This case against Zardari fits in with the Pakistani military leadership’s soft coup strategy—a tactic we noted recently in connection with the so-called Memogate scandal.

What really makes the civil-military clash dangerous is the fact that serious social problems are going unaddressed while Pakistani elites bicker about who should rule. Thousands, for instance, recently took to the streets in Rawalpindi, carrying banners in support of banned Islamist parties and portraits of Mumtaz Qadri, the killer of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, as well as chanting slogans calling for all Ahmadis, a minority religious group, to leave Pakistan. Meanwhile, militants are launching attacks on the army in the lawless north.

A corrupt civilian government, a distracted judiciary, a misguided and stubborn military—no one seems ready to tackle Pakistan’s real problems and, sadly, that is nothing new.

Thirteen of the ruling party’s legislators are accused of murder. Others have served time for mafia-related crimes as well as rape, murder, and abduction.

Consider the story of Brijesh Singh, currently in jail in Ahmedabad. Mr. Singh allegedly ran a gang of contract killers and is charged with over forty crimes, including the murder of 13 people in 1994. He is running for a seat in the state assembly.

Or this:

The next most dreaded criminal is Om Prakash alias Munna Bajrangi. Lodged in Tihar Jail for alleged involvement in the murder of over 40 people, as well as abduction, he is a candidate of Apna Dal [a political party] from Madiyahun in Jaunpur…

He had allegedly murdered BJP [a rival party] leaders Anil Rai, in 1993, and Ramchandra Singh, in 1996. A sharp-shooter and contract killer, Bajrangi is also accused in the murder of BJP MLA Krishnand Rai and his seven bodyguards.

The worlds of politics and crime are blurred in Uttar Pradesh. Dozens of politicians are described by the Indian press as “dons.” Many have served time or operate in politics despite outstanding criminal charges. At least ten convicted politicians are running for assembly seats from jail. Prison sentences are often short, and even then convicts find a way to stay involved in politics: one of Mr. Singh’s rivals was granted “temporary parole” so he could return home in time for his political campaign. “It’s very tribal,” a veteran politician told the NYT. “People are voting for someone to protect them. Not to lead them — that’s something different. They want protection.”

Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populated state. If it were its own country, it would be the fifth-most populous nation in the world, ahead of Brazil, which has thirty-five times the space. Politics here reverberates nationally. The Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh is the state’s second-biggest party and is aligned to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party in Delhi. Samajwadi has fielded 28 candidates in state elections who are “tainted” by crimes. It’s worth mentioning that if Samajwadi were to turn the tables on Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Bahujan Samaj Party it would strengthen the PM’s position ahead of national elections in 2014.

This, we may safely say, is not what Gandhi had in mind. India’s democracy is real, but it is also really messed up. As America’s strategic interests become ever more tightly linked up with India’s, we are going to have to get to know our new partner, and some of what we discover will be unsettling.

Fatah’s struggles stem from decades of failure. It hasn’t built the institutions necessary for Palestinian statehood, hasn’t won concessions from Israel, hasn’t found a way to end its debilitating infighting, and hasn’t proven anywhere near as adroit as Hamas at seeking new sources of funding from Turkey, the Gulf, and newly empowered Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia.

Yet for all of Hamas’s success and Fatah’s failures, neither have had much success in the leadership role. Fatah (at least for now) remains the key to securing Western assistance. Many donor nations will not deal with Hamas, which is still designated a terrorist organization for its refusal to reject armed struggle against Israel. Popular disillusionment with Hamas may also be setting in: A recent poll put its support at 29 percent, down from 44 percent in 2006. Neither Fatah nor Hamas can agree on a timeline for new elections, and they continue to postpone discussion about who should succeed Mahmoud Abbas. To complicate matters, Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Khaled Meshaal, “widely seen as the Islamist movement’s most powerful political figure” and a leading proponent of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, announced his resignation this week.

The fruits of these leadership failures were recently captured in a NYT piece on the Palestinians’ economic and political woes:

The more common view in the West Bank is that with Israel fully controlling about 60 percent of West Bank land as well as the borders, Israel or the donor nations should pay for economic failures, and the Palestinian people should not have to shoulder the cost.

“Once we are independent,” said Mr. [Ahmed] Awaida of the [Palestinian] stock exchange, “we will not need a penny from anyone.”

That attitude, justified or not, will never build a state.

Brazil’s last president, Lula, was averse to criticizing the Castros on human rights, but Rousseff, a former Marxist militant who was herself a torture victim under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, will likely be a more forceful advocate for these issue behind the scenes. She also has the ability to provide Raul Castro with key backing as he pursues modernizing reforms.

Easing Cuba’s transition into the post-Castro future is a worthy goal for Brazil, and a common interest for the whole region—America included.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people…

The report alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders…

It notes: “Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly”.

It says that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

“Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad,” it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: “Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can’t [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching.”

The report details what American diplomats and Afghanistan watchers have suspected for some time. American officials have jumped to play down the report, correctly pointing out that this information should not be taken at face value. Indeed, spokesmen from NATO and the International Security Assistance Force have been “unusually” concerned with rebutting the findings of the report. Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings of ISAF told the press that ”this document aggregates the comments of Taliban detainees in a captive environment without considering the validity of or motivation behind their reflections…Any conclusions drawn from this would be questionable at best.”

The press campaign suggests American and NATO officials are trying to maintain a constructive relationship with Islamabad. As the FT notes, “the Times quoted the report as saying that ‘despite widespread open-source reports to the contrary’ there is little evidence from detainees that Pakistan provides funding or weapons.”

Via Meadia supports the idea of negotiating our way out of Afghanistan rather than cutting and running or, alternatively, settling down in that country forever.  We have long feared that by telegraphing our intentions to begin drawing down troops and setting a hoped for withdrawal date, we were deeply and perhaps fatally undercutting the whole basis of our military campaign. It might have been better either to cut and run in 2009 or to double down and say nothing about withdrawal; the current course looks like the worst of all choices. We (and the Afghans) bear the full costs in life and treasure of a longer war, and we end up with the Taliban running the country much as we would have done had we withdrawn in 2009. We have also strengthened those in Pakistan who advocate a course of waiting the Americans out — with the kind of results we are learning about from the BBC.

Younger readers may not appreciate this, but we at Via Meadia remember the days when trillions were numbers only discussed in astronomy class. This changed in the 1980s, when the word made its way into discussions of Japanese GDP — in yen and not long after that the total US national debt shocked us all by hitting a trillion.

Now President Obama will be remembered as the man who brought trillions into America’s deficit discussions. It’s no comfort to be reminded that a trillion dollars today is only about $100 billion in 1950s dollars; that a dollar today is only as much as a dime was back then only goes to show just how destructive of value national profligacy can be.

President Obama’s defenders can and do point out that much of our deficit results from policy decisions made by George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress.  Fair enough, though if the current President has proposed a balanced budget in the past four years,  or even a plan to balance the budget anytime in the foreseeable future, Via Meadia somehow missed the announcement.

It was back in the days of the second President Harrison (1889-1893) that Congress shocked the country with the first billion dollar peacetime budget — and in those days a Congressional budget still covered two years.  House Speaker Thomas Reed defended the billion dollar budget by saying, “This is a billion dollar country.”

At the rate we are going, we will soon be a quadrillion dollar country — but don’t worry.  The money will be worth so little that a gazillion dollar deficit will be no problem at all.

The latest example took place in Connecticut, where Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy’s moderate and sensible plans to ease restrictions on the hiring and firing of teachers and cut down on red tape in local school districts  hit strong opposition from union leaders.

In many ways, education reform is on the frontlines of the national rollback of the blue model. While the red vs. blue divide remains on many other hot-button issues, the need for education reforms that the unions don’t like has slowly become part of the bipartisan consensus.

The battle for education reforms like school choice keeps picking up powerful allies: inner-city parents, Democratic governors and even liberal, ultra-blue foundations are all coming to realize that the current system is unsustainable, and have added their voices to the call for reform.  Democrats are more moderate in their goals often than their Republican counterparts; Dems want to trim the unions’ wings and cut back on their perks while Republicans want to roast them on skewers and eat them for dinner.  But whether it’s a gentle decline or sudden termination, the teacher unions are losing control over the educational system.

The gradual reshaping of the American educational system looks set to accelerate, with Democrats and Republicans promoting complementary if rival visions. And education is just the first step: the inefficiencies and high costs of the current educational model are found in other parts of state, local and federal bureaucracies as well.

Change is coming.

The desperate state of the European debt crisis coupled with the dynamics of France’s upcoming presidential election provide ample reason to doubt the Chancellor’s pretext: “Nicolas Sarkozy supported me back then in an election campaign, if you remember…This has nothing to do with being concerned, it’s simply a common practice between our two countries.” Since Merkel was reelected three years ago, the French and German governments have approached European financial issues—including the ever-worsening present crisis—in a fragile balance. Sarkozy is trailing behind his main opponent, Socialist nominee Francois Hollande, who openly criticizes ongoing Franco-German eurozone policy, promising to renegotiate the new treaty currently being formulated by EU leaders.

Much less was at stake during Germany’s 2009 federal election cycle, when Sarkozy campaigned for Merkel. Riding on a wave of high approval ratings, the Chancellor enjoyed an easy victory. The extent of Europe’s financial disaster—and the urgency of European unity needed to solve it—had not yet been revealed. Then, Merkel’s grand coalition hardly needed the help of Sarkozy to renew its mandate. Now, it is unclear what effect cross-border campaigning will have. Who says the French want to be told by a German Chancellor how to vote?

By backing the less popular candidate, Merkel has raised the stakes of France’s 2012 presidential election. If Sarkozy loses, his successor’s predicted opposition to previous policies will have been spectacularly endorsed by the public. After the election, Franco-German accord will remain critical to implementing comprehensive financial reform, and it is risky for Merkel to allow potential future ideological disagreements with her counterpart in Paris to be sharpened by personal enmity.

Hermann Groehe, second-in-command of Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party, stated the calculation of his boss clearly: “the upcoming election in France is not just decisive for that country, but for the successful resolution of Europe’s common challenges.”

It’s a very high stakes, risky bet — and a bet on the candidate who, according to the polls, is well behind in the race.  That Chancellor Merkel feels compelled to make it speaks volumes about the fragile nature of Europe these days.

Stay tuned.

Russia, Georgia’s main rival, joined the WTO recently. Georgian opposition was the “last stumbling block” in that process, and the White House likely promised Saakashvili a meeting with Obama in return for dropping objections to Russia’s WTO membership.

Washington’s attempted re-set with Moscow has not been smooth, but the Obama administration isn’t eager to provoke the Kremlin or encourage the fiery and nationalistic Georgians to take Russia on.

Georgians often think that a Republican White House would be more sympathetic to their cause (significant chunks of their country have been occupied by Russia which recognized the breakaway ‘republics’ of South Ossetia and Abkhazia).  They are, I think, wrong. Both US parties sympathize with Georgia, but no US president wants the hyperactive Georgian tail to wag the dog of US-Russian relations.

As for Georgia’s long term goals of NATO and EU membership, the US again sympathizes, but there is not a lot we can do.  NATO candidates need unanimous support to join the alliance and many NATO countries want to avoid annoying Russia — and also worry that Georgia’s unresolved disputes with Russia and tradition of hotheaded leadership could create a dangerous crisis.  For its part, the EU seems unlikely to take on any new challenges soon; it has more than enough on its plate.

Saakashvili will make the most of his official reception in the White House, but Georgia needs to understand the limits of western support.  US-Russian relations may be cooling as the reset fades, but the US is more interested in avoiding unnecessary run-ins with the Russians than in launching a new policy of containment.

It’s bad news that the Iraqis need the help, though hardly a surprise. The good news is that the Obama administration continues to work with Iraq on these sensitive issues. Iraqi politicians may have felt they needed the drama of showing the last US troops out the front door before inviting them back in through the kitchen.  Having demonstrated its sovereignty, and seen that the US is serious and will in fact leave when asked, Iraq’s government may now be ready and able to work out the kind of agreement it needs.

Again, from AP:

“The secretary believes that the Iraqi people have a genuine opportunity to create a future of greater security for themselves, and that senseless acts of violence will not deter them from pursuing that goal,” [Pentagon spokesman] Little said. “The United States remains committed to a strong security relationship with Iraq.”

U.S. officials have said they aim to establish broad defense ties to Iraq, similar to American relationships with other nations in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.

In Tehran, this will be more bad news. Pressure mounting on Syria, US forces potentially coming back into Iraq, China playing footsie with the Gulf states while snubbing Iran: the pressure to come to an agreement on the nuclear program is beginning to add up.

The other place where the news of these talks is bad news: Howard Dean’s “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”  The man the party left did so much to install in the White House, the man it hoped would lead a Reagan style Great Realignment that would install a liberal ascendancy in Washington for the next twenty years, is carrying out a foreign policy increasingly indistinguishable from the second term of George Bush. Guantanamo remains open while the US pursues a long term security relationship with democratic Iraq, preparing an indefinite extension of its military presence.