Smirking a bit, Clinton, just back from a trip to Southeast Asia, acknowledged that “some” believe that a multipolar world “undercuts American power and leadership.” But she said that was simplistic. “We’re seeking to gain partners in pursuing American interests, and we happen to think those interests coincide with universal” aspirations, Clinton said. The alternative approach of demanding foreign nations cooperate with the U.S. is a nonstarter. ”We can’t begin a conversation with someone by saying, ‘Here are the ten things you need to do to be a responsible stakeholder,’” Clinton said when challenged by a former U.S. ambassador, Martin Indyk, on how to persuade sometimes recalcitrant nations that U.S. interests overlap with their own interests.

Several days’ worth of far-ranging dialogue with the Chinese government on energy security and China’s development role in Africa, Asia and Latin America, she said, contributed to her endorsement of the National Security Strategy’s rules-based internationalism. “The sum of the parts add up to a strong endorsement of American leadership,” she said.

As reported here, the House Armed Services Committee finished marking up the fiscal 2011 Defense authorization last week, and intruded on a lot of administration priorities. Something I didn’t focus on, but Gates certainly did: The committee again authorized funding for a second engine on the Joint Strike Fighter, something the past two administrations have opposed as unnecessary and costly. And they did it right after Gates gave a major speech warning Congress about the “political will” necessary for a restrained, sustainable defense budget. Like not even two weeks afterward. It’s a slap in the face. Politico is right to observe that Gates is more solicitous of Capitol Hill than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld — a pretty low bar to clear —  but the budget fight is the central characteristic of his relationship with legislators at the moment.

So the morning after the markup, Gates comes into a Pentagon press conference and starts to regulate. “We will strongly resist efforts to impose programs and changes on the department that the military does not want, cannot afford, and that takes dollars from programs and endeavors the military services do need,” he said, reminding everyone in the room and on the Hill of his longstanding recommendation that President Obama veto the bill if it funds the second JSF engine and an Air Force transport plane Gates is trying to kill.

But if you’re a legislator, maybe you have a different calculus in mind. You need to get re-elected. Your constituents need jobs. You need to be seen as providing them with jobs. Defense-sector manufacturing and support jobs are good jobs, with high wages and federal benefits. So what if some defense secretary is moaning about wasteful defense spending? Your district isn’t going to care. And besides — isn’t Gates on his way out the door this year, anyway?

Then comes this exchange with a reporter in last week’s press conference. Here’s the transcript:

Q Will you stay here through next year to see that ’012 budget through? Because what you’re proposing can be rope-a-doped if there’s a perception you’re leaving at the end of the year. Rope-a-dope means they could, you know, resist –

SEC. GATES: I know what rope-a-dope means. (Laughter, laughs.) I’ve been in — I started in the government 44 years ago. I know exactly what that means. (Laughter.)

ADM. MULLEN: (Laughs.)

Q A serious question, though.

Do you now anticipate staying here through the end of ’011 to see the ’012 budget through?

SEC. GATES: We’ll see.

Maybe that legislator’s calculus changes now that Gates might stick around to see his priorities enforced. After all, she could be blamed for busting up the gargantuan defense budget, opposing the military and not delivering jobs. It’s an election year.

The Force is strong with this one.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announced that the South will close shipping lanes to the impoverished North and cease all economic activity with it. He plans to get the United Nations Security Council to address the Cheonan attack — a move that has the backing of the White House. “Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice are each consulting very closely with their Korean counterparts,” read a White House statement issued at 1 a.m. today, “as well as with Japan, China, and other UN Security Council member states in order to reach agreement on the steps in the Council.”

The operative part of the statement:

Specifically, we endorse President Lee’s demand that North Korea immediately apologize and punish those responsible for the attack, and, most importantly, stop its belligerent and threatening behavior.  U.S. support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal, and the President has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression.  We will build on an already strong foundation of excellent cooperation between our militaries and explore further enhancements to our joint posture on the Peninsula as part of our ongoing dialogue.

Flying back from a major economic summit in China, Clinton declined to say that the Chinese, North Korea’s last remaining benefactor, saw the Cheonan incident as the U.S. and the South Koreans do.  But “the Chinese recognize the gravity of the situation we face,” she said. “The Chinese understand the reaction by the South Koreans, and they also understand our unique responsibility for the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.” Clinton added that the North Koreans have caused “a highly precarious situation” on the Korean peninsula.

Speaking last week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointedly noted that whatever strain from two extended wars that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps feel doesn’t apply to the forces that would respond to a resumption of hostilities in Korea. “If there were a problem in Korea, our main arms would be the Navy and the Air Force,” Gates said. “And so we — those are not stretched in the same way that the — that the ground forces are. But again, the key to remember — the key thing to remember here is that this was an attack on a South Korean ship, and the South Koreans need to be in the lead in terms of proposing ways forward.”

But what did the Panetta-Jones trip reap from the Pakistanis? “Both parties acknowledged the extreme challenge of thwarting each and every plot and terrorist action, both sides pledged to intensify efforts, increase cooperation, and do everything possible to protect our citizens,” the statement reads. Here it is in full:

The productive discussions covered U.S.-Pakistan relations, the security situation in the region, the shared terrorist threat and fight against extremists, and the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue. General Jones reiterated the United States’ long-term commitment to the strategic partnership with Pakistan, including support for creating economic opportunity for the Pakistani people. The talks provided an opportunity to review progress on the many areas addressed in the recent strategic dialogue held in Washington. Both sides expressed their commitment to strengthening ties across the broad spectrum of issues between our countries, including trade, economic growth, and development. The parties agreed to continue frequent government-to-government contacts and further senior-level engagement in order to advance our common interests and provide a better, more secure future for our people.

President Asif Ali Zardari said that militancy and terrorism was the common enemy and that the existing robust cooperation between the two countries must continue to fight the menace. General Jones and Director Panetta provided an update on the ongoing investigation into the Times Square terrorist incident. General Jones expressed appreciation for the excellent cooperation the United States is receiving from Pakistan as well as the tremendous sacrifice of the Pakistani military, law enforcement and people in their efforts to combat extremists. The talks covered measures that both countries are, and will be, taking to confront the common threat we face from extremists and prevent such potential attacks from occurring again and both parties acknowledged the extreme challenge of thwarting each and every plot and terrorist action, both sides pledged to intensify efforts, increase cooperation, and do everything possible to protect our citizens. President Zardari noted that Pakistan desires a long-term, multifaceted, and durable relationship with the United States which no incident should be able to adversely impact.

Watch if U.S. intelligence officials still tell reporters that Pakistan is withholding crucial terrorism intelligence after Jones and Panetta fly home.

“We have reached agreement on a strong draft with the cooperation of both Russia and China,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.

“We plan to circulate that draft resolution to the entire Security Council today,” Clinton said. “I think this announcement is as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days as any we could provide.

Could be bluster, or it could be that Clinton has a whip count.

Presidents Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

The presidential communique has been issued. A longer-term “Strategic Partnership Declaration” will follow by the end of the year. But the most important and immediate result of this week’s visit to Washington by Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a consensus each side will claim for two “processes”: one for outreach to the Taliban, and the other for rolling back its influence in portions of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

[Security1] There is no indication of a quid pro quo. But in public appearances Thursday, the day after Karzai met at the White House with President Obama, senior U.S. and Afghan leaders left little doubt that they would claim the support of the other for the two major initiatives, each of which is a high priority for the other.

Seated beside Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded research organization, Karzai said one of the major messages he would take back to the Afghan people is “U.S. backing of the peace process,” a term he has used repeatedly this week. The peace process refers to an effort beginning with a “consultative peace jirga,” or conference, that Karzai will hold on May 29 for Afghans to come to consensus on the terms of a peace deal to offer to the Taliban in the hope of ending nearly nine years of insurgency. Since his November inauguration to a second term in office — which came after his election was defined by widespread fraud — Karzai has prioritized demonstrating that he will provide the negotiated end to the war that Afghans repeatedly tell pollsters they desire.

That effort received a high-profile endorsement from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, during a Pentagon news conference. McChrystal called the peace jirga “an appropriate effort” to figure out “an Afghan-led process” for ending the war. “The way ahead cannot be war,” McChrystal said, “The way ahead has to be a resolution to it.”

Karzai was similarly declarative about a long-telegraphed U.S. priority — turning military and Afghan governance attention to Kandahar, a major southern city of about 850,000 Afghans and the spiritual home of the Taliban. While much of the city remains under at least formal government control, the Taliban have been able to re-establish major presences in the city and its surrounding areas, most recently assassinating the deputy mayor in a mosque in broad daylight. Karzai previously indicated discomfort with the prospect of major fighting in the city, telling a shura council of 1500 Kandahar notables in April that no operation would go forward without local support.

On Thursday, however, Karzai, McChrystal and Clinton sounded harmonious notes about what McChrystal described as not an operation but a “rising tide of security” into the city. All three expressly forswore the use of the word “operation” — the word conjured up inappropriate images of “tanks, troops moving” through the city, Karzai said — and instead said Kandahar would be a “process” featuring more out-governing the Taliban than out-fighting it. Karzai suggested he became more comfortable with the “process” in Kandahar in the last week.

“This is the consequence of consultations that we have had” with the Americans, Karzai said. “The effort in Kandahar and the surrounding area has to be explained better, the modality of it has to be explained better, so we’re not calling it at all an operation.” Instead, the “process” would feature “bringing conditions to the Kandahar region and around where there is better governance, better resources and more active, vigorous vibrant intelligence activity and then, if and when and where needed, an operation militarily, in consultation with the community and backed by the community.”

McChrystal told reporters at the Pentagon not to expect a “D-Day and an H-hour and an attack” on the city, calling it “a process, not an event.” Instead, he will surge forces — NATO and Afghan — into Kandahar and its surrounding areas “without lapsing into major fighting” that he said “the insurgents would love to see.”

While McChrystal did not specify his battle plan at his briefing, informed sources indicated to TWI that McChrystal would seek to raise the current force mix in Kandahar from 6900 NATO troops and 5300 Afghan troops currently to 11,850 NATO forces and 8500 Afghans by September, with an emphasis on more than doubling the Afghan police presence there. That “rising tide” will coincide with planned rapid assemblies of local jirgas to “reconnect” Kandaharis to national, provincial and local government representatives — something to which Karzai said today he is committed. By November, McChrystal’s command expects to see subtle and favorable changes in Afghan perceptions of the capabilities of the government to provide a better life and for Afghan security forces to keep the peace.

McChrystal said in his press briefing that one of the lessons of months’ worth of difficult fighting in Helmand province is that change is measured in Afghan perceptions of which side offers a better future — and can’t be easily observed. “If you go every day, each day, it’s not a dramatic change,” McChrystal said. “If you go months’ difference, then it is.” That raised the prospect of months of ambiguous progress, at best, occurring alongside what McChrystal forecast would be violent and bloody contests with the Taliban.

While McChrystal and the Afghan government intend to press the insurgents into exercising diminished relevance in Kandahar, Karzai was more forceful than his American counterparts in saying explicitly that he seeks to negotiate peace with the Taliban.

“The peace process will be with those of the Taliban and other militant groups who are not part of al-Qaeda or other terrorist networks or ideologically against us — when I say us I mean the allies and all of us — in any way that will endanger our constitution, the freedoms and the democracy and the progress that we have achieved,” Karzai said. He said he wanted robust efforts at reintegrating what he called “countryside boys” who have fought alongside the Taliban out of material or transactional concerns, but he also pledged to talk to the senior Taliban leadership, an effort that would lead him to turn to Pakistan and regional countries to support and facilitate.

Clinton, by contrast, lowered expectations for what the peace process will deliver, the pace at which it will move, and what the U.S. can support. “People cannot just show up and say that they’re prepared to reenter Afghan society after having directed suicide attacks and other kinds of violence against Afghanistan,” Clinton said, claiming no distance from Karzai’s position. “This process really starts with the reintegration off the battlefield that the president was describing, of people who for a variety of reasons found themselves in the ranks of the Taliban. I don’t think any of us can predict what the outcome of the next phase will be,” referring to talks with the senior Taliban leadership.

She expressed skepticism that “leaders of the Afghan Taliban” are interested in a peace deal. “They are very much against it,” Clinton said. “We don’t expect to see them walking through the door.” Clinton conceived of an Afghan peace process defined by “starting with reintegration but thinking hard about what reconciliation would mean.”

In a joint appearance with Karzai yesterday, President Obama implicitly tied the two “processes” together.

“At what point do the Taliban start making different calculations about what’s in their interests, and how the Afghan people feel about these issues, is in part going to be dependent on our success in terms of carrying out our mission there,” Obama said at the White House. “So we are a very I think important partner in facilitating this potential reconciliation and effectively empowering the Afghan government so that it is in the strongest possible position as these talks move forward.”

Partly because elements of the technology behind Prompt Global Strike are “not yet even invented,” it’s hard to say what the system will ultimately cost or when it can be deployed. The New START accord with the Russians even had to limit its development because once launched from an intercontinental ballistic missile, it would be hard for Russia or any other power to determine with confidence that such a missile didn’t carry a nuclear payload.

Relatedly, here’s something that should warm Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-Ariz.) New START-opponent heart but surely won’t: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a NATO forum that the U.S. won’t withdraw its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe until there’s a follow-on treaty with Russia ensuring the Russians will do the same.

Update: Noah Shachtman hates Prompt Global Strike. “Relying on conventional ICBMs to do the job, and risking a nuclear showdown, is just plain crazy,” he writes.

While the entire Mideast-centric wing of the foreign-policy community waits to see if the Obama administration will actually offer its own plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with an independent Palestinian state — to say nothing of the bated breath in Mideast capitals — Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, sounded warm, soothing tones last night about the U.S.-Israel relationship to a leading pro-Israel group, the center-right Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“There has been a lot of distortion and misrepresentation of our policy recently,” Jones said, getting that out of the way. “We will never forget that since the first minutes of Israeli independence, the United States has had a special relationship with Israel. And that will not change.” And he continued on in that vein. It even got subtle: As Israel tries to rebrand itself as a tech-centric “start-up nation,” Jones said the U.S.-Israel bonds were “the bonds of pioneers in science, technology and so many fields where we cooperate every day.”

Bona fides affirmed, Jones’ speech attempted to thread several needles: convincing Israel and its American advocates that taking risks for a two-state solution right now is in both the Israeli and American interest; that the U.S. is about to take action on Israel’s enemy, Iran, and so Israel needs to reciprocate on the peace process; and that the Obama administration’s broader national security strategy — ensuring nations fulfill their international obligations and uphold the rights of their citizens as the key to global security, prosperity and dignity — is inextricably tied to Mideast peace. “We recognize that peace must be made by the parties and cannot be imposed from the outside,” Jones said, echoing a recent formulation of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “At the same time, we understand that the status quo is not sustainable.” He called for the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations — pointedly eliding the indirect talks the administration has for weeks tried to use as a bridge to direct talks:

So it is time to begin those negotiations and to put an end to excuses. It is time for all leaders in the region—Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab—to support efforts for peace. It is time for today’s leader to demonstrate the courage and leadership of Anwar Sadat, King Hussein, and Yitzhak Rabin.

That looks like the Fierce Urgency of Now again. Jones left hanging in the air the prospect of an Obama peace plan — he didn’t touch on the idea at all — but the thrust of his speech was about the need for concerted and immediate action on peace. The vectors point in the direction of such an Obama peace plan if those talks don’t get underway, and Jones closed by emphasizing that the Obama administration isn’t going to relent on Mideast peace: “This is the work we will continue to pursue in the months and years ahead… not only for the sake of America’s security, but for the world’s.”

Full disclosure: I worked for Scoblic for a bunch of years at the magazine, and while saying this now represents a conflict of interest, his arrival on the committee staff will be very welcome news for arms controllers and very unwelcome news for opponents. Should the committee chairman, John Kerry (D-Mass.), end up succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, it wouldn’t be surprising if Scoblic helped negotiate the next arms-reduction treaty after New START.

It’s that sort of urgency, up against the current impasse in the peace process, that’s leading the Obama administration to consider offering its own peace plan. Even if it does, Clinton implicitly clarified in her speech, “We not only know we cannot force a solution, we have no interest in forcing a solution. The parties themselves are the only ones who can resolve their differences.”  Notice, though, that that’s not the same thing as pledging not to offer a U.S. proposal for peace.

Her speech also tethered the peace process to the marginalization of Hamas, a shared Israeli-Palestinian Authority-U.S. interest:

In contrast to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has staked its credibility on a path of peaceful coexistence. Even more than economic opportunities, that path for the Palestinians must lead to a state of their own, for the dignity that all people deserve, and the right to chart their own destiny. If President Abbas cannot deliver on those aspirations, there’s no doubt his support will fade and Palestinians will turn to alternatives – including Hamas. And that way leads only to more conflict.

But the U.S., the so-called Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union) and the Arab states can only facilitate a solution, Clinton said: “[T]here are only two peoples who can make the decisions. … President Obama can’t work harder than the people of Israel and the Palestinian territories.”