All eyes will be on Chicago this weekend, as the city hosts NATO’s annual summit – a meeting that will be attended by key world leaders including Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Hamid Karzai.

Although Afghanistan isn’t a NATO member, the organization’s interests there are obvious, and the country is set to top the agenda as the leaders of dozens of nations converge on Chicago, which is the first city in the United States outside Washington to host the summit.

The past year has seen the notable success of Muammar Gaddafi being removed from power, with NATO and its member countries managing to facilitate his overthrow without the loss of life of a single one of their serviceman (although questions have been raised this past week by Human Rights Watch about the deaths of civilians).

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“Many analysts argue that Israel lacks the military capability to stop the Iranian nuclear program for more than a few years and assert that the cost of any attack will exceed the benefit,” foreign policy analyst Mitchell Bard wrote yesterday. “This is the conventional wisdom, but it is just that, conventional, and Israel has repeatedly proved that it has the daring and creativity to disprove the skeptics.”

I’m not sure I find the reasoning that because Israel surprised most countries by trouncing its neighbors in 1967, that it’s destined to confound naysayers about a military strike on Iran now, very reassuring. Nor is the suggestion that as it took Iran 20 years to get to where it is now, Israel will buy itself more than a couple of years if it does manage to demolish Iran’s nuclear program.

As the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Anthony Cordesman notes in an important piece of research last week:

“Iran has moved far beyond the point where it lacked the technology base to produce nuclear weapons…Iran has pursued every major area of nuclear weapons development, has carried out programs that have already given it every component of a weapon except fissile material, and there is strong evidence that it has carried out programs to integrate a nuclear warhead on to its missiles.”

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Last week, I wrote on the danger partisanship posed to U.S. policymaking, including foreign policy. But as former Sen. Bob Graham has suggested, political turf wars aren’t all about partisanship – politicians are quite happy to place their own influence in Congress’s myriad committees above the nation’s good.

This likely won’t come as a surprise to most, but it’s a danger worth repeating in light of comments Graham made late last week on bioterrorism, an issue that I’ve taken an interest in before in The Diplomat.

Graham led the Weapons of Mass Destruction Committee, which reported to Congress four years ago about the threat of terrorism and proliferation.

“The Commission believes that much more can be done to prevent biological weapons proliferation and terrorism – even as we recognize it is unrealistic to think that we can completely eliminate the possibility of misuse,” the report noted. “To date, the U.S. government has invested most of its nonproliferation efforts and diplomatic capital in preventing nuclear terrorism. The Commission believes that it should make the more likely threat – bioterrorism – a higher priority.”

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It might only have been a primary, but the results of last night’s Republican primary in Indiana speak volumes about U.S. politics at the moment.

Richard Lugar, a six-term senator who had served since 1976, was beaten by Tea Party-backed Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

According to Rep. Pete Sessions, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, Lugar’s defeat reflected the growing anger in the country at how business is being conducted in Washington.

“Whether you are in Indiana, North Carolina, and any number of other places across the country, it is ground zero for discontent,” the Christian Science Monitor reported Sessions as saying. Voters want “Washington to recognize they have gotten in the way and made matters worse.”

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They were until last week one of the worst kept secrets of U.S. operations against militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. After all, barely a day goes by without them making headlines somewhere in the world. But last week, the Obama administration officially discussed for the first time the use of armed unmanned drones.

Speaking in Washington, White House counterterrorism official John Brennan described how al-Qaeda targets are selected for drone strikes, defending them even as concern grows over a program whose use has expanded dramatically under the Obama administration.

“Yes, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives, the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones,” Brennan said.

Such candor is welcome, but as the Washington Post’s ever-readable columnist David Ignatius has noted, there’s much that remains unclear (more unclear?) after Brennan’s comments.

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A potential diplomatic flashpoint between the U.S. and China looks to have been avoided with news that a Chinese activist will be allowed to apply to study abroad.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed news that Chen Guangcheng, who walked out of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Thursday following a deal between the U.S. and China, would be allowed to apply through “normal channels.”

Clinton and other officials will no doubt be breathing a huge sigh of relief after the Obama administration came under fire yesterday when Chen started to back away from the agreement, saying that he wanted to leave China and that he was “very disappointed” with the U.S. Adding to the drama, Chen called in to a U.S. Congressional hearing to list his grievances.

Was Chen right to be disappointed? I asked Kelley Currie at the Project 2049 Institute, who has been following this closely and offered some great commentary to The Diplomat, for her thoughts on how the U.S. handled all of this.

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Following is a guest entry on the media coverage of the Chen Guangcheng case by Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government at Cornell University.

Writing the first draft of history is always difficult. In the Chen Guangcheng case now unfolding in China, it may very well be impossible, and not even an advisable activity. At this point, there’s a lack of clarity about almost every aspect of his flight from Shandong, his stay in the U.S. Embassy, and his current status.

Only three things are certain about the blind Chinese activist’s case. First, it has emerged as one of the most contentious issues we have seen in over a decade within U.S.-China relations. Second, his fate is far from resolved. Third, his situation has generated a media frenzy on both sides of the Pacific.

Beyond these facts, little else is certain regarding the activists case. Indeed, current reporting on each and every aspect of his ongoing odyssey has been inconsistent and even contradictory. How Chen left his home, and who assisted him in such an endeavor, is unclear.  What occurred during his six-day stay in the U.S. Embassy is also disputed. Finally, the agreement that was reached regarding his departure from the embassy, his current status in Beijing, and his future intentions, are all the subject of contrasting speculation.

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When I wrote yesterday that Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng had just complicated the U.S.-China relationship, I had no idea quite how complicated things would actually get today.

Chen escaped from house arrest last month to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after having been held for about 19 months in a rural village in Shandong Province over his outspoken criticism of forced abortions and sterilizations under China’s one child policy. His supporters said he escaped last week and made his way about 300 miles to Beijing.

So far, so relatively clear. But things have taken a twist or two today with news first that Chen had agreed to leave the embassy with a guarantee made to the U.S. that he and his family would come to no harm, then that Chen had changed his mind and wanted to be allowed to leave China with his family out of fears for their safety. Complicating things further was the claim that Chen had been told by a U.S. official that his wife would be beaten to death if he didn’t leave the embassy. Chen is also said to have complained that he was left alone and without any U.S. officials present in a hospital following his departure, despite assurances to the contrary.

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As if things weren’t tense enough for the U.S.-China relationship already, a Chinese activist has just made things more complicated still.

Chen Guangcheng, a blind dissident lawyer who escaped from house arrest last month, is believed to be residing at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He had been held for some 19 months in a rural village in Shandong Province, but according to his supporters, he escaped one night last week and made his way about 300 miles to Beijing.

With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arriving in China for the Strategic and Security Dialogue this week, Chen’s escape couldn’t have come at a much more awkward moment, and the question now is how to resolve Chen’s status in a way that makes neither China nor the U.S. look bad. That won’t be easy.

Regular Diplomat contributor Minxin Pei suggested that there are four theoretical options for Chen:seeking asylum in the United States, seeking asylum in another country, returning to his village with safety and freedom guarantees from the Chinese government, or staying inside the embassy indefinitely.

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It just keeps getting worse for fallen Chinese political star Bo Xilai. Already stripped of his place on the Politburo, and tainted by allegations that his wife was involved in the murder of a British businessman, the former Communist Party Chief of Chongqing is now accused of tapping the phone calls of China’s top leaders.

The New York Times reports that Chinese President Hu Jintao was among those who fell victim to a program that spread across Chongqing.

“According to senior party members, including editors, academics and people with ties to the military, Mr. Bo’s eavesdropping operations began several years ago as part of a state-financed surveillance buildup, ostensibly for the purposes of fighting crime and maintaining local political stability,” the paper reported.

The architect of the program, according to New York Times sources, was Bo’s police chief, Wang Lijun, “a nationally decorated crime fighter who had worked under Mr. Bo in the northeast province of Liaoning. Together they installed ‘a comprehensive package bugging system covering telecommunications to the Internet,’ according to the government media official.”

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