Guest blogger: Raoul Heinrichs, the 2007 Lowy Institute Thawley Scholar, is on a research placement at CSIS.

A battle is unfolding in the backroom of John McCain’s campaign headquarters. This is the battle to influence McCain’s world-view, and to shape the overarching ideas and principles on which he will build his foreign and strategic policies. According to this New York Times piece, Republican foreign policy pragmatists with whom McCain regularly consults — figures such as Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Richard Armitage — are becoming increasingly concerned about the influence of a competing group of neo-conservative McCain confidantes. The neo-cons, who achieved ideational dominance in the first term of the George W. Bush administration, include Max Boot, John Bolton, and Robert Kagan. 

Though McCain has sought to synthesise the two approaches by proclaiming himself to be a ‘realistic idealist’, his vision for American foreign and strategic policy has, as Fareed Zakaria points out, taken on a confusing, schizophrenic complexion, vacillating awkwardly between shrewd self-interested realism and idealistic neo-conservatism. Take this speech, for example, delivered to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles in March. Though McCain waxed eloquent on the practical complexities of dealing with the increasing diffusion of power and influence in the international system and the rising prominence of non-democratic states like  Russia and China, he nevertheless articulated a vision for renewing American global leadership based almost single-mindedly on his faith in the significance of shared values between America and its democratic international partners. More...

In a speech to the Lowy Institute three weeks ago, I estimated that Senator Barack Obama had greater than an 80% chance of winning the Democratic nomination for president. After yesterday’s results out of North Carolina and Indiana, that number has shot up past the 95% mark. Obama has come back from a shocking couple of weeks to monster Senator Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and go close in Indiana; he has increased his lead in both the popular vote and the delegate count.

Hillary says she’s sticking around, but what credible argument can she put to superdelegates today about why they should defy the popular vote and back her, now that both maths and momentum are against her? How many contributors are going to inject more cash into her campaign at this stage? More...

Last weekend I saw a great new movie about international policy, Iron Man. You may think this is not really a movie about international policy (my wife similarly resisted my attempt to sell it to her as a film about a flawed but sensitive man wrestling with his demons). In that case, you should read a new paper by my Brookings colleague Peter Singer. The piece is called ‘How to be all that you can be: A look at the Pentagon’s five step plan for making Iron Man real’ and it describes a number of Pentagon programs to convert soldiers into weapons systems. Peter’s article describes a number of cool technologies, including electro-darts, insect vision and X-ray vision, ‘Luke’s binoculars’ (that’d be Luke Skywalker), exoskeletons, nanomuscle fibres and bionic boots – and also addresses the consequences of these highfalutin technologies for the militaries which deploy them and the soldiers who use them.

On the subject of Pentagon planning, the American media this week has also been full of the strange story of the scheme to develop Baghdad’s Green Zone into an upscale neighbourhood, complete with international hotel. I do not often quote Alan Greenspan, but this strikes me as ‘irrational exuberance.’

In reponse to our discussion about Americans, Judah Grundstein has some personal reflections:

To this American who has spent time both travelling and living abroad, both posts seem to hit close to the mark. I'm pretty critical of American foreign policy, but I tend to get a bit tight-lipped if I sense that I'm feeding someone's accumulated lifelong hostility towards the United States. That meant a few years here in France of agreeing with thoughtful criticism of American policy (often accompanied by an affectionate regard towards America itself), while rattling off the list of France's post-colonial record (torture in Algeria, the Rainbow Warrior, nuclear tests in the Pacific) in response to virulent anti-Americanism.

Agreed. In conversation, the more anti-American my interlocutor is, the more pro-American I become. And vice versa.

This is hardly Tocqueville, but I wanted to share two quick observations about the American officials I run across here at the Lowy Instiute and previously in various bits of the Australian national security bureaucracy. These are mostly military, intelligence and State Department types:

1. They are almost unfailingly self-deprecating and even self-flagellating about their country's foreign and strategic policy. The obvious reason for this is that they did stuff up pretty royally in Iraq, but it often goes further than that to include other completely unrelated foreign policy issues. It feels almost like a ritual display of humility to interlocutors from a weaker (but friendly) country. One doubts it is entirely sincere, but it does speak to a great American strength, which is that it is intensely self-critical.
2. The ones with experience in Asia are generally very smart about the region, and bemoan the lack of attention it gets at high levels in Washington. What happens to these people as they move up the bureaucratic ladder? Do they lose this focus? Is it beaten out of them? Or are there just too few of these Asianists to make a difference?

Mark Thirlwell will be disappointed. Appearing on ABC's 'This Week' with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning, Senator Hillary Clinton declared: 'I don't throw my lot in with economists.' That was in response to the near-universal drubbing Clinton's gas plan has received from economists, who accuse her of pandering. But it also jives nicely with Clinton's general criticism of elites who have, claims Clinton, not only ruined Americans' lives but found a champion in Senator Barack Obama.

Over on NBC, Obama appeared on the leading Sunday talk show, 'Meet the Press' with Tim Russert. Political junkies looking for a reminder of the contrasting styles of the two Democratic candidates could do a lot worse than watch the two interviews back-to-back. The full Obama interview is available here; excerpts of the Clinton interview are here.

A frivolous highlight from Ryan Lizza's insight into Bill Clinton’s role in his wife’s presidential campaign from the New Yorker:

On the stump, the former President dispensed idiosyncratic political analysis. “One of the reasons that she won Ohio that nobody wrote about,” he said, without explanation, “is that Ohio has a plant that produces the largest number of solar reflectors in America.”

Until the last few days, Senator Barack Obama thought he had dealt with the threat posed by his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright with his elegant and intelligent speech in Philadelphia on the topic of race in America (which I addressed in this op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald). But Rev Wright is the gift to the Republican Party that keeps on giving. In the United States in the past 48 hours, Wright has been the inescapable man, popping up on current affairs programs and at the National Press Club to give his side of the story.

Obama described Wright's performance at the Press Club as a 'spectacle', and as usual his choice of words was ideal. Wright's prepared remarks were relatively measured, but in the question & answer period he lost control of himself entirely. More...

The best explanation I have read of why Hillary Clinton refuses to recognise the inevitable and just drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination (and I can't recall where I read it) is that she is convinced Obama is a weak candidate. She thinks (or hopes) this will become plain to Democrats as the primary process continues, and she wants to have her political organisation in place when he falls. Dropping out now would just open things up for Al Gore if Obama implodes.

'Implosion', though, suggests something sudden and dramatic. Maybe we're seeing a slower but equally deadly phenomenon in the person of Obama's former pastor,  Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The latest installment of that drama has just played out with Wright's remarks to the National Press Club. Some highlights: More...

At first blush, this is a pretty appalling lapse in taste and judgment from Clinton:

Q. You have any good jokes?

A. Here's a good one. Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand: her opponents have observed that in the event of a nuclear war, the two things that will emerge from the rubble are the cockroaches and Helen Clark. [Laughs]

As other blogs have pointed out, there's nothing 'former' about Clark's prime ministership, so points lost there for accuracy, and for how generally unfunny the joke is.

But unlike those other blogs, I'm inclined to give Clinton the benefit of some doubt on the question of taste, because Clinton might actually have been trying to pay Clark a compliment. If the joke does originate with Clark's opponents, it would make sense for them to portray Clark's political toughness in the least flattering light. But it is a grudging compliment, nonetheless. Maybe Clinton sees some parallels with herself and her opponents?

We’ll know later today whether Hillary Clinton has done well enough in the Pennsylvania primary to stay in the Democratic presidential nomination contest with Barack Obama. I wonder if voters will punish her for comments like this?:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)," Clinton said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America"..."In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she said. More...

You have to hand it to the Clintons. When Senator Barack Obama made his imprudent comment about people in small towns turning to faith and guns as a reaction against their economic circumstances, Senator Hillary Clinton spotted an opportunity. Obama's comment was 'elitist' and 'patronizing', she said. 'People don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them.' She released a new ad featuring regular folks commenting on how insulting Obama's comments were, and to reinforce the point she downed a beer with whiskey chaser in a bar in Indiana. More...

Guest blogger: Raoul Heinrichs (pictured), the 2007 Lowy Institute Thawley Scholar, is on a research placement at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter and one of the deans of US foreign policy, recently turned 80. To celebrate, CSIS threw him an honorary colloquium here in Washington on the history and directions of US grand strategy. The event attracted some of the most eminent and influential names in the business, including Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and of course Brzezinski himself. More...

One reason America is so compelling is the diversity of the faces it presents to the world. The country is remarkably religious and obsessively secular. Large portions of it are prim, even prissy; other bits are as as far out there as you can get without falling off. Australian visitors to American cities are often struck by the proximity of great wealth and severe poverty in their streets.

There is also something Janus-like about American journalism. More...

Guest blogger: Raoul Heinrichs, the 2007 Lowy Institute Thawley Scholar, is on a research placement at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

It’s been a big day here on Capitol Hill, with Ambassador Crocker and General Petraus testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the situation in Iraq. The briefing provided prospective presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain with an opportunity to validate their own strategic perspectives on the war. Predictably, Clinton highlighted the practical problems associated with an open-ended military commitment, while McCain sought to capitialise on Petraus’s view that a premature withdrawal would be detrimental to US national security. Barack Obama is scheduled to have his turn soon. 

Beyond the political jockeying, the political and military outlook in Iraq is pretty bleak, and despite some positive developments, the general security situation is, according to Petraus, 'fragile and reversible.' More...

One way of getting a quick insight into a community's perception of itself is to check out its licence plates — or more precisely, the little slogan the authorities have selected to write across the top of the plates. My home state of New South Wales reveals a bit of its pride with 'The First State'. Victoria struggles along with 'The Place To Be'. New York is 'The Empire State', while efficient but boring Maryland contents itself with 'www.maryland.gov'.  

So how does the District of Columbia sum up contribution to the world? 'Taxation without representation'. Now, I understand the motive behind this — DC's argument for statehood and equal voting rights — and I can see why District politicos might want to connect their plight with that of the early American colonies. But does the District have nothing positive to say about itself? 'The nation's capital', for instance, or 'Does great monuments'? The slogan doesn't even have the rude defiance of 'No taxation without representation' — it's more like a metallic shrug of the shoulders. Dammit, this kind of resignation is un-American!

The fact is, Washington is one of the great cities. It's got huge issues, of course, but it's also got wonderful neighbourhoods, a fascinating history, a host of big characters and a surprisingly strong sense of community. Surely it can do better than 'taxation without representation'. Suggestions, anyone?

Photo by Flickr user nollij, used under a Creative Commons licence.

I have an op-ed in today’s Herald on ‘the month of the two PMs’ – the visits to Washington by John Howard and Kevin Rudd. Rocco has also done a nice illustration to go with the piece.

One of the interesting things for me about Rudd’s speech to Brookings, where I’m based, is that immediately afterwards he met with Senator Hillary Clinton, so we got to eyeball her on the way through. She certainly has a stately quality to her: all around her there are cars, rope lines, Secret Service guys, snappers and onlookers, but she moves serenely through the middle of it, almost as though her feet do not touch the ground.

The Interpreter’s more security-minded readers will have noticed the wonderful article in yesterday’s New York Times about the military patches worn by members of various military units funded off the Pentagon’s classified budget. It seems that a lot of military guys working on top-secret projects out in the desert have a good deal of time on their hands. William J. Broad reports as follows:

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. “To Serve Man” reads the text above, a reference to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. “Gustatus Similis Pullus” reads the caption below, dog Latin for “Tastes Like Chicken.”

There is also a dragon holding the Earth in its claws, a naked woman riding a killer whale, and a Groucho Marx face. More...