This year as in every presidential year, it's the economy, stupid. "I'm reasonably relaxed about it," the first President Bush said recently of the upcoming election, "because I believe that elections are decided by the economy. I know mine was." And so Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, needs to establish his bona fides on foreign policy and national security without upstaging the bread-and-butter issues that will seal the race.

Right?

Wrong. This year Kerry would be better advised to throw the post-Vietnam Democratic playbook out the window and reconnect with a different Democratic strategy, one whose time, after 44 years, has come again.

It is 1960. A Democratic senator from Massachusetts faces Richard Nixon, a candidate who boasts eight years of White House experience and is arguably the fiercest Cold Warrior in the mainstream of the Republican Party. The retiring Republican incumbent is no less a personage than Dwight D. Eisenhower, the beloved general who won World War II. As if that were not daunting enough, the Democratic nominee faces a credibility gap. He is young, inexperienced, and little known to the country. The Democrats do have one strong card, which is that the economy is struggling to emerge from a recession. What the Democrats should do, then, is obvious: Shift the race to favorable terrain by focusing on the economy.

John F. Kennedy does not do that. He does the opposite. He attacks the Nixon-Eisenhower incumbency on, of all issues, national security—not from the left but from the right.

"On the Taiwan side of the equation, a formal written document or plebiscite declaring that Taiwan is independent from the PRC is difficult to imagine. It would be nonsensical for any country to write a declaration of independence from another country that it has never been part of. There is no reason for Italy to declare independence from France, and likewise there is no reason for Taiwan to declare independence from the PRC, other than for sheer provocation."

"First, we must pause at the word 'reunification.' Since Taiwan has never been a part of the People's Republic of China, the term 'reunification' is a misnomer. It would be better to call it 'unification', a 'merger', or some other descriptive term."

"President Chen will need courage to stand by his principles and to stand by the Taiwanese people no matter how threatening China appears. In the end, China will not attack, and Taiwan will continue to enjoy its independent status."

"Beijing would lose a war. The rhetoric from the PRC about waging war against Taiwan is based on the following assumptions: The PRC would win such a war and as a result of winning such a war, the PRC would take over Taiwan. The CCP would remain in power after the conclusion of such a war."

"Western military analysts have said that during the next two years, China is likely to achieve military parity with Taiwan. Military parity, however, does not equate to winning a war or, much more important, mounting a successful invasion of Taiwan. The PRC military has long been known to be outrageously bureaucratic, inefficient, poor in communications and far from skilled in maintaining its equipment. Even when China achieves military parity with Taiwan, that does not mean it would be able to use its equipment to match Taiwanese soldiers on the battlefield."

"The US would have to intervene. All of this discussion ignores one important point--US involvement.

"Maintaining a free and democratic Taiwan is important to US security interests in Asia. If Taiwan falls to China, that will send a message that resonates throughout Asia that the United States is only marginally relevant and China is the party to be reckoned with. Asian governments would step back from the democracies that the US has encouraged them to create and would model themselves on the corrupt authoritarian Chinese model.

"US influence in the region would be minimal, and the shipping lanes through the South China Sea would no longer be international waters; rather, they would be controlled by China. Such considerations mandate that the US would step in to help defend Taiwan from any attack.

"The United States has a long history of fighting naval and air battles from a great distance with very few casualties. US ships would stay out of the range of the Chinese missiles in Fujian province, while US planes and cruise missiles reduced the Chinese air force and naval capabilities from 1,000 miles' distance. If the hostilities continued for more than a few days, US forces would begin to target key installations inside China itself. At that point, the only thing Taiwan would need to do to prevail in the war would be to fire rounds at incoming planes and ships, and refuse to surrender."

It is with the deepest sadness that I inform you that Paul Klebnikov, 41, editor of Forbes Russia, was murdered in Moscow this evening. He was reportedly shot four times as he left work and died shortly thereafter.

Paul became the first editor of Forbes Russia at the magazine's launch in April 2004. Forbes Russia is a joint venture with Axel Springer.

Paul joined Forbes in 1989 and rose to the position of senior editor at the magazine, specializing in Russian and Eastern European politics and economics, before assuming editorship of Forbes Russia.

Paul was the author of Godfather of the Kremlin (September 2000), a biography of Boris Berezovsky, a Russian tycoon.

Paul embraced the opportunity to become the first editor of Forbes Russia. He knew Russia well. It was a country he loved deeply.

Paul was a superb reporter--courageous, energetic, ever-curious. I eagerly anticipated reading his stories. The information was always fresh, insightful, fascinating. He exemplified the finest traditions of our profession and served his readers well.

All of us at Forbes are devastated by what has happened and send our condolences and prayers to his wife and family.

Boris Berezovsky, the British-based Russian oligarch, last night described the United States journalist shot dead in Moscow on Friday as being "like a bull in a china shop" in the way he reported on Russia's business elite.


Paul Klebnikov, editor of the newly launched Russian edition of Forbes magazine, wrote a controversial book on Berezovsky's rise to riches. The oligarch described Mr Klebnikov, 41, as "not an honest journalist," but said he would nonetheless miss him.

Mr Klebnikov had earned a reputation for relentless investigative reporting. He was said by leading figures in Russia's publishing industry to have been working on a follow-up to Godfather of the Kremlin, his book on Mr Berezovsky, when he flew to Moscow last week.

It was not clear whether the new book also centred on Mr Berezovsky, or on other aspects of Russia's business world.

The journalist was gunned down in the street near the office of Forbes, which stirred anger recently by publishing a list of Russia's "super-rich".

Godfather of the Kremlin described how the businessman made his fortune from the privatisation of former state assets.

Mr Berezovsky, who was granted political asylum in Britain, spent six and a half years in a legal battle with Mr Klebnikov over a profile he wrote about him. The article, in Forbes magazine in 1996, alleged that Mr Berezovsky was behind the killing of another Russian media mogul - a claim the magazine was forced to retract.

Mr Klebnikov "was a part of my life", Mr Berezovsky said. "He taught me that that even leading Western media lie."

He added: "In Russia, if you publish a list of the country's richest people it's like informing on them to the prosecutors. Somebody clearly did not like the way he operated and decided to sort it out with him, Russian-style, not through the English courts as I did."

He said he had no idea who was behind the shooting - and had been "totally unaware" of Mr Klebnikov's latest work.