Mitt Romney kicked off his "see, I do too know something about foreign policy" world tour today.  Before his homage to Barack Obama's 2008 tour, however, he gave what was labeled as a "major foreign policy address" at the VFW convention. Mark Halperin has the text. I'll just comment on a few pieces of it:

[W]hen it comes to national security and foreign policy, as with our economy, the last few years have been a time of declining influence and missed opportunity.

Just consider some of the challenges I discussed at your last national convention:

Since then, has the American economy recovered?

Has our ability to shape world events been enhanced, or diminished?

Have we gained greater confidence among our allies, and greater respect from our adversaries?

And, perhaps most importantly, has the most severe security threat facing America and our friends, a nuclear-armed Iran, become more or less likely? (emphasis added)

OK, stop, hold it right there. Now Iran is "the most severe security threat"? Is that better or worse than Russia being the number one geopolitical foe?

[Note to self: if Romney loses in November, propose co-hosting awards show with him on Fox News -- call it "The Greatest American Enemies." Categories would include "Greatest Geopolitical Threat," "Greatest Security Threat," "Greatest Existential Threat," and "Best Supporting Threat in Comedy or Musical." Ratings gold.]

Onward!

I am an unapologetic believer in the greatness of this country. I am not ashamed of American power. I take pride that throughout history our power has brought justice where there was tyranny, peace where there was conflict, and hope where there was affliction and despair. I do not view America as just one more point on the strategic map, one more power to be balanced. I believe our country is the greatest force for good the world has ever known, and that our influence is needed as much now as ever. And I am guided by one overwhelming conviction and passion: This century must be an American Century.

Somewhere, the realist wing of Romney's foreign policy advisors are drowning in whiskey.

[S]adly, this president has diminished American leadership, and we are reaping the consequences. The world is dangerous, destructive, chaotic.

You know what? The world really isn't more dangerous, destructive or chaotic than it used to be, and anyone who tells you differently is either uninformed or selling you something.

In an American Century, we have the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, we secure peace through our strength. And if by absolute necessity we must employ it, we must wield our strength with resolve. In an American Century, we lead the free world and the free world leads the entire world.

If we do not have the strength or vision to lead, then other powers will take our place, pulling history in a very different direction. A just and peaceful world depends on a strong and confident America. I pledge to you that if I become commander-in-chief, the United States of America will fulfill its duty, and its destiny.

That sound you hear is Bob Kagan smiling somewhere.

After secret operational details of the bin Laden raid were given to reporters, Secretary Gates walked into the West Wing and told the Obama team to “shut up.” He added a colorful word for emphasis.

Lives of American servicemen and women are at stake. But astonishingly, the administration failed to change its ways. More top-secret operations were leaked, even some involving covert action in Iran.

This isn’t a partisan issue; it’s a national security crisis. And yesterday, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, quote, “I think the White House has to understand that some of this is coming from their ranks.”

Bully for Romney. This is totally fair issue, and the response I'm hearing from Obama loyalists that "Bush did it too" is pretty weak beer.

I'm going to skip the "Obama is abandoning out allies" and "I would act differently in Afghanistan" sections, because they're pretty much unchanged from what Romney has said in the past. Which means, by the way, that he's exaggerating both the discontent of our allies and the differences he has with Obama's Afghanistan policy.

On to China:

We face another continuing challenge in a rising China. China is attentive to the interests of its government – but it too often disregards the rights of its people. It is selective in the freedoms it allows; and, as with its one-child policy, it can be ruthless in crushing the freedoms it denies. In conducting trade with America, it permits flagrant patent and copyright violations … forestalls American businesses from competing in its market … and manipulates its currency to obtain unfair advantage. It is in our mutual interest for China to be a partner for a stable and secure world, and we welcome its participation in trade. But the cheating must finally be brought to a stop. President Obama hasn’t done it and won’t do it. I will (emphasis added)

The bolded section represents the nicest thing Romney has said about China during the campaign. I'd also note with some surprise that he didn't mention his pledge to label China as a currency manipulator on day one.

Now to the Middle East.

Egypt is at the center of this historical drama. In many ways, it has the power to tip the balance in the Arab world toward freedom and modernity. As president, I will not only direct the billions in assistance we give to Egypt toward that goal, but I will also work with partner nations to place conditions on their assistance as well. Unifying our collective influence behind a common purpose will foster the development of a government that represents all Egyptians, maintains peace with Israel, and promotes peace throughout the region. The United States is willing to help Egypt support peace and prosperity, but we will not be complicit in oppression and instability.

I put this in here because I haven't the faintest clue what it means in terms of actual policy beyond "aid to Egypt will be conditional on something." Conditional on what, exactly? How is this different from current policy?

And finally, we get to a kernel of Romney's strategic thinking:

It is a mistake – and sometimes a tragic one – to think that firmness in American foreign policy can bring only tension or conflict. The surest path to danger is always weakness and indecision. In the end, it is resolve that moves events in our direction, and strength that keeps the peace.

I will not surrender America’s leadership in the world. We must have confidence in our cause, clarity in our purpose, and resolve in our might.

This is very simple: if you do not want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your President. You have that President today.

If this really is Romney's foreign policy philosophy, then he's right, it's a pretty sharp contrast with the incumbent. Not the "strongest nation on earth" business, but rather the importance of resolve. I'm not sure, however, that this is the contrast he wants. The last time someone ran foreign policy based on this philosophy was during the first term of the Bush administration. It didn't end well.

After the speech, Chuck Todd tweeted that "The Romney VFW speech felt like it was aimed at GOP voters, not swing voters." I'd agree. Foreign policy doesn't matter that much to swing voters, but rhetoric like this is a great way to appeal to and energize the base. If Romney were to actually follow through on this speech, then the consequences would range from insignificant to quite serious. But it could be that Romney simply doesn't care about foreign policy all that much, and is using these kind of speeches strictly as a tool to cater to key political constitutencies.

What do you think?

I take my cues from the front page of the New York Times just like any other effete intellectual member of the Media Elite. And today, Jodi Kantor delves into the latest paroxysm of debate about women trying to "have it all," and, hey, whaddaya know, this time it's an Atlantic cover essay by Anne-Marie Slaughter that's set it off. I've had my friendly disagreements with Slaughter in the past, and I'm afraid I'm going to have another one after reading "Why Women Still Can't Have it All." But in this instance I want to stress the "friendly" part of the "disagreement."

Slaughter's title pretty much sums up her thesis: after spending two years in a hard-charging job as the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, she discovered that the opportunity costs to her home life were too great:

I realized that I didn’t just need to go home. Deep down, I wanted to go home. I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.

The essay is worth reading, if not quite as groundbreaking as others would like it to be. It ceetainly references political minefields issues I've raised here in the past on women pursuing foreign policy careers. Rather than launch a full-blown critique, however, I'd just raise three questions:

1) Is this just about women? As multiple critics have pointed out, the issues Slaughter raises -- balancing work and home life, etc. -- are hardly unique to women. She suggests that women face this challenge more acutely because... well... they're moms:

From years of conversations and observations, however, I’ve come to believe that men and women respond quite differently when problems at home force them to recognize that their absence is hurting a child, or at least that their presence would likely help. I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.

Many factors determine this choice, of course. Men are still socialized to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the breadwinner; women, to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the caregiver. But it may be more than that. When I described the choice between my children and my job to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, she said exactly what I felt: “There’s really no choice.” She wasn’t referring to social expectations, but to a maternal imperative felt so deeply that the “choice” is reflexive.

As someone in a more traditional marriage than Slaughter, I'd tweak this just a bit. First of all, unless someone is inheriting a trust fund, there's also really no choice in providing for a family either. Seriously, there isn't. Second of all, a difference between men and women is that when parenting issues come up, it's totally cool for women to anguish about it -- in print, no less -- while it's happening. For men, it's totally cool to drink Scotch, brood and repress feelings about the costs of careerism for years until it all boils to the surface at some family vacation when the kids are grown up and resentments can be aired. But trust me, men have to cope with this as well.

Third, I wonder if the choice is really that stark. There are hard-charging jobs and hard-charging jobs. There's being an active parent and then there's... American parenting in affluent zip codes. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry noted:

YES, you can have it all. You can have a successful career and a good family. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, and there is absolutely no doubt about that.

What you CANNOT have is a successful career AND helicopter parenting. This “it” you cannot have. And if you want the best for your kids, you’ll choose the career and ditch the helicopter. They’ll be better off, and take it from me, they’ll be grateful.

2) Is it the international dimension? Slaughter was trying to write as general an essay as possible, but I was struck by how much of her anecdata consisted of women in foreign affairs/national security careers. I have no doubt that professionals in other sectors face this issue, but one of the biggest challenges with "international" careers is that they tend to spawn international travel.

I know and admire some professionals who go overseas and bring their families with them, but that's not for everyone. The one piece of advice I can proffer here is to cram intense foreign experiences early in one's life. One of the jumpstarts to my own career track was spending significant amounts of time in eastern Ukraine during a time when no Westerners wanted to be there. I was able to do that because at the time I was unattached and childless. There is no way -- no way -- I would have made the same choice if I was married and a father. Plan accordingly.

3) Are the solutions worse than the problem? Finally, I am skeptical that Slaughter's suggested reforms will really work. I like her suggestion that we reconceive our career arcs so that they peak in one's late sixties rather than twenty years earlier -- but that won't happen unless wages get less sticky. Older workers woiuld have to be comfortable with declining rather than rising wages, because otherwise Slaughter's suggestion would act as a massive barrier to hiring younger workers.

Furthermore, some of Slaughter's recommendations would likely have unanticipated consequences that would exacerbate the very problems she wants to solve. For example, one of the issues that she raises is family leave for raising children. Now, this is an innovation that has been cemented into the academy pretty well -- but the effects have been somewhat perverse. That's because after maternity leave, paternity leave got institutionalized. This sounds great, but I know from personal experience that women and men use these leaves differently. Women tend to use it by being moms. Men tend to use it by being more of a dad, but also by using it as a semi-sabbatical to publish more. I should know -- that's what I did. So an innovation that was designed to allow redress gender imbalances actually exacerbated them.

Now is ordinarily the time in the blog post when I offer my own suggestions, but I can't say I have any great ideas. So I'll leave it to the readers: what is to be done?

[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]

I enjoyed the first season of Game of Thrones but was somewhat underwhelmed with efforts to use it as a window to understanding world politics today. The second season, which concluded this past Sunday, however, did much better on this score. I think this is because in season one the primary narrative dealt with one ruler of Westeros coping with stupendously naive staff contending factions, whereas this season dealt with a more variegated set of leaders, which worked far better for the show. Two signs of this: First, whereas the Daenerys Targaryen plot in the first season was fun and diverting, I found season two's Dany sections distracting and deadening. Part of this might have been because Dany was whining more, but it was also because she was largely operating in a political vacuum and therefore less interesting. Second, whereas Cersei Lannister seemed like a master Machiavellian in season one, in season two she appeared to be just a little out of her depth. It's not because she got dumber, but because the protagonists who interacted with her were wiser or more powerful than Ned Stark.

Season two's War of the Five Kings allowed for greater contrast between different styles of political leadership and political culture -- and was therefore all the richer for it. Leadership ranged from Stannis Baratheon's humorless determination to Tywin Lannister's stolid competence to Joffrey's sadism to Robb Stark's efforts to preserve humanitarian norms to Balon Greyjoy's sheer bloody-mindedness. The staffers were great too. I'm sorry that Tyrion Lannister and Davos Seaworth never got to share a scene together -- that would have been a hoot. Similarly, the interactions between Tyrion and Varys -- especially this one -- were delicious.

Indeed, the final episode alone is so rich in its contemplation of political leadership alone that it made up for the less comprehensible parts of the plot (why the hell did Bran, Hodor, and company need to abandon Winterfell?) Tyrion's explanation for why he wanted to stay in King's Landing was one of those rare moments in television in which a character was honest about his enjoyment of politics. As Alyssa Rosenberg shrewdly observes, the Throne Room scene in which much political kabuki theater transpired was a powerful reminder of how the victors write the history. And the Varys-Ros alliance bodes well for political machinations in season three.

For all of this -- and zombies too! -- the finale was great. What put it over the top, however, might be the best rejoinder to the Great Speech Theory of Politics that I have ever seen -- Theon Greyjoy's efforts to rally his troops in the face of overwhelming odds during the siege of Winterfell:

Anyone who calls for better political "leadership" should watch this again and again and again. Yes, leadership matters on the margins -- but power and purpose matter one whole hell of a lot more.

The end of the episode promises an even wider array of political actors -- Mance Rayder, the White Walkers, a returning Dany -- influencing activities in Westeros. This bodes very, very well for season three.

What do you think?

It's the last day of the International Studies Association annual meetings.  I'm sleep-deprived, hung over, moderately sunburned, and pretty sick of international relations theory.  While this throwback to my college days is moderately nostalgic, it is usually not a good state for blogging.  Trying to tackle or critique the finer points of a nuanced argument takes energy and analytic skills, and after losing Twitter Fight Club 2012, I'm feeling wanting in both.

But, just when it seems like there's nothing I'm capable of blogging about in such a state, along comes Donald Trump. 

When we last left The Donald in the world of foreign policy, he was uttering such inane, ignorant statements that I even invented an award in his honor.  Today, Politico reports that Trump offered the following opinion on Laura Ingraham's radio show: 

I happen to think that the President is going to start a war with Iran. I think it will be a short-term popular thing to do, and I think he’s going to do that for political reasons, if you want to know the truth. I don’t know if anyone says this as openly, but I think he’s going to start a war with Iran. And, that will be short-term popular. If you remember Bush, Bush was unbeatable for about two months, and then all of the sudden the world set in when he attacked Iraq. And he went from very popular to not popular at all. But I think that Obama will start in some form a war with Iran, and I think that will make him very popular for a short period of time. That will make him hard to beat also.

Now I could go on a long-winded rant about Trump's stupidity, but I think it's more fun to treat this as a challenge to my readers.  See, it's not just that Trump makes a few errors in that paragraph, it's that with one partial exception, every single statement he just said was factually wrong. 

So, rather than ask my readers to point out the myriad ways in which Donald Trump is in error, here's my challenge -- what sentence in the above paragraph contains the most truth value? 

Get to it, dear readers -- while I go search for Advil.

UPDATE: So I see that Trump has said other controversial things today. I will leave it to readers to judge whether the veracity of his later comments are greater than his foreign-policy musings.

I think it's safe to say that the vampire squid Goldman Sachs brand has taken a few hits in recent years. To add to the calumny, Greg Smith, an executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is leaving Goldman today after publishing an op-ed in the New York Times explaining why he's leaving.  It's not pretty:

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

Man, that best-of-luck office party is going to be awkward. 

The fact that this op-ed has already spawned its own satire suggests that it's not going to have much of an effect on the larger debate on Goldman Sachs. Which is a shame, because such a debate would be pretty useful when thinking about Big Finance (though see Gabriel Sherman's excellent New York essay on this topic from a few weeks back). Indeed, this is a teachable moment for how to compose a memo, or a mission statement, or an op-ed that will provoke a deep debate over corporate culture.  Let's see where Smith went wrong: 

1)  He made it all about himself. The ostensible point of this exercise is to shine a light on a shady corporate culture that values sins over virtues. In these instances, the following paragraph should never appear: 

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.       

See how that was ostensibly about Goldman Sachs but was really about the author?  Not a good sign. 

2)  His job apparently required him to burrow out and reside in a large soundproof hole in the ground. Let's take a look at what Smith said about the halcyon, early days of his Goldman Sachs tenure -- i.e., when he started in 2000:

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients....

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence. 

Excuse me for a sec, I need to do this for a spell. 

Look, Smith should know the Goldman Sachs culture better than I do, but as an outsider, I am fairly certain of two things:  A)  Before Smith's op-ed, the terms "humility" and "Goldman Sachs" never appeared in the same sentence.... ever; and  B)  Making money was always how people got promoted at Goldman Sachs. 

There's been enough written about Goldman Sachs to know that by 2006, the firm had recognized that it was badly overexposed in the subprime market and decided to dump their holdings onto their clients. We know that in 2007, the firm went so far out of bounds that the SEC actually brought a civil suit against them, securing a $550 million settlement more than 18 months ago. And now Smith notices something is amiss??!! While the Wall Street Journal suggests Smith's role at Goldman wasn't pivotal, this kind of naivite requires a special kind of willful blindness. 

If you're going to be a whistle-blower, you need to acknowledge upfront your complicity in any malfeasance, be it legal or ethical. Smith's op-ed doesn't come close to doing this. 

Let's face it, there's a general anxiety about the future of America.  There's Tom Friedman's column today, which my doctors have now forbade me from critiquing in order to keep my blood pressure down.  Books suggesting the United States is kowtowing to China are forthcoming.  The Economist recently observed on the highlights of a sobering survey of Harvard Business School graduates, which contained the following:

Fully 71% of the businesspeople polled expected America’s competitiveness to decline over the next three years. (National competitiveness is a slippery concept: countries do not compete in the same way that firms do. But the businessfolk in question answered some clearer questions, too.) Some 45% said that American firms will find it harder to compete in the global economy. A startling 64% said that American firms will find it harder to pay high wages and benefits.

Intriguingly, the Harvard alumni were gloomy about where America is headed, rather than how it is now. Some 57% felt that today the business environment in America is somewhat or much better than the global average; only 15% said it was worse. But when asked to compare its prospects with those of other industrialised economies, only 9% felt that America was pulling ahead; some 21% said it was falling behind. A striking 66% expected America to lose ground to Brazil, India and China; only 8% thought it would pull away from them.

This would seem to jibe with popular laments about why Apple can't make its products domestically.  There are a lot of reasons, but a significant one is the lack of necessary skills for higher-end manufacturing.  This is in no small part because American students shy away from the training necessary to do these kind of jobs even if they originally think they want to be engineers.   Why?  Because American college students don't like doing homework. 

So, America is doomed, right? 

To be honest, this sounds like a lot of pious baloney.  As Michael Beckley points out in a new article in International Security, "The United States is not in decline; in fact, it is now wealthier, more innovative, and more militarily powerful compared to China than it was in 1991."  The whole article is worth a read, and a good cautionary tale on the dangers of overestimating the ease of national catch-up:

The widespread misperception that China is catching up to the United States stems from a number of analytical flaws, the most common of which is the tendency to draw conclusions about the U.S.-China power balance from data that compare China only to its former self. For example, many studies note that the growth rates of China’s per capita income, value added in hightechnology industries, and military spending exceed those of the United States and then conclude that China is catching up. This focus on growth rates, however, obscures China’s decline relative to the United States in all of these categories. China’s growth rates are high because its starting point was low. China is rising, but it is not catching up.

What about the future?  One could point to the last few months of modestly encouraging economic data, but that's ephemeral.  Rather, there are three macrotrends that are worth observing now before (I suspect) they come up in the State of the Union: 

1)  The United States is successfully deleveraging.  As the McKinsey Global Institute notes, the United States is actually doing a relatively good job of slimming down total debt -- i.e., consumer, investor and public debt combined.  Sure, public debt has exploded, but as MGI points out, that really is the proper way of doing things after a financial bubble:

The deleveraging processes in Sweden and Finland in the 1990s offer relevant lessons today. Both endured credit bubbles and collapses, followed by recession, debt reduction, and eventually a return to robust economic growth. Their experiences and other historical examples show two distinct phases of deleveraging. In the first phase, lasting several years, households, corporations, and financial institutions reduce debt significantly. While this happens, economic growth is negative or minimal and government debt rises. In the second phase of deleveraging, GDP growth rebounds and then government debt is gradually reduced over many years....

As of January 2012, the United States is most closely following the Nordic path towards deleveraging. Debt in the financial sector has fallen back to levels last seen in 2000, before the credit bubble, and the ratio of corporate debt relative to GDP has also fallen. US households have made more progress in debt reduction than other countries, and may have roughly two more years before returning to sustainable levels of debt. 

Indeed, the deleveraging is impressive enough for even Paul Krugman to start sounding optimistic: 

the economy is depressed, in large part, because of the housing bust, which immediately suggests the possibility of a virtuous circle: an improving economy leads to a surge in home purchases, which leads to more construction, which strengthens the economy further, and so on. And if you squint hard at recent data, it looks as if something like that may be starting: home sales are up, unemployment claims are down, and builders’ confidence is rising.

Furthermore, the chances for a virtuous circle have been rising, because we’ve made significant progress on the debt front.

2) Manufacturing is on the mend.  Another positive trend, contra the Harvard Business School and the GOP presidential candidates, is in manufacturing.  Some analysts have already predicted a revival in that sector, and now the data appears to be backing up that prediction.   The Financial Times' Ed Crooks notes:

Plenty of economists and business leaders believe that US manufacturing is entering an upturn that is not just a bounce-back after the recession, but a sign of a longer-term structural improvement. Manufacturing employment has grown faster in the US since the recession than in any other leading developed economy, according to official figures. Productivity growth, subdued wages, the steady decline in the dollar since 2002 and rapid pay inflation in emerging economies have combined to make the US a more attractive location.

“Over the past decade, the US has had some huge gains in productivity, and we have seen unit labour costs actually falling,” says Chad Moutray, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers. “A lot of our members tell us that it sometimes is cheaper to produce in the US, especially because labour costs are lower.”

Now, whether this boom in manufacturing will lead to a corresponding boom in manufacturing employment is much more debatable.  Still, as The Atlantic's Adam Davidson concludes:  "the still-unfolding story of manufacturing’s transformation is, in many respects, that of our economic age. It’s a story with much good news for the nation as a whole. But it’s also one that is decidedly less inclusive than the story of the 20th century."

3) A predicted decline in energy insecurity.  British Petroleum has issued their Energy Outlook for 2030.  The Guardian's Richard Wachman provides a useful summary:

Growth in shale oil and gas supplies will make the US virtually self-sufficient in energy by 2030, according to a BP report published on Wednesday.

In a development with enormous geopolitical implications, the country's dependence on oil imports from potentially volatile countries in the Middle East and elsewhere would disappear, BP said, although Britain and western Europe would still need Gulf supplies.

BP's latest energy outlook forecasts a growth in unconventional energy sources, "including US shale oil and gas, Canadian oil sands and Brazilian deepwater, plus a gradual decline in demand, that would see [North America] become almost totally energy self-sufficient" in two decades.

BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley, said: "Our report challenges some long-held beliefs. Significant changes in US supply-and-demand prospects, for example, highlight the likelihood that import dependence in what is today's largest energy importer will decline substantially."

The report said the volume of oil imports in the US would fall below 1990s levels, largely due to rising domestic shale oil production and ethanol replacing crude. The US would also become a net exporter of natural gas.

Note that this will take a while, and doesn't mean that the U.S. will be energy independent.  Still, it's quite a trend.  Or, rather, trends.   

Since the Second World War, the pattern in the global political economy has been for the United States to adjust to systemic shocks better than any potential challenger country.  A lot of very smart people have predicted that this time was different -- the United States wouldn't be able to do it again.  These trends suggest that maybe, just maybe, that might be wrong. 

Am I missing anything? 

The genesis of this blog post is a bit arcane.  In response to news reports about proposed changes in U.S. defense doctrine, Andrew Exum jokingly suggested "replacing the 'Two Wars' strategy with a 'Who Wants Some? You? How About You, Tough Guy?' strategy" on Twitter.  This led to other suggested mottos, expressed in YouTube videos, which eventually led to me issuing a grandiose call:  suggest the YouTube clip that "best encapsulates American grand strategy."   

Yeah, that should bring you up to speed. 

Below you will find the ten eleven suggested clips that resonated the most for me, with some further elaboration by your humble blogger. WARNING: some profanity. Then again, if the profane is offensive to you, it's best that you not think too hard about American foreign policy.   

W. Thomas Webb suggests "Orchestra Fail":

A penetrating critique of the orrery of errors that have befallen American foreign policy as of late.  Clearly, the United States is trying to conduct its international affairs in a sea of darkness, lacking crucial information to light the way.  Despite the best efforts to get all the components of American power into alignment, it's hard to pull off. 

Steve Saideman linked to this scene from Crocodile Dundee:

Steve's rationale: 

The new or not so new defense strategy of having enough of a military to fight one war while deterring or spoiling an adversary's plans requires a "bigger knife" not to use but to dissuade challengers. 

Such a grand strategy also plays to the U.S.'s current strength -- dominating conventional war through bigger and better weapons.  In the video, Croc Dundee is confronted not by one mugger but several (and one can read race into this if one wants, since the mugger was African-American, and most threats to the U.S. are by non-white folks).  His big knife spoils the plans of each of them.  Sounds like a good use of resources.

"Cosmopolitan Scum" put forward "Jessica's Daily Affirmation," suggesting it as a symbol of "soft power":

I think it works as an example of soft power and American exceptionalism.  Via her affirmations Jessica demonstrates that Americans think America is awesome -- and therefore, why the rest of the world will/should want the same things Americans want.

FP's Michael Cohen proffers this climactic speech from Animal House:

Not bad, actually.  Note that Bluto's inspiring speech has no appreciable effect on the apathetic Deltas at first.  Only when other elites -- like Otter -- indicate their support, does the rest of the country -- I mean, fraternity -- rally around the flag.  A subtle exegesis of how elite consensus can drive the mass public into stupid, futile gestures. 

Andrew Exum's suggestion was -- wait for it -- "Leeroy Jenkins!"

An utterly brilliant exposition of the ways in which the best strategy in the world will be subverted by the cowboy who shoots first and asks questons later. Indeed, this clip works on two levels. On the one hand, you can think of it as the struggles that go on within the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy to make sure everyone is on the same page -- and the ways in which hawkish actors can unilaterally set the agenda. Or, look at it as an exegesis of how the United States, through its willingness to take immediate aggressive action, can exacerbate tensions among its less powerful allies. This exuberance can breed resentment among America's partners, but often, Washington doesn't care, because, well, at least we ain't chicken. 

Matt Fay offers up this scene from Ghostbusters:

Hmmm ... I'm intrigued.  This appears to be a subtle indictment of the idealpolitik that occasionally governs American foreign policy.  After all, Ray is trying to "think of the most harmless thing ... something that could never destroy us." Naturally, this leads to the creation of an entity that causes his paranormal colleagues to be "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought." Think of this as a potential metaphor of both liberal and neoconservative enthusiasm for democracy promotion.  Sure, it sounds good in your head, but then you see who winds up doing well in the post-Arab Spring political environment, it's easy to lose the capacity for rational choice. 

Jake Sternberger goes for ... well, just see below:

Ha, I bet you think you've been rickrolled.  Think again!  Rick Astley smartly presaged one of the central dilemmas of America's post-Cold War foreign policy: how do you get nervous allies to believe that the United States will honor its overseas obligations?  You have to have attractive bleach-blonde back-up singers reassure them that "a full commitment's what I'm thinking of" and that "you'll never get this from any other guy."  You have to pledge, repeatedly, that America is "never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down."  Furthermore, the United States is "never gonna run around and desert you."  This kind of reassurance mechanism, done with the proper tone and in harmony with other voices, can make even the wariest of allies vault over political barriers and do backflips in celebration of their alliances with the United States. 

Steven Metz proposes this bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: 

Steven suggests that, at a minimum, this explains public discourse on grand strategy, and he has a point.  On the one hand, you have an angry public that appears to be willing to fabricate evidence to justify taking aggressive action.  On the other hand, you have elites that reject the absence of any logic to justify action.  Instrad, they rely on their own galactically stupid set of axioms to guide their thinking. 

Zach of Arabia offers up "Team America sad song":

Sure, the song is an obvious choice, but as he notes, it was no accident that he chose this version.  The joyful version makes light of America's exuberance for all things American.  That's not the point of this clip -- it suggests the dark side of American exceptionalism, the burden that the United States faces as it tries to preserve global order in a world gone amok by odd, tacit alliances between terrorists and rogue states. 

Hayes Brown, however, submitted my hands-down favorite, a short but sweet clip: "Go! Bwaaaah!"

In less than three seconds, this clip hints at a myriad number of rich textual interpretations. Does the dog represent what happens when force is used, dragging the rest of the country along? Or, perhaps the canine symbolizes the big influence of small allies. Actors that the United States thinks it has under its thumb are actually driving foreign policy more than you would think. Without question, however, critics of the Obama administration would conclude that this clip is the definitive explication of the perils that come with "leading from behind."

UPDATED BONUS CLIP:  Diana Wueger submitted this very late, but it's too good not to add:  "Like a BUS!" 

Like most of these seemingly short clips, Wueger's submission works on two levels.  On the one hand, it demonstrates the ways in which hegemonic power allows some actors to be able to pursue policies that small actors simply cannot.  In this comparison, this clip reminds the viewer of the many global public goods that a hegemonic actor might feel obligated to provide.  Compare Bus 62 with the U.S. Navy after the 2004 tsunami, for example.  On the other hand, hegemonic power can also have unanticipated negative externalities.  Sure, Bus 62 simply plows through the barrier.  However, it does so without helping the other people stuck in traffic, and, like a boss, nearly plows over the person in the way.  A cautionary tale about the uses and possible abuses of power. 

OK, readers, what are your suggestions? 

One of the drawbacks of being a foreign policy blogger is that it becomes very awkward to avoid discussing international relations events that make the front page for consecutive days.  I am therefore duty-bound to comment on Kim Jong Il's death, Kim Jong Un's ascension to leadership, and what it means for North Korea. 

Except I have no friggin' clue what will happen. 

I am in good company on this total lack of knowledge.  I'm bemused by all the U.S. officials anonymously commenting on what Kim Jong Un is like, given that our intelligence on this country is so awesome that Washington didn't know his father was dead until 50 hours after he died, and then only because the North Koreans announced it on television.  To be fair, however, it's not like the South Koreans knew either, and some reports I've seen suggest the Chinese were in the dark as well. 

Despite the near total lack of information outside of North Korea about North Korea, the International Brotherhood of Foreign Policy Pundits require I provide at least two predictions per post.  So, here's my first prediction, courtesy of Mr. T: 

What we do know about the triumvirate of Kim-Jong-Il selected leaders guiding Kim Jong Un into power does not bode well for the North Korean economy.  The only bright spot for the DPRK's economy in recent years was a modest step towards private economic activity.  The fact that one of them "published articles about the need for the government to curtail market-oriented activity" does not bode well for the per capita income of your average North Korean. 

My second prediction is that Kim Jong Un will hold power for longer than any Western analyst expects him to hold power.  Most of the pundit chatter has been about the Kim the Youngest's lack of gravitas and the asbsence of sufficient time to groom him as the successor to Kim Jong Il.  As I'm hearing this, I keep thinking of Hua Guofeng, Mao's successor.  It's an imperfect analogy, but Hua was a relative unknown plucked from obscurity by Mao only a few years before his death.  In the end he was outmaneuvered by Deng Xiaoping and his allies, but even Hua managed to stay in power for a few years before that happened, putting down an attempted coup by Mao's wife Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four. 

To use more game-theoretic language, I'm not sure there is a first-mover advantage to any ambitious North Korean challenging Kim the Youngest.  Because of that, and because the entire DPRK elite likely fears internal division when concerned about natiional survival, the tyranny of the status quo will likely persist for longer than anyone realizes.  Which, unfortunately, in this case, happens to be actual tyranny. 

Am I missing anything? 

I could point to full-blown reports, news stories, or portentious weather forecasts, but American residents already know the truth -- Thanksgiving travel is an ordeal.  Traffic jams, crowded flights -- it seems everyone is trying to get somewhere in the days before Turkey Day. 

With the general mantra of "hurry up and place your hands in a surrender position wait" governing these next 36 hours, I thought it would be worth considering how a better appreciation of the tools of stateraft might help those of you on the road to avoid unnecessary frustrations. 

Let's say that another actor -- which we'll call the target -- is pursuing a course of action that conflicts with your interests in world politics.  This presumably means that all your attempts to avoid this clash of interests in the first place have failed.  What are your options in developing a policy response? 

Well, there's always the denial option -- physically preventing the target from doing the thing that is bothering you.  Of course, denial often requires the overpowering, sustained use of force, and therefore is massively expensive.  Very few actors have this option available to them. 

If denial is not possible, another possibility is compellence.  In this case, the goal is to punish the target such that it recalculates the costs and benefits of doing what it is doing and acquiesces to you.  While less costly than denial, punishing the target will often involve punishing yourself, albeit not as severely.  Some actors possess this option, but its success rate is far from guaranteed

Compellence and denial sound very coercive -- what about inducements?  Surely the most efficient way to alter the target's behavior is to buy them off!  Not so fast -- sometimes the price is extraordinarily steep.  Sometimes the target doesn't want to be thought of as for sale.  And sometimes the target might con you. 

There's always the possibility of persuasion -- using sweet reason to get the target to reconsider their motives and reverse their actions.  Of course, what seems eminently reasonable to you might not look so smart to the target, so this is hardly a surefire recipe for success. 

Finally, one should always consider acceptance -- allowing that the costs of trying to change the target's behavior far outweigh the costs of adjusting to the target's behavior.  Intuitively, this is a very frustrating outcome -- but if you lack the capability or the budget to pursue the other options, then it still might be the best course of action.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with Thanksgiving travel?  Quite a lot, actually.  Let's say you're stuck in a traffic jam on I-95, or you're on a plane with a crying toddler sitting next to you.  The natural instinct is to declare that the situation is "unacceptable" and that "failure is not an option."  All well and good, but let's run through our  list of generic policy options and see what's feasible if you're, say, stuck in a traffic jam: 

1)  Denial:  If you're on the road, sure, you could use RPGs to blast a hole through the traffic.  That would require an awful lot of them, however, and I hear they're expensive and illegal to use.  Good luck having enough of them to force your way through the tri-state area.     

2)  Compellence:  Lot of drivers seem to believe that there are forms of punishment that could be pursued:  constant horn-honking, hanging right on someone's bumper, and so forth.  This can work with a few drivers, but more often than not it simply creates reciprocal bellicose behavior/minor fender-benders/West Coast shootings by the targets. 

3)  Inducements:  The proffering of inducements on clogged interstates is exceptionally rare, for two reasons.  First, what can be offered?  Snacks?  Drinks?  A video player?  These are all exhaustible resources -- so in a traffic jam, this will only get you a few car lengths ahead. 

4)  Persuasion:  As Tom Vanderbilt so wonderfully explained in Traffic, communication across cars is difficult.  There's that horn, and of course gesticulations with one's fingers can also often be used.  Neither of these really persuades, however. 

Unfortunately, but logically, this leads us to acceptance as the best approach to handling Thanksgiving traffic jams.  It's the best of a bad set of policy options -- much like modern-day statecraft. 

[What about the crying toddler on the plane?--ed.  Oh, then this metaphor works even better -- crying toddlers are the uncontrollable rogue states of travel.  The parent could try denial, but suffocating children still carries serious legal penalties in most states.  Compellence is popular, except if the idea is to get a screaming child to stop screaming, punishment isn't really going to work well.  Inducements -- "here, have some chocolate!" -- can work, but the child quickly figures out the associated moral hazard and has an incentive to act out again to get more inducements later in the flight.  Using persuasion on crying children is something that non-parents are convinced will work -- until the moment they become parents themselves and realize their own utter stupidity.  No, if a child is bawling uncontrollably during a flight, it's not because the parent is derelict in their parenting -- it's because they've already exhausted the first four policy options and have no recourse but acceptance.]

Safe and sane travels to one and all!   

Apparently the organizers of tomorrow's GOP foreign policy debate asked David Frum to submit ten questions to ask.  For the record, no one asked me... sniff.... really I'll be fine... but that doesn't mean I can't offer some of my own.  Here would be my top 10 questions: 

1)  In the last debate, all of you declared that the United States should not help out Italy or other eurozone countries plagued by sovereign debt crises. If these economies received rescue funds from China instead, would that undermine U.S. national security?

2)  Many of you on the dias have declared that there should be no daylight between Israel and the United States.  Israeli officials have repeatedly and formally requested that Jonathan Pollard's sentence be commuted for spying for Israel.  As president, will you accede to this Israeli request? 

3)  In previous debates, many of you have warned about the dangers of a debased dollar.  At the same time, many of you have also complained that China is undervaluing its currency vis-a-vis the dollar to augment its economic growth.  Which issue do you believe is more important to America's economic strength? 

4)  Why should the United States pay any dues to the United Nations?  Do you all agree with Governor Perry that the U.S. should reconsider those dues payments? 

5)  The Doha round of world trade talks has stalled out, and bilateral free-trade agreements have proliferated in recent years.  As the president of the world's largest economy, what approach would you favor to promote greater trade liberalization? 

6)  The United States recently dispatched 100 military advisors to Uganda in an attempt to subdue the Lord's Resistance Army. What criteria would you use, as president, to decide when to use American force for the purpose of humanitarian intervention?

7)  Many of you have complained about illegal immigration flows during the campaign, but the hard data suggests that these flows have slowed dramatically over the past few years.  What is the appropriate amount of effort to devote to this issue? 

8)  What steps would you take, as president, to ensure that elements of the Pakistani government cease supporting violent non-state actors in Afghanistan and India? 

9)  Many of you have criticized the Obama administration for ignoring military advice on troop decisions in Afghanistan and Iraq.  During the pre-war debate with respect to Iraq, however, the Bush administration rejected troop estimates from Army Chief of Staff (and now Secretary for Veterans Affairs) Eric Shinseki.  When would you be prepared to overrule the advice you receive from the military? 

10)  Who, in your opinion, was the greatest foreign policy president in American history besides Ronald Reagan, and why? 

Commenters are heartily encouraged to offer their foreign policy questions in the comments. 

In the wake of Hurricane Irene, the St. Petersburg Times records an interesting interpretation of recent events from GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. This is a direct quote of Bachmann:

I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.

An interesting hypothesis!! So, there are three possibilities here. The first is that Bachmann was joking -- in which case, wow, that's a really tasteless joke given the loss of life and probably warrants a pretty big apology.

The second is that Bachmann is simply nuts wrong. Doug Mataconis points out,

I’m not sure how this computes given the fact that the storm largely spared Washington, D.C. and New York, while hammering a red states like North Carolina and a heavily Republican area like Virginia’s Tidewater region.

Well, socialist-supporting Vermont got hit pretty hard too, but still, this is a fair point, and "Bachmann being wrong" seems like another safe bet.

The third possibility is the one I want to explore, however -- what if Bachmann is right? What if God really is using wrath to coerce humanity into implementing a particular set of policy preferences?

A God-fearing person would naturally decide to obey. However, this kind of coercive demand strikes me as a pretty massive intrusion into human sovereignty. The point of a democracy is for majorities of citizens and their elected representatives to decide matters of policy. Recent history suggests that neither sovereign governments nor their populations take kindly to coercive threats from other men. If we acquiesce to Divine demands now, don't we just let God win?

Bachmann's response suggests an obvious bandwagoning approach to the awesome power of deities: When God says jump, you should say, how high? And, indeed, if the Almighty really is omnipotent, this strategy has much to recommend it. Bandwagoning is generally recommended when the targeted actor is comparatively weak, has few natural allies, and believes that the targeting actor can be appeased with concessions. This seems to fit the Old Testament, monotheistic God to a tee.

On the other hand, however, might a balancing approach yield better long-term results? After all, God has a disturbing track record of making demands like this. We know from Genesis the Old Testament that the Almighty has a tendency to, well, you know, smite humans on a semi-regular basis. There's the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, an awful lot of Egyptians, etc. This doesn't even include the number of times God demanded death (the sacrifice of Isaac, Ninevah) only to relent at the last minute. Sure, God has some good reasons in some of these instances, but from a threat assessment perspective, it's veeeeery disturbing.

Maybe the bandwagoning criteria don't apply. If one operates along the monotheistic assumption*, humans should ask if there is a possible ally out there to help resist God's will [Don't go there --ed.], an entity who is God's enduring rival [You're really going there, aren't you?! --ed.] , one who might have the necessary power to make God think twice about all that smiting?

It's time to wonder … would a temporary alliance with Satan really be that bad? [Yes it world!! --ed.] Winston Churchill once said, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Now I'm not sure I would even go that far … the whole selling souls thing sounds like a pretty big demand too. That said, a sober, realpolitik perspective would demand that making a deal with the devil has to be a policy option that stays on the table.

[How about a nice buck-passing strategy instead?--ed. Hey, I'd love to just force other creatures like, say, apes to go toe-to-toe with God, but I just don't see it happening.]

Readers are warmly encouraged to puzzle this out for themselves -- or, instead, to buy the very entertaining Biblical Games by Steven Brams.

*The monotheism assumption is important when thinking about how to cope with a venegeful god. If the universe turns out to be polytheistic, then the question becomes whether us mortals can sow dissension among the gods before someone releases a Kraken.

While the debtopocalypse might have been cancelled, I see that the wake for American hegemony is chugging right along.

The interwebs is drowning from variations of the argument that the process by which the debt ceiling deal was reached has dented American power. To sum them up: Sure, the United States government staved off collapse, but the galactically stupid brinkmanship over it has permanently damaged America's brand. Furthermore, the new politics of brinkmanship means that we could potentially see this kind of own-goal as a new permanent fixture of American political economy. Continued political uncertainty over something as obviously necessary as raising the debt ceiling means that actual policy problems like, say, crumbling infrastructure, education, or reassessing grand strategy is a true fool's errand. So, in other words, the USA is screwed.

See the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, David Weigel, David Rothkopf, Felix Salmon, and Joshua Keating for just a small sampling of this compelling argument.

To which I say: mmmmmmmaybe.  

I don't doubt that the U.S. brand of constitutional democracy has taken a pretty severe hit from this episode. Then again, the parliamentary system of democratic governance has long been more popular, so that's not really a new thing.

There are three factors, however, that make me wary of this kind of eulogy. First, I've come to look at concepts like "soft power" and "standing" with a bit of a jaundiced eye. Even if the U.S. takes a hit in that category, I'm not sure that loss translates anything more tangible than … a bunch of foreign-policy pundits bemoaning its loss.

Seriously, compare the last few years of the Bush administration with the first few years of the Obama administration. Any measurable metric of standing or soft power with the presidential transition. The effect on U.S. foreign policy, however, has been negligible.

Second, power is always a relative term, so the question has to be asked -- who's gaining on the United States? Joshua Keating's survey of global schadenfreude doesn't change the fact that the eurozone remains a basket case, Japan and Russia remain demographic disasters, and China has domestic political problems that make partisanship in the United States look like child's play. Even a cursory glance at military spending reveals no peer competitor to the United States. So yes, the United States will endure a rain of rhetorical horses**t for a while … right up until the next crisis in which the world demands America "do something" because it's still the only superpower still standing.

Or, to put this in bond rating language -- even if US power is downgraded from AAA, who else is even above BBB+?

Third, the thing about democracy is that it has multiple ways to constrain political stupidity and ideological overreach. The first line of defense is that politicians will have an electoral incentive to act in non-crazy ways in order to get re-elected. The second line of defense is that politicians or parties who violate the non-crazy rule fail to get re-elected. So, in some ways, the true test of the American system's ability to stave off failure will be the 2012 election. Politicians from both parties have vastly overinterpreted recent electoral victories as sweeping mandates. I suspect, in 2012, many of them will be penalized for such hubris. If they aren't, well, then the conventional wisdom might have a point.

Smart investors made a ton of money this past month by betting on the full faith and credit of the United States despite the D.C. blood sport. If one could make a similar wager on American power, I'd be inclined to bet against the current market sentiment.

Am I missing anything?

Over the past week there's been a lot of foreign policy outputs coming from the gut, particularly with respect to the greater Middle East. Newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been cursing like a PG-rated sailor as of late, saying about the Iraqis, "dammit, make a decision" with respect to a new defense minister. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has declared that Bashar Assad has "lost legitimacy," which is A) true; and B) not all that helpful a guide for future policy toward Syria. U.S. ambassador to that country Robert Ford took to Facebook to express his ire at the Syrian government. And now we're halting $800 million in military aid to Pakistan, which sounds great but is not necessarily going to make things better.

Do these gestures of frustration accomplish anything? That's hard to say. In terms of concrete outcomes, the likely answer is no -- part of the reason for the venting of frustrations on these issues is that the United States has so little leverage in most of these situations. On the other hand, just the acknowledgment of frustration can be politically useful, a venting of pressure that might otherwise lead to hopelessly misguided or absurdly risky policy options.

For exhibit A, see Reuel Marc Gerecht's latest on Syria in The Weekly Standard, which opens with, "The administration's policy toward Syria is shaping up to be the greatest missed opportunity of Barack Obama's presidency." The essay goes to great length to bash realists detail the myriad policy benefits that would come with regime change in Damascus. This is all well and good (though a bit exaggerated), until we get to what the Obama administration should be doing to foment change:

There are many things that the Obama administration should be doing that it isn’t: using the presidential bully pulpit against the Assad regime, deploying the American ambassador in Damascus as a shield and voice for the opposition (if Ford gets expelled, he gets expelled), organizing the Western diplomatic community in Damascus to do whatever it can to aid the opposition, offering substantial technical support to the Turks to extend a Wi-Fi-ed broadband as far over the Syrian border as possible, and working with Paris to implement energy sanctions that might severely impair the Assad regime. But the most important thing it could do now is encourage Turkey to stand firm against Syria.

Ideally, we should want to see the Turks establish a buffer zone or safe haven on the Syrian side of the border (Ankara sometimes did this in Iraq to counter nefarious Kurdish activity).

Let's be clear: The Obama administration could be doing everything on that list, and it wouldn't make an iota of difference. The only policy that would matter is if the Turks actually wanted to establish a buffer zone -- except in a later paragraph even Gerecht acknowledges that, "neither Erdogan nor Davutoglu would want to do this."

So, to sum up, Gerecht is really enthusiastic about Syrian regime change, and wants the U.S. to beat its breast a little more and ask "pretty pretty please" for the Turks to do something they view as against their self-interest. This will accomplish … nothing.

If you start seeing gut-level foreign policy, it's usually a sign that every other rational option has failed. And although we hope otherwise, frustration alone rarely leads to policy breakthroughs.