Late last week, President Obama unveiled his concept for a slimmed-down trade team. He proposed consolidating six existing agencies into one new body focused on global commerce. The headline change was the merging of the United States Trade Representative's office with large chunks of the Department of Commerce.

There are reasons to question how serious the president might be about the plan. A roll-out on the Friday before a three-day weekend in Washington is not so much "prime time" as "wee hour infomercials." The president also seems to have neglected to keep key Congressional leaders apprised of his thinking -- rarely a recipe for successful cooperation. Congress tends to care deeply when reorganizations change the jurisdiction of its committees. Congress also has a particular interest in trade, since Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution grants the legislature authority over the topic.

This all has led some skeptics to wonder whether this might be simple election-year positioning. It could be a trifecta play for independent voters: reform government, promote trade, and demonstrate Congress' truculence (after deliberately provoking it). Or perhaps it's just a wry, vestigial tribute to departing pro-trade Chief of Staff William Daley.

Whatever the case, the proposal raises at least a couple major concerns:

1. Should there be a White House trade agency?

Once upon a time, trade was handled out of a cabinet agency -- State. There was concern that State might put too much emphasis on striking deals with foreign counterparts and not give enough weight to domestic concerns. So, in the early 1960s, Congress and President Kennedy created USTR's precursor, the Special Trade Representative, as part of the Executive Office of the President. In 1979, the STR grew into USTR.

With the benefit of a few decades experience, is there any good reason to retain a trade agency in the White House, as opposed to nestling it into a cabinet agency? Yes.

In describing its latest proposal, the White House states: "[T]here are six major departments and agencies that focus primarily on business and trade in the federal government." The key word in that claim is primarily. The modern trade agenda involves a significantly larger number of government agencies. When financial services are on the table, Treasury is concerned. When intellectual property questions arise, there's the Patent and Trademark Office. When the discussion turns to beef market access, it's Agriculture. On export control questions, Defense speaks up. Almost every trade agreement raises diplomatic (State) and economic (CEA) questions and could well have an impact on workers (Labor) and business (Commerce). The list goes on.

For this reason, trade issues are commonly hashed out through an interagency process. With the benefit of its position in the White House, USTR serves as an impartial chair of this policy process. If USTR and the trade-related components of Commerce were to merge, how would an administration handle interagency disputes? Of course, a White House body like the National Security Council or the National Economic Council could play the impartial chairing role, but that would require a vastly expanded support staff to cover the broad range of intricate issues. That could effectively mean a re-creation of the current USTR, resulting in minimal savings.

Or the administration may just be arguing that it cares only about export promotion, the traditional domain of the Commerce Department. That would be consistent with the President's mercantilist view of trade, in which exports are good and imports are better left unmentioned. But it would be bad policy.

2. Is this trade process politics in lieu of actual trade progress?

This is not the first trade process reform advocated by the administration. In August 2009, President Obama launched a review to reform the U.S. export control system. Over two years later, progress has been minimal. It is the same sort of issue that requires Congressional action and threatens committee jurisdictions.

To avoid lengthy delays with his latest reform, the president is seeking a version of "fast track" authority from Congress to conduct the reorganization. This request comes just months after refusing to seek new "fast track" authority to pursue actual trade liberalization. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to attach such authority (Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA) to the September trade package, opponents argued that the issue was too complicated and needed a more thorough rethink. Yet, years after TPA lapsed, no rethink or request has been forthcoming from the White House. TPA not only paves the way for a trade agreement to move through Congress, it also provides crucial signals in the negotiating stage about whether any given White House trade stance will have Congressional backing.

This choice of agency reorganization over trade negotiating authority may sound hopelessly arcane to any but the most devoted Beltway trade devotee. There are some serious foreign policy implications, however.

If history is any guide, the president will devote limited political capital to pushing trade matters through Congress in the foreseeable future (he devoted none over his first two years). He has just declared that his priority will be a contentious organization chart reshuffle. If this is in lieu of TPA, then the president will have no hope of getting trade agreements through Congress in the near future. If that's the case, his vaunted Trans-Pacific Partnership will be little more than endless talk. And, if that's the case, his trumpeted pivot to Asia will have lost its economic pillar.

The president just asked for the wrong fast track. He must hope independent voters don't notice.

1) Taiwanese politics are maturing and changing. Inside baseball terms, such as the "1992 consensus," do not have much meaning to the average Taiwanese voter. Even for Taiwanese who are "mainlanders" -- meaning that they or their parents were born on the mainland of China -- their children and grandchildren who are born in Taiwan have no memory of or emotional bond to China. Taiwan now has its own consensus: Taiwanese want to benefit from trade with China while maintaining their dignity as citizens of Taiwan. The system works and the Taiwanese people end up with the policies they want. These policies include a robust trading relationship with China and the world, stability and peace across the Strait, and acceptance of Taiwan's de facto independence. On the one hand, DPP candidate Tsai Ying-wen gained 45 percent of the vote by making a fundamental criticism that Ma Ying-Jeou was not being fastidious enough in protecting Taiwan's sovereignty in his negotiations with China. This argument has some appeal to many Taiwanese. On the other hand, Tsai was not able to convince voters that she would ratify the gains Ma made in cross-Strait trade and stability while also protecting Taiwan's sovereignty. Elections in Taiwan are increasingly about which candidate can successfully engage China while protecting Taiwan's status. Though voters had their doubts about Ma, he won that critical argument decisively.

2) Any thought of "abandoning" Taiwan should be relegated to ivory tower social science labs (if such things exist). It is not only immoral, it is wholly impractical. The vast majority of Taiwanese (the numbers vary, but are probably close to 90 percent) want to maintain the status quo --  Taiwan's de facto independent status without conflict. Debates in Taiwan are increasingly about whether Taiwan is independent under the name the Republic of China (the KMT's position) or under the Republic of Taiwan (the DPP's position). The rest is a debate over tactics, such as how far and how fast Taiwan's leaders should discuss anything but trade and economic issues with China. The vast majority of Taiwanese would simply leave the island if the U.S. withheld support, a boon to Northern California perhaps, but a stain on America's honor and a severe blow to the kind of Asia we want.

3) It is increasingly awkward for China to remain authoritarian. China's brethren in Taiwan have now undergone their fourth really competitive presidential election. It was spirited, free, and fair. Voters got to hear a debate on Taiwan's future. Now Chinese have even more access to Taiwan and simply do not buy their government's condescending arguments that Chinese people are not "ready" for democracy. Taiwan's democracy works, in a Confucian cultural setting. Taiwan's economy is thriving and it is the envy of many developing countries. Taiwan had to sacrifice neither economic growth nor stability for democracy. This year China is going through its own "selection" process for President. What is the argument against democracy in China now? That the people are less developed or inferior to Taiwanese?

4) Democracy in China would probably have the same effect over time on cross-Strait relations. The Chinese people would also opt for moderation and stability. The debate would most likely be over how to repair the humiliation the Chinese suffered at the hands of Western and Japanese colonialists -- still a very charged issue among Chinese citizens -- while letting the long-suffering Taiwanese people enjoy their own identity and basic rights. All sorts of solutions might emerge (e.g. a commonwealth system) that would let the Chinese people live in peace and prosperity as well.

5) Until that time, the U.S. must stand shoulder to shoulder with Taiwan. In many respects it is U.S. blood and treasure, spent over decades, that set the conditions for the Taiwan miracle. There is no sense letting the sacrifices of Americans who fought and died for freedom in Asia be in vain. Washington must hold out until politics in China changes, which would pave the way for a peaceful democratic solution.

The LA Times is carrying an interesting and important story about the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of the war in Afghanistan. The NIE is classified, but has been briefed to Congress (Congressional sources seem to have formed the basis for the article). The article states that the intelligence community has concluded that while the military has made significant gains against the Taliban, the war has ground to a stalemate. It cites three causes for the stalemate: (1) pervasive corruption and incompetence by the Afghan government; (2) sanctuary for Taliban in Pakistan; and (3) reductions in U.S. forces.

The commentariat will have a feeding frenzy on the Director of Central Intelligence supporting a set of conclusions he had objected to last year when he was commander of the war effort in Afghanistan. But Dave Petraeus' reaction is the least interesting part of this story.

If the LA Times is accurate (and they have the best reporting on the middle east of any American newspaper), the NIE is going to be very damaging to the war effort. It also sounds about right in its assessment: we are militarily winning the war, but badly hindered by the shoddy Afghan government and the willingness of Pakistan to assist the Taliban. The NIE itself is quoted to question the viability of the Karzai government, even before the U.S. withdraws its troops.

The NIE evidently earned a formal protest from the entire leadership fighting the war, including General Mattis, the CENTCOM commander (responsible for all the Middle East and South Asia); Admiral Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (it is a NATO mission); General Allen, the Afghan war commander; and Ambassador Crocker, the Ambassador in Afghanistan. Among their reported objections are that the NIE bases its analysis on the assumption that all U.S. troops will depart Afghanistan in 2014; the Afghan war team insist that decision has not been made.

I hope they're right. The central problem with President Obama's strategy for the war in Afghanistan has always been his deadline. The Taliban claim that we have the watches, but they have the time. And the President has already compromised our war effort(s) by setting deadlines for troop withdrawals that are unconnected to the end states his strategy seeks to achieve.

Our exit strategy for Afghanistan is to build an Afghan government, including security forces, that can do the work Americans are fighting and dying to succeed at now. That's both sensible and achievable, the only way to make our gains more than transitory. But nothing in the Administration's choices about either Iraq or Afghanistan suggests they will allow facts on the ground to determine the pace of their drawdown.

The Obama Administration scored a lot of cheap points against their predecessor by hailing the arrival of "smart power" -- using political, military, and economic means in seamless orchestration. If reports of the NIE are accurate, it would be a terrible condemnation of the Administration's efforts. For only the American military has proven able to achieve any effect in the complex task of nation building in Afghanistan, and it has done so without either the political or diplomatic support necessary to make their achievements durable.

Bashar al-Assad is desperate. I say this because all of the problems he faces related to the Syrian uprising have forced him to show up in public for only the fourth time since his troubles began. He "surprised" a pro-government rally on Wednesday, family in tow (who had been rumored to have left the country), defiantly defending his actions and insisting again that he faces an externally-inspired and led conspiracy. He took the bold step of mocking and attacking the Arab League's observer mission to end his government's slaughter of civilians, after ignoring their admonishments he make good on his pledges to reform the government. These are not the actions of a confident dictator who is assured of suppressing a revolt. These are the actions of an ophthalmologist-turned-dictator who can't maintain his regime's stability the way his father could.

Granted, Bashar does not have his father's advantages: Hafez al-Assad readily and ruthlessly killed tens of thousands of his own people in a world with no interference from the international community, no Arab Spring and no fresh examples of fallen Arab dictators. Bashar has seen a gurney-bound Mubarak in the dock and a bleeding Gaddafi hauled out of a culvert and summarily shot to death. While Hafez knew a world where Arab dictators die of stomach cancer or are ousted by coups, Bashar knows one where they are overthrown by chaotic and protracted popular movements sometimes led by thousands of armed civilians and then put on trial or assassinated.

He now faces an uprising that has lasted months and is being led by mutinous soldiers with weapons and thousands of angry citizens who have built up 40 years of hate and desire for revenge against a regime formed by a religious minority. His neighbors no longer acquiesce in the regime's cruelty, and the once complacent Arab League has been moved because of the Arab Spring to act for the good of Arabs instead of simply for Arab leaders.

But he has advantages, beleaguered though he is. The U.S. is not interested in another intervention as in Libya, and Russia and China are unwilling to allow the UN Security Council to impose serious sanctions. (But the Russian assistance is not as powerful as his dad could count on: recently a Russian ship laden with arms was caught off Cyprus and meekly changed course away from its intended delivery port in Syria.)

But he has one other important advantage: the incompetence and fecklessness of the Arab League. As noted above, the League has finally risen to the challenge before it to demonstrate that Arab leaders understand that the world is changing and their people are increasingly less willing to abide tyranny. That is a good thing, no matter their true motivation for this new sensitivity to basic human rights. Yet it cannot seem to pull off an observer mission that should be able to accomplish its goals. Instead of stating those goals clearly -- interpose themselves between the Syrian government and civilians to stop the killing and bring pressure on al-Assad to enact reforms -- and maintaining an orderly and firm public presence, the mission is falling apart, bickering, and suffering defections. Some observers are quitting Syria altogehter, understandably because they are being targeted by the pro-government forces -- a French reporter has even been killed; others are leaving because they are disillusioned by their failure to achieve anything but derision. It doesn't help that a Sudanese general heads the observer mission; leave it to autocrats to be so ham-handed.

So it appears that while al-Assad is emboldened and determined to wipe out the revolution and stay in power as his dad would have done, even stepping up the killings as his many domestic and international opponents are roused to stop him, that might all be the last ditch effort of a desperate dictator. His counselors have no interest in compromise even if he perceives one. They lose everything as privileged elites based on an armed religious minority if they blink. So perhaps his strategy now is simply to follow the age-old approach of "desperate times call for desperate measures:" put on the bravest of fronts and attack the rebels, attack the neighbors and attack the international community. Double down on the violence and the rhetoric.

Let's hope his targets smell his fear and respond in kind with all the measures available to vindicate the Arab Spring.

The recent news that the Taliban plans to open an office in Qatar and pursue negotiations with the United States has raised a number of important questions -- for the United States, for Afghanistan's future, for the U.S.-Pakistani relationship and for the war on terror.

There are always risks in talking with any terrorist group, and the Taliban are no different in this respect. Most knowledgeable observers believe that the Afghan security forces, individually or with the assistance of the U.S. and ISAF, will not be able to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield, at least anytime soon. This means that some type of negotiated solution is the best near-term bet to halt the fighting.

What is interesting is why the Taliban has agreed to a formal diplomatic process now. In a sense, this opening is not really a new development. The United States has been talking to, and with, the Taliban since the Clinton administration, when the U.S. asked that it hand over Osama bin Laden. What is new is that this marks the first time that a formal diplomatic process is being established to broker an end to the conflict.

No one can be sure as to the Taliban's motivations, which could range from general war fatigue, to wanting a halt to U.S. Predator strikes and night raids, to wanting the Obama administration transfer some of its high-ranking members from Guantanamo to Qatar. It is also possible that the latest diplomatic moves could merely reflect the desire of only one faction of the Taliban to explore a peace deal; every insurgency or terrorist group appears from the outside to be more coherent and unified than they are in reality.

Who, precisely, represents the "Taliban" in these talks is not a trivial matter. In 2010, the U.S., NATO and the Afghan government pursued talks (and transferred funds) to an individual purporting to be Mullah Omar's number 2. In reality, he was a Pakistani convenience store owner with a beard.

The administration seems to have road-tested the credibility of the Taliban officials who will be sitting across the table in Doha, but questions remain in at least three areas. The United States still needs to determine: (1) whether the Taliban officials sitting across the negotiating table represent themselves, a small faction, or a broader constituency, (2) whether they have the authority to impose any agreement on the mujahedeen in the field, and (3) whether they have a genuine interest in a permanent halt to the conflict on terms that are agreeable to the United States and its Afghan partner (e.g., renouncing ties to al Qaeda, laying down their weapons and supporting the Afghan constitution).

Of course, talking to the Taliban is not cost-free. Harm may be done to the relationship between Washington and Kabul. After the Taliban killed the chief Afghan negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani, last September, President Hamid Karzai stated that he would no longer negotiate. Karzai subsequently opposed the idea of talks when it was initially floated, recalling the Afghan ambassador from Qatar, and he did not immediately support the talks when they were formally announced last week, suggesting that he still has grave reservations and is being dragged reluctantly by the Obama administration into this process.

Previously, both Washington and Kabul had agreed that any peace process would have to be "Afghan-led." Clearly, that has not happened and represents a significant conceptual difference between the U.S. and its key ally before the talks have even started. This will complicate the U.S. and Afghanistan coordinating future negotiating positions. And, at some point down the road, Kabul is going to have to take the lead and "own" this process if it stands a chance of success.

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On his current tour of Latin American outliers, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stopped in Venezuela this week to share a belly-laugh with his compañero Hugo Chávez over the supposed nuclear threat either of their countries poses to the civilized world.

Gesticulating outside the presidential palace, Chávez said, "That hill will open up and a big atomic bomb will come out," with Ahmadinejad adding that any bomb they would build together would be fueled by "love."

A couple of real cut-ups.

While their mockery should fall flat amongst most sober observers, the fact remains that much of Washington is still unable to grasp the nature and dimensions of the Iranian threat in Latin America.

For example, elsewhere on this site, Michael Shifter, a perceptive analyst of Latin American politics, fails to contemplate the worst of Iran's intentions and argues instead that Iran hasn't managed to meet many of its economic pledges in the region, and has equally failed in making inroads with the biggest power players of the region, such as Brazil.

That, indeed, may be true, but neither is relevant to Iran's covert agenda of evading international sanctions and developing contingencies if the cold war with the United States was to suddenly turn hot.

Indeed, for the past twelve months or so, skeptics have proven more diligent in attempting to debunk reports of Iranian-Venezuelan collusion than following where the (prodigious) trail leads. The hoary "no smoking gun" is continually trotted out to summarily end any discussion.

But for anyone who cares to look, the public record is filled with more than enough information to elicit serious concern about the Iranian threat and spur demand that Washington take more concerted action. Consider just the following:

Money Laundering: Iran has already been caught evading sanctions through Venezuela when an Iranian bank in Caracas was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for providing financial services to Iran's military.

Drugs: U.S. law enforcement officials believe that a weekly commercial flight between Caracas and Tehran and Damascus (dubbed "Aero-Terror" by Brazilian intelligence because no one knows who or what are on those flights) is used to traffic illicit drugs from South America to the Middle East.

Uranium: Venezuela possesses vast amounts of uranium, primarily in the Roraima Basin along its border with Guyana. Across the border in Guyana, a Canadian company is mining uranium. On the Venezuelan side of the border, we are to believe Iran is operating a "gold mine."

Weapons: In two cases made public, ships smuggling either bomb-making equipment from Iran to Venezuela or weapons to Hezbollah from Venezuela were intercepted.

Terrorism: A member of the terrorist network plotting to detonate fuel tanks at JFK International Airport in New York in 2007 was arrested on the run to Venezuela where he planned to board a flight to Tehran. An explosive documentary, "The Iranian Threat," aired last month on Univision, presenting not only incriminating information on Venezuelan and Iranian diplomats discussing cyberattacks on sensitive U.S. computer systems (the State Department subsequently expelled the Venezuelan diplomat from the U.S., where she had been re-posted), but also compelling evidence on how young Latinos are targeted for recruitment and paramilitary training in Iran and Venezuelan camps visited by Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Colombian FARC.

Again, this is but a sliver of the information that has already been made public about Iran-Venezuela machinations. Instead of pundits pining for that "smoking gun," they should be demanding what is it that we don't know?

Thankfully, Capitol Hill is starting to get active on this issue and will press the administration for answers on these important questions when they return later this month. The White House will also likely find itself on the defensive on this issue during this election year -- and that is all to the good if it focuses policymakers minds on the problem.

And as the layers of the Iranian-Venezuelan relationship continued to be stripped away, it is a virtual certainty that even more distressing details of the threat posed to the United States will emerge. But the longer we wait, it will prove only more difficult to counteract.

Taiwan's upcoming elections on January 14^th look set to be a close-run thing. In the presidential contest, incumbent Ma Ying-Jeou's Kuomintang (KMT) is locked in a tight race with Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Less important than the policy specifics of who prevails is the spectacle of a lively, democratic election in a free Chinese society. Taiwanese may rightly fear China's overweening military power and growing economic leverage. But it is rulers in Beijing who will watch nervously as citizens across the Taiwan Strait who look like them, speak their language, and share their culture freely and peacefully choose their leaders.

Unlike a senior Obama administration official -- who last September used an interview with the Financial Times to inappropriately inject Washington into Taiwanese domestic politics by suggesting that the United States did not believe Tsai Ing-wen was ready to govern - most Shadow Government types presumably hold no position on who should win on January 14^th. The election is an opportunity, however, to highlight a troubling argument in American foreign policy circles over whether Taiwan has become a strategic liability for the United States.

A gathering debate is underway in Washington over whether Taiwan is a spoiler, rather than a partner, in America's Asia strategy as President Obama continues the efforts of Presidents Bush and Clinton to "pivot" towards the region.

The core of this argument assumes that relations between the United States and mainland China will define the 21^st century -- and that they should not be held hostage to the legacy of the civil war between Chinese Nationalists and Communists in the 1940s. Why should Washington risk its relationship with the rising superpower of 1.3 billion people over its ties to a small island nation of only 23 million, given the high military and economic stakes for the United States of a conflicted relationship with Beijing? In this view, China and America could enjoy a fruitful partnership if only the thorn in the side of the relationship posed by U.S. arms sales to Taiwan could be removed. Without arms sales, of course, Taiwan would have no choice but to rapidly accept the mainland's terms for unification, irrespective of the views of the Taiwanese people.

But arguments to let Taiwan go get strategy backwards. First, cutting off an old U.S. ally at a time of rising tensions with an assertive China might do less to appease Beijing than to encourage its hopes to bully the United States into a further retreat from its commitments in East Asia. Second, it would transform the calculus of old American allies, like South Korea and Australia, who might plausibly wonder whether the U.S. commitment to their security is as flexible as it was towards Taiwan.  

In particular, Japan, the United States' most important ally in Asia, may have few viable strategic options to maintain an independent foreign policy without a free Taiwan. As China's military power casts a growing shadow over its neighbors, Japan's capacity to maintain strategic choice may hinge on Taiwan's ability to retain autonomy from the mainland in ways that preclude a hostile China from projecting military power from Taiwan into the sea lanes that are the Japanese economy's lifeline.

Third, abandoning Taiwan would upend the calculations of new U.S. partners like India and Vietnam, whose leaders have made a bet on U.S. staying power and the associated benefits of strengthening relations with America as a hedge against China. Fourth, such preemptive surrender would reinforce what remains more a psychological than a material reality of China emerging as a global superpower of America's standing -- which it is not and may never be. Finally, and most importantly, it would resurrect the ghosts of Munich and Yalta, where great powers decided the fate of lesser nations without reference to their interests - or the human consequences of offering them up to satisfy the appetites of predatory great powers.

Taiwan's people may one day vote to reunify with (a politically liberalizing) China. The choice should be left to the Chinese and Taiwanese people, acting through legitimately elected leaders. That's why Taiwan's election this week -- made possible by a regional security environment underwritten by the United States and its allies -- is strategically significant, irrespective of who prevails.

My colleagues have offered good criticisms of the defense budget and strategy unveiled by President Obama and Secretary Panetta last week. Let me add to the chorus with two more points.

First, the defense strategy is an explicit and unfortunate rejection of parts of the Quadrennial Defense Review completed less than two years ago by former Undersecretary Michelle Flournoy. The QDR rightly, repeatedly, and explicitly argued that the United States needs to retain a large-scale stability operations capability. "The United States must retain the capability to conduct large-scale counterinsurgency, stability, and counterterrorism operations" (emphasis added). "DoD will continue to place special emphasis on stability operations," because stability missions will be a permanent requirement of the 21^st century environment. "Stability operations, large-scale counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism operations are not niche challenges...Nor are these types of operations a transitory or anomalous phenomenon in the security landscape." That is why "U.S. military forces must plan and prepare to prevail in a broad range of operations...Such operations include...conducting large-scale stability operations."

The new defense strategy, by contrast, openly admits that "U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations."

The abandonment of a decade's worth of investment and grinding experience in stability operations is a dangerous risk that willfully ignores the realities of the contemporary security environment. Weak and failing states, and the rogue actors who operate within them, represent a real threat to regional and global stability. In response, the  U.S. and UN have launched more than two dozen stabilization and reconstruction efforts between them since the Cold War -- averaging about one per year -- and there is no sign that demand for such operations is easing. We have gradually and painfully improved our ability to execute such missions, and they are a real contribution to U.S. national security. Cutting back on stability operations now will throw away our hard-fought gains and expose us to new risks from across the globalizing, fragile world.

My second criticism of the new defense strategy, and some responses to it, is that it is still captive to the decades-old debate about how many wars we need to fight simultaneously. Since World War II, U.S. military planners have argued that we need to fight two major theater wars at the same time. The two-war doctrine has become something like Holy Writ or an idée fixe. The idea was somewhat well-founded during the Cold War when we plausibly could have faced simultaneous crises in, for example, Germany and Korea, or Germany and Cuba.

However, holding onto this idea for the last twenty years has looked increasingly disconnected from reality. Obama's new strategy goes through contortions to claim that we will, sort of, maybe, continue to be able to almost fight and nearly win two wars at the same time. But it fails, like every defense strategy has for two decades, to explain why this precise formulation is worth defending.

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