Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama believe in engagement with foreign adversaries, but Secretary Clinton believes in engaging from a position of strength.

Provo, Utah

She's smart. She speaks her mind. A lot of people love her and think she should be president. Sarah Palin? No, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Secretary of State Clinton, Washington's No. 1 diplomatic salesperson, is fast becoming the foreign-policy hawk in a Democratic administration, while President Obama seems to be slow moving. Both believe in engagement with foreign adversaries, but Clinton believes in engaging from a position of strength. By contrast, Mr. Obama is now being faulted for engaging from a platform of weakness, if not appeasement.

Clinton seems to be replicating as secretary of State the technique she employed when she became a senator. During her first months in the Senate, she maintained a low profile, taking the measure of her colleagues and learning the ways of that historic chamber before becoming a major player. Similarly at State, she has spent quiet months learning the contents of her briefing books and summing up the foreign players before asserting herself as a cabinet heavy.

The 3 a.m. crisis call

This was the woman who during the presidential campaign dismissed Obama as being too inexperienced to take a 3 a.m. crisis call. Yet as a cabinet member she has projected loyalty to the president and his declared policies, while exuding firmness in their support and application. Thus on her first Asian foray, she sharply warned North Korea to mend its nuclear ways, publicly confronted Pakistani officials for harboring terrorists, and publicly endorsed Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, while privately cautioning him to shape up.

Unkind critics declared the Chinese set piece of Obama's Asian trip a near diplomatic disaster. The hallowed wisdom of summitry is that you do not let the president embark upon such an odyssey without the final decisions agreed upon, the protocol set, the farewell communiques written well in advance. But on the Obama trip there were no breakthroughs to trumpet, the Chinese orchestrated press conferences without questions, obliged the US president to tiptoe around human rights issues like Tibet, and rigged a public "town hall" meeting not with ordinary folk, but selected young communists.

Meanwhile, the president has been snubbed by Israel, ignored by North Korea, charged with dithering on the length of time he took to decide on his commander's request for more troops for Afghanistan, dallying on his overly optimistic promise to close down Guantánamo, and has been stiffed by Iran announcing a plan to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants. The Chinese seem surprised by the Iranian announcement, as do the Russians, but while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested in the past that he might go along with US-urged sanctions against Iran, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has suggested he would not. No doubt it will emerge in time who is really running Russia.

By all accounts, Clinton was key, along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in urging the president to take a strong stand on more troops for Afghanistan. On the other side of the argument was Vice President Joe Biden, who in retrospect may be ruing the decision he took - according to his wife, and despite his recognized expertise in foreign affairs - to choose the vice-presidential, rather than the State Department slot in the Obama administration.

The current take on the president seems to be that despite his soaring eloquence and charm lauded in many lands, he is perceived abroad to be lacking decisiveness, and lacking political traction at home on such issues as healthcare reform.

What's behind her smile?

According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Obama, at a recent cabinet meeting, singled out Clinton for special gratitude among officials "who have been traveling around the globe for us day in and day out and don't know what time zone they're in."

The secretary of State, with a china cup and saucer in front of her, just smiled.

She has been at the diplomacy business now long enough to know that successful diplomats are splendidly adept at concealing their reactions and emotions under all circumstances.

I do wonder what emotion was concealed by that little smile.

By John Hughes, The Christian Science Monitor, December 10, 2009

On the menu: a discussion of climate change action in Congress and at Copenhagen. Brown, who is the leader of a group of Midwestern Democrats who say they will not vote for a Senate climate bill unless it includes an fee on imported goods from countries that don't regulate carbon emissions, said he laid out his views to Clinton. Although other countries object to the idea of U.S. climate legislation with a carbon tariff - and some even speculate that it could spark a trade war - lawmakers such as Brown are betting that those countries would view the tariff as a lesser evil than no climate legislation at all. State Department negotiators have made clear that during the Copenhagen talks, they don't want to promise other countries more than what Congress will deliver.

Brown said that the consensus in Congress is that it won't pass a bill without the carbon tariff. "Almost everybody on our side agrees to it. The Chinese don't like it of course. But there seems to be general consensus. Certainly on the legislative side - and we write the law, the White House doesn't - is building consensus around manufacturing. Climate change [legislation] doesn't work if companies leave Akron, Ohio, to go to Wu Han. With weaker laws we lose jobs and we increase emissions. I think there is growing consensus among senators and house members that the tariff, that the border adjustment is necessary. We saw that in the House bill. In my conversation with others, they know they need it to get our vote, but they understand that it's also the best policy."

Brown said Clinton did not weigh in on the issue one way or another - at least verbally. "She did not speak out against it. She kind of nodded," he said.

Brown said he hopes to attend the Copenhagen talks next week, although he could cancel his trip if health care negotiations are still under way.

By Coral Davenport, CQ Politics, December 8, 2009

All things considered, NATO has done well - so far - in responding to President Obama's request for more troops.

WASHINGTON - On a seven-hour trip from Kabul to a NATO meeting in Brussels last week, the two men in Kabul most responsible for American policy in Afghanistan exchanged few words, according to administration officials, holing up in separate compartments on their military plane.

The quiet flight of the two officials, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and Karl W. Eikenberry, the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, reflects a chill between the two men that officials said took hold even before they staked out conflicting positions in the debate over how many added American troops to send to Afghanistan.

When General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry sit down next to each other on Tuesday to testify before the House and Senate about President Obama's new Afghan policy, they will have to work hard to project the image of lockstep unity so valued by this White House.

How the military commander and the diplomatic envoy reconcile their positions promises to be one of the most eagerly watched spectacles in Washington this week - one that may give a glimpse into a process that was more divisive than the White House would like outsiders to believe.

On Sunday, General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry spent three hours in intense debate preparation at the Pentagon, taking questions from a mock panel of lawmakers. Among the most pointed, a military official said, was how they are getting along, in the wake of the ambassador's now famous cable questioning the wisdom of sending a large influx of troops.

"It would be fair to say that those two aren't exactly in a happy place right now," said another Pentagon official who has worked with both men and also spoke on condition of anonymity to characterize their relationship.

Rumors that they dislike each other are exaggerated, this official said, but aides to General McChrystal said he was surprised and angered by Ambassador Eikenberry's cables, especially since he had not voiced his reservations in their frequent meetings.

For his part, the ambassador has been rankled since General McChrystal handed in his strategic assessment of Afghanistan to the White House without sharing it with him first, another official said. That report formed the basis of the general's request for 40,000 troops.

Beyond the bruised feelings over lack of consultation, some officials insist there is actually less of a rift over substance. Ambassador Eikenberry's views about troops, they insist, are more complex and nuanced than suggested by news accounts, which were based on a selective characterization of the cables by unidentified administration officials, rather than on the full cables themselves.

In fact, a senior official said, the two men have a remarkably similar diagnosis. Only their remedies differ: General McChrystal recommended a hefty infusion of soldiers, while Ambassador Eikenberry worried that such an infusion would increase the dependency of the Afghan government, and should be conditioned on the government's meeting certain benchmarks.

"I suspect Eikenberry is going to say he's been a bit misquoted, that he wanted to use the leverage of more troops to get something more short-term," said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence official who helped coordinate the administration's initial review of Afghanistan policy in March.

"But it's going to be live and in color," he said of the testimony, which begins in the House. "Let's wait and see."

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, said spectators would not have to wait long to hear the two men quizzed about their relationship. "They'll get about 15 questions about that," Mr. Skelton said in an interview on Monday.

Still, he said that their personal history was less important than their working relationship in the future. "It doesn't matter what they said before, it's what they do now," he said.

"That's the way it has to be," Mr. Skelton added. "You cannot fight a bifurcated war."

The record of relations between American military and civilian leaders during wartime is decidedly mixed. In Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus developed a good rapport with Ryan C. Crocker, then the ambassador. But earlier in that war, the top American civilian in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, had a deeply strained relationship with the coalition commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez.

In part, the friction between General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry reflects a natural difference in perspective between military and civilian officials. But there is an added wrinkle: Ambassador Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, was himself the commander in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007. He retired from the Army and was appointed envoy last April.

As soldiers, the two men are very different.

Lean and wiry, General McChrystal is known as an ascetic who operates on a few hours of sleep and usually eats just one meal a day. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the habits of terrorists, and pushed his troops relentlessly to kill as many as possible.

Ambassador Eikenberry, a tall, broad-shouldered man, has degrees from Harvard and Stanford, as well as from Nanjing University in China. He speaks Chinese and has written on ancient Chinese military history. Though more comfortable in political circles than General McChrystal, he has a mixed reputation among soldiers, with some saying he can be high-handed.

The two men have labored to project a united front. Last month, at a meeting of American civilian and military officials in Kabul with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, they squeezed into chairs next to each other along a back wall, giving the seats around the table to their deputies.

But the ambassador's confidential cable, which officials said was solicited by the White House, infuriated General McChrystal's aides, who said he had never expressed those views to the general, even though they met, on average, three times a week. General McChrystal himself tried to take the high road, military officials said, telling his staff, "Let's move on."

Other administration officials say that Ambassador Eikenberry made no secret of his skepticism about troops, which is why he was asked to put his thoughts into writing by the National Security Council.

As they go before Congress, General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry share one burden. Unlike Mrs. Clinton or Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, at least some of their views have been made public. That will make it more difficult for them to paper over differences in opinion.

On the flight to Brussels, an official said, both men were busy in their cabins, working on their own testimony. But after three hours of joint preparation, they are ready to appear together.

By Mark Landler and Helene Cooper, The New York Times, December 7, 2009

Candor is, sadly, in short supply in Washington, particularly when government officials discuss shortcomings related to Afghanistan before congressional committees.

But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during last week's marathon set of hearings on President Obama's new strategy in that war, gave two examples of forthrightness that are worth further examination: a discussion of trouble with expanding the workforce of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, and a tough look at how U.S. aid money is being slipped into the hands of the Taliban.

In hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton said that there has been a 10-month investigation of what USAID was doing on the ground in Afghanistan, and that "we didn't particularly come away impressed." Many of the 300 civilians there were on six-month rotations and did not have well-defined missions, and many spent time out of the country, she said. More important, Clinton added, "most of our civilian aid going into Afghanistan had been contracted out without adequate oversight or accountability."

Plans call for tripling the USAID workforce and changing its mission. "But," she added, "the numbers are going to have to grow if we expect to deliver on what is required."

Clinton's dilemma is spelled out vividly in an October USAID contractor solicitation for a second phase of what is called a "support" project. "Significant increases in USAID/Afghanistan's budget and program portfolio since 2002 had outstripped workforce resources," said the solicitation to continue what amounts to a shadow, contractor-run USAID office in Kabul, with its own building and personnel. The project calls for supplying contractors to take over just about every personnel need required of the main USAID/Afghanistan office.

Among the services this project provides are "activity/project designs, assessments, evaluations, management information and reporting, mapping, translation and interpreting services." In addition, contracted technical specialists "collect and disseminate public information, enhance the quality of data, and develop web content."

The reason for these contractors is explained in the background section of the solicitation. It says direct hire of American, third-country and local employees is constrained by "limited office space, housing, high costs for administrative support, operating expense limitations and security restrictions."

USAID needs the contracted experts "to temporarily fill the staff slots until such time as the [Kabul] Mission has been able to fill the staff slots through its own internal recruitment process," the solicitation says. Although the contractors will be asked to do such jobs as assist with field-based monitoring of USAID projects and the evaluation of these projects, and even propose the makeup of evaluation teams, the proposal said that since they are not "U.S. Direct Hire employees, they will not perform inherently government functions."

Appearing later before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Clinton gave a blunt summary of how U.S. funds get into the hands of the Taliban -- a problem that the news media have referred to in the past only through anonymous government officials.

"Much of the corruption [in Afghanistan] is fueled by the money that has poured into that country over the last eight years. And it is corruption at every step along the way, not just in the palace in Kabul," she told the legislators.

Referring to the daily stream of truck convoys that bring supplies into the landlocked nation, Clinton said, "You know, when we are so dependent upon long supply lines -- as we are in Afghanistan, where everything has to be imported -- it's much more difficult than it was in Iraq, where we had Kuwait as a staging ground.

"You offload a ship in Karachi. And by the time whatever it is -- you know, muffins for our soldiers' breakfast or anti-IED equipment -- gets to where we're headed, it goes through a lot of hands. And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money. That has nothing to do with President Karzai."

She concluded: "We have to do a better job, on the international side, to coordinate our aid, to get more accountability for what we spend in Afghanistan."

Clinton also picked up on a theme that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, emphasized in his report this summer: He sought support for efforts to keep the door open to Taliban members who might be willing to renounce terrorism if there were a financial alternative.

Echoing the general's report, Clinton said: "We understand that some of those who fight with the insurgency do not do so out of ideology, theology or conviction, but frankly due to coercion and money. The average Taliban fighter, it is our information, receives two to three times the monthly salary than the average Afghan soldier or police officer."

By Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, December 8, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she hasn't had a chance to look into the case of the American college student in Italy who was found guilty of murdering her British roommate.

WASHINGTON - Perhaps only a "handful" of American troops will be leaving Afghanistan in July 2011, the date President Obama has set to begin a gradual withdrawal, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"We will have 100,000 forces, troops there," Mr. Gates said on ABC's "This Week," "and they are not leaving in July of 2011. Some, handful, or some small number, or whatever the conditions permit, will begin to withdraw at that time."

"I don't consider this an exit strategy," he continued, "This is a transition." He said it would begin in less-contested parts of Afghanistan before expanding to the most obdurate Taliban strongholds, largely in the south and east.

The White House used appearances on the Sunday talk programs to convey that the deadline would mark the start, not the end, of troop withdrawal. "2011 is not a cliff, it's a ramp," Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, said.

"And it's when the effects of this increase will be, by all accounts, according to our military commanders and our senior civilians, where we will be able to see very, very visible progress and we'll be able to make a shift," General Jones said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Mr. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who unusually appeared together on three Sunday programs, emphasized that the July 2011 date did not signal a wholesale abandonment of Afghanistan that could further destabilize the region.

They said it was important to impart a sense of urgency to the Afghan government about the need to move expeditiously to assume responsibility for their own security.

"We will not provide for their security forever," Mr. Gates said.

But the message he and Mrs. Clinton conveyed also seemed meant for Pakistan, which fears the reverberations of any overly hasty American pullout, and for Republican critics of any notion of a fixed withdrawal deadline.

"We're not going to be walking away from Afghanistan again," Mrs. Clinton said. "We did that before; it didn't turn out very well."

Mr. Gates also said that "I think it has been years" since American intelligence had a good idea of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, though the Qaeda leader is thought to be either in Pakistan's rugged North Waziristan region or just across the border in Afghanistan.

General Jones, also asked about Mr. bin Laden's location, answered: "The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border."

Both Secretaries Gates and Clinton favorably mentioned President hamid Karzai's recent assurance that Afghan security forces could resume control of some provinces within three years, and over the bulk of the country in five.

While the new strategy aims in part to lure lower-level Taliban fighters away, partly through offers of jobs, Mrs. Clinton expressed doubt that key Taliban leaders could be thus enticed. Any defecting Taliban member, she said, would have to renounce al-Qaeda, forswear violence and vow to live by Afghan laws. As to whether senior leaders would do that, she said, "I'm highly skeptical."

Mr. Obama's new strategy - built around the rapid deployment of 30,000 additional American troops and thousands more NATO forces - has faced some of its toughest criticism from his fellow Democrats. It has received stronger, if conditional, support from some Republicans.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Vietnam War veteran and member of the Armed Services Committee, has generally supported Mr. Obama's plan.

"I think he made the right decision," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." But the mention of the July 2011 date, he said, had left policy makers throughout the region - including in Pakistan and India - "trying to figure out whether, really, they can go all in and support this effort."

He and other Republicans fear that the 2011 date will encourage Taliban and al-Qaeda forces to simply outwait their enemy.

The appearances by Mr. Gates and Clinton - two of the president's most important advisers, and also two of the more hawkish - appeared designed to explain the withdrawal guideline.

"After saying that "some, a handful, or small number" of troops would leave in July 2011, Mr. Gates added that further departures would come only when American commanders on the ground assessed that local conditions had sufficiently improved.

"We're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal," Mr. Gates said, "we're talking about that something that will take place over a period of time."

But he also sought to prepare Americans, and their allies, for a short-term increase in casualties.

"The tragedy is that the casualties will probably continue to grow, at least for the time being," he said, because, as during the so-called troop surge in Iraq, the new coalition troops would be going to some of the most hostile parts of the country.

Mr. Gates added, however, that "we'll have an increase in casualties at the front end of this process, but over time it'll actually lead to fewer casualties" as security grows.

By Brian Knowlton, The New York Times, December 6, 2009

WASHINGTON - Pakistan has acknowledged a growing threat from within its borders and is changing its attitude toward fighting terrorists, U.S. officials say.

"The Taliban in Pakistan have been attacking Pakistani civilians, Pakistani government officials, military officials, trying to destabilize the government of Pakistan," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates, joined on three Sunday talk shows by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Pakistani police have been on high alert since a bombing-grenade attack on a Rawalpindi mosque left 37 people dead, including several senior army officers. On Sunday, police commandos killed one militant and arrested five others in a raid near Peshawar, the gateway city to the Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan. The detained are suspected of involvement in recent bombings and other attacks not only in Peshawar but in Islamabad and its sister city of Rawalpindi, a Pakistani official said.

"They are bringing pressure to bear on the Taliban in Pakistan, and particularly those that are attacking the Pakistani government," Gates said. "Any pressure on the Taliban, whether it's in Pakistan or in Afghanistan is helpful to us because al-Qaida is working with both of them."

Clinton said the change in Pakistan's view has come as its leaders have seen terrorist groups join forces and threaten Pakistan's sovereignty.

"There is a syndicate of terrorism with al-Qaida at the head of it. So, we're doing everything we can to support them in what is a really life-or-death struggle," she said.

Gates said the Taliban's "revival in the safe havens in western Pakistan is a lesson to al-Qaida that they can come back, if they are provided the kind of safe haven that the Taliban were."

Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, is believed to be hiding in Quetta, one of those safe havens in a part of Pakistan that is largely ungoverned by the Pakistani government.

"That's one of the problems they have," said Clinton. "They ceded territory that they're now trying to get back."

An underlying concern is the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Gates said that he is satisfied that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are secure.

"The U.S. has been working with Pakistan to keep their supply safe," Gates said.

Clinton and Gates appeared on ABC's "This Week," CBS' "Face the Nation" and NBC's "Meet the Press." The interviews were taped Saturday and the networks provided transcripts in advance of the shows' broadcast.

The Associated Press, December 6, 2009

Government officials, entertainers gather for schmoozefest

On Saturday night, inside the hulking stone walls of the State Department building, Sharon Stone and Lynda Carter became new best friends. Frank Langella and Barbara Walters turned heads by showing up together. One luminary after another stopped on the red carpet to pose for cameras and make bad gate-crasher jokes.

"We're not from Virginia!"

"We can't stop, we don't have an invitation!"

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomed the glittering VIPs in from the cold to the awards dinner for the 32nd annual Kennedy Center Honors.

Few other events -- in Washington or anywhere else in this country -- draw together a pool of such varied and enormous talent. Saturday's honorees -- actor Robert De Niro, opera singer Grace Bumbry, rock legend Bruce Springsteen, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and writer/director/producer Mel Brooks -- will be feted Sunday with a gala performance at the Kennedy Center. On Saturday, they just caught up with a few old pals and mingled with a couple hundred new ones.

"You're my fan," Rep. John L. Mica, a Florida Republican, bumbled to Martin Short. "Er, I mean, I'm your fan."

It happens, that kind of bumbling, in a room like this. Consider the guest list, or at least this sliver of it: Edward Norton, Sharon Stone (looking very thin in purple Galliano), Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Melissa Etheridge, Nora Ephron, Nancy Pelosi (sparkly black Armani jacket), Sting, Harvey Keitel, Chita Rivera, Alan Alda, Ben Harper, Laura Dern, Jane Krakowski, Christine Baranski and Matthew Morrison of newly-found "Glee" fame. (And yes, for the record, names and IDs were tripled-checked by security guards who didn't seem much amused by gate-crasher jokes.)

"When you see Thomas Jefferson's desk, it's almost like a fictional character," said Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles. "And Meryl Streep -- come on."

"It's very crowded and it smells old," reported Jon Stewart. "It smells Colonial. And I wandered into the Martha Washington room not realizing it was the ladies lounge."

Secretary Clinton wore a midnight blue gown and just a slight sheen of jet lag, having flown in from Brussels late Friday after working to drum up international support for the administration's Afghanistan plan. Bill Clinton wore a hiply straight tie and the biggest grin imaginable as he held up the receiving line.

The Kennedy Center Honors have none of the chest-clutching who's-going-to-beat-who tension imbued at most awards show. Here the only surprise is who-will-pay-tribute-to-who. (And in the age of digital megaphones, it's become harder to keep the air in that balloon -- you're not supposed to just Twitter it, Edward Norton!)

But there will always be a question of whose words or songs, in evoking the fertile geniuses of the honorees, will send chills down our spine. Reminding us that, as John F. Kennedy put it, there is "little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist."

And that the people standing in the State Department's diplomatic rooms, admiring Thomas Jefferson's desk and inspecting a copy the Treaty of Paris, regularly go where diplomats and politicians rarely can: into the recesses of far-flung minds, still deciphering the world through movies and music.

After schmoozing for an hour -- can you believe Melissa Etheridge and Eddie Vedder had never met before? -- the evening's 260 guests repaired to the State dining room, where they were served risotto with goose liver, rack of lamb and cabernet sauvignon from the Russian River Valley. Carol Burnett, an honoree from the class of 2003, played emcee as this year's winners received their awards and were toasted by colleagues and admirers. Strangest pairing of the night: Itzhak Perlman and Springsteen. Apparently the violin virtuoso is a big fan of the Boss.

On Sunday, the honorees will attend a late-afternoon reception at the White House before taking their seats in the president's box at the Kennedy Center.

By Ellen McCarthy, The Washington Post, December 6, 2009

The landmark 1991 arms control treaty negotiated by President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that brought the Cold War nuclear arms race to an end expires Friday night.

U.S. and Russian negotiators have been working round-the-clock in Geneva to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, and maintain some of its key provisions, but that work is not yet completed. Both governments say they will abide by the terms of the treaty as the deadline passes.

For months, U.S. and Russian officials have been negotiating a replacement for the START, especially some way to extend key verification measures that have allowed each side to maintain a timely and accurate accounting of the strategic nuclear weapons the other side has deployed.

The START called for the reduction of each side's deployed strategic nuclear arsenal on long-range bombers, missiles and submarines to about 6,000. Those targets were reached years ago, and now the United States and Russia each deploy fewer than 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads.

Maintaining the verification measures of the START is important to the Obama administration. It was on the agenda Friday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Brussels.

"We always knew this would be very difficult. Remember, the prior administration didn't believe in arms control treaties, and so we were pretty much starting from scratch, and these are highly complex technical negotiations," Clinton said.

In 2002, the George W. Bush administration signed the Moscow Treaty that brought the nuclear arsenal of both sides down to current levels.

But President Obama has mapped out far more ambitious goals for the reduction of nuclear weapons. Clinton explained the rationale for this in a speech on arms control in October.

"Clinging to nuclear weapons in excess of our security needs does not make the United States safer. And the nuclear status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. It gives other countries the motivation - or the excuse - to pursue their own nuclear option," she said.

Russia and the United States have already agreed to new levels for nuclear weapons - roughly 1,600. That turns out to have been the easy part.

Achieving reciprocal verification has been one of the hard parts. The U.S. stopped making long-range missiles years ago, and Russian personnel who monitored that production in the U.S. returned home. But Russia continues to produce long-range missiles, at a facility at Votkinsk on the Volga River, about 800 miles east of Moscow.

With the expiration of the START, American monitors at Votkinsk were set to leave. Arms control experts argue that even though the United States and Russia are no longer enemies or adversaries, verification measures such as this are still very important.

In fact, the fewer the nuclear weapons, the more verification matters, according to Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofit group that seeks to reduce nuclear weapons worldwide.

"Once you start going down to, say, a thousand or a few hundred deployed weapons, then it really starts to matter. You want to be sure that you can account for those weapons, that there's no secret stock of weapons that the other side is using, that there's no breakout capability where one side could suddenly double or triple the number of weapons they have," Cirincione says.

The possibility of miscalculation is another good reason to maintain verification measures, says Jeffrey Lewis, who runs the Web site armscontrolwonl.com.

"We do constantly see on the Russian side and on the American side ridiculous over-estimates of each other. ... The Russians think the United States is 10 feet tall, and sometimes we think the same thing about them," Lewis says.

There are other issues that still divide the U.S. and Russia - for instance, disagreements over how deployed nuclear warheads and their delivery systems are counted. Russia wants to include missile defenses. The U.S. does not.

Despite the expiration of the START, it looks like the United States and Russia will continue working on these issues. Any new treaty will have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Russian Duma.

By Mike Shuster, NPR, December 4, 2009

Clinton 'heartened' by response to new Obama strategy

BRUSSELS -- NATO allies welcomed President Obama's new Afghanistan strategy Friday, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton received pledges of 7,000 extra troops to back up the U.S. escalation.

Twenty-five countries have announced that they will deploy additional troops next year, and more contributions are expected "during the coming weeks and months," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

However, officials were still trying to nail down some of the promises.

In addition, U.S. diplomats have some heavy lifting ahead, with Germany and France uncertain about increasing their forces. In addition, the U.S. government hopes to dissuade two other major contributors -- Canada and the Netherlands -- from their plans to pull out within two years.

Friday's meetings marked a sort of roadshow for Obama's new Afghanistan strategy, which was announced Tuesday and features the deployment of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to fight the Taliban and train Afghan security forces. Clinton and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, briefed the 44 NATO and non-NATO countries involved in providing security in Afghanistan.

Although the war has become increasingly unpopular in Europe, Rasmussen said the nations made clear that they supported the mission.

"The strongest message in the ministerial room today was solidarity," he said.

U.S. officials said some Europeans were initially confused by reports that portrayed Obama's strategy as including a U.S. pullout in 2011. Clinton emphasized that troops would only start to leave that year -- and that the size and speed of the drawdown would depend on prevailing conditions.

"Once they saw what the policy really was . . . they were quite comfortable with it," one senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Some countries could find the plan for a drawdown helpful in selling the strategy to their publics, officials said.

U.S. officials said they were pleased with Georgia's pledge of more than 900 troops and Italy's promise of about 1,000 forces. Britain will provide 1,200 troops, including 700 sent earlier to safeguard elections, officials said.

Clinton conceded that some of the promised 7,000 troops were military or police trainers, not combat forces. But she said some trainers would accompany Afghan security forces as they deploy.

"I am just extremely heartened by the level of positive response we've received. Certainly the commitment of troops and additional civilian assistance is a tangible sign of that," Clinton said. "I was also very touched by comments made both publicly and privately from ministers throughout the world" about the new strategy.

France and Germany, however, did not budge from their decision to wait at least until a Jan. 28 meeting on Afghanistan in London before committing to any increases. They are among the largest contributors of troops, with 4,200 and 3,750, respectively. The U.S. government had asked each to provide at least 1,000 more, according to diplomats and news media reports.

Rasmussen declined to give a country-by-country breakdown of the troop commitments. More specifics may emerge Monday at a special force-generation conference, especially from smaller countries.

The U.S. government is also seeking contributions for funding the Afghan army and police.

The number of non-U.S. military forces in Afghanistan has risen from about 17,000 to nearly 44,000 in two years, according to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The United States has about 70,000 military personnel in Afghanistan.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, December 5, 2009