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Good morning and welcome to The Rundown. We have some Christmas gift ideas for the White House: "Lonely Planet Iran," "America in Retreat," "The Wars of Afghanistan," and because it never gets old,"The Audacity of Hope." Missing something? You know where to find us. Best, Your AEI Foreign and Defense Policy Studies team

Tweet of the Week

Roger Noriega @rogernoriegausa #Cuba's Mandelas are in prison, under house arrest, or didn't live to see their country free. Remember that when Castros "eulogize" Mandela.

In the News
Nelson Mandela
President Obama and former presidents G.W. Bush, Clinton, and Carter are traveling to South Africa to attend memorial services for anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who passed away last week. Paul Wolfowitz writes a touching tribute to Nelson Mandela: As head of the World Bank, I was privileged once to have a private meeting with Mandela. The overwhelming impression was of a man who virtually radiated serenity, enormously confident and comfortable with himself but genuinely interested in his interlocutors. No doubt that quality served him well in negotiations, but he would not have succeeded if there had not been steel underneath that calm surface. He had the critical combination of strength and flexibility that are the marks, not of sainthood, but of successful diplomacy. Also, read David Adesnik's blog, In honor of Nelson Mandela.

Iran
Amid tensions with the US over a security agreement, Afghanistans president, Hamid Karzai, on Sunday agreed to talks on closer ties with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry will head to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify on the Iran nuclear negotiations. Keep an eye on the AEIdeas blog for a piece by Danielle Pletka about the six key questions the House Foreign Relations Committee should be asking Kerry. For more on the hearing, tune in to the Hugh Hewitt radio show tonight, guest hosted by Arthur Brooks with a special appearance by Pletka. Its been over a week since the Geneva accord was reached, and Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis endorsement of negotiations continues to restrain dissent among hard-liners. Yet, the further targeting of Iranian and Hezbollah assets in Syria and Lebanon is a reminder of the looming threat to Irans position in the region from Sunni rivals and radical groups. Matthew McInnis connects the recent Geneva accord with growing sectarian conflict within Iran in his latest AEIdeas blog. This is the fourth post in the new series titled What is keeping the Ayatollah up at night. Keep an eye on AEIdeas early this week for the next blog post in the series. Michael Rubin analyzes the efficacy of Irans softening stance towards the US by looking at events on the ground: Whenever an attack occurs in Iran, the Iranian press initially speculates widely but then, as an official line is formed in Tehranusually within one or two daysthe theories coalesce into one line. The Ghalenou murder is no different. Despite ample suspects among the drug runners and militant Sunni activists who traverse the Iranian-Pakistani border, Iranian officials decided to officially blame the United States and Israel. This suggests that, despite the diplomatic outreach accompanying the nuclear negotiations, old habits die hard in certain circles of the Iranian government.

Asia
South Korea announced yesterday that it would expand its air-defense zone to include airspace over the East China Sea that China and Japan also claim. Dan Blumenthal writes for The National Interest about the recent visit of Vice President Joe Biden to Japan, South Korea, and China amidst heightened tension regarding Beijings air defense identification zone (ADIZ) announcement: The timing and brazenness of the action raised questions in Washington about who is really calling the shots in China, and about President Xi Jinpings policy inclinations. Creating such doubt can serve Chinas strategic purposes. Beijing ensured that the Biden trip would be focused on Chinas claims in the East China Sea, rather than on Washingtons agenda of getting more support from China on denuclearizing North Korea, pushing Chinese economic reform, and other issues China would rather not discuss. In The Weekly Standard, read Gary Schmitt's take on the Obama administrations reaction to Chinas ADIZ: It seems the administration thinks in this instance ambiguitywhat others would call incoherenceis the right response as weve now seen reinforced by Vice President Bidens remarks in Tokyo today. Yes, Biden noted, Washington is deeply concerned over Chinas decision to create the ADIZ but then he said nada, zilch, when it came to demanding the Chinese retract their decision. Instead, Biden offered the puffery of China and Japan needing to create crisis management mechanisms and effective channels of communication to avoid accidents when of course the best policy for avoiding such an accident is for China to be told to stop with its provocations.

ICYMI: John Bolton's article for The Wall Street Journal: For too long, American business and political leaders have accepted the notion that China is engaged in a "peaceful rise" to become a "responsible stakeholder" in world affairs, which we should placidly allow to happen. Instead of fantasizing about what China might become, it is far more sensible to consider what America's strategy should be under a range of possible scenarios. The rosy peaceful rise theory ignores countless other possibilities, particularly its polar opposite. On Wednesday, Derek Scissors is testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy. Click here to live stream his testimony on Chinese manufacturing and economic policy. A year after a brutal gang rape in Delhi shook India's conscience, a high-profile investigation has again propelled women's rights to the center of the national conversation. In the dock stands one of India's most prominent journalists, Tarun Tejpal, the founder and editor of Tehelka, a muckraking magazine best known for using reporters with hidden cameras to expose alleged corruption and injustice. Sadanand Dhume examines the Tehelka case: [it] displays a positive development: the increasing willingness of urban Indian women to speak up against sexual harassment rather than bear it silently.

Defense
US House and Senate budget negotiators have agreed to key elements of a 2014 budget resolution, but its unclear whether they have the votes to pass it. To the green-eyeshade editorialists of The Wall Street Journal, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard Buck McKeon is leading a rebellion of defense hawks, an act of masochism threatening the sequestration provision of the Budget Control Act. McKeons crime is that hes hoping for a 2014 budget deal that would reduce the amount of defense sequestration by half. Tom Donnelly discusses the harmful effects of the Budget Control Act in The Weekly Standard: The effects are immediate and unquestionably severe. There is already a crisis in military readiness in the fundamental measures of defense preparedness. . . . The problems of current readiness are about to bloom into a larger problem both of force size and weapons modernization, a shrinking of capacity and decline in relative capability. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made headlines Wednesday when he unveiled a plan to shrink his office by about 200 employees and reduce its budget by about 20 percent over the next five years. Read Mackenzie Eaglen's latest blog for AEIdeas, "Pentagon moves slowly in the right direction." Eaglen concludes, "Secretary Hagel is to be commended in taking the lead to rein in the DoD workforce starting with his own office, yet the Pentagon needs to be extremely clear: these kinds of reductions, while a positive step, are well below the levels that would be needed to meet sequestration-imposed caps." In the concluding session of its series with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, AEI's Jon Kyl will host General Mark Welsh III, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, for a discussion of these questions and more. RSVP here for the December 11 event.

American Internationalism
What happens when a president fails to lead and to use his bully pulpit to make the case for vigorous American engagement in the world?

A new survey from the Pew Research Center has the answer. Marc Thiessen reports on the survey, which found that for the first time in a half century of polling, a majority of Americans now say that the US should mind its own business internationally. Thiessen writes, Its little surprise that such sentiment would grow under a president who repeatedly tells Americans its time to withdraw and focus on nation -building here at home. Read the blog in full. Keep an eye out on AEI.org early this week for a piece by David Adesnik on the new Pew survey results.
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