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A public discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations last week was concerned with identifying particular trouble spots and troublesome issues around the world that are apt to demand policy attention during 2013. One of the speakers, David Gordon of the Eurasia Group, mentioned in passing that an issue he was not worried about this year was radicalism in developed countries. He did not specify what variety of radicalism; probably most in the room simply assumed he was referring to the Islamist variety. That variety, after all, as it manifests itself both at home and abroad, has now been for some time almost the sole preoccupation in the United States as far as violent radicalism is concerned. When Peter King, as chairman in the previous Congress of the House Committee on Homeland Security, conducted a series of hearings on terrorist threats in the United States, the subject was all Islamist, all the time.

One hazard of such a narrow focus on one type of radicalism is to reduce the likelihood we will notice the rise of other types. Different types of radicalism, and the subsets of it that involve terrorist violence, come and go in waves, as they have over the past several decades. The rise of any one wave is generally related to the broader political environment in two somewhat antipodal ways. The radicalism usually is embedded in a larger mood, movement or ethos. But it also usually is a reaction against some political trend or development.

In a wide-ranging review of three recent books on Saudi Arabia, The New York Review of Books’ Hugh Eakin paints a picture of the massive question mark hanging over the Kingdom and its future. Its unusual succession model, which puts brothers ahead of sons, helped hold the kingdom’s many competing princes together—and ensured that the buffoonish King Saud was succeeded by his highly effective brother Faisal instead of one of his young sons.

Now, however, it means that the kingdom is still ruled by the children of a man whose birth was closer in history to the War of the Austrian Succession than to the present. The structure of the state and its economy is just as clogged—many bureaucracies have become so bloated that there is a small industry devoted to helping businesses find a path through it. The cleric-dominated education system combines with the promise of work in government-funded nonjobs to leave many young people with few practical skills yet a sense that blue-collar work is beneath them. Oil money made all this possible; the growth of the population means it's becoming harder and harder to sustain.

Unlike many who comment on Saudi Arabia, Eakin does not succumb to the Western tendency to view all societies through the lens of democratization. Instead of darkly warning that a more participatory system must be implemented quickly to avoid total breakdown, or taking every idle hint of reform seriously (Foreign Affairs suggested Faisal might implement a constitution back in 1966; there still isn’t one in the strictest sense). Eakin notes that in spite of growing criticism of the government, 

Among several broadly held misconceptions about Iran is that to get Iranians to make concessions we want them to make at the negotiating table the United States must credibly threaten to inflict dire harm on them—specifically, with military force—if they do not make the concessions. Some in the United States (and some in Israel) who are especially keen on promoting this notion would welcome a war. If war preparations and brinksmanship used to communicate such a threat lead the two nations to stumble into an accidental war—and there is a real danger they might—so much the better from their point of view. But the belief in saber-rattling as an aid to gaining an agreement in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program extends to many who actually want an agreement and are not seeking a war. We have heard more about this lately in connection with Chuck Hagel's nomination to be secretary of defense. People ask whether this nominee, who has evinced an appreciation of the huge downsides of a war with Iran, would be able to rattle the saber as convincingly as the same people think a secretary of defense ought to rattle it.

Even the usually thoughtful David Ignatius has adopted this line of thought. In his latest column he makes a comparison with nuclear deterrence in the time of Dwight Eisenhower. Under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, a “bluff” of “frightening the Soviets with the danger of Armageddon” was used to dissuade them from overrunning Western Europe. “Obama,” says Ignatius, “has a similar challenge with Iran.”

Great Britain has been conducting an agonizing reappraisal of its relationship with the European Union. For months Prime Minister David Cameron has been trying to elide the issue of a referendum, while placating the anti-European fanatics in his own Tory Party. Now Philip Gordon, the assistant secretary of state for Europe, has raised eyebrows in London with his statement that it would be foolish for Great Britain to attentuate, or even terminate, its attachment to the European Union.

Gordon apparently told journalists that the British should, in effect, get on with it. He said,

We have a growing relationship with the EU as an institution, which has an increasing voice in the world, and we want to see a strong British voice in that EU. That is in America's interests. We welcome an outward-looking EU with Britain in it.

Micah Zenko has a new report out yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations about drone strikes. It’s an in-depth treatment of many of the issues raised by Washington’s current policies regarding drone use. Here’s a snapshot of Zenko’s conclusions:

The United States should more fully explain and reform aspects of its policies on drone strikes in nonbattlefield settings by ending the controversial practice of “signature strikes”; limiting targeted killings to leaders of transnational terrorist organizations and individuals with direct involvement in past or ongoing plots against the United States and its allies; and clarifying rules of the road for drone strikes in nonbattlefield settings.

The report is well worth reading in full. Particularly valuable are Zenko’s calls for reform regarding “signature strikes” and targeting policy, as well as his focus on how drone strikes can at times work against other stated foreign-policy goals of the United States. Also noteworthy is the fact that at the end of his report, Zenko offers recommendations to Congress as well as to the executive branch. He observes, “Despite nearly ten years of nonbattlefield targeted killings, no congressional committee has conducted a hearing on any aspect of them.” Among his recommendations to Congress are that it should:

Demand regular White House briefings on drone strikes and how such operations are coordinated with broader foreign policy objectives . . .

Hold hearings with government officials and nongovernmental experts on the short- and long-term effects of U.S. targeted killings . . . and

Withhold funding and/or subpoena the executive branch if cooperation is not forthcoming.

Armageddon-style battles over raising the debt ceiling are becoming an annual tradition here in Washington. The latest iteration, fresh on the heels of the near-miss on the “fiscal cliff,” promises to once again call the effectiveness and creditworthiness of the United States government into doubt. At a time when financial markets seem to be responding to government decisions as much as economic realities, this is hardly welcome, and it appears likely that Congress will once again kick the can down the road, making a temporary deal in order to fight the battle again in a year or so.

But never fear! An obscure legal loophole might allow the debt limit problem to be solved once and for all.

The Treasury’s ability to create new money is subject to a number of restrictions, including on the denominations of coins. Except, that is, platinum coins. Platinum isn’t normally found in American change—you’re more likely to encounter it in your car’s catalytic converter than in your pocket—but the U.S. Mint occasionally produces commemorative coins in a range of metals. In theory, then, President Obama would be acting within his legal powers if he ordered the production of a platinum coin valued at one trillion dollars, or at any other amount he chose. This coin could then be deposited at the Federal Reserve, allowing new debt to be issued against its value. Debt crisis averted!

The idea of a special relationship between the United States and Britain may have been supported by the sentiments of America's former WASP establishment. But according to Geoffrey Wheatcroft, it was one of the central figures of the WASP elite who most prominently stated that the idea of a special relationship was a fantasy, particularly to the partner looking across the sea from the east.

In the Spectator, Wheatcroft recounts how in 1962 Dean Acheson, then a former Secretary of State with an impressive resumé ("Lend-Lease, Bretton Woods, the coming of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine, the creation of Nato, the Korean war"), dropped a transatlantic political bomb in a speech at West Point. According to Wheatcroft, most of the speech was a conventional analysis of Cold War strategy. What was "almost an aside" got the most attention:

Over 2,100 prisoners held by Syrian authorities were freed this morning in exchange for forty-eight Iranian prisoners released by rebel forces, according to the New York Times. This prisoner exchange appears to be the largest yet in the two-year-long uprising against autocrat Bashar al-Assad.

Above all, this exchange seems most telling about the relationship between Assad and Iran. Louquay Moqdad, a Free Syrian Army spokesman, told the Washington Post, “Assad proved he is an Iranian puppet because he agreed to release over 2,000 in return for 48 Iranians. He did not care about Syrian officers which are also detained with us.” Assad on the other hand, vowed to continue fighting "as long as there is one terrorist left in Syria."

The Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief is said to have helped broker the swap.

Chuck Hagel's chances to become secretary of defense seem to be on the rise, with the biggest reason being the White House finally changing his status from prospective nominee to nominee, and as such getting fully behind him rather than holding him up as a balloon to be shot at. Just as the implications of the entire saga surrounding this nomination include far more than who will head the Department of Defense, so too will the broader enduring effects be shaped by more than the outcome of the vote on the nomination in the Senate. They will be shaped by what come to be the common-knowledge perceptions of what has happened in this saga, which in turn will depend a lot on what is said and written about it over the next few weeks.

The broader effects to which I am referring are not just specific foreign policy directions during the second Obama term, although we can hope for, as Jacob Heilbrunn suggests, more engagement of the diplomatic type and less of the military variety. Hagel will be a voice for reason and realism in policy discussions in the White House Situation Room, but as many others have pointed out, the secretary of defense is not the primary person responsible for making foreign policy.

Perhaps we should be encouraged at least as much about what the nomination says in general about Barack Obama as about having Chuck Hagel as one of his senior advisers. One might even say the nomination is one of the gutsier things Obama has done. Maybe he chose Hagel mainly for the straightforward reasons that the president feels comfortable with him and their overall policy views seem compatible, with the nomination having nothing to do with an in-your-face approach to Congressional Republicans or payback to Bibi Netanyahu. But still.

Even Chuck Hagel, who, like most senators, probably does not have a modest assessment of his talents and abilities, must be taken aback by the furor surrounding his nomination to head the Defense department. Before President Obama nominated him, most Americans had probably forgotten, if they ever knew, who Hagel was or what he represented. His legislative record is fairly unremarkable. Nor, unless it has somehow escaped my notice, has he said anything memorable during his recent years laboring in obscurity as a professor at Georgetown University.

Yet his nomination has sent Washington into paroxysms. Feminists are lamenting that he is not a woman. Minorities are unhappy that he is not a minority. And conservatives are bemoaning that he is not a real conservative.

How has the Hagel nomination acquired such significance?