Show A Test That's Sure to Come Jackson Diehl The Washington Post Of course Joe Biden is right there will be an early international crisis to test the new president There almost always is In April 2001 long long before Sept 11 George W. W Bush had to react when a US U.S. military surveillance aircraft was forced down in China and its crew detained for 11 days The episode started as an accident but Beijing used it to measure a new executive with scant international experience In 1993 Bill Clinton was bythe by bythe bythe the Blackhawk Down firefight firelight in Mogadishu After 18 US U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush he abruptly withdrew US U.S. forces from Somalia and taught Osama bin Laden not to fear American power Chances are the next administrations administration's first test will be a surprise Yet some probes are predictable For the past few months several familiar US U.S. adversaries have been waiting out the Bush administration while painstakingly setting up traps they can spring on the incoming president A few other actors are thinking about the ways they can get their problems problem s onto what will be from inauguration tion day on art impossibly busy White WhiteHouse WhiteHouse WhiteHouse House agenda Take North Korea as Rice might want to say The State Departments Department's efforts over the past year to negotiate the nuclear disarmament o of f that charter axis of evil member has deteriorated into something very like the status quo the Bush administration repudiated when it first took office In exchange for not restarting g its bomb production line the regime of Kim Jong II extracts bribes like its recent removal from States State's list of terrorism sponsors 4 y iI i lT rJ I J Its It's not difficult to predict that sometime in 2009 the North will trigger another crisis when it refuses to honor its disarmament promises threatens to fire up its plutonium reprocessing plant and demands new concessions from Washington Would a afresh afresh afresh fresh or McCain team flinch Not just in Pyongyang but in Beijing Seoul and Tokyo yo any such probe will be minutely observed Next is Iran another stop on the axis that will remain roguish even after Bushs Bush's departure In recent months the military fronts controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Guardin in Lebanon the Gaza Strip and southern Iraq and on the Persian Gulf have been almost eerily quiet But they've not been abandoned On the contrary Israeli sources say long- long and short-range short missiles are pouring into Lebanon despite a UN U.N. ban on arms anns deliveries to Since a fire cease-fire began in late June Hamas has imported through tunnels from Egypt an estimated 20 tons of explosives dozens of tank anti-tank missiles and tons of metal fertilizer and chemicals used to build the rockets aimed at Israeli cities US U.S. officials say the camps in Iran where 1 tr train inS in'S i 3 ci lT groups for attacks on US U.S. forces in Iraq are still are still busy The question is when not whether this firepower will be put to use By Bythe Bythe Bythe the spring Tehran willbe will willbe willbe be seeking the measure of not only a new US U.S. president but also a new Israeli prime minister who could be the hawk Binyamin It will be preparing for its own presidential election in which Mahmoud health permitting will seek re Will the Guard the most line hard-line of Iran's competing factions judge judge that a up flare-up in Gaza Lebanon Iraq or the Persian Gulf is the best way to intimidate the new US U.S. and Israeli leaders undermine any move toward negotiations with Washington by Iranian doves and bolster the campaign of Guard patron Though Iranian moves are always hard to predict that one would not be a surprise Beyond the rogues are the regulars the countries that depend on American attention positive or negative to fuel their own political cycles and andare andare andare are good at finding ways to grab it when they feel ignored There are Latin American demagogues such as Hugo Chavez who need a Yanqui enemy and small Eurasian countries such as Georgia which need a US U.S. shield against Russia There are the Russians themselves who measure their country's power by its ability to thwart American initiatives And then there are the Israelis and Palestinians At the annual Weinberg conference of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in hi September two senior surrogates for the McCain and campaigns agreed on one large point that the Palestinian Israeli-Palestinian conflict would rank fardown far fardown fardown down the new presidents president's list of prioritieS prioritieS' Dont Don't t beton beton bet beton on it Both the Israelis and the want to elevate their issues on the agenda says Shibley a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland vI aryl and One way to do that is isto isto isto to create a crisis for example a collapse of the Palestinian Authority or oran oran oran an Israeli strike on Gaza Another is a positive surprise maybe an agreement by Hamas to a referendum on whether to accept a two-state two solution Either way if the next president does not soon call on oh the Middle East it will find a way to call him p C |