Sorry for not posting for a few days --- it's that time of year for us academics, I've had to attend a few events and give some talks, and now I'm about to hit the road for the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting over the weekend.

 If I hadn't been drowning, I had been meaning to post about Lebanon's new government (a power-sharing deal which looks pretty much like what should have happened right after the election only it took almost half a year to get there);  KSM in New York (fears that a trial will help al-Qaeda propaganda are so old school -- there have been fundamental changes in AQ's ability to mobilize Arab support, and KSM isn't going to reverse that; Steve Simon does a fantastic job with this here);  the Iraqi election law veto (Hashemi's concerns about the representation of refugees and minorities are probably right on the merits, but my goodness that's some bad timing); and the Israeli-Palestinian abyss ('nuff said).  

 I'll try to post something on some of those topics before I leave, but no promises... and after that, blogging as usual will be subject to the whims of the gods of wireless.  Should be back online middle of next week.

 In the meantime, you can enjoy this list of the 500 most influential Muslims compiled by Georgetown's Prince Waleed bin Talaal Center.   I don't know what methodology they used, but I'd say that a list of the most influential Muslims in the world which includes King Abdullah of Jordan, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and Sultan Qaboos of Oman in the top 10 probably has some flaws. 

The other day, I mentioned that I would be interested to hear what Nathan Brown thought about the current Israeli-Palestinian situation, given that a year ago he argued powerfully that there were no serious prospects for negotiations and it was time to think of a Plan B.  He has obliged with an excellent Carnegie brief, and with this short commentary, which I'm calling...

OK, here we are at Plan B. Guest commentary by Nathan Brown. 

The collapse of US diplomacy on the Israeli-Palestinian front—too obvious now for even the most starry-eyed optimist to deny—has provoked predictably partisan sniping in Washington in which the Obama administration’s critics (and actually even some of its friends) charge it with incompetence.

There have been tactical mistakes aplenty, though to be fair to the current US leaders, their predecessors could be stunningly maladroit as well.  But the problem goes beyond clumsiness.  The commonalties between the late Bush approach and the early Obama approach far outnumber the differences: they amount to a “West Bank first” strategy of building up the Ramallah government, pursuing Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy in support of a two-state solution, and ignoring Hamas on the assumption that allowing the impoverishment of Gaza will bring Palestinians there to their senses. 

Seen this way, the Obama administration’s embarrassments of the past month have served a vital public service: they reveal that the basic US approach leads only to political decay.  In a short commentary for the Carnegie Endowment, I argue that this is the time to abandon rather than tweak failed policies.

One of the long-denied realities is the deep state of institutional decay on the Palestinian side.  Just as Voltaire famously described the Holy Roman Empire as “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire,” there are reasons to describe Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority as neither Palestinian nor an authority. It is an internationally-sponsored and partly internationally-financed protectorate administering some Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank. Its shelf life was supposed to be five years, starting with its creation in 1994. To regard its moldy remains as the germ of a Palestinian state ignores the unhealthy dose of antibiotics that Israelis, Americans, and Palestinians themselves have administered to the Palestinian national movement over the past ten years.

Is there a way out?

No. Or at least not now. The best we can do is to make sure that things don’t get worse and begin creating the raw ingredients for fresh new approaches. This will not be easy.  Elsewhere I have proposed a “Plan B” that focuses less on conflict-ending diplomacy and more on working to contain the damage and create the basis for moving to a solution in the future. I still stand behind that proposal, but I acknowledge that it has its own weaknesses and may be based on excessively optimistic hopes of what can be achieved. So for now, let me restrict myself to a few pointers. In the Carnegie commentary, I argue that whatever approach is adopted should not ignore the following realities, among others

• “West Bank first” has failed. One of the proposals buzzing around Washington is to give fuller backing to Salam Fayyad’s “plan” for Palestinian statehood.  Fayyad is an admirable figure in many respects, but he his plan is really a hopeful vision rather than a workable set of policy guidelines.  We should back him if we like, but that’s no substitute for a comprehensive policy review.
• Palestinians—like Americans and Israelis—have domestic politics.  Palestinians have some pleasant leaders now and we should work with them. But our bungling of the Goldstone report and the settlements issues should remind us that they are weak and have serious problems with domestic legitimacy. 
• Don’t forget Gaza.  The focus on Goldstone report on the Gaza war makes us forget that the Gaza economy was wrecked before December 2008.  This matters—maybe not to us, but to almost everybody in the Arab world and many people elsewhere.  This looks like a rerun of our Iraq sanctions policy of the 1990s—when the ground shifted slowly under our feet without us noticing it. 
• There are no quick fixes to the challenge of Hamas.  Hamas won’t go away quickly; it is dug in very deeply in Gaza.  It has taken a hit in public opinion polls (and for good reasons—it has delivered blood, toil, sweat, and tears but little food and less hope).  But let’s be careful about extrapolating that into the future—Hamas has been an agile movement in the past.  And even if people grumble, someone has to explain how to make Hamas lose elections that aren’t going to be held.

 Since Mahmoud Abbas announced that he won't stand for re-election, controversy has swirled around his intentions. Is he bluffing?  Does it mean the end of the peace process?  Will he change his mind?  Well, today I was talking with a friend who very closely monitors Palestinian election matters, who is just in town visiting from Jerusalem.  He pointed out that developments on the ground suggest strongly that the elections aren't going to be held, rendering it all rather moot. 

 Basically, for the elections to be held in January, certain things need to be happening.  Once the Presidential decree was issued, the Elections Commission needed to start voter registration procedures... tomorrow.  That involves opening about 1000 voter registration centers, hiring and training some 3000 staffers, securing voting centers and preparing materials.  Evidently, none of that is happening.  That's kind of a tell.

 Part of this is because Hamas has refused to take part and is preventing anything from being organized in Gaza. That's the harvest of the Egyptian (and American-driven) failure to achieve a national unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah -- without a political agreement on the terms of co-existence, Hamas was never going to agree to elections on Fatah's terms.   West Bank only elections are unlikely, because nobody in the electoral commission wants to legitimize the division of Palestine into two distinct entities.   

 If there are no elections, it doesn't mean that Abu Mazen is going away.  As a number of analysts have pointed out, he has shown no signs of giving up his hold on other institutional power centers - in Fatah, in the PLO, or even on the Presidency whatever the status of his electoral mandate. Most likely, by this argument, he'll just carry on as before without anyone much caring whether or not he's been re-elected.  This certainly won't help the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, contribute to the rule of law or institutional development, or provide a unified and legitimate negotiating partner should talks ever get underway.  But that seems to be where this is heading. 

 As to whether there's really some secret Palestinian plan for Salam Fayyad to unilaterally declare a state and get international recognition, with American support.... sounds unlikely to me.  Is the whole PA leadership about to quit?  Who knows?  Few people seem to have really thought through what might happen in the absence of the fig leaf of a formal peace process.  I'm interested to hear from those who have, such as my colleagues Nathan Brown (who I hear has something in the works along those lines, stay tuned) and Rob Malley (UPDATE: and right on cue...) 

 Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I've seen a meme going around that it somehow  exposed a contradiction between "political correctness" and "security."  The avoidance of Nidal Hassan's religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage.  American security, therefore, demands dropping the "political correctness" of avoiding a  confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the "tough questions" about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans. 

 This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong.    There is a connection between what these critics are calling "political correctness" and national security, but it runs in the opposite direction.   The real linkage is that there is a strong security imperative to prevent the consolidation of a narrative in which America is engaged in a clash of civilizations with Islam, and instead to nurture a narrative in which al-Qaeda and its affiliates represent a marginal fringe to be jointly combatted.  Fortunately, American leaders -- from the Obama administration through General George Casey and top counter-terrorism officials -- understand this and have been acting appropriately. 

 It's worth walking through the connection once again, because how America responds to Ft. Hood really is important in the wider attempt to change the nature of its engagement with Muslim publics across the world.  Get the response right, as the administration thus far has done, and they show that things really have changed.  Get it wrong, as its critics demand, and the world could tumble back down into the 'clash of civilizations' trap which al-Qaeda so dearly wants and which the improved American approach of the last couple of years has increasingly denied it. 

 The grand strategy of al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues is, and has always been, to generate a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West which does not currently exist.  Their great challenge is that the vast majority of Muslims reject their theology, ideology, strategy and tactics.  That's especially true of American Muslims.  They therefore feel the need to change the environment in which Muslims live in order to change their calculations about the appropriateness of extremist identities and ideologies and actions.   

 Terrorism is a means towards that end.  The object is to create a violent, polarized environment in which Muslims are forced to embrace a narrow, extreme version of Muslim identity.   They want Muslims to accept a master narrative in which the Islamic umma is existentially threatened by Western aggression, and the only theologically and strategically appropriate individual response is to join the jihad in the path of god (as they have defined it). 

 They recognize that most Muslims won't embrace this radical conception of their identity just through messaging, internet rhetoric, or preaching. To make inroads with mainstream Muslim communities, they need to change the context in which they live -- to render their status quo unacceptable and to make their narrative resonate.  And for that to happen, they need a lot of help -- for the targeted governments to take inflammatory measures against their Muslim populations, for the non-Muslim citizens in the targeted countries to discriminate against them, and for the media to fan the flames of hatred and mistrust. 

 Understanding this strategy points towards some fairly obvious guidelines for judging various responses.   Al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues don't just want their targets to overreact with blanket crackdowns on the mainstream Muslim community -- they are counting on it.  They want to create a homogenous, undifferentiated Islam on whose behalf they speak and a coherent master narrative which justifies and validates their actions. American reactions which feed AQ's master narrative, lump together disparate Muslim movements, and tar a wide range of Muslims with the AQ brush therefore serve al-Qaeda's strategy.  Responses which disrupt AQ's narrative, disaggregate the Muslim world and relegate AQ to a marginal fringe frustrate its strategy.  

 A lot of people -- some well-meaning, some clowns or worse -- evidently want the American response to the Ft. Hood shootings to revive the post-9/11 "war of ideas" and "clash of civilizations" anti-Islamic discourse.  It's a jihad, they shout, demanding careful scrutiny of the loyalty of American Muslims.  That's what they seem to mean by the demand to throw away "political correctness" and confront the ideological menace.  The overall effect of their recommendations, however,  would be to revive the flagging al-Qaeda brand and to greatly strengthen the appeal of its narrative.  And that's exactly what we should not want. 

 I don't think it's going to happen.  President Obama and his national security team clearly rejects such strategic misconceptions. They understand the importance of combining effective police work and international cooperation with a carefully calibrated rhetoric and strategic communications campaign.  Americans have learned a lot since 9/11.  And if the careful police work and investigation uncovers real ties to al-Qaeda, then I expect they will pursue those leads and carry out the appropriate response quietly and efficiently --- but without inflaming public hostilities, scoring cheap political points, or fueling the al-Qaeda narrative. 

 It seems that the Iraqi Parliament has finally reached an agreement on an election law, after a succession of missed deadlines which jeopardized the scheduled January date and added a few more white hairs to the collective heads of American military planners and diplomats.  The law reportedly features the "open list" and multiple district system favored by most American analysts. For more details, check in soon with Reider Visser, who has been following the details of the talks as closely as anyone. The major breakthrough was an agreement on how to handle the hotly contested area of Kirkuk -- using the 2009 electoral rolls, with the awesome idea that the election will be rerun in a year if sufficient fraud is discovered.  That should make for a whole year's worth of fun political gamesmanship!

 But that aside, the deal getting done is clearly good news -- and demonstrates that overall Obama's Iraqi strategy is going well even if it doesn't get much attention.  The election law deal has obvious implications for Obama's commitment to withdraw combat forces.  The American withdrawal timeline was long ago pegged to the elections, with force levels kept relatively high in order to provide for security during the elections and in the immediate aftermath. If the elections had been postponed, it would have posed a major problem for the withdrawal planning.  So from that narrow perspective, getting the elections done in January under any laws was really important - and Obama today affirmed that the deal keeps the withdrawal on schedule.  Getting a law which seems to include most of what the U.S. wanted substantively is a bonus.

 The long delay in passing the law had costs, of course.  The Iraqi Higher Election Commission has already warned repeatedly that it can not guarantee a fair and clean election in January because of the missed deadline for drafting a law.  This will throw a shadow of doubt over the proceedings, no doubt.  But I expect that with help from the UN and US, the technical issues will get resolved in time for the election.  And those costs arguably pale beside the larger point that Iraqis largely reached this deal on their own, without intense American micro-management, under the shadow of a clear commitment to U.S. military withdrawal. 

  Ambassador Christopher Hill has come under a lot of criticism for not throwing himself into the daily nuts and bolts of Iraqi politics the way his revered predecessor Ryan Crocker did.  I hear that US officials got more involved in recent weeks in pushing for an election deal, but still not at anything like the levels of the past.  And despite that, the deal got done.  That's an extremely important, positive lesson which needs to be internalized in this new era of reduced American presence and influence.  Hill's less hands-on approach is basically the right one, as much as it bothers those nostalgiac for the old ways.  The U.S. should not be as actively involved in the details of Iraqi politics as in the past, because its influence and resources are declining, and Iraqi politics carry on well enough without American micro-management.  Not everything happens as the U.S. would like, and there's not nearly as much progress on a range of political issues as American analysts would hope, but what else is new?  As the U.S. moves towards withdrawal, without Iraq really unravelling, this kind of development is exactly what needs to happen. 

 Obviously a lot happening today, but don't have time to comment at great length because the Elliott School is hosting Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jersualem, in about 45 minutes.  Since there have been protests over at least some of his previous appearances in the U.S., it may be an exciting morning on E Street.  But since I've been asked to comment about Mahmoud Abbas saying that he won't seek re-election, here's a super-quick take: 

I don't have much to add to what I wrote last week, before people started paying attention: if he's serious, then it isn't necessarily a disaster. It could shake up a failing process on autopilot, it could offer the chance to finally renew Palestinian leadership, and it could offer a way for the Gaza-West Bank, Fatah-Hamas standoff to be defused.  Nothing has changed in the last week to make me change my mind on those basic points. 

 Most of the Palestinian and Arab commentary I've seen since his announcement falls into three basic trends:  the first thinks he's bluffing, attempting to leverage his weakness into pressure on the U.S. and Israel; the second thinks it's irrelevant, because the elections will not actually be held in January; and the third is cheering his  departure, and hoping that it will lead to a collective admission that the PA's strategy has failed.  The three perspectives are obviously not mutually exclusive.  When I asked leading Palestinian academic Salim Tamari yesterday about the impact it would have on the peace process, he just looked at me quizically and said "what peace process?"

 There's been a collective moment of clarity over the last week about the disastrous course of the attempt to get to serious peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  Hillary Clinton's comments about the Israeli "unprecedented" positions and the prospect of starting talks without a settlement freeze have thrown people into paroxysms of premature  postmortems. I don't think her comments actually changed very much -- the dynamic was bad before she came to the region, it's still bad. At least now maybe the shock of this sudden view of the abyss will concentrate people's minds and get them to try something new.  

This all gets back to the basic point I've been harping on for months (for instance in the CAP report I co-authored with Brian Katulis in the early summer):  the administration has lacked a viable strategy for, or an adequate appreciation of, intra-Palestinian politics and the implications of the deep structural weakness of the Palestinian Authority.  Now, perhaps, they'll have to get it.  There's no viable path forward which doesn't include alleviating the blockade of Gaza and reunifying it politically with the West Bank, and no serious prospect that the institutions of the Palestinian Authority can be built up along Salam Fayyad's model without also dealing seriously with the political horizon of peace talks aimed at rapidly achieving a two state solution.   The settlement freeze demand, which is being blamed wrongly for the current problems, was not a luxury -- it was essential for the Palestinian political track.  And now that track needs a serious American re-think. 

 More later. 

 Egyptian opposition politician Ayman Nour said today that state security forces prevented him from flying to the United States.  Since finally being released from prison, where he had been placed on trumped-up charges after losing the 2005 Presidential election to Hosni Mubarak, Nour has faced recurrent harrassment and abuse.  He recently signed on to the broad campaign to oppose Gamal Mubarak's succession to his father's position as President. 

 The Reuters article mentions that Nour was scheduled to speak at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.   He was also scheduled to speak, at my invitation, here at the Elliott School next Friday (November 13) on the topic of "democracy in Egypt."  I certainly hope that the Egyptian authorities change their mind in time to allow him to travel to the United States and share his views on that subject.

I gave the opening keynote talk to two fascinating conferences this week organized by State Department, which sought to take stock of what might be called the "hearts and minds" part of the struggle against al-Qaeda and associated movements.  Since the events were off the record, I really can't talk about the deliberations themselves, unfortunately, or even who was there. But, with the permission of the organizers, I thought it might be interesting to just put out there my own overall sense of the good news and the bad news, and to pose ten big questions which deserve some serious thought.  (And sorry, I'm not going to go back in and insert links right now.. I'm exhausted enough.)

 First, the good news.  I think that Obama's initial approach has been outstanding, reframing America's relationship with the Muslim world around a broader lens than terrorism.  His personal public diplomacy has achieved its initial goal:  a fresh start, a new conceptual frame, and a serious engagement based on "mutual respect and mutual interests."   His approach resolutely undermines al-Qaeda's efforts to impose a binary "West vs Islam" clash of civilizations narrative, and very effectively disaggregates the problem and marginalizes al-Qaeda. He also has taken seriously the political grievances which make the al-Qaeda narrative attractive to average Arabs and Muslims who don't share its radical ideology-- pledging withdrawal from Iraq, promising to close Guantanamo, engaging on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

 And this has paid off in the real world.  As I've argued several times recently, al-Qaeda is more marginal than it has been since 9/11 (at least in the Arab world -- this may be different in South Asia or Europe, where I pay less close attention). It has simply lost its ability to present itself as the avatar of generic resistance.  Al-Qaeda thrives on, indeed requires, a polarized environment in which its radical strategy represents one side of an all-consuming clash of civilizations.  Much of the Bush administration's approach to the "GWOT" gave it just what it needed;  it got better towards the end of his second term, and Obama has built upon and greatly accelerated the progress. 

 It's worth remembering that mostly, they did it to themselves (with some help from their adversaries, of course).  They haven't carried out the big attacks on the U.S., thankfully.  What their affiliates could do were local "soft target" attacks in Arab countries which killed Muslims and deeply alienated mainstream Arabs who might have thrilled to attacks on U.S. troops occupying Iraq.  It now faces an almost universally hostile Arab mass media and a daunting gallery of enemies -- not just America's allied governments but also the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and more.  Internal critiques of its tactics are everywhere, and magnified by this hostile Arab media, while the movement itself grew more doctrinally pure. Its videos get little traction and have little impact on Arab public debate.  Its like-minded movements have failed to gain a foothold in Gaza and Lebanon, and it continues to suffer the effects of their strategy in Iraq.  And at the ideological level, Yusuf al-Qaradawi's declaration of its ideology as a mad declaration of war on the whole world has resonated. 

 This strong beginning and reoriented conceptual framework is a big part of my continuing "A-" grade for his overall foreign policy performance. 

 But there's less good news as well.  Al-Qaeda is resilient and adaptive, and even if its ideology is unpopular it still offers a potent and compelling narrative.  Bin Laden's address last month was far better crafted and resonated more widely than most recent AQ productions. The ideology has spread far enough and has matured enough that it may no longer need AQ Central for direction.  It may have failed to gain a foothold in Lebanon or Gaza, but the fact that those who share its ideology tried shows that the mobilized base is still out there searching. Yemen's descent into multiple wars has created broken space within which the previously struggling al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula could reconstitute.  The general spirit of resistance (muqawima) is strong and growing at the popular level -- and, as more moderate Islamist competitors struggle with regime repression and democratic doors close, openings might be found to siphon off recruits, funds, or support. 

 And Obama's window is closing.  Arab audiences see Guantanamo still open (including in an endlessly repeating al-Jazeera promo), US troops escalating in Afghanistan, Gaza still blockaded, and no settlement freeze or peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  They have seen little follow-up on the ground on the Cairo address (regardless of what's been cooking secretly in Washington).  A narrative is clearly hardening that Obama has not delivered on his promises, and that he hasn't really changed American policies despite his personal appeal.  U.S. officials may complain that this is unfair, that it's only been four months since Cairo, that they are preparing a lot of programs... but the world isn't fair.  This window isn't closed yet, but it's closing fast and opinions appear to be hardening.   I don't think that the risk here is that al-Qaeda will take advantage of it, given its weakened state -- in fact, Secretary Gates made an uncharacteristic mistake when he lapsed back to the Bush-era argument that we had to win in Afghanistan because otherwise al-Qaeda would capitalize.  It's more that the mobilized Arab and Muslim publics which Obama hoped to win over will be lost. 

 So with that background, here are ten questions worth thinking about for those interested in these issues, especially professionals in the area. I'm not including a number of more specifically focused points about strategic communications and public engagement which I'm writing about elsewhere.

1. What replaces the GWOT?  There is not yet a clear intellectual frame to replace the unmourned Global War on Terror.  I find myself often saying "what used to be called the GWOT."  If it isn't GWOT, what is it? "Combatting Violent Extremism (CVE)", which appears to still be the term of art, is better -- but also enormously flexible, in a bad way.  If CVE includes everything from COIN in Afghanistan to after-school programs in Birmingham, it just might be too broad.  And if that mission is defined by CVE, then isn't this just the old GWOT under a new name?  The Obama administration's conception of global engagement clearly wants to escape this trap -- helping to promote entrepreneurship, civil society, education economic change, and so on in order to build a new relationship between Muslim populataions and America rather than because it will fight terrorism.  But this is slippery, since the national security justification often ultimately comes back to terrorism, violent extremism, and those old categories.  So I can see how USAID, for instance, can pitch what it is doing as a contribution to CVE.  But what then is not CVE? 
2. What does the definition of CVE mean for the “whole of government” approach which is all the rage these days?  Everyone these days wants to see development agencies, domestic agencies, intelligence, public diplomacy, the State Department, the military and everyone else all integrated into a coherent whole of government approach to problems.   But who defines the mission?  Since budgets seem likely to remain skewed sharply in the Pentagon's favor for the forseeable future, that isn't hard to guess.  So is this just pressing other agencies into the service of a mission defined by the Pentagon, or does their inclusion actually change the mission?   How much progress has been made in restructuring the government, coordinating inter-agency activities, and sorting out responsibliities and authorities?   Can the NSC play the leadership role required to balance this out? 
3. Is it time to abandon the "war of ideas"? We've spent so much time and effort over the last eight years fretting about how to fight AQ's ideas and how to promote moderate Islam.  We should know by now that we (as a government) are really bad at trying to intervene in intra-Muslim debates.  Is it necessary?  Does it even help?  How much?  For instance, if the goal is to discredit the use of violence against civilians -- a good goal -- then it may make more sense to try and drive the kind of societal normative change which delegitimized smoking or child pornography (something about which people with a wide range of different ideas can agree) than to try to promote particular religious "ideas".  More broadly, the "resistance"  which I mentioned above is generally non-ideological, rooted far more in perceived political grievances than in the nuances of Islamist ideology.  What may have been useful in delegitimizing a marginal, radical ideology may have little relevance for responding to a mass-based, political, non-ideological oppositional trend.  But there are nearly a decade now of organizational competencies, budgets, and constituencies for the "war of ideas" -- which won't soon go away.  Are they still playing an appropriate role in the new strategy? 
4. Does AQ Central matter?   The perennial debate over whether to think about al-Qaeda as a centrally directed organization or as a loosely connected network of like-minded individuals and groups continues.  It will not likely be resolved, since there are elements of both going on.    But for designing CVE strategy, it clearly does matter whether you think that AQC is the key.  So to make this as blunt as possible:  would killing bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the remnants of AQC --- which seems more plausible in the coming months and years -- decisively end, or even decisively transform, the nature of the struggle?  
5. What to do with non-violent Islamist groups? The argument over how to classify different organizations, movements, and individuals has been going on for years.  While the conceptual understanding of intra-Muslim nuance has grown dramatically over the years, it's not clear to me that clear decisions have been made.  Are non-violent Islamists useful because they embrace demcracy, eschew violence, and compete with AQ for recruits and space, or dangerous because they oppose US foreign policy and spread Islamist identity and ideas?  Should they be engaged with as viable partners, tolerated but not engaged, or treated as part of the problem?  How much should this vary by local circumstance?  It's hard to construct a serious engagement strategy without an answer to this.   And, perhaps of more immediate concern:  what do we expect will happen if these organizations buckle under the weight of repression or pressure, whether in Gaza or Egypt or Jordan or elsewhere? Would this advance or set back American or Western interests, whether in CVE or more broadly?
6. Can local partners do the job?  I hear a lot of talk these days about Western governments partnering with and helping to build up local Muslim groups which can carry on the fight inside their own communities.  In general, that sounds good -- though nobody should expect that this can be done covertly without serious backlash risks, and there should be no expectations of control.   But I'm also struck by the lessons of democracy promotion and civil society building efforts over the years -- and the limits of all those partnering and capacity building efforts.  The CVE folks should learn those hard-learned lessons. In general, there are only a limited number of local partners with the capacity and willingness to deal with Western governments on these issue.  They often can't bear the weight assigned to them. They may risk their local credibility by partnering with governments.  And they may end up spending more of their time chasing the next government contract than doing the kind of community work which first made them interesting. 
7. What about human rights?  The GWOT frame tended to encourage a cavalier approach to public freedoms, human rights, and the rule of law in the name of counter-terrorism and security.  It is not clear whether the CVE frame makes the same leap.  After all, a whole of government, long-term approach to CVE should recognize the importance of legitimate, accountable, and transparent governments which deal respectfully with their citizens.  But will that in fact be the case?  The way that many Arab governments have achieved "success" has included a lot of torture, arbitrary indefinite arrest, and repression of all sorts.  Will a CVE paradigm under Obama go along with this or challenge it? 
8. Is this really a "Long War"?  We've grown used to thinking of this as a "generational struggle" -- but is it?  Does it make more sense to think of this as a transitional moment, in which al-Qaeda and its ideas could be decisively marginalized and rendered politically irrelevant? How would we know if this is a generational or transiational conflict?  What kinds of programs, strategies, and resourcing would each require?
9. Where are the crucial zones of CVE?   Arguably, the focus is shifting away from Arab heartland -- but to where?   Is it the active combat zones (Iraq, Afghanistan) which consume so much of the Pentagon's budget?  Is it the ungoverned spaces like Yemen or Somalia?  Is it the Muslim communities of Europe?   What do each of these demand -- and should they be brought together under the same conceptual framework?  And what do we absolutely have to do to avoid the most catastrophic, unacceptable outcomes in each:  do we have to bring legitimate governance and health care reform to Yemen? I sure hope not, but if so, where exactly are those resources to come from?   
10. And finally -- you knew this was coming:  is AfPak central to CVE or marginal?  Does its relative importance justify the ever-growing resource commitment?  Would maintaining the status quo (as opposed to U.S. withdrawal) render AfPak more marginal or more central?  Would escalation render AfPak more marginal or central?  

Lots of questions, some of which I feel have clear answers but a lot that don't.  Enjoy! 

(.... and #11, I suppose:  can we really do well at "combatting violent extremism" when we can't even spell it?  Sorry... )