Tipping the scale

Some encouraging developments abroad:

1. The pro-Western March 14 coalition won a clear victory in the Lebanese election, a promising step towards more enduring stability in that deeply-divided country.

2. The Iranian presidential election campaign has turned into a real dogfight between incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi. Although recent polls in Iran suggest that Ahmadinjed will still win, Mousavi seems to be gaining ground and there may well be a run-off. Even if Mousavi loses, there's clearly a lot of popular discontect with Ahmadinejad's rule, and a lot of it centers around his bizarrely self-defeating approach to foreign policy. [..] Moreover, there seems to be widespread popular support for improving relations with the United States.

3. The New York Times reports that some Pakistani villagers are turning against the Taliban, and may even be supporting the government's more active role against them.

It would be a mistake to give Barack all (or even most) of the credit for these developments, but I don't think its completely unrelated either.

[..] elections in most countries turn on local conditions and issues and not on what's happening in Washington. But it sure looks like Obama's approach is helping tip the scale in the right direction.