This week on Talking Points Memo Cafe's America Abroad, the bloggers are talking about...

 

Accord In North Korea: Worth The Wait?

North Korea agreed this week to abandon its efforts to build a nuclear weapons program and to admit international inspectors in exchange for security, energy, and economic concessions.  On America Abroad, Bruce Jentleson was the first to react, noting the diplomatic lessons that can be learned from the agreement.  "Major policy change can be achieved without regime change," he wrote.  Lee Feinstein declared the pact better late than never and criticized the Bush Administration's "ignorance is bliss" policy of ignoring the problem in North Korea as wasting valuable time while Kim Jong-Il amassed nuclear weapons.  Ivo Daalder noted four issues left unresolved  by the negotiators: the sequence of implementation, the presence of a light water reactor in North Korea, as well as verification of and a deadline for compliance.  Daalder also pointed readers to an "inside the Beltway" take on how the agreement is playing inside the capital.

Hurricane Katrina: More Mistakes From Washington

As residents of the Gulf Coast braced themselves for Hurricane Rita, America Abroad's bloggers pointed to the lack of leadership coming from inside the Beltway.  Ivo Daalder recalled that Senators McCain and Lieberman, now calling for improved communications capabilities for first responders, were among the strongest proponents of creating the Department of Homeland Security.  "It wasn't just in the implementation that things went wrong," Daalder wrote, "the whole idea of promoting the largest governmental organization in history was deeply flawed from the start.  Juliette Kayyem called President Bush's speech  to the nation from New Orleans "redundant," suggesting that "the Hurricane Katrina disaster could have been avoided had we been as prepared as we required ourselves, as a nation, to be."  Ivo Daalder also raised a frightening question: if the Department of Homeland Security is absorbed in recovering from Katrina and preparing for Rita, "Who's watching the terrorists?"

In Other News On America Abroad

Bruce Jentleson called on Democrats not to be content with President Bush's falling approval ratings and to push their numbers up by giving Americans a "governing philosopgy and strategy."John Ikenberry lamented the crisis of global governance  and the erosion of capacity facing so many international institutions.   "Looking into the future - with the growing complexities and dangers associated with continued globalization of economies, societies, and cultures and the privatization of technologies of violence - it is all too clear that the world will need more not less institutionalized cooperation," he wrote.

Returning to the state of affairs in Iraq, Ivo Daalder wondered  how the U.S. can "minimize the damage caused by our having lost the war."

Katherine Reilly is a recent graduate of Princeton University.