March 28 update

Articl= 2. The Washington Post

Obama's pragmatic approach to Mi=east

David Ignat=us Link

Articl= 4. The Wall Street Journal

Stopping an Undetectable Iranian B=mb

David Albrigh=, Mark Dubowitz and Orde Kittrie Link

Articl= 6. Los Angeles Times

'Star Wars' today: What would Reag=n do?

Graham Allison

Article 7.

The Economist

Can India become a great power?

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Ar=icle 1.

The Washington Post=/span>

Obama appeals=to Israel's conscience

Fareed Zakaria Link

March 27, 2013 -- A= a piece of rhetoric, Barack Obama's speech to college students in Jerusalem Israel Link was a triumph.=He finally convinced Link of them e-maile= me. "In his Kishkas (gut], he gets us!" But Obama also spoke and more its supporters blu=tly about that Israel's "HE GETS occupation US," as one and the case for a Palestinian state than =ny U.S. president has in the past. Oratory aside, Obama has recognized and employed the strongest — and perhaps onl= — path toward peace and a Palestinian state: an appeal to Israel's co=science.

For 40 years, those=who have tried to push Israel toward making concessions have pointed to da=gers and threats. Israel is surrounded by enemies, the argument goes, and =he only way to ease that hostility is to give the Palestinians a state. Palestinian terrorism will make daily=life in Israel unbearable, another variant explained, and Israel will have=to settle this problem politically. These assumptions undergirded the peac= process and Obama's approach in his first term.

The argument reflec=ed reality in the 1980s and 1990s, when Israel faced an array of powerful =rab states with large armies — Iraq, Syria — formally dedicated to its=destruction. The Soviet Union backed these regimes with cash and arms and ceaselessly drummed up international opposi=ion to the Jewish state. Israelis lived with constant Palestinian terror, =hich created a siege mentality within the country.

The situation today= however, is transformed in every sense. The Soviet Union is dead. Iraq an= Syria have been sidelined as foes. The Arab world is in upheaval, which p=oduces great uncertainty but has also weakened every Arab country. They all are focused on internal issues of po=er, legitimacy and survival. The last thing any of them can afford is a co=frontation with the country that has become the region's dominant power.

The data underscore=this. Israel's per capita gross domestic product is now nine times that =f Egypt, according to the International Monetary Fund's most recent figu=es; six times that of Jordan; and nearly three times that of Turkey. It is almost 50 percentgreater than Saudi Arab=a's per capita GDP. Israeli military expenditures are larger than those =f all its neighbors combined, and then there are its technological and qua=itative superiorities and its alliance with the world's dominant military power. Israel's highly effective co=nterterrorism methods, including the wall separating Palestinians and Isra=lis and the "iron dome," which increasingly shields Israelis from miss=les, have largely made Palestinian terrorism something that is worried about and planned against but not actually exper=enced by most Israelis.

Even the much-discu=sed "demographic threat" is a threat only if Israel sees it as such =97 something the country's new breed of politicians, such as Naftali Bennett

chttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/21/130121fa_fact_remn=ck> , have cynically grasped. After all, Israel has ruled mi=lions of Palestinians without offering them citizenship or a state for 40 =ears. There is no tipping point at

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which this becomes logistically or tech=ically unsustainable. Walls, roads and checkpoints would work for 4 million Palestinians just as they do for = million.

In a sense, both ha=d-line supporters of Israel and advocates of peace have clung to the notio= of the Jewish state as deeply vulnerable. For Likudniks, this demonstrate= that Israel was at risk and needed constant support. For peaceniks, it proved that peace was a vital necessit=.

But Israel's stre=gth and security are changing the country's outlook. Don't look only a= the tough talk coming from the Link new the Link country right. As has columnist turned its and attention author from surv=val to social, political and economic justice. (January's confirmed election this Ari trend.) Shavit results notes, And while these seem, at first, domestic affairs, t=ey will ultimately lead to a concern for justice in a broader sense and fo= the rights of Palestinians.

Link Obama's appealed speech to this as=ect of Israel's psyche and grounded it deeply in Jewish values: "Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition bu= also in the idea that a people deserve to be free in a land of their own.=94 Then, applying that idea to Israel's longtime adversaries, he said: =93Look at the world through (Palestinian( eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of=their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army t=at controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents= their grandparents, every single day."

Having tried pressu=e, threats and tough talk, Obama has settled on a new strategy: appealing =o Israel as a liberal democracy and to its people's sense of conscience =nd character. In the long run, this is the most likely path to peace and a Palestinian state.

Articl= 2.

The Washington Post=/span>

Obama's pra=matic approach to Mideast

David Ignatius Link

March 27, 2013 -- H=re's the coldblooded calculation at work as President Obama shapes his f=reign-policy agenda: If he took "full ownership" of the Syria problem =hrough direct military intervention, that's probably all he could accomplish during his second term — and even then,=he might fail in reconciling that country's feuding sects.

So Obama is moving =nstead toward a more pragmatic approach in Syria, with the CIA playing a c=ntral role, supplemented by the State Department and the U.S. military. Th= United States will train Syrian rebels and help build governance in areas liberated from the regime of President =/span> Bashar al-Assad

[Link](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/21/fiv=-most-bizarre-quotes-from-bashar-al-assads-new-interviewh . Washington will work harder to coordinate policy with the key regional powers — Turkey, Qatar=

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Saudi Arabia and Jordan — whose conflicting agendas have threatened in =ecent days to pull the Syrian opposition apart.

But Obama won't m=ke the all-encompassing commitment in Syria that some want because he fear= it would devour the remaining years of his presidency.

This pragmatic line=on foreign policy was evident during Obama's trip to the Middle East cLink often criticized for his passive, "I=ading from behind" style, he made some notable this advances month. on Though the trip. the president is The=challenge, as always for Obama, will be to follow through with coherent =93from the front" leadership.

Here are three stra=egic gains that emerged from the trip:

Obama breathed a li=tle life back into an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that had all but e=pired. He did this largely by cLink the horses force at of once: his March The =peech 21speech was a love letter to in Israel, Israel. What as one he commentator accomplished noted, was the and diplomat's it was al=o trick a passionate of riding two evocation of the Palestinians' plight, and the need to =93Iook at the world through their eyes."

Obama pulled Israel= Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward the U.S. position on military ac=ion against Iran. Israel Link Netanyahu — that share is, to saidg=pan> "a actuall= common manufacture assessment" the of weapon Ira=. This — sounded then . . . it close will to take agreement them that about "if with Iran a year." Obama's decides =e position said to go the for United that a nuclear the States trigger weapon and for a military strike would be an Iranian breako=t toward a bomb; that's quite different from the "zone of immunity" =rguments Netanyahu was making last =ear [Link](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/benjamin- =etanyahu-invokes-holocaust-in-push-against-iran/2012/02/23/gIQAFKdkhR_stor=.html) , which viewed Iran's very position of enrichment technology as the threat= These exchanges demonstrated that Obama is stronger politically than he w=s a year ago and Netanyahu is weaker. The Israeli prime minister is now tr=ing to associate himself with Obama's Iran policy, rather than pressuring him.

Obama brokered an i=portant reconciliation between Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Link matter of vital national interest f=r both Israel and Turkey, but it took Obama .=With to provide the region the personal in turmoil, link this t=at was a made it happen. This was a payoff for Obama's cultivation of Erdogan since 2010, and for his "reset" w=th Netanyahu.

Syria remains the t=st of whether Obama can, forgive the term, "lean in" more during his s=cond term. Obama has been slow to see the dangers of U.S. passivity there:=For months he let things drift in Syria; the United States had a nominal commitment to strengthening command-and-co=trol within the opposition but no real policy on the ground to accomplish =t.

Obama is now said t= understand the risk that Syria's sectarian conflict will spread to Leba=on, Iraq and Jordan if the United States doesn't take stronger action. T=e White House is eager to work with Brig. Gen. Salim Idriss, the commander of the Free Syrian Army, on training, log=stics and other priorities. The administration recognizes that it may need="safe zones," perhaps protected by air defenses, to train Syrian rebel= inside the country rather than in Jordan and Turkey.

The president is st=ll said to resist the simple formula of "arm the rebels," but he seems=close to partnering with friendly intelligence services in the region on w=at would be a major covert action program, reminiscent of Afghanistan in the 1980s Link , with all the attendant risks.

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In framing this project, he'd be wise to bring in some CIA veterans who have experi=nce running similar programs, pronto.

Obama hasn't had = personality transplant. He's still likely to be slow and deliberate. Bu= the Middle East trip showed that he has built some political and diplomat=c capital and is starting to use it wisely.

Articl= 3.

The National Intere=t

Why Stay in t=e Middle East?

Leon Hadar Link

March 27, 2013 -- B=shing the critics of their foreign-policy agenda as "isolationists" ha= become the last refuge of military interventionists and global crusaders.=The tactic helps sidetrack the debate by putting the onus on their opponents—those skeptical of regime change her=, there and everywhere—to disprove the charge that they want Americans t= shun the rest of the world.

And now proponents =f maintaining American military hegemony in the Middle East have been appl=ing a similar technique, accusing those who call for a debate on U.S. inte=ests and policies in that region of advocating retreat and appeasement. Like the accusation of "isolat=onism," the suggestion that a reassessment of current U.S. policies in t=e Middle East amounts to geostrategic retrenchment is part of an effort to=shut down debate and maintain the status quo. But questioning the dominant U.S. Middle East paradigm, which assumes=that Americans have the interest and the obligation to secure a dominant p=litical-military status in the region, now goes beyond strategic and econo=ic calculations being debated by foreign-policy wonks in Washington. Most Americans have only b=sic knowledge about the Middle East and U.S. interests there, beyond words=that trigger a visceral fear ("oil" and "Israel" and "terrorism=94). But most of them are now telling pollsters that they want to see U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as poss=ble, are opposed to new U.S.-led regime change and nation building in the =iddle East, and are skeptical about the utility of Washington taking charg= of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." Indeed, you don't have to be a deep strategi= thinker to conclude that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a major military a=d diplomatic fiasco (no more Iraqs, please); that Washington exerts very l=ttle influence on the political weather (where it's "spring" or "winter") in the Arab World, a place where they lost t=at loving feeling for America a long time ago; or that Israelis and Palest=nians are not going to live in peace and harmony anytime soon, even if Pre=ident Obama would spend the rest of his term engaged in diplomatic psychotherapy sessions with them at Camp David.=/span>

It is becoming quit= obvious to most Americans that sustaining the foundations of the Pax Amer=cana in the Middle East is no longer cost-effective. Especially at a time =hen many members of the middle class have yet to recover from the economic devastation of the Great Recession a=d their representatives in Washington cannot agree on how to manage the ba=looning federal deficit.

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