It is not fair to criticize the Obama administration too harshly for its failure to come up with a single, robust policy regarding the spreading street unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. The administration has been playing catch-up and has often been a step or two behind, but I think that is inevitable when one is confronting revolutionary cascades. Moreover, the region is dotted with very different governments, ranging from friendly autocrats who have been liberalizing (albeit too slowly) to thuggish despots who used almost every tool at their disposal to oppress their people and frustrate U.S. interests in the region. The popular movements rising in the region may share some features in common, but the regimes they are threatening are very different. It would be very hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all policy that would endure given these conditions.

So I have some sympathy for the way the Obama administration has handled, for instance, the situation in Bahrain. The regime there has supported key U.S. policies over the years, and securing long-term access to the home port of the 5th Fleet is an important U.S. national interest. The ethnic mix in Bahrain is volatile, and the Sunni rulers have good reason to fear Iranian adventurism -- long a staple in the region. For precisely those reasons, however, the administration is right to use its influence to pressure the regime into avoiding bloodshed and accommodating legitimate political grievances of the protesters. Calibrating the pressure and the message is hard, but the core U.S. interests involved are fairly straightforward.

I have less sympathy for the same equivocation with regard to Libya. The Qaddafi regime is no friend of the United States. While Qaddafi did make a major concession on WMD in 2003 on the heels of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it is likely that that deal would be honored (or an even better one secured) by any regime installed after its ouster. Moreover, the level of atrocities the regime has inflicted upon the street protesters goes well beyond what the other regional autocrats have done. Full-throated condemnation would seem an easy call for the administration. As former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz notes in a tough column today, the U.S. message has not been all that full-throated, not yet anyway.

The Obama administration needs to do more, but I would not go as far as some who advocate having U.S. forces impose a no-fly zone. I share their outrage at the way Qaddafi had his Air Force strafe defenseless citizens, but involving the U.S. military in this way would constitute a major escalation and it would be hard to walk back if the situation further unraveled. What if Qaddafi shifted to tanks? Would we then be obligated to have our planes destroy the tanks? And without U.N. authorization, the United States would be entirely on its own. Not even our European allies, who otherwise would join in condemning the Qaddafi regime, would approve of U.S. military action without U.N. authorization.

The United States has acted without U.N. authorization before and rightly so, most famously in the Kosovo war of 1999, although there we were joined by all of our NATO allies. (Academics also debate whether the 16 prior UNSC resolutions on Iraq provided adequate legal cover for the 2003 invasion of Iraq or whether the Bush administration needed a 17th.) But in these cases, the action came after considerable diplomatic efforts at the United Nations and elsewhere. Other avenues of pressure were tried and found wanting, and only then was a resort to extraordinary force taken.

As Wolfowitz and others note, there is much the United States can do and pressure other states into doing short of unilateral military actions. The Obama administration should take those steps, and quickly.

That's what the new Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wants to know. In a letter to the State Department last week, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) expressed her grave concern over reports that the administration was trying to pressure the Honduran government to absolve disgraced former President Manuel Zelaya of his crimes that precipitated the 2009 presidential crisis there.

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen wrote, "It is troubling to consider that the importance of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Honduras would be undermined by attempts to coerce the Honduran government to take steps that run counter to its legal and constitutional processes in order to pave the way for Manuel Zelaya to return to Honduras without facing judicial consequences." She called on the administration to "immediately cease any efforts being taken to undercut the judicial system in Honduras by pressuring the current government to absolve Zelaya of his crimes."

Indeed, absolving Zelaya of his crimes would open the door to his return to Honduras, which appears to be the new administration policy on Honduras. In little-noticed remarks in a December 2010 trip to Tegucigalpa, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela said that, "national reconciliation will advance further when Honduras is able to resolve the issue of the return of former President Zelaya so that the country can regain its place in the [Organization of American States]."

Yet advocating for Zelaya's return is nothing short of reckless, resulting most assuredly in a return to rule of the mob and anarchy. Since his removal from power, the oligarch-turned radical-populist has shown no contrition for his abuses of power and disrespect for the country's constitution. He has continued to wave the bloody shirt while in exile in the Dominican Republic. His actions then and now demonstrate he cares not a whit about endangering Honduran lives in the service of his political agenda.

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I have a few more musings on the "readjusting the war clocks" issue, specifically the question of accelerating the Afghan battle clock by getting more help from Pakistan. What might the outlines of a deal with Pakistan look like? I don't have specifics, but I can think of some design features and suggest some out-of-the-box things to think about. In the spirit of stimulating the strategic policy planners who have better access to the information necessary to do this exercise right, here are some considerations.

General Design Features

The absolutely essential element is explicit quid pro quo. It is fine for us to offer intangible, mood-setting quids, but their quo better be tangible and clearly spelled out in advance. The entire deal would not have to be public; indeed perhaps some elements would have to stay confidential. But the deal would have to be worth it to risk the inevitable leaks and set-backs and it is only worth it if Pakistan delivers concrete action.

The United States would also have to be willing to step back from the deal if the other players are not doing their part. This is harder to do than it sounds because, once established, every "deal" develops political inertia and American leaders can be reluctant to break it off even when it is clearly not delivering.

What should we ask for?

I would let General McChrystal draw up the list of asks, but I am pretty sure it would involve the movement of sizable Pakistani military units to put pressure on the areas that most affect the Taliban's freedom of movement as well as the sharing of intelligence that would substantially change the local balance of power on either side of the Durand line.

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