A few weeks ago, grainy photos surfaced online showing what several prominent defense analysts said appeared to be a prototype of a Chinese stealth fighter jet that could compete with the best of America’s warplanes, years ahead of U.S. predictions.

Days later, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet disclosed that a long-awaited Chinese anti-ship missile, designed to sink an American aircraft carrier, was nearly operational.

As Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates heads to China this weekend, analysts are expressing concern about Chinese military advances, which appear to have taken the U.S. by surprise. The Pentagon had predicted that China wouldn’t have a stealth fighter for a decade or more and Defense officials had given no previous indication the anti-ship missile, which had long been tracked by the U.S., was close to fruition.

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Moktada al-Sadr, the populist cleric who emerged as the United States’ most enduring foe in Iraq, returned Wednesday after more than three years of voluntary exile in Iran in a homecoming that embodied his and his movement’s transition from battling in the streets to occupying the halls of power.

“Long live the leader!” supporters shouted as a grayer Mr. Sadr made his way from the airport in the holy city of Najaf to his home and then to prayers at the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali, one of the most sacred places in Shiite Islam. Supporters there hailed his return as another show of strength for a movement that is now more powerful than at any time since the United States invaded in 2003.

“We’re proving to everyone that we’re an important part of Iraq and its politics,” said Jawad Kadhum, a lawmaker with Mr. Sadr’s movement.

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”How do you deal toughly with your banker?” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to China, asked then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd in March 2009, according to US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

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Party leaders were evidently pleased with what they described in their main annual meeting as China’s ”marked rise in international status and influence”. Beyond exploiting the domestic propaganda value, however, they struggled to find ways to put China’s new-found power to good use.

Throughout 2010, the leadership appeared to lurch from underestimating its power to overestimating it. The signs of overreach were most evident in the geopolitical realm. Beijing showed a new willingness to throw its weight around in pursuit of narrowly defined self-interest, which generated an acute sense of unease among many of China’s neighbours. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam have responded by inviting the United States to re-establish its diplomatic and military primacy in the region, despite Chinese protests.

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The three [year-end 2010] plots had two things in common: They were launched by lone-wolf attackers, and the FBI was in the middle of them. Experts say to expect more undercover cases in 2011, because the agency has clearly decided that the best way to battle the growing threat of homegrown terrorism in this country is to confront the suspects directly.

“I believe that we have something in this country that you don’t see characterized in TV shows,” says Philip Mudd, a former counterterrorism official with both the CIA and the FBI, who is now a research fellow at the New America Foundation.

“It is not cells or clusters of individuals that are like-minded … it is clusters of kids who are talking about extremism,” he says. “I think this exists across the country. Kids are talking about what they don’t like in Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan, and within those clusters occasionally you’re going to have a couple who say, ‘All my friends, all our friends are talking, why don’t we do something about it?’ ”

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Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

The plan has not yet been approved, but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan. Even with the risks, military commanders say that using American Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated.

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After almost a decade, the fix is in and the news is bad. Just as Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai has Barack Obama precisely where he wants him, so too Pakistan has the US leader where it would like to keep him – up against a wall, writing big fat cheques.

There have always been three essential elements to this conflict in Afghanistan. The first two essentials are whatever might be achieved militarily and what could be achieved in governance to sustain any military gains. But just as important is the extent to which neighbouring Pakistan will come to the party, to facilitate these two. And in the absence of gains either in governance or with Pakistan, any counter-insurgency effort almost certainly will fail.

Accounts of the mechanics of the Obama White House’s review of progress in the war – announced last week – suggest that the military swayed the debate with evidence of some tactical success in the south of the country. Perhaps. But the President would do well to pay more attention to the reports of the intelligence services, which go a good way to explaining the impossible task ahead.

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The United States is too reliant on China for minerals crucial to new clean energy technologies, making the American economy vulnerable to shortages of materials needed for a range of green products ”” from compact fluorescent light bulbs to electric cars to giant wind turbines.

So warns a detailed report to be released on Wednesday morning by the United States Energy Department. The report, which predicts that it could take 15 years to break American dependence on Chinese supplies, calls for the nation to increase research and expand diplomatic contacts to find alternative sources, and to develop ways to recycle the minerals or replace them with other materials.

At least 96 percent of the most crucial types of the so-called rare earth minerals are now produced in China, and Beijing has wielded various export controls to limit the minerals’ supply to other countries while favoring its own manufacturers that use them.

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China is seizing on Europe’s debt problems to expand its influence on the continent with large-scale investments and purchases of government bonds issued by highly-indebted states. The strategy could push Europe into the same financial dependency on China that is posing a dilemma for the US.

Portugal’s cavalry staged a magnificent parade to welcome Chinese President and Party General Secretary Hu Jintao, 67. Suddenly, one of the horses reared up and threw its rider to the ground. The state guest from China waited motionless until the end of the ceremony before he went to the fallen cavalryman, embraced him, and asked if he was all right.

There was symbolic value to Hu’s caring gesture in early November in Lisbon: China’s foremost party organ, the People’s Daily, wrote enthusiastically that this was the “Best moment for the world to see a true China in flesh and blood.”

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I was very sorry to hear this.

Update: A WSJ article on him is here–read it all.

From the Vatican Press Office:

Without venturing to evaluate the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences, the Holy See Press Office observes that part of the documents published recently by Wikileaks concerns reports sent to the U.S. State Department by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.

Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials.

Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind.

Hanukkah, which we celebrate this week, recalls the miracle of lights that burned for eight days. Israel, meanwhile, struggled to extinguish a forest fire raging out of control. Fanned by Santa Ana-type winds, the blaze engulfed the Carmel region of the Lower Galilee, claiming 42 lives, destroying communities, and consuming about 10,000 acres and more than 4 million trees. A country that has prevailed through successive wars and terrorist attacks, Israel had never before confronted such a devastating natural disaster. And we could not overcome it alone.

Admitting that was not easy for us. A self-reliant people who are renowned as first responders to disasters abroad ”” in earthquake-stricken Haiti and Turkey, for example, or in a Congolese village decimated by fire ”” we are accustomed to offering rather than requesting aid. And yet, as the Carmel fire spread, forcing 17,000 people from their homes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not stand on pride. “We live in a global world,” he explained. “We give and receive help, and it’s not shameful to ask.”

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In the latest twist in the drama swirling around the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group, British police officials said on Tuesday they had arrested Julian Assange, its beleaguered founder, on a warrant issued in Sweden in connection with alleged sex offenses.

Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit when he went to a central London police station by prior agreement with the authorities, the police said. A court hearing was expected later.

In a statement, the police said: “Officers from the Metropolitan Police extradition unit have this morning arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape.”

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Is WikiLeaks a serious journalistic enterprise or a wrecking party? The organisation had given the impression that it had been trying to be more responsible in the past month, after having been accused of endangering the lives of US troops and their helpers by releasing the Afghanistan war logs. But yesterday’s publication of a list of facilities deemed vital to US national security is a step back in the wrong direction. There is a dangerous nihilism in the refusal to distinguish between information that embarasses the powerful, and information that potentially puts lives at risk.

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President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China talked by telephone on Monday about North Korea, culminating 13 days of effort by the White House to persuade China’s leaders to discuss a crisis that many experts fear could escalate into military action.

Administration officials say they have no evidence Mr. Hu was ducking the call, which the Chinese knew would urge them to crack down on their unruly ally, a step Beijing clearly is highly reluctant to take amid a leadership succession in North Korea. White House officials insisted that the long delay was simply the result of scheduling problems.

But in Beijing, both Chinese and American officials and analysts have another explanation: the long silence epitomizes the speed with which relations between Washington and Beijing have plunged into a freeze. This year has witnessed the longest period of tension between the two capitals in a decade. And if anything, both sides appear to be hardening their positions.

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last year in a leaked classified memo that donors in Saudi Arabia were the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”.

She said it was “an ongoing challenge” to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority.

The groups funded include al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, she added.

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The US is worried that Qatar, which last week won the right to host the 2022 soccer World Cup, and Kuwait are not doing enough to combat the financing of al-Qaeda, say officials and leaked diplomatic cables.

The Obama administration expresses fears that the two countries are in effect allowing al-Qaeda to circumvent tighter controls in Saudi Arabia and that pilgrims on the annual Hajj to Mecca also play a big role in funding the group.

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After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States was left as the world’s only superpower. But the “unipolar moment” did not last long. By the time Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, it was already clear that the era of untrammelled American confidence and power had come to a close. Two major events have undermined the swagger and self-confidence of US foreign policy. The first was the failure to secure clear victories in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The second was the financial and economic crisis that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, 2008. These three new books all respond, in different ways, to this new environment:

Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, by Andrew Bacevich

How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, by Gideon Rose

The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-strapped Era, by Michael Mandelbaum….

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As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing one reason top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: they were Googling themselves.

The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.”

That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power ”” and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.

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In one cable from January 2010, Spanish prosecutor Jose “Pepe” Grinda Gonzales claimed that in Russia, Belarus and Chechnya “one cannot differentiate between the activities of the Government and OC (organised crime) groups”.

Judge Grinda led a long investigation into Russian organised crime in Spain, leading to more than 60 arrests.

A cable from the US embassy in Madrid talks about the “unanswered question” of the extent to which Mr Putin is implicated in the mafia and whether he controls its actions.

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In a confidential diplomatic cable sent back to the State Department, the American Embassy warned of increasing mistrust of the United States by its northern neighbor, with which it shares some $500 billion in annual trade, the world’s longest unsecured border and a joint military mission in Afghanistan.

“The degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars, twist current events to feed longstanding negative images of the U.S. ”” and the extent to which the Canadian public seems willing to indulge in the feast ”” is noteworthy as an indication of the kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada,” the cable said.

A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians “always carry a chip on their shoulder” in part because of a feeling that their country “is condemned to always play ”˜Robin’ to the U.S. ”˜Batman.’ ”

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A journalist working closely with WikiLeaks says that secret documents about the Vatican and the volatile territories of North Korea and Israel are to be made public soon.

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The [New York] Times has…erected a series of filters between the 250,000 raw documents that WikiLeaks obtained and complete public exposure. The paper has released only a tiny percentage of the cables. Information that might endanger informants has been redacted. Specific cables have been put into context with broader reporting.

Yet it might be useful to consider one more filter. Consider it the World Order filter. The fact that we live our lives amid order and not chaos is the great achievement of civilization. This order should not be taken for granted.

This order is tenuously maintained by brave soldiers but also by talkative leaders and diplomats. Every second of every day, leaders and diplomats are engaged in a never-ending conversation. The leaked cables reveal this conversation. They show diplomats seeking information, cajoling each other and engaging in faux-friendships and petty hypocrisies as they seek to avoid global disasters.

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The Times was the only American news organization to receive a massive cache of government documents that were released by WikiLeaks, the “stateless” Internet organization that specializes in exposing government secrets through leaked information.

But the Times wasn’t on WikiLeaks’ list of original recipients. The newspaper got its hands on the trove of about 250,000 cables thanks to the Guardian newspaper of Great Britain, which quietly passed the Times the raw material that it had received as one of five news organizations favored by WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks had worked with the Times this summer in releasing about 90,000 documents prepared by U.S. military sources about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the group pointedly snubbed the Times this time around, offering the State Department cables to two other American news outlets, CNN and the Wall Street Journal. Both turned WikiLeaks down, deciding that its terms – including a demand for financial compensation under certain circumstances – were unacceptable.

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China has signalled its readiness to accept Korean reunification and is privately distancing itself from the North Korean regime, according to leaked US embassy cables that reveal senior Beijing figures regard their official ally as a “spoiled child”.

News of the Chinese shift comes at a crucial juncture after the North’s artillery bombardment of a South Korean island last week that killed four people and led both sides to threaten war. China has refused to condemn the North Korean action. But today Beijing appeared to bow to US pressure to help bring about a diplomatic solution, calling for “emergency consultations” and inviting a senior North Korean official to Beijing.

China is sharply critical of US pressure tactics towards North Korea and wants a resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks. But the Guardian can reveal Beijing’s frustration with Pyongyang has grown since its missile and nuclear tests last year, worries about the economic impact of regional instability, and fears that the death of the dictator, Kim Jong-il, could spark a succession struggle.

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denounced the release of classified diplomatic cables as an “attack on the international community”.

She spoke after the release of some 250,000 messages from US envoys around the world by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

The cables offer candid and sometimes unflattering views of world leaders and frank assessments of security threats.

But Mrs Clinton said diplomats often needed confidentiality to be effective.

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Iran obtained 19 advanced missiles from North Korea, potentially giving the Islamic nation the capability of attacking Moscow and cities in Western Europe, according to embassy cables posted by WikiLeaks.org and provided to the New York Times.

U.S. officials denounced the release, coming on the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s departure for a security conference in the Persian Gulf, as jeopardizing U.S. ties with foreign governments and endangering individuals. WikiLeaks began posting the cables yesterday.

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A day after the whistleblower site WikiLeaks began publishing details from a massive collection of confidential U.S. diplomatic documents, the chorus of criticism from government leaders grew louder Monday.

Top U.S. officials were quick to denounce the publication of the leaked documents Sunday. And the U.K.’s foreign office followed suit Monday, saying it condemned any release of classified documents.
“They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the U.S. [has] said, may put lives at risk,” the office said in a statement.

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The first victims of the leaked cables released Sunday was anyone who shared secrets with American diplomats, especially Arab leaders who saw their private security deals – and their insistence that those deals be kept from their people – published online with undiplomatic bluntness.

But the main effect of the many details of American diplomacy revealed in the thousands of documents obtained and released by WikiLeaks was to deepen the damage to their intended targets: U.S. foreign policy, prestige, and power.

“The impression is of the world’s superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden,” wrote Sir Simon Jenkins in the left-leaning Guardian, one of the publications that were given the documents.

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The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.

Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.

The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet ”˜handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”

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The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”

“President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal,” the statement said. “By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals.”

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