Charlie Kupchan is both a first-rate scholar and a generally insightful commentator on foreign policy. This makes his FP article yesterday ("Sorry Mitt, It Won't Be an American Century") all the more puzzling and, frankly, disappointing. Navigating the article's internal contradictions can be a head-snapping experience. Kupchan begins with a snide dismissal of Mitt Romney's calls for renewed American global leadership as "hackneyed rhetoric," since in Kupchan's telling the U.S. is an exhausted, overstretched nation that needs to curtail its commitments abroad and "focus on the home front." Having described a diminished America, Kupchan then pivots and applauds President Obama's chest-thumping defiance that those who think America is in decline "don't know what they're talking about." But to back up his praise for Obama, Kupchan describes a world in which America's economy will soon be eclipsed by China, American capacity to project power is diminishing, America is overextended in the Middle East and Europe, and the American ability to influence global events is being overtaken by other rising powers. If that doesn't amount to American decline, I would hate to see what does.

What is going on here?  I wrote last week about the confusions that seem to beset the "American decline" debate and the Obama administration's opportunistic political tactics of rhetorically rejecting American decline while implementing policies that assume (and advance) said decline. It is true that the global distribution of power is shifting towards the likes of China, India, Brazil, and other emerging powers. But -- and here is the key point -- these power shifts are not (yet) coming at the expense of the United States but rather primarily come at the expense of the European Union and Japan. For example, American share of global GDP for the last four decades has stayed relatively constant at 25-28 percent of global GDP, whereas the core EU and Japan's shares of global GDP have both declined by over 25 percent from their peaks. Defense budgets tell a similar story. The American share of global military spending has stayed roughly constant over the past decade, while the defense budgets of the United Kingdom, France, and Japan have declined substantially relative to China. So yes, the U.S. needs to adjust to shifts in the global balance of power -- but Mitt Romney is correct that these shifts do not need to come at the expense of American primacy.

This might well be the crux of the difference between the Obama administration and its Republican critics on the decline debate. Both sides agree that global power dynamics are shifting. But President Obama, at least in Kupchan's analysis, sees the shifts as cause to dial back American leadership, whereas Romney and many other Republicans see the shifts as an opportunity for renewed American leadership in helping shape the emerging order.

Yet as Bob Kagan and others have pointed out, while the U.S. is not yet in decline, there is a worrisome possibility that some of the Obama administration's policies are putting the U.S. on a path to decline. Kupchan actually applauds a series of Obama policies -- such as slashing future defense budgets, pulling back from Iraq and Afghanistan with outcomes still uncertain, and conceding that authoritarian capitalism is the model of the future -- that in fact risk diminishing America's standing in the world and cede global leadership to other emerging powers. To that list should be added Obama's exorbitant expansion of the national debt to the tipping point of parity with our national GDP, and a persistent unwillingness to reform the real drivers of our indebtedness: domestic welfare-state entitlement programs. (As just about everyone who follows this issue has pointed out, Obama's blithe disregard for his own Simpson-Bowles debt commission shows just how little entitlement reform seems to matter to this White House). This makes the Obama campaign's talking point, echoed by Kupchan, that it will focus on "nation-building here at home" sound like, well, hackneyed rhetoric.

Over at the indispensable Cable, word comes that the White House is now pushing the line that President Obama eschews the notion of "American decline," and has even become a devoted reader of Bob Kagan. As presidential reading lists go, this is a welcome development. If present trends continue, perhaps the White House communications shop will soon issue a story noting that President Obama is also a reader of Shadow Government? [ed. Dream on! Are you just saying this to bait the anonymous snarky responses that will soon appear in the "Comments" section? Or are you in denial that the President is much more likely to read Dan Drezner's blog? Who, by the way, is funnier than you -- and also doesn't believe in American decline.]

All kidding aside, this is a serious issue that merits some scrutiny. On the one hand, President Obama's rhetorical rejection of American decline is significant and welcome, precisely because presidential rhetoric plays a role in forming a nation's character and actions. As I have commented before, if a nation's leadership and citizens start believing the nation is in decline, it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and infecting the nation's actions.

But presidential rhetoric is only a small part of the decline debate. Actions and policies are more important. So before junior White House staff start emulating their boss's reported new reading tastes and prompt a surge in Pennsylvania Avenue subscriptions to the likes of the Weekly Standard (to our friends at the Standard: may it be thus!), it is worth taking a closer look at this claim that the Obama administration rejects American decline.

This theme not inconveniently comes in an election year, as President Obama attempts to lay out his policy successes. As many others have pointed out, the White House seems reluctant to run on his major domestic policy initiatives such as ObamaCare or the $787 billion stimulus, judging by their almost complete absence from the State of the Union address. Instead, part of the campaign strategy seems to be pointing to foreign policy successes, such as in Obama's recent interview with Fareed Zakaria (himself a frequent apostle of American decline) where the president repeatedly claims that America's standing in the world is better than it was three years ago.

The inconvenient truth behind this claim is that most the Obama administration's foreign policy successes have come from adopting policies and strategies from the Bush administration. While as Jackson Diehl among others has pointed out, most of the Obama administration's signature initiatives have been failures. On the explicit question of American decline, rather than offering a full-throated rebuttal in his interview with Zakaria, Obama seems curiously ambivalent. On the one hand he strongly affirms American global leadership and repeats Madeleine Albright's description of the United States as the "indispensable nation," but on the other hand he says it is "inevitable" that China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy.

Besides being a gifted journalist, Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker has also emerged as one of the White House's favored conduits for channeling the Administration's mindset and messages. For example, earlier this week Lizza published an article based on exclusive access he'd been given by the White House to internal decision memos on domestic policy. And it was also Lizza who received extensive access from senior administration officials for his famous profile of the White House's foreign policy last spring. Most notorious is the "leading from behind" phrase that the White House has regretted ever since, but the context it came from in the article is revealing and bears recalling (emphasis added):

Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the President's actions in Libya as "leading from behind." That's not a slogan designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic Convention, but it does accurately describe the balance that Obama now seems to be finding. It's a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.

This deliberate message from the White House probably bears a closer resemblance to President Obama's strategic mindset than election year sit-downs with journalists or campaign lines from State of the Union addresses. Why? Because it also reflects many of the administration's actions. Such as the drawdown decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan that seemed to reflect political timetables more than conditions on the ground and commitments to maintaining American credibility. Or the recent "pivot" to Asia, which as many of us have pointed out is a welcome assertion of American presence in a strategic region but loses its potency if it is under-resourced, and presented as a retreat elsewhere because of our diminished capabilities. Or the administration's persistent refusal to make any serious cuts and reforms to the domestic entitlements that are fueling our runaway debt -- while the only spending cuts the White House has actually implemented are to the defense budget, which as Gary Schmitt points out is what we can least afford. And yes, even "leading from behind" our European allies during the Libya intervention.

Given the above actions the administration has taken that do diminish America's power and credibility in the world, is America actually in decline? No -- not yet anyway. Bob Kagan is correct. Our nation has too many strengths and is too resilient to be set back that much in such a short time. America's problems are considerable, but I would still rather have our challenges than the problems facing any other nation, whether China's brittle governance, imbalanced economy, demographic troubles, and resentful neighbors, or the European Union's currency and debt crisis, democratic deficit, and anemic defense capabilities. Rather, the worry is that the Obama administration's combination of actions and inactions are setting the United States on a trajectory towards decline -- a trajectory that if it continues unabated will be hard to arrest.

On the campaign trail, Republican candidates such as Gov. Mitt Romney frequently criticize President Obama for moving America towards a "European-style entitlement society" with sclerotic social welfare programs and crushing debt burdens. Two recent decisions by the Obama administration raise the prospect that the White House might also be following the European ethos -- or at least the prevailing French model of "laicite" and aggressive secularism -- on religious liberty. With apologies to historic French America-philes such as Lafayette and de Tocqueville, this is not the direction our country should go.

Normally domestic policy developments like Obamacare insurance mandates and school employment disputes in Michigan wouldn't be of much relevance for a foreign policy forum like Shadow Government. But the administration's position on the recent Supreme Court case on Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School and Friday's Obamacare mandate eviscerating conscience provisions for religious institutions providing healthcare -- while appalling in their own right -- might also help explain a foreign policy puzzle that I have raised before -- why this administration has been so indifferent to the promotion of religious liberty abroad.

To briefly recap, on the Hosanna-Tabor case, the Obama Justice Department took the position that religious liberty does not protect the right of religious institutions to hire their own employees in accordance with the organization's faith commitments. And the Obama Health and Human Services Department mandated that religious institutions such as hospitals and schools need to fund and include sterilization, contraceptive, and abortifacient coverage in their health insurance plans regardless of any doctrinal convictions otherwise. Just how bad for religious liberty were these two positions that the White House took? So bad that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the White House on Hosanna-Tabor in a 9-0 smackdown (those votes included Obama appointees Justices Sotomayor and Kagan), and the normally understated US Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced the HHS decision as "literally unconscionable" and "a direct attack on religion and First Amendment rights."

The Obama Justice and Health and Human Services Departments -- with at least a green light if not a strong push from the White House -- embraced positions on religious liberty that can only be described as extreme. Religious believers may disagree among themselves on any number of theological, moral, and political issues, but they hold near unanimity on the imperative and importance of religious freedom -- in part precisely because religious freedom preserves the space for diversity and tolerance of differing opinions.

Why does this matter for foreign policy? Because it might help explain the Obama administration's otherwise baffling apathy on international religious freedom. I have lamented previously the administration's negligence on this issue, including the delay until over halfway through its first term to even put in place an Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and the complete omission of religious freedom from the 2010 National Security Strategy. When seen alongside the administration's myopic positions on the two domestic policies mentioned above, it is hard to escape the conclusion that this White House sees religious liberty with indifference.

Read on

In assessing the most important things that the Obama Administration got right and got wrong in 2011, there are an abundance of choices in both categories.  National security-wise, the Administration had a very mixed year -- genuinely so, in terms of a number of notable successes as well as a number of significant failures.  The former include an improved strategic posture in Asia, the discovery of a freedom agenda for the Middle East and Asia, helping engineer Qaddaffi's ouster in Libya, and of course killing Osama bin Laden, Anwar Al-Awlaki, and other Al Qaeda High-Value Targets.  The latter category includes being repeatedly behind the curve on the Arab Spring, waffling on Iran's nuclear program, botching the drawdown and military exit from Iraq, losing Pakistan, further alienating Israel, and getting left holding an empty bag on the Russia "re-set."  While any of the above would be legitimate choices, my main criteria for selecting the best and worst is how each will look in the light of history.  In other words, 25 or 50 years from now, what might historians look back on and evaluate as the best and worst of the Obama Administration's policies in 2011?  I honestly don't know, and anyone who insists we can know history's judgments in advance is committing historical malpractice.  But that doesn't mean we can't at least speculate -- and admit it is mere speculation -- on what might have the most enduring consequences.  Here are mine.

The Obama Administration's Most Significant Success: Creating a new strategic posture in Asia.  If the Obama Administration's initial Asia policy consisted of naively pursuing an illusory "G-2" with China while neglecting our regional allies and universal values such as human liberty, than 2011 marked a substantial course correction in the Indo-Pacific.  A renewed commitment to allies such as Japan and Australia, increased attention to emerging partners such as India and Indonesia, outreach to potential partners such as Vietnam and Burma, and an upgraded strategic posture across the region were all features of a substantially improved Asia policy that has the potential to pay dividends for a generation. 

The Obama Administration's Most Substantial Failure: The National Debt.  Recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen frequently called the national debt "the single biggest threat" to our national security.  Yet it was also the biggest failure of the Obama Administration during the year, a failure that might hurt America for decades to come.  What was the White House's fault on this?  Part of it was, to paraphrase Governor Mitch Daniels, a failure of arithmetic: presiding over the increase of the debt to the unfathomable amount of $15 trillion (an unprecedented increase of $4 trillion just since Obama took office) without making any effort to reform entitlement spending.  But the bigger part of the failure was the White House's cheap demagoguery that attacked any credible plan such as Paul Ryan's, and the cynical disregard of bipartisan efforts such as Obama's own Simpson-Bowles Commission.  All of which further poisoned the political environment and put any prospects for fiscal sanity on life support. 

Why is this a national security failure?  For the obvious reasons of how the debt strangles needed resources for the defense, diplomacy, and development budgets, or how it gives China economic leverage over us, or how it threatens the dollar's status as the global reserve currency.  But more perniciously, the debt is a national security failure because of how it undermines one of the main pillars of American power and global preeminence: our economic dynamism and our model of an opportunity society.  Ryan Streeter astutely calls this a "crisis of aspiration," and a national debt that now equals our national GDP cuts at the heart of American exceptionalism and leadership. 

A recurring theme here at Shadow Government has been puzzlement at why President Obama has been so averse to giving any credit to his predecessor for Bush policies that he has either benefitted from or adopted himself. On issues including the (conflict formerly known as) war on terror's strategic, intelligence, and legal framework; the Iraq surge; free trade agreements and initiatives; the strategic upgrade in US-India relations; a stable regional order in Asia; drone strikes in Pakistan; the need for democracy in the broader Middle East, and others, Obama has consistently refused to acknowledge his policy indebtedness to President Bush.

Yet just as Shadow Government contributors readily point out areas where we think the Obama Administration gets things wrong, we also want to applaud areas where the White House gets things right -- especially on matters that we've previously griped about. In that regard, President Obama's speech on World AIDS Day last Thursday was particularly noteworthy for the gracious words of appreciation that he directed towards President Bush:

Let me also thank President Bush for joining us from Tanzania and for his bold leadership on this issue. I believe that history will record the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as one of his greatest legacies. And that program -- more ambitious than even the leading advocates thought was possible at the time -- has saved thousands and thousands and thousands of lives, and spurred international action, and laid the foundation for a comprehensive global plan that will impact the lives of millions. And we are proud that we have the opportunity to carry that work forward.

As far as I am aware, this was the first instance of President Obama offering unqualified and full-throated praise for a Bush foreign-policy initiative. Of course part of the reason may be that PEPFAR was one of the few Bush foreign policies that Obama did not criticize on the campaign trail or eschew when he took office, so praise for it comes easier than some of the other initiatives mentioned above that Obama lambasted and then adopted. Still, President Obama's support for PEPFAR and its successor initiatives is genuine and high-minded, and here his administration has largely matched words with deeds.

As I've argued before, this matters not for petty point-scoring or vainglorious Republicans demanding our due (at least I hope that's not the case). Rather, it matters because bipartisanship is a preciously rare commodity these days -- yet often the best American foreign policy traditions and initiatives are those that command bipartisan support and endure across multiple presidencies. One certainly hopes that is the case with America's global commitment to AIDS prevention, care, and eradication efforts, where Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all shown admirable leadership.

 To quote Bono on this campaign:

"The United States performed the greatest act of heroism since it jumped into World War II. When the history books are written, they will show that millions of people owe their lives to the Yankee tax dollar, to just a fraction of an aid budget that is itself less than 1 percent of the federal budget."

"What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?" famously asked the early church father Tertullian. His question in the third century addressed the relationship between the reason of Greek philosophy embodied by Athens and the revelation of Judeo-Christian religion embodied by Jerusalem. Today's foreign policy equivalent of Tertullian's query could be "What hath Damascus to do with Darwin?" (the Australian city that is, not its namesake English naturalist)

Plenty, because oftentimes strategic opportunities transcend just one region. This is the case with the Middle East and Asia today. Looking at those regions together, the Obama administration has a strategic opportunity to push far-reaching changes that will anchor American interests for a long time to come. Here I will echo many of the good points that Dan Blumenthal makes in his post below. The White House (and the Asia policy shop at the State Department) should be applauded for last week's moves in Asia, including plans to base a small contingent of Marines in Darwin, Australia, support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and further development of the AirSea Battle Concept. If one doubts the significance of these moves, just a glance at the querulous reactions from China tells another story. This new posture is all the more significant -- and welcome -- considering that the Obama Administration took office less than three years ago intent on pursuing a dubious "G-2" partnership with China.

While I share Dan's concerns about the administration's commitment to resourcing America's forward posture in Asia and political will to follow through on free trade, the fact of these decisions is still encouraging and merits bipartisan support. Basing a small contingent of Marines in Australia sends a political signal that far surpasses its military significance, and will bring positive reverberations not just in Canberra but also in Jakarta, Hanoi, Manila, and Bangkok. And more may be yet to come, if the recent liberalization trends in Burma continue and Secretary Clinton's upcoming visit, encouraged by Aung San Suu Kyi, helps lure Naypyitaw out of Beijing's orbit. If even Burma comes in from the cold, Beijing will have realized the dubious geopolitical distinction in the last two years of having alienated almost every other nation in its neighborhood (or at least everyone not named "North Korea").

Yet as Dan argues, the White House would be undercutting its own strategic initiative if it treats these moves in East Asia as pivots away from the Middle East and South Asia. Our nation's actions in one region shape our credibility and power in other regions. India realizes this, hence its hesitation to partner with an America that it worries will be drawing down prematurely in Afghanistan and further complicating India's rough neighborhood. China and Russia realize this, hence their efforts to constrain American influence by vetoing the recent U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria and watering down an emerging resolution on Iran, which as Mike Singh and Jacqueline Deal point out remains China's favored partner in the region.

Syria represents the crucible of strategic opportunity. The once-timorous Arab League has now spoken boldly that Assad must go. The European Union, too politically paralyzed to deal adequately with its own economic crisis, has marshaled the political will to impose severe sanctions on Damascus that are now bearing fruit. The people of Syria have braved the massacres of over 3,500 of their fellow citizens and persist in their demands for a new government in Damascus. It is time for the Obama Administration to capitalize on this multilateral momentum by leading a concerted diplomatic effort to end Bashar Assad's barbaric rule.

While moral concerns alone justify the demise of the Assad regime, the strategic consequences would be enormous. Iran would lose its only regional ally. Hamas and Hezbollah would lose a valuable patron state. Lebanon would have the chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Turkey would see the benefits of being a responsible regional actor. Iraq's border security would improve. The Green Movement in Iran would likely be resuscitated and pose a new challenge to Ayatollah Khameini's regime in Tehran that is otherwise barreling ahead with its nuclear weapons program. China and Russia would lose both a client state and international credibility, and democratic reformers in China might even be energized.

China, after all, sees its subtle rivalry with the United States playing out not just in East Asia but across the world. As David Ignatius describes, when American leadership is perceived to be diminishing in a region, other actors will step in to fill the void, such as the Saudis are doing in the Middle East. And if America abdicates our leadership in the Middle East, the effect will be to undercut rather than strengthen our posture elsewhere such as Asia. This is why Marines in Darwin and democracy reformers in Damascus are important players on the same global chessboard.

Peter Feaver's excellent post earlier this week assessing the Obama administration's foreign policy as a political issue argued that "where Obama has continued along policy lines laid out by Bush, he has achieved success, but where he has sought to make dramatic changes, he has failed."

I am struck by an additional dimension of this point. Not only have Obama's foreign policy successes have come from adopting specific Bush policies, but these successes have also come from adopting many of the strategic doctrines of the Bush administration. I doubt my Democratic friends will like to hear this, but it bears noting for the record and as a cautionary tale against campaign hubris. Bush administration strategic principles that were either disparaged or disregarded by candidate Obama have now been embraced by  Obama. These include:

• The preemptive use of force, which is the strategic doctrine behind the Administration's campaign of preventive drone strikes against terrorists in places like Pakistan and Yemen likely plotting against the United States

• Selective unilateralism, which defined the Obama Administration's operation against Osama bin Laden, as well as much of the framework governing the drone operations. Not to mention, less favorably, some of the Administration's decision-making on Afghanistan without much coordination with frustrated NATO allies

• Strong executive authority, which exemplified the Administration's defiance of Congress for the Libya war (er, "operation") as well as much of the Administration's counterterrorism legal infrastructure

• Democracy promotion over autocratic stability, which President Obama at last acknowledged in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring

• Great Power relations based on shared values, which helps explain why after its initial "realistic" embrace of China and Russia, the Obama White House eventually pivoted and realized that fellow democracies like Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, and Australia are more reliable friends

Why does this matter? Is this just plaintive pleading for recognition or snarky "I told you so's" from ex-Bush staff? No. There are at least two reasons the Obama Administration should consider this seriously and publicly acknowledge its embrace of so many of Bush's strategic principles.

First, with campaign season upon us, this is a final fleeting opportunity to demonstrate bipartisanship. Obama's euphoric campaign promises to unite the nation and pursue bipartisanship are just nostalgic memories of dashed hopes. Unfortunately, as Pete Wehner has ably documented, the president has followed a partisan and divisive domestic and economic agenda with a campaign strategy questioning the patriotism of Republicans. Foreign policy represents Obama's last legitimate opportunity to demonstrate genuine bipartisanship, and a gracious acknowledgement of his agreement with Bush's strategic principles would be a great place to start.

Second, this is the time to think about Obama's own legacy. It is far too early to predict the outcome of the 2012 election and the possibility of a second Obama term, but with half of the American people expressing disapproval with his performance and 75 percent saying the country is "on the wrong track," at a minimum a one-term presidency is a very real possibility. Obama's domestic and economic policies are not likely to be regarded well by history. His best hope for a positive legacy lies in foreign policy, especially if his eventual successor in the White House adopts the framework he (or she) inherits.

And here I will pivot from my previous skepticism about the Eisenhower analogy and say that in this narrow sense Peter Feaver may have a point. As far as historical analogies go, Obama has an opportunity to play Eisenhower to Bush as Truman, as the candidate who campaigned against a foreign policy framework that he then adopted once in office.

This does not at all mean that Obama's foreign policies have been unqualified successes. In contrast to the positives described above, there are also the failures and deficiencies, including the Israel-Palestinian relationship, the continuing Iranian nuclear program, frayed relations with many of our allies and partner nations, missed opportunities in the Arab Spring, an anemic freedom agenda, "leading from behind," squandered soft power -- the list goes on. Hopefully the administration will reflect carefully on what seems to have worked, what seems not to have worked, and why. The answer might be revealing.

Yesterday's news of the Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir is stunning. Among other things, following on the recent case of the Iranian pastor facing execution only for his Christian faith, this plot provides further evidence of the multifaceted malevolence of the Iranian regime. The details of the plot also display the Iranian strategic game in its brazenness and morbid sophistication. In this case the plan involved an unprecedented targeting of American soil, a simultaneous blow against two of Iran's enemies, the United States and Saudi Arabia, and further heightening of tensions with our troubled southern neighbor, Mexico.

The Obama administration has announced retaliatory sanctions, and is weighing options for a further U.S. measures. America's response should have at least two dimensions: an effective tactical retaliation and a strategic countermove.

What kind of retaliation? As Ken Pollack points out, Iran considers itself to be at war with the United States, and in as it calculates its offensive moves, Tehran "may no longer be concerned about a massive American conventional military retaliation." In this case, the Obama administration's response thus far of announcing additional sanctions is necessary but insufficient. Depending on what the investigation reveals, a military response should at least be considered among the options. One possibility could be targeted strikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) training camps inside Iran. This would also have the advantage of punishing the same entities responsible for killing American troops in Iraq, and supplying munitions to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

It is not the case that the assassination attack would have to have actually been carried out to justify a kinetic response. For example, in 1993 the United States uncovered a plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush, and the Clinton Administration appropriately retaliated with cruise missile strikes against Iraqi Intelligence headquarters.

There remains some question about whether this Quds Force operation was authorized at the highest levels of the Iranian Government, specifically by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini. It is very likely that Khameini did know. But even if he did not -- even if this was overseen by "rogue elements" of the Quds Force -- a strong response is warranted for the simple reason that Tehran is responsible for creating, equipping, and supporting the IRGC, and must be held accountable for its actions.

To be sure, there are also ample reasons to argue against a military response at this time, and the United States must be equally careful about gratuitous escalation and unforeseen consequences. But the severity of this threat is significant enough, particularly in what it reveals about Tehran's new strategic calculations about its latitude to target the United States, that we at least consider a kinetic retaliation among the options.

Perhaps more important will be the strategic dimension of the American response, and here the priority should be using this incident to shift the strategic momentum against Iran. As if any more evidence was needed why this regime cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapons capability, this is it. The American strategic countermove should include repairing the frayed U.S.-Saudi relationship, bringing Turkey back in alignment with the United States and against Iran, stepping up multilateral pressure on Iran's ally the Assad regime in Damascus, reinforcing our support for the embattled Calderon government in Mexico, and making a renewed effort to enlist Chinese and Russian pressure against Iran on multiple fronts.

While the Russia "re-set" has thus far been oversold, here is a chance to get the Russians to deliver some results. China and Russia's double-veto of the U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria last week was as beneficial to Iran as it was to Syria. With this latest plot so brazenly targeted at our capital city, Iran has now overreached so far that Russia and China's hedging policy of playing both sides is no longer viable. Beijing and Moscow must now realize that any further support or cover they provide to Tehran amounts to a direct alignment against the core interests and security of the United States.