Jim Castle is a friend of mine. I have known him since we were graduate students in Indonesia in the late 1960s. While I labored in academe he went on to found and grow CastleAsia into what is arguably the most highly regarded private-sector consultancy for informing and interfacing expatriate and domestic investors and managers in Indonesia. Friday mornings he hosts a breakfast gathering of business executives at his favorite hotel, the JW Marriott in the Kuningan district of Jakarta.

Or he did, until the morning of July 17, 2009. On that Friday, shortly before 8am, a man pulling a suitcase on wheels strolled into the Marriott's Lobby Lounge, where Jim and his colleagues were meeting, and detonated the contents of his luggage. We know that the bomber was at least outwardly calm from the surveillance videotape of his relaxed walk across the lobby to the restaurant.

He wore a business suit, presumably to deflect attention before he blew himself up. Almost simultaneously, in the Airlangga restaurant at the Ritz Carlton hotel across the street, a confederate destroyed himself, killing or wounding a second set of victims. As of this writing, the toll stands at nine dead (including the killers) and more than 50 injured.

On learning that Jim had been at the meeting in the Marriott, I became frantic to find out if he were still alive. A mere 16 hours later, to my immense relief, he answered my e-mail. He was out of hospital, having sustained what he called "trivial injuries", including a temporary loss of hearing. Of the nearly 20 people at the roundtable meeting, however, four died and others were badly hurt. Jim's number two at CastleAsia lost part of a leg.

The same Marriott had been bombed before, in 2003. That explosion killed 12 people. Eight of them were Indonesian citizens, who also made up the great majority of the roughly 150 people wounded in that attack - and most of these Indonesian victims were Muslims. This distribution undercut the claim of the country's small jihadi fringe to be defending Islam's local adherents against foreign infidels.

But if last Friday's killers hoped to gain the sympathy of Indonesians this time around by attacking Jim and his expatriate colleagues and thereby lowering the proportion of domestic casualties, they failed. Of the 37 victims whose names and nationalities were known as of Monday, 60% were Indonesians, and that figure was almost certain to rise as more bodies were identified. The selective public acceptance of slaughter to which the targeting of infidel foreigners might have catered is, of course, grotesquely inhumane.

Since Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was first elected president in 2004, Indonesia's real gross domestic product has averaged around 6% annual growth. In 2008 only four of East Asia's 19 economies achieved rates higher than Indonesia's 6.1% (Vietnam, Mongolia, China and Macau). In the first quarter of 2009, measured year-on-year, while the recession-hit economies of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand all shrank, Indonesia's grew 4.4%. In the first half of 2009, the Jakarta Stock Exchange soared.

The economy is hardly all roses. Poverty and corruption remain pervasive. Unemployment and underemployment persist. The country's infrastructure badly needs repair. And the economy's performance in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) has been sub-par: The US$2 billion in FDI that went to Indonesia in 2008 was less than a third of the $7 billion inflow enjoyed by Thailand's far smaller economy, notwithstanding Indonesia's far more stable politics.

Nevertheless, all things considered, the macro-economy in Yudhoyono's first term did reasonably well. We may never know whether the killer at the Marriott aimed to maximize economic harm. According to another expat consultant in Jakarta, Kevin O'Rourke, the day's victims included 10 of the top 50 business leaders in the city. "It could have been a coincidence," he said, or the bombers could have "known just what they were doing".

Imputing rationality to savagery is tricky business. But the attackers probably did hope to damage the Indonesian economy, notably foreign tourism and investment. In that context, the American provenance and patronage of the two hotels would have heightened their appeal as targets. Although the terrorists may not have known these details, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is an independently operated division of Marriott International, Inc, which owns the JW Marriott brand, and both firms are headquartered on the outskirts of Washington DC.

Second-round revenge against the Marriott may also have played a role - assaulting a place that had rebuilt and recovered so quickly after being attacked in 2003. Spiteful retribution may have influenced the decision to re-attack the Kuta tourist area in Bali in 2005 after that neighborhood's recovery from the bomb carnage of 2002. Arguable, too, is the notion that 9/11 in 2001 was meant to finish the job started with the first bombing of the Twin Towers in 1993. And in all of these instances, the economy - Indonesian or American - suffered the consequences.

Panic buttons are not being pushed, however. Indonesian stock analyst Haryajid Ramelan's expectation seems plausible: that confidence in the economy will return if those who plotted the blasts are soon found and punished, and if investors can be convinced that these were "purely terrorist attacks" unrelated to domestic politics.

Sympathy for terrorism in Indonesia is far too sparse for Friday's explosions to destabilize the country. But they occurred merely nine days after Yudhoyono's landslide re-election as president on July 8, with three months still to go before the anticipated inauguration of his new administration on October 20. That timing ensured that some would speculate that the killers wanted to deprive the president of his second five-year term.

The president himself fed this speculation at his press conference on July 18, the day after the attacks. He brandished photographs of unnamed shooters with handguns using his picture for target practice. He reported the discovery of a plan to seize the headquarters of the election commission and thereby prevent his democratic victory from being announced. "There was a statement that there would be a revolution if SBY wins," he said, referring to himself by his initials.

"This is an intelligence report," he continued, "not rumors, nor gossip. Other statements said they wished to turn Indonesia into [a country like] Iran. And the last statement said that no matter what, SBY should not and would not be inaugurated." Barring information to the contrary, one may assume that these reports of threats were real, whether or not the threats themselves were. But why share them with the public?

Perhaps the president was defending his decision not to inspect the bomb damage in person - a gesture that would have shown sympathy for the victims while reassuring the population. He had wanted to go, he said, "But the chief of police and others suggested I should wait, since the area was not yet secure. And danger could come at any time, especially with all of the threats I have shown you. Physical threats."

Had Yudhoyono lost the election, or had he won it by only a thin and hotly contested margin, his remarks might have been read as an effort to garner sympathy and deflect attention from his unpopularity. The presidential candidates who lost to his landslide, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Jusuf Kalla, have indeed criticized how the July 8 polling was handled. And there were shortcomings. But even without them, Yudhoyono would still have won. In this context, speaking as he did from a position of personal popularity and political strength, the net effect of his comments was probably to encourage public support for stopping terrorism.

One may also note the calculated vagueness of his references to those - "they” - who wished him and the country harm. Not once in his speech did he refer to Jemaah Islamiyah, the network that is the culprit of choice for most analysts of the twin hotel attacks. Had he directly fingered that violently jihadi group, ambitious Islamist politicians such as Din Syamsuddin - head of Muhammadiyah, the country's second-largest Muslim organization - would have charged him with defaming Islam because Jemaah Islamiyah literally means "the Islamic group" or "the Islamic community".

One may hope that Din's ability to turn his Islamist supporters against jihadi terrorism and in favor of religious freedom and liberal democracy will someday catch up to his energy in policing language. Yet Yudhoyono was right not to mention Jemaah Islamiyah. Doing so would have complicated unnecessarily the president's relations with Muslim politicians whose support he may need when it comes to getting the legislature to turn his proposals into laws. Nor is it even clear that Jemaah Islamiyah is still an entity coherent enough to have, in fact, masterminded last Friday's attacks.

Peering into the future, one may reasonably conclude that the bombings' repercussions will neither annul Yudhoyono's landslide victory nor derail the inauguration of his next administration. Nor will they do more than temporary damage to the Indonesian economy. As for the personal aspect of what happened Friday, while mourning the dead, I am grateful that Jim and others, foreign and Indonesian, are still alive.

Donald K Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford University. He is a co-author of Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam (Stanford University Press, November 2009) and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (Stanford/ISEAS, 2008).

Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

CISAC is pleased to announce that 14 seniors have been selected to participate in its Undergraduate Honors Program in International Security Studies. 

The program provides an opportunity for eligible students focusing on international security subjects in any field to earn an honors certificate.

Students selected intern with a security-related organization, attend the program's honors college in Washington, D.C. in September, participate in a year-long core seminar on international security research, and produce an honors thesis with policy implications.

• Bertram Ang
  Departments of Economics & Political Science
  Restructuring of the Military Mindset
• Amir Badat
  Program in International Relations
  Nuclear Disarmament and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• Daniel Cassman
  Departments of Political Science & Computer Science
  The Restart of Ended Civil Wars
• Philippe de Koning
  Program in International Relations
  Minor in Economics
  The Influence of North Korea and China on Japanese Militarization
• Daniel Leifer
  Department of Biology
  Rapid Mobilization of Health Care Workers in Times of Crisis
• Ashley Lohmann
  Program in International Relations
  Tactical Change by Middle Eastern Terrorist Organizations, 1970-2004
• Raffi Mardirosian
  Department of Economics & Public Policy Program
  The Adaptability of Terrorists and Rogue Nations to Financial Methods of Preventing WMD Proliferation and other Breaches of National Security
• Ben Picozzi
  Department of Philosophy
  Minor in Classical Languages
  Norms and International Security with Respect to the Responsibility to Protect
• Amir Ravandoust
  Department of Management Science & Engineering
  Minor in International Relations
  Nuclear Arab States: Is Proliferation Inevitable?
• Sam Stone
  Department of Mathematics & Program in International Relations
  The Use of Energy Exports as a Foreign Policy Tool in the CIS and Eastern Europe
• Gautam Thapar
  Department of Political Science
  Minor in Economics
  U.S. Aid to Pakistan
• Son Ca Vu
  Department of Management Science & Engineering
  Minor in Political Science
  The A.Q. Khan Network: A Rogue Business Model
• Georgia Wells
  Program in Human Biology
  Explaining the Radicalization of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
• Hao Yan
  Departments of Political Science & Economics
  China's Global Strategy

Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature. Without question, the tyrannical triumvirate — Ayotallah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard — have dealt a crippling blow to the popular movement protesting their electoral coup of June 12.

Thousands of Iranians have been arrested and savagely tortured — from street protesters to election campaign organizers for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the likely victor in that contest. Many are now being forced to “confess” to having been agents of the United States or Britain.

We have seen this play before, not simply in Iran but in other tyrannies that suppressed mass movements for democratic change with massive violence and terror.

But Iran in 2009 is not China in 1989, Burma in 1990 or Belarus in 2006. The crisis in the Islamic Republic has exposed and widened massive cracks within the ruling elite. Such divisions are always a sign of an impending crackup of dictatorship.

Despite the rush to bury Iran’s reformist movement as another lost cause, Iran remains at a possible political tipping point. Democracies around the world have a duty — not simply to themselves, but to their strategic interests — to weigh in. They must not be deterred by threats to shun talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has gotten it right by signaling America’s support for peaceful protest, human rights and the rule of law. More explicit language, not to mention action, would only play into the hands of the most cynical and vicious conservative elements in Iran. Moreover, with no diplomatic ties and all but no trade with Iran, there is little more the U.S. could do right now to pressure the regime.

But there are over 100 other democracies in the world. It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran.

Britain shares with the U.S. the handicap of a past history of negative interference in Iran. But Britain has diplomatic and economic ties to the regime, and breaking or suspending those will weaken Ayatollah Khamenei and his reactionary allies.

Moreover, Britain can have a unique kind of impact in Iran: For more than a century, Iranians have believed in the omnipotence of the “British hand” in the affairs of their country. Any indication that Britain is no longer willing to do business with the Islamic regime will hearten the Iranian people and undermine the regime’s aura of invincibility.

Germany, France and Italy are major trading partners with Iran. They have little history of colonial interference in Iranian affairs. Their decision to refuse to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime would have an immense effect. More compelling still would be a similar declaration from the entire Group of 8 at its impending summit.

The smaller and less powerful democracies can also have an impact. It would be preposterous for Iranian hardliners to attribute ulterior strategic motives to actions by the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada or Slovenia. If a coalition of such countries were to condemn the crackdown, call for a release of political prisoners and demand full respect for human rights — and back up these positions with a downgrading of diplomatic and trade ties — this would send a powerful message to both sides in Iran.

Many democracies around the world, including the above, have diplomatic ties with Iran. It is important that they maintain their embassies in Tehran. But they should now refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government.

The most powerful coalition of democracies in the world, the 27-member European Union, is now debating whether to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.

The withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors would send a stunning message to the Iranian hardliners that coups and bloody suppression of peaceful protests carry a heavy price in international standing.

With the simple diplomatic act of denying legitimacy — something nearly all democratic forces in Iran are now asking of the world — the democracies of the world can give a needed boost to the forces of democratic change in Iran and earn the lasting gratitude of a movement that will eventually triumph.

As President Obama will soon discover, erasing the nuclear weapons legacy of the cold war is like running the Snake River rapids in Wyoming — the first moments in the tranquil upstream waters offer little hint of the vortex ahead. Now that Mr. Obama has set a promising arms reduction agenda with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, he faces the greater challenge of getting his own government and the American nuclear weapons establishment to support his audacious plan to make deep weapons cuts and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.

So far, Mr. Obama has effectively coupled an overarching vision of getting to a world without nuclear weapons, outlined in a speech in Prague earlier this year, with concrete first steps like the one-quarter reduction in operational strategic nuclear weapons promised in Moscow this week. Given his short time in office, and the looming December expiration of the treaty with Russia covering strategic nuclear arms reductions, the new limits are a good, realistic start. It is especially important to extend the monitoring and verification provisions of the expiring arms accord.

But the overall Obama approach involves a balancing act that requires him to move boldly while reassuring opponents that he is not endangering our security. Put simply, he has to maintain a potent nuclear arsenal while slashing it.

Mr. Obama might consider Ronald Reagan’s experience when he tried to set a similar course. The nuclear weapons crowd practically disowned Reagan when he proposed abolishing nuclear weapons during his 1986 summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. After the meeting, when Reagan asked his generals to explore the ramifications of possibly sharply cutting warheads and eliminating nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, they politely but firmly told their commander in chief it was a terrible idea.

Mr. Obama’s moment of truth with his generals is coming later this year when the Pentagon completes its periodic Nuclear Posture Review. This, in the Pentagon’s words, “will establish U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, strategy and force posture for the next 5 to 10 years.” So it will be the American nuclear weapons bible for the remainder of Mr. Obama’s presidency, one term or two.

President Obama must make sure it reflects his thinking. That will not be automatic, because the nuclear weapons complex — the array of Pentagon and Energy Department agencies involved in nuclear operations, including the armed services and the weapons labs — harbors considerable doubt about his plans. The same goes for the wider world of defense strategists. There is resistance in Congress, too.

The view in these quarters is that the weapons cuts Mr. Obama envisions — deeper than the modest goals set in Moscow this week — would dangerously undermine the power of America’s arsenal to deter attacks against the United States and its allies. Sentiment also favors building a new generation of warheads, a step Mr. Obama has rejected.

If the White House does not assert itself, the Nuclear Posture Review could easily spin off in unhelpful directions. The review that was produced when Bill Clinton was president in 1994 offered a rehash of cold war policies. The one that was done when George W. Bush took office in 2001 was more unconventional, but was quickly overshadowed by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq.

To serve Mr. Obama’s interests, the new review should lay the groundwork for pronounced cuts in weapons and shape America’s nuclear stockpile to fit a world in which threats are more likely to come from states like North Korea and Iran than from a heavily armed power like Russia.

After the review, the next big test for Mr. Obama will likely be Senate consideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He has pledged to resubmit this 1996 United Nations treaty, which was flatly rejected by the Senate in 1999.

To get the two-thirds majority needed for its approval, Mr. Obama will need to hold his fellow Democrats in line — far from a sure thing — and also pick up some Republican support. Two influential Republican senators — John McCain and Richard Lugar — are pivotal. Both voted against the treaty in 1999.

Opponents wrongly argue that the treaty is unverifiable. That might have been the case a decade ago, but technological advances make monitoring of even small underground nuclear tests possible today. Critics also say a permanent ban on testing — the United States has honored a moratorium since 1992 — would eventually cripple the nation’s ability to maintain reliable warheads. So far, most weapons experts would say, that has not proven to be true and should not be for many years.

Few presidential moments are more glittering than the announcement of arms reduction accords in the Kremlin’s gilded halls. For Mr. Obama, that was the easy part.

Peter B. Henry, the Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and an affiliated faculty member with the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), has been appointed by President Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, the White House has announced. This distinguished and diverse group of 28 accomplished Americans is responsible for recommending an exceptional group of men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows, America’s most prestigious program for leadership and public service.

“The men and women of this commission embody what makes the White House Fellows program so special,” said President Obama in making the June 17 announcement. “These leaders are diverse, non-partisan, and committed to mentoring our next generation of public servants. I am confident that they will select a class of White House Fellows that demonstrate extraordinary leadership, strong character, and a deep commitment to serving their country.”

“Peter Henry is a superb scholar, teacher, leader, and mentor,” said CDDRL Director and FSI and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond. “This recognition is richly deserved and will give Peter a national venue to continue developing a new generation of leaders, scholars, and policy practitioners.”

Alumni of the White House Fellows Program include former Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, and author Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Henry is also the John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Faculty Scholar and Associate Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy at Stanford’s business school.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Among the numerous awards and honors Henry has received are a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award, a National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and the National Economic Association Dissertation Prize.  He has published several articles in journals and books, including “Capital Account Liberalization, the Cost of Capital, and Economic Growth” in the American Economic Review and “Perspective Paper on Financial Instability” in Bjorn Lomborg’s Global Crises, Global Solutions.

Dr. Henry received his BA in Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was later a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a BA in Mathematics.  He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology.

Professor Henry is also part of the distinguished Stanford faculty group that teaches in the Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program each summer at Stanford.  From some 800 applicants, this program selects 25 to 30 rising leaders from important countries in transition – such as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe—and brings them to Stanford to examine and help foster linkages among democracy, development, human rights, and the rule of law in their countries.  Other Stanford faculty teaching the Draper Hills Summer Fellows include Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, FSI Deputy Director Stephen Krasner, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy, Avner Greif from economics, and Erik Jensen from Stanford Law School.

First, it opened daylight between the US and Israel. Israeli settlements on the West Bank are impediments to a two-state solution and a stable peace with Palestine. Obama did not split hairs. He did not distinguish between increments to existing settler populations by birth versus immigration with or without adding a room to an existing house. The United States, he said, does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. Period.

The American Israel Political Affairs Committee, which advertises itself as America’s pro-Israel lobby, cannot have been pleased to hear that sentence. But without some semblance of independence from Israel, the US cannot be a credible broker between the two sides. It is not necessary to treat the actions of Israeli and Palestinian protagonists as morally equivalent in order to understand that they share responsibility for decades of deadlock. New settlements and the expansion of existing ones merely feed Palestinian suspicions that Israel intends permanently to occupy the West Bank. Nor did Obama’s criticism of Israeli settlements prevent him from also stating: Palestinians must abandon violence. Period.

Second, alongside his candor, he showed respect. The most effective discourse on controversial topics involving Islam and Muslims is both sensitive to feelings and frank about facts, as I argue in a forthcoming book (Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam). Inter-faith dialogues that rely on mutual self-censorship–an agreed refusal to raise divisive topics or speak hard truths – resemble sand castles. Empathy based on denial is unlikely to survive the next incoming tide of reality. Respect without candor, in my view, is closer to fawning than to friendship.

As Obama put it in Cairo, ‘In order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. As the Holy Quran tells us, ‘Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” His listeners applauded – most of them, perhaps, because he had cited their preferred Book, but some at least because he had defended accuracy regardless of what this or that Book might avow.

In the partnership that Obama offered his audience, sources of tensions were not to be ignored. On the contrary, we must face these tensions squarely. He then followed his own advice by noting that extremists acting in the name of Islam had in fact killed more adherents of their own religion than they had Christians, Jews, or the followers of any other faith. In the same candid vein, he noted with disapproval the propensity of some Muslims to repeat vile stereotypes about Jews, the opposition of Muslim extremists to educating women, and the fact of discrimination against Christian Copts in Egypt, the very country in which he spoke.

Third, his speech was notable for what it did not contain. The word ‘terrorism’,’ a fixture of the Manichean rhetoric of George W. Bush, did not occur once. Back in Washington, in his 26 January televised interview with Al Arabiya, Obama had used the phrase Muslim world 11 times in 44 minutes – an average of once every four minutes. In the run-up to his Cairo speech, the White House had repeatedly hyped it as an address to ‘the Muslim world.’ Yet in the 55 minutes it took him to deliver the oration, the words ‘Muslim world’ were never spoken. He must have been advised to delete the reference from an earlier draft of his text.

I believe the excision strengthened the result, but not because a ‘Muslim world’ does not exist. Admittedly, one can argue that 1.4 billion Muslims have too little in common to justify speaking of such a world at all. But the already vast and implicitly varied compass of any ‘world’ diminishes the risk of homogenization. One can easily refer to ‘the Muslim world’ while stressing its diversity. Many Muslims and non-Muslims already use the phrase without stereotyping its members. No, the reasons why Obama avoided the phrase were less definitional than they were political in nature.

Had Obama explicitly addressed the Muslim world in Cairo, he would have risked implying that his host represented that Muslim world, as if Egypt were especially authentic–quintessentially Muslim–in that sphere. That would have been poorly received in many of the other Muslim-majority societies that diversely span the planet from Morocco to Mindanao.

Several years ago a professor from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, which co-sponsored Obama’s appearance, told me in all seriousness that Indonesian Muslims, because they did not speak Arabic, were not Muslims at all. Obama did not wish to be read by the followers of ostensibly universalist Islam as endorsing such a parochially Arabo-centric conceit.

The US president could, of course, have mentioned the Muslim world and in the next breath denied that it was represented by Egypt, a country under an authoritarian regime with a reputation for corruption of near-Nigerian proportions. But it was far smarter and more effective for Obama to have shunned the phrase altogether, thereby avoiding the need to clarify it and risk implying that his hosts were somehow less than central to Islam, less than paradigmatically Muslim. Such a candid but insensitive move would have triggered nationalist and Islamist anger not only in his Egyptian audience, but in other Muslim-majority countries as well. Indonesian Muslims, for example, would have wondered with some apprehension whether to expect comparably rude behavior were he to visit their own country later this year.

Obama’s listeners at Cairo University were, instead, subjected to twin eloquences of absence and silence: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s not being present, and Obama’s not mentioning him at all. Eloquent, too, was the absence of Israel from his itinerary. This omission was not a sign of hostility toward Tel Aviv, however. He termed the US-Israel bond ‘unbreakable.’ Not visiting Israel merely signaled that Washington on his watch would not limit its foreign-policy horizon to what any one country would allow.

Obama mispronounced the Arabic term for the head covering worn by some Muslim women. The word is hijab not hajib. But that small slip was trivial compared with the brilliance and timeliness of what he had to say. Rhetoric is one thing, of course; realities are quite another. The tasks of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum and improving relations with the heterogeneous Muslim world are more easily discussed than done. Illustrating that Muslim world’s extraordinary diversity are the many and marked differences between Turkey, where Obama spoke on 6 April on his first overseas trip, his Egyptian venue two months later, and Indonesia, which he is likely to visit before the end of 2009.

Before his choice of Cairo was announced, several commentators advised him to give his Muslim world speech in June in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Rather than risk legitimating Mubarak’s autocracy, they argued, he should celebrate Indonesia’s success in combining moderate Islam with liberal democracy.

Following their advice would have been a mistake. Not only did speaking in Cairo enable Obama boldly to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a podium close to its Middle Eastern epicenter. Had he traveled to Indonesia instead, his visit would have been tainted by an appearance of American intervention in the domestic politics of that country, whose President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is up for re-election on 8 July.

Earlier in his career, Yudhoyono completed military training programs in the US, at Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth, and earned a master’s in management from Webster University in St. Louis. No previous Indonesian head of state has had a closer prior association with the United States. Yudhoyono’s rivals for the presidency are already berating him and his running mate as neo-liberals who have pawned Indonesia’s economy to the capitalist West. Obama could feel comfortable keeping the autocrat Mubarak at arm’s length in Cairo, but in campaign-season Indonesia the US president would have been torn between behaving ungraciously toward his democratically chosen host and appearing to back him in his race for re-election.

Yudhoyono’s popularity ratings among Indonesians are even better than Obama’s are among Americans. The July election is Yudhoyono’s to lose. But the winner’s new government will not be in place until October. The US president was wise to postpone visiting Indonesia until after its electoral dust has cleared and the next administration in Jakarta has taken shape. A gathering of leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which Obama is expected to attend, is conveniently scheduled for mid-November in Singapore. He could easily visit Indonesia en route to or from that event.

An Indonesian journalist in Cairo interviewed Obama shortly after his speech. The president virtually confirmed this November itinerary by saying that his next trip to Asia would include Indonesia. He said he looked forward to revisiting the neighborhood in Jakarta where he had lived as a child, and to eating again his favorite Indonesian foods – fried rice, bakso soup, and rambutan fruit among them.

A trifecta happens when a gambler correctly predicts the first three finishers of a race in the correct order. Obama appears to have bet his skills in public diplomacy on this sequence: Ankara first, then Cairo, then Jakarta.

One can ask whether his actions will match his words, and whether the US Congress will go along with his prescriptions. But with two destinations down and one to go, Obama is well on his way to completing a trifecta in the race for hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

A version of this essay appeared in AsiaTimes Online on 6 June 2009.

High-level American envoys visiting Seoul say they are cooperating with regional allies to dissuade North Korea from the path of nuclear weaponry and back to dialogue aimed at disarmament. The delegation is making stops around Asia for consultations on how to respond to last month's nuclear weapon test by the North.

Daniel Sneider is with Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He says neither the Obama administration, nor any future one, can afford to recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons nation.

"It would, for one thing, undermine our alliances with South Korea and Japan.. and, frankly it would set an increasing risk of serial proliferation in this region," he said. "It would give further encouragement to those - in Iran, first and foremost - who are on a similar path, who have sought and gotten the help of North Korea to get there. So we can't do that."

In recent months, North Korea has put on trial two young American journalists working for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV, launched a long-range rocket, and tested its second nuclear device. It has renounced the Beijing Six-Party nuclear talks and the 1953 Korean armistice agreement. It will likely soon fire another long-range rocket and may test a third nuclear device and stage limited military attacks against South Korea.

The regime’s actions are a source of serious concern. North Korea might transfer nuclear weapons technology to rogue states or terrorist groups. It has long sold its missiles to many countries in the troubled Middle East and South Asia, and two years ago the Israelis destroyed a nuclear facility that the North Koreans were building in Syria, possibly in coordination with Iran.

North Korea’s pursuit of reliable nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles with which to launch them constitutes a direct threat not only to the United States but even more so to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. The Japanese and South Koreans may eventually feel forced to build their own nuclear arsenals, which could destroy the balance of power with China in East Asia.

Pyongyang has often engaged in provocative behavior, but lately the pace and tone of its threats have worsened considerably. After suffering a stroke last fall, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seems to have begun the process of naming his 26-year-old third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. The nuclear and rocket tests may have been aimed at boosting nationalistic enthusiasm for the move. Even in North Korea there may be those who question the legitimacy of yet another dynastic succession there.

But while extreme and anachronistic, North Korean leaders are not irrational. Fundamentally, they feel they must have a nuclear “deterrent,” as they call it, to re-balance their relationship with South Korea. North Korean leaders believe theirs to be the legitimate Korean regime on the peninsula, but they know that democratic South Korea is decades ahead of them, economically, diplomatically, and in conventional military terms.

Information about North Korea is scarce but two decades of dealing with North Korea have given American policymakers a much better understanding of the regime. The North’s brinkmanship playbook is now well known, and the Obama administration is determined not to play that game anymore. It has made clear it is willing to deal fairly with North Korea but that it will increase diplomatic, financial, and military pressures on the regime until it agrees to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The United States will need to proceed very carefully. There is no perfect North Korea policy, no silver bullet that will suddenly end all of the challenges the regime poses. Although North Korea is basically a failing country, its artillery arrayed along the Demilitarized Zone just north of Seoul could cause hundreds of thousands of casualties there. Over the past decades, the North Koreans have come to believe that they almost always win when they engage in a game of chicken with the United States and South Korea. They will almost certainly continue their provocations until they think they have won the latest match.

The United States and its allies must game-out the many possible scenarios on the Korean Peninsula and be prepared for continuing North Korean provocations, something previous U.S. administrations have not done well. The aim should be gradually to limit North Korean room for maneuver and eventually force them to abandon their nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs. At the same time, the United States should ignore calls for drastic steps that risk war on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s nuclear and rocket programs are still primitive; the regime is weak. There is still time for stronger and smarter diplomacy - including both sticks and carrots - to work.