President Obama gave his State of the Union address yesterday, in a wide-ranging speech that was generally well received – including some measures that generated rare bipartisan support.

The New York Times was strongly behind the president, writing in an editorial:

The country’s problems are profound.

There are 13.1 million unemployed, and the risk of stagnation is real. Republican candidates are pounding on the wrong, but seductive, notion that the real problem is government spending - especially on the “others,” the poor and minorities. Congressional Republicans have barely wavered in their obstructionism.

Mr. Obama has become steadily more assertive, but he will have to push even harder. The State of the Union address was a chance to do that, and he did not squander it.

They were especially supportive of his rhetoric on the financial sector:

Mr Obama has pushed banks and Congress to make it easier for borrowers who are current in their payments to refinance. On Tuesday night, he called - finally - for a full investigation of the lending abuses that inflated the bubble and led to the crash. That is the best hope for getting meaningful redress for borrowers.

The Washington Post was also encouraged. Although their reaction was more tempered, they were in favour of many of his proposals, especially his elaboration of the ‘Buffet rule’,

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s position that he should not pay a smaller share of his income in taxes than his secretary’s; she was in attendance in the first lady’s box. Mr Obama announced that not only billionaires but all those earning $1 million or more a year should pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Think of this as a new version of the alternative minimum tax.

This position sets up a politically useful contrast between Mr Obama and Mr Romney. It is not a fleshed-out proposal that the administration expects, for example, to produce as a line item in the forthcoming budget. Administration officials could not tell us how much revenue such a change would produce.

But Mr. Obama is right to take on the unlevel and distorting playing field of a code that taxes ordinary earned income at a much higher rate than investment income.

Stan Greenberg, of GQR research, pointed out that the whole Buffett discussion gained high levels support from all the viewers they were polling, regardless of their party. He called the unity of response “pretty stunning”.

Indeed, the whole address was apparently an attempt to take the Republicans’ lunch from under their noses.

Like the Post, Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo also saw the speech as a direct response to Mitt Romney, the man Obama’s office still see as the likely GOP nominee:

His speech was peppered with the sorts of proposals that play well across the country. But after executing a three year plan of partisan opposition to his full agenda, Republicans can’t possibly support them — and that puts them on the steep side of an election Obama is framing while Republican presidential hopefuls tear each other down.

It was also sharp-elbowed. It read in a way as a series of critiques of the GOP’s most prominent rhetorical attacks on Democratic priorities, and as a piecemeal rebuttal of the talking points his most likely general election opponent Mitt Romney has levied against him in a bid to shore up support among Republican base voters…

“This election’s going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Tuesday.

That’s the battle for public perception that will play out over the next several months — between Obama’s calls for fairness and Republican reminders of people’s current woes, implicitly Obama’s fault they’ll say.

If Republicans lose that battle they’ll find themselves flailing in the general election with nothing forward looking to offer voters.

That’s the bet Obama made tonight.

At least one person disagreed with the consensus, however.

Speaking from Florida, Mitt Romney delivered his opinion:

“Tonight will mark another chapter in the misguided policies of the last three years - and the failed leadership of one man.”

See also:

• Sign up to our new weekly email on US 2012 and election news from across the globe, The World Outside Westminster

• MPs call for Romney’s tax haven to be closed – Shamik Das, January 23rd 2012

• The British Empire – subsidising Republican presidential candidates since 2007 – Daniel Elton, January 19th 2012

• Barack Obama’s 2012 – Tom Rouse, January 4th 2012

• Obama mocks the mad Right and makes the case for the State – Shamik Das, September 9th 2011

Five years ago it would have been unthinkable 9/11 would not prove to be the defining global event of the first decade of the 21st century; yet five years on, as we reflect on the decade that has passed since the worst terror attack ever perpetrated on US soil, it is the global financial crisis and not 9/11 that has defined the last decade, argues Tom Rouse

This is not to downplay the significance of that tragic day or attempt to argue it didn’t change the world. 9/11 marked the moment the USA realised it was no longer invincible, nor immune to problems elsewhere.

Prior to the attack, the US was displaying a post-Cold War reluctance to engage actively in foreign operations, as demonstrated by their feet dragging over Kosovo and the wider Yugoslavian conflict. In the following years we saw an America that was more confident flexing its muscles abroad, with a firm commitment to international inverventionism and regime change.

With Bill Clinton having left a comfortable budget surplus, the money was there to be spent and missions abroad allowed the Bush administration to distract attention from unemployment figures immediately prior to 9/11 of 4.6%, the highest in four years.

What has changed of late, is not the reality of the world or the terror threat, but the priorities of the American public. The oft-repeated mantra, that if there are problems at home it is best to distract your citizens with a foreign war no longer works. The recession has hit too hard and for too long to be swept under the rug.

This is shown most clearly by the very limited and short-term nature of the poll bump President Obama gained from the killing of Osama Bin Laden. What was expected to be a sizeable boost to his struggling ratings turned out to be no more than a flash in the pan. It is clear where voters’ priorities lie and it is no longer fighting terrorism.

Bin Laden’s death deprived vocal supporters of the War on Terror of a figurehead to rally the US public against. Catching him had become an obsession and now that it has been accomplished, no new motivation has risen to take his place.

Gadaffi, in spite of the Lockerbie atrocities, does not have the same resonance with the American public, which combined with the feeling that what money is available is better spent at home, goes a long way towards explaining the lukewarm support for the current intervention in Libya.

With the country still struggling to recover from the recession, and unemployment at worryingly high levels, the focus for US voters is the economy and in particular job creation. That is why Obama’s Jobs Act and accompanying speech has been the big political event of the week, even setting the tone for the Reagan Republican Presidential Debate.

It is why Ron Paul’s isolationist message is gaining traction amongst voters and sections of his party. With Gallup regarding the government’s figure of 9.1% unemployment as a conservative assessment, the public and political classes are focused purely on how to fix the economy and for the politicians how to use it as a stick with which to beat their opponents.

The 2008 election gave us a taste of this shifting battleground, with Obama’s message of hope and promises to bring the troops home and introduce economic reforms triumphing over John McCain’s war record.

The deficit, rather than terror, has become the bogeyman the GOP have rallied against and tried to paint the Democrats as being weak on. The rise of the Tea Party as the driving influence on the right of US politics has reframed the debate and made the issue one of big vs small government.

Foreign policy has always been a sideshow for the Tea Party, with only occasional sweeping statements issued, in large part due to the distinct lack of foreign policy knowledge on the part of the movement’s figureheads.

Coupled with this has been a noticeable decline in the number of Americans who believe the US and her allies are winning the War on Terror, with just 46% now supporting that view, down from a high of 65% in 2003 after the toppling of Saddam. The War on Terror worked when US voters believed it was succeeding, but the last years of the Bush administration made voters sceptical and the Obama government has not sought to use it as a dividing line.

Whether we will see senior Republicans attempt to reopen the debate over the next week is debatable. Right wing pundits will inevitably use the opportunity to rail against President Obama and his ‘weak stance’, particularly as rumours of another attack are beginning to circulate.

Alongside this increased cynicism, terrorism still remains a concern for US voters, with 59% of those polled believing terrorists would find a way to launch another attack, regardless of past and future action taken by their government.

This tension between foreign policy and economics is likely to be one of the main features of the Republican primary; this time next year we may see the anniversary of 9/11 in a very different light if the GOP choose to hone in on security as a dividing line.

This year will be a sombre occasion, but the focus on the past will be short lived; the US has too many problems in the present to dwell on past tragedy for long.

President Obama invoked the heroes of the past and delivered a passionate defence of State investment in his Jobs Act speech last night. He called on Congress to “stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy”, and urged the watching public to “tell Washington that doing nothing is not an option”.

Calling for Congress to unite for the good of the American people, he said every proposal he’d laid out “is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past”, admitting that he didn’t “pretend that this plan will solve all our problems”, that what’s guided him “hasn’t been the search for a silver bullet”, but a commitment to “keep trying every new idea that works, and listen to every good proposal, no matter which party comes up with it”.

He reserved his greatest scorn, however, for the forces of small-Statism, the Tea Partyites who criticise almost all State spending, reminding his audience that they achieve more when Americans work together than alone, that State spending drives growth and builds nations:

“…this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everyone’s money, let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own - that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.

“Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and envy of the world. But there has always been another thread running throughout our history - a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future - a Republican president who mobilised government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.

“Ask yourselves - where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways and our bridges; our dams and our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the GI Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?

“How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this Chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result?”

Earlier, highlighting the impact the Jobs Act would have, and the positive benefits for all Americans that will ensue, he said:

“Pass this jobs bill, and we can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows that we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over this country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world.

“This is inexcusable. Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads? At a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America?

“There are private construction companies all across America just waiting to get to work. There’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky that’s on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America. A public transit project in Houston that will help clear up one of the worst areas of traffic in the country. And there are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating.

“How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America. Every child deserves a great school - and we can give it to them, if we act now.”

And with a final nod to history, he concluded:

“President Kennedy once said: ‘Our problems are man-made - therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.’

“These are difficult years for our country. But we are Americans. We are tougher than the times that we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been. So let’s meet the moment. Let’s get to work, and show the world once again why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth.”

We will have more on the President’s speech and the latest news from the Presidential race on Left Foot Forward tonight in Look Left.

Clare McNeil is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)

Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, says the government’s ‘Green Deal’ programme could create 250,000 ‘green jobs’ at its peak, to aid the economic recovery. But findings in a report (pdf) published this week by IPPR on the US green jobs agenda suggest this could be far harder to achieve than the government expects.

When standing in 2008, President Obama pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Once in power he dedicated one eighth of Stimulus Act investment – around $90 billion – to building a clean economy.

Of this at least $5.5bn spent was invested in buildings retrofit programmes specifically and $20bn more widely on energy efficiency. Public works style programmes in home insulation and energy efficiency retrofitting were to provide hundreds of thousands of ‘shovel-ready’ jobs to put Americans back to work.

The President bet heavily on the investment generating jobs in the short-term as well as the longer-term gains from the green energy incentives.

Two years later, and a report (pdf), Sizing the Clean Economy, from the Brookings Institute, shows how green jobs growth in the US is in fact being driven by emerging energy technologies such as wave power and solar thermal, rather than the energy efficiency sector.

See Table 2:

The stimulus funding has saved many jobs in the construction sector that would otherwise have been lost, but the ‘green army’ in every community has not materialised. The same Brookings report found only around 60,000 jobs nationally were created in the buildings-related energy efficiency sector between 2003 and 2010. Several energy efficiency-related sectors saw a net jobs loss.

The biggest factor behind this is the devastating impact of the housing-centred recession, causing mass layoffs in the construction sector, which currently has an unemployment rate in the US of 16 per cent, making it difficult for new entrants to find work. But the policy design was also flawed.

The residential retrofit market was under-developed and transaction costs too high for property owners. It was difficult to persuade homeowners, many of whom were facing far higher mortgage repayments or even the threat of losing their homes, to take on additional debt.

The UK government’s Green Deal home insulation scheme hopes to avoid this through its ‘golden rule’, where payments for work will not cost any more than the savings they achieve. But if Mr Huhne wants to see a 250,000-strong green army in the UK, the lesson is clear: you won’t get jobs or policy success without the right combination of smart policy design and healthy market conditions.

Irishman Patrick Bury served in Afghanistan in the British army. A memoir of his experiences, “Callsign Hades”, has just been published in paperback. He currently works for NATO as a researcher on Afghanistan. The views expressed here are his own.

President Obama’s decision last night to begin withdrawing U.S troops from Afghanistan marks the beginning of the end of the surge he ordered 18 months ago. With America’s longest war now in its 11th year, military and civilian casualties still rising, and the war costing the US more than $10 billion a month, this article outlines the Obama surge’s impact on the strategic situation in Afghanistan and what the end game in Afghanistan may look like.

President Obama’s decision to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, and a further 23,000 by September 2012, effectively marks the end of the surge he announced in December 2009.

Eighteen months on, the surge has delivered operational successes where troops have been concentrated in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, but it has failed to deliver the strategic, and most importantly, political gains Obama hoped for when he tied his presidency to the war in Afghanistan.

Leon Trotsky once remarked:

“…insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.”

When President Obama announced the surge, he was acting on the advice of his military chiefs, who had asked for 40,000 troops to implement a comprehensive counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy centered on protecting the Afghan population. Obama gave them 30,000, choosing the COIN approach over the more limited counter- terror approach advocated as more realistic by Vice-President Biden and many others.

That such a COIN “strategy” could work was based largely on the fact that it had in Iraq, yet COIN itself was never, and never will be, a strategy in itself. It is merely the military part of an overall strategy. Yet in Afghanistan, in the absence of coherent grand strategy, COIN has become the strategy as the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) mission crept further and further toward comprehensive nation building.

Furthermore, as Trotsky outlined, the Afghan insurrection has laws of its own, quite apart from those of Iraq, which, combined with Afghanistan’s political, economic and social landscape, have meant that from the outset such a strategy had far less chance of success than in Iraq.

With Obama now signaling the end of the surge, he is acknowledging these factors are insurmountable within a pragmatic political timeframe. The evidence of this is obvious for those who care to look.

In a recently released UN report, Afghan civilian casualties in May totalled 368, the highest since records began in 2007 and effectively the highest since the war began in 2001. Military casualties have also soared with the surge, further undermining public support.

Also this month, the conclusion of a two-year Senate Foreign Relations Committee inquiry stated that the impact of the billions of dollars of US development aid was questionable and in many cases had aided the insurgency. At present, military spending and development aid account for 97 per cent of country’s gross domestic product, a figure that shows just how unsustainable the whole nation building project is.

And the fact that the inquiry questioned the very efficacy of using aid as a stabilisation tool over the long run has serious implications for the continued funding of an Afghan COIN/ nation building approach that is draining American coffers rapidly.

But the most significant issue that has eroded the political and public support for the war is the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last month. There is no avoiding the fact that Al Qaeda was the reason ISAF went into Afghanistan. Now that their leader is dead and the terror network’s members number less than 100 in the country, it is very hard to explain to Americans and Europeans alike why they should fund, and their soldiers should die for, a nation building project in Afghanistan.

Obama realises this, as does prime minister Cameron and President Sarkozy, who have both announced their own timetables for withdrawal. Their Afghanistan adventure, it seems, is all over, bar the shouting.

Indeed, Bin Laden’s assassination has shown Afghanistan up for what it has been for years: a sideshow; Pakistan, its nuclear arsenal and its large population are now the obvious strategic prize China and the US will compete for. As the Afghan Security Forces increase in quantity – and at a slower pace in quality – fewer Americans and Europeans will be needed to stop the Taliban re-taking Kabul by force. Political reintegration processes may yet help stabilise the country. But, ultimately, it is all about Pakistan now.

That is one of the main reasons why America will look to keep military bases in Afghanistan after the transition to Afghan security forces in 2014 – and that is why they will probably keep about 25,000 troops in the country in an advisory role after that date too.

A military presence in the centre of Asia, close to both Pakistan and China, has too much strategic potential to be squandered by a complete drawdown of forces. Moreover, these troops will be ready to conduct counter-terror operations in the Af/Pak border regions, finally confirming that the counter-terror strategy was the most viable all along.

Such a 360-degree reversal of policy is tragic for the Afghan civilians and ISAF men and women who died during the surge. And for those still on the frontline in Afghanistan, whilst the shouting continues, there is much dying to be avoided in the meantime…

By Matt Cavanagh, Associate Director, ippr

This week Europe saw the latest sign of the growing public concern over immigration across the developed world, as the Schengen group of European countries responded to domestic political pressure by re-introducing limited checks on their internal borders - more symbolic than real, perhaps, but a big symbol nonetheless.

In Britain, the Conservatives signalled their intention to keep immigration on the political agenda. Less well reported was a significant development in America, where President Obama travelled to the Texas border town of El Paso to deliver a major speech on immigration. For observers of the British debate, there were some interesting parallels, but also important contrasts.

Overall, the most striking parallel was that of a centre-left political leader balancing pro-immigration messages with tough messages on border security.

So Obama talked about immigration being good for the economy, about America needing to attract talent in the global marketplace, and about migrants being good and hardworking people; but he balanced that by acknowledging people’s concerns about the pressure which immigration puts on wages, about migrants involved in criminality, and about border security.

He talked about having “increased the removal of [foreign] criminals by 70 per cent”, and about there being “more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history”, along with new unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, and the controversial border fence.  

Many of these specific points, as well as the overall shape of the narrative, echoed speeches by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the last decade. Centre-left leaders know they have to balance their messages on immigration to have any chance of winning the public debate – even if that goes down badly with some of their core supporters.

But there were contrasts as well. The most obvious and important was over how Obama handled the issue of illegal immigration.

Here too, he was careful to send a balanced message. He said the overwhelming majority of illegal migrants are “just folks trying to earn a living and provide for their families”, but qualified that by saying that they “have to acknowledge they have broken the rules… [and] made a mockery of those who are trying to immigrate legally”. But the mere fact that the narrative was balanced, on illegal as well as legal immigration, is a contrast in itself.

And in policy terms, the major thrust of Obama’s speech was to keep alive the idea of earned regularisation: a systematic way for at least some categories of illegal migrants to achieve legal status, provided they pay tax, pay a fee or fine, speak English, and pass security checks and certain other conditions.

In particular, Obama was urging moderate Republicans to continue to support the DREAM Act, reintroduced to Congress last week, which proposes earned regularisation for around 750,000 of the least controversial and most sympathetic category of illegal migrants: those who arrived in the country as minors, graduated from high school, and either get a degree or serve for two years in the American military.

Until recently this had been a mainstream position enjoying significant cross-party support, embodied in the 2005 McCain-Kennedy Bill. But this and subsequent compromise bills failed to make it into law, and now the recession and the emergence of the Tea Party have hardened attitudes to immigration among voters and Republicans in Congress.

Still, even after this shift, the shape of the American debate on illegal immigration remains completely different to Britain, where neither of the two main parties has been willing to touch earned regularisation. The Liberal Democrats did include a version in their last manifesto, but it was unpopular with voters, and the Lib Dems quickly dropped it in their coalition negotiations.

There are several factors behind this contrast. First, for all the parallels in political strategy, Obama’s language on immigration is more positive than centre-left leaders in Britain or even continental Europe, and this reflects a quite different tone in the American public debate on immigration. As Obama said on Tuesday, Americans “define ourselves as a nation of immigrants”.

It is this, rather than Obama’s personal history, that allows him to state simply and confidently that immigration is not just good for the economy, but “the right thing to do”.

In Britain, while immigration has played a big part in our history, we do not regard ourselves as a nation of immigrants. Obama can successfully caricature his critics, who complain that the border fences and patrols and UAVs are not enough, by saying – “what do they want, a moat?” Britain has a moat: it’s called the English Channel. We still define ourselves as an island nation - tolerant of newcomers, enriched by their contribution, but not made up of them.

It is this fundamental difference in our national story, more than the events or political decisions of recent years, or even the xenophobic approach of much of our popular media, which explains why Britons remain more concerned and hostile about immigration than Americans or for that matter continental Europeans. Attitudes are hardening across the developed world - partly because of the recession, partly pre-dating it - but Britain remains an outlier, and this is something all British politicians need to take into account.

The second big contrast is the numbers. Obama talked about there being 11 million illegal migrants in America, or around 3.5 per cent of the population; this compares to around 600,000, or 1 percent, in the UK.

The sheer scale of the problem in America increases the pressure for reform, from communities, businesses, faith leaders and others. It also alters the democratic arithmetic, and the political calculations of the parties. It’s been estimated that Latinos swung four states in the last Presidential election; next time it might be six. This is one reason why despite the wider shift in attitudes, some Republicans as well as Democrats want to keep talking about regularisation. They know that if the Democrats succeed in ‘owning’ the issue, they could secure the growing Latino vote for a generation.

But for now, too many other voters are opposed to immigration reform, and for them too it is starting to be an issue that affects their vote rather than a mere grumble. Surveys show a similar overall picture to Britain and Europe, with attitudes hardening among lower-paid Democrat identifiers and moderate Republicans, as well as Tea Party supporters.

The impression remains that despite Tuesday’s speech, immigration reform won’t be one of Obama’s priorities – maybe not even in a second term. He probably believes he couldn’t deliver it even if it was. So his strategy is to look like he’s trying, to be able to say he kept the issue on the agenda, and to be able to blame Republicans for blocking reform, rather than having to defend himself against accusations of lacking courage or commitment.

As a political judgment this is hard to criticise. And in fact this strategy may offer the most likely scenario for progress on immigration reform in the longer term: Obama keeps the issue alive, and the next Republic administration have to deliver it, to ensure they don’t lose the growing Latino vote for a generation - also conforming to the rule that it is easier for right-wing parties to get away with liberalising immigration (or cutting defence), and easier for left-wing parties to get away with reforming healthcare.

Supporters of liberal immigration policies in Britain need to take an equally long term view. IPPR’s recent report on irregular migration, ‘No Easy Options’, restated the economic, social, and human benefits of earned regularisation, but argued that it would be counter-productive to push for such reform without broad political and public support, and concluded that there was no realistic chance of securing that support in the foreseeable future.

This should not be seen as a counsel of despair. There are plenty of other reforms which progressives can realistically push for – including a more humane immigration system, a less restrictive attitude to skilled migration, and a continued focus on integration and citizenship rather than a return to the discredited ‘guest worker’ approach.

As well as being important in their own right, all of these would help foster a more positive and optimistic overall debate on immigration, increasing the prospects of future progress in more difficult areas, including earned regularisation.

Labour’s candidate for London Mayor Ken Livingstone has put his foot in it again today – saying the assassination of Osama bin Laden made President Obama look like “some kind of mobster”. The ill-judged attack on Obama, whose leadership over the operation has been praised round the world, risks hardening public perception of Livingstone as being in league with Islamists, and soft on Islamist extremism.

He told today’s Standard:

“I just looked at [the scenes of jubilation in the US] and realised that it would increase the likelihood of a terror attack on London… That’s very much the American style but I don’t think I’ve ever felt pleased at the death of anybody.

“The real problem for London is that after America we’re a big target so it’s a very dangerous time at the moment…

“We should have captured him and put him on trial. It’s a simple point – are we gangsters or a Western democracy based on the rule of law? This undermines any commitment to democracy and trial by jury and makes Obama look like some sort of mobster.”

Last night on Left Foot Forward, a year out from the elections for London Mayor, Daniel Elton made the case for Livingstone to renounce some of his allies with questionable views:

“…as the challenger best placed to unseat Boris Johnson - all progressives in the capital should vote Ken for first or second choice. However, as even many on Ken’s campaign would admit, he has had a chequered past. Among the most unfortunate aspects of his career to date has been to walk hand in hand with some frankly unsavoury political ‘friends’.

“This behaviour probably will not affect his chances of election – the biggest single factor in that will be the unpopularity of the Tories and how much of that sticks to the current Mayor. But for the sake of good governance, it is time to throw these sometime ‘comrades’ under the bus.”

Those named were Socialist Action, Hugo Chavez, Lutfur Rahman and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Of the latter, he wrote:

“Livingstone’s repeated inviations to one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leaders was shameful to all self-respecting liberal supporters of ‘Red Ken’.

“Maybe Livingstone is right when he says Qadarawi “preaches moderation and tolerance to all faiths throughout the world”. He also preaches homophobia, and defends suicide bombing.

“Qaradawi cares so much about women’s rights, he argues that husbands should only be allowed to hit their wives “as a last resort”, and then only “lightly”. He should never step back into City Hall. Ever.”

And as a commenter adds:

“A cursory stroll through Google quickly shows anyone who’s interested that Qadarawi is an aggressive, inciteful, unremitting antisemite… For those who are interested/concerned, here’s a starter-pack: http://hurryupharry.org/2011/02/24/qaradawi-on-muslims-and-jews/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS_5aIv3sHQ.”

Though there is a case to be made for taking bin Laden alive – indeed Kevin Meagher will make that case on Left Foot Forward later today – to go against the grain so spectacularly, and to criticise the statesmanlike leadership of Obama and imply he hadn’t thought through the attack, will not go down at all well with Londoners and will play into the hands of those who wish to paint Livingstone as some kind of apologist.

As Tory MP Greg Hands said:

“Calling President Obama a mobster is yet another example of Ken Livingstone’s extreme views which threaten to damage London. What American business will want to invest in our city if it is run by a man who repeatedly attacks their leader?”

President Obama has finally announced his plans to bring the US budget back to balance. He has chosen to do so on a timetable three times slower than Britain’s Chancellor, George Osborne.

President Obama said yesterday:

“I’m proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years. It’s an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission that I appointed last year, and it builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget.  It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table — but one that protects the middle class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.”

The independent Congressional Budget Office outlines that the US deficit was 8.9 per cent in 2010 and will be 9.5 per cent in 2011 – a similar level to the UK’s (Table 1.3). US debt is projected to be 68.9 per cent of GDP in 2011 compared to 66.1 per cent in the UK. Yet despite these similarities, President Obama is to take twelve years rather than the four that Osborne is taking to eliminate the cyclically adjusted current budget deficit by 2014-15. Indeed Obama’s approach will mean that the deficit is still “about 2.5% of GDP in 2015, and put deficits on a declining path toward close to 2.0% of GDP toward the end of the decade.“

Obama’s plan also contains something that looks much more like a ‘Plan for Growth’ than the Coalition’s short-cut of 1980s style cuts to tax and regulation. He said:

“We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs that I care deeply about, but I will not sacrifice the core investments that we need to grow and create jobs. We will invest in medical research.  We will invest in clean energy technology.  We will invest in new roads and airports and broadband access.  We will invest in education.  We will invest in job training.  We will do what we need to do to compete, and we will win the future.”

And unlike the Tory plans to cut the 50p rate and fail to renew the bankers’ bonus tax, Obama said, “we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society.  We can’t afford it.  And I refuse to renew them again.”

In a recent op-ed, four US elder statesmen called for a re-think of traditional ideas on nuclear deterrence. The group, led by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, warned that the horizontal proliferation of nuclear technology had undermined the doctrine of ‘mutual assured destruction’.

They wrote:

“With the spread of nuclear weapons, technology, materials and know‐how, there is an increasing risk that nuclear weapons will be used. It is not possible to replicate the high‐risk stability that prevailed between the two nuclear superpowers during the Cold War in such an environment.

“The growing number of nations with nuclear arms and differing motives, aims and ambitions poses very high and unpredictable risks and increased instability.”

Acknowledging that the lack of nuclear exchange during the Cold War was a mix of diligence and luck, the ‘Big Four’ set out a series of steps to establish a safer form of deterrence. The steps, based on co-operation and a diminished role for nuclear weapons, are summarised as follows:

• Recognise there is a new spectrum of global security threats, including nuclear terrorism due to the spread of fissile material. Adopt effective strategies to control this material;

• Realise the continued reliance on nuclear weapons as the principal element for deterrence is encouraging, or at least excusing, the spread of such weapons;

• Deeper warhead reductions and changes in nuclear posture between the US and Russia decreases the risk of accidents. Whilst the recent New START agreement is positive, further reductions must be a priority and include tactical nuclear weapons (i.e. warheads on short-range delivery systems, primarily based in Europe);

• Whilst reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming hazardous and decreasingly effective, some states will hesitate to draw the same conclusions unless regional conflicts are addressed. Efforts must be redoubled to resolve these conflicts.

The thesis turns on the view that the US and Russia, having led the nuclear build up and possessing 95 per cent of the world’s stockpiles, must lead the builddown. This has been accepted by the Obama administration, which recently announced plans to initiate negotiations with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) within the year.

However, this will not be easy.

Russia has an estimated 4,000 TNWs compared to about 500 on the American side, meaning the US cannot offer significant reductions. Also, TNWs are central to Russian military doctrine: they compensate for Russia’s weakness in conventional terms and her limited capacity to produce strategic weapons, comparative to the US.

Nonetheless, the Russians are likely to make some reductions in the coming years. Many Russian TNWs are old, dysfunctional and will not be replaced, such as nuclear warheads in air defence systems. A new treaty may be a way to get something in return.

Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Centre, argues that movement on TNWs is a matter of timing. New START negotiations exhausted the Obama administration and any TNW agreement needs to be part of a wider conversation on conventional and strategic weapons. Blechman argues that a new treaty should be a priority for a second Obama administration, rather than a half-hearted attempt in 2011. In the meantime, he proposes, the two states should conduct exercises and experiments to develop warhead-counting rules and verification methods.

On this blog in January, the CND’s Kate Hudson asked where the UK stands in all of this. One thing the UK has been doing is the mundane work Blechman advocates. For example, the recently concluded UK-Norway initiative was a collaboration between scientists from both countries to practice on-site inspections. Such work is essential to enforceable, multilateral disarmament.

Another thing the UK can do is persuade uncertain European NATO members the nuclear umbrella is not essential to their security. This would help set the scene for future TNW negotiations.

The momentum behind Obama’s nuclear agenda has slowed down. However, when Kissinger, Obama and CND agree that mutually assured destruction does not always work, there is still hope.

With all eyes on Libya and the Middle East at the moment, the war in Afghanistan has slipped down the agenda; Left Foot Forward’s Patrick Bury, a former Captain in the Royal Irish Regiment who served in Sangin, Afghanistan, reports on the latest news out of Afghanistan

It is now over a year since President Obama’s decision to send an extra 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan. Accompanied by another 8,000 or so International Security Assistance Force soldiers (ISAF), these “surge” forces began deploying in January 2010, and all forces had arrived in theatre by last November.

As such it is premature to judge the full impact of the surge, but there are some interesting indicators from 2010 that allow us to gain understanding of the effect of the surge so far.

The first influx of US troops to arrive in Afghanistan were immediately deployed on combat operations in central Helmand province, where they initially faced stiff resistance during February’s Operation Moshtarak, in and around the town of Marjah. Despite harder than expected fighting, by the summer the Taliban had been forced out to the peripheries of the security bubble and Marjah had become relatively secure.

Further north, having transferred Sangin to US Marines, the British effort switched to the less lethal Nad E Ali district. Here again, as operations to clear new areas from Taliban control were launched, there was heavy fighting. And again, ISAF troops drove insurgents away from the population centres and established a security bubble around them, proving that tactically and operationally the insurgency cannot defeat ISAF in battle.

Moreover, another success story for ISAF has been the rapid expansion and continued increase in capability of the Afghan National Security Forces, in particular the Afghan army (ANA). Clearing, holding and building in the above areas of central Helmand were General McChrystal’s, and later General Petreaus’s, main effort for 2010. Militarily, the forces deployed to clear these areas have succeeded. The latest polling shows vast increases in Afghan public perceptions of security in central Helmand and declining Taliban activity.

Yet with security now established and the relatively benign winter season further decreasing short term violence trends, military commanders are looking around and asking “what’s next?”

Herein lies the problem with the COIN strategy in Afghanistan: it still relies on Afghans to fill the governance void inside the security bubbles created by ISAF and Afghan forces. Yet this is not going to happen in any meaningful way anytime soon and may never occur.

The September 2010 elections highlighted the electoral fraud that still plagues Afghanistan, and the endemic corruption that is associated with President Karzai’s administration. The practical collapse of the Kabul bank, the lost millions of dollars of US development aid and the continuing controversy over Karzai’s brother’s rule in Kandahar show the ‘civilian surge’ has a long way to go in its fight against corruption and in developing governance.

The announcement of the July 2010 withdrawal date did not help things in this regard, emboldening insurgents and forcing a wary Afghan population to sit on the fence and bide their time. Meanwhile there is continued and sustained criticism from many credible quarters about the feasibility of a strategy that requires top-down nation building in a country that has little history or cultural acceptance of the Western ideals that underpin such a COIN strategy.

While the military, once resourced correctly, dutifully clears and holds the areas allotted to it, it is the lack of follow on credible Kabul governance that seriously undermines the current strategy. And as the military campaigns in Helmand and Kandahar have shown, even to create piecemeal operational security bubbles requires considerable resources, determination and patience. Linking these across Afghanistan to achieve strategic results may yet prove beyond ISAF member states’ political endurance.

In the rest of Afghanistan the picture is even less rosy. Violence is at an all time high, and public perception of ISAF control is at an all time low. The military say this correlates with surging operations into new territories and that the Taliban command structure has been severely degraded by the fighting.

Strong anecdotal evidence and the fact that the insurgency is changing to high-profile assassinations and terrorism, does support these claims and also provides an indicator of how the campaign may evolve in 2011. However, the litmus test of continued insurgent capability will be seen in their ability to conduct operations in summer 2011.

Only then will we have a good picture of the military headway ISAF is making, and only then will Afghans have a feeling of who to side with in this decade-long conflict.