Calls are now ranging far and wide for the United States to establish a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent the government from continuing to use air power to attack rebel forces fighting to unseat Muammar Qaddafi. In addition to our domestic debate, Libyan ministers until recently part of the Qaddafi government (including their former interior minister and deputy U.N. ambassador) are urgently calling for it, the Gulf Cooperation Council supported it, the British and French have drafted and are pushing a U.N. Security Council resolution, and the Arab League ambassador in Washington has even suggested that organization will endorse a no-fly zone within a week.

If the Obama administration decides a no-fly zone needs doing, it ought not to jump from there to the United States establishing and enforcing it. Instead of taking up the call to provide the military force, the United States should instead pull together a coalition to undertake the work, one in which we play a minor operational role but undertake to recruit, organize, and manage the force necessary to do the job successfully. Such a role is consistent with our interests and has the potential to share broadly the burden such operations entail.

The coalition build will be complicated by the unlikelihood of getting a U.N. Security Council mandate -- and there will be a certain irony in the Obama administration orchestrating a coalition of the willing after their condemnation of the practice in the George W. Bush administration. But it appears there will be plenty of countries willing to advocate the undertaking. 

The administration should do more than have their support, it should have their participation. It ought to seek a formal mandate from the Arab League sanctioning the operation, which would be a first for that organization working with the U.S. and support the administration's National Security Strategy vision for strengthening multilateral institutions.

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International Relations theorist Charles Glaser has joined a growing chorus calling for the abandonment of Taiwan. His take on why we should abandon the island is tucked into his "nuanced version of realism" argued on the pages of Foreign Affairs. As do most "abandon Taiwan" arguments, he begins with a "realist" argument for why war between the United States and China is unlikely. Why? Because besides Taiwan, Sino-U.S. interests are compatible.

Parting company with other "pessimistic" realists who believe that "power transitions" -- the historic condition of a rising power challenging the existing hegemon -- more often than not lead to war, Glaser believes that this time it is different. The security dilemma (in pursuing our security we take steps which decrease their security which leads them to take steps which decrease our security, a process that can end in conflict) in the Sino-U.S. case. The task for Beijing and Washington (but mostly Washington) is to trust that each country just wants security, not domination. 

For example, the United States should not fear China's nuclear build-up because of Beijing's limited ability to strike the U.S. homeland. According to this logic, the United States should forego temptations to increase its own nuclear arsenal in response to China's own increases. All China is doing is increasing its security with a second strike capability. In turn, China should not fear U.S. conventional capabilities because most are resident across the Pacific.

But ultimately, the argument goes, it is up to the United States and not China, to make adjustments to its security posture and not exaggerate threats that China poses. The United States is safe because China will never have the means to destroy its deterrent.

Glaser concedes that this theory overlooks the fact that U.S. security alliances could seem threatening to China. Here we get to the nub of his argument. The United States must ask itself how important its security alliances are. Unlike "Neo-isolationists," Glaser, an advocate of "selective engagement," believes that the alliances with South Korea and Japan are important. And the United States could defend those alliances without creating a debilitating arms race if it provides just enough conventional deterrence, plus the threat of nuclear retaliation should those countries come under attack.  

To Glaser, Taiwan is different. China's belief that Taiwan is part of it is non-negotiable, and Beijing and Washington have very different views of what constitutes the status quo across the Strait. The Taiwan dispute has no diplomatic solution and the risks of nuclear war are getting too high, particularly with China's advancing second strike capability. His answer is for the United States to make the necessary "adjustments" and abandon Taiwan.

He acknowledges potential critics who may say appeasement usually whets the appetite of the appeased. But, says Glaser, not all adversaries are Hitler, and China has limited territorial goals. Even if China has more expansive territorial claims, the United States can remediate any military imbalance through a greater conventional presence.

In the end, the real danger is a self-fulfilling prophesy, a failure by the United States to realize that its basic goals are compatible with China's. Glaser fears that this is already happening -- the United States is taking a much more competitive military stance because its ability to operate along China's periphery is in danger. According to Glaser, this dilemma has two solutions. The first is for Washington to realize that U.S. interests are changing -- Taiwan is not really vital. And second, the United States should forego the kind of nuclear superiority that could counter China's second strike capability. Problem solved.

This is a fairly conventional international theory argument about the relative stability of Sino-American relations. Glaser is essentially taking a side in an old debate. His innovation is the abandonment of Taiwan, a necessary step to decrease the security dilemma and reveal China's truly limited aims.

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When drama fills the headlines, reason deserts the pundits. Here are just a few thoughts:

1. Egypt says nothing about Obama. The United States had no control over events in Egypt. It is silly to proclaim that events in Egypt proved Obama either feckless or brilliant in his foreign policy. All he could do is watch, make carefully-moderated public statements, and place a few private phone calls. Making that a test of his foreign policy acumen is like judging the Super Bowl by the coin toss. Obama's foreign policy mettle is tested on issues in which he actually has a role to play, like the war in Afghanistan.

2. If Obama gets any credit, so does Bush. Obama rightly sided (albeit cautiously) with the protesters. His pro-democracy rhetoric would have been stupendously hypocritical and opportunistic if George W. Bush hadn't given Obama legs to stand on. Bush reversed decades of U.S. foreign policy by publicly criticizing Egypt and Saudi Arabia for their political oppression. Obama sounded more plausible as a result when he threw Mubarak under the bus and reached out a hand to the protesters.

3. Despite the basic goodness of people rallying against autocracy and corruption, their movement won't seamlessly usher in a golden age of good governance. Recent pro-democracy movements across the developing world are largely discouraging about the long-term effects of such popular outbursts.

• The Georgian government never succeeded in exercising full control over its territory after the 2003 Rose Revolution. Disputes with breakaway regions helped trigged the 2008 war with Russia, which hobbled Georgian sovereignty.

• Six years after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine toppled Viktor Yanukovych for corruption and fraud, Ukrainians reelected him.

• The 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon created an ephemeral sense of national unity that vanished in 2007. The national assembly couldn't agree on a President, the office went vacant, violence erupted in Beirut, and the country veered towards civil war. A national unity government was patched together in 2008. It collapsed last month.

• The 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan installed Kurmanbek Bakiyev as President on a platform of reform and clean government. Bakiyev was as bad as his predecessor. He faced down violent protests in 2007, rigged his reelection in 2009, and finally caved to more protests and violence when he fled the country in 2010.

4. Be careful what you ask for. Every day I expected The Onion to run the headline, "Egyptians Demand Military Rule," because that, for now, is exactly what they have got. Democracy is possible, contrary to cultural determinists who think Arabs are barred by the laws of history from self-government -- but neither is it inevitable, or even particularly easy. The eventual emergence of good government and democratic elections would be a better test of Obama's handling of Egypt than parsing his utterances of the last month.

5. No one knows how the Muslim Brotherhood will react, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Elections have a track record of blunting the hard edge of some revolutionary, illiberal movements (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq), and empowering others (the Nazis). The Brotherhood's greater freedom of action in the post-Mubarak Egypt is something to watch closely. The Brotherhood's choices in the coming months and years will be more important to Egypt and the Middle East than the toppling of one autocrat. They may be a bellwether for political Islamist movements across the world.

6. James Clapper should resign.

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.

One of Bob Woodward's previous books, Bush at War, told how President George W. Bush and his advisors formulated policy towards Afghanistan in 2001-2002. Woodward's latest book, Obama's Wars, details how President Barack Obama's administration formulated its Afghanistan policy in 2009-2010 (see here for earlier thoughts of mine in response to Woodward's book.) A casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that there was no U.S. policy towards Afghanistan in between.

That view is wrong. From 2003 to 2008 officials in the Bush administration struggled mightily to grapple with the growing challenges in Afghanistan, fighting (with modest success) to get more time, attention, and resources for a war overshadowed by the larger and bloodier one in Iraq. They started moving U.S. policy in the right direction, but only slowly and with small steps. This fight has important lessons that Woodward -- and, I fear, the Obama administration -- neglected in his latest chapter.

Here's a review of the Afghanistan timeline:

• In 2003 Zalmay Khalilzad, an National Security Council (NSC) staffer before his successive appointments as the president's special envoy for Afghanistan and then U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, lobbied for an increase in reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan. The security situation was relatively calm back then (compared to today) but it was increasingly evident that the Afghans needed greater help to rebuild their country. After the NSC approved his plan, called "Accelerating Success," U.S. assistance for all programs more than doubled from $1 billion in FY 2003 to $2.6 billion in FY 2004, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. (See also the GAO's report.)
• In late 2006 the NSC, led by special assistant to the president Meghan O'Sullivan and senior director for Afghanistan Tony Harriman, conducted a comprehensive strategic review of U.S. goals, aims, and progress in Afghanistan. This review, almost entirely unheralded by the media (compared to the reviews of 2008 and 2009) was a key strategic turning point for U.S. policy (here is a State Department briefing that mentions it). Following the review the United States tripled its assistance to Afghanistan, from $3.5 billion to $10 billion in a single year, including almost quadrupling assistance to the Afghan army and police, according to the Special Inspector General. This marked the starting point of serious international efforts to build Afghan security forces. Additionally, President Bush appointed a deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan -- Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, my former boss -- who substantially increased the interagency focus and pace of work on Afghanistan. Furthermore, Bush nearly doubled the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan between the 2006 review and the end of his term in office.
• In 2008 Lute led another NSC strategy review on Afghanistan, briefly mentioned in Woodward's book and in the media at the time. Woodward correctly records that Lute and his team set up an intensive review -- "19 in-depth meetings over six weeks" that were 2-3 hours apiece and involved all the U.S. agencies and departments, military and diplomatic officials, and Afghan leaders. The review recommended more resources, a counterinsurgency strategy, and a greater focus on Pakistan, among other things. Coming so late in the Bush administration's term, the document could not guide budget decisions or troop deployments, but it did become a transition document that was briefed to incoming National Security Advisor Jim Jones. It was also fed into the first of Obama's strategy reviews in 2009, led by Bruce Riedel. While Riedel had many inputs and wrote his own report, his report's recommendations and conclusions were broadly consistent with Lute's.

A cynic might read this history as proof that Afghanistan cannot be fixed. Every few years we reevaluate Afghanistan, determine that it is not working, and try to fix it with more money and more troops. It never works, so we should stop trying.

I read the history differently. It doesn't prove that Afghanistan can't be fixed, it proves that we've never really tried. At no point did Bush (or Obama) fully implement the reviews' recommendations. Time and time again the interagency consensus was that Afghanistan needed massively more resources and faced considerably more challenges than anyone fully appreciated. Time and time again, Afghanistan was not a priority; funds were limited, troops were scarce, and thus Afghanistan was given what was available, not what the mission required. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen famously told Congress in 2007, "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must." That was the guiding principle of U.S. policy to Afghanistan. When the policy predictably failed to show results, the interagency ground out another strategy review. While it is a myth that the Bush administration simply ignored Afghanistan, the truth is still not very flattering.

But as Woodward's book shows, Obama may be following in his predecessor's footsteps. Obama and his advisors have likely bought into the myth that Bush ignored Afghanistan and thus believe they have already improved matters by merely paying attention. But Woodward's account shows the president more concerned with amounts of time, money, and troops than with -- dare to use the word -- "victory." Rather, it shows the president redefining "victory" downward until it is achievable with the resources he was willing to commit. Obama rightly committed more troops to Afghanistan, but he is restricting the one resource the troops now need the most of -- time. Obama, like Bush, is tailoring the mission to meet the resources rather than the other way around. That's how the president should treat secondary efforts, not his top foreign policy priority or a shooting war in which U.S. vital interests are at stake.

I agree with Peter Beinart's basic conclusion that the Obama administration's foreign policy is unsuccessful, but I think his description of what would have made it successful is wildly off the mark, and would have landed the administration in an even worse position than it has played itself into.

Beinart argues that the administration has failed because of a lack of "fresh strategic thinking," and a foreign policy team that is too establishment. But the analysis operates in a vacuum where a thinly-credentialed president would pay no political price for departures from establishment thinking. Beinart would bring to Obama's foreign policy the very mistake that has been so politically costly to the president domestically: misreading his election victory as a clarion call for dramatically different policies.

Candidate Obama had one big departure from the establishment foreign policy idea: end the Iraq war. It was the making of his presidential candidacy, and it has driven the administration's agenda. In order to fend off attacks that he is soft on national security, candidate Obama took a hard line on Afghanistan. Emphasizing that the Bush administration had turned its attention from "the good war" because of Iraq allowed candidate Obama to sound tough while still being against the war in Iraq. It was shrewd politics, but bad policy.

It also illustrates why I think the administration's foreign policy is unsuccessful:

• A failure to understand the strategic importance of seeing the Iraq war through to a successful conclusion.
• A false equivalence between what could be achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• An inattention to risk mitigation measures (such as what we would do if Iraq's timeline didn't match our drawdown or the Karzai administration proved an inadequate partner for achieving our aims).
• A belief that enemies will accept our characterization of our actions (the "responsible drawdown" in Iraq, for example) rather than drive up the costs of our choices.

These are basic strategic errors, not the type of thing one needs to be outside the foreign policy establishment to appreciate.

Moreover, the people Beinart cites as mistakes to leave out are hardly dramatic departures from the establishment. I like and admire Ken Pollack and Mike O'Hanlon. O'Hanlon is the best defense analyst in the country and Pollack understood both the importance and the risks associated with Iraq more clearly and earlier than anyone. The administration -- any administration -- would undoubtedly be stronger with their talents. They were both redlined because they supported the Iraq surge, and expressed the opinion that it was succeeding even while candidate and then President Obama insisted it was not. Which is one more reason the administration's foreign policy isn't more successful: they aren't listening to people who want them to succeed but disagree with their policies.

The last time I checked, George Shultz and Jim Baker were both Reagan Republicans. And they certainly were not shy about their views at the White House meetings I attended in those days. For his part, Henry Kissinger led a special commission for Reagan, working closely with my former boss, the "Reaganaut" Fred Ikle. George Shultz was also an early, and strong, supporter of George W. Bush. And both Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft advised the Governor of Texas as he was on the road to winning the Presidency (I write as an eyewitness on that score). Moreover, many of the people about whom Jacob Heilbrunn waxes nostalgic, the Joe Alsop crowd, would have had little time for Kissinger in particular -- something about his background perhaps, or, just maybe, the accent.

And, what, exactly, was wrong with Reagan's muscular approach to foreign policy? Did it not convince Gorbachev that the Cold War was futile? Did it not deter Muammar Qaddafi after the Gulf of Sidra operation? Did it not convince the Ayatollahs to remain quiescent? Reagan was no neo-con; he may have had Richard Perle on his team, but Baker, and Shultz were both far more senior. And on certain key issues -- including relations with the Soviets, Reagan sided consistently with the pragmatists.

As it happens, quite a few moderate Republicans have problems with the START Treaty -- in particular, its not-too-muffled hints about a potential end to the American missile defense program. The Russians, notably Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have unilaterally stated that this is the case, and while the administration refutes their assertion -- the Treaty would not otherwise have a hope of winning Senate approval -- it only does so sotto voce.

Oh, and one more item for Mr. Heilbrunn to consider: if he were to bother to look around on Capitol Hill in particular, he would find many young Republicans, twenty- and thirty- somethings, who are not at all committed to the kind of international noblesse oblige that Woodrow Wilson shared with Rudyard Kipling, and instead simply feel strongly about what they perceive as the erosion of our national security posture. Were I their age, I would certainly count myself among them.

President Obama has at long last announced his nominee to be ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. After an almost unpardonable delay of one and a half years, the news that the White House has tapped the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook for the position is welcome but curious. As many others have observed, conspicuously absent from her background as a minister and motivational speaker is any experience in foreign policy or human rights advocacy -- qualifications which would normally be considered prerequisites for such a senior State Department position.

Nevertheless, once she is in office, Rev. Johnson Cook will be evaluated not on her resume but on her performance. Her past accomplishments show that she will likely bring an entrepreneurial spirit and considerable energy and devotion to the job, as well as an existential understanding of how religious belief functions in the lives of individuals and communities. All of which are attributes that will serve her well. And as my former State Department colleague Tom Farr has noted, once in office she will have the support of religious freedom advocates who are relieved to finally have a champion for the cause, both within the State Department bureaucracy and around the world.

Before Rev. Johnson Cook can be sworn in, the world's greatest deliberative body will first have its say.  In the Senate confirmation process, it would be prudent for members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask some specific questions. Note that raising these questions need not be seen as acts of antagonism towards Rev. Johnson Cook, but as appropriate measures of legislative oversight, particularly in probing whether the executive branch is faithfully implementing the International Religious Freedom Act that Congress passed unanimously in 1998. Moreover, Senators raising such questions can also help strengthen Rev. Johnson Cook's position at the State Department and her role as America's chief religious freedom diplomat, by requiring the administration to provide satisfactory answers. Herewith some suggested questions the Senate might ask:

1. Will your position be listed on the State Department's organizational chart, and will you attend Secretary Clinton's morning senior staff meetings?

In an inauspicious sign of its (lack of) priority at the State Department, the IRF ambassador position does not even exist on the State Department's organization chart -- unlike every other ambassador-at-large. Participation in the secretary's morning staff meetings is essential for functioning effectively as a senior official in the department.

2. Will you have an official role in helping administer the Human Rights and Democracy Fund?  How will you advocate for religious freedom programming in that fund?

The Human Rights and Democracy Fund (HRDF) is one of the Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor's most effective initiatives, yet religious freedom has generally not been a priority in it and has sometimes been ignored altogether.

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If President Obama wants to solve America's immigration dilemma, he should avoid mixed messages. On May 19, he naively sided with visiting Mexican President Felipe Calderón who complained that Arizona's new immigration control law could lead to racial profiling. This last week, he ordered 1,200 National Guard troops to the southwest border and requested an additional $500 million from Congress to step up border enforcement.

While his words may have pleased undocumented migrants (a potential constituency) and immigration lawyers, his deeds seemed too much like bait for Republican votes on upcoming reform legislation. In both cases, he forgot to do his homework. 

For starters, he was too quick to criticize the Arizona law. It hardly differs from federal statute that penalizes illegal entry, or a 2007 Prince William County, Virginia ordinance that allows police to check the immigration status of detainees. As amended, the Prince William law ensured that the status of all detainees would be reviewed, not just those who looked like migrants. Fears of profiling abated. With similar tweaking, worries over the Arizona law are likely to recede. 

Obama also backed up his Mexican counterpart without knowing the history behind his remarks. President Calderón (an otherwise fine leader and good friend of the United States) carps at our immigration policies to satisfy Mexican voters -- including entrenched elites who resist land tenure and market reforms that would end monopolies and expand jobs at home. His predecessor Vicente Fox felt compelled to do so and now it seems to have become a ritual.

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President Obama's West Point speech on Saturday provides a great example of the structural continuities in American foreign policy. As president and commander-in-chief, Obama now embraces and owns policies that he previously eschewed. For example, after running his campaign denouncing the Iraq War and doubting the surge, he is now essentially declaring Iraq a victory ("this is what success looks like: an Iraq that provides no safe-haven to terrorists; a democratic Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant.") After spending much of his first year in office downplaying if not ignoring democracy and human rights promotion, he is now making democracy and human rights promotion one of the four pillars of his national security strategy. After previously rhetorically distancing himself from American exceptionalism, he now says that a "fundamental part of our strategy is America's support for those universal rights that formed the creed of our founding."

In short, through a combination of the burdens and responsibilities of office, prevailing geopolitical realities, the deep cultural currents of U.S. foreign policy, the bureaucratic systems that reinforce those cultural currents, and the crucible of learning that takes place every day in the toughest job in the world, the President Obama of today acts and sounds considerably different than the one elected in November 2008. (John Hinderaker over at Powerline -- a site never hesitant to criticize the Obama administration -- makes a similar favorable observation about the speech and its essential continuity with U.S. foreign policy). This is not at all to say that his foreign policy is identical to that of his predecessors -- in important ways it does differ, and as I have written elsewhere, often not for the better -- but only to point out that truly profound structural changes in American foreign policy are very rare. And generally for good reason.

Some media coverage, such as Peter Baker's New York Times article, attempts to portray the speech as a "repudiation" or at least distancing from the Bush administration's grand strategy, and makes much of the fact that he did not emphasize "unilateral American power" or affirm "pre-emption" or "prevention." Baker is one of the very best, and best-sourced, White House correspondents around, so it may be that his article reflects some additional background conversations with Obama administration staff attempting to advance a particular message. But at least when it comes to the text of the speech, here I think Baker's article overshoots. 

For example, in the midst of discussing the importance of international cooperation, Obama described American leadership in "steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice" -- in other words, a polite way of saying that American power and influence will continue to shape the international order. Or the fact that President Obama did not explicitly affirm the possibility of the preemptive use of force does not mean that his Administration actually rejects it. As historian John Gaddis has shown, since the days of John Quincy Adams (while Secretary of State to James Monroe), American presidents have reserved, and sometimes used, the right to take action against looming threats. Unless President Obama were to explicitly reject the possibility of ever using force in a preemptive or preventive manner to protect the nation (highly unlikely), it will remain an option within American national security doctrine. 

In his speech, President Obama also previewed his soon-to-be-released National Security Strategy, ostensibly built around the four pillars of connecting renewal at home with strength abroad, integrating diplomacy and development, building international cooperation and international institutions, and promoting human rights and democracy. As basic principles, these are sound. Whether they will amount to a coherent strategy (which needs to identify end goals, identify threats or obstacles to those goals, and explain how and why the tenets of the strategy will defeat those threats and overcome those obstacles) remains to be seen, once the NSS document itself is released.

I have been struck by how the various sides in the war on terror debate have all found justification for their prior positions in the unfolding drama of the Times Square terrorist. Advocates of treating terrorism primarily as a law enforcement problem praise the rapid forensics that caught the suspect (albeit, just barely). Critics point to the near-misses and other troubling details and renew their complaints about the Obama-Holder approach to terrorism.

So far, everyone seems pretty sure that their prior convictions were sound. Alas, I am no exception. It seems to me that the following four points, all of which I already believed, are supported by this case:

• We are safer but not yet safe. It is much harder today for terrorists to launch the kind of mass-casualty terrorist spectacle they launched on 9/11 -- let alone an even more devastating WMD attack -- than it was a decade ago. That does not mean the terrorists have given up their desire to kill Americans. There is still a terrorist threat.
• The amateurish nature of recent attacks is not proof that we can relax our guard. On the contrary, the amateurish nature of recent attacks seems rather to confirm the wisdom of many of the counter-terrorism policies the United States has adopted since 9/11. The attacks are amateurish because more devastating options have been made harder to execute.
• We cannot avoid taking action that motivates at least some terrorists. Reportedly, the Times Square terrorist was motivated by the drone strikes, a tactic that was begun under Bush (though had antecedents in the Clinton and even Reagan eras) and substantially ramped up under Obama. While some on the far left have rejected the drone-strike tactic altogether, and many more have raised questions about certain aspects, there is a strong bipartisan consensus that some version of this tactic -- killing key terrorist leaders that cannot be captured -- is a necessary component of any sound counter-terrorism policy. During the Bush years, many partisan Democrats advanced the theory that terrorists were motivated chiefly by Bush foreign-policy choices, choices the critics thought were foolish anyway like invading Iraq or not coercing Israel into making more concessions to Palestinians in the peace process. Obama's campaign accepted this premise, and seemed to offer a new era in which America would stop doing things to fuel the terrorists. It is now obvious that even Obama has not avoided actions that motivated someone to become a terrorist. Of course, this does not mean that we should cavalierly ignore Muslim sensibilities or gratuitously insult them. Obama is right to try to calibrate our language and approach to avoid pointless provocations. Likewise, we should debate the wisdom of foreign policy choices like the invasion of Iraq or the proper approach to Middle East peace and in those debates the extent to which terrorists can exploit the issue for propaganda purposes is a relevant, but by no means dispositive, consideration. For a hardened core of would-be terrorists, however, there is nothing we can or should do to fully assuage their hatred.
• Terrorist safe havens still matter, even in the age of al Qaeda 2.0. The terrorist movement may be more decentralized and web-based -- a necessary response to our counter-terrorism policies -- but terrorists still exploit safe havens if they can get access to them. Al Qaeda's great innovation was leveraging a vast infrastructure devoted to the weaponization of resentment and targeting it on the United States and our global interests -- turning angry individuals into terrorists willing to kill Americans and be killed for their cause. There were many key nodes in this infrastructure, but one of the most important was a safe-haven, a destination where would-be recruits were assembled, winnowed, trained, equipped, and finally commissioned. The invasion of Afghanistan and the denial of safe havens in that country is thus a vital step in the war on terror. Since the success of the initial invasion, however, some have speculated that the terrorist threat has morphed into an entirely web-based phenomenon, where the only "safe-haven" the terrorist needs is a virtual on-line one. If that day ever comes -- and I am skeptical -- we are certainly not there yet. Even an attack as unsophisticated as the Times Square attack, which in theory could have been hatched entirely through individual web-based research, apparently involved trips to North Waziristan. Control of territory still matters, which means that the Bush-era emphasis on helping responsible regimes establish effective governance is still an important part of the war on terror.

It is possible that these and other similar points are merely evidence that I am a victim of confirmation bias, seeing in a new case only those things that confirm what I already believed. If so, I am probably in very good company. At least I am willing to ask: what in this case disproves these four points?

Tom Donnelly, blogging over at AEI's Center for Defense Studies has an interesting reaction to my earlier post on Obama's NSS. Donnelly is a good friend and, despite harboring deep-seated suspicions about academic political science (or, as he would insist, because he harbors those suspicions), he always has something interesting and important to say.

He notes, for instance, that the drafters of Obama's NSS can draw on two very different streams of Obama rhetoric, one that seems to celebrate exceptional America's role in the world and another that seems to be bothered by that role. The tone of Obama's NSS could change dramatically, depending on which stream dominates.

I found some of Donnelly's other points less convincing. He claims, for instance, that speechwriters had the pen in the drafting of the Clinton and Bush NSS's. That is not true for Clinton's first, nor for either of Bush's two NSS's. Of course, speechwriters had some influence, if only because the president's existing body of spoken text on foreign policy is some of the source material for an NSS. But the drafting, for better or worse, was in the hands of strategists, not speechwriters. Whether this has been the case for Obama has not been reported yet, but here I suspect Donnelly might be on firmer ground, given the prominence of speechwriter Ben Rhodes in recent weeks.

But where he really loses me is his proposal to give the Senate a formal role in ratifying the NSS. Donnelly despairs that the NSS is not sufficiently strategic and is too oriented to political communication. Then he recommends something that would exacerbate those very problems. Indeed, it would be hard to identify a proposal that would make the NSS even less strategic in orientation and more oriented to political theater than to give the U.S. Congress a formal role in approving the document. "There are too many cooks watering down the stew, let's add 100 more and, by the way, let's make sure each of them considers themselves to be a principal whose vote is co-equal with the President's." The mind boggles at the potential for Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase mischief.

This idea is so manifestly wrong-headed that I suspect Donnelly may have a more devious strategy in mind. Perhaps his goal is to kill off the NSS once and for all as an act of (note to editor: stand by for gratuitous abstruse academic reference) Schumpeterian creative destruction. Perhaps Donnelly hopes that out of the wreckage of his proposal would come new, more strategic modes of planning.

I prefer to reform the NSS process on the margins. Bolster the strategic planning offices, especially at the White House. Give them more resources and authority to monitor implementation and to trigger ad hoc strategic reviews (such as the one that produced President Bush's Iraq surge strategy). Give the NSC a greater role in OMB budget review. Bolster strategic planning capabilities at State and other non-defense players.

I do think the strategic planning process could be improved, but I don't think the process is as dysfunctional as Donnelly does. In fact, I have a question back over to him: what great or near-great power has done better strategic planning in the post-Cold War era, and, for that matter, when was the golden era of U.S. strategic planning?

As Politico has pointed out, the Obama administration has a tendency to describe their every action as "unprecedented." In the case of the U.S.-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, this is actually true. Theoretically, the treaty agreed to by the Obama administration limits each side to 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons. In practice, it will allow least 200 nuclear weapons in excess of the U.S. and Russian stockpiles permitted under the 2002 treaty signed by the Bush administration. The administration is laying claim to a 30 percent reduction in strategic nuclear weapons while actually permitting an increase in the force. This is unprecedented. 

The discrepancy comes from what each treaty actually limits.  The earliest treaties (SALT I and II) limited but did not reduce stockpiles, and established "counting rules" on the basis of how many warheads each system could deliver. The 1992 START Treaty was structured to give the Russians incentives to shift from fast-flying missiles to bombers. In the theology of nuclear deterrence, it is believed that "slow-flying" bombers are more stabilizing because a leader could reconsider the decision after launching, and the target country would have greater warning of an impending attack. So the 1992 Treaty gave generous discounts to bombers, counting the newer B-1 and B-2 bombers as a single weapon although they have the capacity to carry up to 20 warheads. The older B-52s that carry air-launched cruise missiles were counted at half their true capacity, so tallied as 10 warheads each. The Obama administration's new START treaty counts all bombers as a single nuclear weapon, leading the Federation of American Scientists to conclude that 450 U.S. warheads and 860 Russian warheads will be excluded from the count.

Read on

"In many ways, America has been somewhat absent from the region over the last several years and we are committed to restoring that leadership," said National Security Council communications director Ben Rhodes in a preview of President Obama's upcoming Asia trip. Absent? Like on the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that President Bush signed and President Obama has declined to send to Congress? Like on trade more generally, where the words "Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific" haven't been uttered since President Bush left the Oval Office? Like on the U.S.-Japan alliance, which President Bush leveraged to make possible historic Japanese deployments to theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan before U.S.-Japan relations under Obama became embroiled in a dispute over U.S. basing rights that some believe threatens the foundations of the alliance? Like on U.S. relations with India, utterly transformed under President Bush but now characterized by U.S. neglect and Indian disappointment that President Obama doesn't treat it as the strategic partner Bush elevated it to be? Like in Southeast Asia, where every regional power improved its relations with America over the course of the Bush administration with a wary eye on China? (Burma may be the exception -- though Obama's engagement policy hasn't worked out too well.)

And speaking of relations with China, is Rhodes suggesting that Bush, who after a rough start oversaw the most stable period in U.S.-China relations since the 1970s, has an inferior record to Obama -- for whom China has become his biggest great-power headache, with Beijing daily testing the limits of American patience on matters from trade to currency to human rights to internet freedoms to Iran sanctions to Taiwan arms sales? Perhaps Rhodes is talking about North Korea, where Obama has pursued the same policy of engagement as President Bush did in his second term -- with equally little to show for it. Or maybe Rhodes is speaking of Asian public opinion; in this case he may want to have a look at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs' 2008 survey showing the surprisingly wide and deep extent of American soft power in Asia at the end of the Bush presidency.

This administration has an outstanding Assistant Secretary for East Asia in the form of the State Department's Kurt Campbell, and other talented officials at the White House, Department of Defense, and Treasury. Asia policy isn't partisan, which is why it's such a shame when non-Asia policy officials make it out to be. Nonetheless, Peter Feaver's point last week is apt: U.S. relations with every major power in the international system (with the possible and dubious distinction of Russia) have deteriorated since Obama took office. This is unquestionably true in Asia. As Jackson Diehl wrote with regard to President Obama's relationships with his foreign counterparts, "In foreign as well as domestic affairs, coolness has its cost." When it comes to Asia, perhaps serving administration officials should spend less time slamming their predecessors' record and more time studying up on it.