Barroso referred to the global recession early in his speech, noting that the continent’s “interdependence was highlighted and our solidarity [...] tested like never before.” The president believed that Europe had withstood the test. “We have provided many of the answers needed,” he said, “on financial assistance to member states facing exceptional circumstances, on economic governance, on financial regulation, on growth and jobs.” What is more, “Europe has shown it will stand up and be counted.”

But there remains much to be done. “There is no room for complacency. Budgetary expansion played its role to counter the decline in economic activity. But it is now time to exit.” Throughout Europe, countries must make severe cutbacks in order to rein in spending and restore balance to their budgets. “Unsustainable budgets make us vulnerable,” Barroso warned. “Debt and deficit lead to boom and bust.”

The Commission President clearly sided with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on this issue who has been pushing for tougher budget rules on the European level. Countries in the south of Europe, led by France, Italy and Spain, are not in favor of implementing sanctions for member states that violate Europe’s deficit maximum of 3 percent of GDP. They continue to struggle with a mounting debt burden in the face of mass protests against announced austerity measures.

In France and Italy, trade unions have staged large demonstrations against proposals to rein in welfare spending and raise the retirement age. Barroso urged opponents to consider that, “sound public finances are a means to an end—growth for jobs. Our goal is growth,” he said, “sustainable growth, inclusive growth. This is our overarching priority.”

One way to promote employment is further unlocking the potential of Europe’s common market. No matter high unemployment rates, there are still some four million job vacancies throughout the Union, said Barroso. He proposed to initiate a “European Vacancy Monitor” that will “show people where the jobs are in Europe and which skills are needed.” In short, people should be encouraged to work across borders.

Although he pledged to “strengthen citizens’ rights as they move across borders” and opined that “racism and xenophobia have no place in Europe,” Barroso was criticized from the left for not objecting more strongly to France’s recent expulsion of Roma.

This summer, the French Government began deporting hundreds of Roma and Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria, offering them 300 euros as an incentive to leave France voluntarily. Opponents of the expulsions believe that the government is violating the freedom of movement which the Roma, as citizens of the European Union, enjoy. The opposition wonders aloud whether President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose approval ratings have plummeted in recent months, isn’t using the incident for his political gain.

Barroso further spoke of the need to cut red tape and stir innovation to help small and medium sized companies prosper. “We have the people,” he professed; “we have the companies. What they both need is an open and modern single market.” Just 8 percent of Europe’s twenty million small businesses engage in cross border trade; still fewer in cross border investment. “The internal market is Europe’s greatest asset,” said Barroso, “and we are not using it enough. We need to deepen it urgently.”

In times of persistent economic malaise in some member states and ever louder calls for protectionism in others, Barroso’s call to greater unity and free market dynamic across Europe deserves some praise.

Complaints, particularly from the left, focused instead on minutiae, with some demanding a ban on hedge funds and the trading of assorted derivatives and the Green Party urging the Commission to invest more time and effort in fighting climate change. The leader of the broad and centrist European People’s Party regretted that Barroso wasn’t more ambitious about expanding the reach of the EU, adding that he should explain to nation states and their taxpayers that their money is “better used by the twenty-seven together than by each member state separately.”

In fact, Barroso did note that “Europe must show it is more than twenty-seven different national solutions. We either swim together, or sink separately,” he added. “Our partners are watching and are expecting us to engage as Europe, not just as twenty-seven individual countries. If we don’t act together, Europe will not be a force in the world, and they will move on without us—without the European Union but also without its member states.”

I have never spoken or heard anyone in person or through blogs speak of the current Republican Party in a positive light. Even those who believe in the GOP in principle agree that it needs some drastic changes to go in the right direction. No matter how rich, charismatic, intelligent, or talented you are you cannot lead people if they do not wish to follow and the Republicans have gotten wildly off track.

That being said, Limbaugh, Beck and Palin don’t really lead the GOP. They are leaders each in a slightly different way, but their relationship to the American people is direct and not filtered through a political party. Glenn Beck in particular is not about politics at all, rather about virtuous principles and good government. Republicans are extremely sluggish in responding to the current drift of American opinion and indeed seem to spend all their time chasing what they perceive to be the politically expedient rather than the principled path. The GOP appears without position and is, in any event, notoriously poor at explaining it or adhering to it for any length of time.

It is interesting to note that when Plouffe named Limbaugh, Beck and Palin as the Republican leadership he was making an effort to marginalize the party. That may not be the best tactic since all three are gaining in popularity almost every day. It’s hard to convincingly claim that a majority of Americans are on the fringes for a majority does agree with at least a significant part of the message being spread by the three.

While government is formed for the organization of society and the protection of life and property, politics is the effort of individuals and groups to use government for their own gain in power over others. The GOP is about politics as much as the Democratic Party is. Each wants power. Beck and Palin at least are dedicated to promoting proper government. Limbaugh walks the line between good principles and power, desiring a strong GOP that follows good principles. It is the principles of good government the people of America are responding to just now. The Democrats have been hemorrhaging supporters and losing leadership at an alarming rate as well, though the full extent of this problem won’t be evident until after the November elections for Congress. It is parties and leadership the Americans have become disillusioned with. For the moment, politics is disgusting to all and freedom becoming palatable again.

Despite some confidence building measures from both sides in the last year—like Netanyahu’s temporary settlement freeze in the West Bank and Abbas’ clampdown on radical Palestinians—the Israeli and Palestinian delegations are at polar opposites of one another on every major issue. Rumors are already going around in the Israeli press that Netanyahu is kowtowing to the right on resuming settlement expansion when the moratorium ends September 26. A weak and indecisive Abbas is looking for any excuse he can get to pull out of the talks, for he really didn’t want to engage the Israelis in the first place (it took some extra cajoling from Envoy George Mitchell and Secretary Hillary Clinton to convince the tired Abbas to travel to Washington). And the motives of the Arab states are still questionable in the views of those who know all too well about Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan’s tendency to dictate terms on Palestinian negotiators.

There are, of course, some slight differences in today’s negotiations that distinguish themselves from the past. Netanyahu and Abbas have known each other personally for a very long time; both the Israelis and Palestinians have staked out consistent positions and each side knows the demands of the other; and over two thirds of the Palestinian electorate in the West Bank is supportive of direct talks with the Israelis. If you were an optimist like former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, you may agree that “the negotiating environment is better suited to peacemaking today than it has been at any point in the last decade.” But you wouldn’t have been paying that much attention in the past decade.

The last ten years were particularly heinous for the Middle East peace process, consisting of a bloody Palestinian intifada from 2001-2003, an Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 and an Israel-Hamas war in 2008-2009. Sure the peacemaking environment is better today than it was over the past decade. How can it get any worse?

But predictions and feelings aside, today’s direct talks are really not all that different from past meetings. The current peace drive still hinges on that old issue that has made reconciliation a distant fantasy: Jewish settlements. If Netanyahu caves in to his right wing coalition, settlement construction will resume in the West Bank later this month and Abbas will walk out with his tail between his legs. If, however, Netanyahu is bold enough to extend the settlement moratorium for another couple of months, the talks that everyone now expects to fail may in fact gain some headway. It all comes down to September 26.

Call me crazy, but I’m not betting on the latter.

The organizations involved in the effort include the United Nations’ Development Program (UNDP), UNICEF, the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The North Korean Government has agreed to implement minimal changes in procedure to meet UN requirements for aid. The tight, indeed ferocious control which the state maintains over its citizens and all activities within its borders, even if they are undertaken by foreign nongovernmental organizations, renders it highly unlikely that the humanitarian and development assistance provided by the UN will have a significant impact on the plight of the North Korean people however. Instead, the bulk of those millions in “aid” are far more likely to disappear into the coffers of Kim Jong-Il’s despicable regime, allowing it to perpetuate its oppressive and destructive reign.

North Korea’s recent track record is anything but encouraging. The country is a proliferator of nuclear technology, having helped construct a Syrian nuclear site that was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in 2007; it is believed to be assisting Myanmar in its own clandestine nuclear program and it successfully detonated two nuclear devices in October 2006 and May 2009. The United States believe that the North has enough plutonium to construct at least half a dozen nuclear weapons. It is now developing the intercontinental ballistic missiles needed to deliver these weapons. In doing so, the country has violated numerous UN Security Council resolutions.

Earlier this year, North Korea sunk a South Korean corvette in the Yellow Sea and it has been threatening to wreck havoc on Seoul for participating in a naval exercise with the United States that was supposed to show Pyongyang who’s boss. Washington has also announced renewed economic sanctions while even North Korea’s only, if lukewarm ally in the region, China, has been compelled to distance itself from the regime’s recent saber rattling.

No matter sanctions and attempts to negotiate, North Korea will keep inventing crisis because it’s the only way for its regime to survive. As its people are slowly starving to death, the regime need some way to justify its very existence. The North Koreans no longer believe that the South is a slave to America. To the contrary, most are well aware that their former brothers on the other side of the 1953 demarcation line are prospering. So, rather like Airstrip One in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), North Korea needs crisis, constantly.

No ordinary crisis will do given the grumbling of a small but existing middle class that is able to exert some level of control. They understand that their country is on the decline and that there’s no way out. So the regime has to foster a fear of imminent danger in order to keep Kim Jong-Il in control. For years, it has been one crisis after another, from nuclear weapons to intercontinental ballistic missiles to abducting American journalists to sinking a South Korean navy vessel.

Meanwhile, millions of North Koreans are suffering unnecessarily. Understandably, the United Nations want to intervene to do what they can to make life a little better for the ordinary North Korean but in doing so, it is giving the regime a lifeline to cling to, at least for a while. By handing North Korea just enough food and medicine to survive, Kim Jong-Il and his fellow tyrants have no reason to change their ways, nor might the North Korean people start questioning the propaganda they have been fed from birth and contemplate regime change. Painful though it may be for them, having the rest of the world doing nothing to help the people of North Korea is likely to benefit them the most in the long run.

Ending the moratorium risks undermining the peace process that was relaunched in Washington last week under the auspices of President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, halting settlement construction in their territory is a nonnegotiable condition to bringing about permanent peace in the Middle East. They have threatened to walk away from the latest negotiations if the settlement freeze ends ends as planned. Extending it however imperils the stability of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for which the support of Yisrael Beiteinu (”Israel is Our Home”), currently represented with fifteen seats in the Knesset, is essential. Many members of the prime minister’s own Likud are also in favor of allowing Jewish colonists to build outside of Israel’s 1967 borders again.

The foreign minister has been skeptical of the peace talks that were resumed last week after a year of noninterference from the United States. “The more we lower expectations, the healthier it is,” he professed ahead of the negotiations in Washington between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Lieberman did signal a willingness to compromise, promising the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that he won’t quit the coalition if he doesn’t get his way. “We will not leave or bring down the government. We will fight from the inside for what we believe,” he said. Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, former foreign minister and still a prominent Likud leader, was more careful, claiming that an extension of the moratorium would pose a “huge danger” to the government. “Within the coalition, there is a huge majority against it,” he told reporters late Sunday.

Some 300,000 Israelis currently live in settlements on the West Bank which is home to approximately 2.5 million Palestinians. Another 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem which the Palestinians claim as their capital.

The extent of the drop in construction since the settlement slowdown began ten months ago is subject of debate. According to Israeli Government statistics released last week, just five new building projects were undertaken on Palestinian territory in the first half of this year, compared with 673 in the first half of 2009.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with his Palestinian counterpart for a second round of talks next week in Egypt and Jerusalem. Secretary Clinton will attend both meetings.

Now, what worries the US and India the most is that with the Maldives struggling with its infant democracy, there is every chance of the political chaos being used by jihadi extremists to use the island nation as a springboard for terrorism. Indian intelligence was alerted recently from Western sources that the internationally banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is based in Pakistan, had been trying to set up base in isolated islands of the Maldives. The group may well use the Maldives, which has largely a Sunni Muslim population, to launch attacks throughout South Asia.

One instance when Islamic militancy raised its head was on September 29, 2007 when the Sultan Park bombing in Malé took place; the first ever Islamist terror strike in the Maldives. Though Islamic militancy isn’t entirely new to the Maldives—this started in the early 1980s under President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom—what is new is the clash between Salafi Sunni traditions versus the Shāfi’ī Sunni traditions. The latter is a culmination of the indigenous Maldivian culture whereas the former was imported through the return of students from the Arab world and Pakistan. Many of the “hardcored” Islamic motivated students are located in the southern atolls of the Maldives. They call themselves Super Salafis.

Small scale insurgency attacks started in the Maldives after it was believed that President Gayoom, who came to power in 1978 by citing his Islamic credentials polished at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, ditched his Islamic agenda. Now with the more Western liberal Oxford educated President Nasheed in power, the fissures between the Salafis and the ruling establishment has only increased. It’s particularly evident in the southern atolls. Precisely for this reason, the Maldives’ government is engaging with India to set up underground radars on all of its twenty-six atolls.

There are reports which also suggest that there’s an increase in the number of tourists from Pakistan to the Maldives. Annually, the islands hosts about 700,000 tourists, most of them from Europe and the United States which is part of the reason why Western governments are so concerned that jihadists might imitate the 2002 bombing that occurred in Bali, Indonesia.

Politically in the Maldives the government and opposition started a dialogue to ease tension on the advice of US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake Jr. Blake traveled to Malé to mediate between the opposition and president while Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse visited the capital on July 7 on invitation from his Maldivian counterpart to help him out of the matrix that is the current political predicament. It’s to be noted that Rajapakse has political capital in the Maldives for successfully annihilating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam last year.

As the great American poet Mark Twain observed, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” In the case of the Maldives that sounds perfectly apt as the islands descend into a political chaos much like it did twenty years ago. At the time, in November 1988, Abdullah Luthufi and some eighty armed mercenaries of the Sri Lankan People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) attempted to overthrow the Maldivian Government but failed when Indian forces intervened with some 1,600 troops send by air to restore order. This act helped seal Indo-Maldives relations and it was a classic example of the application of India’s Monroe Doctrine.

The present situation has not gone unnoticed in the capitals of today’s Asian giants. India considers the Maldives within the ambit of its Monroe Doctrine. In August 2009 a defense pact was signed between India and the Maldives. The last thing New Delhi wants is to have the islands succumb to internal power struggle with Islamic militancy on the rise around the Indian Ocean. China has active trade relations with the Maldives and it’s watching the ongoing political fiasco in Malé with great interest.

The seeds of the present discord in the Maldives go back to the 2009 parliamentary election when the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) led by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom managed to get only a simple majority in parliament with the help of the People’s Alliance (PA) and some independents. President Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has twenty-eight representatives and the support of four independents in the seventy-seven seat parliament.

The Maldives function under a multiparty system with the president assembling a cabinet with parliamentary approval. Parliament also has the power to remove a minister with a motion of non confidence. Though DRP gained control of the legislature it fell short of the twothirds majority needed to impeach the president. At the same time, President Nasheed can’t dismiss the assembly until it completes its full five year term. The outcome has been a political deadlock.

The crisis reached its height in June when thirteen members of Nasheed’s cabinet resigned. The reason cited was somewhat new in any parliamentary democracy: they claimed to have “working problems” with parliament. Though the ministers were reappointed at the insistence of Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa who undertook a one day goodwill tour to the Maldives on July 7 and managed to get the government and the opposition to agree to form a committee to address the political problem in the Maldives, the fissure is bound to last.

Historically, the Maldives had their first constitution in 1932. Since, the country was ruled as a constitutional monarchy. A republic was established in January 1953 but it was short lived and the monarchy was restored in August of that same year. A second republic was proclaimed in November 1968. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom became the second president of the republic in 1978 and held power till the decisive October 2008 elections when Nasheed secured the presidency.

The problem with the Maldives’ politics is multiplied by the paradox of its constitution. The constitution, which was adopted in August 2008, establishes a presidential system of government though vests significant power with parliament. It is a classic example of decentralization with extended checks and balances. This becomes problematic in case parliament is controlled by the opposition as is the case in the Maldives today. The opposition is then able to obstruct the core functions of the executive, such as raising taxes and providing subsidies.

The escalating political rift in the Maldives casts doubt upon Malé’s ability to host the 17th South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation Summit next year. The Maldives were supposed to host the 16th SAARC summit in July 2008 which the government was unable to facilitate because of preparations for the October elections.

Those elections led Mohamed Nasheed to victory against then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Gayoom was considered an oppressive ruler with a record of being Asia’s longest serving head of state; Gayoom was in power for thirty consecutive years.

In many ways, President Nasheed was thought of as the Maldives’s Barack Obama. Just like Obama won the November 2008 elections in the United States on a message of hope and change, Nasheed was able to overthrow Gayoom’s “regime” campaigning on a message of “audacity of hope.” Like Obama, in many ways, Nasheed comes off far too liberal in a conservative society as the Maldives however which is populated by 300,000 Sunni Muslims. It remains to be seen whether President Nasheed will be able to bring his dissents and opposition together in the young democratic nation.

In conclusion it must be noted that the Maldives are in great strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Traditionally, all greater powers that aspired to control the sea have sought to establish a base there—Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and more recently, the Soviet Union. The southernmost island of the Maldives, the Gan Island in the Seenu Atoll, served as a base for the British Royal Navy during World War II.

The last thing anyone wants is for the Maldives to become a safe haven for Islamic insurgents which why leaders as President Mahinda Rajapakse and Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake had undertaken a “shuttle diplomacy” to ease the tension.

Contrary to the difficult peace process in Northern Ireland, which Blair was an integral part of in the late 1990s, in the Middle East, both sides agree that there can be only one outcome: the two state solution. This makes it, at least somewhat, “easier,” said Blair, to work out an agreement. What is needed from the Palestinian Authority is that it starts building the necessary institutions for statehood, particularly in the realm of security, so that Israel can “respond to that by giving the Palestinians greater run and greater freedom over their territory.”

The foremost demand from the Palestinian side—that Israel halt its construction of settlements in the West Bank—didn’t seem to bother Blair particularly. As he explained, when a final agreement on the borders of the Palestinian state is reached, settlement activity should no longer present a legal problem. Israel has, in the past, shown a willingness to dismantle settlements and even, last year, threatened to use force against Jewish colonists who refused to abide by a moratorium on settlement activity that is due to expire this month.

Asked whether the Palestinians can guarantee security within their own borders—Israel’s nonnegotiable priority for any peace accord—Blair attested that “they’ve gone a long way.” Indeed, he said, “the Israelis accept that. And as a result of that, incidentally, we now have many of the main checkpoints open [and] the Palestinian economy is very strong.” With imports and exports moving again, economic peace for Palestine may soon become a reality. With Israel understandably concerned over Hamas’ position in Gaza, at least for the West Bank, a closer integration of the Israeli and Palestinian economies should mean a step forward.

The Gaza Strip, stressed Blair, must not be separated from Palestine proper and have Hamas in permanent control. The former prime minister gave the terrorist group two choices: either continue down the path of violence and eventually lose support from the Palestinian people or “become part of this process.” Other Middle Eastern governments have tried to negotiate with Hamas, he added, to no avail.

A recent bombing in Gaza which occurred on the eve of the talks currently taking place in Washington, powerfully demonstrated Hamas’ persistent unwillingness to sit down and compromise. “The only way ultimately of defeating Hamas,” therefore, “is with a better political argument and the genuine prospect of a Palestinian state.”

Fox was in Paris to speak with his French counterpart Herve Morin about sharing the cost of military aircraft programs. Both countries are bracing for spending cuts which Fox, last month, described as “the absolute mother of horrors of a spending review.” Britain’s armed forces may have to give up whole brigades, armored formations, artillery units, maritime surveillance aircraft, the Royal Air Force’s fleet of Tornado strike aircraft, amphibious landing ships and one of the Royal Navy’s four Trident submarines.

Britain currently has three Invincible class aircraft carriers in service and is building the first of two Queen Elizabeth class carriers which is scheduled to enter service in 2016. The second, the HMS Prince of Wales, may end up being converted into something of an assault ship or cancelled altogether. France has one aircraft carrier in service, the nuclear powered Charles de Gaulle.

While sharing carriers is out of the question, “when it comes to pooling assets in other areas such as strategic or tactical lift I would have thought that that was a different case altogether,” said Liam, referring to military transport planes and helicopters. Morin elaborated: “We have some tracks we’re going down: the A400M, the refuelling planes, and perhaps cooperation on naval capacity.”

The A400M is Airbus’ troubled attempt to produce a military transport plane that can replace the ageing fleets of C130 Hercules and Transalls currently operating in Afghanistan and around the world. The new plane was ordered in 2003 by seven countries but has been plagued with delays and is now scheduled to be delivered four years overdue. Britain, no matter a pledge from its previous government, may well pull out of the project to buy more American made Boeing Globemaster aircraft instead.

Asked for concrete examples of how Britain and France might cooperate in the realm of defense, Morin urged reporters to “wait for the end of October.” He did note that the two armed forces, which are the largest in the European Union, are currently working closely together in Afghanistan and will seek to save funds by working toward “mutualisation” of procurement projects.

June’s incredibly close elections in the Netherlands decimated the traditional ruling party, the christian democrats, while providing neither the right nor the left with a clear majority. The Liberal Party, which came out largest by just one seat compared to Labor, has spearheaded the negotiations for a new government up until now, attempting, most recently, to come to a coalition with both christian democrats and Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party. Wilders is widely condemned on the political left for his Islamophobic, anti-immigration rhetoric but has fared well in recent years, more than doubling his seats in parliament in the last election.

Although much of Wilders’ support, particularly in the south of the country, comes from christian democrat voters, several conservative party leaders, among them three former prime ministers, have objected to the notion of governing with his platform in recent weeks. Former health secretary and current number two in the party, Ab Klink, channeled their concerns and persuaded two fellow parliamentarians to block the negotiations. Party leader Maxime Verhagen, simultaneously serving as caretaker foreign minister, ultimately managed to restore unity in his faction but lost Wilders’ confidence in the process.

Liberal Party leader and likely future prime minister Mark Rutte has proposed to pin down a coalition agreement himself now and seek support from other parties later. The notion is not without precedent. Wim Kok, before he became prime minister for the Labor Party in 1994, attempted a similar method and was successful in forming the country’s first Purple coalition, bringing together social democrats and liberals in a single government. It depends on the recommendations of other party leaders and Queen Beatrix whether Rutte gets his way or another, conventional round of negotiations follows first.

In either event, amassing sufficient support for a majority government under liberal leadership will prove difficult to accomplish. Few of the parties on the left, which together hold about half of the votes in parliament, are willing to implement the liberals’ rigorous spending cuts on health care and social security. Each day that the country remains without a government, the Netherlands’ public debt mounts with some €100 million. The next government, the liberals say, has to find some €18 billion in permanent spending cuts on a budget that equals more than 45 percent of GDP.

In Belgium the political uncertainty is all the greater. June’s elections there brought Flemish nationalists to power who are demanding greater autonomy for the northern, Dutch speaking part of the country. Compared to Flanders, southern, French speaking Wallonia is relatively backward. Unemployment is twice that of Flanders while the region is responsible for but a third of Belgium’s total economic output.

While in Flanders, the political right—the nationalists and christian democrats—won the elections, in Wallonia, the socialists are in the majority. These two camps, supplemented with smaller parties from the center, have to reach an agreement on the federal level to form a new government.

Socialist leader and chief negotiator Elio Di Rupo offered the Flemish significant financial reform, including a transfer of competences from federal to regional governments worth some €15 billion. “All conditions were there for the center of gravity to shift from the federal state to the federated entities,” he declared. But the nationalist balked at parallel requests to give Brussels—an independent, bilingual region within Flanders of which the population is largely French speaking—a fixed subsidy of €250 million to alleviate part of its massive debt burden.

Di Rupo finally tendered his resignation as negotiator with King Albert II on Friday after several attempts to reach a compromise failed, complaining, in a press conference, that “not all Dutch speaking politicians understand the sensitivities of the French speaking. They will not approve of an accord that heralds the impoverishment of Brussels and Wallonia,” he predicted. The Flemish, on the other hand, are largely tired of effectively subsidizing their southern neighbors for their lack of productivity. Any new administration will have to enact major legal and financial reform to further separate the two nations but with the political landscape so starkly divided, it seems unlikely that a government composed for a multitude of parties will have the mandate to do so.

Among the Dutch, the notion that Flanders should, once again, become part of the Netherlands is widely entertained these days. Modern day Belgium was part of the Netherlands between 1815 and 1839 when its secession was recognized in the Treaty of London. The Flemish now have reason to retort that their neighbors ought to get their own house in order before contemplating such schemes of reunion.

Yet at this point, there seems to be little difference between success and failure. Whatever happens on the ground, critics and officials still resort to the same old questions about the mission. 1) Is it actually possible for the United States to stem the Taliban’s momentum? 2) Can NATO achieve its security objectives if Afghan Government corruption continues to push the civilian population away? But more importantly: 3) Should the White House minimize its goals of rebuilding Afghan society to tracking down and killing international terrorists?

For most of 2010, the United States didn’t seem to know which direction they wanted to go in. Common wisdom would tell you that the US military is practicing a fully resourced counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign. And in many ways, US forces are following COIN to the letter. Soldiers are redeploying to populated areas; troops are trying to gain the trust of civilians; USAID is partnering with the Department of Defense and trying to bring some sense of economic development; the military is training Afghans to fight for themselves.

At the same time, the US are also in the middle of a global “War on Terror.” Special Operations forces routinely travel behind enemy lines, drones repeatedly strike against Taliban targets, and assassinations of high ranking Taliban commanders occur on a weekly basis.

A hybrid strategy is not necessarily a bad thing on its own. In a sense, the US is killing two birds with one stone; shaking hands with the good guys and killing the bad guys at the same time.

The problem is when the strategy collides with itself, or when the same people you are trying to coopt start to question whether you have ulterior motives. Take the arrest of Mohammed Zia Salehi as an example, who just so happens to be a top security advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Such an arrest seems compatible with America’s persistent calls for cleaner government in Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, the corrupt Salehi was also a vital informant to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Therein lies the flaw of America’s war plan. US officials prod and poke the Afghan Government to clean up its act, but then pay the very same Afghan officials for info on what is happening inside Karzai’s administration.  It’s the absolute epitome of double dealing and hypocrisy, and it’s making it look like Washington doesn’t know how to execute the war.

Of course, the CIA has been paying foreigners for decades. The agency did this quite effectively during the Cold War, when Langley partnered up with brutal governments in Latin America to contain the influence of Communism in that part of the world. The CIA did this again during the 1980s, when Afghan rebels were given cash, weapons, and machinery to combat the invading Soviets. And American intelligence continues to pay authoritarian Arab governments for tips and cooperation on terrorists and militants across the Middle East.  Bribing is a great tool to possess, and it works remarkably well when the people being bribed are in a state of greed or desperation.

The difference in those cases, however, is that the United States is not insisting that those governments or groups change their nature of doing business. Democratic resistance groups in Central America were given virtual freedom in how they fought the Sandinistas in the early 1980s. The mujahideen were not asked to respect women’s rights or moderate their political behavior before they received American weaponry. And Arab governments are generally not subjected to preconditions—as respect for democratic principles and journalistic integrity—before American aid flows into their hands.

The Salehi example is just the opposite. Afghans accept money for information, but later get prosecuted for accepting the money in the first place. It’s a classic dilemma between morality and security, and the US is still lost as to which side they want to embrace.

Perhaps this quote from an anonymous American official says it best: “In Iraq, we mobilized some pretty tough customers to help turn the tide against Al Qaeda. It made all the difference. People in this country shouldn’t forget that lesson. If they want to build a pure, pristine state, they shouldn’t choose spots like Iraq or Afghanistan for their social experiments.”

In other words, you’re not going to transform Afghanistan into another Switzerland or Sweden.

If the arrest of Salehi tells us one thing, it’s that the US is confused about what it’s actually trying to accomplish in Afghanistan. If it’s to rebuild Afghanistan in its entirety, then arresting and charging corrupt civil servants may be the correct course of action (although a year is not going to cover it). But if it’s simply to defeat Al Qaeda, then plowing fields, arresting corrupt politicians, and building schools may be overkill.