Harry Reed, Parliamentarian

If you are following the domestic health care policy bill/debate, you’re undoubtedly picking up the fact that the Senate Majority Leader is not only the political go-to guy for his party (along with the go-to gal, Nancy Pelosi in the House), but he’s also a strategist in Robert’s Rules—of necessity:

At some point, Mr. Reid will have to push for a vote to end debate. And to do that, he will once again need the support of 60 senators — either the entire Democratic caucus or some Republicans to make up for any defections.

At least four senators — three Democrats and one independent — who voted yes on sending the measure to the floor for debate have already publicly threatened to block any effort to get a vote on final passage.

Mr. Reid succeeded in getting the bill to the Senate floor with no clear path to a final vote to get it off the floor.

via Rough Race to the Finish for Senate Democrats – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

See Hillary Run | Madame Secretary in Public DIplomacy Mode

The manner in which a diplomat schedules and conducts meetings/interactions makes a difference.  Hillary has been on the road pushing the U.S. policy agenda, but in a manner different from her immediate predecessor, employing what is known in the corporate world as public relations or marketing, but to diplos has become defined by Joseph Nye of Harvard’s Kennedy School as “soft power”:

It is difficult to assess what impact this public diplomacy is having on America’s image abroad or on advancing the foreign policy goals of President Barack Obama’s administration.She may be mostly preaching to the converted or adding to the surge of goodwill towards the US after Mr Obama’s election, though this could help appease anti-American feelings in some corners.

Mrs Clinton, who already has her own star power from her days as first lady, also presents a stark contrast to Condoleezza Rice, her predecessor, who conducted her foreign policy in a more rigid, academic style, sticking mostly to official meetings during short trips that were run with military precision.

Critics say Mrs Clinton’s focus on soft power is a result of her being marginalised – town hall meetings about women’s rights are all she has left after the major foreign policy files like the Middle East and Afghanistan were outsourced to special envoys.

via BBC, “Clinton Focuses on Soft Power”

News Analysis – China Aims to Steady North Korea – NYTimes.com

What does real leverage look like?

For months, North Korea had insisted that it would never return to the talks demanded by the United States, calling them “dead.”  North Korea’s reversal came after China signed a series of agreements that promised aid for the North and an expansion in economic exchanges, including the construction of another bridge across their tightly controlled river border.  via News Analysis – China Aims to Steady North Korea – NYTimes.com.

China really doesn’t’ want to have to face the implosion of North Korea.  But its interests are furthered using North Korea as a “buffer” against US influence in the region.  But as the article notes, China wins and South Korea/US loses influence.

Ahmadinejad @ the UN

How effective will Ahmadinejad be at the UN—how will the story go?

Mindful of the horrific human rights abuses that have taken place in Iran in the aftermath of the stolen elections, and the continuing protests and resistance by ordinary Iranians, one would think that Ahmadinejad’s lack of internal legitimacy would be the natural topic of conversation. But Ahmadinejad is not a man of limited resources.

He knows how to deflect the attention of the media and he is a master of changing the subject. And he knows all too well how to push the buttons of Western audiences.

So it is not a surprise that after having been relatively quiet about the Holocaust for almost two years, Ahmadinejad suddenly decided to question it once again just a few days before landing in New York. At the Friday prayer sermons on September 18, Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a “lie.”

His calculation seems to be as follows: Just as before, Western journalists will focus on the controversy around his Holocaust denial, while neglecting about the abuses and violations that are taking place in Iran on a continuous basis. The controversial Holocaust comments will overshadow everything else and will be the focus of not only Western media, but also the protests in New York as well as the statements and comments by European officials. At a minimum, it may help Ahmadinejad portray the situation as such to his audience in Iran.

via Trita Parsi: Will the Focus at the UN Be on Ahmadinejad’s Human Rights Abuses?.

Iranian Protesters in NY outside the UN weren’t happy [video]

And finally, Thomas Friedman provides a dialogue on how the US should handle this very tricky moment with Iran:

“The Obama administration must reconcile how to deal with a disgraced regime, which presents urgent national security challenges, while at the same time not betray a democratic movement whose success could have enormously positive implications for the U.S.,” said Sadjadpour.

Word for Word – A Tutorial From Lyndon B. Johnson – ‘Don’t Let Dead Cats Stand on Your Porch’ – NYTimes.com

Source: National Archives

From the applied perspective, international politics is very similar to the national level—tactics, timing, and personal relationships matter.  Budding diplomats could do well to study effective power brokers, and one of the most clever implementers of the Prince, former US President LBJ, has some lessons to be culled:

In their new book, “The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office,” David Blumenthal, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and James Morone, a political science professor at Brown University, reviewed the nation’s many attempts at health care reform to find some “rules of success.” Here are six lessons from Mr. Johnson’s triumph — captured in his own words, at least those that can be published. It appears that President Obama has studied at least some of them closely.

via Word for Word – A Tutorial From Lyndon B. Johnson – ‘Don’t Let Dead Cats Stand on Your Porch’ – NYTimes.com.

Specifically:  go fast, keep the specialists quiet, master the process (i.e., parli pro), give credit, go public and build momentum, and be passionate.  (Still, read the piece…)

Knowing You Are Right | Overconfidence, Bluffing, and Strategy

In a short New Yorker piece, Malcolm Gladwell–namer of the famed term “tipping point” and a book to match–draws lessons from Wall Street to the British invasion of Galipoli–noting that overconfidence often plays an important role in the fall of the mighty. (Andrew Sullivan disagrees, seeing a psychological clues as not “mutually exlusive explanation–they are mutually reinforcing.”)

Still, this is a helpful lesson for the Type A leader, who things that things will work out if s/he wills it so.  In fact, from a system viewpoint these decisions become like bullets ricocheting–causing a catastrophe:

From an individual perspective, it is hard to distinguish between the times when excessive optimism is good and the times when it isn’t. All that we can say unequivocally is that overconfidence is, as Wrangham puts it, “globally maladaptive.” When one opponent bluffs, he can score an easy victory. But when everyone bluffs, Wrangham writes, rivals end up “escalating conflicts that only one can win and suffering higher costs than they should if assessment were accurate.” The British didn’t just think the Turks would lose in Gallipoli; they thought that Belgium would prove to be an obstacle to Germany’s advance, and that the Russians would crush the Germans in the east. The French, for their part, planned to be at the Rhine within six weeks of the start of the war, while the Germans predicted that by that point they would be on the outskirts of Paris. Every side in the First World War was bluffing, with the resolve and skill that only the deluded are capable of, and the results, of course, were catastrophic.

Another insight Gladwell offers is the limits of training devices, models, and simulations.  Using the false comparison of bridge to Wall Street in a critical hiring decision, he quotes Gideon Keren:

In bridge, there is such a thing as expertise unencumbered by bias. That’s because, as the psychologist Gideon Keren points out, bridge involves “related items with continuous feedback.” It has rules and boundaries and situations that repeat themselves and clear patterns that develop—and when a player makes a mistake of overconfidence he or she learns of the consequences of that mistake almost immediately. In other words, it’s a game. But running an investment bank is not, in this sense, a game: it is not a closed world with a limited set of possibilities. It is an open world where one day a calamity can happen that no one had dreamed could happen, and where you can make a mistake of overconfidence and not personally feel the consequences for years and years—if at all. Perhaps this is part of why we play games: there is something intoxicating about pure expertise, and the real mastery we can attain around a card table or behind the wheel of a racecar emboldens us when we move into the more complex realms. “I’m good at that. I must be good at this, too,” we tell ourselves, forgetting that in wars and on Wall Street there is no such thing as absolute expertise, that every step taken toward mastery brings with it an increased risk of mastery’s curse. Cayne must have come back from the Spingold bridge tournament fortified in his belief in his own infallibility.

via The psychology of overconfidence : The New Yorker.

Rules for Radicals | Tactics for Taking Power

In Sunday’s NYT Week in Review Dick Armey was quoted as describing author of Rules for Radicals as follows: “What I think of Alinsky is that he was very good at what he did but what he did was not good.”

The larger point is that Alinsky is to minority power-seeking tactics as Machiavellis is to the majority’s power-keeping guidelines.  But the author points out the irony by which Republicans may be using these community organizing ideas to derail the Obama Administration’s efforts on health care reform.  Some tactics: “using spectacle to make up for lack of numbers; targeting an individual to make a large point; and trying to use ridicule to persuade the undecided”  Read on for more ideas–useful in politics but also in campaigns, negotiations, and other group persuasive endeavors.

Pushing Peace One Meeting at a Time

Its a tough job for George Mitchell, but he’s seen this once before.  How to push for peace– a process and a destination–one meeting at a time?

Even the Saudis, he said, “want to be helpful. They, like everyone we’re talking to, want a peace agreement that will lay the foundation for the end of this conflict. I truly believe that’s what they want.”

The trick, analysts said, is persuading both sides to act simultaneously when each wants to see the other move first.

via Diplomatic Memo – U.S. to Push Peace in Middle East Media Campaign – NYTimes.com.

On another front, how should the U.S. deal with Iran?  Another NYT report observes: “The question we have to face,” one American diplomat said, “is whether any sanction at this point can really deter them, given how close they are now.”

The approach would be to empower President Obama so he would be able to forge a multi-nation sanction:

In a visit to Israel last week, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, James L. Jones, mentioned the prospect to Israeli officials, they said.  The White House refused Sunday to confirm or deny the contents of Mr. Jones’s discussions. But other administration officials said that they believed his goal was to reinforce Mr. Obama’s argument that the Israeli government should stop dropping hints about conducting a military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities if no progress is made this year, and to give the administration time to impose what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calls “crippling sanctions” that might force Iran to negotiate.

The “Bug Pit” of Bukhara and Other Reflections on Torture

A British officer named Charles Stoddart was sent on to Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan, to assure the emir he had nothing to fear from Britain, and to try and make an alliance against the Russians. Known for his depravity and cruelty, the emir had Stoddart thrown into a 20-foot pit filled with insects and other vermin.

via Bukhara on the Potomac | GlobalPost.

Ambassador Hot Dog – NYTimes.com

A very brief meditation on Hot Dog diplomacy…which makes me think I’ll head down the hill to JDawg–Utah’s runaway success shack with amazing special sauce that Pres. Obama should utilize to solve his various worldwide political crises.  One great anecdote:

Twenty years later, in 1959, a hot dog again figured in American foreign relations when Nikita Khrushchev, the unpredictable leader of the Soviet Union, toured the United States. At one point he stopped at a packing plant in Des Moines, where he ate his first hot dog — although at least one account says his first bite had to wait until security agents waved a Geiger counter over the dog. A mere cold war formality.