The United States has fought twelve major wars and a countless number of smaller skirmishes. Memorial Day is our way of honoring the soldiers, sailors, airmen, airwomen, and marines who did not return home. The holiday dates back to the months immediately following the Civil War when a few towns and cities began honoring their dead. In 1868, General John A. Logan designated May 30 as “Decoration Day,” the purpose of which would be “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” The holiday was renamed Memorial Day after World War I, and its purpose became to honor all Americans who have died fighting the nation’s wars.

More than 600,000 Americans have died in those conflicts. Here are the stories of four of them:

Albert E. Baesel was on a battlefield near Ivoiry, France on September 27, 1918, far from his hometown of Berea, Ohio. He watched his squad leader attempt to take a German machine gun nest, only to be hit by gunfire and stranded two hundred yards in front of the American line. Baesel asked for permission three times to go to the wounded man’s aid.  Permission was finally “reluctantly given.” Along with another volunteer, he worked his way under withering fire and a “heavy deluge of gas” to his squad leader’s side. He had just hoisted the wounded man across his shoulders when he was killed by enemy fire.

Private First Class Sadao Munemori volunteered for Army service a month before Pearl Harbor. During the war he addressed his letters to the Manzanar relocation camp, where his family was interned along with thousands of other Japanese Americans during the war. In fighting outside Seravezza, Italy in April 1945 he took command of his squad after its leader was wounded. Munemori initiated a one-man frontal assault on two enemy machine guns. He took out both with grenades and then raced back to a shell crater where two U.S. soldiers had taken shelter. Just as he reached his comrades, an enemy grenade ricocheted off his helmet and fell to the ground. He dove on the grenade, saving the lives of the other two men but forfeiting his own.

The North Vietnamese attack on the Cam Lo District Headquarters on February 2, 1968 quickly destroyed nearly half of the base’s defensive perimeter.  As enemy troops prepared to pour through the breach, Marine Corporal Larry Maxam dashed to an abandoned machine gun position. Despite being severely wounded by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade, he steadily fired on advancing North Vietnamese troops. When his bleeding left him too weak to reload the machine gun, he fired his rifle.  He continued to be hit by grenade fragments and small arms fire.  After fighting off the enemy for nearly two hours, Corporal Maxam bled to death. He was one month past his twentieth birthday.

The firefight with fifteen to twenty insurgents in Kunar province, Afghanistan had seemingly ended. U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert J. Miller was tasked with leading the battle damage assessment.  As his small team moved forward, a “large, well-coordinated insurgent force initiated a near ambush.” Miller, who was acting as point man, was stranded and cut off from his men. He nonetheless ordered them to withdraw as he offered covering fire. He moved from position to position, suffering multiple gunshots before finally being mortally wounded. He saved the lives of seven U.S. Army and fifteen Afghanistan National Army soldiers.

Arthur E. Baesel, Sadao Munemori, Larry Maxam, and Robert J. Miller were all posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. On Memorial Day—indeed, every day—it is worth remembering the supreme sacrifice that they, and more than 600,000 other Americans made. In the words of the inscription on the Peace Monument that sits on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, “They died that their country might live.”

Monday marks Memorial Day here in the United States. Cities and towns across the country will hold parades and ceremonies to honor the men and women who served and died in the U.S. armed forces. If you happen to be in Washington, DC, you can choose from dozens of monuments and memorials to visit. Some of them are well-known: the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Marine Corps War Memorial, and Arlington National Cemetery all spring readily to mind. But if you have already visited those memorials or simply want to pay your respects at sites that are likely to be less crowded, here are seven lesser-known memorials in DC worth a visit.

African American Civil War Memorial. Shortly after Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865, some 200,000 Union soldiers were invited to parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Not a single black regiment was invited to participate. The African American Civil War Memorial, which stands at the intersection of U and Vermont streets NW, was dedicated in 1998 to recognize the contributions of the more than 185,000 members of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) made during the Civil War. The memorial’s centerpiece is a sculpture that depicts several soldiers and a sailor on one side, with a family standing on the other side. The nearby African American Civil War Museum tells the story of African American involvement in the American Civil War.

Vietnam Women’s Memorial. More than 10,000 U.S. servicewomen served in Vietnam during the war. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, which sits just south of the famous Vietnam Memorial wall, commemorates those women who did not return home. Dedicated on November 11, 1993, the sculpture depicts three women with a wounded American soldier. Every Memorial Day (and Veterans Day) women who served in Vietnam or knew those who did tell their stories or the stories of their loved ones at the memorial.

National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II.  Just northwest of the U.S. Capitol and the Russell Senate Office Building you can find a memorial that honors those who fought as well as those who stayed behind. The National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II, which was dedicated in 2000, bears the names of the more than 800 Japanese Americans who died fighting for the United States in World War II. It also bears the names of ten relocation camps where the U.S. government interned more than 100,000 Japanese Americans because of suspicions about their loyalty after the Pearl Harbor attacks. The five boulders in the monument represent the “five generations of persons of Japanese ancestry who were living” in 1988 when the U.S. government officially apologized for the internment policy. Viewing the memorial provides a powerful reminder that sometimes the effects of war aren’t limited to the battlefield.

Peace Monument. If you have visited the U.S. Capitol, you may have already walked by the Peace Monument. It stands just west of the Capitol, facing the National Mall. Completed in 1878, it commemorates “the officers, seamen and marines of the United States Navy who fell in defense of the Union and liberty of their country, 1861-1865.” The statue should appeal to anyone who likes classical imagery. Near its base are two infants representing the god of war, Mars, and the god of the sea, Neptune. Just above them stands a female figure representing Victory. Two figures, representing Grief and History, top the forty-four-foot-tall monument. History holds a tablet inscribed with a simple but memorable phrase: “They died that their country might live.”

District of Columbia War Memorial. If you walk south of the reflecting pool that runs between the Lincoln Memorial and the National World War II Memorial, you will come upon a simple dome sitting atop ten pillars. It may look unremarkable in a city full of marble edifices. But it is the District of Columbia War Memorial. It honors the service of the more than 26,000 DC residents who fought in World War I. Its base bears the names of the 499 Washingtonians who died doing so. The memorial was renovated in 2011, unintentionally sparking a tussle over its purpose. On one side are those who want it to remain a memorial celebrating local sacrifices. On the other side are those who would like it to honor national sacrifices. Although 116,516 American troops died in World War I, no memorial in Washington commemorates all the troops who made the supreme sacrifice at places like Belleau Wood and St. Mihiel. The modest District of Columbia War Memorial is all that represents those who fought to make the world “safe for democracy.”

First Division Monument. Just south of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building and just southwest of the White House you will find a tall column topped by a winged female figure. That is the First Division Monument, which was dedicated on October 4, 1924 in honor of the soldiers from the U.S. Army’s First Division who fought in World War I. In the intervening years, the monument has been expanded to commemorate the First Division’s valor in other wars, including World War II, Vietnam, and Desert Storm. First Division troops were not only the first U.S. troops to reach France in 1917, they were also the last troops to leave two years later. General John J. Pershing said that the division had “a special pride of service and a high state of morale never broken by hardship nor battle.” (A word to the wise, the Secret Service currently has the First Division Monument cordoned off for security reasons. So if you want to see any of its details, bring binoculars.)

Second Division Memorial. The First Division isn’t the only U.S. Army division to honor its members with a monument in Washington. Just slightly south of the First Division Monument near the Ellipse you can find the Second Division Memorial. Dedicated in 1936, it commemorates the 17,660 men who died while serving in the U.S. Army’s Second Division. The monument’s centerpiece is a sculpture of an eighteen-foot-tall flaming sword, placed upright in front of a granite doorway. That juxtaposition symbolizes the Second Division’s effort to block the German advance on Paris during World War I. Two wings were added to the memorial in 1962, one to commemorate the Second Division’s losses during World War II and the other to commemorate its losses during the Korean War.

Of course, these seven memorials don’t begin to exhaust the list of memorials around DC that honor America’s fallen heroes. If you have a favorite memorial or monument that I haven’t mentioned, please use the comments section to tell me what it is.

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed Ireland’s referendum on the EU’s fiscal treaty; the UN Security Council’s debate on Yemen; the beginning of hurricane season in the North Atlantic; and Memorial Day in the United States.

The highlights:

• Irish voters go to the polls on May 31 to say yea or nay on the EU’s fiscal treaty. The polls suggest that the “yeas” will win. Prime Minister Enda Kenny of the center-right Fine Gael party strongly supports a “yes” vote, as does Ireland’s major opposition party, Fianna Fail. If the “no” vote wins, however, Kenny says that he will not order a second referendum. That is what happened in 2001 and 2008 when Irish voters voted the “wrong way” the first time an EU initiative was put before them.  A “yes” vote keeps the fiscal treaty alive and gives Ireland access to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which is intended to help keep the eurozone from unraveling. A “no” almost certainly means that Ireland would have to leave the euro, and it would likely aggravate the debt problem facing Greece, Portugal, and Spain.
• The UN Security Council will meet this week to discuss the findings of the UN Special Envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar. This discussion comes on the heels of a suicide bombing in the heart of Sana that killed more than one hundred Yemeni soldiers, which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has taken credit for. AQAP was also behind the recent foiled plot to blow up an international airliner using an underwear-style bomb. Yemen’s internal divisions and fighting provide AQAP with an environment in which to operate. U.S. drone technology can solve only part of the problem. Putting Yemen back together would probably do far more. But that is a mighty tall task.
• June 1 marks the traditional start of hurricane season in the North Atlantic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a normal hurricane season—which means somewhere between nine and fifteen named storms. The prediction does not mean that global climate change might not make hurricanes both more powerful and more frequent in the future. The international community has made little progress, however, in curtailing the emission of the heat-trapping gases that drive human-induced climate change. And as long as countries are focused on repairing their economies and can’t agree on how to apportion responsibility for curtailing emissions, not much is going to get done.
• The United States celebrates Memorial Day on May 28. The holiday dates back to May 30, 1868 when Decoration Day was held to commemorate soldiers who died in the American Civil War. As Americans celebrate this Memorial Day, they are deeply skeptical of U.S. participation in the war in Afghanistan. Polls show that two out of three Americans oppose the Afghan War and three in five want U.S. troops to come home as soon as possible.
• Bob’s Figure of the Week is Dr. Shakil Afridi. My Figure of the Week is 656,241. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why.

For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out:

Ireland’s Referendum and the EU’s Fiscal Treaty. CFR had a meeting with William H. Buiter, chief economist for Citigroup, on the financial crisis in Europe. Bloomberg says Hollande might be willing to renegotiate the fiscal treaty. Pedar o Browin of the Institute of International and European Affairs wrote a working paper on the euro crisis. The Wall Street Journal has the eurozone’s dire economic numbers. The Journal also notes that doubts about the euro are surfacing in its birthplace, the Netherlands.

The UN Security Council Debate on Yemen. CFR’s Micah Zenko discusses “how to grow terrorists in Yemen.” The BBC reports that al-Qaeda attacks in Yemen are a setback for the country’s stability. USA Today says the fight against al-Qaeda in Yemen is taking a toll on the country. The UN News Centre mentions that the Security Council condemns terrorist actions in Yemen, and that “a record number of African migrants fled to Yemen this year.” Al-Arabiya notes that the United States cited Yemen as a “model of political transition.”

Hurricane Season and Climate Change. The National Hurricane Center has an overview of how cyclones work. Weather.com has your 2012 hurricane forecast. AccuWeather.com lets you track all the hurricanes. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society has the number of Atlantic hurricanes per hurricane season. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that climate talks in Bonn have stalled over a divide between rich countries and poor ones. AFP quotes Raul Estrada, one of the architects of the Kyoto Protocol, who believes that “negotiations are returning to square one.” Reuters reports on possible ways to raise climate ambitions. Bloomberg notes that the EU’s lead envoy believes that China is leading developing nations seeking to block a UN climate treaty.

Memorial Day. Reuters claims that “weary warriors favor Obama,” and that civilian deaths in Afghanistan have fallen by 20 percent. The Hill notes that a House-passed defense bill will publish the cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The Chattanooga Times Free Press mentions how hundreds of bikers are making their way to Washington, DC for Memorial Day events. The Sacramento Bee reminds us of the true meaning of Memorial Day: “to honor and remember our fallen heroes and the families they left behind.”

NATO’s twenty-eight member counties wrap up their annual summit today in Chicago. The parting sound bites no doubt will tout this year’s summit for being especially productive—even with a few breaks to throw a football around and to watch a soccer game. And the final communiqué will almost certainly point to progress on critical issues such as Afghanistan, missile defense, and alliance modernization.

But that sunny talk won’t hide a dark cloud that hangs over the most successful military and political alliance the world has ever known—namely, the United States accounts for the vast (and increasing) bulk of the alliance’s military spending. The chart below from the Associated Press makes the point:

That disparity is not likely to lessen anytime soon. Not in an era of austerity when most of Europe is looking to cut spending. Indeed, with all the talk of a possible “Grexit” and fears that the financial markets might turn on Spain and Italy, the pressure in Europe to cut defense spending is likely to intensify.

It’s not just me pointing to this unpleasant fact. Here is what Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, had to say recently about European defense spending. (Full disclosure: Ivo and I have co-authored a thing or two over the years.)

Austerity hasn’t been good for [European] defense spending. And I think that’s true—some say austerity hasn’t been good for a lot of things. But it certainly hasn’t been good for defense spending.

I don’t see that loosening the austerity constraints that currently exist will now lead to a massive increase in European defense spending. But it is clear that we need more defense spending if you look at just two statistics. A decade ago Europe still spent 50 percent of the total amount that NATO spends on defense. Today, even after the cuts that the United States has engaged in, 70 percent is U.S. spending, and 30 percent is Europe.

Now, part of it is because the United States expanded its defense spending in the last decade, but the other part of it is that Europe has been cutting it. And there will come a time when if you continue that divergence between European and American defense spending that the gap becomes so large, the ability to operate together in military operations becomes so constrained that there is a real need to start thinking about how do we meet the ability of the Europeans to be good partners and strong partners—as we saw in Libya, they can be—but continue to be over the future. And that will require not only spending more, but it also will require Europeans to spend better and smarter.

That is a critical point to keep in mind when mulling over suggestions like Anne-Marie Slaughter’s thoughtful call for “globalizing NATO.” NATO certainly can do “bigger and better” things. But it most assuredly won’t if current spending patterns persist.

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the presidential election in Egypt; the NATO summit in Chicago; and the P5+1′s talks with Iran in Baghdad.

The highlights:

• Egypt holds its presidential elections on May 23-24. If no candidate wins an outright majority, a runoff will be held June 16-17 and a president will be named no later than June 21. Amr Moussa, who served as foreign minister under Hosni Mubarak and then went on to head up the Arab League, is the front-runner among the thirteen candidates. The polls suggest, however, that he won’t win an outright majority in the first round. The two challengers with the best shot of squaring off against Moussa in the second round are Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Ahmed Shafiq. Aboul Fotouh is a liberal Islamist and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who has been endorsed by conservative Islamist (or Salafist) leaders. Shafiq served briefly as prime minister in the waning days of Mubarak’s regime. The top issues in the campaign are the economy and public security, but the issue that dominated Egypt’s first-ever televised debate (which lasted four hours) was the role of Islam in government.
• NATO leaders descend on Chicago next week for the NATO Summit, which is being held in the United States for the first time since 1999. The summit will be centered on Afghanistan’s future after the end of the NATO military mission there in 2014. But a background issue will be the alliance’s future. New French president François Hollande campaigned on a pledge to have all French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of this year—though upon taking the oath of office this week he discovered that that might not be logistically possible—and several other NATO countries want out as well or never got in. Meanwhile, with fiscal austerity the name of the game in domestic politics, many NATO countries are cutting defense budgets rather than increasing them.
• Baghdad will host the P5+1 talks with Iran over Iran’s controversial nuclear program. This comes on the heels of talks in Vienna between Iranian officials and the IAEA. Tehran is under growing economic pressure to halt its enrichment activities; India recently announced that it would scale back its purchases of Iranian oil. But whether the pain is great enough for Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions remains unknown.
• Bob’s Figure of the Week is 50.4 percent. My Figure of the Week is Jamie Dimon. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why.

For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out:

Egypt and the Elections. The Water’s Edge asks if Egyptians dislike the United States. Steven Cook writes about the “real crisis” in Egypt. IFES has an election guide for this and past Egyptian elections. Al-Jazeera has a live election blog. Christopher Santarelli of the “Blaze” thinks Egypt’s election may be “trouble for Israel.” Reuters reports that Egypt’s election committee will stop working after it received criticism from parliament. NPR has the story from when about half of the presidential candidates were banned.

The NATO Summit. The summit has an official website. USA Today says that protestors are on their way to the Windy City, and Reuters says Chicago should brace itself for violence. The New York Times reports that the United States and Pakistan have a deal to “open NATO supply lines.” Human Rights Watch claims in a new report that NATO has not acknowledged multiple civilian deaths during its operation in Libya. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune tries to help NATO officials understand “Chicago-style diplomacy.”

The P5+1′s Talks with Iran. Jeffrey Goldberg argues on Bloomberg that “Ehud Barak is the man to watch” during the nuclear talks. Reuters reports that Iran claims the pressures it is under might derail the planned talks. Laura Rozen attempts to read the “tea leaves” ahead of the talks. The Christian Science Monitor notes that talks in Vienna between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency ahead of the Baghdad meetings were good. The Arms Control Association has a history of official proposals by Iran in regard to its nuclear program.

The New York Times ran a fascinating article yesterday on soaring student college debt. To make a long story short—and at 4,500+ words it was a long story—students are taking on a lot more debt to get themselves through college and finding it harder to pay back what they borrowed. That trend is worrying. Because if the system for financing American higher education breaks down, one of the country’s primary mechanisms for generating social mobility, lessening income inequality, and stimulating economic growth will be lost.

Here are some of the eye-opening statistics the Times offers up:

• 94 percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education—up from 45 percent in 1993.
• The average debt in 2011 for all student loan borrowers was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000. (These figures do not include money that parents borrow by, say, taking out a second mortgage on their homes or maxing out credit cards.)
• The total amount of federal student loans has grown by more than 60 percent over the past five years.
• Nearly one in ten student loan borrowers who started repayment in 2009 defaulted within two years—a rate roughly twice that in 2005.
• According to data from the College Board, state and local financing per student declined by 24 percent nationally between 2001 and 2011.
• Again according to the College Board, tuition and fees at four-year state colleges jumped 72 percent between 2001 and 2011, while they were up 29 percent for nonprofit private institutions.

Soaring tuition has sparked political fights over how to provide more student loans at lower interest rates. But easier access to money just encourages people to borrow more and colleges to charge more. The critical task is to get costs under control, as the Times notes in a follow-up article. That will be hard do in part because it’s not how most college administrators think:

“I readily admit it,” said E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University, who has also served as president of Vanderbilt and Brown, among others. “I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have given significant thought to the impact of college costs on families.”

President Gee knows of what he speaks. He racked up more than $550,000 in travel charges over the past two years and nearly $850,000 over the past five. And his total compensation package runs about $2 million. That’s far more than what your average full professor makes.

Getting soaring college costs under control is going to be hard to do because it reflects more than inflated presidential salaries or overpaid football coaches and sumptuous facilities for varsity sports (to name two other factors I hear mentioned frequently). It also owes to things like escalating parental and student demands for services. With one kid in college (Wahoowa!), another set to start in the fall (Go Blue!), and two more in high school, I have been on my fair share of college tours. And what I hear parents and students saying is that they want more small classes, personalized instruction, extensive personal and career counseling services, state-of-the-art recreational facilities, and dorm food that tastes like a three-star restaurant. Those things all cost money. But schools that let their average class size grow or say no to building an indoor rock climbing facility risk seeing prize students head over to Rival U.

Sadly, there aren’t any easy fixes for the college cost problem. But the current cost growth simply isn’t sustainable. And as the late economist Herb Stein liked to remark, “if a thing cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

Ask Americans to name World War II battles in the Pacific and you will likely to hear places such as Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. You aren’t likely to hear anyone mention Attu. But it was the only land battle fought on U.S. soil during World War II. And in proportional terms, it also was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Pacific theater.

You’ve never heard of Attu? It’s the westernmost island in the Aleutian Islands chain. It lies closer to Russia than to the U.S. mainland. It is 1,100 miles off the Alaskan coast and nearly 5,000 miles from Washington, DC. It’s about 20 miles by 35 miles in size, making it the twenty-third largest American island.

Japanese troops captured Attu on June 7, 1942, exactly six months to the day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. military wasn’t defending the island, so it was there for the taking. Japanese military leaders didn’t order the attack because of Attu’s strategic value. It didn’t have any. They instead hoped to entice the U.S. Navy into diverting its forces away from the southern Pacific to Alaska, thereby weakening the American ability to win the war in the South Pacific.

Washington didn’t bite. Almost a year elapsed before it decided to retake Attu. On May 11, 1943, the first of 15,000 U.S. soldiers landed on the island. They squared off against roughly 2,500 Japanese. Although the Japanese were badly outnumbered, they fought tenaciously in grim, arctic weather conditions.

The American troops slowly gained ground. On May 29, the Japanese commander recognized that the end was near. He ordered that all Japanese soldiers too wounded to continue fighting be killed. He then led a banzai charge, one of the largest of the entire war. Some 1,000 surviving Japanese troops attacked the surprised U.S. forces and nearly overran their positions. The headline that the Saturday Evening Post gave its story on the battle highlighted the viciousness of the fighting: “Mad-Dog Hunt on Attu.”

Fewer than thirty Japanese soldiers survived the Battle of Attu. On the American side, 549 soldiers died, 1,148 were wounded, and more than 2,000 suffered exposure-related injuries. When the overall number of soldiers who fought in the battle is taken into account, only Iwo Jima surpasses Attu in terms of U.S. casualties.

A soldier who fought at Attu summed up the experience of trying to retake 346 square miles of frozen terrain:

It maybe wasn’t such a big battle as battles go nowadays, but, brother, everything about it was done in a big way, including the way them Japs knocked themselves off. Believe me, that was the biggest, awfulest damned mess I ever saw in my life, so help me.

Today Attu is known as a birder’s paradise. If you ever visit Attu, and few people do, you might see a whiskered auklet, a red-legged Kittiwake, a solitary snipe, a red-flanked bluetail, or even a hawfinch. But if your eyes turn from the heavens to the earth, you’ll also see a collapsed church and few trees. They are pretty much all that remains of the presence of the Americans who fought on a distant island seven decades ago.

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed next week’s talks in Vienna between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran; the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Camp David; François Hollande’s inauguration as president of France; and the Cannes Film Festival.

The highlights:

• Iranian and IAEA officials meet in Vienna on May 13 and 14 for a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program. The meeting comes ahead of Iran’s May 23 meeting with the P5+1 in Baghdad. Iran and the IAEA met earlier this year in January and February; the January talks were seen as “good,” but the February meeting was deemed a “failure” by the White House. The big issue for next week’s talks will be negotiating a visit to the Parchin military site southeast of Tehran. IAEA director general Yukiya Amano has said that there are some questionable “activities” at the site, but he has yet to receive a “positive response” from Iran about visiting Parchin. Adding tension to the dispute is the claim by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) that satellite imagery shows activity at Parchin and that Iran may be “washing” the site before inspectors arrive. Iran has indicated its preference to use these talks as a time to “reflect” on the upcoming P5+1 meeting.
• The leaders of the G8 are headed toward Camp David, where President Barack Obama will be hosting the G8 Summit. Or more precisely, seven of the eight G8 heads of government will be headed to the presidential retreat on Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain. Russian president Vladimir Putin has canceled, saying he needs to remain in Moscow to finish sorting through his cabinet picks. He is sending former Russian president and current prime minister Dmitri Medvedev in his place. It’s hard not to read Putin’s decision as a slap in the face to Obama. The White House had relocated the G8 Summit from Chicago, where it would have preceded the NATO Summit Meeting, in deference to Putin’s staunch opposition to NATO’s missile defense plans. So it looks as if Putin and Obama won’t have their first presidential meeting until the G20 Summit Meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico in June.
• François Hollande will be sworn in on May 16 as France’s new president. His first official visit will be to Germany to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. While on the campaign trail Hollande repeatedly called for Europe to shift to a pro-growth policy to help renew the European economy. Chancellor Merkel, however, isn’t a fan of the “spend-more” school of economics. She is the champion of the “cut-more” school of fiscal austerity. Whether or not Hollande and Merkel can find common ground will have ramifications throughout Europe. The economic numbers in Europe’s hot-spot countries don’t look good, and the Franco-German partnership will be essential to fixing the problem. Meanwhile, elections in Greece make it much more likely that the Greeks may soon find themselves outside the eurozone looking in. Whether that happens, and how it happens, will have consequences for the broader global economy.
• The Beautiful People will be descending on the French Riviera for the Festival de Cannes and the pursuit of the coveted Palme D’Or. Meanwhile, Disney wonders why no one turned out for John Carter.
• Bob’s Figure of the Week is Richard Lugar. My Figure of the Week is 165.3 percent. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why.

For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out:

The IAEA and Iran Talks. The IAEA’s website has a chronology of events with Iran for this year. Al-Jazeera has a timeline of Iran’s nuclear program. Back in 2010, CFR held “A Conversation with Yukiya Amano.” Reuters reports that Iran has been complaining about “nuclear double standards,” and it notes that the hope for Middle East nuclear talks is fading away. Haaretz claims Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not convinced that Iran will halt its nuclear program.

The G8 Summit. Time has a history of the G8.The White House has a profile on Camp David. UPI reports that food security issues will be discussed on the second day of meetings, and CNN notes that President Obama invited four African leaders to that discussion. The Hill says that First Lady Michelle Obama will host the spouses of G8 leaders during the meetings. Global hunger expert Roger Thurow will be hosting a “Twitter town hall” during the food-security section to answer any questions. Claire Godfrey of Oxfam thinks the G8 has “failed to make poverty history.”

François Hollande’s Election and the Future of Europe. The Water’s Edge has an extensive Hollande profile. Timothy Garton Ash says on the Guardian that Hollande and Merkel need new methods to save the eurozone. Doug Saunders wonders in the Globe and Mail if Hollande and Merkel can find middle ground. Reuters reports that the eurozone’s new emphasis on growth could end the problem with equities. The Washington Post mentions that after the anti-austerity elections, Europe must come up with a new “grand project.”

Cannes Film Festival. The festival has an official website. Benjamin Craig of the Prague Film School offers a text history of the event, and the Los Angeles Times has a visual history of Cannes. The BBC has a quick guide for all things Cannes. If you’re planning to go, Caroline Patek writes at Forbes on how to see the festival “in style.”

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is out with a new poll on what Egyptians think about politics a few weeks ahead of their historical presidential elections. Some of the results are interesting:

• Egyptians like the idea of democracy. Two-thirds say it is preferable to other forms of government, and six-in-ten Egyptians say democracy is the form of government best suited to solving their problems.

• Economics is job number one. Eight-in-ten Egyptians say that the government’s top priority should be improving economic conditions. So Egyptians look to be like other publics around the world that want their governments to produce jobs. The open question for Egypt, of course, is whether its new government will be able to make the tough choices needed to get the economy going again.

• Egyptians think that Saudi Arabia provides the right model for the role of religion in government. By a margin of more than three-to-one (61 percent to 17 percent), Egyptians say Saudi Arabia provides a better model for the proper role of religion in government than Turkey does. The preference for the Saudi model seems to contradict the embrace of democracy. But Egyptians are hardly the first people to give pollsters conflicting answers.

The poll also contained a finding that comes as no surprise: Egyptians aren’t terribly fond of the United States. Only about one-in-five Egyptians (19 percent) has a favorable view of the United States. But the poll also contains a finding worth highlighting:

Despite these negative sentiments, a majority of Egyptians says either they want the U.S.-Egypt relationship to stay about as close as it has been in recent years (35 percent) or become even closer (20 percent), while 38 percent would like to see relations become less close.

So Egyptian attitudes toward the United States look to be deeply ambivalent. They can’t live with us; they don’t want to live without us. That spells danger for Washington’s diplomacy going forward. But it also spells opportunity.

On Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited a Syrian refugee camp in southeastern Turkey and declared that the Assad regime’s days are numbered. Over the last few months, Turkey has taken a leadership role confronting the crisis in next door Syria.

As a new CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report on Turkey released today notes, Turkey’s position on Syria is consistent with Ankara’s increasingly active role in the Middle East. The Task Force report also takes stock of Turkey’s recent political, social, and economic transformations, and how these developments have affected Turkish foreign policy. 

I asked my colleagues Steven Cook and Anya Schmemann, who worked on the Task Force report, to explain why Turkey matters. Here’s what they had to say:

Turkey is a rising regional and global power and is more democratic, prosperous, and politically influential than it was a decade ago. But it is not well understood in the United States.

Some observers have raised concern that the rise of the religiously-oriented AKP (as the Justice and Development Party is called), which came to power in 2002, and the subsequent decline of the military (historically, the protector of secularism in Turkey) means that Ankara is altering its Western orientation. It is true that Turkey has broadened its foreign policy beyond traditional concerns such as European Union (EU) membership, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Balkans, Cyprus, and relations with Armenia to include the Middle East, Russia, Africa, and even Latin America.

As we saw firsthand in a recent trip to Istanbul and Ankara with the Task Force co-chairs, the Turkish story is more complex. In the last decade Turkey has become “more European, more Muslim, more democratic, and more modern”—as the report puts it.

In addition to dramatic social and political changes, Turkey’s strong economic performance has made many in the West sit up and take notice. An economic underachiever only a decade ago, it is now the world’s seventeenth-largest economy and hopes to be in the top ten in the next ten years. To be sure, its rapid economic expansion poses risks and Ankara faces significant challenges, including high unemployment, a current account deficit, and economic crises within the Eurozone—Turkey’s largest trading partner.

When it comes to the United States, Ankara has long enjoyed close diplomatic and military ties with Washington. Indeed, Turkish troops fought alongside Americans in Korea, and Turkey became a member of NATO in 1952. Still, the political relationship has at times been bumpy. Unresolved issues with Armenia, Greece, and Cyprus have chilled the relationship in the past and remain contentious. More recent tension over the Arab-Israeli conflict and differences over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program have divided Washington and Ankara.

In the last year, however, Turkey’s foreign policy has become more aligned with the United States. The two countries have been mostly unified in their approach to Syria, for example. And after initial misgivings, Turkey agreed to host an early warning radar system on its territory, signaling its continued commitment to NATO.

As a Muslim majority democracy and market economy, Turkey has lessons to share with groups in the region who are seeking ways to include Islam in democratic politics. Turkey has the potential to show by its own example that religiously-oriented governance is not inconsistent with democracy, modernization, and economic liberalism.

But while its example is mostly positive, the Task Force points to some worrying developments that may undermine Turkey’s democratic development. Too many journalists and government critics have been arrested, many women remain second-class citizens, and the Kurdish minority is not well integrated into Turkish society. There also remain questions about freedom of speech and expression.

Virtually all Turks recognize the need for a “civil constitution”—in contrast to the current document that was written at the behest of the military in 1982—and Prime Minister Erdogan has made a commitment to a new constitution by October.

Any visitor to Turkey is struck by the juxtaposition of ancient and modern, Asian and European, religious and secular. Turkey’s leadership is charismatic, its economy is dynamic, its society is in flux, and its goals are ambitious. The Task Force seeks to provide a better understanding and fuller picture of this significant country as it continues its consequential transformation.