The headline writer for this piece should be taken to the woodshed. The US and its administration has not been dozing on any of these key international issues. One can quibble about the effectiveness on some, but not about the energy the President and his delegates have shown on all of them. One clear indication is the signing today of the new strategic arms limit treaty.

To Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan add Israel and Palestine.
We will not have peace with Muslims world-wide until we stop unconditionally supporting Israel, e.g. $3 billion aid annually with no strings attached.
Michael Cain

Ted, thanks for your piece—we ‘mere mortals’ should keep an eye on The Big Stage, and venture to form and voice opinions about it from time to time.

Your laundry list is a pretty good one, and looks a lot like the list I would draw up myself--but I’ve come round to thinking that such lists have the weaknesses of our episodic, reactive, “hot spot” thinking: The number and complexity of those hot spots is growing, and the ability of even a “superpower” to grasp their import and deal with them effectively is increasingly suspect.

Down in the weeds, nation-states face at an endless succession of specific challenges in multiple environments, with dizzying numbers of policy and strategic options. The Grand Strategy remains elusive and incomplete, even for the United States.

Above the fray, game-changing alterations can be seen happening. Old paradigms and ways of behaving are in decline, but effective new concepts and strategies aren’t clear. I sense that a couple of historically-rooted structures are on the verge of collapse: The idea that the single, sovereign state continues to be the “unit of analysis” and principle actor, and the related concept that “hegemons” (the most powerful states, always selfish and very often incompetent) can sustain an orderly, peaceful, and just world. Multinational corporate entities, including frankly criminal entities, are the emerging proof.

A recent Big Picture piece worth a look is Harv/Ox/Stan-ford historian Niall Ferguson’s dark musings on “Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos” (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65987/niall-ferguson/complexity-and-collapse). Heavily influenced by chaos theory, and therefore pretty conceptual, and hardly predictive—but a good current riff on the natural history of empires and hegemon/bullies. In good “butterfly in Brazil/dam in China” fashion, he notes that complex systems are vulnerable to small, innocuous disruptions that trigger catastrophe. A Serbian terrorist assassinates an Archduke, and triggers four years of savage global conflict. An impulsive superpower, aroused by a brutal attack, inserts itself into two ancient and complicated regions--and eight years later is drained of resources, beset by the difficulties of disengagement, and at risk of having added to the net world instability.

Too much of this kind of thinking can be unnerving and dispiriting, of course, and by comparison, our laundry lists may look concrete and manageable--but they also contain the seeds of complex, chaotic, and catastrophic events.

What, then, must we do?

I’m with you when you say “Put me down as perplexed by all of this”--but I’m not sure that I discern as much “grandstanding” as you have, nor that your prescriptions for action are compelling. Among other thoughts, your tactical suggestions for nuclear deterrence, quiet diplomacy, “doing whatever is necessary” to avert a collapse of the Pakistan regime, and “encouraging a successor (Iranian) regime which will not use the weapons or export the technology,” seem unpromising.

Venturing into the arena of Grand Strategy, I think that we need to start hanging together with our fellow nations. Breathing life into the failed Wilsonian vision of shared international governance offers the best hope for averting catastrophe. This means abandoning the idea that “we” should do “x” to improve the situation in “y”, and should the international audience much harder—-to create and promote strong mutual commitment to solving international relations/world problems. This, of course, is a very hard sell in the United States, which—despite the cautionary warnings of presidents from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower—continues to pursue a career of cultural, financial, ideologic and military hegemony (whew!). And it's a strategy, not a tactic or set of action items, and of course the latter is/are still needed in conduct of our foreign policy.

Thank you again for your essay—lots of food for Thursday thought.

Excerpt:
Our highest foreign-policy, national-security priority right now is to get our American financial and economic houses in order. If we fail on that count, we will be unsafe and ineffectual in the world. There are, however, some things ongoing internationally that have been somewhat obscured during our year-long immersions in bailout and health-care debate.

The writer takes another cheap shot at what many American leaders, both Republican and Democratic, for decases have said was a pressing national priority -- universal health care. If U.S. nation building efforts are so vital in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, why not here at home?

Actually, no serious people I know of have been ignoring Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc. etc. because of the health reform debate. Most of us can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Finally, lots of serious analysts would disagree that our highest national security priority is to "get our financial and economic houses in order." I guess if all you read is Robert Samuelson, you might conclude that. But if you read Tom Friedman and people with a broader view of the world beyond entitlement cutting, you would conclude that our highest national and global security priority, as well as our highest economic priority, is replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. Then we're freed of our reliance on places like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. etc. and we create a growing, sustainable new economic base.

Seneca, that link appears to require a subscription. I think a short way of saying what you express is that we no longer (not that we ever really did) have the power to police the world. What we had was a congenial world. That seems to no longer be the case. When we are even partly successful in altering the world into a state that is more friendly to non-aggressive, largely democratic nation states it simply means that other rich nations can (and do) withdraw from the stage. The demand for world order, or at least the discouragement of naked aggression, can be left to the USA. How China, Japan and Western Europe will respond to a nuclear armed Iran will be very revealing.

Always ready to fight the last war, Ted has focused on the areas in which the US has been screwing up for the past 25 years, mainly in an effort to assure the supply of what we now know to be a poison- cheap oil. And how ironic is it that, never having been in Iraq until we went there, Al Quaeda in Iraq is now trying to destabilize elections?

What is needed is not some tinkering around the edges, but a wholesale readjustment of our major policies. We need, for example, to reduce our energy needs to the amounts that can be supplied by renewable resources. We need to end the segregation-by-other-means of the 'War on Drugs' and admit people of color to full citizenship. We need to develop industries that can compete in world markets for sophisticated products, and compete domestically for simple items such as shovels. We especially need to reduce the military and restore civilian control of our government.

What has happened "while America dozed" is that the entire nature of future human life on earth has changed- and we're the buggy whip manufacturers now.

Conventional Wisdom 101. No new insights here, beyond learning that "China is a huge, populous country." That's an eye-opener.

Thanks for the comments. I suspect all of us, as Seneca, would prefer that
policy be framed on a broad conceptual basis rather than being based on case-by-case exigencies. The Cold War period, which ended only with the collapse of the former Soviet Union, made conceptions of "containment" and "deterrence" viable but still left us trying to cope with
shooting wars in places such as Korea and Vietnam where we were unsure where and how they related to great-power containment. From the post-World War II period, onward, we also placed great faith in multilateralism and the international rule of law. We undertook fundamental changes in the global financial and trading systems and, through the UN and regional bodies, tried to construct the forums for multilateral cooperation that you suggest. The UN, through its specialized agencies, proved useful in addressing tangible non-security-related problems. But, because of the veto possessed by UN Security Council members, it has never been what we hoped it would be in war-prevention and resolution. (The Security Council, representing the major powers at the end of World War II, no longer represents power as it exists today). The Obama administration came to office pledging greater reliance on multilateralism and international cooperation. Yet, a year later, it finds itself sometimes acting alone or with only one or two partners. (A good example: Its attempt, right now, to mobilize broad-based international support for sanctions against Iran).

There are broad policy areas which involve everyone---for instance, the current necessity to maintain global financial and economic stability---but others where major players inevitably are going to disagree, depending on their readings of their respective national interests. Thus, inevitably, we are going to have to deal with one-by-one problems (such as some of those I enumerate in my piece), according to our reading of our own national interest---which, I would hope, would always be broadly
rather than narrowly interpreted.

Disappointed by woofer's smart-ass comment. He usually has something
more useful to say. There may or may not have been insights in my piece.
I presented the issues therein as those which presently bear particular watching. In many cases, woofer should have noticed, my analyses and prescriptions did not accord with current U.S. policy.

I apologize for the lack of substantive detail in my smart-ass "conventional wisdom" gibe. I should learn not to blog on the fly; the perceived need for brevity inevitably puts me into a quick-strike mindset. Brother Van Dyk clearly invests a lot effort into his articles and deserves a more engaged response. For what it may be worth, my wife thinks the cause of World Peace would be better served if I went back to doing kenken puzzles along with my morning coffee.

Upon further review and deliberation the only one of Van Dyk's positions that truly strikes me as beyond the pale of mainstream Democratic Party conventional wisdom is his argument for tolerating nuclear weapons in Iran. I agree that our current national hysteria over this question is overblown and that threats and sanctions only serve to strengthen the current unpopular theocratic regime. But a softer approach to Iran also increases the probability of a preemptive military strike by Israel, a factor Van Dyk should have addressed.

In the bigger picture, I agree that the looming presence of huge foreign policy issues has been obscured by the domestic medicine show. I also believe that the Obama administration's performance in this realm generally has been amazingly weak. Bad foreign policy decisions continue to be made based on how they will play politically in the short term -- starting with the appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Hillary may be smart and hard-working, but she is a foreign affairs novice. This is not a good time or place to be implementing an on-the-job training program. Her appointment was designed to placate a political rival, not to install the best person available for the job.

I don't know how much longer Obama can expect to get a free pass on foreign affairs. I'm sure we all experienced a giddy moment of euphoria with the departure of Bush. After eight years of Supremely Awful, the advent of Merely Mediocre looked pretty good. For awhile. What we seem to have now is Republican Lite -- not harsh enough to annoy the Left nor gentle enough to rile the Right. But it's not a policy; it's a political posture. Democrats are always more concerned with not appearing unduly weak and unmanly to their political opponents than articulating a coherent position that might actually solve the problem.

Afghanistan is surely a disaster in the making. I have yet to see anyone come up with an explanation of Obama's policy there that makes a lick of sense. In order to nation-build, you need a credible local leader. Karzai is inept, corrupt and petulant to boot. On the other hand, if the plan was simply to hammer on the Taliban until they agree to some sort of power-sharing truce, Obama undercut that strategy at the outset by announcing in advance a departure date for US troops. The Taliban knows that all it needs to do to win is hunker down and weather the current storm. In the light of all this, the only option that makes any real sense now is to acknowledge the hopelessness of the situation and promptly depart. But, gee whiz, we can't do that because it would hand the Republicans an electoral issue.

The network of foreign relations is, of course, a massive topic and the litany of problems and complaints could go indefinitely. After all, we haven't even mentioned peak oil, climate change or worldwide environmental degradation -- issues that are truly potential game-changers in the international arena on the most profound levels. In the face of all this, the sin of conventional wisdom in the broadest sense lies perhaps in our unspoken agreement to reduce fundamental existential challenges to the trivial level of political calculation. Is this really going to be good enough? Will it get us where we need to go?

Woofer, yes, much better commments deserving consideration. Keep 'em coming.