[Maura Elizabeth Cunningham is contributing editor for The China Beat.]

On November 19, 2009, I posted a story here at China Beat that I titled “The Good, the Bad, and the Boring.” The article was a review of Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to China, during which he held a somewhat bland town hall meeting in Shanghai, performed the de rigueur tours of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, and met with Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders behind closed doors. All in all, Obama’s trip seemed to be little more than an icebreaker, a quick and innocuous introduction to one of America’s most important strategic partners. But that was last year.

Fifty-one weeks later, Obama again made a November visit to Asia, though his itinerary on this four-country trip didn’t include a stop in China. That isn’t to say, however, that China wasn’t on the president’s mind as he traveled—a fact that was quite clear at several points, never more so than during a news conference at the conclusion of the G-20 meeting in Seoul on Friday. On this occasion, Obama showed none of the restraint that characterized his trip to China last year; instead, he spoke out against Chinese undervaluation of the renminbi and criticized unnamed “countries with large surpluses” that rely on an export-oriented growth strategy. Here’s the section of Obama’s remarks that’s been getting the most attention:

I’ve been very clear and persistent since I came into office that we welcome China’s rise; we think the fact that China has grown as remarkably as it has, has lifted millions of people out of poverty, and that is ultimately good for the world and good for America—because it means that China has the opportunity to be a responsible partner. It means that China can be an enormous market for the United States, for Korea, for countries throughout Asia and around the world. And it’s just good to get people out of poverty and give them opportunity.

What I’ve also said is that precisely because of China’s success, it’s very important that it act in a responsible fashion internationally. And the issue of the RNB [sic] is one that is an irritant not just to the United States, but is an irritant to a lot of China’s trading partners and those who are competing with China to sell goods around the world. It is undervalued. And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.

(Full text of Obama’s remarks is available here.)

Obama actually spent relatively little time on the topic of China during the press conference, but his newly assertive tone regarding the renminbi has been the among most attention-getting aspects of the entire 10-day trip. Obama met with warm receptions in both India and Indonesia before traveling on to Seoul for the G-20, where tensions quickly arose over not only the renminbi but also questions such as global trade imbalances and American stimulus plans. As Louisa Lim of NPR notes, Obama’s outspokenness in the press conference contrasts with his inability to get such strong language about the currency issue into the communiqué the G-20 hammered out during the summit. In the end, Lim says, “This trip was designed to reward America’s natural allies in Asia; it’s served to highlight the limits of American power.” It also served to highlight the growing importance of Chinese strength in Asia; that’s certainly not a new development, but the looming presence of the PRC during Obama’s trip made many of his actions in both India and Indonesia appear specifically calibrated to counter Chinese influence in the region (see this report at McClatchy and “The elephant outside the room” at The Economist for more).

Despite Obama’s strong words in Seoul, the U.S. and China are clearly not going to shut each other out any time soon. This was the message of a music video circulating online last week, the “US-Sino Currency Rap Battle” produced by Taiwan’s Next Media Animation. In the words of the song’s annoyingly catchy chorus, “They’re not enemies / They’re frenemies / With co-dependent economies.” But these “frenemies” seem to be moving toward a rough patch in their relationship—one that could make Hu Jintao’s scheduled January visit to the U.S. anything but boring.

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.]

Palestine as America’s next Vietnam? Like all historical analogies, it’s far from perfect. We aren’t about to send the U.S. Army to the West Bank or Gaza to kill and die in a war that can’t be won.  Where else in the world, though, is American weaponry and political power so obviously used to suppress a Viet Cong-like movement of national liberation (a bill the Taliban hardly fit)?

And what other conflict is as politically divisive as the Israeli-Palestinian one? More than the Afghan War, the struggle at the heart of the Middle East evokes the kind of powerful passions here that once marked the debate over Vietnam, pitting hawks against doves. Not that the progressive media are yet portraying it that way. They’re more likely to give us an increasingly outdated picture of an all-powerful Jewish “Israel lobby,” which supposedly has a lock on U.S. policy and dominates the rest of us.

In fact, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, the political landscape is far more complex, fluid, and unpredictable. Yes, the election day just past saw a wave of hawkish Republicans with a penchant for loving Israel to death swept into Congress, but the hawks’ amplified voice is also likely to energize a growing alliance of doves.

Religious Hawks vs. Religious Doves

This election was not a Jewish triumph. Most of the GOP congressional hawks (if they aren’t from Florida) come from constituencies with only a sprinkling of Jews. They seem eager to make Israel a symbolic test case, as if supporting the hard-line Israeli government against Obama administration “betrayal” proves their strength in protecting America.

In the wake of November 2nd, a prominent Israeli columnist wrote that Republicans believe in “patriotism, Judeo-Christian Values, national security… and associating Arabs and Muslims with terrorism… a worldview that is usually consistent with pro-Israel sentiments.”  Those are certainly “pro-Israel sentiments” as defined by the old Israel lobby that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt analyzed so sharply. That lobby still wields plenty of power with its loud media megaphone, and it will welcome the recent success of its flag-waving, fear-mongering GOP allies.

Here’s a new reality, however: The hawkish Israel lobby is no longer the true face of the Jewish community. According to midterm exit polls, most American Jews stuck with their traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party and, far more important, they are visibly developing a new idea of what it means to be pro-Israel. Today, three-quarters of American Jews want the U.S. to lead Israelis and Palestinians toward a two-state solution; nearly two-thirds say they’d accept Obama administration pressure on Israel to reach that goal.

Republicans entering Congress will learn what I recently heard a Jewish congressman explain. Few non-Jewish legislators pay close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. When it comes up, they usually turn to their Jewish colleagues for advice. Once, the Jews they consulted were likely to simply parrot the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) line. Now they’re likely to say, “Well, AIPAC says this, but J Street says that. You decide.”

J Street is the most prominent player in the dovish, newly developing coalition that already represents the views of most Jews. When Barack Obama invited top Jewish leaders to the White House in the summer of 2009, the heads of two smaller organizations, Americans for Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum, were at the table too. These are the most visible voices for American Jews who don’t want to see their own government enabling Israeli governmental policies that they oppose.

The Christian community is split into competing lobbies as well, with hawks led by Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and doves by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP).  CUFI makes more noise and gets more press attention. But CMEP is an impressive coalition of 22 national church groups, including some of the largest denominations and the nation’s largest umbrella organization of Protestants, the National Council of Churches.

Then there are doves, both Jewish and Christian, who promote direct action rather than political lobbying as the route to change. The movement to use boycotts, divestments, and sanctions to pressure Israel to change its policies on the Palestinians didn’t really take off until the Presbyterian Church endorsed the concept. More Christian groups have now joined this campaign, as has Jewish Voice for Peace, among other Jewish groups. Such direct protest also gets plenty of support from left-leaning doves not moved by any religious faith.

So far this alliance has not mounted the massive demonstrations that were a hallmark of Vietnam-era doves. The new strength of the hawks in Congress, however, might someday provoke the doves to take to the streets.

Elite Doves vs. Elite Hawks

As in the Vietnam era, today's policy debate has not been restricted to groups of outsiders. It’s reaching deep into the foreign policy establishment. Top editors of the New York Times recently visited Israel, talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and came home to write an editorial putting most of the blame on the Israeli leader. They urged him to renew the moratorium on expanding settlements and immediately settle on the borders of a Palestinian state.

Just two days after election day, when everyone else was still talking domestic politics, the Times gave Bill Clinton op-ed space to say that “everyone knows what a final agreement would look like” -- a coded message from the secretary of state’s husband to the Jewish state’s prime minister that it’s time to end the occupation, withdraw settlements, and share Jerusalem. Two former national security advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, have publicly urged Barack Obama to “outline the basic parameters for a Palestinian state” -- a coded message to the president that it’s time for a U.S.-imposed solution in the Middle East (assumedly based on Clinton’s parameters).

Of course, the elite hawks are fighting back. Neoconservatives (whose obituaries are always premature) have created an international alliance that calls itself “The Friends of Israel Initiative.” With friends like these, the doves claim, Israel doesn’t need enemies.

The elite debate extends into U.S. military and intelligence communities which have worked closely with Israel for decades. It’s a safe bet that there are powerful hawks in those circles who don’t want to put pressure on Israel because it might jeopardize those relationships. But top military leaders have been issuing warnings in private and in public about the dangerous consequences the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have for U.S. interests in the region, and implying that the president should be pressuring Israel to bring the conflict to an end.

Both hawks and doves have found jobs in the Obama administration. “The question of how much the United States is offering [Israel], and what it is asking for in return, is being fiercely debated within the White House and the State Department,” the New York Timesreported -- which is undoubtedly one reason that the administration has been bobbing and weaving on Israel and Palestine with no clear policy direction in sight.

Another reason is the political risk involved. Though domestic issues dominated this year’s campaign season, the Republicans still stake their claim on being the party of tough guys, and they look for every opportunity to paint the Democrats as soft on national security. If Obama wavers on Israel, the GOP is ready to pounce and he knows it.

Republicans are always eager to run against “the ‘60s,” and efforts to move Israel to the peace table have become yet another symbol of “the ‘60s” in the GOP imagination. It’s no coincidence that, just after he won the Florida Senate race, the Tea Party’s rising star Marco Rubio announced that he was packing for a trip to Israel.

On the other hand, a president stymied in the domestic sphere is always tempted to make his historical mark with major foreign policy initiatives where he has more freedom. As Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now points out, this president will be criticized for abandoning his original demands on the Israelis just as much as for pursuing them, so he might as well “double down on his Middle East peace efforts.” If he does that, the doves will have Obama’s back. And a triumph at the peace table could shift attention away from the morass of Afghanistan in just the way Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China overshadowed the continuing slaughter in Vietnam.

An Unpredictable Complex System

There’s one more interesting analogy between the present Middle Eastern conflict and Vietnam. Both have triggered the passions of hawks and doves who otherwise would not pay much attention to foreign affairs. Every day, a few more doves start asking why the U.S. suppresses the Palestinian urge for national liberation and self-determination.

From there, it’s just a short step to asking other questions: Why does the Obama administration echo Israel’s frightening but unproven claims about “the Iranian threat” and leave so much room for talk of war? Why does the U.S. continue to demonize Hamas, rebuffing its efforts to moderate its stand and resume a truce with Israel? Why do government and media figures so regularly reduce the endless complexities of the Middle East to a simple morality tale of good guys against bad guys? And how can that enhance the security of the American people?

Just as during the Vietnam War years, such questions about U.S. policy in one region lead to even larger questions about the American stance in the world -- and sooner or later, some of those questioners will dare call it imperialism. Any victory for the doves on the question of policy toward Israel will also be a victory in the ongoing struggle between competing visions of foreign policy, and no one can say where the growing movement of doves might lead.

In fact, no one can say anything with any degree of certainty about the future of this issue. It is now what the Vietnam debate once was: a complex, perhaps even chaotic, system, where every action provokes reaction.

Will a more Republican-leaning Congress change policy? Perhaps. But who knows exactly how? The more the hawks push, the bigger and more appealing the target they offer to the doves. As the issue only polarizes, ever more American Jews may feel pushed out of their tactful silence.

We could end up with a new media picture entirely: gentile hawks urging Israel to maintain its hard-line stance versus a Jewish community leaning toward compromise and peace. Under those circumstances, the average citizen, who figures that Jews know best about Israel, might be unlikely to sympathize with the hawks.

That’s not a prediction, just one among many possibilities in a complex system that’s inherently unstable and so unpredictable. In other words, there’s no reason for doves to feel powerless. Election Day 2010 may look like a victory for the hawks, but it could turn out to be a step toward their long-term defeat.

[Barbara Leaming is the author of two New York Times bestselling biographies and three New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book, a biography of John F. Kennedy, focused on the influence of British history and culture on the 35th president.]

By this time, everyone knows that in the moment of victory, President Obama returned the bust of Churchill. Whatever the gesture actually meant, many people took it to mean that unlike President Kennedy who had been studying Churchill's strategies since boyhood, Obama was unlikely to look to Britain's most famous Prime Minister for inspiration or advice.

But now, in the wake of the Democrats' midterm defeat, it is Churchill who has a stark and important lesson for the President. I do not mean the triumphant Churchill of the war years, but rather the Churchill who was overwhelmingly defeated in 1945. These are the years I have just written about in my new book, Churchill Defiant: Fighting On, 1945-1955.

Obama at his press conference spoke of a"shellacking." In 1945, Churchill endured a"shellacking" of his own -- a far more terrible one than the President's. Having just saved his country, Churchill was hurled from power, as Labour swept out the Conservatives. Shaken and personally devastated though Churchill was was, his response was typically Churchillian: defiance.

He refused to retire from political life, and in a matter of months the then seventy year old Churchill launched one of the most astonishing political comebacks in history. Over the course of the next six years, he not only held onto the leadership of his party (a party where there was broad sentiment that he ought to step aside), but also he fought his way back to the center of world events and then, in the General Election of 1951, back to Downing Street and the premiership.

One of the reasons Churchill was able to do this -- and this is where the lesson for the President resides -- is that he was able to make it clear to everyone what his reason for staying on was (though of course there were also strictly human reasons mixed in as well). In short, he followed his own dictum that it is essential always to have a"theme". In defeat, Churchill was quick to articulate his theme, and he stuck to it, hammering it home again and again, never wavering, until the day he left Downing Street at age eighty, at the close of his last premiership.

Churchill's theme -- and this is the brilliance of it -- was concise and easily understandable, something people could grasp and remember. It made clear exactly what his goal was and how he intended to achieve that goal. He said that his goal was to make a lasting peace, and he left no doubt that the way he planned to accomplish that was by going to the summit and negotiating with the Soviets.

Now for Obama and how this applies to him: There is broad agreement that the President is not communicating. His supporters say so, his opponents say so, and even he himself concurs. But to say that he is not communicating does not really help get to the root of the problem. You have to understand what he is not communicating. And what Obama is not communicating -- never has communicated -- and must find a way to put across soon is his theme. As Churchill would say, Obama and his administration lack a theme.

The President has never clearly defined" change." People do not know what he means when he says that he wants to bring change. Even his supporters do not really know what the change he calls for means exactly or how he intends to achieve it.

So Churchill's lesson for Obama in defeat would be this: He must find a way to explain his theme to the people. The word change is amorphous. At the moment, the President completely lacks a sharp statement of his goal and of how he plans to get there. And without that clarity, his opponents can suggest that" change" means just about anything: socialism, communism, whatever. Without that clarity, his supporters will continue losing focus and enthusiasm.

I am not suggesting that Obama needs to search for inspiration in the speeches of Churchill. The President has a very different task right now, one that has to be accomplished before it is time for big speeches. He does not need to look to how Churchill constructed his signature set-piece speeches, but rather to how he managed to be concise, to communicate a big idea in such a way that people can easily understand it. Obama needs to study Churchill's gifts of concision.

If Obama manages to articulate a theme, it would not merely be good for him -- it would be good for the country, for it is the confusion about his goals are that partly stokes the acrimony. It surely will not be easy, but I am confident that the author of Dreams from My Father is supremely capable of precisely the sort of thinking that will be required. Obama does not need to bring the Churchill bust back to the Oval Office, but he would certainly benefit from considering the lesson of the defeated Churchill.