After eight years of protracted negotiations and a long session in Brussels last night, the 27 heads of state of the European Union announced they had finally chosen a foreign-policy czar and president for the 500-million-person economic juggernaut. The reviews are in, and they are far from kind.

Since the Czech Republic grumpily signed the Lisbon Treaty in October, the topic had become hotly debated in Europe and abroad, with papers and politicians handicapping the race. Would British Prime Minister Gordon Brown succeed in placing his Labour predecessor, Tony Blair, into the presidency -- beating out figures like Bertie Ahern? Might Carl Bildt, the respected Swedish foreign minister, take the foreign affairs job?

Not quite. In the end, the European leaders went with two virtual unknowns, at least outside of Brussels: Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy for president and Briton Catherine Ashton, a former leader of the House of Lords and current EU trade commissioner, for high representative for foreign policy.[[SHARE]]

Let's start with Van Rompuy. Germany and France reportedly backed "Haiku Herman" -- as he is known for his love of composing the Japanese poetic forms, though the British press has dubbed him "Rompuy-Pumpy" -- for the job, due to his bona fides as a Christian Democrat and a consensus-builder. Van Rompuy does not have a long list of European accomplishments: He has led Belgium for just a year, and became prime minister somewhat unexpectedly. But he has won plaudits for his wry humor and ability to please both his country's French and Flemish blocs, which are often at loggerheads.

Van Rompuy accepted the job by stating that he seeks to be "discreet" and that he will keep his personal thoughts "subordinate" to the wishes of the EU. But he has not met with such a considered and humble response. At least in the French and British press, he has been pilloried -- with papers calling him "charisma-starved," Euroskeptics declaring his selection a "stitch-up" (a conspiracy), and anonymous politicians and officials close to the 27-party negotiations expressing frank dismay with the choice.

And Ashton makes Van Rompuy look like Bill Clinton. By all available accounts -- the handful of them -- she is a respected Labour member, but by no means a household name in her own country. Thus far she has held a few domestic-policy posts, never won an election, and has been EU trade commissioner for just a year, during which time her greatest accomplishment has been the signing of a free-trade agreement with South Korea. She will now speak for Europe on issues like Afghanistan, manage a $10 billion aid budget and a staff of thousands, and replace Javier Solana, the current EU foreign-policy czar -- a charismatic politician with deep ties in Washington and the respect of the European political scene.

Ashton's appointment met with scalpels and cleavers from the press. Take, for instance, the sarcastic commentary of the right-leaning British Telegraph: "Bang go the reputations of Metternich and Talleyrand. European diplomacy has a dynamic new exponent and it is none other than Baroness Ashton of Upholland." (Ashton's is not a hereditary title, but an honorific given for government service when she became leader of the House of Lords.) Even Europhilic papers were unsparing.

Commenting on her appointment, Ashton appeared defensive, telling reporters, "I think for quite a few people, they would say I am the best for the job and I was chosen because I am." But her appointment means that big players like China and the United States will likely continue to privilege their bilateral relationships with individual countries and known entities like NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

It is difficult to argue that either Van Rompuy or Ashton were truly the most-qualified or best-prepared candidates for their respective jobs. By choosing such low-profile figures, Europe is essentially defining their responsibilities and expectations down. Van Rompuy had been mentioned before as a compromise option, but Ashton had not -- and the pick reportedly took her by surprise. After eight years of haggling and months of heated expectation, why would Europe pick such demonstrably low-profile figures?

One answer lies in the tension between the EU's diversity and its orientation towards consensus. Put simply, trying to please 27 different heads of state answering to 27 different constituencies on a continent with a panoply of political tendencies is difficult -- but a strong priority in Brussels. In his response to the appointment announcement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy noted that it was important the choice of leader made sure "no-one will feel excluded." Any forward-thinking or internationally renowned candidate (like Blair) was batted down by a partisan or disavowed interest to avoid Brussels' politicking long before the selection meeting.

Another answer -- one with more importance to the future of the European Union -- lies in the strongest European states: Britain, France, and Germany. Only Britain even sought to put its politicians into EU high office; France and Germany preferred to negotiate for powerful but lower-profile positions in the European Central Bank and European Commission. This eased the selection process and avoided the alienation of small states.

But it also revealed these countries' affection for the status quo. They already have strong bilateral relationships with countries like the United States and China, and seats at virtually every foreign-policy table of import. Were, say, a player like David Miliband to have taken the foreign-policy chair, or Jean-Claude Juncker the presidency, the big powers might sometimes have had to cede to Europe where they previously stood on their own. The choice of Ashton and Van Rompuy ensures those bilateral relationships will not be eroded or threatened or changed by the Lisbon Treaty. But it also ensures that, for now, the Lisbon Treaty will not accomplish its ostensible goal of giving the EU a louder voice on the international stage. In the end, perhaps that's what Europe really wanted.

State visits are all about harnessing symbolism. When Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971 to negotiate for Richard Nixon's historic visit, the Chinese agreed to time the announcement of the invitation so that the American press could hit their then-weekly news cycle. Nixon's visit the following year symbolized the end of more than 20 years of antagonism.

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All subsequent U.S. presidents visiting China have struggled with Nixon's legacy. Some things have changed since 1972, not least the antediluvian idea of a weekly news cycle, but presidential visits to China remain more symbolic than substantive. Years of diplomatic spade work drive actual policy changes, leaving government communication offices, pundits, and journalists to construct a narrative from stage-managed vignettes, choreographed meetings, and turgid communiqués, or to pull odds and ends from the margins. Different agendas produce different narratives, and sometimes the real picture emerges from the totality of coverage, like a poster emerging from a mosaic of small photographs.

That was the case with President Barack Obama's widely heralded visit to China. Expectations were high. China's significance in global affairs has blossomed in the past decade. A charismatic and more multilaterally inclined U.S. president, a resurgent and confident China, and a host of headline-dominating issues including climate change, trade, and the aftermath of the financial crisis suggested a visit that, while not approaching the magnitude of 1972, could at least be substantive.

Despite that potential, much of the pre-visit American coverage sounded defensive. In stories that ran in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and CNN, the messaging of the American government was clear: There is room for both of us; China's rise is not bad for America. Newsweek fretted about the decline of American influence in the Pacific under George Bush's presidency. In an AP story, an analyst suggested that the United States brought "nothing to the table in Asia." The coverage painted a picture of a chastened superpower, pleading for a stronger renminbi and acutely aware of owing nearly a trillion dollars to Beijing.

No such soul-searching was visible in the tightly managed pre-visit coverage of the Chinese press. Typically for such a high-level visit, the tone was set by Xinhua, the Chinese state-owned news service. Xinhua stories relayed the comments of various Chinese officials expressing confidence in the success of Obama's visit, although without offering a definition of what "success" entailed. The importance of trade relations was a dominant theme. China Daily, the main English language newspaper, offered a hopeful editorial praising Obama for being the first U.S. president to listen to the opinions of other nations.

Chinese and U.S. press coverage during the visit was no more convergent. Early U.S. coverage focused on the process, including the sudden evaporation of "Obamao" T-Shirts from stalls in Beijing and an attempt to apply American retail political methods to China via a "town hall" meeting with Shanghai university students. Were the students Party members? Were the questions planted? Obama's delicate balancing act in answering a question on Internet censorship was analyzed at length and widely disparaged ("I'm a big supporter of non-censorship" was the delicate formulation). USA Today noted how difficult it was for people not attending the town hall to watch it online or elsewhere. Chinese media, meanwhile, kept their focus squarely on the positive themes of the talk.

With the shift from Shanghai preliminaries to the headline activities in Beijing the momentum of the coverage changed. American media lost interest in the banquets and scripted formal events, sticking to terse stories on the anodyne pledges that emerged from the meetings. Even the joint press conference with Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao generated scant heat, possibly because there was little time for questions following the prepared statements. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China published a statement complaining about the truncated press conference. Obama did give an exclusive to the notoriously independent Chinese magazine Southern Weekend, but his published comments were safely diplomatic. Nevertheless, the interview was missing from print copies of Southern Weekend delivered to several foreign news bureaus in Beijing.

In contrast to American media, protocol-sensitive Chinese state media charged into overdrive during the formal activities. People's Daily, the main national Party newspaper, devoted its entire November 18^th front page to the ceremonies. In typical fashion, the stories were on-message recitations of the events, with deadpan headlines such as, "Hu hosts welcome ceremony for U.S. President Obama" and "China, US issue joint statement." As it did before the visit, state media set the tone for coverage throughout the Chinese press, emphasizing several familiar messages: "Obama supports the ‘One China' policy"; "Obama welcomes China as ‘strong, prosperous and successful'"; and that evergreen trope of Chinese state visits, "Obama impressed by the Great Wall". It wasn't electrifying, but it was consistent and relentlessly positive.

The Chinese government can steer the outcome of press coverage in ways that the American government must envy in its darker moments. Having declared the visit a success in advance, there was little doubt that it would be reported as such. Chinese Internet users, a better window to popular sentiment than state media and apparently immune to Obama's legendary charisma, were harsher in their judgment. They called the U.S. president out on protectionism, questioned the U.S. stance on Tibet, and raised other contentious issues.

Ultimately, the real story of Obama's visit emerged neither in the individual news stories nor in the dull communiqué, but in what Chinese and American coverage revealed about sentiment in the two nations. China's ascendance is a given. From the Chinese point of view, the visit was a trouble-free tour that offered a chance to showcase a U.S. president, still a potent international symbol of power, publicly reiterating a properly deferential position on China's rise.

The American conclusion was darker, perhaps reflecting national anxieties about American resolve and the relationship with China. Despite reported behind-the-scenes tough talk on human rights, several newspapers reflected on the visit's vague accomplishments and unanswered questions. And the San Francisco Chronicle rendered the most succinct and brutal judgment: "It was hardly three days that shook the world."

For those seeking a world-changing visit, it seems that Nixon's ghost still lingers in Beijing.

When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrives as U.S. President Barack Obama's first official state visitor this weekend, Washington will be pulling out all the bells and whistles to welcome the leader of the world's largest democracy. Many already fear that the meeting will begin with a bang only to end with a whimper -- in the form of a communiqué filled with little more than platitudes about ‘shared values' and a desire to deepen strategic cooperation.

Forget the worriers -- let's hope that this is the case. A clichéd, public declaration is what both sides should hope for. Because when it comes to India, the less said about what Washington and New Delhi are doing and plan to do, the more likely the two countries are to build a genuine, strategic relationship that will endure.

I'm explain what I mean by that in a second, but first: Why does India matter? In Washington, the India-U.S. relationship is a bipartisan win-win. For liberals, it makes sense for the world's most powerful democracy to offer a strategic hand to the world's most populous one. But India's charms are not only its democratic ways; realists like the country for its unquestionable position as the enemy of a potential enemy, i.e., China. New Delhi has been warily balancing and competing against Beijing from the very moment of India's independence in 1947. Even now, a low-level conflict is simmering in the disputed Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. China's nuclear weapons, stationed on the neighboring Tibetan Plateau, are frighteningly real for India. And New Delhi, like the rest of Asia, is carefully watching Beijing's navy build up to a point that already far exceeds what would be needed to prevent Taiwanese secession (the official reason given in Beijing's defense white paper.)

There are other important reasons to think India will matter in Asia in coming years, too. The country's economy, which has been in near-constant boom since 1991, is built on the backs of a population that will be larger than China's in several decades, with a much better age demographic. To be sure, the continued success of India's economic reform program -- they key to its continued rise -- is far from assured. (The same could be said of China.) But already, India has a vibrant and thriving middle class of 300 million people. This means it has a critical mass of people generating the economic resources needed to entrench New Delhi's status as not just a South Asian colossus but a major center of power within the Asian continent.

Then there's its military, where size still matters most of all, and India has the world's third largest force. New Delhi is developing a highly effective navy, including a fully operational aircraft carrier with plans for several more. Of course, it is also a nuclear armed power. But most importantly, India's political leaders have shown that they are not afraid to use their military. India rarely runs from a fight. As its generals boast, they have been in a constant state of war in Kashmir for decades. Neither conflicts nor casualties faze Indian politicians and elites.

The mere existence of a confident and formidable India acts as a formidable structural and strategic constraint against Chinese ambitions in South and Southeast Asia. But again, that's just the icing on the cake. India is ready to engage with the world, after years of standing aloof. New Delhi is planning to create more than 500 new positions in its Ministry of External Affairs over the next 10 years. The country has become a full dialogue partner of ASEAN, a regional economic grouping. And the U.S.-India partnership is getting good "buy in" from key states in Asia that do not feel nervous or threatened by India's rise. For example, New Delhi already conducts extensive joint naval exercises with Jakarta, and increasingly with Tokyo, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur.

This is where the virtue of subtlety comes in. Indian political, strategic, and social elites prize strategic "independence," or at least the appearance of it, above all else. India will not allow itself to become perceived as a dutiful and secondary player in any grand U.S. strategy -- one that is designed, for example, to manage China's rise. Joint statements declaring a grand bargain with the superpower would create domestic suspicions within India. After all, the era of British colonization, which only left behind an enduring fear of subjugation by foreign powers, only ended in 1947. Any suggestion of of a grand alliance with Washington would simply be too much too soon.

There is also another important reason why boring public statements are good. The security dynamic in Asia is still in a precarious flux, as many states try to hedge against the chance that China will rise, the United States (and Japan) will decline, and India will stagnate. And though almost all Asian states do not trust China, they do not feel comfortable with any arrangement that is explicitly designed to "contain" it. China is simply too important to the regional economy, and Beijing's diplomatic response to such a strategy is hard to predict. A case in point is the 2007 Quadrilateral Initiative involving ministerial level meetings between the United States, India, Japan and Australia in order to deepen military cooperation between the four countries. The Initiative raised Chinese hackles and made Southeast Asian states nervous, reluctant to explicitly ‘choose' between China and other great powers. And just a year later, the project was subsequently abandoned by the incoming Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Meanwhile, the emergence of India as a significant strategic player in East and Southeast Asia took Beijing by surprise, as did the rapid conclusion of a U.S.-India nuclear deal signed in 2008, which effectively legitimized India as a nuclear power and allowed it access to nuclear materials and technology. Beijing is watching Washington's blossoming relationship with New Delhi with greater interest than ever before. Many within the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples' Liberation Army desperately want irrefutable and public evidence that the U.S.-India relationship is a provocative one designed to prevent China from rising. This would provide Beijing with a convenient opening to justify its rapid military buildup, not to mention an excuse to escalate border tensions with New Delhi. When Obama and Singh emerge from the White House doors to give their public remarks, they should ensure that no such excuse becomes available.

Afghanistan's election crisis has temporarily abated, but Pakistan could soon face a volatile political transition of its own. President Asif Ali Zardari is under ever-increasing pressure to resign. His influence and power is dwindling and will likely continue to diminish in the coming months. By this spring, the Zardari presidency could meet its end.

There have been several waves of pressure on Zardari this year, coming primarily from the Army and segments of the private media -- both see Zardari as inept, corrupt, and unpatriotic. And it appears that the Army is entering into a decisive final stage in its power struggle with Zardari, which began with the latter's attempt last year to put the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the military's chief spy service, under civilian control. Until now, Zardari has called his opponents' bluff, and they, lacking the constitutional means to remove him, have faltered in their attempts to oust him. But cracks in Zardari's political coalition are emerging and he is more vulnerable now than ever.

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Pakistani politics has historically been marked by extreme bandwagoning around an ascending power broker. Smaller parties ride it to the top, but once the political peak has been reached, they vacate their defensive positions and join the attacking side.

Zardari is fast falling prey to this dynamic. In a recent television interview, for instance, Altaf Hussain, head of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) -- a second-tier political party and member of Zardari's coalition government -- asked the president to resign. Hussain has since backtracked after MQM parlays with Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). But the MQM and other parties successfully prevented the PPP from renewing the 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), an amnesty bill that benefitted Zardari and other members of the coalition government.

Without this parliamentary protection, Zardari and his allies are now exposed, wounded, and the sharks smell blood in the water. Some would like to leave him limbless -- without meaningful constitutional powers to impact the political process -- but alive enough to make key concessions and serve as a figurehead. Others are aiming for the jugular.

The Pakistani Army, by all indications, would like to see Zardari go, having tried to push him closer to the exit door in March and August of this year. Zardari's accidental presidency, which was produced by his wife's assassination and political deal making to secure an indirect election, was never quite accepted by the Army, which sees him as overly dovish, if not "traitorous," on security issues, like India, and is on edge about the president's attempts to impose civilian oversight over the military.

The scheduled retirement of Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in November 2010 is likely to add further strain to this relationship. Zardari, as president, has the power to appoint the head of the Army and other military services. His dysfunctional relationship with the Army could create a sense of uncertainty within the institution and fear that its corporate autonomy and monopoly over shaping national security policy are under threat. As Pakistan battles a hydra-headed insurgency in its Pashtun belt and the United States seeks an endgame in Afghanistan, healthy civil-military relations in Pakistan are critical.

Most political elements -- including Zardari's own prime minister and his party's vice chairman, Yousuf Raza Gilani -- would settle for him to be constitutionally neutered, ending the president's ability to dissolve parliament and appoint military service chiefs. Gilani seeks an empowered premiership. And toward this end (some Pakistani commentators speculate, with good reason), he has been colluding with the Army and elements of the opposition to weaken Zardari's position.

However Gilani is playing his cards, he has a difficult balancing act to maintain, for he could be discarded if and when Zardari is ousted by the Machiavellian maneuvering of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who covets a third shot at the premiership. Gilani could, at least for the next year, be an asset for Sharif -- serving to neutralize Zardari and constitutionally empower the presently weakened office of prime minister. It would make political sense for Sharif to then push for midterm elections just after the economic and security climate bottoms out and once the prime minister's office is fully empowered. (One can almost hear Sharif's advisors saying, "Let Gilani, Zardari, and the PPP do the dirty work.") To serve as prime minister for the third time, Sharif would need a constitutional amendment passed by a two-thirds majority in parliament to lift a two-term limit on the premiership. Sharif can only get this passed via deal making with other political parties, but the Army can also get in the mix, make some deals of its own, and shut out Sharif.

But when it comes to Zardari's fight for political survival, it's the second-tier political parties, such as the MQM, that are the true wildcards. Since no party in Pakistan currently holds a parliamentary majority, the smaller parties have a veto power on parliamentary votes (such as for impeachment). Not surprisingly, these parties are using their wild-card status -- coupled with Zardari's vulnerability -- as a bargaining chip in order to influence his actions to their benefit. The MQM, for example, would like governorship of Sindh and to retain administrative control over urban areas of the province. But it and other small parties generally side with the dominant or rising power broker. The recent MQM push against Zardari signals, at least, a political consensus in favor of a weakened Zardari.

If these parties continue to successfully manipulate Zardari he will become a ceremonial president, which would result in nothing short of a political prison. It would deny him tangible power and delay his eligibility for a run for the National Assembly, and thus for the premiership, until two years after his presidential term ends. What's more, internal divisions within the PPP are sure to increase as Zardari's capacity to influence events declines and alternative power centers grow in his place.

Zardari's decline has serious implications for U.S. policy toward Pakistan. His political neutralization would deny the United States a local civilian lever against the Pakistan Army. Restraining the Army's praetorianism, some in Washington argue, will markedly reduce its support for militants in Afghanistan and India, as Pakistan's major political parties (particularly the PPP) are far more inclined toward normalizing ties with neighboring states.

As the challenges in Afghanistan grow and Zardari weakens, Washington becomes increasingly dependent on the Pakistani Army. In fact, U.S. success or failure in Afghanistan will, in part, be decided by the Pakistani Army, which can influence the tempo and trajectory of the war with its control of supply routes from the Arabian Sea into Afghanistan and unparalleled access to Afghan insurgent groups.

Although the United States could try to use Sharif -- a vocal advocate of civilian control over the military -- he has a long history of leveraging anti-American sentiment and has been unwilling to adopt a firm position against the Taliban. Furthermore, if Washington indelicately shifts its patronage from Zardari to Sharif, the Army could intercept the telegraphed pass.

Within the next few years, Zardari's political demise could also impact Pakistan's ideological balance of power. Without meaningful internal reform, the future of the PPP -- Pakistan's largest center-left party -- is at stake. Zardari's unpopularity and inability to legitimately lay claim to the Bhutto name has weakened the PPP in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province. But he, at least, provides some nominal continuity from the Bhutto era as Benazir's widower.

Internal elections and a reinvigorated push for social justice could bring the PPP back to relevancy. But without that change, the PPP could be reduced to a feudal strip in southern Punjab and rural Sindh, and of declining importance in an increasingly urbanized Pakistan. Indeed, for Zardari, the greatest challenge is not to save his presidency, but to save his party.

The PPP is both a family enterprise dominated by the Bhuttos and Zardaris and a national institution that anchors Pakistan's secularists and leftists. If the PPP sank along with Zardari, Pakistan would be without a truly national party -- the remaining major parties are ethnic or regional -- and the odds of ethnic and political fragmentation would increase dramatically. A leaderless left would also embolden the nationalist and Islamic right as Pakistan confronts jihadis at home and debates whether to continue supporting them in the region. And so as Zardari ponders his political future, let us hope that he does not bring down his party, which is critical to his nation's stability, in a bid to save his imperiled presidency.

The greatest shock of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's murderous spree at Fort Hood last week may not have been the spree itself, but the fact that it was the first of its kind in the United States. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Muslims in America have been subject to innumerable stresses, including discrimination and the strain of divided loyalties in their country's eight-year-long war against Muslims in the Middle East and Central Asia. The confusion is enough to inspire conflict in the minds of even the most patriotic of American Muslims in the U.S., let alone young Muslim GIs directly exposed to enemy propaganda. The fact that one unstable member of this community finally erupted in violence should be no surprise.

The conventional wisdom is that unlike Europe's discontented Muslims, America's Muslims are prosperous and happy, having benefited from the welcoming embrace of our "melting pot" nation. This is basically a complacent fiction. According to a Gallup poll released in March 2009, while Muslim integration in the United States has been more successful than in Europe, Muslims remain less civically engaged in American society and less inclined to view their social position positively than any other religious group.[[SHARE]]

These attitudes have hardened since the attacks of Sept. 11, with American Muslims increasingly choosing not to assimilate into American society and instead finding solace in their religious identity. For example, exclusionary Muslim students' associations on college campus have grown, as have Islamic schools and Muslim radio stations and publications. These initiatives may resemble those taken by other religious and ethnic groups in the United States since the nineteenth century to promote acceptance and assimilation.

But the Muslim situation differs. As a relatively well-integrated minority, Muslims were able to protect their considerable stake in America -- American Muslims' income is slightly above the national average -- by keeping a low profile. Sept. 11 rocked their quiet world, abruptly placing them in a conspicuous and tortuous position. The domestic aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, including physical attacks on Muslims in the streets, being singled out for airport security screenings and in other forms of surveillance, and biased media treatment, implied that suppressing their Muslim identity was better for their health, that they couldn't take their civil rights for granted, and that their interests depended on the absence of serious future attacks within the United States.

At the same time, many Muslims also found the moral territory of those years murkier than the average American did, results from a 2007 Pew Research Center survey suggest. The Sept. 11 attacks appeared to be retaliation for policies, like unbending U.S. support of Israel, that American Muslims themselves tended to disapprove of. Muslims were also less supportive of the American reaction to the attacks: military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and indefinite detention and torture of terrorist suspects. And many Muslims perceived the implementation of the U.S. Patriot Act as biased. Thus, to most U.S. Muslims, maintaining a low profile simply by demonstrating unalloyed approval of their adopted country's policies would have been unprincipled and unpalatable. Yet the absence of a fervently patriotic response only confirmed the suspicions of many non-Muslim Americans.

In turn, the evolving attitudes of non-Muslim Americans toward their Muslim compatriots have been more conducive to Muslim alienation than assimilation. According to a 2006 Gallup poll, a third of Americans admire "nothing" about the Muslim world. Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslims. A July 2007 Newsweek survey indicated that 46 percent of Americans think that the United States is accepting too many Muslim immigrants, 32 percent consider American Muslims less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam, 28 percent believe that the Koran condones violence, 41 percent are convinced that Islamic culture "glorifies suicide," 54 percent are "worried" about Islamic jihadists in the U.S., and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques. Since Sept. 11, Muslims have faced increasing racism, employment and housing discrimination, and vandalism. Media coverage dwelling on the violence associated with radical Islam and ignoring the respectable lifestyles of most American Muslims, along with Christian right-wing rhetoric casting the campaign against terrorism as a clash of religions, has contributed to the public's misunderstanding of Islam.

Despite all this, American Muslims have generally resisted radicalization, and have almost universally rejected violent protest or reaction. Post-9/11 fears that a Muslim fifth column would coalesce in this country have not remotely been realized. But the Fort Hood massacre arguably showed that the continued civility of the Muslim population against undeniable pressures cannot be taken for granted. To preserve it, the American public will have to resist the paranoia to which last week's tragedy could potentially lead.

Instead, Barack Obama should use his bully pulpit to fight for the better treatment and monitoring of vulnerable Muslim service-members, to avoid another tragedy. Following his stern and eloquent eulogy, Obama should offer another speech emphasizing that Fort Hood was an anomaly and that the very rareness of such incidents illuminates the overall loyalty of American Muslims and the need to protect that population.

Then, he should follow up his words with policy changes. The fact that Hasan was psychologically disturbed does not negate the larger point that soldiers cannot be expected to function well in the service of their country for a cause that they oppose. Accordingly, with the United States in direct combat with Muslims on two fronts and engaged in a broader global counterterrorism campaign in which the antagonists are Muslims, the attitudes of Muslim service members need to be closely monitored. The sharp opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the belief that Muslims should not be sent to fight other Muslims voiced by Hasan at Walter Reed Hospital in mid-2007 should have raised a red flag even without evidence of mental imbalance or contact with radical clerics because the military imperatives of unit cohesion and strong morale would have counseled against his continued service. The White House should ensure that the services, the Pentagon, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force institutionalize better interagency early-warning mechanisms for detecting attitudes that render personnel unsuitable for service before they become alienated from their country.

Second, evidence has emerged that Hasan's turn toward radicalism and violence was partly driven by the taunts of fellow soldiers. The relative ease with which the Army was integrated after World War II demonstrates how effective military discipline can be in advancing individual rights when purposefully applied. Since military service is an extraordinarily sensitive issue for Muslims, Obama should immediately direct the chiefs of staff of all of the military services to redouble efforts to enforce antidiscrimination standards. Then a broader antidiscrimination effort, perhaps informed by a General Accountability Office study on anti-Muslim bias, should be extended to other agencies.

Increased vigilance for the few Muslims who may stray from the nonviolent norm is essential. But Fort Hood's principal legacy should be a greater commitment to ensuring, through accommodation of political and religious sensitivity and equality of treatment, that American Muslims don't suffer for their loyalty to their country.

Fourteen years after its brutal war ended, Bosnia is today in political, if not literal, turmoil. Half of the country is deadlocked in a feud with the international governor, the High Representative. And a meeting this week of the Peace Implementation Council, setup in 1995 to monitor the peace accord, could prove decisive in moving forward. With the status quo unviable, the council will have to decide between reinforcing the existing, international executive authority in Bosnia or transitioning to a new, forward-looking approach based on ever-increasing integration into the European Union and NATO.

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The trouble started back in September. Bosnia is divided into two main political-territorial parts, and the Serb half, Republika Srpska, rejected a series of decisions imposed by the Office of the High Representative, Bosnia's international governor. Some were technical and innocuous, but others -- relating to control over the electric monopoly -- were controversial. In theory, the High Representative can impose virtually any law without review by national authorities. But this crisis shows his practical ability to enforce decisions has been weakened or even curtailed. The Serbs have since threatened to pull out of common Bosnian institutions if the High Representative imposed any other laws. There is no obvious way out of this confrontation, and further escalation would threaten Bosnia's hard-won stability and viability as a common state.

Rather than backing the High Representative as they have done in the past, the United States and the European Union launched talks in October between Bosniak, Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat leaders to break the impasse. At the "Butmir talks" -- so called because they are taking place at the Butmir military base near Sarajevo  -- Washington and Brussels presented a package of constitutional reforms. These are part of a broader attempt to move the country toward EU and NATO membership, thus stabilizing it and allowing the Office of the High Representative to close.

Ideally, Bosnia's leaders would accept the EU-U.S. proposal in its entirety. It is a good compromise and the most that can be hoped for under trying circumstances. But time is running out. The High Representative's conflict with Republika Srpska has been frozen for two months as the Butmir talks have been ongoing. But it will not stay frozen for much longer, as Bosnia's parties gear up for what promises to be a tense campaign leading to next year's general elections. If negotiations achieve little or only partial agreement on the proposed reforms, as now looks likely, the international community will be left with only two choices.

The first option would be to strengthen the Office of the High Representative. That may require sacking obstinate Bosnian political leaders -- something the High Representative has the right to do but has not done in years. The trouble with this option is that the office has no public support among Serbs, meaning that enforcing decisions might entail a very real show of force, potentially from the small peacekeeping mission still in Bosnia. Forcing tough political choices would also entrench Bosnia's position as an international protectorate, where ultimate political responsibility lies with international rather than democratically elected leaders. It would buy stability at the expense of a big step backward in Bosnia's viability as a state.

A more forward-looking approach would be to reinforce the Bosnian state, close the Office of the High Representative, and put in place new, strong stabilizing measures based on close EU engagement coupled with continual U.S. and NATO involvement.

The EU has long been eager to take on new responsibilities in Bosnia. A new special representative should have a stronger mandate that enables the envoy to call out parties and persons who are in noncompliance with the Dayton Agreement, barring them from further EU benefits. The EU will equally need to be the guarantor of the Dayton Peace Agreement, seeing the process through to final implementation.

What makes this arrangement different from the current High Representative is executive power -- which the new EU representative would lack. He or she would be there to facilitate Bosnia's political process, and make decisions on the disbursement or restriction of EU financial aid to Bosnia. Such a mechanism would ensure that political pressure would remain while still giving Bosnia's leaders something they have never really had before: responsibility for their country.

At the same time, the U.N. Security Council should renew the mandates of both EUFOR and NATO for at least one more year, endorsing their authority to maintain Bosnia's security under the Dayton Peace Agreement. In addition, both the EU and NATO should invite Bosnia to apply for membership and spell out the conditions for joining both organizations.

Meanwhile at Butmir, the EU and United States should work toward getting agreement on the urgent reforms necessary for Bosnia's next stage in EU integration: candidacy status. These include authorizing the state to make commitments to the EU and implement obligatory EU reforms, including ensuring that the constitution is compliant with the European Convention of Human Rights and improving the state's administrative and legislative capacity.

There is no viable middle ground here between these two options. The current situation -- an endless stalemate -- risks bringing the state to a standstill and derailing its EU ambitions. Keeping the High Representative's office in its present form, with broad authority but without the ability to enforce it, is dangerous. It's time for a new approach. Full Bosnian responsibility, reinforced by the EU and NATO, offers the best insurance against fragmentation and stagnation and the best chance to for Bosnia to become the mature and normal state its citizens deserve.

As swine flu was spreading around the globe this spring, a senior disease specialist from the World Health Organization (WHO) held an urgent conference call with top British health officials. In the conversation this May, later described as "aggressive" by sources familiar with the discussion, the WHO official accused the British of concealing the extent of their country's swine-flu outbreak. Among those with swine-flu symptoms, Britain was only counting people who had traveled to places that, like Mexico, had already confirmed an outbreak of the virus, known to scientists as H1N1. Their method left much to be desired in a country where the virus was already spreading fast. Countless Britons fell sick and were intentionally left uncounted.

Governments, of course, have a long history of concealing outbreaks, and this year's flu pandemic, while the first of this particular century, was certainly not the first to be brushed under the rug. The consequences of cloaking swine flu weren't disastrous on this occasion, but the result will not always be so benign. In fact, at this very moment, another virus -- with the potential to be far more devastating -- is continuing to seed infections, frustrating efforts to root it out. That virus, H5N1, or avian flu, is a far more lethal strain. And you guessed it: front-line countries' records in candidly reporting the disease's spread don't bode well.

If there's one thing past pandemics have taught, it's that curing the world of flu is impossible unless countries are upfront about their outbreaks. Armed with that vital information, health officials can take steps to slow the spreading infection and, if containment fails, ramp up emergency medical care and other vital services. Without timely disclosures, it's much harder for virus hunters to discover how an emerging disease attacks its victims and transmits to others; it's also much tougher to get virus samples for study in the lab.

Given all this, why would governments try to keep down their official infection tallies? Most likely, fear of stigma and all the economic consequences that follow. When the WHO placed its call to London last spring, the agency was still weighing whether to raise its state of alert and declare that the swine flu epidemic was a full-blown pandemic, a dramatic step that would signal all countries to ready themselves for the brunt of the new virus. It was clear that the virus was spreading in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the United States and Mexico. But under the agency's criteria, a pandemic could be declared only if "community-level outbreaks" were confirmed in more than one region of the world. If Britain acknowledged that the virus was spreading widely, that would add Europe to the list and push the outbreak across the pandemic threshold.

London's concerns are understandable. The epidemic of 2009 might have been dubbed the British flu, just as the Spanish flu of 1918 got its name not from its place of origin but from one of the first countries to honestly report the epidemic's arrival. (In 2009, perhaps having learned their lesson, the Spanish also withheld information about their swine-flu outbreaks, according to sources familiar with Spain's reporting.)

Of course, some countries do get high marks on swine flu, including the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, which has won international credit for sharing information about the epidemic in his country and acting very aggressively to contain it. Even China has been open this time, having been burned by criticism of a completely opaque epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that went on for three months in 2002 before the epidemic was confirmed.

But the world hasn't changed. And the H1N1 flu experience recalls concerns over the emergent H5N1 strain, which is still circulating silently in Asia and Africa. For most people sickened by swine flu, it's no worse than the regular, seasonal bug. But avian flu kills more than half of those who catch it. Until now, bird flu hasn't gotten the hang of passing easily from one person to another. But it might take only a few genetic tweaks for this virus to become highly contagious. Tens of millions could die.

Already, a number of Asian governments have covered up their bird-flu outbreaks. Part of the reason for the opacity is that bird flu mostly afflicts chickens and ducks, not humans. That puts the disease squarely in the purview of agriculture officials, who often have an interest in protecting farming businesses and promoting exports rather than publicizing outbreaks that could spook consumers, precipitate culls, or prompt export bans. In many countries, those agriculture officials wield huge government budgets and associated patronage that can easily outmuscle their technocratic counterparts at health ministries.

Chinese government scientists, for instance, were aware that bird flu was sickening livestock in Guangdong province as early as 1996, but agriculture officials over the following years refused to acknowledge repeated outbreaks. Beijing responded furiously after international researchers a decade later identified southern China as the source of several waves of infection that had spread both westward toward Europe and south into Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, local livestock officials and veterinarians at the agriculture ministry had proof in the summer of 2003 that H5N1 had struck commercial poultry farms outside Hanoi. But only after people started dying did Vietnam confirm the outbreaks early the next year.

In Thailand, it took several months of private sleuthing by an elderly virologist at Mahidol University to force the Bangkok government to confirm that bird flu was burning through the country's flocks in early 2004. Senior Thai agriculture officials had been reassuring farmers that the poultry deaths were just a minor case of fowl cholera, complicated by bronchitis and aggravated by an abrupt change in the weather. Indonesian agriculture officials were notified of bird-flu outbreaks in mid-2003 too, but by the time Jakarta acknowledged them in early 2004, the virus had spread throughout much of the archipelago. The country's director of animal health later said that eight of the country's largest farming conglomerates lobbied top agriculture officials and even then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri to keep the outbreaks quiet. Today, the virus is endemic across almost all of Indonesia, making the country perhaps the most likely source of any new pandemic bird flu strain.

Chastened, some Asian governments have become serious about eradicating bird flu, in particular Vietnam and Thailand. But the virus keeps coming back, and there are still many reasons to doubt that agricultural authorities are reporting each new outbreak.

It's not just in Asia or the developing world that agricultural interests wield such influence. This year, the U.S. pork lobby successfully convinced Washington policymakers to stop referring to swine flu by that name, though the virus almost certainly came from a pig. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, allied with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Animal Health Organization, successfully prevailed on the WHO's leadership to drop the label swine flu for the unwieldy designation of "Pandemic (H1N1) 2009."

With their livelihoods on the line, farmers and their government advocates from Cambodia to Kansas are wary of efforts to identify new virus strains in their flocks. Meanwhile, most of the previously unknown diseases that have struck people in recent decades have originated in animals, ranging from SARS and West Nile virus to HIV/AIDS and Ebola. The link between animal and human health remains largely ignored. We believe swine flu originated in pigs, but no one detected the virus before it infected people. And as bad as swine flu may prove to be, the next infectious disease to jump from livestock to people could be far worse. We need to be able to see it coming.

Mahmoud Abbas is in a bind. Faced with a seemingly insurmountable impasse to negotiations with Israel, the Palestinian Authority president can either resign from his PLO chairmanship or come up with some serious, unilateral action to break the deadlock. With hopes that Barack Obama would stand up to the right-wing Israeli leadership dashed, an unwillingness to return to violent resistance, and the inability to resign his presidency of the PA in protest, the Palestinian leader has no alternative but to declare a Palestinian state unilaterally.

The first question one might ask of the leader who has yet been unable to deliver a solution for his people is simply: Why not resign? Indeed fresh leadership, some argue, is just what the situation needs. But the Basic Law of the Palestinian Authority stipulates that such a resignation would prompt presidential elections within 60 days. With the recently released pro-Hamas Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Abdel Aziz Duwaik, poised to become that leader should a vote proceed, resignation is not an option for the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader.
 
So Abbas is left with unilateral action. The idea to declare independence is not new; a similar Declaration of Independence was made in Algiers in1988, setting forth Palestinians’ historic compromise by accepting the two-state solution: An independent and free state of Palestine alongside a safe and secure state of Israel. The declaration came at the height of the relatively nonviolent Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, dubbed the intifada, and forced the PLO to accept the two-state solution as a means to end the occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip. The declaration was welcomed by more than 100 countries.
 
Then what happened? The unilateral declaration failed to significantly alter the reality on the ground. In the ensuing years, the Oslo peace process failed to produce an end to the occupation, and Palestinians began searching for an alternative to the talks. The process’s five-year interim period expired in May 1999, leaving many Palestinians worried that the status quo of occupation would become a permanent reality. After the failed Camp David II talks, the violence of the second intifada, and finally, the tragedy of September 11, there was little remaining chance that a unilateral action would succeed. Washington had no stomach for any Palestinian action that was opposed by Israel, and the staunchly pro-Israel U.S. Congress issued a number of sharply worded resolutions against such declarations of Palestinian statehood.
 
But today is not then. A decade has elapsed since the end of the interim period, and for the last five years, the Palestinian Authority has been led by the moderate Abbas. He deeply believes in negotiations and has delivered near total security in cooperation with Israel and the United States. So while unilateralism does not provide any guarantee of success, it does offer the potential to help a frustrated leader, whose every effort has yet to yield a firm solution, sort out some of the dilemmas facing Palestinians now.
 
A declaration of independence would allow the Palestinians to demarcate a state covering territory that best reflects minimal Palestinian requirements -- without having to negotiate those red lines. This is particularly important because the building of Israeli settlements has continued in Palestinian territories, encroaching on the lines drawn in the Road Map. These settlements were the very reason that Mahmoud Abbas decided to give up on what appears to be a useless peace process – one that gives more and more of the Palestinians’ land away. Unilaterally declaring his own lines may be the only choice remaining.

Any such unilateral Palestinian action will also  push the ball not only into the Israeli court, but into the court of Western countries, especially the United States and members of the European Union. These countries will be hard pressed to oppose a Palestinian declaration following years of failed negotiations by a moderate leader such as Abbas, who is so clearly committed to a nonviolent resolution to the conflict. Western powers would also find it difficult to refuse recognition of a state declared within the internationally recognized borders of June 4, 1967.
 
Israel can be expected to move quickly to nip this unilateral eventuality in the bud.  Israeli leaders know that if the idea sees the light of day, it may develop a dynamic of its own. But the Palestinian leadership, the Israelis, and to a lesser degree the Americans, have only themselves to blame for allowing a conflict as volatile as that of today’s Middle East to unravel. If reaching an independent Palestinian state is in the national interest of the United States, as President Obama has said, then it would be ill advised to deny that inevitability to Palestinians -- whether they achieve it through negotiations or unilateral action.