Andrew Sullivan, responding to Christopher Hitchens’ claim that an Obama presidency will mean “more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less”, says:

I can face the idea of a president Obama taking on and finally defeating Osama. In fact, that’s the major reason why I favor his candidacy… . Obama will try to correct the massive stretegic error of the Iraq invasion and pivot Western allies toward a greater focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe that Obama will be able to do this with much less global p.r. blowback than McCain and that the support president Obama will get from our European allies will dwarf McCain’s.

First of all, I should point out that I, too, would welcome a President Obama “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” For what it’s worth, I could face a Honeydew-Beaker Administration “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” (Hey, I wouldn’t even mind if it happened in the next 3-4 months, under Bush, but I get the feeling that happenstance might upset someone…)

What I really wanted to draw attention to is Sullivan’s assumption that Obama will be able to formally and officially expand the Afghanistan problem into an Afghanistan-Pakistan problem with “much less global p.r. blowback than McCain.” Au contraire. I expect there will be more blowback against Obama.

Right now, he can ride high on a wave of global public support, but those thronging masses in Berlin and elsewhere are supporting him because they expect something in return: a massive rupture with Bush-era foreign policy. Since this is inchoate mob opinion we’re talking about here, it wouldn’t do to overanalyze it; basically they want more talk, fewer bombs, and they think he’s the one who’s going to give that to them. Americans, on the other hand, seem more inclined to take him at his word on his promises to get tough with Pakistan (though they still favor McCain on national security issues).

Something tells me that, if it comes to a choice between upsetting Americans’ expectations, and upsetting the world’s, the President of the United States is going to side with…well, the United States. And this is going to cut across a number of issues besides Afghanistan/Pakistan, as Slate pointed out awhile back:

If his diplomats or military advisers told him that the Iranians perceived his willingness to talk as a sign of weakness, he might reconsider his pledge to meet with the Iranian president as quickly as he now promises. Maybe when presented with confidential data gathered by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, he would be less keen to drop all the measures taken by Bush and criticized by the opposition. Maybe his belief that “the United States needs to lead the world in ending this genocide” in Darfur would put him at odds with reality or with some members of the international community. In each of these cases, Obama would suffer the consequences of high expectations. He would be trapped between the desire to preserve his high standing in the world and the need to act in ways that would erode that standing. Of course—his advisers would argue—it is better to have this political goodwill in the first place. But even if that were true, political goodwill should always be handled delicately. Starting modestly and building up is also an option, sometimes a better one if you aim to keep expectations realistic. (This, I think, is the way John McCain would play his cards internationally.)

It’s undeniable that the “get tough on Pakistan” rhetoric is good for Obama’s short-term political interests. The world simply isn’t listening as closely to the candidates’ statements as are Americans, so it’s easier for them to bask in the unadulterated glow of St. Barack. But if Obama wins in November, he may soon come to realize that hell hath no fury like a Berliner scorned.

Over at Slate, David Haglund attempts to make the case that the Big Lebowski works as an anticipation of the perfidy of the neocons:

Watching The Big Lebowski in 2008, it becomes clear that appreciating Walter is essential to understanding what the Coen brothers are up to in this movie, which is slyer, more political, and more prescient than many of its fans have recognized. Perhaps that’s because Walter, with his bellowing, Old Testament righteousness and his deeply entrenched militarism, is an American type that barely registered on the pop-culture landscape 10 years ago. He’s a neocon. If that seems like a stretch, consider the traits Walter exhibits over the course of the film: faith in American military might (the Gulf War, he says, “is gonna be a piece of cake”; in the original script, he calls it “a fucking cakewalk”); nostalgia for the Cold War (“Charlie,” he says, referring to the Viet Cong, was a “worthy fuckin’ adversary”); strong support for the state of Israel (to judge from his reverent paraphrase of Theodor Herzl: “If you will it, Dude, it is no dream”); and even, perhaps, past affiliation with the left (he refers knowingly to Lenin’s given name and admits to having “dabbled in pacifism”). Goodman, who has called the role his all-time favorite, seems also to have sensed Walter’s imperialist side. “Dude has a rather, let’s say, Eastern approach to bowling,” he said in an interview. “Walter is strictly Manifest Destiny.”

So, yeah, all the points of comparison do line up kind of conveniently, like Haglund says. But if we’re going to be interpreting the movie this way, why stop with Walter? The entire cast of characters, one could say, represents a skewering of the entire American political landscape. When you start to make pat interpretations, it’s hard to stop: There’s the dude (Sixties radicalism as a spent force), Maude Lebowski (Europhilic coastal elites), Jeffrey Lebowski…the other Jeffrey Lebowski (a straigh-from-central casting, cigar-chomping GOP corporate welfare case), and Donny (the “silent majority” in America’s flyover country, who can’t get a word in edgewise over all the partisan bickering). Indeed you can make a good case for these and many more readings, but by doing so, don’t we lose a little of the magic of the original?

As The Dude himself might put it, “No, you’re not wrong, Haglund. You’re just an asshole.”

A badly fractured (far right, pro-Russian) Radical Party in Serbia.

Yes, the Bush Administration approached Kosovo’s recognition reflexively and without much forethought. But in this case, their decision seems to be paying dividends.

(Why it matters: here and here.)

Anne Applebaum notes that Sarah Palin breaks the Hillary mold of the powerful woman politician, but not just in the narrow ideological sense:

In the end, though, it is not just Palin’s large family and important job which have made her the topic of the day at every school pick-up queue in America. It is also the fact that she breaks the Hillary Clinton mould, not only in personality and lifestyle but in ideology as well. By this, I don’t mean merely that she’s a conservative, that she’s an evangelical Christian, or that she opposes abortion. More interesting are the ways in which she shatters all of the stereotypes altogether: Left/Right, Democrat/Republican, liberal/conservative. In practice, it isn’t even easy to say on which side of America’s increasingly confusing culture wars she stands. Is it “Right-wing” to go back to work two days after having a baby, as she did while governor? It is “feminist” to support one’s unwed daughter’s decision to have her baby? Is it liberal or conservative for women to play sports or drive snowmobiles? Or is it the case that, especially where women are concerned, none of these categories were [ever] as rigid as politicians have sometimes made them seem? While I wouldn’t say that women like Palin are a dime a dozen, in real life there are plenty of conservative women with full-time jobs and post-feminist lifestyles, just as there are plenty of liberal or Left-wing women who decide to stay home with their children.

And this is only part of the reason I would have loved to have waited until 2012 to back Sarah Palin for President.

The New York Times reports:

Peter Feith, the European Union’s special representative to Kosovo, said in an interview this month that the European Union was determined not to allow partition to become a political reality, and would work to ensure that Kosovo remained a multiethnic country in which both groups lived side by side. The European Union is soon to take over administration of Kosovo from the United Nations.

But many senior European Union officials admit privately that if the Serbs continue to push for partition, there is little the European Union can do to prevent it.

This, then, becomes yet one more example of Serbia’s uncanny ability to game the international system. The strategy has been consistent throughout the Balkan wars: create demographic facts on the ground to match your territorial objectives and then merely wait for the world to catch up with reality.

In both Bosnia and Kosovo, the end result may very well be Serbia annexing territories with majority Serb populations, majorities it created by starting expansionist wars. The bitter irony is that the only country to have escaped this fate is Croatia, a country whose military victory over Serbian irredentism is currently on trial at the Hague.

They done gone ahead and did it—Kosovo has declared independence. They’ve elected to use a flag with motifs reminiscent of the EU’s own standard: blue background, gold color, and stars. They’ve also chosen to use a map of the territory of Kosovo as an element in the flag, much like another long-suffering, partitioned country: Cyprus. If the Serbs do manage to establish de facto independence for the northern parts of Kosovo, however, it’s not likely that they would declare autonomy like the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but would rather be annexed outright by Serbia.

One has to think that this obvious parallel was not lost on the Kosovars, and that they opted for this flag design as an explicit reminder to the West to not let the same thing happen to them as has befallen the wretched Cypriots. Whether symbolism is an effective means of communicating with the wretched Eurocrats remains to be seen.

Robert Kagan is a smart man. Of Paradise and Power was a smart, insightful book. This is a smart, insightful essay proceeding along the same lines of argument.

The supranational, legalistic E.U. spirit is a response to the conflicts of the 20th century, when nationalism and power politics twice destroyed the continent. But Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as Ivan Krastev has noted, is driven in part by the perceived failure of “post-national politics” after the Soviet collapse. Europe’s nightmares are the 1930s; Russia’s nightmares are the 1990s. Europe sees the answer to its problems in transcending the nation-state and power. For Russians, the solution is in restoring them.

Kagan is frequently lumped in with the neoconservatives—and rightly so. But it’s important to note that his argument here boils down to a gritty realist essence. Russia is a rational actor on the world stage trying to maximize its influence in its “near-abroad”. The Europeans need to wake up to the fact that soft power is not terribly effective in such circumstances. And the Americans need to come up with a catalogue of which countries are absolutely critical to their interests and which they can afford to give up to growing Russian influence.

Boris Tadić wins, and the (small part of the) world (that cares about the Balkans) lets out a sigh of relief. Nikolić would have been darkness for Serbia and the broader region had he squeaked into office. Though the presidency does not wield much power in Serbia, keeping the Radicals in the wilderness was an important victory any way you look at it.

This young interviewee puts it best:

“I am Tadić’s opponent, but I voted for him because this election is not about him but about progress,” said Branislav Jovanović, a 22-year-old student, at a Belgrade polling station. “People are sick of isolation and wars and misery.”

Tadić’s widely-reported EU enthusiasm only stands up to scrutiny when held up against Nikolić’s retrograde nationalism and rabid Russophilia. Tadić played up his nationalist bona fides during the campaign, perhaps to sap some support from Nikolić, and it remains to be seen whether his supposed EU-love will continue in the wake of the Kosovo declaration of independence which should happen some time this week. Here’s to hoping that he opts for trying to be a transformational figure in Serbian politics.

Smarting from their memories of Srebrenica, the Dutch bravely blocked the EU from going forward on the Stability and Association Agreement with Serbia unless Serbia first serves up Ratko Mladic to the Hague. Smart move by the Dutch. As long as Serbia remains unreconciled with the horrors perpetrated on her behalf during the last few decades, any long-term healing in the region is impossible.¹

Those unconvinced that the political situation in Serbia is as toxic as I make it out to be need only to look at the results of the first round elections. The only politician running on an unabashedly pro-Western pro-modern platform, the only candidate to publicly concede that Kosovo was a lost cause for Serbia was Čedomir Jovanovic.² He got only 5.34% of the vote.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica threatened thusly:

With such an illegal decision, the EU would seriously violate the UN Charter and Resolution 1244, which would automatically mean that there is the Stabilization and Association Agreement is no longer *[sic]*. After this, only in case that the EU withdrew its decision on sending the mission would Serbia be able to discuss the Agreement once again.

That’s right, he’s threatening that he will junk the SAA agreement which the EU extended to Serbia as a measure of goodwill if the EU goes on with its Kosovo plans.

Imagine you have a petulant child. You buy the child a present in order to quiet him down. The child threatens to destroy the present if you don’t do exactly as it demands.

As parents well know, there’s no negotiating with children.