Nuclear Issues

The new US president will be operating on a very weak political foundation, is very unlikely to be able to deliver the results he has promised to key constituencies, and seems likely to take dangerous gambles in the international arena. This makes it probable that a cycle of growing disillusion, disappointment and disapproval will set in within a year.

"The never-ending negotiations about the pending fiscal cliff sometimes amount to nothing more than a dizzying array of numbers. Who can count that high? The negotiations also make us think that the only stastistics that mattered in 2012, or will matter in 2013, involve dollar signs. A year in pictures may be compelling and beautiful, but the year in numbers gives a strong hint of what to anticipate in the year ahead."

"...Germany has an opportunity at the Washington summit — and thereafter — to step up and lend non-American leadership to the problem. Recognizing that in many of the world's capitals the threat of nuclear terrorism is not yet being taken seriously, and when in some of them the very notion is even considered an American pretext for an entirely different, potentially hostile political agenda, non-American leadership is most urgently needed."

There is much to learn from the British: their reticence about disclosing details, their clear expertise in human intelligence, their non-hysterical reaction to very real threats. But how we deal with our immigrant and domestic populations is certainly not one of them.

In the next week or so, Congress is expected to vote on a bill to renew certain expiring sections of the Patriot Act. The debate over this law is a crucial conversation for our country and for how we protect both the security and privacy of a free citizenry.

It was President Bush himself who insisted on calling it a global war on terror. He wanted to indicate that this was not just another piddling law enforcement action, but an all-out, full-scale military response to Sept. 11 that would involve U.S. troops around the globe. But now, apparently, a decision has been made that the language of war isn't working for him anymore. So in recent days, the "global war on terror" has been shelved in favor of the "global struggle against violent extremism."

Like every other country, the United States has, in the name of security, made mistakes that we admit only later. What separates us from those regimes we abhor isn't that we never act cruelly. It's that we reject, rather than defend, our departures from our ideals and we actively seek to prevent such abuses from happening again.

Contrary to popular view, the Patriot Act did not address many of the toughest legal issues Americans face in trying to balance our concern for our freedoms with worries about our safety in the war on terror. What are needed are new rules for a new era.

The collapse earlier this month of the government's case against an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Detroit is just another example of the Justice Department's failed "arrest by headlines" philosophy in the war on terror.

Until our intelligence agencies place important focus on "who" is in fact doing the gathering and communicating, we will continue to be at a critical disadvantage against our enemies