Politico is reporting that Derek Chollet, presently deputy director of policy planning at the State Department, is moving over to the White House to head up the National Security Council's strategic planning shop (my old post). He replaces Ambassador Mary Yates, who has held that job since early in President Obama's tenure.

Chollet is a strong choice. By virtue of his State gig, he has good experience inside, and as co-author of an important study of post-Cold War American Grand Strategy he has done serious thinking at the broad level one would expect of a strategic planner. Perhaps just as importantly, he has strong ties up and out -- up with his direct boss Tom Donilon, the national security advisor, and due to his campaign experience out, beyond the NSC into the rest of the White House and throughout the administration and into the think-tank world.

The NSC strategic planning shop can play a constructive role as an internal "second-guesser," helping line officers think through policy areas where the current strategy is perhaps stuck or reaching the point of diminishing returns. He can also help the administration look across stove-pipes to find opportunities for a strategic investment of presidential time, energy, and capital. As one of my colleagues put it: The administration's line officers are busy shooting at the enemy crawling through the wire so a strategic planning office, if sufficiently integrated into NSC operations, can help the organization look out beyond the wire so as to attack problems gathering in the distance.

Chollet is arriving at a critical juncture for the administration. The new balance of power with Congress points to likely stalemate on domestic policy. At the same time, most of the foreign policy initiatives launched by the administration have played out, while other problems (think Iran, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Korea, and so on) are facing their own moments of truth. The NSC strategic planning shop will have its hands full, but I am hopeful that it can rise to the occasion.

The conventional wisdom about the pre-holiday lame duck Senate debate of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is that Republican leaders lost control of a bitterly divided caucus, handing President Obama a much-needed foreign-policy victory.

The reality, however, is closer to the view put forth by Senator Bob Corker, who, during the final floor debate prior to ratification, termed New START the "Nuclear Modernization and Missile Defense Act of 2010."

Although many key Republicans, including Sens. Jon Kyl, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and minority leader Mitch McConnell, ended up voting against ratification, the work they did behind the scenes in the months and weeks prior to the vote vastly improved the U.S. strategic situation post-ratification.

New START itself is a rather minor arms control agreement, with only minimal cuts to U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. Therefore much of the debate about the treaty was about ancillary issues the Russians attempted to bring into the treaty or about strategic issues not addressed by the treaty.

In two of these areas, Sen. Kyl and his colleagues did yeoman's work by prodding the administration to improve nuclear and missile defense policy. Through months of negotiations, he extracted a commitment from the Obama administration to provide $84.1 billion of funding over the next ten years to ensure that the aging U.S. nuclear stockpile is modernized. And during the final days of the Senate debate, Sen. Kyl, joined by Sen. McCain and others, obtained assurances from Obama regarding his long-term commitment to develop effective missile defenses.

Neither item may seem like a concession, given that both actions are fully in line with positions taken by previous administrations of both political parties.

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WILL INBODEN

As the end of the year approaches, along with it comes the ritual end of year evaluations as well as New Year's resolutions. In that spirit, several Shadow Government contributors here offer our thoughts on the Obama administration's foreign policies -- specifically:

1. Advice for the administration in the new year,

2. Suggestions on what policies are working and should be continued, and

3. Suggestions on what policies aren't working and should be consigned to the archives.

Advice: Seize the initiative. This is not about a specific policy but an overall posture. Two years since President Obama's election, the question of an "Obama Doctrine" remains elusive, as the administration's national security policy has mostly been reactive, focused on managing current challenges and crises. This inbox by itself is a substantial challenge to be sure, and one which the administration is handling with varying degrees of success (e.g. decently well with Iran and North Korea, with mixed results with Afghanistan and Iraq, and less well with Pakistan and Israel/Palestinian issues). Missing thus far, however, has been an overarching strategic framework. Hence my advice that the White House seize the initiative for its next two years, and develop a strategic doctrine or at least proactively take advantage of creating some new foreign policy opportunities. Implications for seizing the initiative include:

• Don't acquiesce in predictions of U.S. decline. The world needs responsible global leadership, and there remains no better candidate than the United States.
• Establish principles, alliances, and institutions that will endure beyond this presidency.
• Take the long view. Ignore annual global popularity surveys, and instead ask a question that President Bush told us to consider while on his NSC staff: "What policies should I adopt now as president that my successor's successor will look back on with gratitude?"

What might seizing the initiative look like in practice? For specific policy ideas, perhaps a new alliance of democracies in Asia, or a new global free trade initiative, or reinvigorated transatlantic partnerships, or a new strategic outreach in a neglected region such as Latin America or Africa (including an American partnership with the likely new state in southern Sudan, as Andrew Natsios has suggested), or establishing a robust strategic framework for winning the war of ideas against jihadist ideology.

Continue: Rediscovery of the freedom agenda. After its initial woeful neglect of democracy and human rights promotion, earlier this year the Obama administration rediscovered -- rhetorically at least -- the importance of supporting freedom around the world. The White House should build on this, particularly with specific policies and with new resources. As events in just the past few weeks have shown, in places like Belarus, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, and China, the demands of citizens for their liberty remain embattled and in need of America support.

Drop: The "reset" with Russia. Now that New START has passed the Senate, and thus completes the centerpiece of the administration's "reset" policy, it is time for a new, realistic look at Russia -- which necessarily means a delete of the reset framework. The original reset framework assumed that U.S.-Russia relations could be put on a sustained positive trajectory based on shared interests and reciprocal good will. But as Bob Kagan wrote earlier this week, "relations with Moscow are about to grow more challenging," as serious issues including Russia's ongoing occupation of Georgia, growing corruption and internal repression, and cynical ambivalence on Iran remain. Defense Secretary Robert Gates's reported description of Russia got it right: "An oligarchy run by the security services." Taking a fresh look at the United States' Russia policy should include strengthening U.S. support for beleaguered Russian reformers, reaffirming U.S. commitments to our allies and partners in Russia's border regions, and jettisoning unrealistic assumptions about shared interests. Ironically, such a reduction in expectations might well enable better cooperation in the areas where our interests do align.

PETER FEAVER

Advice: Be as committed to seeing Iraq and Afghanistan through to success as the President was in pursuing health care "reform." President Obama secured his place in history with the passage of Obamacare. Whether it comes to be seen as a positive legacy like Social Security, or as an overreach and folly like Prohibition, it will always be seen as historic and as the president's own. This was a policy war of choice, not of necessity. There were needful aspects of health care reform, but most of them fell out of the bill or got swamped by far more expensive and consequential optional items. Elections have consequences, and in this case it empowered Obama to doggedly pursue what he considered to be the right thing -- and he showed he was willing to pay a huge electoral price, if necessary.

It is time for him to engage in a policy war of necessity, building a political coalition in support of prevailing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His policy moves in the next two years will likely prove decisive in determining whether U.S. forces leave in success or defeat. Until now, President Obama has not made war leadership a central priority of his administration, and he has devoted very little effort at all to the crucial task of mobilizing political/public support. It is time, past time, to devote the political capital to this effort.

Continue: President Obama and his team proved quite adept in passing New START. To be sure the treaty itself was only of secondary importance for national security. Indeed, the side deals on force modernization and missile defense wrung out of the administration by skeptical senators will likely prove far more consequential in the long run than the modest treaty provisions. Yet the orchestration of lobbying, arm-twisting, bipartisan outreaching, principled deal-making, and even somewhat hyperbolic policy-shilling -- all of that amounted to an impressive effort culminating in what surely is the administration's greatest national security accomplishment to date. If the administration devotes a similar effort to forging bipartisan support for the various wars under its command (see point above), it will be an even more impressive national security accomplishment.

Drop: The silly campaign boasting that "America is back" in Asia. The boast was always a bit absurd but it quickly became an embarrassment when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to skip regional meetings and postpone long-planned trips to attend to domestic political priorities. The boast also reflected a needless defensiveness on the administration's part. The United States has pursued a common bipartisan grand strategy in Asia for over a decade now, with President George W. Bush building on President Bill Clinton's initial efforts regarding China, India, and Japan, and now President Obama building on Bush's initiatives. Rather than pretend to be offering a bold departure, why not make a virtue out of the truth and note that there are some areas where mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans can agree, and one of them is Asia? Both sides recognize that the United States is an Asia-Pacific power and the world will be a better place if the United States remains vitally engaged in this region. No need to pretend that the United States ever left, because it didn't and it won't.

PHIL LEVY

Advice: From a trade perspective, it is remarkable to think how little has been accomplished in the first two years of the Obama presidency. When he took office, President Obama inherited an agenda that included stalled global trade talks (the Doha round of World Trade Organization negotiations), three already-negotiated free trade agreements (South Korea, Colombia, and Panama), and a troubled trade relationship with China. Across all of these items, the only achievement approaching progress was the revision to the Korean free trade agreement, and that came at the very end of 2010. The revision left Ford and the United Auto Workers happier, but came at the expense of other sectors, such as pork producers.

Better late than never, but there were costs to the lost time. Free trade agreements that promised U.S. producers at least a period of privileged access to a trading partner's market are now just offering the prospect of equal access, since our jilted partners went and negotiated agreements with other countries while the United States dallied. Frustration was already high with the lagging global trade talks; it has since mounted. What's more, the repeated empty promises of the G-20 nations to conclude the Doha round undermined that group's credibility.

The ineffectiveness of the G-20 was also revealed in the sad Seoul summit, in which China and Germany objected to any global rebalancing plan that pushed past platitudes. The Obama administration -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in particular -- deserves credit for putting forth a credible approach; it just didn't seem to gain traction. As with trade liberalization, the administration might have been more credible had it led by example. In trade, it called for a new WTO agreement while condoning "Buy America" protectionism and showing that it would not spend the political capital to push through existing agreements. In international finance, it called for global rebalancing while dramatically increasing spending, creating a significant new entitlement program through its health care plans, and relegating any plans for fiscal restraint to a separate deficit commission (as opposed to using its own Office of Management and Budget).

So what happens when you defer serious action on the international economic front for a couple of years? Institutions (in this case the WTO) deteriorate, problems (resurgent global imbalances) fester and grow, and resolutions to address these issues soon may be undercut by new crises that demand attention.

Looking ahead to the rest of Obama's term, my top candidate for major distracting crisis to come is the bubbling debt trouble in Europe. The leaders of the Euro nations have been working furiously to address problems as they pop up in Greece, then Ireland, then Portugal, with Spain and Belgium starting to simmer. But all of their remedies have done little more than buy time and, in some cases, allow the problems to grow. There are fundamental inconsistencies ripping the euro apart. When that happens, it will not simply be a matter of having to deal with currency exchange at the borders; it will likely involve a significant banking crisis. Those, it turns out, can be nasty.

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On Dec. 15, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rolled out the State Department's first ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) at an internal town hall meeting -- a year behind schedule. No surprise, it turns out to be more of a public relations document than a disciplined strategic review. Yet if it doesn't score a bull-eye, the QDDR at least hits an outer ring by describing an ambitious and needed reform agenda.

Quadrennial reviews -- used by the Department of Defense since 1993 and also adopted by the Intelligence Community and Department of Homeland Security -- are supposed to evaluate an institution's fitness for accomplishing expected missions and responding to crises. As guides for decision-makers, they should assess the continuing applicability of the agency's charter, the global operating environment, institutional strengths and weaknesses, and options prioritized by resources available.

I may have missed something in my speed read through the QDDR's 242 pages. But it seemed less an analytical assessment than a justification for steps the secretary had already taken. State's desire to coordinate a growing menagerie of interagency actors in its embassies got coverage, but its evolving relationship with them was brief. The operating environment lacked details on forecast challenges and regional goals. Moreover, the authors pulled punches on institutional strengths and weaknesses, shed little light on budgetary realities, and established no discernible priorities among a long list of to-do's.

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When Napoleon marched his army into Berlin in 1806, he took his generals to the tomb of Frederick the Great, saying "hats off, gentlemen; if he were alive we wouldn't be here." The same could be said of the Obama administration's policy on Afghanistan: without Defense Sec. Robert Gates, we would not be here.

Over the weekend, the Obama administration concluded its Afghanistan policy review, formally committing to prosecute the war until Afghan security forces are competent to undertake the work done by U.S. and allied forces. Control of operations will gradually transition to Afghan security forces as military commanders determine them capable of managing the fight. The year 2014 is aspired to by the Afghan and force providing governments as the date at which such transition would be complete, although the commander in Afghanistan is hesitant to pledge unequivocally that can be met.

This beneficial outcome is diametrically opposed to the president's intention when a year ago he announced the surge of effort in Afghanistan. Having been cornered by his own rhetoric about the good war in Afghanistan recklessly under-resourced by the previous administration, the president accepted the need to increase forces. But in the very same breath as he gaveth, he tooketh away: "as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home."

Secretary Gates has a fine Florentine touch for orchestrating outcomes, as is evident by his slight of hand in convincing the public that defense spending is being reduced. But trapping the Obama administration into a sensible alignment of objectives and resources for winning the war in Afghanistan is his coup de grâce. His work repairing the administration's strategy merits studying.

The first element was preventing the administration from adopting a narrower set of objectives in Afghanistan. Both during the initial administration review announced March 25th and the exhaustively drawn out second review, there was significant support by the political faction of the administration to reduce the standard to something that could be met without distracting from the president's domestic agenda. Gates made common cause with Secretary Hillary Clinton, and standing together they were too formidable for Vice President Joe Biden and others to assail. In his West Point speech announcing the conclusions of the second review, the president emphasized that "our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future."

Having established the goal, Gates put his men in place. Though General McKiernan had drawn attention to the under-resourcing of effort in Afghanistan, he was judged by both Gates and Admiral Mullen to be insufficiently creative to succeed designing and commanding operations for this complex war. They replaced him with a counterinsurgency expert, General Stanley McChrystal, and put Gates's military assistant, General Rodriguez, in the mix, as well, to ensure close webbing of the Pentagon and the war effort.

Third, Gates tasked the commander with undertaking an independent assessment of what would be required to achieve the administration's objectives. The McChrystal review accepted the premise of the White House's policy and made an intellectually unassailable argument for what would be needed in a concept of operations and resourcing to achieve it, with options directly tied to varying levels of risk. Once the McChrystal standard had been set, it was untouchable by the politicos. There was no way to reject the resources the commander said he needed, given the president's criticism of the previous administration.

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Congratulations to President Obama and his team for successfully concluding negotiations on the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement (KORUS) on Friday. Republicans should applaud and support the president when he pursues such a market-friendly policy. So should Democrats, of course, but the early indications are that the agreement will face critics on the left. More on that anon. Herewith eight questions and answers about what just happened.

1) What changed in the agreement?
The original KORUS was signed in the summer of 2007, more than three years ago. Up until late last week, Obama and other critics had derided that accord as unsatisfactory. So what changed?

The headline revisions were in the auto sector. Ford, in particular, was upset about the obstacles it faced trying to sell into the Korean market while Korean producers like Hyundai enjoyed lucrative access to the U.S. market. In the revised agreement, Korea promises changes to emissions and safety restrictions that Ford argued were discriminatory. Tariff schedules were also reworked to slow market access for car producers on each side (i.e., less rapid liberalization).

Korea, in turn, will phase out its tariffs on U.S. pork exports more slowly than previously planned, will get more favorable visa treatment for workers coming to the United States, and will slow down changes to its patent system that U.S. pharmaceutical makers wanted.

2) Is it better than the first version of KORUS in 2007?
One agreement is indisputably better than another if it makes some groups better off and leaves no one worse off (that's "Pareto efficiency" for those who enjoy slinging econ jargon). This revision is not that. Ford is happier while pickup buyers and pork exporters are not. Weighing one group's interests against another's is a political calculation. The answer depends on who your friends are.

3) Was it worth the wait?
No. The bulk of the benefits of this agreement could have been had years ago and U.S. trade policy has been held hostage ever since.

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To further Peter's thoughts in his recent post, I agree that the Obama administration is right to reject China's call for more talks with North Korea, and to refuse any further negotiations with the DPRK until Kim Jong Il's regime changes its behavior. Yet one can't escape the irony that the Obama administration is following the same policy of refusing to negotiate that brought much self-righteous criticism from many commentators against former President George W. Bush. And as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama made the centerpiece of his foreign policy a pledge to do just the opposite, specifically offering to talk without preconditions to hostile regimes.

Let me be clear -- I support the White House on this aspect of their North Korea policy. But I also think this might be a good occasion for reflection by commentators on all sides, myself included. It seems that the same voices that so indignantly condemned the Bush administration for its occasional refusal to engage in unconditional negotiations with unsavory regimes (such as Iran) now fall silent when the Obama administration does the same thing. Perhaps this is another example of what Ross Douthat perceptively described earlier this week as the "partisan mind" at work.

It is also a reminder to partisans and observers on all sides to resist caricaturing each other's positions. I hope this latest impasse with North Korea at least helps elevate the policy debate beyond the hackneyed and simplistic "negotiate or not" rut. As any serious policymaker knows, in practice negotiations are one tool in the policy arsenal. They are not a neutral tool, as the act of negotiating inherently incurs potential risks (such as the other side using it to play a delay and dissemble game while still pursuing a nuclear program) along with potential rewards. And it is a fact that negotiating, especially if public, does confer some sense of legitimacy and political capital to the other side. Think of the debates in the 1980s over whether the odious apartheid regime in South Africa should be "isolated" or "engaged," and many critics rightfully pointed out that engagement would give the government a degree of legitimacy that it craved but did not deserve.

A realistic approach to negotiating must include leverage. For the United States, the most effective entry point for negotiating with an adversarial regime begins with assessing what kind of leverage we can bring to the negotiating table, and what kind of negotiating posture it would give us. Such a leveraged posture could include inducements we possess that the other side desires, or coercive instruments that are either in place and the other side wants lifted, or that haven't been triggered yet and the other side wants to avoid. If a careful "leverage assessment" reveals a weak hand, then it is usually best not to enter into unconditional negotiations, especially because in those cases the best type of leverage might actually be the prospect of negotiations, desired by the other side.

In the case of North Korea, the lead officials in the Obama administration realize that they have little leverage, in part as a result of the concessions made in the last two years of the Bush administration (such as removal of the DPRK from the state sponsor of terror list, and lifting of the Banco Delta Asia sanction along with returning Kim Jong Il's $25 million of ill-gotten gains) that failed to secure a meaningful improvement in North Korea's behavior. Refusing to negotiate from the current posture is a good starting point and helps turn North Korea's (possible) desire for talks into a source of some small leverage. To gain more leverage, reimposing the financial market sanctions on the private accounts of the regime's leaders would help, as would revisiting the state sponsor of terrorism list. Equally important will be exploring ways to change China's cost/benefit calculation for its support of the DPRK. Perhaps after these kinds of steps are taken, it will be time to talk again.

President Obama's foreign policy spinmeisters have received assistance from an unlikely corner. Ashley Tellis, one of our most knowledgeable South Asia experts, pushes back against critics who have pooh-poohed what the president accomplished in his recent trip to India. The article posted elsewhere on the FP site, calls the trip the exact opposite of a failure, a "ringing success."

Since I also privately received pushback from another knowledgeable India hand for my own characterization of the India visit as "solid but not stellar," the Tellis article caused me to rethink my judgment. Rethink, but not revise. Not yet anyway.

Tellis begins by arguing that the Obama administration undersold the trip by focusing its talking points around jobs when the larger optics of the trip were equally important. I agree that the larger optics and public diplomacy of the trip belong on the positive side of the ledger. President Obama effectively deployed his global popularity and garnered favorable coverage from a notoriously anti-American media. I also agree that the trade deals were positive and that it was especially noteworthy that the deals included military equipment. This was a good step forward in the strategic relationship. One might even call it solid.

But beyond the trade deals, the list of tangible accomplishments on the trip that Tellis offers is rather thin. In fact, if one were to draw up a list of "things we offered to India," that list would look a lot like Tellis's list of "things we accomplished on the trip." The only deliverable from India was a commitment to upgrade its export control system -- a worthy and long-overdue step. Again, this is on the positive side of the ledger, but it falls somewhere short of a triumph in my book. Maybe closer to solid.

Importantly (well, importantly for me, anyway), Tellis does not address the question at the heart of my equivocal reaction to the trip: what did we get from India in exchange for the United Nations Security Council offer? Or rather, his answer appears to be that the intrinsic benefits of welcoming India into the ruling councils are reward enough, and I just don't find that convincing.

Tellis claims "intensifying security cooperation" with India will "redound to the benefit of the United States in Afghanistan." I certainly hope so, but I remain unconvinced especially since Tellis also touts as progress "that Obama has rejected the Pakistani claim that India's involvement in Afghanistan undermines the United States-led international mission and threatens Pakistan." We can all agree that Pakistani concerns are grounded more in their own paranoia than in Indian behavior, but that doesn't make the paranoia any less real and or any less consequential for our effort in Afghanistan. I am not sure how ignoring the paranoia and perhaps even stoking it by failing to get even token concessions from the Indians redounds to our benefit and increases our prospects for success there.

But I am sure that if anyone could convince me, it would be Tellis and the other unexpected administration defenders, so I will reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks as I learn more from the area experts.

The president's Asia trip is getting mixed reviews, wildly mixed reviews.

Team Obama thought the trip was a huge success. Tom Donilon, the new National Security Advisor, in a fit of extraordinary (jet-lagged?) exuberance told reporters in Yokohama: "I think when historians look back on the trip to India and Indonesia. It will be one of those seminal moments, one of those iconic moments in the relationship between countries when historians look back on it."

Outside observers were less charitable. Some dismissed it as "a trip about nothing." Even charter members of the Obama choir fretted about the optics of the President scurrying out of town so soon after the electoral "shellacking."

The truth is somewhere in the middle. The president made some modest headway, with a solid but not stellar visit to India and a fine visit to Indonesia. It was hardly "iconic," but the visit to Indonesia may have been "seminal." The Obama administration believes they have a real opportunity in Indonesia thanks to the president's personal connection to the country. If they were able to build the foundation of a strategic partnership with Indonesia as Presidents Clinton and Bush were able to do with India, that would indeed be an accomplishment. But they have a long way to go and they clearly had no significant deliverables for this visit.

The rest of the trip went considerably less well. I was inclined to give Team Obama a pass over the failure to close the deal on the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) because I remember how frustrating the Bush Team found negotiating with our allies in Seoul could be. Then I read Phil Levy's blistering analysis and had second thoughts. He makes a convincing case that this was diplomatic malpractice, from the arrogant dismissal of the deal they inherited, to the boastful claim that the deal would be struck on this trip, to the endgame when the staff sent President Obama out to face the cameras with nothing to show for two years of haggling.

Levy leaves unasked the obvious follow-up question that most interests me about this episode: How could the staff leave the president exposed on this fiasco? There may have been errors at the middle-staff level, but my own read is that the point people who owned the issue -- Treasury Under Secretary Lael Brainard and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs (and economic summit "sherpa") Michael Froman -- were not to blame. In fact, were they to blame that would surprise me because they are some of the strongest players on Obama's team. On an issue such as this one, the hardest deals to cut are the ones within one's own team, in particular the deals between the foreign policy and the domestic politics folks. There are only a handful of people who have the heft to force such deals: a strong National Security Advisor, a strong National Economic Council Director, a bold senior political advisor, and the chief of staff, in other words Tom Donilon, Larry Summers, David Axelrod, and Pete Rouse. If those four were not able to forge a deal they could live with that the Koreans would accept -- and manifestly they were not -- then there is only one person who could have, President Obama himself.

Yes, the Koreans deserve some blame for driving such a hard bargain, but they were just exploiting the mistakes of the administration: the mistake of setting the deadline, which weakened our bargaining position; the mistake of not getting the deal done before Air Force One left Washington; and the mistake of not securing (or merely taking) more bargaining space from domestic coalitions. Once the jet lag wears off, I hope the Obama Team will sort this one out.

The biggest disappointment of President Barack Obama's Asia trip was his failure to strike an agreement on the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement in Seoul. His biggest success was his embrace of a transformative partnership with India. The president can now claim ownership of a relationship that has been on the rocks since he took office, and he deserves considerable credit for arguing that India's rise and success as a future democratic superpower is a core interest of the United States.

The president's vision of a far-reaching partnership with India -- to manage global diplomatic and security challenges, tie the two countries together in a mutually beneficial economic embrace, and promote freedom and rule of law in Asia and beyond -- was bracing. Obama's warm reception by the Indian parliament, commentariat, and public bodes well for future ties between the world's oldest and the world's largest democracies.

In New Delhi, Obama made a strong case for strengthening Indo-U.S. ties -- and to create an "indispensable" partnership that would help define the course of the 21st century:

Now, India is not the only emerging power in the world. But the relationship between our countries is unique. For we are two strong democracies whose constitutions begin with the same revolutionary words -- the same revolutionary words -- "We the people." We are two great republics dedicated to the liberty and justice and equality of all people. And we are two free market economies where people have the freedom to pursue ideas and innovation that can change the world. And that's why I believe that India and America are indispensable partners in meeting the challenges of our time… The United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality… [P]romoting shared prosperity, preserving peace and security, strengthening democratic governance and human rights -- these are the responsibilities of leadership. And as global partners, this is the leadership that the United States and India can offer in the 21st century.

Obama's expressed ambitions for Indo-U.S. ties came just in time to check a growing chorus in Washington of pessimism toward the relationship. Most prominent among the skeptics is George Perkovich, the esteemed vice president for studies of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, whose foundational book on India's development of nuclear weapons was an inspiration for this author, and many others, to embrace the study of India. Dr. Perkovich was an India expert long before it was popular, so his arguments carry great weight. That is why his recent Carnegie report arguing that India cannot be the partner the United States wants it to be -- and that ambitions of the kind Obama expressed for the relationship are actually harmful to it -- deserves attention.

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The to-ing and fro-ing between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government continues unabated, with each new verbal clash further dimming any chances for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. On Friday the Israeli government moved another step closer to lifting its construction freeze by publishing in the Israeli press its plans to build 1,345 new housing units in mostly Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Two days later Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Vice President Joe Biden in New Orleans, where the impasse between Jerusalem and Washington remained as firm as ever. 

Two days after that, President Obama, responding to a question at his Jakarta news conference about Israeli construction, first stated that he had not received "a full briefing on Israel's intentions," but then went on to say that such activity was "unhelpful." Naturally, the world press focused on the latter part of Obama's remarks, with breathless headlines proclaiming, in tabloid fashion, "Obama Rips Israel." Not to be outdone, Netanyahu responded to Obama's remarks by pointing out that Jerusalem was "not a settlement," and that the new housing units would not affect the outcome of peace talks. In effect the Israeli Prime Minister dismissed the entire flap as much ado about nothing (his actual term was "overblown"). At which point the State Department issued its own retort, arguing that there was indeed a linkage between construction and the peace process.

President Obama has clearly determined that construction in East Jerusalem is a "red line" that the Israeli government should not cross. The problem is that "East Jerusalem" does not merely consist of Arab neighborhoods in the Old City or even outside its walls. Many districts of what is East Jerusalem have been home to tens of thousands of Israelis for years, even decades. Construction in these neighborhoods never was an obstacle to peace talks until the Obama administration put the Palestinians in an impossible position by insisting that construction should stop. 

Given Washington's position, the Palestinian Authority has had no alternative but to focus on the construction issue. It clearly cannot not take a softer line on construction than Obama has done. Meanwhile, Israelis of all political stripes, including many who otherwise have no truck with Netanyahu, are puzzled and angered by Washington's stance. Many suspect that he is simply trying to curry favor with the Muslim world at Israel's expense. His performance at the Jakarta press conference does nothing to allay that suspicion. After all, having said he needed to study the issue, he need not have gone any further. But he did, and Netanyahu responded in turn and in kind.

Why does the president continue to harp on settlements in East Jerusalem, as opposed to expansion of West Bank settlements that would be dismantled under the terms of any peace agreement between the parties? Obama may feel that he has crossed a Rubicon and must push forward. Or he may feel that he must put Netanyahu in his place; there is no love lost between the two men, and the Israeli reportedly feels that the recent Congressional elections have strengthened his position. Obama may want to show the Israeli that his grasp of the balance of power in Washington is not as strong as he thinks it is. (Which of the two men is right is another matter, and in any event will not be determined for some time.)

There is, however, another possibility: the president may simply not realize that while Israel might give up parts of Jerusalem, as both Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert were willing to do, even they were not ready to cede major Jewish neighborhoods in what every prime minister since 1967, of whatever party, considers to be Israel's capital.

Whatever the reason, Obama's behavior in Indonesia, and his constant harping on the construction issue, has complicated his avowed search for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel will not give in to his demands, and the Palestinians will not proceed unless the Israelis do so. The peace process is stalemated, and it is up to the president, who has, perhaps unwittingly, brought on this latest dead end on the long-standing saga of Israeli-Palestinian misery, to come up with a way that lets both sides move forward, even if it means that he personally has to take several steps back in order to do so.

I'd like to take a short break from my running critique of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy to laud him for supporting India's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. I don't know what the administration's rationale was for the shift in U.S. policy, but I think there is a strong realist case for expanding the Security Council to include not just India, but also Japan, Germany, and Brazil.

International institutions like the United Nations are mostly useless. At their best, they oversell their relevance. They do not exert much independent influence on world events distinct from the states that comprise their membership. What needs doing gets done by states, not by institutions. At their worst, institutions waste time and money on ill-advised causes. But institutions do serve a purpose. They provide regularity to the interaction between states. They enshrine norms and patterns of behavior. They provide a reliable talk-shop. They make it easier to conduct multilateral talks and negotiations. They (sometimes) provide a credible, neutral, third-party voice. They can become useful stores of expertise and data on highly specialized issues.

Read on

While U.S. voters were not particularly interested in foreign policy (certainly not Asia policy) during this election, Asia is always interested in U.S. voters. The economic growth of countries such as China and India, and the technological and innovative dynamism of much of the rest of Asia, are significantly impacting the structure of the U.S. economy. Newly elected Republicans have a chance to help the United States continue to benefit from Asia's growing prosperity.

Though the election was not about foreign policy, it is worth noting that former Vice President Dick Cheney's early 2009 critique of Obama's counter-terrorism policies first exposed the chinks in the administration's armor, demonstrating signs of life for a Republican Party declared dead and providing moral support to others in his party who soon voiced their own powerful critiques. Still, this election was about economics and the size and structure of government, not foreign policy. So, I am about to practice economics and politics without a license.

While voters still do not seem to trust the GOP, the party can regain their trust by reclaiming the mantle of economic leadership. Newly-elected Republicans can insist upon free market, pro-free trade policies that can push the president to create a friendlier climate for foreign investment in the United States as well as to ratify a free trade deal with South Korea and pry open other Asian markets for U.S. investment and exports.

By committing to fiscal responsibility, Republicans can provide a more credible case for the global rebalancing that economists agree needs to happen. A collective economic rebalancing, rather than a trade war or legislating punitive tariffs, is the answer to our current economic troubles with China. And a broader commitment to U.S. leadership in trade liberalization throughout Asia will contribute to setting the United States back on the road to economic growth and low unemployment.

But the United States is on the horns of a dilemma in Asia, one that new Republican leaders must resolve. Our huge debt and uncertain fiscal position calls into question our ability to sustain a robust diplomatic and military presence in the region; if fiscal austerity includes cuts to the defense budget, Asians will continue to conclude that we are not going to be present in Asia for the long haul. In the context of Asia policy, then, the key challenge for Republican leaders both in Congress and aspiring to the presidency is to strike the right balance between pursuing long-term measures to restore fiscal health without making short-term cuts on defense spending that create deep regional unease.

The first chance for Republicans to reconcile long and short term goals with respect to Asia is during Obama's trip to the region. They should pledge to work with him if he agrees to ratify the FTA with Korea, hold his feet to the fire if he panders to special interests on the issue of outsourcing to India (or what I like to call trading based on comparative advantage), and pledge to support him if he commits to keeping our alliances strong by making the military investments we need to keep the region stable.

The midterm election results were a strong rebuke of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's stewardship of political power, but they turned almost entirely on domestic issues, not foreign policy. Therefore, the foreign-policy implications of the election are likely to be indirect rather than direct.

Even when foreign-policy issues are an important factor in a midterm election -- think the public dissatisfaction with the Iraq War that helped fuel Democratic gains in 2006 -- it does not necessarily translate into a predictable change on those issues. The new Democratic-controlled Congress believed they had a mandate to force a rapid retreat from Iraq in 2007 and they tried very hard to impose that policy on the Bush administration. Former President George W. Bush interpreted the 2006 election as a partial rebuke of his Iraq policy, but opted for the opposite response, the surge, and very narrowly kept the surge alive long enough to show results on the ground. Democrats came very close to thwarting the surge in the summer of 2007, but they failed in their effort. Implication: A highly resolved president can prevail on a foreign-policy issue even against a highly motivated oppositional Congress.

The next Congress may well be oppositional, but it will not be singularly motivated on a foreign-policy issue. For starters, there is no clear foreign-policy mandate coming out of the election. So far as I can determine, exit polls asked about only two foreign-policy issues: Afghanistan and the recent attempted terrorist attack.  Interestingly, of those voters who ranked these issues at the very top of their list of concerns, Democrats won: 57 percent-41 percent in favor of Democrats on Afghanistan and 55 percent -43 percent on the recent terrorist attempt. But only small portions of the electorate considered these their top issues: 8 percent on Afghanistan and 9 percent on terrorism.

But elections have consequences, and even though the consequences will be more dramatic on domestic policy issues, there will nevertheless be discernible implications for foreign policy. Here are three quick ones: 

• President Obama will face an even more difficult time mobilizing Democrats to support his war policies. A majority of voters (54 percent) said they disapproved of the Afghanistan war and an even larger majority of those disapprovers (61 percent) voted Democrat. Obama is even more reliant on Republican support for his war in Afghanistan than he was this past year. Moreover, the departure of national security moderate Democrats from the House of Representatives combined with the freedom that being a minority party grants means that the Democratic caucus in the House will likely be even more stridently anti-war.  
• Democrats lost their most respected voice on national security, Congressman Ike Skelton of Missouri. Some respected voices remain in the House, notably Jane Harman of California, but this election reverses a trend that could be traced to the party's response to the 9/11 attacks: the cultivation of a "strong on national security" wing among House Democrats. Skelton was uniquely respected on both sides of the aisle, in particular because he devoted time and effort to issues that were significant in a larger strategic sense but not hot-button electoral issues, such as professional military education, interservice rivalry, or the development of grand strategy. It will be harder to forge strong bipartisan positions on national security without more strong national security moderate voices from the Democratic side of the aisle.
• President Obama is likely to prioritize foreign-policy issues more in the next two years than he did in the previous two years. Obama faces the prospect of compromising with Republicans in order to get things done on domestic policy or focusing attention on areas where he can do what he wants while ignoring Congress. He may well choose the latter. The president's long trip to Asia could be both a symbol and a harbinger of this approach. There are plenty of foreign policy concerns to preoccupy him and he will certainly have a higher success rate of prevailing over Republicans on foreign policy than on domestic policy.

Bottom line: While foreign policy was not a front-burner issue in the run-up to the midterm elections, it could well re-emerge as a front-burner and contentious issue in very short order.