The U.S. often takes on the role of defending basic freedoms in the world at large. One of the better examples of this is our championing of religious liberty abroad and one of the primary tools we have used to do that is the annual publication of the report on International Religious Freedom by the State Department. This report serves as a barometer of the expansion and contraction of religious freedom, noting those countries which practice openness and contrasting them with countries that practice repression and religious persecution. In her remarks on the publication of this year’s report, Secretary Clinton said:

The right to profess, practice, and promote one’s religious beliefs is a founding principle of our nation. In fact, many of our earliest settlers came because they wanted the freedom to practice their own religion without a state interfering or oppressing that practice. It is the first liberty mentioned in our Bill of Rights, and it is a freedom guaranteed to all people in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. [...] The United States will always seek to counter negative stereotypes of individuals based on their religion and will stand against discrimination and persecution.

Even as the report represents a worthy affirmation of American values it also makes for rather awkward moments and complicates our diplomacy, as when we find ourselves criticizing allies (Saudi Arabia for example) who may not share our devotion to religious freedom. For more on the report, please this State Department video:

As you know, President Obama has not yet made a decision on whether to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan and there are any number of reports in the media about his decision-making process. The White House is signaling that President Obama is nearing his decision on Afghan war strategy:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday that a planned meeting on Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be among the last events in the decision-making process. Gibbs said Obama then will take some time to evaluate the recommendations and decide what is best for the United States as well as for Afghanistan, Pakistan and that region of the world. [...] Gibbs said the president will announce his decision in the coming weeks.

In previous posts I used this space to highlight recommendations by scholars and experts who study this issue. One of the key variables that Obama and his national security team are considering is the depth of public support for the war and the question of whether the U.S. public would support a long-term engagement. The consensus seems to be that the public would not support a long-term commitment to Afghanistan. I was reminded recently that the U.S. is not a stranger to long-term military commitments. Having fought WWII in Europe and Asia the U.S. still retains a large number of forces there, and as this AP report notes, the status of those forces often has profound implications for the domestic politics of host countries:

Japan cannot sign off on a planned reorganization of U.S. troops in the country before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo next month, its foreign minister said on Thursday, after the U.S. defense secretary bluntly called for the deal to be implemented. Friction over the military realignment deal could be the first big test for ties between the United States and Japan’s new Democratic Party-led government, which has pledged to steer a diplomatic course less dependent on its closest security ally. [...] The daily Yomiuri newspaper said U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Tuesday that Japan should decide before Obama’s November 12-13 visit to go ahead with a plan to move a U.S. Marine air base to a less crowded part of Japan’s southern Okinawa island.

From this, I would draw two conclusions. First, If the status of U.S. forces in Japan is a hot-button issue for Japanese domestic politics I can’t help but note that sixty-four years after WWII it’s not at all an issue in U.S. domestic politics. No commitment phobia there. And second, perhaps if Japan no longer wants U.S. forces there we can move all our troops from that country to Afghanistan. I don’t really think that would happen, but we could do that…if we wanted to.

The news cycle has moved on and few are talking about President Obama’s Nobel Prize award but the event did prompt me to wonder how the U.S. was doing overall in the prize count. We like to think of the U.S. as producing outstanding achievers in almost every area of human endeavor, but does the Nobel Prize serve as a good barometer of U.S. standing? In looking into this question I found the following report on U.S. wins in the area of science and technology:

After cleaning up in the Nobel science prizes, the United States scored another coup: the peace prize for a president less than nine months in office. At a time when some had begun to question how long America’s pre-eminence in science and diplomacy could last, nine of the 11 nominees who won or shared this year’s five prizes handed out so far are American. [...] The scientists were recognized for work that led to breakthroughs in cancer therapies and antibiotics, and brought the world digital photography and high-speed Internet. [...] However, Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted that Nobels are generally given for work that’s a decade old or more, and that the U.S. mustn’t become complacent. U.S. strength reflects federal financial support since World War II, but it has flattened out or declined while other countries are investing heavily in their own scientific research, he said. “The United States probably will not lose its eminence in science in the coming years, but its pre-eminence, its dominance is, of course, at risk as other countries make their own investments,” he said.

American Nobel victories are great news and I’m happy to congratulate the winners who are expanding the frontiers of scientific and technical knowledge, but I also want to underscore that warning about complacency by noting another recent news report that suggested to me that such success may not be sustainable. You may have heard of the recent report by U.S. Department of Education on American math scores at the 4th and 8th grade levels. The news is not good:

Arne Duncan, releasing a report on the Department of Education’s latest examination of how well American children are doing in mathematics, said no one should be satisfied with what it found. “Today’s results are evidence that we must better equip our schools to improve the knowledge and skills of America’s students in mathematics,” he said. “More must be done to narrow the troubling achievement gap that has persisted in mathematics, and to ensure that America’s students make greater gains toward becoming competitive with their peers in other countries.”

If this trend is not reversed the pipeline that produces leaders in science and technology could run dry in a generation. Education reform has been a goal of many presidential administrations, past and present, and everyone acknowledges the role of education as a foundation for economic prosperity, but we should also acknowledge the role education plays in sustaining high levels of achievement in the sciences. Education reform needs our urgent support if we are to maintain the traditional U.S. role as a top innovator in science and technology.

Like many people I’ve been fascinated with the news that President Obama has won the Nobel Prize. The story isn’t really dying down at all and it’s dominated chat in the blogosphere. What strikes me most about the coverage of this story is how often commentators link the award committee’s reasoning to notions about the proper U.S. role in the world. Of course, the award committee specifically noted Obama’s foreign policy as one reason for the award, and other commentators have explicitly linked it to the U.S. role, describing it as an almost aspirational affirmation of an idealized view of the U.S. role in the world. Take, for example, this commentary from Fareed Zakaria:

I think it’s more an award to America for rejoining the world than recognition of President Obama per se. People here underestimate how relieved the world is to have a more engaged, less bullying America. [...] He ended many “war on terror” practices that made people (both inside and outside the country) see America as betraying its ideals; he reached out to the Muslim world in a way that hasn’t been done before; he made proposals to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenals; he re-engaged on the Israeli-Palestinian issue; he started winding down the Iraq war. All this collectively adds up to a changed American profile in the world — as is evident in President Obama being awarded the prize today.

Has world perception of the U.S. really changed that much? Public opinion poll results noted in this report indicate that it has:

In Europe and much of the world, Obama is praised for bringing the U.S. closer to mainstream global thinking on such issues as climate change and multilateralism. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S. favorably in countries around the world.

If the award committee has indeed given Obama this honor in recognition of reviving and/or restoring what they see as the proper U.S. role in the world it suggests that Obama now has more good-will and political capital to spend on the international stage than any recent president. Expectations are high to see what he will do with it.

There were two important developments today in the Afghan war effort and the debate about the overall strategy. First, President Obama has received an unofficial copy of General McChrystal’s recommendations. I’m a bit confused about how a general’s recommendations can be considered unofficial when given to a president, but that is what the media is reporting. General McChrystal, as you know, is advising President Obama to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan and to more or less repeat the surge strategy that worked in Iraq. The other major development I’d like to call your attention to has to do with the alternative to the McChrystal plan. It has been widely reported in the news media, and I’ve noted it on this blog, that one option on the table has been to decrease the number of troop in Afghanistan and instead rely on drones (UAVs) and special forces to accomplish U.S. goals. The New York Times is reporting that President Obama said this option was mischaracterized by the media and that this option is now off the table:

Several administration officials and lawmakers who attended the session on Tuesday said Mr. Obama was intent on using it to dismiss any impression that he would consider pulling out of Afghanistan. “There is no option that would entail a dramatic reduction in troops,” said one administration official, who, like others quoted in this article, requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden made it clear that the option Mr. Biden had proposed was not a pure counterterrorism alternative, relying only on drones and Special Forces to track down leaders of Al Qaeda. Instead, Mr. Biden’s approach would increase the use of such surgical strikes while leaving the overall size of the American force in Afghanistan roughly at the 68,000 troops currently authorized.

While we don’t yet know the final strategy President Obama will adopt for the war in Afghanistan we can now at least clearly define what he won’t do, which is at least progress.

Nicholas Thompson responds in this blog post to Andrew Bacevich’s article in The Washington Post about updating the Cold War doctrine of containment for the war on terrorism. He agrees that here is much in George Kennan’s original idea that could be applied to the present conflict with global jihad while suggesting that the effort be expanded to include soft power as well as traditional military based hard power. It’s nice to see the old strategies revived, after all, nothing succeeds like success.

President Obama is engaged in a comprehensive policy review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and meetings this week at the White House have produced a flurry of news reports about about the situation there. In this report in the LA Times, General Stanley McChrystal makes the case for a “troop-intensive counter-insurgency strategy” that would call for a dramatic increase in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to counter the resurgent Taliban rather than the UAV drone-centered high-tech low-troop approach favored by some in the administration. Lest you think that the news out of Afghanistan is all bad, I’d like to point you to this video report from the BBC, which notes a recent success by allied forces in Helmand province working to rebuild a war shattered village. Can drones do that?