EUROPE’S BRAIN DRAIN:

Three years ago, E.U. leaders vowed to make the union “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. But one of the most worrying signs of their failure is the continued drain of Europe’s best and brightest scientific brains, who finish their degrees and pursue careers in the U.S. Some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S. and thousands more leave each year. A survey released in November by the European Commission found that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad currently intend to return home. . . .

But complaints like those of Claude Allègre, the former French Education Minister who heads the Paris VII geochemical lab, are all too common. He decries France’s anachronistic “Soviet” system, in which control is centralized and researchers must run a bureaucratic obstacle course, whether to buy expensive equipment or order basic office supplies. “I’m planning on moving to the U.S. indefinitely because I want to continue my research,” says Allègre. “I can’t do so in the current conditions.”

Interesting story. Will this sort of thing cause the Eurocrats to lighten up?

GOT A COPY OF An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, by David Frum and Richard Perle. I’ve only glanced through it so far — I’m snowed under this month — but here are a couple of observations. First, dumb title: A smashing victory in the war on terror would be an end to a particular kind of evil, but not “an end to evil.” That’s just silly, but I don’t necessarily blame Frum and Perle for that — I wanted to title the ethics book Nixon’s Revenge, but our publisher wouldn’t go for that. I still think it would have been a better title.

The book also lacks endnotes, or an index, which is pretty much unforgivable. (There are a few footnotes.) But having said that, what’s most notable about the book is its very hard line on Saudi Arabia. Excerpt (pp. 138-39, 141):

For thirty years, U.S. Saudi policy has been guided by the dogma that, problematic as the Saudi monarchy is, it is better than any likely alternative. . . . It’s past time to drop the happy talk about how splendidly the Saudis are cooperating. (“The Saudis have done everything we’ve asked them to.”) These transparent untruths demean the U.S. government — worse, they encourage the Saudis in their arrogant belief that they can stiff the United States and get away with it. The Saudis qualify for their own membership in the axis of evil: They paid for some three-quarters of the cost of developing Pakistan’s nuclear bomb–and without the Pakistani bomb, neither the Iranian nor the North Korean bomb would be as advanced as it is. The Saudis support terror on a lavish scale. . . . The Saudis shelter absconded persons of interest to the United States. . . .

There is one more thing that must be said, and it is a hard thing to say. The reason our policy toward Saudi Arabia has been so abject for so long is not mere error. Our policy has been abject because so many of those who make the policy have been bought and paid for by the Saudis — or else are looking forward to the day when they will be bought and paid for.

There’s a lot more — and if I were a Democratic strategist, I’d be giving this book a close read, because the Bush Administration’s coddling of the Saudis is an Achilles’ heel.

UPDATE: The book certainly managed to provoke a mouth-frothing review from Michiko Kakutani at the Times. And David Frum illustrates the reason why every author should have a blog by posting this reply:

The greatest scholar of the Islamic world, Bernard Lewis, has brilliantly explained the roots of Muslim rage. He traces that rage to the failure of Muslim societies to adapt to the modern world. The people of these societies remember that they were once rich and powerful and important. Now they lag far behind – and they do not understand why. Rather than look inward at their own faults and failings, they have sought scapegoats in the world beyond their borders.

Can’t one see something similar at work in the mind of Michiko Kakutani? The brand of liberalism championed by her newspaper was once all-powerful in American cultural life. Over the past decade, that power has ebbed away – and since 9/11, the ebb has become a flood. The New York Times no longer decides what Americans will read and what Americans will think about what they read. Rather than look inward, they blame talk radio and the Internet and Fox TV. And when this ferocious reservoir of accumulated resentment encounters a new and contradictory idea – well it just boils over. . . .

Every author should have a blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Kalb seriously doubts that the Democrats will take my advice.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bill Palmer emails:

Stopping the terrorists is pretty much going to require regime change and/or serious regime alteration in most of the countries of the middle east. But if we announce this clearly, we¹ll have the whole Arab world against us. By taking on one regime at a time, we make it much easier.

But this makes it look like we don’t have a plan — we look confused and unfocused. I don’t think that Frum and Perle know something that Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfield and Powell don’t know. I suspect that the policy we have toward Saudi Arabia is not because Bush doesn¹t get it and/or because our diplomats were bought off than that Saudi Arabia is a little farther down the list (after Iran?) and we could use their help for now. I strongly suspect we will soon get around to them if they haven’t figured out a way to stop the terrorists while still keeping power.

I think that’s probably right.

MICKEY KAUS has a lengthy post on everything that makes both the Iowa caucuses, and the news coverage thereof, bogus. It’s a must-read if you’re paying attention to this stuff.

WINDS OF CHANGE has its Iraq roundup and its war roundup posted.

THE UNITED NATIONS doesn’t seem to be very good at nation-building:

A DELEGATION of senior Australian diplomats last week toured an Indonesian region considered by the UN to be more dangerous than Baghdad.

Australian deputy ambassador in Indonesia Peter Rowe and several other diplomats made an official visit to West Timor, an impoverished half-island in eastern Indonesia.

West Timor is rated phase 5 by the UN, the highest danger-level alert, warranting immediate evacuation.

Phase 5 bars UN officials from working without extraordinary security clearance, stifling aid to a dirt-poor district now home to thousands of East Timorese refugees. . . .

Gregorius Maubili, deputy regent of Belu, next to the East Timor border, said the UN should rethink its assessment of West Timor as a matter of priority.

“Maybe to withdraw it is not an easy matter, but at least the status should be adjusted to reflect the current situation,” Dr Maubili said.

“With the phase 5 alert, the lives of the people are disrupted because international aid is not able to come here – this applies especially to handling the East Timorese refugees,” he said. “We have been punished by this rating.”

Dr Maubili said the burden of the East Timorese refugees had been borne for four years in a district with limited means. “We have tried to contact the UN in order to get an evaluation of conditions at this time,” he added.

Not terribly impressive.