty Images

Australia is suffering from an acute shortage of manpower, according to Australian defense minister Joel Fitzgibbon. He says, "the service suffering most is the navy, where retention and recruitment has become a real crisis." So why is the Australian Navy in such dire straits? The Financial Times explains:

Chinese demand for commodities has triggered a crisis in the Australian navy, whose submarine fleet is suffering from a critical crew shortage as skilled technicians are lured into higher-paying jobs by the booming mining industry.

Western Australia, in particular, is attracting workers from the Navy to work in the mining industry. Fitzgibbon says that mining companies even "hover around" West Australian naval bases hoping to recruit technicians, whose skill sets are easily transferable to mining. Wage discrepancies favoring mining can be in the tens of thousands of dollars a year, leaving the Navy unable to compete for talented workers on financial grounds.

Australia has recently spent $10 billion dollars on bolstering the navy, upgrading its fleet of advanced destroyers and warships. Last year, the Australian Navy engaged in war games with the United States, Japan, and India in a "Quadrilateral Initiative" to improve their strategic partnership and bolster regional security. Many analysts believed that this initiative and Australia's naval investment were, ironically, targeted at containing a rising China. I guess the Chinese stumbled upon their own way of striking back.

U.S. Navy via Getty Images

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?"

Since it's the fifth anniversary of the DHS, we've got homeland security on the brain today. So it was fitting that this terrifying little tidbit just came over the AP:

The Pentagon has banned Google Earth teams from making detailed street-level video maps of U.S. military bases.... Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base. He said military officials were concerned that allowing the 360-degree, street-level video could provide sensitive information to potential adversaries and endanger base personnel."

Um, no duh. Considering that Google Earth is a favorite tool of terrorist groups -- including the Palestinian al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which uses it to target and kill Israeli civilians -- this strikes me as a pretty common sense decision.

And it begs the question: Who the heck allowed a team from Google Earth, presumably carrying all sorts of video and mapping equipment, access to a U.S. military base in the first place?

Here's a clip of Susan Rice, one of Barack Obama's foreign-policy advisors, discussing the infamous 3 a.m. phone call ad:

Transcript:

Clinton hasn't had to answer the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready. They're both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call."

Whoops.

(Hat tip: The Caucus)

UPDATE: MSNBC sends along the full clip, so that you can see the context and judge for yourself.

There is no shortage of Israelis who are fed up with daily rocket attacks from Gaza. One such Israeli has decided to go vigilante. A man in Ashkelon reportedly fashioned his own homemade missile to launch into Gaza. The "200-millimeter ballistic missile" also came with some fightin' words:

From this day onwards, we will push back to the stone age every place which dares shoot missiles into Israel's sovereign territory... It is time the world understood Israelis' lives are not expendable... I'm afraid this is the only language the Palestinians understand, and this is the language in which we'll speak to them."

The missile, painted with the words "to Hamas, from the residents of Ashkelon," was never fired as police stepped in to stop the man and disperse the crowd that was cheering him on and protesting the government's handling of their security. This ought to be a teachable moment: A government can prevent acts of terrorism if it has the capacity and the will to do so.

Hillary Clinton's already controversial new commercial lays out what Marc Ambinder calls her "best ... argument .. against Barack Obama." Take a look:

Clinton apparently always puts on her reading glasses for nuclear war. The ad clearly borrows its theme and tone from Lyndon Johnson's classic 1964 "Daisy" attack against Barry Goldwater. You can judge for yourself which is more effective:

It's perfectly acceptable, and even advisable, to think about who you would want in charge during a crisis when you vote. But can't we leave the cute little kids out of it?