It should be no surprise, I write today, that American officials desperately working to stave off military defeat and political collapse in Afghanistan find themselves cutting dirty deals with nasty people—like Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. In Afghanistan,  a country that’s been involved in chaotic civil and international conflicts for thirty years, the people who have scrambled to the top of the bloody heap are unsavory, and U.S. involvement there—as much as Americans may huff and puff—demands that we hold our noses and give these characters  cash (knowing they won’t show us any receipts).

The real question, of course, is whether the Brother Karzai is a Viagra-sponsored warlord…

Read the full article at The Daily Beast…

There’s a beautiful kilim on the blogging room floor here at the stately Mead manor in Jackson Heights; I bought it in Peshawar about three years ago when I was giving a series of lectures on American foreign policy across Pakistan.  I couldn’t buy it in the market; the security situation in Peshawar was so dicey at the time that my State Department minders wouldn’t let me set foot in the bazaar. Fortunately the head of the AID mission was a rug collector and he persuaded a dealer to bring the market to me: dozens of glorious Central Asian rugs were laid out across his carport and lawn as I wandered around trying to figure out how many of these dazzling rugs I could bundle into my luggage for the trip home.  From time to time the ground would shake as heavily laden planes took off headed for the nearby warfront in Afghanistan just over the mountains.

This morning I see that they’ve bombed the market in Peshawar; some months ago a suicide bomber drove a truck into the hotel where I stayed.

There’s no doubt that Pakistan is the toughest and most dangerous problem in American foreign policy; it’s one of the most complicated, dangerous and engaging places in the world.  Hilary Clinton is visiting the country as I write; she will find, I suspect, as I did that there are few places with more brilliant, talented and well intentioned people than this country – but that these brilliant and talented people have no idea among themselves how Pakistan’s problems can be solved, and the more time she spends with them the more confused she is likely to become about what America should do.

But there’s one thing she needs to bear in mind; I bring it up because I’ve found that both in the news coverage of Pakistan and even in the expert discussion about it, Americans consistently seem to underestimate the importance of a single, central topic in our relations with Pakistan.

That subject is India.

No relationship in world politics has changed as dramatically in the last ten years as the U.S.-India relationship.  The Bush administration gets the historical credit for pushing this relationship to a new level, but the logic is clear to both sides.  The emergence of India as a great global power is the centerpiece of America’s Asia policy – and America’s Asia policy is the centerpiece of our grand strategy for the twenty first century.

The logic is pretty compelling.  If India continues to prosper and grow, the danger that the United States and China will clash dramatically declines.  A weak India means an unbalanced Asia – China would stand alone as an economic and military superpower and the United States would have to choose between trying to ‘contain’ China by rounding up an alliance of its nervous neighbors or it would have to accept China as the dominant superpower in the world’s most dynamic economic region.

But if India emerges as a strong economic and military power, Asia is a very different place.  India, China and Japan between them would form a rough balance of power; any two of them, especially with the prospect of American support, would be able to balance the third.  A strong India dramatically increases the chance that Asia will be stable and prosperous in the twenty first century; it also increases the chance that the United States would enjoy a unique global role in a world of strong regional powers.

This is pretty much game, set and match from the standpoint of the traditional goals of Anglo-American foreign policy.  (Readers who want to know more about this can look at my recent book God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World.)

This logic is why the Bush administration reached its historic agreement with India over nuclear weapons and why, despite reservations by long time opponents of nuclear proliferation, Congress agreed to it.

The only problem with this otherwise excellent initiative is that it totally destroyed the historic foundations of Pakistani foreign policy.

Ever since British India was partitioned between India and Pakistan, Pakistanis have felt they were engaged in a desperate and uneven struggle for survival against a hostile, larger rival.  The loss of most of Muslim-majority Kashmir and the subsequent secession, with India’s help, of modern Bangla Desh (formerly East Pakistan) have both dramatically reduced Pakistan’s economic and military potential and reinforced Pakistani fears of a hostile, aggressive India.

The Pakistani military has always looked to outside powers – first to Britain and more recently to the United States – for the financial and technical aid that would enable Pakistan to maintain a military force that could deter the feared Indian aggression.

During the Cold War, we were willing to pay up; India tilted toward the USSR and the U.S. tilted toward Pakistan.

Now that logic has changed.  The United States talks about a strategic global partnership with India – while relegating Pakistan to a secondary ally in a nasty local conflict in Afghanistan.  The United States has accepted India’s nuclear arsenal and opened the door to widespread cooperation by other nuclear powers with India’s nuclear industry.  Nothing like that is currently on the table with Pakistan.

Americans don’t think about all this very much; Pakistanis think about it often, sometimes obsessively.

They also look ahead.

India has a larger economy than Pakistan’s and it is growing more rapidly.  As India’s influence in the world grows, what happens to Pakistan?  Even before the wave of radical violence now shaking the country, Pakistan was divided between different ethnic and regional groups and tribes.  Not all of them are happy with the status quo.  Socially, Pakistani elites are sitting on a volcano.  Many Pakistanis live under conditions of feudal exploitation and oppression.  When the Taliban occupied the Swat valley, there were stories of guerillas driving unpopular landlords away.  Let religious insurrection meet a peasants’ revolt and you have a true nightmare scenario from the standpoint of Pakistan’s rulers: Osama bin Laden, meet Mao Tse Tung.

This is the world of Pakistan’s rulers, and it is a dark and scary place.  Pakistanis have traditionally looked to the Saudis and the Chinese for alternatives to their American connection; Saudi money is widely rumored to have helped support the Pakistani nuclear program.

China is attracted to Pakistan.  Chinese-Indian relations have deteriorated sharply even as U.S.-Indian (and Japanese-Indian) relations have improved.  Yet so far, the Chinese have been cautious; Pakistan is a troublesome partner and the Chinese have their own issues with Islamic radicalism in Central Asia.

So far, Americans and Pakistanis remain trapped in a dysfunctional relationship that doesn’t really work for either one of us – but one neither of us is able to end.  Unfortunately, the clock is ticking.  Pakistan’s internal and external problems are growing steadily worse, and the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is steadily becoming less attractive but more necessary to both sides.

It is hard to see how this ends well for either side.

The last time I visited Pakistan, I spent a lot of my time surrounded by heavily armed police, moving through cities like Peshawar on carefully plotted routes.  I hope to return before long – though I fear that it will be a long time before I can do what I really wanted to do in Peshawar: wander freely through the markets and streets, enjoying the hospitality and admiring the creativity of some of the kindest and most generous and intelligent people anywhere on earth.

Sam Ayres, the official intern here at Team Mead, is turning 23 years old today. In lieu of an actual gift, which would only turn his attention to material things and away from the intangible rewards of interning, I’m posting our first Occasional Poem in his honor: a sonnet that John Milton wrote on his own 23rd birthday back in 1631.

Here it is, Sam: enjoy!

	How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,
	   Stoln on his wing my three and twentieth yeer!
	   My hasting dayes flie on with full career,
	   But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
	Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
	   That I to manhood am arriv'd so near,
	   And inward ripenes doth much less appear,
	   That som more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
	Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
	   It shall be still in strictest measure eev'n
	   To that same lot, however mean, or high,
	Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n;
	   All is, if I have grace to use it so,
	   As ever in my great task Masters eye.

Of course if you take my advice to subtract ten years when thinking about your age, you would come up with 13. But don’t cheer up too much—here is what Milton was writing at 15, “A Paraphrase of Psalm 114.” Worse, he was translating it—from Hebrew. And that wasn’t even his second, third or fourth language.

		WHEN the blest seed of Terah’s faithful Son
		After long toil their liberty had won,
		And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan land,
		Led by the strength of the Almighty’s hand,
		Jehovah’s wonders were in Israel shown,
		His praise and glory was in Israel known.
		That saw the troubled sea, and shivering fled,
		And sought to hide his froth-becurlèd head
		Low in the earth; Jordan’s clear streams recoil,
		As a faint host that hath received the foil.
		The high huge-bellied mountains skip like rams
		Amongst their ewes, the little hills like lambs.
		Why fled the ocean? and why skipped the mountains?
		Why turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains?
		Shake, Earth, and at the presence be aghast
		Of Him that ever was and aye shall last,
		That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,
		And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush.

Apologies to all who are checking this space, but posting has been slow for the last few days, and will be slow for at least a couple more.  Whether it’s the flu formerly known as swine or something even less glamorous, a virus of some kind is sweeping through Mead Global HQ.  I will spare you the details, but the worst seems to be over.  We have plans underway to upgrade the blog and over the next couple of weeks will roll out some improvements; meanwhile, the quest to name the blog continues.  Mead Matters?  Via Meadia?  Any other suggestions?

Well, not man-eating exactly and a giant only in relative terms, but this 4.7 inch spider is definitely more Shelob than Charlotte’s Web.  This BBC story tells the whole ghastly tale; my appetite for nighttime bush walks in Maputaland and Madagascar has suddenly diminished.

I’m less surprised by the discovery of some new creepy crawly creature of the bush, though, than by something else in the story.  The spider’s discoverer named it after his best friend, who recently died in an accident. (The BBC is curiously mum on what kind of accident.)

In the unlikely chance that there’s anybody out there thinking of memorializing me after I’ve gone on to the Great Broadband Network in the Sky, there are at least two forms of memorial that I don’t want.

One, do not name a giant spider after me.  Or a new species of cockroach – or in general, any animal that does not have vertebrae and is not cute enough to play the lead in a Disney animated children’s film.

Two, do not name a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike in my ‘honor’.  I envy and admire Walt Whitman for many accomplishments, but I am sure that like Walt, Clara Barton, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and James Fenimore Cooper all wish that the Garden State had found some other way to express its admiration.  About Vince Lombardi and Joyce Kilmer I am not so sure.

Giving advice to the rising generation is always fun and sometimes even useful.  The most interesting piece of advice I ever heard was from a woman working as an American diplomat in Beirut.  My research associate was traveling with me at the time—healthy, single and in his early twenties, he was clearly itching to explore the legendary nightlife of that fascinating town.

The diplomat had learned that the associate was thinking about a career in government work; she took him aside at one point and said that if he really wanted to get into the kind of government work where you might need a security clearance of some kind, there was a good rule to adopt.

Enjoy Beirut, she told him – but if you want to get ahead, “Sleep NATO.”

I’m not sure how true that actually is; I’ve met people who are married to non-NATO spouses who have extremely interesting and important jobs with the government.

But whether or not it’s true, it’s memorable and it’s clear – and it kept the kid on the Embassy grounds overnight which, given the security situation in Beirut at the time, might have been what the diplomat had in mind.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the advice I gave to another twenty-something: when assessing where you stand in life you should always subtract ten years from your age. Ben Skinner (who is not, by the way, the kid in Beirut) emailed to remind me of something else I once said to him: you should have your twenties in your twenties.

A lot of people don’t do this – and it often turns out to be a big mistake.

I think the root problem is school.  read more »

I was a little surprised to read on the BBC website that the world’s temperature appears to have fallen over the last ten years and that the debate among scientists has shifted from whether this global cooling is happening to why – and to what, if anything, global cooling means.

Frankly, I don’t have a clue.  I don’t know very much about meteorology and doubt that I ever will.  The global warming debate has mostly passed me by and I suspect the global cooling discussion will also go over my head.

Put me down I suppose as a mildly skeptical observer on the climate change debate – but not because I’m skeptical about the science. What I don’t trust is the politics.

The net effect of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, has been essentially nil.  Most of the reductions in greenhouse gas emission from the target start date of 1990 were due to the closing of inefficient Soviet era facilities in Eastern and Central Europe after the fall of communism. (The greenhouse gas emissions of Russia, not to mention other former Soviet states, fell 38% from 1990 to 2001.) This would have happened whether or not the Kyoto Protocol existed.  Other reductions seem to come mostly from two sources:  either from efforts by individual companies and consumers to use less energy or use it more efficiently on simple economic grounds or from energy policies (like fuel taxes) adopted by governments trying to raise revenue and/or reduce the energy import bill for geopolitical and balance of payments reasons.

But overall, from where I sit, the social movement striving to fight climate change has had more impact on the rhetoric of world politics than the realities of world energy use.  Its impact on policy appears small – comparable say to that of the nuclear freeze movement on the world’s nuclear arsenals in the 1990s. The nuclear freeze movement made a lot of noise and it made a lot of people feel better about themselves.  As PR and therapy, it was a success.  As politics, it was a dud.

Nuclear weapons stocks would ultimately decline for the same reason that greenhouse gas emissions declined in some countries: the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Russia could no longer afford to maintain the full Soviet arsenal, and if Russia was cutting back the US could afford to do the same.

This is actually a fairly common fate for international mass movements.  Take the global peace and disarmament movement of the twenties and thirties.  This movement was more successful than most in that it resulted in a famous treaty – the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that outlawed war forever.  But overall the major effect of the movement was probably to make World War Two more likely by diminishing public concern about the real menaces to world peace taking shape in Germany, Italy and Japan.

I suspect that the anti-global warming campaign will come out looking either like the campaign for a nuclear freeze or the earlier campaign for world peace. The consequence of the present round of negotiations is most likely to be an increase in hot air emissions from political leaders with little effective change in the greenhouse gas situation.  At best, the world will reach an agreement that everybody signs which has little or no impact on global climate – the environmental equivalent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.  At worst, no agreement will be reached, and everyone will hold the United States responsible for the failure, allowing everyone in the world to blame America for any bad weather that might somewhere appear.

Neither of these outcomes is particularly inspiring, but the first of these two alternatives is clearly preferable from the standpoint of American national interests.  I hope we can manage to achieve it, so count me in as a supporter of the Copenhagen Process.  Sort of.

This would be an excellent place for a self-proclaimed expert and commentator to sneer at the gullible and naïve hordes of ignorant peasants who periodically swarm together into vast and pointless social movements.  That’s not what I want to do.  Cooperation by everyday people in all walks of life across international and cultural frontiers is a necessary dimension of the kind of global economic and political system that human technological and social development requires of us all.  The peace crusaders after World War I, the anti-nuclear activists of the 1990s and the environmentalists of today might not get things 100% right, and in some important respects they may actually be unintentionally working against the noble goals that inspire them, but that doesn’t mean that these movements aren’t an important social phenomenon – and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t on the right side of history.

The challenge before us isn’t to sneer these movements into oblivion by pointing out their flaws; it is to spread an understanding of how the international system works and can be made to work so that future social movements will be more sophisticated and more effective.

In our time, the human race is passing through the most tumultuous period of change that history records.  Virtually every society on earth today faces cascading waves of social, economic, technological and environmental change.  Increasingly, the causes of these changes lie outside the control of national governments – or indeed of any institutions.  It’s not just that our institutions are challenged; our ideas and assumptions are being forced to take note of new realities.  In the United States, movements for racial equality, women’s liberation and gay rights are forcing us to re-examine and in some cases discard some of our most deeply held cultural values and institutions (like marriage).  The mass movement of immigrants, legal and illegal, is changing the nature of communities and political societies around the world – even as those communities are trying to respond to challenges and changes.

International mass movements and international NGO networks are one of the ways in which the human race is working to build institutions and ideas that can cope with the rapidly changing conditions we face.  That they exist is encouraging; that they are often inadequate is not, under the circumstances, very surprising.

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,” as Herman Melville summed up the whaler’s version of the Fourth Commandment (for most Protestants and Jews; it’s Number Three for Roman Catholics), “And on the seventh the same, and holystone the cable.”

In that spirit, I’m posting a God-blog today, then it’s off to the gym to work off the unbelievably rich fare they served at the church coffee hour this morning.

Two friends have recently told me that they were visiting my neighborhood in Jackson Heights looking at apartments for sale. Smart thinking; Jackson Heights offers a lot more space for the money than snootier neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. We’ve also got some of the best restaurants around; I particularly like Sripraphai for the best Thai food I’ve had on this side of the Pacific and the old favorite Jackson Diner, still serving some of the best Indian cuisine you can get.

However for me at this point the central attraction of the neighborhood is the local Episcopal Church: St. Mark’s Church between 81st and 82nd on 34th Avenue. Since moving into the neighborhood I’ve been an active parishioner and it’s been an eye-opening experience.

This isn’t the first church I’ve belonged to. My father is an Episcopal minister and while my attachment to the church has waxed and waned over my life, the older I get the more I appreciate the importance of being grounded in the life and faith of a local congregation.

I joined St. Marks following a principle I first read about in the work of the British literary critic, children’s book writer and Christian apologist CS Lewis. Lewis thought that Anglicans shouldn’t hunt for the nicest or most suitable parish church in the area. That was too much like joining a club. Instead, you should just go to the church that was closest to you and involve yourself in it – trusting that the people you meet there and the form of worship practiced there have something to teach you. Don’t go to church as a critic, airily considering whether this group of people is ‘worthy’ of your exalted and sensitive self.

It’s good advice; without it I probably would have commuted on Sundays to one of the endowed parishes in Manhattan. There’s nothing wrong with them, and like all thoughtful Anglicans I am deeply grateful to Queen Anne for putting the church on a solid foundation here. But commuting out of the neighborhood to a rich and fancy church, however gratifying aesthetically or maybe even socially, would have meant I missed out on the rich experience of getting to know some of my neighbors in ways that never would have happened if I hadn’t decided to put roots down in the local church.

Getting seriously involved with St. Mark’s, a struggling congregation in a changing neighborhood, has also helped me understand some of the issues facing mainline churches today. As an intellectual who often perceives religion in terms of ideas, I’ve been surprised to learn how few of St. Mark’s problems have anything directly to do with any of the theological controversies shaking the Anglican Communion or the mainline churches. read more »

Yesterday was one of those days when the phone calls don’t stop and halfway through the day I learned that I would be on the PBS Newshour with my old friend and sparring partner Zbigniew Brzezinski. Not having worn a national-TV worthy tie into the office that morning, I needed help, fast.

Fortunately Lauren Gottlieb, my research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, has dedicated herself to fixing up my scruffy image and volunteered to go out to the vendor at 68th and Third to pick up one of the five dollar ties I blogged about last week.

You can find the PBS segment — and the tie — here.

Historical rumor has it that a subordinate once asked Napoleon, “What kind of generals do you want?” “I want lucky ones,” he replied.  Luck is important, and it does nothing to belittle Obama’s intelligence and hard-earned achievements to say that he’s been lucky (heck, he was in the Illinois State Senate less than 5 years ago).  Obama’s winning the Nobel Prize for Peace—whether deserved or not—certainly comes at a good moment: as the newest trophy on his mantel, it adds to his varnish at a time when he needed it (coming back from Copenhagen). This morning, in a podcast on CFR.org, I  touched on how Obama’s  luck might affect his  decision-making (for the worse), and discussed the broader upsides and perils that accompany the award.

In early 2004 Howard Dean was running for the Democratic presidential nomination and went on a tour of the Holy Land to shore up his foreign policy credentials and squash speculation that he was a secularist who couldn’t connect with religious Americans.  A New York Times story of January 4, 2004 details some of the awkward and humorous aspects of Governor Dean’s efforts to make the religious side of his nature more familiar with voters, but the most memorable moment came when he spoke about his credentials as a serious reader of the Bible.

Touring with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Dr. Dean also visited Galilee, where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. ”If you know much about the Bible — which I do — to see and be in a place where Christ was and understand the intimate history of what was going on 2,000 years ago is an exceptional experience,” he said.

Asked his favorite New Testament book, Dr. Dean named Job, adding: ”But I don’t like the way it ends.” ”Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different,” he said. ”I think, if I’m not mistaken, there’s one book where there’s a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later.”

(For those readers who lack either a religious or a literary education let me just observe that the Book of Job is, famously, found in the Old Testament.  Dean’s statement about other New Testament books that offer a different version of Job is garbled nonsense.)

What struck me about this particular gaffe or, really, gaffette, was how little it resonated in the general media.  Writers and television hosts who had laughed themselves sick when Vice President J. Danforth Quayle misspelled potato (as potatoe) on the blackboard while speaking to schoolchildren did not think Dean’s mistake was particularly funny or embarrassing.  Some conservatives chalked up the discrepant treatment to liberal media bias; more likely it was that the Ivy-educated types who staff the country’s newspapers would never spell potato wrong – but thought that misplacing a biblical book was something anybody could do.

For a lot of Americans, however, it’s exactly the other way round.  It seems anal and snobbish to get all worked up about misspelling a vegetable, but not knowing your Bible is serious business.  Bragging about Bible knowledge that you don’t actually possess is even worse.

Well, Howard Dean isn’t president and probably never will be; Barack Obama like most of our presidents since Jimmy Carter is at home with his scriptures.  But the book of Job is back in the news; the Coen brothers have released one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen – A Serious Man.  This is, basically, an adaptation of the Book of Job and nobody who sees it will ever forget which part of the Bible it’s from.

Job was an interesting choice for Howard Dean’s favorite book.  In many ways it’s the most shocking, out of place book in either testament; it shows God allowing an innocent man to suffer for no understandable reason.  It defies the assurances of divine protection and providence that abound in other parts of the Bible; it is, famously, the book of the Bible that atheists like most, precisely because it rejects the facile pieties to which believers often like to cling.

Like many of the Coen brothers’ movies, this one combines enormous ambitions with a remarkable focus on the everyday.  The movie’s eye is so detailed, so relentless, that the filmmakers’ unwavering, all-seeing view of their characters and setting gives us a hint of the passionate intensity with which the God of the Bible observes His creation.  It is very hard for a film to do more.

The portrayal of God in the Book of Job is inscrutable and incomprehensible: power and knowledge so great that human beings can’t even ask it sensible questions.  God speaks from the whirlwind but at the end of the day his ‘explanation’ to Job about why God sent him this suffering is about like what my old Texas-accented Groton headmaster used to say when he didn’t want to explain his actions to a gaggle of pestering schoolboys: “Je ne gonna tell you pas.”

That is about all that Larry Gopnik gets from God or from his appointed rabbinical experts and exegetes in A Serious Man.  It is all we get from the Coen Brothers in terms of an explanation of their own religious faith.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst who worked with and then broke away from Sigmund Freud, wrote that the God of Job and by extension of the Old Testament was a cruel and heedless being, intoxicated with power and unaccountable to man’s moral sense.  Jung argued that Christ came as God’s much delayed ‘answer to Job’; Christ was God become man and like Job was a just man who experienced unjust suffering.  That is a rather unorthodox restatement of a classic Christian answer to the question of evil.  God doesn’t tell us why there is evil, either in general or in terms of the suffering in our own lives.  He does however share that suffering with us and through that suffering somehow we come to share more of His reality.

But after seeing A Serious Man I was thinking of the Old Testament more than the New, and in particular I was thinking about the mysterious passage in the Book of Genesis where Jacob wrestles all night with a strange, unnamed figure, and refuses to let him go until he blesses him.  “You shall no longer be known as Jacob, but Israel (literally, the one who wrestles with God) for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed,” says his opponent before leaving.

Job was a wrestler.  So are the Coen brothers.  Israel, judging by the headlines, is wrestling still with God and with man.

And as to what it all means, God still isn’t telling.

Walking down 68th Street yesterday between Lexington and Third Avenues – the spot where, historians think, Nathan Hale was hanged in September of 1776– I felt the world change. A sidewalk vendor was selling pretty decent neckties for $5 each.

Neckties are one of my subjects. Since I was thirteen years old, I’ve spent more time wearing neckties than not. From the eighth grade on we had to wear them everywhere but on the athletic field – and in those days I spent as little time as possible on the athletic field. And in most of the jobs I’ve had since, neckties were de rigueur. I kept reading about the new business casual and the trend away from ties – but never actually encountered it in the workplace.

I’m also a messy eater, especially when soup and/or pasta is involved. I put that down to problems with depth perception that come from weak eyesight and strong glasses prescriptions. I spill soup on myself for the same reason that I tend to dent fenders on those rare occasions when I find myself behind the wheel of a car. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it; the family’s view seems to be that I’m just a slob – and a lousy driver.

In any case, the combination means I’ve bought a lot of neckties over the years and learned something about how to price them. It’s an important field of study for a man, even one less spill-prone than I am. Barring fancy watches and cufflinks, inch for inch neckties are typically the most expensive thing men wear; they are also, notoriously, the easiest to ruin and the hardest to clean.

The most important lesson I’ve learned from a long lifetime in the tie market: you should never buy ties in the conventional way. Men’s stores, department stores, tie kiosks in airports: they rip you off big. $30 is cheap in a lot of stores; $60 ties aren’t hard to find, and they just go up from there. This is a lot of money for a stain-sucking soup magnet.

Over the years I’ve learned about tie bargains. The best place on earth to buy men’s ties is Bangkok – although I suspect Ho Chi Minh City may be nipping at its heels. In Bangkok’s night markets, you can find tie vendors with a few hundred ties on display. When you find a vendor with a good selection, haggle down to the best price you can get for one tie – then see if you get a further discount for two. Then see what you can get if you offer to take ten. I’ve been able to get them down to $1 a tie once or twice: a personal best.

Venice, not generally known as the home of the bargain, is another good place for men’s ties. Pretty consistently I’ve found that you can find reasonable, non-embarrassing ties for 8 euros and less. Walk from St. Mark’s to the Rialto and you will see what I mean.

The Beijing Pearl Market also has its attractions; the haggling there is pretty ferocious – I’d rather haggle in Bangkok where things are more laid back. But you can come away with significantly better ties there than you find in the Thai night markets for between five and ten dollars. (With practice and local knowledge, you could do better, I think. Beijing is a tough, world-class city and the vendors are skilled.)

Otherwise, it’s a cold and cruel world. In most places cheapish ties can be found, but like the polyester kangaroo ties that infest Australian souvenir stands, you get what you pay for. And heaven help you if you need to buy ties in London, Paris and Berlin.

This is not, from the consumer’s point of view, a perfect world. It’s not only that the good tie markets are hard to get to; the choices are not always ideal. The elephant motif is big in Thailand; in America an elephant tie is a political statement. Venetian ties run to the topical, too: gondolas and winged lions a la San Marco are the most popular themes. I happen to like them, but you can’t wear a gondola tie every day.

Until yesterday, I’d thought of New York as one of the world’s low yielding tie markets. You can find cheap ties here and in the old days they were common down on the Lower East Side, but they looked even cheaper than they were and polyester was the fabric of choice.

Now that’s all changed, thanks to the vendor on 68th. I didn’t actually buy any ties – I’ve still got some virgin ties in the closet from my last trip to Beijing – but a casual glance showed three or four that could, for example, be worn on a cable news show. The quality is comparable to what you would find at the Pearl Market and the initial price, no haggle needed, is less.

So: New York is on the verge of becoming a world-class tie source. Big deal, you say.

Well, it isn’t a big deal in itself, but it points to a few trends that matter.

First, it’s a sign that the crisis of our legacy institutions and organizations still has a long way to run. Brooks Brothers, Bloomingdales, Macy’s: traditional retailers have a lot of overhead to support. A lot of bricks and mortar and a lot of middle management stands behind those big brands. Street vendors won’t bring the big stores to their knees, but the gap between manufacturer’s costs and retail prices will continue to narrow. There are more and more ways to disintermediate, to cut out the middleman. Remember how many travel agents there used to be before Orbitz and Priceline? What are they all doing now?

That’s an opportunity, and a problem. Obviously, ties are cheaper and we have more choices and convenience when we book flights. On the other hand, those high overhead legacy operations are where a lot of consumers make their livings.

One message of the cheap ties in New York is that there are more waves of layoffs and downsizings to come, and not just in clothes stores. Blue collar America went through mass downsizing in the 1970’s and 1980’s as automation and off-shore competition gutted the traditional manufacturing system in the US.

Now it’s the turn of the white-collar workforce. Law firms are already sending back office work overseas; the recession has accelerated the cost squeeze on the legal industry. Their corporate clients are telling them that change has to come. Businesses are continuing to look for ways to cut headcount; better software increasingly will mean that fewer professionals are needed to carry on basic business.  The ranks of journalists have already been scythed by the newspaper equivalent of the five dollar tie: free access to news, opinion and other information on the web.  The rationalization of costs and the downsizing of both profit and non-profit organizations is picking up speed. That’s part of what those ties were telling me.

The other half of the message is even scarier. I didn’t look at the labels (who’d believe the label on a five dollar tie?) so I don’t know where the ties were made. They looked more Chinese than Vietnamese or Thai at a casual glance, but that’s just a guess. However they almost certainly come from East or Southeast Asia, and the message of the five dollar tie to Asia is grimmer even than their message to Macy’s.

Here’s what I think this means. In the last forty years the dramatic rise in global manufacturing capacity has created a huge glut. There are more people who want to make cars than people who can buy them at the traditional price. The result is a tight market for manufactured goods of all kinds, starting maybe with my five dollar tie, but running all the way up to Airbus and Boeing.

In the short term, that’s bad news for individual producers. Profit margins have shrunk for a lot of factories. Factories actually depend on the sixty dollar standard tie and its equivalent as much as retailers. If retailers are collapsing and/or slashing their prices, they are going to cut the prices they pay their suppliers. And if there are too many suppliers chasing retail orders, that price pressure turns brutal.

But there’s more. Discounting the cyclical effects of economic upturns, over the long run, manufacturing margins will stay under pressure. That means both economic and political trouble for countries like China. Economically, it’s hard to see how China can keep up its blistering growth rates into the future if its factories stop being so profitable. Politically, think about all those industrial workers who, instead of raises, might face falling wages.

It’s thoughts like this that keep China’s rulers up late at night, and well they should.

So: are five dollar neckties a Good Thing – or should we pass laws to keep those dratted vendors off the streets and to promote ‘fair’ competition (i.e. price fixing cartels) among retailers and manufacturers?

Myself, I’m firmly in the five dollar tie camp. I’d rather deal with the disruptions and disadvantages of a world that was becoming more productive, more capable of providing better goods at lower prices, than deal with the problems of standing still. There are too many billions of people out there still living on less than the price of a cheap tie for me to think it’s humane or moral for the world to stand pat.

But that doesn’t mean that change will be easy. Those five dollar ties are, in their way, as dangerous and revolutionary as was Nathan Hale, who died 233 years ago last month at 68th Street and Third Avenue, back when this part of Manhattan was still farmlands and woods.

When I was a young kid living in South Carolina, you would still sometimes see mule-drawn wagons on country roads.  You also saw advertisements for Burma Shave: typically a series of six to eight small road signs at short intervals with a rhymed message of some kind.  “Don’t go passing up a slope/Unless you have a periscope.”  “Don’t stick your elbow out too far/It might go home in another car.”  My favorite:  “This shall never come to pass/A backseat driver out of gas.”

I’ve been thinking about that slogan this week as I’ve noticed how many of my blog entries turn out to be backseat driver interventions in President Obama’s foreign policy.  Gassy backseat drivers are deservedly unpopular; I’ll try to keep that under control as I blog.

And one thing to keep in mind, whether reading my criticisms or anybody else’s:  governing is hard and criticism is cheap.  To govern is to err; that’s just the way things are.  Presidents and their staffs are always making decisions without all the information they need, without all the time they need to reflect, and without all the freedom they need to choose the best course rather than the politically viable one.  Often the chief purpose of criticism is to make its readers see just how much smarter the book critic, the film critic or the political critic is than the poor blundering boob who wrote the book, directed the movie or won the election and shaped the foreign policy.

I hope to do something different: not to make readers think about how stupid Obama or Bush or whoever is, or even how smart Mead is – but to help readers think more clearly about what good policy looks like, how hard it is to make it, and how they might handle themselves if in the fullness of time they are called to that kind of responsibility.

But all that said, I’m going to post one more time about where American foreign policy seems a bit wobbly right now – and then, I promise, it will be on to something else for a while.

President Obama’s decision to go in person to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC to award the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago rather than its leading rival – Rio de Janeiro – is a mistake.  It’s not the worst mistake anybody ever made; it’s the kind of mistake presidents, especially newbies, make all the time.  But it’s an interesting mistake – it’s the wrong choice on three different levels.

First, it’s wrong because the benefits aren’t worth the risk.  If the president succeeds and the IOC gives the games to Chicago, Obama wins – but not big.  On the other hand, if he uses all the power and prestige of his office and his celebrity appeal to get the games and he fails – it’s a big fat public fiasco that his eroding prestige at home and abroad doesn’t need.

Second, it’s the wrong move because it’s the wrong policy for the United States.  Brazil has never been more important to the US than it is now, and having the games in Rio is a lot more important to Brazil than having them in Chicago is to us.  The US has hosted the Olympics 8 times since the modern games began in 1896; Brazil has yet to have them once.

Currently, Brazilian President Lula is the biggest ‘swing vote’ in a Latin America increasingly polarized between responsible democratic modernizers and atavistic, anti-democratic and anti-American regimes.  A man with longtime center left credentials who cares passionately about the poor, President Lula understands some things that people like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez can’t quite seem to get: that markets, for example, can help the poor and that the poor need good government, stable institutions and democratic freedoms as much or even more than the rich.  More than any other figure on the continent, President Lula can put limits on the efforts of so-called “Bolivarian revolutionaries” to force corrupt, ineffective and radical policies on Latin American countries today.

President Obama, so busy making nice with his enemies, could more usefully spend his time and political capital building relations with true potential partners like Brazil.  Graciously helping President Lula land the big O would have been a smart move.  Getting in his face is a blunder.

In going to Copenhagen, President Obama is actually repeating one of his predecessor’s damaging mistakes.  President George W. Bush failed to get a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement in large part because his administration couldn’t get past parochial interests like Florida sugar and orange growers to make Brazil a good offer on trade.  By putting Chicago politics ahead of the national interest, President Obama is traveling down the same road.

Third, going to Copenhagen undercuts the message that President Obama most wants to send to the rest of the world.  One of President Obama’s themes going back to the campaign is that the United States needs to project a new and friendlier image to the world.  We should not be trying to dominate every forum, constantly thumping our chests and boasting about what a super-duper superpower we are; this needlessly offends others and makes their cooperation harder to get.

This is an important message to deliver, but in policy terms it is difficult to accomplish.  The United States has global interests that it cannot ignore; we often need to use our power to shape situations around the world.  How can we project power and shape events while curbing perceptions that the US is arrogant and unheeding?

The deliberations of the International Olympic Committee are a heaven sent opportunity to do exactly that.  Most countries have never hosted the Olympic Games and for these countries, getting the Olympics is a dream come true.  The United States can afford to be generous about the Games – and we should be.

A president of the United States needs to be magnanimous and openhanded – without looking weak or giving away the store.  Conspicuous opportunities to do that are few and far between.  This week in Copenhagen, President Obama is throwing something precious away and nothing he gains in Copenhagen will outweigh the lost goodwill in Brazil and elsewhere that he could have gained, cheaply, by just staying home.

Win or lose at the IOC, President Obama comes home from Copenhagen looking smaller and less inspiring.

That didn’t have to happen.

Strangely enough, the White House had this exactly right at one point.  No politician can ignore his hometown or his home team.  The Obama White House could not stand aside from Chicago’s Olympic bid.  Sending the First Lady – the original White House plan – sent exactly the right message.  It showed support for the home team, but Obama’s prestige would not be affected by a loss.  And Brazil and the other contestants would not be offended by Michelle Obama’s appearance before the committee.  That’s a legitimate and moderate use of her star power.  Sending in the Big Dog, though, is a bit over the top.

Why the White House made this change I don’t know.  Perhaps they had information that Chicago had definitely won and so they saw this as the chance for the president to get some momentum and some positive news.  Perhaps they heard that the contest was up for grabs, and the Chicago loyalties of folks like Rahm Emmanuel overrode all other considerations.  Perhaps the Obamas just wanted some family time and the long plane ride gave them that chance.

Whatever it was, here’s one backseat driver who wishes they had quit while they were ahead.

Note: Walter Russell Mead will be appearing on “The Kudlow Report” tonight (October 2) to discuss the topic of this post–Obama’s (now failed) trip to Copenhagen, and what it means about both his, and America’s, standing in the world. Tune into CNBC tonight at 7 P.M. ET.