My colleague Kori Schake goes some way toward taking the administration to task for what it calls a new strategy. But she does not go far enough; her critique appears to postulate that the strategy is not new. On the contrary, in my view it is indeed a new strategy of sorts, and a very dangerous one at that.

This is, of course, a budget-driven strategy -- after all, the DoD's Strategic Guidance, which was released together with the president's announcement, specifically states that the strategy "supports the national security imperative of deficit reduction through a lower level of defense spending." Leaving aside for a moment the question of how a reduction of some $50 billion a year will enhance national security given an annual deficit that exceeds $1 trillion, such an assertion leaves little doubt regarding the reason for a new strategy.

It should be recalled that the administration's own Quadrennial Defense Review, written in the shadow of the president's pledge to depart from Iraq, was committed to "maintain ability to prevail against two capable nation-state aggressors." Now, however, the administration proposes to plan for our forces to fight just one war, while being "capable of denying the objectives of - or imposing unacceptable costs on - an opportunistic aggressor in a second region" (emphasis in original document). What changed since the QDR appeared, other than the explosive growth of the national debt? What exactly does denying the objectives mean? Would we necessarily know what those objectives are? Where would we find the forces to deny those objectives if they were enmeshed in a major conflict elsewhere?

This budget driven strategy is a throwback to the discredited "win-hold-win" strategy that the Clinton administration proposed early in its first term. At that time, it quickly became clear that the strategy could not work. There was no way of knowing whether forces engaged in one combat theater could be freed to fight in another theater, and, even if they could be freed, whether they could arrive in a timely fashion to defeat the enemy.

The Obama administration does not even offer the pretense of "holding" an enemy. The troops fighting elsewhere will somehow miraculously arrive in time to fight a second war. But our forces are not the cavalry in a 1940s Western. With the cuts that are being proposed, there is no way that they can arrive in time to fight a second war, assuming there are enough of them to do so. As for our enemies, it is a virtual certainty that they would do all they could to ensure that our forces do not arrive in time and, indeed, would exploit American preoccupation in another theater to realize long held objectives of their own. North Korea and Iran both come to mind in this regard.

The new strategy asserts that "everything is on the table," meaning perhaps, that everything is subject to cuts. Given the administration's concomitant commitment to preserve benefits and avoid a hollow military, it is clear that, in addition to force structure (which must mean the land forces, since naval and air forces have been cut significantly over the past decade), the acquisition accounts will be the bill payers.

There is nothing in the two regional contingency strategies that needs fixing. We have potential and real enemies in several theaters, and encountered difficulties conducting two wars in the same regional theater. What is needed is a focus on accounts that the administration shies away from: civilian personnel, staff augmentation contractors (which Robert Gates identified as a major budget concern) military retirement, and military entitlements. The latter have grown as much, if not more quickly, than civilian entitlements and both need to be ratcheted back.

The administration itself acknowledges that the world remains a dangerous place. It wants to maintain its commitments to Europe and NATO, and to the Middle East, and to our Asian allies and friends. It wants to do so with a strategy and budget priorities that belie its high flown pronouncements. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs asserts that the new strategy accepts more risk. That is quite the understatement. This is not a strategy that merely invites risk, it is one that courts disaster. 

Ed. note: As we approach the end of another year, the Shadow Government team is resuming our tradition of evaluating the Obama Administration's foreign policy over the past year. Our contributors will be offering their assessments on one thing the White House got right, and one thing the White House got wrong.  Here is the first installment from Dov Zakheim.

Give the President credit: once Osama Bin Laden had been located, Barak Obama had several options for capturing or killing him and he chose the one that involved the greatest risk but yielded the most satisfying outcome. The President and his advisors all were aware of the disaster that was the Carter Administration's attempt to free the Embassy hostages in Tehran. Desert One was a spectacular failure that helped to doom Carter's re-election hopes.

Obama, knowing that his political opponents often compared him to the man who many reckon to be among the least effective president of the twentieth century, needed a lot of gumption to order the Seals into Pakistan to capture or kill the terrorist icon. He knew that the mission might not succeed, and that he too could go down in history as a failed one-term chief executive. He knew, as well, that a raid on Abbottabad would provoke Pakistani ire to the point where relations between Washington and Islamabad might be damaged beyond repair. The President went ahead anyway, and Bin Laden is dead.

On the other hand, the Obama Administration should hang its head in shame over the release of a terrorist who personally masterminded the killing of five American soldiers. Ali Musa Daqduq is Lebanese national and a high level Hezbollah operative. Like so many other Hezbollah leaders, he has ties to the worst elements of the Iranian regime: he has trained members of the notorious Iranian Revolutionary Guard Kuds force, which is closely aligned with Tehran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. That alone should have prevented Washington from turning Daqduq over to the Sh'ia-led Iraqi government, with its more than cordial ties to Iran. But it was his masterminding the ambush, kidnapping and murder of five American soldiers that should have prompted the Administration to make the "no-brainer" decision to transfer him to an American military detention facility (how about Guantanamo?).

What will the Maliki government do about Daqduq?  Since Iraq, clearly at the behest of Tehran, joined Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon in not even voting with its fellow Arab League states to suspend Syria from membership, the answer is clear. Now that American troops have departed Iraq, it is only a matter of time before Baghdad orders the release of Hezbollah's hero.

Hopefully, Daqduq will no longer be in a position to kill more Americans. But given both the likelihood that he will soon be able to roam around the Middle East, and the extent of his terrorist contacts, we can never be sure. It is therefore truly a shame that, having showed so much courage in its successful effort to eliminate one master terrorist, the Obama Administration showed an equal amount of pusillanimity in its treatment of another. The price of that fateful decision may yet be paid.

With the first anniversary of Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation rapidly approaching (on December 17), and the second round of Egyptian voting currently underway, the tumult in the Arab world that began with the death of the unemployed young Tunisian one year ago has yet to subside. It remains far too early to tell what the so-called Arab Spring will yield, but the trends on several countries certainly provide cause for considerable concern.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party has emerged as that country's most powerful political force. While it claims it will not form a coalition with the more extreme Salafist al-Nour party, its leaders are not the moderates some in the West wish -- or hope -- that they are. True, they have not yet repudiated the treaty with Israel. But to do so would cost Egypt the massive assistance, both military and economic, that it receives from the United States, a development that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which benefits from that aid and retains control of Egypt's guns, simply will not tolerate.

On the other hand, the status of Egypt's Coptic minority, some ten percent of its population, hangs in the balance. Religious tensions are at fever pitch, and the Copts are voting virtually as a bloc for parties that strongly oppose the Islamists. How the Copts will fare in the medium term will be as much of an indication of where Egypt is headed as will be the treatment of women, which Secretary Clinton continues to emphasize to her Egyptian interlocutors.

One thing is clear, the young secularists who were at the forefront of the revolution that brought down Hosni Mubarak have suffered the fate of Alexander Kerensky. They are now essentially bystanders, which in truth, is all that could have been expected of them. Egyptians themselves assert that most of their countrymen are not radical Islamists by nature, but will acknowledge that, like the vast majority of Arabs, they are religiously traditional and socially conservative. Most Egyptians cannot be expected to buy into secular Western norms the way the more secular-minded, Western educated, English and French speakers would have their friends in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels believe. It is not at all a foregone conclusion, therefore, that ordinary Egyptians, who don't have Facebook accounts, will resonate to Secretary Clinton's message. As for the SCAF, it appears that it will let the politicians play their games, but, as with pre-Erdogan Turkey, will intervene if they feel the country is spinning out of control. Of course, if an Islamist with the talents of an Erdogan emerges on the Egyptian scene, the SCAF may find itself as outmaneuvered as, much to their dismay, have been the Turkish generals.

No two Arab countries are alike. Perhaps in contrast to Egypt, the prospects for Tunisia retaining its moderate pro-Western stance remain good, despite the Islamist Ennahda Party's leading that country's coalition government. One test of where Tunisia is heading will be the treatment of its small (1800 souls) Jewish community, which has lived in that country for thousands of years and has been carefully protected by the military since Tunisia's independence from France. While Tunis has no formal relations with Israel, the government has permitted Tunisian Jews to visit their relatives there. Travel to Israel is the canary in the Tunisian coal mine; should it be banned, it can be expected that the Islamists will bare their teeth in other ways. That they are in a coalition with liberals is no guarantee of future moderation; Czechoslovakia's Communists were in a coalition with liberals from 1945-48 before they formally brought that country behind Stalin's iron curtain.

Libya has been another poster child of the Arab Spring. Again, in terms of achieving liberal values there is less than meets the eye. Militias abound, Islamists are active, tribal and regional rivalries remain as sharp as ever. The Libyan story is far from over, despite NATO's having declared "mission accomplished."

And then there is Syria. The country is plunging into civil war, to the point where even the stolid Arab League has had enough of Bashar al-Assad (who declares that he hasn't ordered the killing of anyone; it's the Army that seems to be acting on its own). With Christians generally siding with the ruling Alawis out of fear of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover; with Kurds wary of any outcome that reduces their own prospects; with Turkey, with its "neighborhood policy" bankrupt, fearful of more Kurdish terror should Syria suffer from all-out sectarian warfare; and with Iran continuing to back Assad, "spring" is not exactly the description that seems most apt for the situation in Syria.

In addition, one should not forget that President Obama's so-called democratic ally, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, not only has refused to back the Arab League's suspension and sanctions of, Syria, but has continued to expand economic ties with Damascus. Moreover, it is asserted in some Middle Eastern quarters that Iraq is actively supporting Assad by permitting military supplies to enter Syria from its territory. Given that Maliki has retained the defense and interior ministry portfolios; seems bent on repressing any Sunnis dare oppose him; and while stoutly declaring Iraq's independence from Iran, has done nothing to diminish Iranian influence in his country, one may legitimately wonder how Iraq fits into the construct of the Arab Spring.

There have been demonstrations elsewhere in the Arab world-from Morocco to Yemen-but actual changes of government are another matter. At one extreme, the popular King Mohammed VI of Morocco has changed the constitution to give more power to political parties-as in Tunisia, moderate Islamists have formed a government-but has retained control over national security and foreign policy, and, equally important, remains at the apex of the state's religious hierarchy. At the other extreme, Ali Abdulla Saleh continues to buy time in Yemen. An extended stay in Saudi Arabia did not bring down his government.

The traditional monarchies in the Gulf remain stable. Bahrain is the notable exception. The government's Sh'ia opponents appear to be encouraged by Hezbollah, acting as Iran's agent, since Tehran recognizes that Arab Sh'ia will resonate more with their Lebanese cousins than with Persian big brothers. Washington should be wary about pressuring Manama; it is not merely a matter of Bahrain's importance to America's strategic posture in the region. It is also an issue of American credibility. It is not only the Saudis who believe that America threw Hosni Mubarak under the bus after having done the same to Pervez Musharraf, and, for that matter, the Shah of Iran.

At the end of the day, there clearly is no Middle East-wide Arab Spring. Indeed, there may not be an Arab Spring at all. Not a single Arab state is being led by the kind of secular liberals that Washington favors, and the cloud of Islamism hangs over the entire region. Whether the Arab Spring will lead directly into winter remains unclear, but Washington and its allies, including its Arab allies, have every good reason to worry that it might.

The Nov. 23 deadline for a "Supercommittee" budget agreement is fast approaching, and no such agreement is as yet in sight. The Pentagon appears to be panicking over the prospect of sequestration, and with it a reduction of some $600 billion in defense-related spending over the next decade. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's warnings have become ever more dire. He has said that sequestration will "invite aggression from U.S. adversaries", that it will result in a "hollow force" of "ships without sailors" and "brigades without bullets."

The Secretary should know better. Not because sequestration, if implemented, would not be a disaster for DoD, but because the absence of an agreement, which would trigger a sequester, does not mean that sequestration will ever come to pass. It is important to note that the sequester would only come into force for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget; in other words, nearly a year must still pass before any cuts are mandated. And the Congress thus has nearly a year to legislate the sequester into the dustbin of history. 

It has happened exactly that way before, as Mr. Panetta knows only too well. He was a veteran of the House Budget Committee in 1988 when the Congress reached a budget deficit agreement that wiped out a $20 billion sequestration that was supposed to have been "automatically" triggered by the 1985 Balanced Budget Emergency Deficit Control Act, popularly known as Gramm-Rudman-Hollings. And he was chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1990, when he played a major role in the enactment of Congressional legislation that again circumvented the 1985 Act by lowering sequestration levels from the "automatic" $16 billion that the Act would have mandated to just over $4.5 billion in budget reductions. Again in 1991, with Mr. Panetta still serving as House Budget Committee chairman, a smaller sequester of some $190 million was rescinded in subsequent legislation that year when the purported savings were found to be the result of a miscalculation.

It is arguable that the long term health of America's defense posture would be better served if the Supercommittee fails to produce an agreement than if it does. It will be much harder for the Congress to rescind a budget deal to which all sides agreed, than to rescind a sequester that was the product of an absence of agreement. Even under the best of circumstances, it is unlikely that Defense could avoid cuts of $200-300 billion in a deal that totals $1.2 trillion; and those cuts will be difficult, if not impossible to restore. On the other hand, the Congress can be expected to rescind sequestration precisely because of the warnings that the Pentagon's top leaders have issued. And once the Congress returns to square one, the prospects for protecting the Defense budget will radically improve.

Muammar al-Qaddafi may be gone, but nothing else has changed in Libya. The late dictator's tribal allies are certainly aware of the reprisal killings that have already taken place; they will continue to fight until they believe their future is protected. The interim government has not changed since I last wrote, about a week ago, that it is not exactly on afterburner when it comes to transitioning to a true democracy. Nor has the death of Qaddafi clarified in any way who exactly his successors in government are, and with whom they are associated.

It is noteworthy, and not a little bit ironic, that Ambassador Paul Bremer, he of the late and unlamented Coalition Provisional Authority, identified several criteria for ensuring that the departure of the dictator does indeed lead to a fundamental change in the governance of Libya. He argues, in bold typeface, that "the population must believe that the political change is real and lasting;" that "someone has to provide security;" that "a new political order must be established quickly." 

It is difficult to argue with Bremer's main points. The problems arise, for Libya as they did for Iraq, in the subtext that is not in bold type. Leave aside Bremer's controversial decisions to disband the Iraqi Army and to maximize the extent of de-Ba'athification, neither of which he mentions, and both of which many analysts (myself included) consider to have been major blunders that led to the sectarian violence that plagued the country for the ensuing four years. Bremer asserts that it was only with the trial and death of Saddam that Iraqis stopped fearing a return of the old regime. But he does not mention that it was not until the surge of forces into Iraq, which was not completed until the middle of the following year, that Iraq began to return to a semblance of stability. Evidently even with Saddam gone, the population did not believe that political change was "lasting." The violence continued until the influx of American troops, coupled with the Sunni Awakening, seemed to promise that political change was not a pipe dream. And, for all we know, the violence may return once American troops depart in a few months' time.

Bremer is also correct when he posits that "someone" must provide security. He adds that "unless some system is put in to demobilize the fighters, there is sure to be trouble." But who exactly should be the "someone" who provides security? What plans have been drawn up for a "system" to demobilize the fighters? And who will implement the plan for such a system. Surely not the United States, I hope. We have enough on our plate, both domestically and internationally. The military and financially exhausted Europeans? The Arabs? The United Nations?

Finally, Bremer is right that a "new political order" must be set up quickly. But, as I argued last week in my Shadow Government post, who will constitute that political order and what sort of political order will it be? There is no evidence that the current Interim Government has in mind the kind of democratic, pro-Western political order that Bremer seems to be calling for. Nor is it clear that, democratic elections notwithstanding, Iraq is pursuing policies that align with America's interests -- and that is before all American troops have left his country.

At the end of the day, while no one should shed tears over Qaddafi's departure from this world, neither should anyone expect that it marks a turning point in Libya's political development. There is much work to be done in that regard, and it is not at all clear who exactly will be doing it.

Some weeks ago, Tom Ricks called me out for questioning NATO's Libya operation. I still have my doubts.

To begin with, the interim government is showing few signs of being "interim." In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just told the Libyan leadership that they must set a date for elections. She has also told them to honor the rule of law and not seek retribution against Muammar al-Qaddafi supporters. The regime appears to be doing just the opposite in both cases.

Many observers continue to question just who the Libyan leaders really are, and whether they are affiliated with Islamists. Whether those in power in Libya are Islamists, or whether Islamists will seize power, is simply unknowable at this time. Nevertheless, the new or emerging leaders of that country need not be Islamists to pursue policies antithetical to those of the United States. The policies of Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki, particularly vis-à-vis Iran and Syria, have been demonstrating that reality on a near-daily basis. 

In the meantime, in the face of a massive defense budget crisis, about which my Shadow Government colleagues rightly are debating, Washington continues to pour money into its Libyan adventure. DoD's latest estimate of expenditures, which runs through Sept. 30, already exceeds $1.1 billion. But this estimate does not include the cost of the F-15E that was downed in March, some $45 million, with a replacement cost that will be much higher. With operations still ongoing, the total cost of this exercise could well approach $1.5 billion. Some $375 million of this sum has already been "reprogrammed," meaning that the funds were taken from other, presumably important, DoD budget lines. The remainder is to be "reprioritized" within the baseline appropriation request, meaning, yet again, that other programs, previously considered sufficiently important to merit being included in the budget, no longer are all that important.

These sums do not, of course, include monies that will be spent to assist the reconstruction of Libya. It appears that Libyan bank accounts will not cover all reconstruction expenses such as programs to help Libya develop an appreciation for the rule of law, which, as noted above, its leaders still appear to lack.

The truth is that we have no idea what kind of country Libya will be in a year's time, nor who its leaders will be, nor what its posture towards the United States and its interests will be. What we do know is that the operation continues, the costs continue to mount up, and other defense programs are being sacrificed to meet those costs, and new expenditures can be expected down the road. All in all, it is hardly a pretty picture, and certainly not something about which one should call out others. 

When Nicolae Ceaucescu was brutally executed in 1989, then-Syrian leader Hafez el-Assad took note. Determined not to share the Romanian dictator's fate, he tightened his already vise-like grip on Syria, and never relaxed it until the day he died in 2000. His son, Bashar, whose career as a London-based ophthalmologist came to a sudden end when his brother Basil, heir apparent to the Syrian throne, was killed in a car crash in 1994, never sought to match the elder Assad's ruthlessness until the uprising earlier this year. What Qaddafi threatened to do to his opponents, Assad actually has been doing; but it is only in the past few weeks that the West, including the United States, has done anything more than wring its hands over Syrians who have been either killed or kidnapped (or both)  by Assad's troops and secret police.

Qaddafi's imminent fall has no doubt encouraged the Syrian opposition to continue its nationwide protests. It is unlikely to sway Assad to make any real concessions to the protesters. On the contrary, convinced that the Army still supports him, and much as his father did after Ceaucescu's fall, Bashar can be expected to redouble his efforts to retain his hold over Syria. He may not succeed, however, not because of the growing strength of the opposition, but rather because his Alawi supporters may turn on him.

The Alawis know that they can expect no mercy from the majority Sunni population if the Assad regime falls. They are doubly hated, because of their heretical religion, and their abuse of power. They also know time is running out for them, as it has for Qaddafi and his supporters. Their only hope is to remove Bashar and his entire leadership team and replace them with a seemingly more civilized Alawi face who would who would both be acceptable to the West and, even more important, negotiate with the opposition to ensure the survival of the community. The Alawis may not succeed, but they have few alternatives.

Whatever happens, Iran is likely to be the big loser, and with it Hezbollah as well. That would certainly be the case if the Sunnis took power in Damascus. Even were the Alawis somehow to maintain control, their freedom of maneuver is likely to be far more restricted vis a vis Iran than it has been for the past few decades: a weakened Alawi regime would be more susceptible to Turkish and Arab League pressure.

Washington's policy regarding Syria has toughened in recent days with President Obama's call for Assad's departure and the extension of sanctions to include petroleum purchases. The Europeans, more heavily dependent on Syrian oil, may at last be ready to tighten sanctions as well. Even Russia's opposition to any pressure on Assad is beginning to soften. All of these developments will affect Alawi calculations, much as they are encouraging the Syrian opposition. Ultimately, however, it will be the day of Qaddafi's actual fall that forces the Alawis' hand to dispense with Bashar while they still can. That day surely is not very far off.

President Obama has made it very clear that he sees the defense budget as a major contributor to however many trillions in program cuts that a debt ceiling deal will require. It was only months ago that he announced that he would seek $400 billion in cuts over twelve years. It now appears that his target is, at a minimum, twice that amount, and it could reach a trillion -- and that over a decade.

The military simply cannot sustain cuts of that magnitude and preserve a strategy that, in its fundamentals, has not changed since the end of the Second World War. That strategy called for U.S. forces to deploy "forward", whether in Europe, the Middle East or Asia, so as to fight far away from the United States' shores. With cuts the size of those being discussed, the United States will no longer be able to maintain its presence overseas, other than in a "virtual" sense, and, as one wag has put it, "virtual presence is actual absence." 

It is difficult to see how cuts approaching $100 billion in each of the next ten years will not eviscerate the U.S. defense posture. Defense "entitlements" -- military pay and retirement, as well as military health care -- absorb a substantial portion of the budget and seem virtually immune to reductions. It has taken years to move Congress just to contemplate enacting a minor increase in co-pays for the Tricare health program, while any change to the military retirement system, which penalizes anyone who serves less than twenty years but over-rewards those who serve longer, has been strictly verboten. Civilian personnel are immune to reductions -- cuts in any office simply have led civilians to migrate to other offices. Operations and maintenance, which account for about a third of all defense spending, include payments to a huge cadre of  "staff augmentation" contractors whose number the department has never been able to calculate.

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