As I write this, the news is still fragmentary and unfolding concerning the Algerian hostage situation following France's military intervention in Mali and effort to arrest the territorial gains made by the jihadists. However this latest crisis plays out, events thus far seem to expose several of the Obama administration's strategic deficiencies, including:

Premature declaration of victory over al Qaeda. As if we needed yet another reminder, the White House's past declarations of looming victory against "core al Qaeda" were woefully premature. This is most costly not as a public relations blunder but as a strategic blunder; when an administration's leadership signals a change in strategic priorities, the rest of the national security apparatus shifts accordingly. Such a premature spiking of the ball seems to have influenced the administration's mishandling of the Benghazi consulate attack, and now seems to have caused a corresponding neglect of Mali. Yet Mali may be emerging as just the latest front in the war, as Peter Chilson points out the bracing fact that "Northern Mali is currently the largest al Qaeda-controlled space in the world."

The shifting fissures and fusions of various jihadist groups, a kaleidoscopic combination of local grievances and global aspirations, should not obscure that in the minds of the terrorists there is in part an international and universal dimension to their campaign. Terrorist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar's reported demand that the U.S. release the "blind sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, imprisoned for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is just one example of their grievances towards America. Whether or not the al Qaeda branch in northern Mali is ever able to stage an attack against the continental United States, its hostage operation against the Algerian gas field installation shows a capability and willingness to target U.S. interests and allies (such as the French, British, and Japanese employees). That alone should justify a more vigorous American response than the Obama administration has thus far marshaled.

Leading from behind. An Obama administration official first proudly described the White House's multilateral strategy as "leading from behind" in the context of the Libya intervention. What might have sounded good then does not sound so good now, as unfortunately the Mali chaos emanates directly from the Libya spillover, and the corresponding failure to engage in an effective post-conflict stabilization operation. Now the latest chapter of "leading from behind" has the French intervening in Mali while the U.S. sits on the sidelines. This has the effect of further annoying important NATO allies while ceding leverage and initiative to the jihadists. The U.S. admittedly has limited resources and bandwidth to bring to bear here, so I am not making the simplistic argument that an earlier full-scale American intervention would have been easy or solved the problems besetting Mali. But while the downsides of excessive involvement are well-known, the ongoing crisis shows in turn the downsides of dogmatic passivity.

Anemic religious freedom policy. Six months ago I wrote about Mali and made the point that violations of religious freedom are often a leading indicator of a looming security threat (an argument later elaborated here). As I said at the time:

"One worrisome indicator is the jihadists' destruction of traditional Muslim burial grounds and other iconic sites, a sign of the vicious religious intolerance that militant Islamists show towards other Muslims, let alone believers in non-Islamic faiths ... This campaign of religious intolerance may be an early warning indicator of a looming security threat, particularly if northern Mali becomes a terrorist safe-haven and magnet for jihadists planning attacks on the West ... at a minimum, American counterterrorism and religious-freedom policymakers should be watching Mali closely, and talking to each other. In the case of Mali, their concerns may be more aligned then they realize."

Unfortunately the Mali situation is just the latest indicator that the Obama administration still has not made religious freedom policy a priority, either as a value in its own right or as a strategic interest. From that time six months ago, conditions only worsened in Mali as the jihadists began imposing their perverse version of Islamic law. If the Obama administration had been paying more attention to religious liberty deteriorations, it would not have been as surprised at Mali's perilous straits.

If you were Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, how worried would you be about President Obama's threats regarding a U.S. response to any use of Syrian's chemical weapons? A series of recent news pieces (here, here, and here) seem to suggest a depressing answer: not very much.

Ever since the civil war started, the nightmare scenario has been the prospect that the conflict would escalate to a point where Syria's vast chemical arsenal was in play -- either through a deliberate use or through a loss of custody. That nightmare seems ever more plausible as the civil war grinds on, particularly as the tide seems to be favoring the rebels. It is not impossible to imagine a rapid collapse of the Assad regime and, for that very reason, it is not impossible to imagine circumstances under which Assad would be tempted to gamble with a game-changer like chemical weapons.

President Obama has consistently warned that the use of chemical weapons would be a game-changer for American involvement, as well. The Administration has hitherto resisted calls to intervene more directly in the conflict, but it has also indicated that the United States would act militarily if chemical weapons were used.

How might Assad interpret that vague threat?

One can divide up the continuum of military response into five main categories, listed below in order of escalating involvement:

1. Symbolic punitive strike: a military response designed to indicate sharp disapproval, but otherwise not tilting the balance in the civil-war and not securing the WMD.

2. Game-changing military operation that topples Assad regime: some combination of sustained strikes and other action (e.g., no fly zones) that tilts the military balance decisively in the rebels favor, hastening the fall of the Assad regime.

3. Destroying the chemical arsenal: conducting enough airstrikes to render the arsenal unusable by Assad or by terrorists and militia groups.

4. Invading to secure the WMD arsenal: deploying enough ground troops to secure the many chemical depots and to hunt down any weapons that may have slipped away.

5. Invading to guarantee a favorable political transition: deploying enough ground troops to guarantee the toppling of the Assad regime and assure a transition to a new political order more favorable to U.S. interests. 

None of these is an attractive option.

Option 1 is trivially easy to do but will not accomplish much beyond its symbolism -- even its symbolic message may be undone, since a response like this signals weakness as loudly as it signals disapproval.

Option 2 is a bit more challenging -- but compared to the other options quite doable. However, it will not address our biggest concern about the chemical weapons. It will implicate the United States in the civil war without giving us much leverage over the political outcome or the disposition of the chemical weapons.

Option 3 may not be doable and would involve tremendous collateral damage. The arsenal is vast, and widely dispersed, and destroying all of it from air would require a very lengthy sustained bombardment. In the process, the air strikes would result in extensive contamination and casualties in communities near the depots. Even then we could not be certain that all of the weapons were destroyed before terrorists got their hands on some.

Option 4 would be a daunting military operation, and depending on the state of Syrian forces could approximate another Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF, the invasion of Iraq in 2003). Once in Syria, the pressure for mission-creep to expand to policing a political resolution to the civil war would be nearly irresistible. Also, this would take a long time to assemble (think how long it took to build up to OIF) and some chemical weapons could go missing in the delay.

Option 5 would be tantamount to another OIF -- all of the downsides of Option 4 plus an indefinite commitment to a hostile occupation.

The Obama Administration has assiduously avoided spelling out with any clarity what the President might be contemplating, but some things are clear. Obama has built his entire regional strategy around the "no more Iraqs" objective. There is a double meaning: "no more Iraq" in the sense of leaving Iraq regardless of consequences and taking a hands-off approach to the unraveling situation there, and "no more Iraqs" in the sense of not making any military commitments that involve substantial U.S. ground troops.

Perhaps the prospect of Syrian chemical weapons landing in the hands of terrorist groups would cause the President to change his regional strategy, but a change of that magnitude would require substantial political preparation of the American public. The uncertain and vague comments so far from the Administration are far from adequate to the task. My inference, and likely the inference of Assad, too, is that Options 4 and 5 are effectively off the table.

I can well imagine that the Administration would be tempted to try Option 3, but it is far from clear that it is militarily feasible. And is there anything in the past four years that would suggest this Administration is willing to risk the substantial collateral damage that would ensue?

Option 2 is more likely and, given the fecklessness that would be signaled in Option 1, might be where the Administration ends up. But the Administration has been very wary about getting on other slippery slopes and, despite its boasts about leading from behind in Libya, the Administration understands that doing "another Libya" is a dangerous business. Indeed, the Administration has resisted pressure to do just that up until now when there was more upside potential and so why would they change their mind now when the upside looks far more bleak. It is not at all clear that the use of chemical weapons on Syrian rebel groups would be enough to change Obama's calculus.

If Assad reasons the same way I have just done, he may conclude that what Obama means by military warnings about chemical red lines is simply Option 1: punitive strikes that don't otherwise change the game. In other words, Assad may conclude that Obama's threats are the least of his worries, given how desperate his situation is.

Ironically, then, if the Obama administration really does want to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, it may have to threaten more credibly than it has so far a level of military intervention the President manifestly wants to avoid.

I have been cautious about predicting the longer-term strategic implications of the massive earthquakes and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11. To begin with, years ago I lived for a summer in the part of Japan that has born the brunt of this disaster, interviewing farmers and politicians for a column I struggled to write each week in Japanese for the local Iwate Nippo Newspaper. The images of death and destruction, especially to the beautiful Sanriku Coast, have been heartbreaking for me to watch. A second reason for caution is the lesson many of us learned trying to anticipate the longer-term impact of the December 2004 Asian Tsunami. Most of us in government at the time expected that the civil war in Sri Lanka would end because the tsunami had destroyed the Tamil Tigers' fleet and coastal bases, but that the insurgency in Aceh, Indonesia would grow worse because the tsunami had destroyed the Indonesian Army's bases and lines of supply. The exact opposite occurred -- the Sri Lankan civil war dragged violently on for five more years, but Indonesian President Susilu Bambang Yudyuhono managed to sign a peace agreement with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) within six months of the disaster. A final reason for caution is that the scope of the disaster is not yet clear -- particularly at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where a few dozen engineers bravely remain to cool the reactor cores.

Yet as Japanese scholars and citizens themselves begin considering the future -- and as American rating agencies and pundits hit a drumbeat of negative and often ill-informed predictions -- it seems both appropriate and necessary to at least frame the possibilities of what comes next for Japan.

The first thing that can be said about the disaster is that it has highlighted both the traditional strengths and the adaptability of Japanese society. The world press has marveled at the stoic resolve and orderliness of the Japanese public as they queue for hours for scarce supplies without breaking the rules or complaining. This is precisely the national character that allowed Japan to rebound from even greater disasters such as the Edo fire of 1657, the Kanto earthquake of 1923, and the aftermath of the Pacific War's end in 1945, when the Emperor announced that the Japanese people would have to "endure the unendurable"... and they did. The response has also highlighted the adaptability of Japan. After studying shortcomings in the response to the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, the Japanese government strengthened coordination with the Self-Defense Forces and created crisis management centers across central and local government. This preparation has saved countless lives, even as the government struggles on multiple fronts because of the scale of the disaster. Even more impressive has been the activism of Japanese civil society and especially of Japanese youth; frequently dismissed in recent press analysis as self-obsessed "herbivores," they have mobilized spontaneously through Facebook and other social media and have been shown carrying elderly citizens to high ground on their backs.  

The disaster will likely have at least some impact on Japanese security and foreign policy. The government's poor response to the 1995 Kobe earthquake was seized upon by national security realists to argue for changes in emergency legislation and greater acceptance of the Self Defense Forces as an instrument of national power. Fiscal realities may keep defense spending below 1 percent of GDP, but the disaster will reinforce calls to remove impediments to the SDF's rules of engagement and for greater interoperability with the United States (Operation "Tomodachi" -- the relief effort by the 50,000 U.S. personnel in Japan -- is the largest joint and combined operation between the United States and Japan ever). Japan's relations with China and Russia, which were abysmal before the crisis, may thaw somewhat now. Beijing's 15-man rescue team could take some of the edge off of the Sino-Japanese tensions -- 86 percent of Japanese said in recent polls that they do not trust China -- though the root cause of the tensions, PLA operations around Japan, are unlikely to change.  Putin's decision to set aside differences over the Northern Territories for now in order to help a "good neighbor" may have a more lasting effect, since the root causes of friction between Tokyo and Moscow were always more political than structural or strategic. Finally, many Japanese friends are telling me that the world's outpouring of support and assistance is reminding average citizens in Japan how important it is for Japan to also make its own "international contributions" in terms of ODA and security. Of course, this impulse will be in competition with the understandable desire to focus on reconstruction at home over the coming years.

Japanese economic production will definitely recover from the disaster. The damage estimates are generally well above US $150 billion, and Japanese business surveys are expecting a big hit on manufacturing output over the coming months. However, the economy is still expected to grow overall in JFY 2011 (April 2011-March 2012) once corporations adjust their supply chains and reconstruction spending begins.  Moody's Investors Service is warning that the huge financing needs may erode investor confidence in the country's ability to repay its debts, but this underestimates the likelihood that Japanese citizens will buy reconstruction bonds (over 90 percent of Japanese debt is already domestically held) and ignores the huge amounts of cash Japanese banks and corporations have been sitting on the past year. (Moody's also downgraded South Korea's sovereign debt rating when Roh Moo Hyun came to power in 2003on the dubious logic that relations with the United States would deteriorate.) However, even if production recovers, that still leaves the question of whether Japan will revitalize its basic economic growth strategy. Phil Levy rightly pointed out in his post that the Japanese political classes could become addicted again to Keynesian approaches to growing the economy. On the other hand, Prime Minister Kan had already begun to embrace measures that would unleash greater competition in the Japanese economy, including participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations. That specific debate will probably be on hold for a few months, but the economic reformers behind it will seize on the reconstruction strategy to argue for even bolder measures to revitalize economic growth. Decisions about how to raise money for reconstruction -- for example, whether to include incentives for private equity and not just rely on debt -- will reveal the prevailing direction of the economic strategy debate in the coming months.

Numerous Japanese commentators had recently argued that the nation needed a shock to accelerate the kind of opening, reform and revitalization that Japan embraced after Commodore Perry's ships landed in Edo Bay on July 8, 1853 and the war ended in August, 1945. While no one could have anticipated or called for the enormity of the heart-wrenching human tragedy of March 11, the nation again finds itself at an important turning point. And history would strongly suggest that Japan will emerge stronger.

There are reports coming out of North Korea again that they are suffering from a severe shortfall in food supplies. North Korean emissaries have gone on a multi-national tour asking foreign governments to resume food assistance programs to feed their malnourished population.

This is not a new scenario for North Korea. The regime has continually struggled to feed its people since the famine of the mid 1990s when over one million lost their lives.

What is more shocking is the effect the many years of living on less than 1,700 calories a day have had on the general population. I saw this first hand in a Pyongyang park in 2008 where some elderly people were quietly harvesting grass so they could supplement a meal. Those in the NGO community with access to remote areas of the country have confirmed many in North Korea suffer from malnutrition and infection. In many cases, people outside of the capital are on the brink of starvation.

Today, a North Korean child can expect to be up to 7 inches shorter than his/her South Korean counterpart and 20 pounds lighter by adulthood. 

A recent Washington Post article stated that the North Korean request has "put the United States and other Western countries in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to ignore the pleas of a starving country or pump food into a corrupt distribution system that often gives food to those who need it least."

Not if the policy makers in Washington use the agreement reached in 2008, which remedied past problems of the regime diverting humanitarian food shipments to the military or for black market revenues.

Read on

It is right and natural that we devote a great deal of time deliberating about the foreign policy and other implications of the events unfolding in Egypt. For Egypt, these events constitute a national crisis; for the United States, a foreign-policy crisis. But for many individuals, these events also represent a personal crisis. These include first and foremost Egyptians themselves, of course, who amid jubilation and trepidation about the future of their country must also grapple with rapidly rising food prices, various shortages, looting, and a complete standstill in tourist spending. But the crisis has also affected Americans who live and work in Egypt or tourists who have found themselves unexpectedly stranded there.

While we debate the intentions of President Mubarak, the attitude of the military, and the likely place of various groups and figures in a successor government, many in Cairo worry about
sounds of gunfire outside their windows and reports of looters in their neighborhoods. Their friends and relatives inside and outside Egypt struggle to get information on their safety and whereabouts, frustrated by the interruption of email, mobile phones, and other means of communication.

Looking after the welfare of Americans abroad -- particularly during a crisis -- is one of the core missions of the State Department and a foremost responsibility of U.S. diplomats stationed overseas. U.S. diplomats are rarely noticed, much less celebrated, but their service and sacrifices deserve the American people's recognition.

When a crisis such as this erupts, the local U.S. Embassy will scramble to understand and report to Washington on events and offer its advice on U.S. policy. But it will also initiate a massive effort to account for and care for American citizens, both those who wish to leave and those who remain behind. Right now at the Cairo airport, our Foreign Service officers and other U.S. personnel are putting in days-long shifts to assist Americans who want to leave Egypt. The same officers who are responding to Washington's demands for analysis of opposition figures and the latest reports on protests in Tahrir Square are also comforting weary travelers, serving them food and water, and packing them on to evacuation flights.

Among those the officers have seen off are their own families, whom the State Department yesterday ordered to depart Egypt. The farewells are hasty -- families must leave quickly once the order is given -- and sometimes do not take place at all if the employee is needed elsewhere. The families do not know when they will be able to return, if at all, and must make accommodations for housing and schools on the fly. When their families are long gone, the officers stay on to perform vital work to advance U.S. national security.

The experience of the officers in Cairo is hardly unique -- many diplomats are stationed at embassies and consulates overseas where conditions do not permit their families to
accompany them. Alongside other civilians and of course members of the military, they make daily sacrifices to serve their country. Few Americans are actually aware of what they do, and fewer still will ever have need to call upon their help. But they are there when Americans require, and for Americans stranded in Egypt, that is a deep relief.

An Oval Office Address to the Nation (OOAN -- to coin a new acronym) is a "big gun" presidential communication tool -- perhaps only a special address to a joint session of Congress is bigger. All administrations keep the OOAN powder dry for an emergency, but few have husbanded it as carefully as has the Obama administration. This will be the first Obama OOAN, but he has previously conducted at least three addresses to a joint session of Congress, not counting the annual State of the Union address.  

With the president's polling numbers falling and domestic and international problems mounting, the time is fairly ripe for Obama to deliver his first OOAN. Fairly ripe, but not fully ripe, because the usual peg for an OOAN is missing: either a) A recent tragedy or b) A recent potentially pivotal development in an ongoing challenge or c) an announcement of an abrupt change of course. (Technically, this last one was not an OOAN because it came not from the Oval but from the Library, so it was a LAN.)

By contrast, President Obama will deliver his OOAN: a) on day 57 of a slow motion crisis, that b) has not just had an on-the-ground pivot (on the contrary, the most recent development, a lightning strike igniting a fire on a recovery vessel seems like an almost Biblical piling-on of trouble), and c) apparently without any dramatic change of course to announce.  

I could be wrong about a dramatic policy announcement, of course, but I don't think so because the pre-speech spinning by White House advisors has emphasized how President Obama, simply by virtue of giving his first address, can rhetorically deliver a pivot in the story. He will apparently use the address to reinforce some old talking points ("We have been on the job since Day One") that have not sold well and to refocus attention on old energy proposals that have been stuck in Congress. He will make news simply by giving the speech, but it seems unlikely that the news will be about new policies that will produce a pivot in the Gulf or on the shores.

All of this is domestic policy, of course, so why raise it in a blog devoted to foreign policy? Several reasons:

• The Gulf oil crisis is now a major issue- arguably the major issue - in our relations with our most important ally, Britain. Brits believe, not without some justification, that harsh rhetoric out of the White House has talked down BP's stock, a real "pocketbook" problem for ordinary Brits whose pensions have invested in BP and suffered. I hope President Obama does not forget this crucial audience tonight.
• The oil spill has fed an Obama-as-feckless-Carter meme that has potentially serious implications for how other global leaders view him. At a minimum, they likely view him as distracted but more seriously they may view him as ineffective. The rest of the world -- those who wish us well and those who wish us ill -- are taking their measure of the man as he handles the first presidential crisis that unambiguously and completely began on his watch and so cannot simply be blamed on his predecessor.  As president, he owns all of the problems, inherited and otherwise, but ones that began on his watch are especially telling to foreign leaders trying to figure out what Obama might do in other cases. This, too, is a vitally important global audience that Obama must reach.
• Energy policy is foreign policy, and vice-versa. Whatever the Obama administration accomplishes (or does not accomplish) on energy will have profound effects on national security policies relating to the Middle East, to China, to Russia, and beyond.

For our country's sake, I hope tonight's OOAN does represent a pivot point in this crisis. Obama has famously risen to the occasion, especially when the occasion is a "big speech." By rolling out their long-saved big gun, the White House has indicated they think this is the President's biggest speech thus far, so he may once again deliver on his promise.

By Thomas Mahnken

John Barry, one of the nation's most insightful defense reporters, has posted a piece for Newsweek arguing that the Pentagon should be put in charge of the Haiti relief effort. As he notes, the only institution capable of meeting the demands of the Haiti crisis is not the United Nations, but the U.S. military.

As in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. armed forces have once again become the responder of first resort. In this case, the U.S. Navy is front and center: the USS Carl Vinson's heavy-lift helicopter and the USS Bataan and USS Ft McHenry's air cushioned landing craft are bringing needed supplies to the people of Haiti. 

There are three lessons here. First, for all the talk of whole-of-government solutions, the U.S. military remains the most competent national security institution we have. In recent years, the men and women of the U.S. armed forces have time and time again responded admirably when called upon to conduct missions far beyond those for which they were trained.

Second, the very competence of the military has become a sort of trap. Time and time again, the military has taken up the slack when other national security institutions do not perform as well as they can or should. Tasks better performed by the State Department or U.S. Agency for International Development, state or local governments, or non-governmental organizations too often wind up being performed by soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

Third, when the American taxpayer bought today's Navy, he got a lot more than he thought he was getting. He not only got a force capable of defending American interests on the high seas, but also one possessing the flexibility to respond rapidly to contingencies across the spectrum of conflict. Let's hope that the Obama administration's Quadrennial Defense Review, to be released next month, reflects this reality.

The Obama administration has two choices. First, it can continue to hope that, with more funding and some presidential leadership, the other parts of the national security community will finally rise to the occasion. Both Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Clinton (both at Foggy Bottom and before that in the Senate) have been articulate advocates for whole-of-government approaches. I very much hope they succeed.

If not, the logical alternative is to do what John Barry says and give missions like Haiti to the Pentagon. Such an approach would, however, be undesirable; it would further dilute U.S. military capabilities while also delegitimizing those institutions that should be bringing their unique talents to bear on crisis situations.