While Obama talked about lofty goals and moving beyond Cold War divisions, Putin was picking lint off the sleeve of his suit. When Obama talked about freeing the world of nuclear weapons, Putin gazed off in the other direction, with an extremely bored look on his face.

Behind the scenes it was much the same. Obama was hoping to achieve a grand bargain with the Russians – they would stop Iran’s nuclear program and in exchange, we would give up the Missile Shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russians said nyet. We tried to sweeten things, presumably for the next round, by agreeing to put the missile shield on hold, but even this concession is unlikely to bring the Russians around anytime soon.

Even if Obama were to give Eastern Europe back to the Russian sphere of influence, it’s not clear the Russians will try to stop Iran or even could if they wanted to. Time is running out on America’s number one national security priority – preventing Iran from getting the bomb. Improved relationships with every country in the world mean little if that world includes a Nuclear Iran. And according to experts, that frightening prospect is only a year away.

So Obama has to try another track to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table – immediately – and ready to do business. The one way to get their attention now is a gasoline embargo.

Iran may be the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, but since it doesn’t refine that oil, Iran still has to IMPORT Forty percent of its gasoline. That gasoline comes from just 5 companies – four in Europe and one in India. The ships that deliver that gasoline are insured by a handful of companies in Britain, France, Germany and Japan. If we can pressure those refining and insurance companies to stop doing business with Iran, we can get Iran in the economic equivalent of a half nelson.

Congressional legislation to that effect has just been introduced by Senator Lieberman and others -to sanction any company that helps Iran import gasoline. Last year, British Petroleum, BP figured this was coming so they stopped selling gas to Iran, figuring they’d prefer to lose out on that business rather than risk their American customers.

If these European, Indian and Japanese companies do what BP did, and stop trading with Iran, others will probably move into fill the void. But they will charge Iran more for the gas – much more – which means the average Iranian has a higher price tag at the pump. That’s bound to make Iranian citizens really mad. Just two years ago, when the Mullahs tried to raise gas prices the Iranian people rioted – torching gas stations and taking to the streets.

Hmmmm….doesn’t that sound familiar?

The Mullahs of Iran are unlikely to be lulled into giving up their nuclear weapons program just because we sing them the sweet songs of diplomacy.

On the other hand, the last thing we need right now is a military confrontation with Iran to topple their government.

What we can do, and should do immediately, is cut off their gasoline, so that those Iranian citizens, who have recently taken to the streets to protest a sham election, will take to the streets again to protest an incompetent government. That’s how we helped bring down the Soviet Union, and that’s how we can help bring down the Mullahs.

Pirates and presidents. Hostages and heroes. Since the early years of the Republic, we’ve judged our presidents on their ability to defeat pirates and rescue hostages.

Remember Jimmy Carter? When Iranian radicals stormed the American embassy in Tehran in 1978 and took hundreds of our diplomats hostage, Carter failed to negotiate their release. His secret rescue mission two years later was a fiasco. The Iranian hostage crisis wasn’t finished but Jimmy Carter’s presidency was.

Compare that to Ronald Reagan’s response when Marxists seized the Caribbean island of Grenada, endangering hundreds of American medical students there. Insisting on complete secrecy, Reagan gave the order to invade Grenada, and rescue the students immediately. The first the world knew about it was when 400 grateful American students landed in the United States and knelt to kiss the ground. The rest was history.

Obama, the anti-war candidate, needed a decisive and successful hostage rescue – both for domestic political reasons and to demonstrate to the world that he isn’t the Jimmy Carter of the Pirates. The strongest navy in the world couldn’t be held at bay by a bunch of skinny teenage thugs in dinghies, hopped up on narcotics and waving AK-47s at Americans. Thanks to the SEALs, the United States Navy and the heroic Captain Philips, this ended well.

The question is what’s next. Unless we act decisively, Somali piracy will continue – in fact it already has. And why shouldn’t it. Iit’s easy money, pirates are replaceable and seizing an unarmed vessel on the high seas is easy pickings. But the last thing America needs is another war, so whatever we do will have to be in concert with others. President Obama could build on the momentum he’s achieved and pull together a consortium of nations – perhaps using NATO forces in an out of area operation – to end the pirate menace now.

The risk in letting piracy continue is it will morph into something more lethal. Remember the hijackings of twenty years ago? The world used to laugh them off hijackings as annoying but relatively harmless events – that is until September 11 when Al Qaeda realized they could hijack 747′s filled with fuel and turn them into deadly missiles.

As the world watched the pirate drama unfold, there was no doubt another group watching it as well – observing, learning, measuring how they might use piracy to advance their own goals. Could the next phase of the pirate wars be terrorists seizing tankers full of oil and using them on suicide missions into ports or fuel depots or narrow waterways?

President Obama deserves credit for decisive action in rescuing Captain Phillips. He should use that and push to eradicate the pirate menace now before our laughs over pirates turn into tears over terrorists.

Kabul, Afghanistan

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz

The first thing that strikes you getting off the plane in Kabul, Afghanistan is how DIFFERENT this place is. Not just different in that it’s poor – I’ve seen plenty of poor places – in the Caribbean, in Asia, in Latin America. But different in the sense one gets of entering a wholly different culture, with REALLY different rules.

Once we got through emigration to the airport reception area, we were met by a private security services driver we had hired to drive us to Bagram Airbase, an hour and a half drive from Kabul. It was a ten-minute walk through the open air parking lot, which held few cars but dozens of idle mostly bearded young men – all of whom started at us intently, without saying a word and distinctly unfriendly. There were probably two hundred people in that parking lot and I was the only one without a Y chromosome. Had I not been accompanied by a 6′2″ highly decorated former Marine, who looked like a NY Giants linebacker, I would be been really spooked.

Once in the car, my colleague pulled his knife out of his backpack, “just in case” and we took off at a breakneck speed with a driver who spoke no English, to a place somewhere in the desert. We sped past rows of open shacks selling carcasses of meat, spotty brown bananas, and plastic sandals guarded by guys with turbans and beards and rifles balanced on their knees.

Suddenly the driver veered to avoid a small, light-blue bundle of rags in the middle of the busiest intersection in town. we looked closer and realized it was actually a small women, kneeling underneath a full body, head-to-toe burka, with a gauze grill where the opening for the eyes, nose and mouth should have been. When I looked at our driver with horror, he just shrugged. I later found out she was most likely a beggar, who would either be tossed a few coins or be run over – and no one seemed to care much either way.

After an hour’s drive through the most desolate, deserted, semi-arid dessert, whizzing past mud walls, occasional open shacks, and even more occasional groves of grape vines, we pulled up behind a row of trucks waiting at the barbed wire entrance to Bagram Airbase.

It was like that moment with Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, the Tin Ma and the Cowardly Lion arrived at the gates of Oz, and the movie goes from black and white to color.

President Obama outlined his new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy today, and for the most part, got it right. He laid out a specific strategic objective, “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda – in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.” He acknowledged the problem isn’t confined to Afghanistan, but leeches out to Pakistan – as Al Qaeda has set up safe havens there.

He also laid out the tactics to achieve that objective – training Afghan forces, reaching out to tribal leaders to join our cause and turn against Al Qaeda, assisting the Pakistan military and, in a break with Bush administration policy, offering economic and reconstruction assistance to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of the reasons Al Qaeda and its partners the Taliban have been such successful recruiters in Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, is that they’ve offered a different future to the millions of illiterate young men and women – a future of jihad and armed struggle instead of the endless cycle of grinding poverty. Building schools, roads and hospitals and helping with economic development in both Pakistan and Afghanistan will offer a third choice.

Obama is on the right course; the question now is whether he can make good on his promises. Will Obama increase the defense spending and foreign assistance necessary to pay for these new programs? Will Congress and the American people pony up for aid to others when we’re hurting at home?

Finally, if all does not go according to plan – if the tribal forces do not turn against Al Qaeda, if the Pakistani government does not hold, if Al Qaeda in both Afghanistan and Pakistan proves difficult to eradicate – what will Obama do next? The one thing I’ve learned in my years at the White House and the Pentagon is it’s not what you say you want to do that counts, it’s what you actually do. And then when things don’t go according to plan, what you do next?

President Obama unveiled the first part of his Iranian policy directly to … the Iranian People. It was a good opening pitch, insofar as it went. But Iran is playing hardball, so the important thing is what kind of pitch Obama throws next.

Right now, Iran has two pressure points, two Achilles’ heels, which give Obama a narrow window of opportunity with Iran:

First, Iran’s youth population, which is 70 percent of its population, is pro-West and anti-mullah. Last month student demonstrators chanted ‘Death to the Dictator’ in universities throughout Tehran.

Second, low oil prices have seriously damaged Iran’s economy. Eighty percent of its revenues are from oil and gas exports. Iran needs oil to be above around $70 a barrel to meet budget. It’s now around $50. If oil remains low, Iran will have to cut back on subsidies and social programs, significantly.

HOWEVER, and this is key – saying nice things to the Iranians isn’t enough. The thing I learned from my old boss Reagan is you ratchet up the pressure while you have leverage, you don’t suspend it – because negotiating without leverage isn’t negotiating, it’s begging.

The U.N. and the Europeans and the U.S. have tried the carrots and sticks and diplomacy approach with Iran for a decade. As long as oil prices were high, Iran ignored them. But now that oil prices have fallen, we’ve finally got some leverage.

Now we need to ratchet up the pressure – economically, diplomatically and financially. Because of Iran’s vulnerability we have a narrow window to get what we want from them — a halt to their nuclear program before they develop nuclear weapons.

Iran’s vulnerability is temporary, because once oil prices go up they won’t need our help. And once they have nuclear weapons — within the next year or two at this rate — it will be too late. If Iran’s leaders can play out the clock with us while pretending to “negotiate,” they will have exactly what they want – higher oil prices and nukes. A rich, belligerent, nuclear Iran would be catastrophic – for the U.S., for Israel, for the Middle East, for the world.

Obama is great at speeches and an offering diplomacy. The test will be whether he has the guts to play hardball with the Iranians. Apparently Obama likes to be compared to Reagan; they’re both great communicators. Unless he can prove he’s as tough a negotiator as Reagan, the leader he’ll be compared to is Neville Chamberlain.

After decades of diplomacy in the Middle East, it seems there are two schools of thought on how to proceed. One school says a relations between two countries grows from the bottom up. Negotiations are between the countries directly involved and focus on specifics like trade agreements, border arrangements, military deployments and money changing hands. The second school looks at the Middle East like a giant chessboard with multiple pieces on it and all with different objectives.

According to that line of reasoning, the only way to get a peace agreement is to find out who controls whom and go to the source.

The State Department’s plan to reach out to Syria is more of the former, but will only succeed if it realizes more of the latter.

Israel and Syria are two of the only countries in the Middle East that God has not graced with oil; as a result they need benefactors.

Israel has the United States. Syria, for now, relies on Iran. So, as long as Iran is paying Syria’s bills, it is difficult for Syria to be an independent actor.

For example, Syria began informal negotiations with Israel last summer, with Turkey serving as the intermediary. When the Syrian foreign minister discussed these negotiations, he did so in Tehran with Iranian officials at his side. But it was clear Iran was deeply, if not overtly, involved. In the end, nothing much happened, and the negotiations were suspended after Israel’s incursion into Gaza. But you can be sure that Iran was the non-present participant in every meeting.

For its own part, Iran is taking a wait and see approach with the United States. Obama has offered the hand of friendship but Ahmadinejad hasn’t reciprocated. They might be waiting for their own elections in June. They might be waiting to see what goodies Obama’s team will to put in his hand of friendship. They might be playing for time and running out the clock, hoping they can distract us while they continue their nuclear program, knowing that within a year or two they could have nuclear weapons.

Does this mean Obama’s overture to Syria is a waste of time?

No, meeting is always a good idea. It gives you an idea what’s on the other guy’s mind. It could be that Syria is exploring a more independent relationship, and prepared to distance itself from Iran.
It could be that Syria is Iran’s stalking horse. Whatever their motives, we’ll know a lot more once we start talking.

But in the Middle East negotiating isn’t always the means to the end. It is often an end in itself. As long as we remember that, Hillary should head to Damascus. But please, Secretary Clinton, leave the headscarf behind.

It’s official. Iran has enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. It has a long-range missile capable of delivering that bomb. Now all it needs is the blueprint, which is usually complicated, but not if you’re getting help from the Russians or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’ dealer Dr. AQ Khan, newly released from house arrest. Unless something derails their program, Iran will have nuclear weapons within two years, and within a year will reach the point of no return – where no amount of carrots or sticks will convince them to give up their program since the benefits to them of being a nuclear power are enormous.

Why do we care whether Iran has nuclear weapons? First, it has said time and again its goal is to destroy Israel. Nukes give them the ability to do so. Second, Iranian nukes will set off an arms race – a nuclear arms race – in the single most unstable part of the world. Third, Iran now becomes the bully on the block in the Persian Gulf – through which a majority of the world’s oil transits.

So, what’s next? Incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said — a number of times — that Israel will do “everything necessary” to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. They bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and Syria’s in 2007. An attack would be fraught with enough logistical and intelligence challenges that it would set Iran’s nuclear program back a few years, but probably not destroy it.

If Israel determines the U.S. is unwilling or unable to stop Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli attack would come soon — before Russia gives Iran the S-300, a sophisticated air defense system that could knock out incoming Israeli bombers.

The Obama administration has yet to unveil its plan for Iran, but so far they’ve hinted at a combination of sweeter carrots and bigger sticks and more diplomacy. This might work, but it hasn’t so far. Meanwhile the clock is ticking. Iran might engage this time, but would it just be playing out the clock?

Some Obama advisers have hinted at expanding America’s nuclear umbrella to cover Israel – but our pledge to nuke Iran after they nuke Israel is cold comfort to Israel.

A third, think-outside-the-box option is for us to go to the Russians, who are aiding Iran and their nuclear program, and cut a deal for them to break off from Iran. That would have been unthinkable six months ago, but now the Russian economy is teetering on the brink of collapse. They’ve had a triple whammy with the global recession, collapse of oil prices, and withdrawal of foreign investment in the wake of their invasion of Georgia last summer.

A U.S. -Russian alliance? A long shot for sure, but at this point we should be trying everything — and all at the same time — to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Detroit may have its Big Three automakers, but Geopolitics has its own big three – Russia, China and the U.S. and they’re facing even bigger challenges than Detroit. Here are my predictions:

1. A Resurgent Russia

Russia wants its superpower status back and higher oil prices gives them the cash and clout to do so. Despite some very recent setbacks with lower oil revenues, Russia is poised for a comeback.

Their foray into Georgia last summer, which the world criticized but nonetheless watched from the sidelines, has given Russia confidence to do the same with Ukraine. They won’t need tanks or troops on the ground this time, though. Russia can force Ukraine’s government to rethink its independence from Russian by merely turning off the gas, and leave the Ukrainians shivering and in the dark.

In fact it’s already happening. Here’s this from the Associated Press on Friday:

On New Year’s Day the Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom said Ukraine, with a population of 46 million, had failed to pay an outstanding $2.1 billion bill – and stopped pumping gas.

The move came after Ukraine made a $1.5 billion overdue payment.

Russia is demanding another $600 million, including $450 million penalties for the late payment for gas shipped in November and December.

Prediction: Expect Ukraine to drop plans for NATO membership and slip steadily back into Russia’s orbit. And expect Europe, which generates most of its electricity from Russian gas imports, to go along with it.

2. China Hits the Skids

The phenomenal growth China has enjoyed for the last decade is about the come to a screeching halt as the world’s economy slows. As consumers around the world tighten their belts, demand will fall for products bearing the label “Made in China.” The World Bank estimates China’s economy will grow by only 7.5 % next year, down from almost 12% in 2008. While that might still sound good to most countries, China needs at least 7% growth to keep up with the rising demands from its own population. They need to create more than 20 million jobs a year for new graduates. Two hundred million of China’s workers are migrants. What happens when those jobs don’t materialize?

Prediction: Expect social unrest in China, especially toward the end of 2009. The Chinese government will crack down ruthlessly and restore social order, but there could be a period where the world watches another Tiananmen Square-type incident.

3. America Faces its Year of Reckoning

The U.S. is faced with a once-in-a-lifetime choice over its economy. It could take the tough steps now, or put them off for another generation to solve. Either way, a reckoning is inevitable – we can’t avoid it, we can only delay it.

Within months, Washington will be faced with a choice of bailing out and industry after troubled industry, or refusing to do so, and watch some companies and industries take draconian measures to reform or risk going under.

The easier choice politically will be bailouts – in effect nationalizing large sections of the US economy. But longer term it will lead to our economic decline, as American industries fail to adapt to consumer demands and no longer remain competitive. By the middle of the next decade America could look like Great Britain did in the late 70′s – huge deficits, confiscatory taxes and economic stagnation.

The more difficult choice is to take tough steps now so American industries are forced to reform and reinvent themselves — by retooling factories, renegotiating labor contracts, retraining, retiring or relocating workers. Will Washington streamline the legal and regulatory system to make it easier for new industries and small businesses? Will it re-up for the free market system?

Prediction: Can Washington summon up the courage make this the year of reckoning or will it put off the inevitable for another generation? My heart hopes our leaders have the guts to face our problems now, but my head thinks otherwise.