The Senate's war hawks, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, are giving voice to their concerns that the Obama administration is about to repeat in Afghanistan the policy choices that squandered the national security gains and political influence bought with blood in Iraq. All three are making direct parallels between the endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator Graham cautioned "Iraq is falling apart. Political progress has stopped, al Qaeda is beginning to remerge. What you see in Iraq is going to happen in Afghanistan if we do not have a post-2014 presence."

Ostensible secretary of defense candidate Senator Jack Reed told reporters yesterday that such criticism was "comparing apples and oranges." His rationale? "Reed noted that botched withdrawal from Iraq was set in motion by the Bush administration, and said President Obama is intent on not making the same mistakes in Afghanistan." There is evidently no statute of limitations beyond which this Administration will take responsibility for its own choices -- even when the president actually campaigned on the policy choices Senator Reed is saying are the fault of their predecessor.

All of the significant choices about the end of the war in Iraq were made by the Obama administration:

• An arbitrary end to "combat" operations in Iraq in August 2010, confining U.S. forces to a support role nowhere required in U.S.-Iraqi agreements made in the Bush Administration and curtailing the effectiveness of our contribution.

• Not confronting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as he used the courts and security forces against domestic political rivals.

• Having expressed no interest in the importance of Parliament for the 18-month stalemate after the shamefully manipulated outcome of Iraq's elections, insisting that any agreement on future presence of U.S. military forces must be approved by that Parliament, leading to the breakdown of negotiations on any long-term stationing.

• A ridiculously extravagant and unexecutable plan for civilian presence after our military withdrawal that conveyed the lack of seriousness in our involvement.

• Not investing any political capital in coalescing neighboring states into support of a government emerging from international isolation.

• And, having achieved "an end to the war in Iraq," President Obama seems not to care whether that war continues, only that we not be participants in it.

The result? An authoritarian Iraqi government turning the military we built against its domestic rivals, aligning itself with Iran and excusing the depredations of the Assad government against its own people.

And the Obama administration appears poised to make the exact same set of choices in Afghanistan. The President conveyed early that he cared about the timeline, not the objectives of the war, leading all affected parties to hedge against us. President Obama chose not to draw attention to the malfeasance of the 2009 election that returned Hamid Karzai to power, instead over-investing in the incumbent. President Obama cared less about risk -- either to our forces or to achievement of the objectives for which they were fighting -- than about diversion from "nation building here at home," evidenced by his limits on resources requested by commanders. His diplomats never were able to deliver on either of our strategy's seminal political objectives: Pakistani cooperation and Afghan governance. His administration promised a "civilian surge" that never materialized. His administration sprayed money ineffectually through aid programs uncoordinated with our strategy's objectives and inadequately supervised to prevent colossal corruption (the Special Inspector General's report should infuriate every American taxpayer). His exit strategy was contingent on Afghan security forces being able to undertake the fight, yet the fact that only one of 23 Afghan brigades are capable of independent operations has not affected either the timeline of our withdrawal or the size of the force that would remain in the country. And now the Obama administration is negotiating a long-term stationing agreement that would consolidate around 6,000 U.S. forces at a single base outside Kabul to conduct raids throughout the country and train small numbers of Afghan security forces. But the Karzai government seems unlikely to allow U.S. forces to retain immunity, likely considering himself better off if he appears to force our retrenchment than simply be the victim of it.

Why would President Obama repeat the mistakes of Iraq in Afghanistan? The saddest and likely truest answer is that he doesn't consider them mistakes. Small wonder parties to the conflict have been positioning themselves against U.S. abandonment of our allies and our objectives in Afghanistan.

The original Saturday Night Live cast used to have a skit where Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna saw sexual overtones in everything around her. Finally an exasperated Freud would explain to her, "sometimes a banana is just a banana...Anna."

The punditocracy's response to North Korea's launch of the Unha rocket on December 11 shows similar and predictable over-interpretation of Pyongyang's motives. The "Great General" Kim Jong-un is said to be using the launch to consolidate his control over the Korean People's Army. Other explanations focus on North Korean efforts to influence the South Korean or even Japanese elections, which are to be held over the next few weeks. Or is it a signal to the Obama administration as it begins a second term? 

No doubt missile tests please the KPA generals and make for good propaganda in a nation of undernourished and terrified people, but that is the same reason given for all of the previous missile and nuclear tests by the North. This is, after all, a Stalinist state driven by an "Army First" policy and a perpetual state of war with the United Nations and the Republic of Korea. Explanations that the North is trying to shape the South Korean or Japanese elections also hang awkwardly in the air, since the missile test cannot possibly help the softer-line progressive candidate Moon Jae-in to overcome his conservative rival Park Geun-Hye -- let alone the hapless Democratic Party of Japan which is about to be trounced at the polls by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party led by North Kora's worst nightmare, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Psychoanalyzing North Korea's deviant behavior is convenient in one sense, however:. it allows the State Department and White House spokesmen to to dismiss the growing threat from Pyongyang as the rantings of a teenage miscreant only doing harm to itself. If North Korea is only isolating itself from the international community, as we are told after each provocation, then there is no need to take action. One analytical explanation making the rounds describes a "cycle" in which North Korea provokes with a nuclear or missile test but inevitably returns to talks. Phew !!

The problem is that the consequences of North Korean weapons testing are not cyclical -- they are linear. Each missile and nuclear test, even a failed test, represents a new milestone in Pyongyang's well-advertised march towards marrying nuclear warheads to ballistic missiles. This most recent test appears to have ended in the successful separation of multiple stage Rockets. Recently, a senior KPA general was reported to have told military officers at a speech in Pyongyang that the nation has already achieved the ability to mount small warheads on medium range missiles. Bravado or not, that is clearly the North's goal and it grows closer with this most recent test.

The administration's response should not be based on interpreting the North Korean Unha missile launch as anything other than what it was -- a deliberate weapons development program aimed at forcing concessions on the United States and our allies through coercion. That threat requires significant countermeasures both within the UN Security Council and among US allies.

The National Intelligence Council's (NIC) just-released Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report identifies key meta-trends that will shape the future international system, including the explosion of the global middle class, the diffusion of power away from the West, and the rising likelihood of inter-state conflict. In no other region will these trends play a more decisive role than in Asia, where the NIC predicts China to emerge as the world's largest economy, India to become the biggest driver of middle-class growth on Earth, and conflict scenarios between a number of rising and established powers likely to put regional peace at risk. In no other region will the future of U.S. leadership in the international system be more decisively tested than in an Asia featuring rising giants like India and Indonesia, a fully emerged peer competitor in China, and the dramatic tilt in the international economy's center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific.

What kind of role Asia will play in the world, and how it will relate to the United States and other Western powers, in turn will be determined by what form of regional order is operative in 2030. My last post described four broad pathways Asia could take over the next two decades. This one sketches out a more granular set of scenarios for Asia's future, identifying seven distinct possibilities that could emerge by 2030. That there are these many pathways demonstrates how unsettled regional power dynamics are -- and how much uncertainty remains around China's trajectory, U.S. staying power, Japan's strategic re-emergence, and the nature of Asian regionalism.

Headline scenarios for Asia in 2030 include:

• a fluid multipolarity driven by the rise of multiple strong states, with an extra-regional United States as primus inter pares;

• a Concert of Asia;

• a New Asian Cold War;

• a Sino-American G2 condominium; and

• a New Middle Kingdom.

More specifically, three forms of multipolarity in Asia seem possible: (1) a cooperative-competitive multipolar order in which the United States is the strongest power; (2) a fundamentally competitive multipolar order in which China is the strongest power; or (3) a liberal Concert of Asia in which multiple strong states organize themselves around cooperation rather than competition.

• Multipolarity with a U.S. lead: this multipolar order would mix cooperation and competition, interdependence and rivalry, with the United States as primus inter pares. This continuation of today's pattern presumes continued U.S. full engagement in the Asia-Pacific.

• Multipolarity with a Chinese lead: this multipolar order would be fundamentally competitive and conflictual, with the United States playing a more disengaged, offshore role, regional balancing dynamics predominating, and China as primus inter pares. Such a scenario is most likely in the case of U.S. disengagement or withdrawal. 

• Concert of Asia: this liberal order would feature a regional entente in which political liberalization in China has made possible greater democratic cooperation on the basis of transparency, trust, and effective regional institutions. Such an order would be more sustainable if it included the United States, though one that excluded it is conceivable.

Alternatively, three forms of bipolarity seem possible: (1) an Asia split into two competitive blocs led by the United States and China; (2) a region featuring a withdrawn United States pitting a grouping led by China against a contending one led by Asia's other great and regional powers; and (3) a Sino-American condominium in which a cooperative bipolarity orders the region.

• Bipolar Asian Cold War: U.S. v. China: this bipolar regional order would be centered on competitive blocs led by the United States and China. 

• Bipolar Asian Cold War: Asia v. China: such a bipolar regional order would pit competitive blocs led by a coalition comprising Japan, India, unified Korea, and Southeast Asian allies against China and its allies (Pakistan, possibly smaller Southeast Asian states) on the other, with a withdrawn U.S. playing an offshore balancing role.

• G2 Condominium: in this cooperative bipolar order, the United States and China would form a condominium that replaces the U.S. alliance system as the pillar of regional stability. Such an order could have spheres of influence characteristics mirroring that of the competitive bipolar order, but with cooperation rather than rivalry the defining quality of U.S.-China relations. 

Finally, one form of unipolarity is possible (and only one): a form of Chinese primacy that reduces other states to lesser status and effectively excludes the United States from playing a leading regional role.

• New Middle Kingdom: in such a unipolar order controlled from Beijing, the United States would be effectively excluded from Asia and regional great powers would find their interests subordinated to Chinese primacy.

From the vantage point of 2012, the most likely Asian strategic futures for 2030 appear to be, in descending order: (1) multipolarity with a U.S. lead, (2) U.S.-China Cold War, (3) multipolarity with a Chinese lead, (4) Asia-China Cold War, (5) concert of Asia, (6) Sino-American condominium, and (7) new Middle Kingdom.

The key variable will be what role the United States chooses to play in Asia with respect to continued military presence and diplomatic/economic leadership (which themselves will derive in part from the ability of the United States to revitalize its domestic power resources); defense of its allies and deepening of strategic partnership with India; and the nature of its relationship with China. Other decisive variables will be the scope and pace of internal political change within China; the speed of India's economic and military rise; and the future of Japan and the U.S.-Japan alliance.

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

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

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

How might Assad interpret that vague threat?

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

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

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

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

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

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

None of these is an attractive option.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Ambassador Roger F. Noriega and José R. Cárdenas

Last week, ahead of President Obama's meeting with the Business Roundtable, the Roundtable and the U.S. Council for International Business released a report saying that, "the success of American companies, and of the U.S. workers they employ, increasingly hinges on their success as globally engaged companies."

Indeed, there is some optimism in Washington that President Obama, free from political constraints in his second term (i.e., Big Labor opposition to free trade), can implement a robust international trade agenda as a sure-fire way to create new jobs at home, markets for U.S. goods and services, and investment opportunities abroad.  Much of that talk is focused on action regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement with Europe.

We have just co-authored a paper for the American Enterprise Institute -- "An action plan for US policy in the Americas" -- the essence of which can be distilled down to the following: Mr. President, stop ignoring Latin America!

If the President's objective is to use trade to help jump-start the U.S. economy and create more jobs here at home, then Latin America has to be part of the equation.  That's because when you look beyond the rogue behavior of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and his populist ilk, clearly the Western Hemisphere is home to some of the most dynamic markets in the world.

Since 2003, an estimated 73 million Latin Americans have risen out of poverty. Moreover, between then and 2010, the average Latin American income increased by more than 30 percent, meaning that today nearly one-third of the region's nearly 570 million population is considered middle class. And in just the next five years, regional economies are projected to expand by one-third.

Given the Americas' close historical, cultural, familial, and geographic ties, linked by common values and mutual interests, what that means for U.S. businesses is millions of new consumers with an ingrained affinity for U.S. goods and services. 

Greater economic integration will also create momentum to deal with other challenges in the region, from security issues to modernizing immigration policy -- not to mention rendering obsolete once and for all the retrograde populist agendas of some who prefer looking to the past rather than the future.

It's time that U.S. policymakers dispensed once and for all with Old Think when it comes to Latin America: that is, what is it the U.S. can do for the region.  Today, it is what we can do together to benefit all the peoples of the hemisphere and boost our own recovery and competitiveness. If President Obama is to pursue an aggressive trade agenda in his second term, the incentives are powerful for a fundamental reassessment of relations right here in our own hemisphere.

Today the U.S. National Intelligence Council releases its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report, authored by the NIC's resident thought leader and global futurist par excellence, Mat Burrows. Several of us in the Shadow Government stable contributed to the report in various ways over the past few years of its development .

Because Asia is the cockpit for so many macro drivers of the international system over the coming decades, it's worth considering the outsized role Asia's evolution will play in shaping the future world described in GT2030 -- and how that evolution in turn will impact key variables like the resilience of American power and the future of democracy.

At the macro level, four broad pathways for Asian order are possible through 2030. Which order prevails will have determinative effects on the kind of international system our children inherit.

A Lockean order

In the first scenario, continued American maritime preeminence and the U.S. alliance system sustain a security order in which China's "Prussianization," North Korea's nuclear mischief, and other potential security dilemmas in Asia are mitigated by the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States and its allies, thereby deterring aggressive revisionism on the part of Beijing or Pyongyang and continuing to supply the public goods that underlie wider Asian prosperity. In such an order, Asian institutions could continue to sink roots, but on the basis of a trans-regional outlook in which the United States remains what then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates called a "resident power," with economic integration oriented around a Pacific rather than an exclusively Asian axis.

Great powers like Japan and India, secondary powers like South Korea and Australia, and the states of Southeast Asia could continue to engage economically and diplomatically with China, confident that their security ties with the United States constituted a hedge against falling under Beijing's sway. In turn, China's development would be shaped by the combination of engagement with the United States and its friends in Asia and Europe, and by the deterrent effect of America's forward military presence and alliance commitments. These raise the costs of Chinese adventurism, allowing Beijing to focus its resources on internal development and peaceful external engagement -- rather than on wielding its growing power to revise Asia's order through coercion.

A Hobbesian order

In the second scenario, a U.S. retreat into isolationism or accelerated material decline (induced by protectionism or failure to reverse America's alarming levels of national debt) would lead to the weakening of Washington's alliance commitments in East Asia and its willingness to remain the region's security guarantor. Such a regional order would be "ripe for rivalry," as forecast by realist scholars like Aaron Friedberg after the Cold War, when an American withdrawal from the region and raw balancing behavior in the midst of dynamic power shifts seemed likely to make Asia's future resemble Europe's war-prone past.

Such a balance-of-power order would feature self-help behavior by Asian states of the kind that has been mitigated to date by American defense commitments. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam might develop and deploy nuclear weapons as the only means of securing their autonomy against the Chinese military giant in their midst. Chinese leaders, no longer constrained by America's Seventh Fleet and robust alliance network, might find themselves free to pursue their declared revisionist aims in the South and East China Seas. Lesser Asian states whose territorial claims conflict with China's would find they had less ability to leverage a retreating America's support in their favor.

A Kantian order

In the third scenario, Asia would evolve in Europe's direction -- not the pre-1945 Europe of great-power balancing and war, but today's European Union, in which demilitarized societies between which war is inconceivable enjoy the fruits of democratic peace through institutional cooperation. Such a pathway for regional order presumes that Asian regionalism develops in a pluralistic way that preserves the autonomy of lesser Asian states, rather than deriving from a nonconsensual extension of China's sphere of influence. It also presumes a dovetailing of Asian regime types in a democratic direction. After all, it was only the resumption of democratic control over previously militaristic European regimes following their defeat in war that made possible the institutional deepening that has defined the post-World War II European project.

Another necessary, and often unstated, condition for the development of Europe's Kantian order of perpetual peace has been the American security umbrella. It has created a security cocoon within which European governments can dedicate national resources to domestic welfare rather than military defense and maneuvering against potential adversaries. Ironically, then, the development of a pluralistic and peace-loving East Asian community along the lines of the European Union may require the continued role of the United States as the region's security guarantor. Such a role would naturally be more amenable to Washington's leading regional competitor, China, should that country pursue the political liberalization that would make an Asian democratic peace both possible and self-reinforcing.

A Sinocentric order

In the fourth scenario, an East Asian community of economic interdependence and pan-regional cooperation would develop not along lines of democratic pluralism but as an extension of an increasingly dominant China. Rather than the horizontal sovereignty between states that developed in post-Westphalian Europe through the institution of the balance of power, such a regional order would feature hierarchical relations of suzerainty and submission of the kind that characterized pre-modern East Asia when China's Middle Kingdom was strong and cohesive, and lesser neighboring states paid ritualized forms of tribute to it. A Sinocentric East Asia could emerge out of this historical past; it could also emerge through what neorealist international relations scholars like John Mearsheimer define as the imperative of great powers to enjoy regional hegemony. The Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary epitomized this process in the 19th and early 20th centuries with respect to the United States and Latin America.

A Chinese sphere of influence encompassing East Asia and Southeast Asia presumes that states like Japan and South Korea would bandwagon with, rather than balance against, Chinese power. This could follow from either a lack of external alliance options or out of a reemergent pan-Asian identity; in a scenario in which they were economically and geopolitically "Finlandized," these countries might have no choice. An Asian system in which China sat at the summit of a hierarchical regional order presumes that Asian institution-building develops along closed lines of Asian exclusivity, rather than through the open trans-Pacific regionalism that has been the dominant impulse behind Asian community-building since the early 1990s.

In my next post, I'll describe some more specific scenarios for Asian order in 2030, from an Asian Cold War to a New Middle Kingdom.

Over the last four years, many commenters have labeled President Obama a foreign policy realist (see also here and here).  At first, I scratched my head at this appellation being applied to him because 1) I heard him speak and watched him act; and 2) I know by reputation and in some cases professionally and personally his foreign policy and national security staff and few of them strike me as realists.  While most analysts and pundits continue to call him a realist (methinks they do protest, more on that below), some are lamenting that he appears to be "slipping" into a more Wilsonian mode, and heaven forefend, a Bush 43 mode.  I'm not quite sure what is going on here, but I can speculate: 1) these commenters are trying hard to give a president who is criticized for not caring much about foreign policy something to hang his commander-in-chief role on; 2) they are trying hard to be sure that their man in the White House-oft-criticized for apologizing for the United States and relying too much on the United Nations-is not called an idealist, a term that is held in derision by some; or 3) they are simply still attacking President George W. Bush over Iraq because they cannot get over it and see "his" war as the ultimate violation of realist doctrine; that is, Bush invaded Iraq to change the nature of its government, Obama has invaded nowhere to do such a thing.  This latter argument would fall into the category of the ongoing claim that "our guy is not your horrible guy."

Let's look at the tenets of realism and see if President Obama lives up to them.  Now of course there are many understandings of and nuances to a theory that has been around for millennia (Thucydides was the first exponent, Machiavelli and Hobbes are its best known exponents in the early modern era, and probably Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger are that today).  But a few points have been commonly accepted for decades, in part because statesmen like Richelieu, Bismarck and T. Roosevelt acted on them and changed the world with them.  They are: the international system is anarchic where distrust and anxiety are the norm and force is the final arbiter; states, as the most important actors, are rational and unitary and they must work out the problems of coexistence themselves; and finally, states seek above all their own interests defined ultimately as survival and they do so by maximizing their power, ultimately military power.  It is really difficult in my view to label a policymaker or a policy realist if they don't comport with most if not all of these elements.

Let me stipulate at the outset that the Obama administration uses force sometimes even if that means mostly using drones.  Moreover, the administration has at times, as in the case of Libya, at least partially gone it alone. But the entire tenor and work of the administration is best described as idealist or liberal, the latter being the current term of art (no one likes to be called an idealist it seems).  Following are a few examples:

1) The administration's view on the role of the United Nations is quite clear: all actions taken by states to secure the peace must have the imprimatur of this supreme intergovernmental organization and it can and will solve problems if states will submit to it.  This is what the administration says, even if it doesn't abide by that principle 100% of the time. The statements of the president and vice president, the UN ambassador and the secretary of state attest to this.  That's par for the course for post-McGovern Democratic administrations and this one is no different.  The personnel who populate the Obama administration have been policymakers of that view their entire careers; if Senator Kerry becomes Secretary of State, all the more so.  It is no surprise that this is the case, but it is a surprise to hear them called realists since realist philosophy, as noted above, holds that unitary, rational actor states are the sole judges of their actions in pursuit of their interests. 

2) Realist thought, especially as put into practice by the statesmen noted above, includes the idea that states should attempt to shape the anarchic world to conform to their state's interests.  This can be done by moral suasion, of course, but often it requires threats that run the gamut from noncooperation in the fulfillment of the opposing state's interests to the outright use of military force, either in an alliance or alone.  An administration that says the United Nations is supposed to determine matters of war and peace and avows that only alliances are the appropriate context for the use of force is not sending the message that it will insist on securing its interests. There is plenty of evidence in terms of diplomatic statements and actions to suggest that this attitude characterizes the Obama administration.  

3) Realist thinking contemplates that states must seek to maximize their power via a strong economy and a military capable of deterring aggression against the state's interests.  The rational actor that is the state is represented by a government that sees as its first job the building and maintaining of sufficient force to defend its interests and deter those who would try to reshape the international system in ways that harm the state's interests.  The financial health of the state is fundamental to it being perceived as militarily credible in the face of threats.  The Obama administration, in running up record deficits and showing no sign of dealing with an entitlement crisis except to bluff its way through a sequestration time-bomb-that it proposed-does not comport with realist thinking.  Even the administration's own secretary of defense called this approach to reform "devastating" for military preparedness, though he did not acknowledge it was hatched within the administration but rather blamed Congress.  To be sure, opponents of the United States knew better.

4) Finally, a brief review of some examples drawn from the US's dealings with specific countries.  In the case of Iraq, realist thought would have moved the president to do everything in his power-and he had plenty-to get a status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government so that the United States could better safeguard its interests in the region.  It is not in line with realism to have spent so much in lives and treasure only to walk away without using our ample leverage to continue to have forces in this country which is situated right next to one of our greatest enemies.  And speaking of Iran, from failing to encourage the enemy of our enemies (the people v. the regime), to bringing the regime to its knees through sanctions and other pressure years ago if it didn't disavow its nuclear program, the administration has failed to live up to the realist moniker.  Rather, the Obama administration has relied on the United Nations and pleading for talks with an implacable theocratic regime.  On Syria, a realist president would have seized the opportunity early on to conclusively aid those who would topple the last state ally of Iran.  And, finally, on the Palestine question, the Obama administration's handling of our relationship with Israel has alienated our strongest ally in a dangerous region while encouraging our enemies to see us as weak and fickle.  Realists don't take risks with important allies.  Neither Richelieu, Bismarck nor TR would counsel such a policy. 

So why are some so adamant that President Obama is a realist?  I am left still with my speculations: they know he doesn't have a coherent policy, that often he appears to wing it on an area of governance he has little interest in, so they want to characterize him with the perceived strongest and wisest of the approaches possible.  Or they are simply still waging the "he's not Bush" campaign-it is telling when one of these pundits describes Obama as following Hans Morgenthau's and Eisenhower's thinking regarding Vietnam.  But that is a very selective reading and use of Morgenthau.  Whatever the reason, I don't see the evidence to make such clear-cut calls.  It would be better to admit, of course, that there are no pure realists or idealists once in office, and then fashion a hybrid approach to describe Obama, much as Kissinger did so eloquently and convincingly for Reagan in his great work Diplomacy. 

By Otto J. Reich and Ezequiel Vázquez-Ger

Seventy-one years ago this week, on December 7, 1941, the United States changed forever. What began as a tranquil day in a country that thought it could avoid the violence wracking the rest of the world ended with a bloody and unprovoked surprise attack. That "day that shall live in infamy" -- in President Franklin Roosevelt's famous words -- saw our country transformed from a growing but isolated nation into the military, technological and economic superpower that routed a vicious totalitarian Axis, then a brutal communist empire, and that has ensured peace and democracy in the world ever since.

On December 7, 2012, the people of Argentina will wake up to a different assault. The attack on its freedoms will not be a surprise and it will not come from a foreign empire. It will be a pre-announced offensive on freedom of expression, the most fundamental liberty of any democracy, and it will come from the increasingly despotic regime headed by Cristina Kirchner, a left-wing populist that, like most authoritarians, cannot abide an independent press.

It is often said that Argentines only protest when the economy hurts their pockets. If so, last November 8, was an exception to this rule. On that day about a million people across that country took to the streets with a clear message: Argentina wants more freedom, an independent judiciary, free press, and an end to widespread corruption. Unlike previous protests, this time the Argentines rallied not for better pay but for the basic principles that a democracy requires to function.

In the last year, after winning re-election with over 54 percent of the vote, Mrs. Kirchner apparently felt that an electoral majority allowed her to crudely grab all remaining power and move aggressively against every sector of society that she saw as a threat.

Motivated by Kirchner's removal of her democratic face mask, the protesters carried signs and placards denouncing many policies of the government, including violations of the constitutional separation of powers (e.g, threats, blackmail and extortion against judges); corruption scandals at the highest levels of government such as with the sitting vice-president; resumption of close diplomatic relations with Iran, with the concomitant somber foreign policy implications; and arbitrary restrictions on private enterprise, such as blocking access to foreign currency for commercial transactions and obstacles to importation of goods from abroad.

But the biggest immediate challenge facing the country, and the largest target of popular discontent, are the threats to press freedom coming from Kirchner. Many of the other indignations described above would not have been known but for the existence of an independent press that the government is trying to silence. And among the most professional and hard-hitting journalistic reporting is that by the largest media conglomerate, Grupo Clarin.

Two years ago, Mrs. Kirchner saw to it that the Congress pass a new media law that seeks to break up the Grupo Clarin, a move that in the opinion of many jurists is unconstitutional. After several judicial processes, in which the government tried to maliciously influence the judges' decisions, the President announced that on December 7 Grupo Clarin will shed many of its properties. If this occurs, it could spell the beginning of the end of press freedom in the Argentina, since Clarin is a trial balloon to be followed by Government attacks on smaller news organizations less able to defend themselves.

But not only is press freedom threatened. If the government is able to neutralize Grupo Clarin, representative democracy itself will be tested. Without the independent media's courage to expose the abuses and scandals of the government, President Kirchner will have eliminated the largest obstacle in her path toward the "constitutional reform" that would allow her to remain in power for an unprecedented third term, or perhaps indefinitely.

Argentina is once again at a crossroads. On November 8, its people arose and demanded the President respect basic principles. On December 7, Argentines will face their own "Pearl Harbor," seeing one of its most illustrious institutions shatter. If, on the other hand, they stand and defend their Constitution and freedoms, they will put a stop to Kirchner's plans for autocratic government and avoid the self-destructive path followed by the Cuban, Venezuelan, Bolivian, Ecuadorian, and other left-wing hemispheric governments.

The U.S. and other Western governments have a responsibility to defend the people of Argentina. Just as on December 7, 1941 the U.S. was bloodied but not broken, so will the people of Argentina recover their freedoms, sometime in the future, probably after a fierce but non-violent struggle, but one that must count with the support of the free world.

Otto J. Reich is president of the consulting firm Otto Reich & Associates LLC. He is a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, and U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. Follow him on Twitter: @ottoreich

Ezequiel Vázquez Ger is an associate at Otto Reich Associates LLC and collaborates with the non-profit organization The Americas Forum. Follow him on Twitter: @ezequielvazquez