North Korea is yanking the world's chain yet again, sending all relevant parties hither and yon. As we contemplate what to do and the Kim clan perfects its ability to deliver its growing nuclear arsenal to targets in South Korea, Japan and the United States, we could do worse than turn to a rising star of Korea analysis: Sung-Yoon Lee of Tufts University. Dr. Lee provides a much-needed dose of reality about what exactly we are dealing with. The basics are not a bad place to start in thinking or rethinking how to deal with the criminal-nuclear enterprise that we call North Korea. Here is an edited version of what he said at a conference in Seoul last week (my commentary is in italics and the final thoughts are my own).

1.    North Korea is "uniquely unique." It is the world's sole communist hereditary dynasty, the world's only literate-industrialized-urbanized peacetime economy to have suffered a famine, the world's most cultish totalitarian system, and the world's most secretive, isolated country -- albeit one with the world's largest military in terms of manpower and defense spending proportional to its population and national income. The result is an exceptional state, perhaps the world's most influential regional power commensurate with its territorial and population size and economic and political power.

That is, North Korea has managed some seemingly impossible feats. It has remained a cultish communist dictatorship even though all its like-minded brethren have been relegated to the ash heap of history. It has managed to produce a spate of famines despite the fact that its population is urbanized and literate. And through its combination of supremely disproportionate spending on military forces, its nuclear program, and its unique ability to outfox, out-negotiate, and outplay the world's industrialized powers, it has become a regional nuclear power with disproportionate influence in Northeast Asia despite its poverty and privation.

2. The other Korea, the one south of the 38th parallel, is a global leader in trade, shipping, automobiles, and electronics. It is also a free democratic polity. And on December 19, South Korea elected Park Geun-hye as president. Park is the first elected female leader in Korea and also in Confucian civilization, which consists of China, Japan, the two Koreas, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam and makes up nearly a quarter of the world's population. The contrast between the two Koreas could not be starker -- beyond the obvious, you have a cultish male hereditary dictatorship in the North, and a freely elected female leader in the South.

Development experts and theorists of democratization take note. South Korea has the same culture, historical legacies, and so on as its neighbor to the North. And yet it is an advanced industrial economy and a thriving democracy that has just, despite its Confucian culture, elected a woman as president. It has managed to reach this high point of prosperity and human dignity because of -- to reduce a complex set of phenomena to its minimal essence -- different institutions than those in the North: democratic and capitalist ones. (I realize that I may be violating some tenet of doctrinaire realism with this observation. For the less doctrinaire, the contrast between the two Koreas is a useful reminder of why we try and favor and even push for democratic capitalism). Given the stark contrast between the two countries one can safely draw at least one conclusion: There is nothing inherent in culture or history that ipso facto should keep a country poor and enslaved.

3. The Park Geun-hye administration and the Obama administration should ... not deprive themselves of the credible, non-military deterrent that would weaken or debilitate the Kim regime. They should attack the North Korean regime's two most glaring systemic contradictions: 1. Over-reliance on its shadowy palace economy instead of making licit goods that are competitive on the world market or opening up to foreign investment and trade worthy of the name. Pyongyang's palace economy is particularly vulnerable to tools designed to counter international money laundering. 2. [T]he unfeasibility of controlling the population over the long-term through its vast network of prison camps, fear, and thought police; that is, its egregious human rights violations.

The North Korean state is essentially two things: 1) a large money-laundering concern; 2) the world's largest prison and slave labor camp. Now, however, it is a large money-laundering concern and prison camp that has additionally extorted its way to nuclear weapons. Any U.S. policy should begin and end with the knowledge of what North Korea really is. It is not a state engaged in the normal give-and-take of diplomacy, seeking "security assurances" in return for "denuclearization" or some other such deal conjured up by diplomats whose experience is in dealing with real countries who negotiate in good faith. Rather, North Korea has had a pretty good run with its current approach of extortion, criminality and the deprivation of its own people.

4. The Obama administration is in a position to take the lead on squeezing Pyongyang's palace economy. It should designate the entire North Korean government a Primary Money Laundering Concern, which is a legal term for entities that fail to implement adequate safeguards against money laundering. It should also enforce Executive Orders 13382 (signed June 2005) and 13551 (signed August 2010), which call for the freezing of suspect North Korean entities' assets and those of third-country entities suspected of helping North Korea's WMD proliferation (and criminal) activities. Furthermore, the incoming Park Geun-hye administration is in a position to take the lead in implementing a sustained human rights campaign against Pyongyang. It should vastly increase funding for information transmission efforts into North Korea, encourage North Korean defection and reinforce resettlement programs, and raise global awareness on the Kim regime's egregious human rights violations so that people living in democratic societies around the globe come to think less of the Kim regime as an oddity or an abstraction and more as a threat to humanity.

North Korea's nature underscores its vulnerabilities. It cannot survive without laundering money for its dangerous and illicit activities. It should not be treated as a normal country when most of its people are enslaved. The countries threatened by Pyongyang have in their toolkit the ability to treat the entire state apparatus as a criminal enterprise and can block it and anyone (including many Chinese banks and enterprises) doing business with it from engaging in transactions within the international financial and commercial system. Rather than pretending that they are negotiating with just another regime, the United States and South Korea should instead unleash a campaign to highlight just how abnormal and illegitimate the Kim family is. Here is a simple formula that policymakers can use in setting our approach to North Korea: North Korean existence=criminal activity + human enslavement + nuclear exhortation. There may be little to nothing the world can do now about the fact that it has allowed the North to become a nuclear weapons state. But it can and should treat it like one big criminal/slave state.

Some Concluding Thoughts: South Korea and Japan, for reasons that should be obvious (North Korea, China, an unsteady and retrenching American presence), have elected right-of-center hawkish governments. They are uniquely open to dealing with reality, not a common occurrence in international politics. Reality in this case means taking all necessary deterrent measures against a nuclear state (Tokyo and Seoul appear poised to actually call North Korea a nuclear-weapons state, which -- for those unfortunate to have witnessed to the unfolding tragedy of North Korea policy -- is a big deal). Rather than engage in diplomatic conferences that result in more North Korean extortion, more North Korean nuclear weapons, and more illusions that through combined U.S. and Chinese exertions North Korea can actually be persuaded (against all evidence) that the illegal possession of nuclear weapons actually has a price, we would be wise to consider Dr. Lee's basic idea. Let's deal with North Korea as Dr. Lee describes it -- a criminal enterprise whose crimes can and must be stopped.

There is another looming problem. A second term in a presidency seems to provide a unique temptation to American secretaries of state across administrations to go for the brass ring-a Nobel Peace Prize for "solving" the North Korean problem. In this case, at least from Pyongyang's perspective, there is nothing to be solved. North Korea has pretty much what it wants. But now that Seoul and Tokyo (hopefully Washington too?) are ready to call North Korea a nuclear power, there may be one thing to discuss with Mr. Kim: What would happen if he dared use those weapons?

Perhaps to guard against the "North Korea Nobel Peace Prize" temptation, a parallel prize can be created, awarded to those diplomats who avoid attempts to bargain away that which the North has never put on the table, and instead achieve the more modest task of bettering the lot of the North Korean people and putting an end to the many crimes of Kim Jong Un and his cronies.  

Amid the furor over the attack on our U.S. consulate and the death of four Americans serving in Libya, Secretary Hillary Clinton convened an internal State Department review -- and that Accountability Review Board has just released its report. Clinton has cannily already said she will adopt all of the recommendations in the report. Unfortunately, even doing so will not solve the problems that occurred in Benghazi.

The New York Times describes the report as sharply critical, but it is not. While acknowledging that "there was no protest prior to the attacks, which were unanticipated in their scale and intensity," and "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels," the report concludes that the solution lies in more money with fewer congressional strings attached. Yet when Congress has given State money and allowed it latitude to program those resources, this has not resulted in an adequate supply of expert diplomats to high-risk postings or adequate security for our diplomats operating in those postings.

The report contains all the well-known State Department refrains: The world is newly complicated, diplomacy is underfunded, Congress must change its approach. Here's the medley of greatest hits, in language from the report itself:

"the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) is being stretched to the limit as never before ... for many years the State Department has been engaged in a struggle to obtain the resources necessary to carry out its work ... it is imperative for the State Department to be mission-driven, rather than resource-constrained -- particularly when being present in increasingly risky areas of the world is integral to U.S. national security ... [any] solution requires a more serious and sustained commitment from Congress to support State Department needs ... the United States cannot retreat in the face of such challenges."

What the State Department does not acknowledge -- but what is at the core of its institutional failures -- is that it sets priorities, and that those priorities have not adequately changed with the changing needs of American diplomacy or the changing demands of security for our diplomats. Since 9/11, funding for the State Department and USAID has increased by 155 percent and the size of the Foreign Service has doubled, yet State has chosen to channel its increased resources to the functions the institution values more than diplomatic security. There is not even a mandatory training program for diplomats being assigned to high-risk posts.

Prior to the Benghazi attacks, State's advocates complained that post-9/11 funding increases had been predominantly in consular and diplomatic security rather than in new staff for multilateral organizations, international law, economics, science and technology, public/private partnerships, and international organizations. By which they meant that the terrorist attacks on the United States should have resulted in more involvement in activities to which State is already optimized, rather than in increasing security for embassies and screening people applying for visas even though those are critical vulnerabilities highlighted by attacks on American embassies in the past 15 years. The report just released uses this opportunity to argue for more language training; it offers insight into the institutional culture of an organization that begrudges security at the expense of additional staff to do what the department is already doing.

The report's top recommendation is that "the Department should urgently review the proper balance between acceptable risk and expected outcomes in high risk, high threat areas." The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review called for the same thing; yet in the two years since the QDDR was released, State has not developed such a risk model nor expended institutional effort in building consensus with the executive and with Congress. Having our diplomats actively engaged in dangerous circumstances -- as Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya and Ambassador Robert Ford in Syria have been -- is essential. If our diplomats remain bastioned inside our embassies, they could just as well perform their functions from Ohio as from Libya. But State has not made solving this problem a priority.

The report's second recommendation is to applaud State for having already created "a new Diplomatic Security Deputy Assistant Secretary for High Threat Posts." Its third is more personnel for assistant secretaries in Washington. This is deeply discouraging, because it reinforces State's tendency to believe that more money and more high-level positions are the solution, rather than clarifying accountability. The report states that "among various Department bureaus and personnel in the field, there appeared to be very real confusion over who, ultimately, was responsible and empowered to make decisions based on both policy and security considerations." Yet, with its advocacy of external threat evaluators, increased staffing in Washington, and "multi-bureau support cells," it does not make recommendations for resolving that irresponsibility.

In one crucial way, the system worked in Libya: the ambassador-in-country determined whether the mission justified the risks. Ambassador Stevens undertook an extraordinary set of risks traveling to Benghazi, given the problems the report explains with local security forces. State allowed Benghazi to become "a floating TDY platform with successive principal officers often confined to the SMC due to threats and inadequate resources, and RSOs resorting to field-expedient solutions to correct security shortfalls." The report acknowledges similar security problems and proposed solutions have been extant since 1999. The tragedy of Benghazi is that, once again, State has proven itself incapable of arraying the institution to support the terrific individuals serving on the front lines of American diplomacy.  

The problems identified in the report are systemic problems, and fixing them is almost wholly within State's existing authorities. As Congress explores the Benghazi debacle, it ought to force State to look clearly at the deficiencies of its institutional culture, and align incentives to correct them. The questions State should be pressed to answer are: Why have you not fixed these problems before now? How can you make us confident you will fix them going forward?

2012 will end with Japan and Korea both choosing new governments as the leadership on Asia policy changes at the State Department. All three transitions could have an impact on the president's vaunted pivot to Asia.

In Japan the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe just walloped the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) at the polls. On the one hand, this is nothing new. The last three Japanese elections (2005, 2009 and 2012) ended with lopsided victories as the frustrated Japanese electorate searched for leadership to get them out of their current doldrums. With the election of Shinzo Abe, however, the Western media and the left have hit general quarters. Time Magazine predicts dangerous new friction in Northeast Asia; the folks at Foreign Policy have featured analysis warning Japan could go nuclear; and within some quarters of the administration there is nervous chatter about whether Tokyo might provoke China too much. 

Abe is a nationalist, to be sure, and he has said less than helpful things this election cycle about elevating attention to Japan's territorial dispute with Korea and revisiting a 1993 apology for treatment of the euphemistically-called "comfort women" who were sent to the rear areas of Japanese combat units during the war. On the whole, however, Abe is a good nationalist -- which is to say that he wants to project a Japan that is far more resolute than the flip-flopping of the past three years under the DPJ. At a time when Beijing thinks it is winning in its campaign to coerce maritime states on territorial issues, Abe has promised to increase spending on the Japanese navy and coast guard, to relax constraints on defense cooperation with the United States, and to strengthen security ties with the Philippines, Australia, India and others in Beijing's crosshairs. The United States should embrace this agenda. The problem is that any continuation of the nationalist rhetoric of the election campaign would drive a wedge between Japan and Korea, putting the United States and Japan in a weaker position to deal with a dangerous North Korea and an overbearing China. The administration should quietly explain the problem to the incoming team in Tokyo in exactly those strategic and national interest terms. In his last go as Prime Minister, Abe moved from nationalist to pragmatic statesman, improving ties with both China and Korea. As it became clear that LDP would win a landslide this time, he also began tempering his comments and stressing that he would rebuild the U.S.-Japan alliance and place importance on relations with China and Korea. His top advisors say privately not to worry. National security is all about worrying, though, so the administration will need the skill to construct a trusted private dialogue on the sensitive issues with Tokyo, backed by robust public support for Japan's security.

Korea goes to the polls on Wednesday. Right now the conservative candidate, Park Geun-hye, has a lead in most polls, but just inside the margin of error. Her opponent, Moon Jae-in, appears to have slight momentum on his side (Korean law limits polling in the final days of the election). Both are trying to appeal to the center without abandoning their bases. Park is the former daughter of strongman Park Chung Hee, while Moon was chief-of-staff and heir apparent to the former president, Roh Moo-hyun. Park's supporters are generally tougher on North Korea, more pro-U.S., and older. Moon's supporters are generally softer on North Korea and younger, but not gripped by the same anti-Americanism that helped Roh get elected in 2002. The younger voters' conversion is typified by Psy, the Gangnam-style rap artist who recently apologized for his crude anti-American songs from a decade ago. Moon himself is a pragmatist who appears to have learned the political and security consequences of the Roh administration's initial anti-Americanism. The problem is that Moon has surrounded himself with hardcore leftists who still believe that the right approach to North Korea is to buy their confidence with economic aid, even after (or they would argue especially after) Pyongyang has tested long-range missiles and possibly begun preparations for a third nuclear test. Needless to say, that policy would create considerable dissonance with Washington. Even Park, whose pro-alliance credentials are solid, has hinted that she will not be quite as tough with either Pyongyang or Beijing as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak, has been.

Just as Japan and Korea enter these transitions, the Obama administration is losing its best stewards of Asia policy -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her assistant secretary for East Asia (and, truth in advertising, good friend to a number of us at Shadowgov), Kurt Campbell. There are other solid Asia hands in the administration, to be sure, but State has been particularly instrumental in managing U.S. alliances in the region. It is not hard to imagine an incoming team at State deciding that the highest priority in the second term must be modifying the harder edges of the pivot and quietly reassuring Beijing that the U.S. does not fully support Japan's new trajectory -- or worse, publicly walking away from a declaratory policy on the contested Senkaku Islands that suggests the U.S. is completely neutral (for three administration's the policy has been neutrality on the territorial claims, but clear signals that the United States would not be neutral if there were any military coercion by China). There are hints that some in the administration have already been shifting their public statements in this direction. Similarly, Korea-U.S. relations have prospered in the last four years, not because the Obama administration came in with any particular strategy for strengthening relations with Seoul, but because the President was personally captivated by President Lee Myung-bak's commitment to globalizing Korea's role and restoring trust in alliance relations with Washington. It is one thing to react to a dynamic ally, but quite another to put in the hard work of strengthening alliance ties when there are disagreements over North Korea policy or uncertainties in Seoul about how to deal with China in future.

The good news is that any new team will have to face confirmation hearings. In private calls and hearings, the Senate should be sure to take some time off from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to verify the nominees' fundamental thinking about our alliances in Asia. These alliances do not run on auto-pilot, nor are they always easy. But as Lord Carrington once said about us as allies in the face of European criticism in the 1980s, "Yes ... yes ... all your complaints are true, but they are the only Americans we have."

President Obama seems to have two options in assigning the top three national security spots (Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor): follow the conventional beltway wisdom or go his own way and do what he thinks is best.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama should pick a Democratic "dream team." That would put Senator Kerry in the Secretary of State slot. He is the Democratic Party's acknowledged congressional leader on foreign policy and would be a shoo-in to be confirmed. He has certainly earned the president's favor, having rescued the administration from some tricky foreign policy predicaments, and he clearly wants the job. The Obama political operation appears willing to risk the Democratic Senate seat in the by-election to replace him. He will not have the celebrity star power that Hilary Clinton had, but there is no one (except her husband -- or perhaps Colin Powell) who could come close to matching that anyway, and Kerry probably is the biggest name available. Secretary Clinton's most important contribution to foreign policy in the past four years has been this high profile "face of America" role -- certainly she had a bigger impact in that role than in shaping key policy debates inside the interagency -- and so seasoned foreign policy hands recognize the importance of making a high-stature appointment.

For Defense, the conventional wisdom is that either of the top two underlings from the first term -- current Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter or former UnderSecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy -- would be strong picks. Neither would face a contentious confirmation fight or a steep learning curve. Both enjoy bipartisan respect and would be as capable in selling Obama's controversial defense cuts as anyone he could pick. Both would be trusted to do the best that could be done to mitigate the damage those cuts risk doing to national security.

That leaves Susan Rice looking for a spot to land, and the conventional wisdom is that she would make a fine National Security Advisor. She clearly has the trust of the president, which is the single most important criterion for success, and she would be seen as an equal by the other principals (another important criterion). This is also a non-confirmable post, so the Benghazi unpleasantness would pose no hurdle. There is the awkwardness that the job is currently filled by someone who wants to stay, Tom Donilon, but the conventional wisdom is that it would be no bad thing for President Obama to start the second term with a clean slate. Indeed, as one Obama insider put it, an "intervention" may be needed to repair the dysfunctions of the first term. The president could also consider many other worthy names for spots on the "dream team " that were also in circulation four years ago -- Richard Danzig, John Hamre, Jim Steinberg, to name just a few -- but they all have in common this "clean slate" feel.

The trial balloons floating out of the White House suggest that President Obama doesn't agree with the conventional wisdom. It appears he wants to put Susan Rice at State -- never mind that some Senators seem willing to serve the sauce for Rice's goose that she merrily served to their gander over the years. Even some Democratic voices have raised doubts (here and here) about whether Rice is a good fit at State.

And if Rice is at State, what to do with the loyal Kerry? The consolation prize appears to be Defense -- never mind the doubts that a Senate office is the wrong training ground for managing such an unwieldy bureaucracy. Or perhaps Kerry would be left at the altar altogether, which would mean that Obama's rocky relations with Congress would have one more unhappy boulder to contend with.

And if Rice is at State, that means Donilon is likely to stay as National Security Advisor, which leaves the slate uncleaned.

When facing similar choices in the past, Obama has tended to follow his own lead and ignore the conventional wisdom and so I guess the best bet is that he will do so again. But sometimes the conventional wisdom has a certain, well, wisdom to it.

When it comes to partisan differences on foreign policy, one area that the conventional wisdom regards as a deep chasm is multilateralism. A crude set of stereotypes have taken hold: Republicans as reckless unilateralists, and Democrats as feckless multilateralists. But in actual practice the differences over multilateralism are often not as acute, as most policymakers from both parties would admit.  On this note, our readers might be interested in the results of a recent survey that my colleagues Josh Busby (also of the University of Texas-Austin) and Jon Monten (of the University of Oklahoma) and I put together. Assessing the views of experienced policy-makers in both parties, we found that while there are genuine partisan differences on multilateralism, there is also a surprising degree of agreement and bipartisan consensus. We wrote-up an analysis of our findings at the Foreign Affairs website, and a summary of the survey results can be found here. [In the spirit of bipartisanship, alert readers will also appreciate this collegial cross-linking between Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs. If this bonhomie keeps up, by week's end Peter Feaver will be writing nice things about the North Carolina basketball team].

In brief, our survey found that both parties see the value and the limitations in multilateralism. Furthermore, while both parties might often arrive at similar policy outcomes, they do so from different orientations. For example both parties believe multilateralism in practice generally increases the effectiveness of American foreign policy. Yet as we describe in the article, Republicans and Democrats use different balancing tests when considering a multilateral initiative and evaluating just how effective it might be. Republicans tend to emphasize the importance of sovereignty and freedom of action, while Democrats tend to emphasize the importance of legitimacy and interdependence. Thus Republicans weigh whether the multilateral opportunity protects American sovereignty and produces the desired policy results. They usually will agree to relinquishing a measure of sovereignty if a multilateral policy otherwise appears to be effective, but are likely to oppose a multilateral initiative that they perceive to erode sovereignty without delivering adequate policy benefits. In contrast, Democrats weigh whether the multilateral opportunity appears to address the vulnerabilities created by interdependence and is perceived as legitimate by other countries. These principles, Democrats believe, contribute to more desirable policy outcomes.

In trying to make sense of these findings, we considered various labels to summarize the dispositions of the parties (e.g. Republicans as "pragmatic multilateralists" and Democrats as "principled multilateralists," or the GOP as "a la carte multilateralists" and Dems as "prix fixe multilateralists"). Ultimately we settled on the categories "sovereignty-minded multilateralists" and "interdependence-oriented multilateralists," which hopefully make up in accuracy what they lack in pith and punch.

The survey is admittedly constrained in how much it captures party attitudes because we limited it to people who have served in meaningful policy-making positions (rather than pundits and party activists), and because the surveys depended on people believing it worthwhile to take the time to respond. So while our political scientist friends out there might find areas to quibble on methodology and selection effects, we still think that the surveys capture something meaningful. Especially because the responses reflect the beliefs of those who have actually made policy, and who may well occupy policy-making roles in the future.

The survey also helps illuminate not just where Republicans and Democrats might diverge on certain foreign policy questions, but why they do so. Understanding these reasons can be constructive on a number of fronts. It can lay a basis for bipartisan cooperation by helping each side understand the other's core concerns and priorities, and also help illuminate potential sticking points on particular issues. Understanding how Democrats and Republicans think about foreign policy can also help clarify the differences between the parties for other stakeholders, ranging from foreign governments trying to understand American foreign policy, to American voters weighing their choices this November.

A recent Cable item from the intrepid Josh Rogin tells me that one of the consequences of the era of declining defense budgets may well be a further shifting of civilian roles back on to defense shoulders.

That is not a typo.

For years pundits have complained about the "militarization" of foreign policy, referring to the way that foreign policy tasks get assigned to the military even if the tasks do not involve military expertise per se (i.e. blowing things up). For decades, the military has been deployed to do everything from disaster relief to rural development to local banking reform to post-conflict venture capital, and so on. High defense spending has bought remarkable capacity in our uniformed ranks, and that capacity has been utilized in the service of a broad range of foreign policy goals.

Critics have complained that these tasks are not inherently military and they could be, perhaps should be, done by civilians in the State Department and elsewhere. Letting civilians do civilian tasks would, the critics maintain, "demilitarize" American foreign policy. Hence, a big push to boost capacity outside of DoD.

That push enjoyed substantial rhetorical support from Secretary Rumsfeld, who despaired of the military being the bill-payer for tasks better assigned to State and elsewhere. It enjoyed even more substantial material and political support from Secretary Gates, who joined first with Secretary Rice and then with Secretary Clinton to beg Congress to boost the budget of the State Department so as to build civilian capacity.

I suspect that effort may have reached a turning point, however. The very same fiscal pressures that are forcing deep cuts in the defense budget will be operating on the budgets of the State Department and other departments and agencies that might otherwise be expected to prop up the civilian side of the civil-military balance. And in such a hostile fiscal environment, it is likely that the military will lose less than civilian agencies will. Or rather: Even if the military loses more in absolute terms (because their budget baseline is so high), in relative terms they can weather those losses better without losing minimum functioning capacity.

In short, the civil-military balance is likely to tip even further in the direction of the military.

This was the gist of a talk I gave last month to the Army War College's Annual Strategy Conference. I made several points, which the latest congressional action on the foreign operations and defense budgets have only reinforced:

• To make a lasting change in a civilian departmental or agency effectiveness, you have to increase resources relative to assigned tasks, specifically personnel resources. You must create float -- more than 100 percent staffing, so that a fraction of the workforce can always be improving its skill-set through professional training and education. If you can't increase resources, you have to decrease tasks. Neither is happening today.
• The problem of a balance tilted in favor of the military is a very old one. Ever since the United States became a global power, we have oscillated between two less-than-ideal coping mechanisms: (1) be unprepared or (2) ask the military to handle this as a lesser-included-task along with the primary mission of preparing to fight and win our wars. There are many complex reasons for this, but one pretty fundamental one is that it costs a great deal to build a military capable of fighting and winning our wars (and we often are unwilling in peacetime even to adequately fund that) and once you have paid for such a tool, it seems efficient to use it for other tasks, even ones it was not designed to do. Better a sub-optimal fit than a non-existent tool.
• If Gates+Rice and Gates+Clinton couldn't fix this problem, it won't get fixed in our professional lifetime. Those two Defense-State pairs may well have delivered the best levels of cooperation ever achieved between those two departments. And in the latter case, it happened while the administration enjoyed a dominant party advantage in Congress. It will only get more difficult from here on out. Adequately building up civilian capacity was going to be a hard slog when you had lesser politicians talking about how "it is time to focus on nation building here at home." Unfortunately for the more grandiose plans for building civilian capacity in national security affairs, the author of that line was President Obama when he announced in June 2011 that he was accelerating the end of his Afghan surge. That unfortunate applause line could prove quite effective in killing any momentum for rebalancing capabilities between DoD and State. What were those capacities needed for? Nation-building abroad. Well, it is time to stop doing that....

Therefore, while it is fine to remain rhetorically committed to Plan A (improving State capacity), the military should train and equip for Plan B (State and other civilian agencies  are no more and probably less capable than they were in 2008).

In truth much as I searched, I have found that the Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics actually has no analogue in foreign policy. Regardless, it is a good way to describe Obama's foreign policy doctrine. Call it the Uncertainty Doctrine.

Businesspeople and economists make a good case that the uncertainty of Obama's domestic policies has slowed the economic recovery. The private sector does not know when and for what they will next be taxed or regulated, what the new health care law visited upon them means for the economy. The anxiety causes a freeze in economic growth.

So too with Obama's uncertainty foreign policy doctrine. Allies and adversaries have no idea what we will do next and are acting accordingly.

Obama announced a troop surge in Afghanistan and then immediately a pull out date. Should our allies stick with us as we take out just enough bad guys to make the Taliban more vengeful when they return? Or instead should Kabul just make deals with the Taliban? An Iranian nuclear weapon is unacceptable but so is Israel removing one from the hands of Iran. Assad must go, but we will not do anything to make that happen. On the other hand maybe its best if he just stayed -- easier to work with than the alternative.

China was a partner in global action problems -- perhaps even a G2 was in the offing! Together we would work on climate change, nonproliferation, who knows what else? Now the United States needs to pivot to Asia to keep China in check.

Here is another part of the uncertainty doctrine that must leave Europeans and Middle Easterners scratching their heads: The United States is pivoting to Asia (under fiscal constraint) but not abandoning its allies in Europe or the Middle East.

The pivot, we tell the Chinese, is not about them. But then Manila and Tokyo ask: "What do you mean the pivot isn't about China. The Chinese are unwelcome visitors into our waters at least once a week!"

Oh, and we have new battle plan called "Air Sea Battle" that again is not about China. However, it is meant to operate in "anti-access" environments -- those in which enemies have many missiles, submarines, and cyber warfare capabilities. Sounds like China. We will be able to operate again in those environments once the plan is executed, but we will not execute it because we are cutting the defense budget, so China should worry a bit but not too much. Our allies should have just a little dose of reassurance to go along with their fears.

India is a strategic partner whom we would like to join us in checking (or not checking?) China but we are going to leave Afghanistan for India to fight over with its archrival Pakistan.

I think the point is made. Just as uncertainty in economic policy can make an economy sputter, so too has Obama's uncertainty doctrine made the world a more dangerous place. With no one else to do the chores, the United States must lead with certainty. The rest of the world may complain about our arrogance, but that is better than complaining about utter chaos.

BRUSSELS – For supporters of the war in Afghanistan, recent news has been depressing. Here in Brussels at NATO headquarters, where I've been observing the so-called "jumbo" ministerial of NATO defense and foreign ministers, officials were forced to address the Haqqani network's brazen attacks in several Afghan cities, including Kabul, over the weekend, as well as photographs published by the Los Angeles Times of U.S. Army soldiers posing with the body parts of suicide bombers in 2010. 

Read on

The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, former Secretary General Kofi Annan, reported to the Security Council yesterday that the government of Bashir al-Assad has agreed to a cease-fire commencing April 10th. Annan also reported there has been no abatement of the violence by the government of Syria against its citizens. Assad's government is estimated by the U.N. to have killed more than 9,000 people in the past year, when Syrians began demanding the rights we Americans consider universal.

In that year, the Obama administration has gingerly moved away from defending Bashir al-Assad. When thousands of people had already been victims of murder by their own government in Syria, Secretary of State Clinton described Assad as a "reformer" who should be supported by the United States. Astonishingly, she contrasted him with Arab despots we supported protests against.

While Obama administration policy has improved somewhat with the advance of revolutions in the Middle East, it continues to chase rather than positively affect change. Our president now concedes that Assad should step down, but endorses a U.N. peace plan that would leave the murderer of nine thousand in power. Moreover, the Obama administration considers itself restricted from intervening in Syria because Vladimir Putin shields a fellow despot with Russia's vote in the U.N. Security Council.

So while Assad's forces shell neighborhoods in Homs and Hama, Secretary Clinton promises communications equipment to the disparate Syrian opposition. Make no mistake: Syrians are paying the price for our diplomatic nicety. They understand it, and those who would challenge despotism elsewhere understand that the United States is moving slowly enough that the Assad government may well succeed in breaking the resistance before we are of any help.

In fact, the Assad government seems to believe they're close to crushing the resistance: Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi declared as much last week, and the April 10th timeline agreed to by Assad for the U.N. peace plan is probably intended to allow consolidation of government gains against the resistance.

By valuing a United Nations mandate more than we value the lives of Syrians, we have given authoritarian governments a veto on our ethical responsibilities -- multilateralism trumps morals. It is discouraging that our government champions this concession as though it were a virtue.

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There hasn't been a lot of good news on the Iraq front of late. But there is one bit, and I am going to grab it and hope for the best: President Obama has nominated Brett McGurk to be the next Ambassador to Iraq. I worked closely with Brett on Iraq policy back in the day and it is hard to think of someone Obama might have nominated who is more committed to success in Iraq. Brett was one of the earliest and most ardent supporters of the surge in 2006 and he has stayed active on the inside more or less ever since. There are few Americans inside or outside government with his breadth of experience and insider knowledge about Iraqi politics.

Senator McCain has expressed some very understandable frustration with Obama's handling of the Iraq file, but I hope those concerns do not hold up McGurk's confirmation. McCain is right that the prospects for securing American interests in the region would be better if the Obama administration had successfully negotiated a deal to keep the planned-for stay-behind overwatch force in place. And even if U.S. plans in Iraq have had to be scaled back, the embassy will still be extraordinarily large and something of a managerial nightmare; McGurk will need a very strong senior leadership team to manage it all effectively.

But those who still want to preserve as much of what the surge accomplished as can be preserved at this point will not find a more committed partner and advocate than Brett McGurk. I hope his nomination means we can count the president in that number.

As I posted earlier, I have been in Singapore for a series of lectures and meetings with strategic studies specialists inside and outside of government, courtesy of the wonderful people at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. This was not my first visit to Southeast Asia, but it was my first (and hopefully not last) visit to Singapore.

I usually gain more from these exchanges than I give out, and that was the case this time. For folks who like to talk strategy -- and who like to sample extraordinary cuisines while doing so -- there is no place better than Singapore. Singapore is a tiny country, essentially a city-state, that punches well above its weight in international affairs both because of its record of economic success and because it takes seriously the need to think and act strategically. And, Singaporeans love to dine.

American visitors like myself get asked lots of tough questions and, since my visit coincided with the gruesome spectacle of the debt crisis, my answers often left me (and perhaps my audiences) second-guessing American power and purpose.

Still I had some takeaways:

Geostrategic tragedies happen when leaders hesitate to act and cling to beliefs in the face of all evidence. Prior to World War II, the British were confident that Singapore was an impregnable fortress, a "Gilbratar of the East." If the Japanese were foolhardy enough to attack it, the big guns on Singapore's hills would destroy the naval armada before it could reach the shore. And so they might have, if the Japanese had attacked from the sea. Instead, the Japanese launched an attack on the northern part of the Malaya peninsula and fought a bloody advance through the jungle in order to attack Singapore from Johore to the north, not, as the British expected, from the sea to the south. This strategic disaster unfolded over two months, so there was plenty of time for the British to adjust their defensive plans. But they didn't. Of course, the British also missed an opportunity perhaps to block the Japanese attack from the outset, if only the Brits had executed their planned preemptive raids to seize more advantageous terrain. But they didn't. And slowly, inexorably, the Japanese advanced until they trapped a very sizable British force in a tiny perimeter with limited water supplies. I kept asking myself as I visited those sites: are U.S. strategists clinging to mistaken beliefs that will come back to haunt us? Have we, through hesitation and uncertainty, ceded the initiative to forces that are not as complacent as we are?

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A news item from this weekend is that President Obama intends to nominate NSC Senior Director Michael McFaul to be the next ambassador to Russia. This is an inspired choice. McFaul will bring a compelling set of attributes to the position, including a deep knowledge of Russia, a close relationship with President Obama, experience in high levels of government and national security policy, and a longstanding commitment to democracy and human rights promotion. That last quality will be of particular importance, as Russia's grim and deteriorating record on democracy will be in the international spotlight with its presidential transition in 2012. "Transition" is a more accurate word than "election," as the question of Russia's next president will not be settled by Russian voters at the ballot box but rather by the opaque intra-Kremlin maneuverings between current President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. As Paul Bonicelli has pointed out, as a former and potentially future president, Putin's intentions and actions are more "neo-Czarist" than democratic, and his relationship with Medvedev will likely grow more and more strained.

In appointing McFaul, President Obama is also departing from recent precedent in bypassing the career Foreign Service for the position. Over the past three decades, all but one residents of Spaso House have been career foreign service officers. But the exception was a notable one: President Bush 41's bipartisan appointment of Democratic elder statesman Bob Strauss (namesake of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, where I'm honored to work), who ably represented the U.S. in Moscow during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the transition of the national identity back to "Russia."

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Imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying that if defense funding were reduced, seven hundred thousand people in Libya would die, and tens of millions elsewhere in the world. It would be considered fear-mongering of the most repulsive kind. In fact, it would be considered a threat to the integrity of our civilian-led military to  attempt such a blackmail of the Congress.

But that's exactly the approach USAID Director Rajiv Shah took last week testifying before the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee. He said that if proposed reductions to USAID's budget go into effect 70,000 children will die. He added that he considered that a very conservative estimate, and that among other effects, another 800,000 recipients of our international disaster assistance in Darfur would be at risk.

Shah testified that 30,000 deaths would come specifically from scaling back anti-malaria programs, 24,000 from lack of immunization, and 18,000 lack of skilled attendants at births. All this from cutting 16 percent of the Obama administration's international affairs budget request.  

Hard to say which is more offensive, Shah threatening Congress will have blood on its hands unless it continues to fund USAID programs, or the bureaucratic and cultural mindset that considers increased spending the only solution to a multivariate problem.

USAID was created as an entity separate from the State Department (and military assistance) in 1961, in order to remove from development assistance the taint of being provided in order to advance America's interests. USAID's official history rather unselfconsciously states that "It was thought that to renew support for foreign assistance at existing or higher levels, to address the widely known shortcomings of the previous assistance structure, and to achieve a new mandate for assistance to developing countries, the entire program had to be 'new.'"

The whiff of sanctimony pervades USAID still, which is part of why it is so unpopular on Capitol Hill, where elected representatives often find unpersuasive that the spending of their constituents money abroad should have no connection to our national interests.

Providing money through the Agency for International Development is by no means the only -- or even the most effective -- way to alleviate disease and poverty in the world. Case in point: funding for AID was dramatically cut in the 1990s, and yet that decade saw nearly a billion people lifted out of poverty by actual economic development. USAID's funding has been increased by 150 percent in the past decade -- most of that coming with the advocacy of a Republican president and his secretaries of state. 

There are many ways USAID could compensate for reduced government spending:

• USAID could build coalitions of like-minded governments to share the burden of funding.
• USAID could reach out into American society for private-sector partners to fund programs.
• USAID could use its power as a convener and facilitator of non-governmental organization involvement in programs.
• USAID could develop performance metrics that ensure it is using what money is available to greatest effect.
• USAID could prioritize its own activity to close down programs of lesser immediate importance.
• USAID could discontinue development projects in countries like China and Brazil that, as a result of their own economic development, are now providers of development assistance to others.

In fact, USAID's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review champions all these approaches. USAID just doesn't practice them.  

In recent weeks, civil unrest in much of the Middle East has reminded many Americans of the very uncertain world in which we live. Repressive regimes that appear stable one day can just as quickly be overthrown the next, altering the strategic landscape and impacting U.S. interests.

This is an important lesson for the members of the 112th Congress as they debate ways to reduce the United States' spiraling deficit. As the search for savings has begun, some members have gone after areas of the federal budget that have nothing to do with our fiscal woes to pay down the debt.

In recent months, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates faced pressure from the White House to find more savings in the defense budget despite being the one cabinet secretary who has already carried out multiple rounds of cost cutting. Republicans in Congress weren't much kinder. The House approved an FY11 continuing resolution late last week providing $15.9 billion less for the core defense budget than President Obama requested. The House's FY11 continuing resolution would also cut the FY11 international affairs budget by nearly 20 percent from FY10 levels. The debate shifts to the Senate when Congress returns from recess next week.

This pressure to cut international affairs and defense is coming not just from Congress, but also from several blue-ribbon commissions that recently produced deficit reduction recommendations.

As Secretary Gates observed after deficit commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson proposed $100 billion of cuts to the defense budget, these recommendations represent "math not strategy." Several task forces have combined a dire assessment of the impact of the financial crisis with questionable proposals about bringing troops home from overseas, closing embassies and consulates, and canceling weapons programs. The long-term implications of these proposals represent nothing less than a rethinking of the U.S. role in the world even though the commissions were ill-equipped to analyze the implications of their proposed cuts.

Defense and international affairs have ended up on the chopping block despite the fact that the 2010 midterms were not a referendum on U.S. foreign policy. In fact, even in the midst of two wars and continuing terrorist threats to the homeland, congressional campaigns were marked by very little discussion of national security. In a late October 2010 poll done by the Pew Research Center, only 12 percent of respondents said that the war in Afghanistan was the first or second issue most important to their vote, and only 9 percent cited terrorism.

As recent events in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East have shown, the United States will continue to face strategic challenges in the coming decades that will require significant diplomatic and military expenditures. For most Americans, the need to adequately fund the military, the country's most-respected institution, is clear. For conservatives looking to downsize government, the case for a robust international affairs budget may be less apparent.

In the post-9/11 era, funding via the U.S. State Department and affiliated agencies increasingly goes toward civilian missions in war zones. These programs are essential to our long-term success in front-line states such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. These targeted funds go toward U.S. efforts to support democracy and human rights abroad and help train and equip allied militaries around the world. Such security assistance is pivotal amid the increased threats of rogue states and terrorist organizations and allows an already overstretched U.S. military to focus on more immediate threats.

U.S. aid programs provide the United States with tools to counter emerging threats from weak and failing states. Often thought of solely as evidence of American goodwill and values, these programs are in fact key components in the battle against extremism, battling the conditions that often fuel anti-U.S. sentiment.

As President George W. Bush recently wrote in his memoirs, "After the attacks [of 9/11], it became clear to me that this was more than a mission of conscience. Our national security was tied directly to human suffering. Societies mired in poverty and disease foster hopelessness. And hopelessness leaves people ripe for recruitment by terrorists and extremists."

It is also important to remember that America only spends roughly 1.4 percent of the federal budget on international affairs. In polls, Americans routinely overestimate the amount spent on such programs, perhaps contributing to the temptation of lawmakers to look to such programs first when drawing up constrained budgets.

Like any part of the government, there are certainly wasteful programs and inefficiencies that should be targeted and eliminated, but the deficit is not going to be paid off by savings generated from gutting the international affairs budget.

Although the amount spent on defense is significantly larger, it too is not the source of our current fiscal predicament. Oddly, given the now frequent proposals in Washington to cut international affairs and defense, it is not apparent that the American public supports this agenda.

It was, in fact, outrage over the Obama administration's runaway domestic and entitlement spending that drove many voters to the polls last November. It is thus these areas of the federal budget that lawmakers should focus their attention on first. Targeting our military and diplomatic capabilities will only serve to put the country at greater risk.

The 112th Congress faces some tough choices about how to improve America's fiscal situation without sacrificing our standing in the world. Unfortunately, thus far, many have skirted over the strategic debate and jumped directly to the budget cutting. The United States' current economic woes are concerning, but abdicating the global responsibilities of the United States is not the solution.