The United States achieved its dominant position in East Asia in the aftermath of World War II. Washington defeated Japan and created a network of alliances to both prevent any imperial Japanese renaissance and contain Soviet and, later, Chinese expansion. The Cold War with China, which went unrecognized for three decades, and North Korea, which remains unrecognized after six decades, was very chilly indeed.

But that world has largely disappeared. Japan has recovered and created the world's number two economy. The Soviet Union is gone. Maoist China lives on only in the late dictator's ubiquitous image. Vietnam has joined the global economy. South Korea has raced past the decrepit Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Other countries, ranging from Australia to India, are capable of playing a stabilizing role in the region.

The recent naval clash between South and North Korea demonstrates that the potential of conflict remains. However, without any link to a global hegemonic competitor like the Soviet Union, such regional instability poses little threat to the United States. Indeed, Pyongyang doesn't even pose much of a threat to the Republic of Korea. How else to explain why the ROK has for years failed to further expand its own military while subsidizing its supposed antagonist?

Yet Washington's Cold War alliance structure remains essentially unchanged. The United States maintains one-sided "mutual" defense treaties with Japan and South Korea. American officials routinely resist host nation demands to reduce deployments and close bases. That America must remain both militarily dominant and guarantor of regional peace is taken for granted. In Washington the People's Republic of China's apparent determination to create a military capable of deterring U.S. intervention along its border is treated as a threat to American security.

What has ever been must ever be appears to be the basis of U.S. foreign policy and military deployment.

The Obama administration should pursue a different course, a transformational agenda, emphasizing economic integration while promoting military detachment. America still has a major economic role to play, but should increasingly devolve defense responsibilities on countries in the region.

The most important relationship for the twenty-first century will be that between the existing superpower and the potential superpower. Washington should strengthen economic and trade ties with China. That requires maintaining an open market at home while working through contentious disputes, such as the value of the Yuan. The United States also needs to address its own irresponsible fiscal practices which may discourage Chinese purchase of U.S. government securities and investment in private American companies.

Moreover, Washington must forge a cooperative relationship on difficult regional issues like North Korea. The PRC has much at stake in a stable Korean peninsula; China also has much to gain from taking the lead in promoting diplomatic solutions of regional problems. The president should press hard for a more active PRC policy to support reinvigorated U.S. engagement with the North. In that case, Beijing should be prepared to take forceful measures if Pyongyang rejects a peaceful solution. Successfully defusing the North Korean geopolitical bomb would offer some of the "strategic reassurance" which the administration has talked about.

The United States should speak frankly about the importance of human rights, while recognizing Washington's limited ability to influence the PRC's behavior. An improved bilateral relationship is more likely than isolation to encourage greater respect by Beijing for the liberty of its citizens.

Japan, with a new and untested government in Tokyo, is likely to be another tough test for the president. He should treat Japan as a full partner. In economics, that means proposing a free-trade agreement (FTA). On defense, that means shifting to genuinely mutual security ties.

Rather than merely adjust its controversial Status of Forces Agreement, Washington should withdraw its garrisons from Japanese soil, turning defense responsibility for Japan over to Tokyo. The Japanese people must decide on the foreign policy and military forces which best serve their interests, but they should understand that the United States will no longer step into any resulting security gap.

Washington also should encourage greater cooperation between Japan and its neighbors. Some in East Asia continue to express disquiet at the thought of Tokyo taking on greater security responsibilities, but World War II ended more than six decades ago. The Japanese do not have a double dose of original sin and the Americans should no longer play geopolitical wet-nurse for nations which long ago developed the means to assert their own interests. Washington should engage North Korea over its nuclear program—in fact, bilateral talks are planned later this year.

At the same time, the United States should inform the North that full international integration requires the participation of South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia as well. The president should use this trip to begin a concerted effort to coordinate South Korea, Japanese, and U.S. policies regarding Pyongyang. However, Washington should allow the Republic of Korea (ROK) to lead the nonproliferation campaign. The South, with some forty times the North's GDP and twice its population, is well able to deter North Korean adventurism. Seoul also has the most at stake in maintaining a peaceful peninsula. As the U.S. steps back from its dominant military role, the ROK and its neighbors should step forward.

At the same time, Washington should seek to tighten economic integration. The starting point for that strategy should be an announcement—appropriately made at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum—of a push to ratify the FTA with South Korea and a campaign to promote further trade liberalization in a region that already has 168 FTAs in force, only two of which involve the United States (with Australia and Singapore).

President Obama needs to promote a changed attitude as much as offer specific policies. The new government in Japan appears to be particularly interested in promoting a regional order, called the East Asian Community, apart from the U.S. Washington should embrace rather than resist such an approach—which would represent genuine "change" from today's policy, which is still rooted in a nonexistent Cold War.

America will be most secure if friendly states in East Asia work together to confront sources of instability, promote respect for human rights, and encourage peaceful settlement of disputes. Such a cooperative venture, backed by a willingness to commit real resources to defense, as reflected, for instance, in Australia's defense white paper earlier this year, also would help channel China's rise in peaceful directions.

The United States will remain engaged in East Asia. America's cultural and economic ties to the region are long-lasting and mutually beneficial. But Washington no longer has any need to attempt to preserve regional military hegemony. And at a time of economic crisis the United States is losing its financial ability to do so. It will take time to transform America's military role. But President Obama should begin moving the region into a new era of less security dependence on Washington.

Start with the locus classicus of American alliances, NATO. Several former heads of state and other policymakers from Central and Eastern European NATO members greeted the Obama administration six months into its term with a hectoring letter demanding Washington pay more attention to their region. The letter argues that these leaders' "ability to sustain public support at home for our contributions to Alliance missions abroad … depends on us being able to show that our own security concerns are being addressed in NATO and close cooperation with the United States."

In other words, these countries have options, and if Uncle Sam would like to continue receiving their contributions in places like Afghanistan, Washington had better pony up. The authors have several suggestions for us, one being to deploy military personnel on their territory. After all, they argue, "at a regional level and vis-à-vis our nations," Russia acts as a revisionist power.

It is easy to understand why these countries, given their experience with Russia, want increased American support. The trouble is that capitals across Central and Eastern Europe have shown precious little interest in carrying their own weight within the NATO alliance.

This past summer, for example, the Czech Defense Ministry announced it was cutting its defense budget by more than 10 percent. Other countries complaining of the looming threat from Russia, such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all spend less than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, an anemic figure.

Note that the countries could afford a robust defense against Russia if they chose. In 2008, the combined GDP of the NATO members added after the Cold War was roughly equal to Russia's. Along with wealthier Western European countries, these nations could keep Russia from pushing them around.

The simplest explanation for these countries' low defense spending is that their leaders know that Washington will do the work for them. And why should they pay for a service that will be provided anyway? That was more or less how things went during the Cold War.

U.S. alliances in Asia are almost as perverse. During his recent visit to Japan and South Korea, Defense Secretary Robert Gates faced a plucky new Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama. After imploring Hatoyama to continue Japan's miniscule contribution to the war in Afghanistan and not to reconsider the deal to realign U.S. forces in Japan, Gates was asked whether the U.S. military role in Japan might be scaled back. Offering the obligatory reference to the countries' "shared interest" in regional security, Gates admitted that "the primary purpose of our alliance from a military standpoint is to provide for the security of Japan … It allows Japan to have a defense budget … of roughly 1 percent of GDP."

This is an excellent reason why the Japanese should support the alliance, but it raises the question of why U.S. taxpayers should want to pick up the tab for Japan's security.

The next day, Gates was in South Korea, where he reassured the South Koreans that the United States would continue to provide extended deterrence to Seoul, "including the nuclear umbrella." There is such a thing as too much reassurance, however. Gates' statement likely had two effects: one, to diminish Seoul's concerns about the threat posed by the North, and two, to diminish Chinese apprehension that a nuclear North Korea may ultimately lead to a U.S. departure from Japan and South Korea, possibly causing those countries to develop their own nuclear arsenals.

Given that Washington's current policy on North Korea would benefit from a greater, not lesser, concern about the future in both Seoul and Beijing, Gates' explicit promise of nuclear extended deterrence to Seoul likely dampened the admittedly low prospects for progress on the North Korean nuclear issue.

America's alliances are no longer considered responses to security challenges. Instead, they have become ends in themselves. In an era of record-breaking budget deficits and serious economic problems at home, the billions of dollars Uncle Sam pays each year to baby-sit Europe and East Asia ought to be coming in for scrutiny, not perpetual affirmation.

The headline above a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, "Behind the War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages," seem to illustrate the way supporters and opponents of increasing U.S. troop level in Afghanistan have been making use of what they see as the lessons of Vietnam, and applying them to the debates over the process of presidential national security policymaking and civilian-military relationship.

Hence, political scientist Gordon Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster which depicts a President Lyndon Johnson being pressed to escalate the war in Vietnam by a somewhat narrow-minded military is being cited by those skeptical about the recommendation by General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, to increase the number of troops there.

At the same time, military analyst Lewis Sorley's A Better War, which describes the administration of President Richard Nixon under public and Congressional pressure to get out of Vietnam and rejecting what could have become an effective counter-insurgency strategy by the military, is being touted by those who leaning in the direction of General McChrystal's recommendations.

Applying historical analogies à la "the lessons of..." to contemporary foreign policy dilemmas could certainly be instructive. As President Obama prepares to make his decisions in Afghanistan, he should consider the pitfalls faced by U.S. presidents, starting with John Kennedy as they tried to calibrate U.S. strategic choices in Vietnam by drawing on the input of their military and civilian advisors and juggling conflicting political pressures from the public, Congress and the bureaucracy.

But the historical analogies of Vietnam could become confusing if not misleading when one shifts the focus from the decision making processes to ideological premises of U.S. involvement the Cold War. In fact, Obama and his advisors should recall that as President Johnson and the members of his national security team were deliberating whether to expand U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia, it was the specter Munich 1938 that was haunting Washington then, and that the lessons of British attempts to appease Nazi Germany's dictator Adolph Hitler were being employed in a way that seemed to be leaving the White House with no other choice but to hang tough and stay the course in Vietnam lest U.S. policymakers would be perceived as lacking the resolve to stand-up to Hitler-like aggressors.

The reason that the lessons of Munich in the context of World War II seemed be so relevant to U.S. policymakers during the Vietnam War taking place at the height of the Cold War was that American intervention in the two wars were driven by grand Manichean narratives in which a U.S.-led Western alliance was confronting a powerful global aggressor representing a threatening and dynamic ideology.

Indeed, for the American foreign policy establishment as well as for the general public, North Vietnam was perceived to be an integral part of a monolithic Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, including its Eastern European satellites, China and Cuba. The only serious debate in Washington was over the kind of mix of diplomacy and military force that the U.S. needed to employ in defending South Vietnam and confronting North Vietnam. And in that context, it wasn't difficult for the "hawks" in Washington to suggest that just like Czechoslovakia in 1938, South Vietnam was being threatened by a regional satellite of an antagonistic global adversary and thus required forceful American military support.

Recognizing that nationalism and not adherence to communist ideology or solidarity with the Soviet Union and China was the main driving force behind North Vietnamese policy could have changed the strategic calculations of policymakers in Washington. Indeed, the growing realization that there was no Soviet-led global communist bloc led to the U.S. opening to China — which ended-up going to war against Vietnam — and to the use of the "China Card" in dealing with the Soviet Union. And it helped accelerate U.S. détente with the Soviet Union as well West German rapprochement with Eastern Europe or "Ostpolitik."

In the aftermath of 9/11 and in the period leading to the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seemed for a while as though President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors would be successful in constructing a new grand Manichean narrative that conceived of a U.S.-led West confronting a global Islamofascist threat or a Caliphate-in-the-making that allegedly included Al Qaeda, a radical Muslim-Sunni fundamentalist terrorist group; Taliban, an Afghani-Pashtun and Sunni-fundamentalist movement allied with U.S. partners, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; Iran, a Muslim-Shiite fundamentalist state and Hizbollah, a Lebanese-Arab Shiite movement as well as the secular Syrian Ba'ath regime and the Palestinian-Sunni Hamas movement, elected to power in a U.S.-sponsored election and a mish-mash of national and regional militant Muslim groups — in the Horn of Africa and North Africa, and in places like Chechnya (Russia), Kashmir (India), and Xinjiang (China).

In a way, it was the costly and failed Iraq War that helped disprove the Islamofascist myth — after all, the collapse of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban helped strengthen Iran — and undermine the ideological premises of short-lived grand narrative that steered the U.S. into the war in Mesopotamia while preventing it from achieving its original and limited goals in Afghanistan (destroying Al Qaeda). Indeed, any serious discussion of the political realities in the Greater Middle East taking place in Washington today would have to assume that the U.S. has to deal today — including in Afghanistan — not with a unified and monolithic adversary or "axis" but with a hodgepodge of Muslim governments and movements that lack any shared ideology or common interests.

To apply the historical analogies here, the choices facing the U.S. in Afghanistan are unlike the dilemmas the U.S. confronted during the Vietnam War, in the same way that the "loss" of South Vietnam wasn't akin to the destruction of Czechoslovakia by Hitler's Germany. Even under a scenario under which the Taliban ends up controlling even more territory than it already does today, the impact on core U.S. national interest would be limited. Local and regional players (India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) would be forced to work together or separately to prevent the country from becoming a source of instability and a center of international terrorism. Hence, taking limited steps towards securing U.S. narrow goals of preventing Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a military base should not be regarded as a new and dramatic chapter in a grand narrative but as a cost-effective exercise in fighting terrorism.

Last month, the Democratic Party of Japan ousted the Liberal Democratic Party, which had held power for most of the last 54 years. Exactly how policy will change is uncertain: The DPJ is a diverse and fractious coalition.

But Washington is nervous. U.S. policymakers have grown used to Tokyo playing the role of pliant ally, backing American priorities and hosting American bases.

That era may be over. Although Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama insists that he wants to strengthen the alliance, before taking office he wrote in the New York Times: "As a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end."

Of course, there are significant barriers to any dramatic transformation of Japanese policy. Indeed, during the campaign the DPJ platform dropped its earlier pledge to "do away with the dependent relationship in which Japan ultimately has no alternative but to act in accordance with U.S. wishes, replacing it with a mature alliance based on independence and equality."

Nevertheless, the DPJ possesses a strong left wing and vigorously opposed the ousted government's logistical support for U.S. naval operations in the Indian Ocean.

Other potentially contentious issues include reducing the military presence on Okinawa, renegotiating the relocation of the Marines' Futenma Airfield to Guam at the Japanese expense, cutting so-called host nation support, and amending the Status of Forces Agreement.

Some Obama administration officials privately acknowledge that adjustments will be necessary. However, the day after the election State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that there would be no renegotiation of the Okinawa accord.

This might seem like a good negotiating tactic, but it didn't go over well in Tokyo. Washington's dismissive response gives the Japanese one more reason to want to escape dependence on the U.S.

Actually, Americans should support a transformation of the alliance. The current relationship remains trapped in a world that no longer exists.

Japan has the world's second (or third, based on purchasing power parity) largest economy, yet Tokyo remains dependent on America for its security, a minor military player despite having global economic and political interests.

There are historical reasons for Tokyo's stunted international role, but it is time for East Asian countries to work together to dispel the remaining ghosts of Japan's imperialist past rather than to expect America to continue acting as the defender of the last resort.

Since Japan and Asia have changed, so should America's defense strategy. There should be no more troops based on Japanese soil. No more military units tasked for Japan's defense. No more security guarantee for Japan.

The U.S. should adopt a strategy of offshore balancer, expecting friendly states to defend themselves, while being ready to act if an overwhelming, hegemonic threat eventually arises. China is the most, but still unlikely, plausible candidate for such a role — and even then not for many years.

Washington's job is not to tell Japan — which devotes about one-fourth the U.S level to the military — to do more. Washington's job is to do less.

Tokyo should spend whatever it believes to be necessary on its so-called "Self-Defense Force." Better relations with China and reform in North Korea would lower that number. Japan should assess the risks and act accordingly.

In any case, the U.S. should indicate its willingness to accommodate Tokyo's changing priorities.

It's the same strategy that Washington should adopt elsewhere around the globe. The Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on Okinawa is primarily intended to back up America's commitment to South Korea. Yet, the South has some 40 times the GDP of North Korea. Seoul should take over responsibility for its own defense.

Even more so the Europeans, who possess more than 10 times Russia's GDP. If they don't feel at risk, there's no reason for an American defense guarantee. If they do feel at risk, there's no reason for them not to do more — a lot more.

Defending populous and prosperous allies made little sense in good economic times. But with Uncle Sam's 2009 deficit at $1.6 trillion and another $10 trillion in red ink likely over the next decade — without counting the impact of any additional financial disasters — current policy is unsustainable. The U.S. essentially is borrowing money from China for use to defend Japan from China.

In Washington, officials are rounding the wagons to protect the status quo. But America's alliance with Japan — like most U.S. defense relationships — is outdated. Both America and Japan would benefit from ending Tokyo's unnatural defense dependence on the U.S.

Whatever the Obama administration's approach to Somalia, it must avoid the failures of the Bush administration. The rise of a popular, moderate Islamic government in 2006 sparked an Ethiopian invasion, for which the United States provided key backing. Washington defended its support of the Ethiopian attack on the grounds that Somalia's Islamic Courts regime was actively harboring known members of al Qaeda, a claim that appears to have been exaggerated.

The resulting Ethiopian occupation of Somalia —in which as many as 16,000 people died—collapsed in early 2009 against the backdrop of one of the world's worst sustained humanitarian crises. Taking advantage of the political and economic chaos, hundreds of desperate Somali fishermen turned to piracy, making the waters off Somalia the world's most dangerous for seafarers.

With the Islamists' return to power earlier this year, under the banner of the new president, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, Washington has a rare chance to reset bilateral relations. The Obama administration should work to build a regional framework for reconciliation, the rule of law, and economic development that acknowledges the unique risks of intervention in East Africa.

Somalia's best hope for peace is the moderate Islamic government that has emerged from the most recent rounds of fighting, despite early opposition from the United States and its allies. There are ways in which the United States could help Somalia escape its cycle of violence and peacefully encourage progress by working with this former enemy, but Washington should err on the side of nonintervention.

Without knowing the answers to such questions, the United States has no way of determining whether it is succeeding. And as long as it continues to conflate military and state-building objectives, the United States will always appear to be losing. But by focusing on stamping out al Qaeda with a light military footprint and accepting an Islamist government in Afghanistan, the United States has an opportunity for unqualified success.

Indeed, by most military standards, the United States has already achieved numerous victories. In early October 2001, a small number of U.S. personnel working in tandem with sympathetic Afghans punished al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that harbored the terrorist group. Although it hasn't met its goal of capturing Osama bin Laden, the United States has still seriously degraded al Qaeda's global capabilities — a major win.

But perceptions have lagged behind reality. Many U.S. policymakers, defense officials, and prominent opinion leaders still tend to lump al Qaeda (a loose, transnational jihadist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks) together with the Taliban (an indigenous Pashtun-dominated movement with no shadowy global mission). Because of this conflation, the suppression of al Qaeda is not seen as the victory it is — and disproportionate focus is placed on suppressing the Taliban.

However, the Taliban and other parochial fighters, such as the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami group, and other indigenous Pashtun militants, pose little threat to the sovereignty or physical security of the United States. Therefore, waging a counterinsurgency campaign against these militants is not a pressing national security interest. In fact, the effect of prolonging the large-scale U.S. military presence and artificially expanding the number of enemies risks uniting these otherwise irrelevant guerrilla groups against the United States.

An Islamist regime such as the Taliban — if it can be encouraged to moderate its more militant fringes — can be an acceptable U.S. ally. Consider Somalia, a country where Washington once also conflated al Qaeda with a local nationalist regime. In 2006, Somalia's moderate Islamic Courts Union (ICU) expanded from its bases in the capital, Mogadishu, to command most of southern and central Somalia. Although the ICU's enforcement of sharia law made some Western observers uncomfortable, the regime's widespread public support and effective governance meant it was in fact the best chance for lasting stability that Somalia had had in decades.

But George W. Bush's administration didn't see things that way. A handful of al Qaeda operatives had sought refuge in remote Somali villages, and in response, the U.S. military launched several raids, killing at least two of the operatives. Under Bush, Washington seemed incapable of viewing the ICU separately from these al Qaeda refugees. Defeating terrorism in Somalia also meant destroying the ICU. In retrospect, it seems that the Bush administration sacrificed an opportunity for peace in Somalia on the altar of the war on terrorism. In December 2006, Washington provided key logistical, military, and diplomatic support to neighboring Ethiopia as that country launched a mechanized invasion of Somalia that briefly unseated the ICU and resulted in a bloody, two-year war — a war that did nothing to boost anti-al Qaeda operations. In fact, the disastrous, U.S.-supported invasion only stoked anti-Western sentiment in Somalia and empowered the country's major insurgent group, al-Shabab.

In time, the ICU and other insurgent groups fought off the Ethiopians. The resurgent ICU subsequently subsumed a U.S.-backed secular "transitional government" this January. The ICU is now back in charge in Somalia, albeit under the transitional government's name, and has regained some of the momentum it had before the Ethiopian invasion.

The Obama administration has reversed Bush's policy and now embraces the ICU's moderate brand of non-democratic, Islamist government. It is, after all, what most Somalis want. And the relaxed relationship between the two countries has only made counterterrorism easier. In early September, a U.S. strike killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al Qaeda agent suspected of orchestrating the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan hotel, who was hiding in Somalia at the time. The ICU was mute about the whole incident — as close to an official approval as one can expect.

Somalia's lesson for Afghanistan is that regime change, and democracy, are not necessary for counterterrorism. Propping up President Hamid Karzai's Western-style government in Kabul does not make operations against al Qaeda any easier or more successful. If anything, it distracts from the conceptually simpler task of finding and killing terrorists.

Without U.S. and NATO protection, Karzai's regime would, sooner or later, probably fall to the Taliban. But U.S. observers should not equate that eventuality with "losing" the war. The war is against terrorists, not Islamist governments. The United States should be prepared to make peace, and amends, with a resurgent Taliban — and to encourage the group to excise its more extreme elements. As Somalia demonstrates, Islamist governments can be greatly encouraged to reform their extremist fringes, rendering these regimes no more amenable to terrorist groups than any other country.

U.S. military operations against al Qaeda, still clinging to life in Afghanistan, could continue. In fact, the blueprints for an effective counterterrorism approach have already been drafted from the initial U.S. invasion in 2001. Small Special Forces teams working in conjunction with local militias can assemble quickly, move with ease through the difficult terrain, and strike effectively and cheaply at "real" enemies whenever they raise their profile.

Such small-scale operations, making use of Special Forces and other covert means, as well as the CIA and FBI's close cooperation with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies, have lead to the greatest successes scored against al Qaeda since 9/11 — the snatch-and-grab operations that netted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of 9/11, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the support interface between the 9/11 operatives and al Qaeda.

Instead of increasing troops, then, the United States should scale back its military presence and adopt more limited objectives. Rather than trying to protect Afghan villages from the Taliban, the United States should concentrate on dismantling al Qaeda cells in Pakistan through discrete operations, promoting intelligence sharing and collection, and committing to surgical missile strikes when necessary.

Over the past eight years, the United States has confused an operational doctrine — population-centric counterinsurgency — with the strategic goal of keeping the country safe. But the strategic objective of protecting the United States from terrorism should define its operational methods, not the reverse.

Historians agree that Britain's rise as a pre-eminent global power came as a response to changing circumstances and not as a part of a grand master plan; Britain, it has been said, stumbled into an empire. But the converse was also true: the dismantling of the British Empire wasn't a linear process involving a manageable and steady decline in its military and economic power; instead it had a haphazard muddling through quality. British leaders weren't aware that Rule Britannia was already history even after the fat lady had sung that it was over.

Indeed, Prime Minister Winston Churchill who had led his nation into an impressive military victory in World War II, confident that the defeat of Nazi Germany would help save the British Empire, failed to recognize that the enormous military and economic costs of the war had actually created the conditions for the liquidation of the empire, starting with the withdrawal from Palestine and the "loss" of India after the war.

But while the sun was setting on the British Empire, members of its political elite continued to live under the illusion that their nation had remained a paramount global power. If you traveled in a time machine to London 1949 and attended a debate in the British Parliament, browsed through the pages of the Times or listened to a BBC news program you would come across numerous references to Britain as a Great or "superpower," a term that was applied to the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II. And if you encountered diplomats in His and (after 1953) Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service and bankers in the City of London, you wouldn't be surprised if they continued to behave as though the world was still their domain to rule.

It was the humiliating abandonment of the Anglo-French invasion of Suez in collusion with Israel in 1956 that proved to be the turning point in Britain's retreat from empire and ensured that London would never again attempt global military action without first securing the acquiescence of Washington. The time lag between the effective end of the British Empire and the recognition that indeed it was all over, proved to be quite lengthy.

The concept of "recognition lag" is familiar to economists. It refers to the time lag between when an actual economic shock, such as a sudden boom or bust, occurs and when it is recognized by economists, central bankers and the government, like when officials signal a recession in the economy several months after it has actually begun.

And just like changes in economic conditions, changes in the global status and power of nations, are not always immediately apparent, especially to the politicians and the generals who yield that power and to the journalists who cover them. That the elites continue to share such misconceptions about their nation's ability to exert global influence has less to do with the power of inertia and more with the vested interests they have in maintaining the status-quo that could be threatened by challenges at home and abroad.

While no one is comparing the global political, economic and military status of the United States to that of Great Britain after World War II, there is an eerie resemblance between the resistance of officials, lawmakers and pundits in London 1949 and that of their contemporary counterparts in Washington 2009 to adjust their nation's foreign policies to the changing global balance of power. That may explain why so many members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment seem to be so depressed in face of the Obama Administration's current difficulties in dictating global developments, ranging from the military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's nuclear aspirations and the deadlocked Israel/Palestine peace process to the stalled negotiations on global trade liberalization (the Doha Round), the efforts to reach an international agreement on climate change and the global financial imbalances between the U.S. and China. Where is U.S. leadership on this or that global policy issue? Why can't the Obama Administration "do something" to resolve this or that international crisis?

As expected, neoconservative critics depict President Barack Obama as an idealistic peacenik, if not a 1930's-style appeaser. They blame the perceived erosion in U.S.' ability to call the shots around the world on Obama's alleged failure to stand-up to Russia (by abandoning the missile shield program in Eastern Europe), to Iran (by trying to engage it), to Venezuela (by shaking hands with Hugo Chavez) and to Al Qaeda (by overturning torture practices), and on his supposed betrayal of allies (Israel, Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic). Not to mention Obama's refusal to launch new crusades against Islamofascism, to promote the Freedom Agenda in the Greater Middle East and to annoy the commies in Beijing on a regular basis.

That's rich coming from the guys at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). After all, it was the mess that the Bush administration, guided by these neoconservatives, had made in the Greater Middle East -- where US military power was overstretched to the maximum, and where American policies helped strengthen Iran and its surrogates in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine -- coupled with the dramatic loss of American financial resources, that has produced a long-term transformation in the balance of power in the Middle East and worldwide, and has significantly eroded Washington's geo-strategic and geo-economic clout. In fact, the increasing wariness of the American public regarding new US military interventions, as a consequence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the expanding U.S. deficits would have made it difficult even for a President John McCain to promote an aggressive U.S. policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

That Obama finds it so difficult to press Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai to change their policies may have to do with the fact that unlike many of the elites in Washington, the above and other foreign leaders have succeeded in deconstructing the current geo-strategic reality and recognized that the global balance of power has been shifting and that U.S. ability to exert its diplomatic and military leverage over them has been constrained. Let's hope that these changes will also be recognized in Washington as soon as possible, and that unlike the leaders of the British Empire, those in charge of Pax Americana will have enough time to readjust to the new global reality.

I expected a book called America During the Interwar Years to be about Herbert Hoover and FDR, the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties and the radio as a new mass medium, the Scopes and Leopold-Loeb trials—aka the trials of the century—and about Tarzan the Ape Man.

I must be getting old(er), because I never imagined that someone would actually write a broad and ambitious account of America in the "interwar years" of 1989 to 2001, a time that for me does not fall under the rubric of history—more like a heading on my résumé. So I did not anticipate that I would be reading about George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the dot-com boom and the stock market crash of 2000, Tabloid Nation and cable television news, Monica Lewinsky and the O.J. Simpson trial—aka the trial of the century—and about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

As a journalist and scholar based in Washington during those not-so-distant interwar years, however, I have written a great deal about what many refer to, appropriately or not, as the Age of Clinton, the period that William L. O'Neill, a professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University, has chronicled in A Bubble in Time. I assumed that my being, to borrow the title of Dean Acheson's autobiography, "present at the creation" (or in this case, also a lot of the destruction) explained why the details in this book felt so familiar—the main and lesser characters, the many juicy anecdotes, even the political slang ("Troopergate") or the euphemisms ("budget train wreck" to refer to when Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill could not reconcile their differences).

But after scanning the endnotes and not-so-long bibliography, I realized why reading this work reminded me of listening to my dear late grandfather recalling his heroic exploits during "the war" for the thousandth time. It is not that I have been there, done that; rather that I have read that, watched that. (These days we might add "browsed that.") It seems that O'Neill has read or watched—and more important, relied on, quoted from, and referred to—exactly the same newspapers, magazines, books, television shows, and films that I read or watched during those years.

The book includes quotes from and references to all the usual suspects, most of whom are still alive: Joe Klein, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Dinesh D'Souza, among others. (For some reason, globalization guru Tom Friedman doesn't make the list.) O'Neill contextualizes and deconstructs these commentators' words of wisdom. He agrees, for instance, with Klein, the veteran Clinton watcher and author of Primary Colors, whose main characters are based on Bill and Hillary, when the columnist praises Clinton "for the skill and persistence with which he promoted the well-being of women, minorities, and the poor." But he disagrees with him on Clinton's effect on the Democratic Party. ("The New Democracy and triangulation worked for Clinton personally but hurt the party.") Memories, like the pundits on my mind…

Not that there is anything wrong with sharing the same associative universe and misty, water-colored memories of the 1990s with another political junkie who is very perceptive. O'Neill applies an understated sense of humor and irony to connect the many dots in his narrative. After describing in detail the so-called grade inflation rampant in academia in the 1990s—and presumably still a problem—O'Neill turns his attention to his assessment of Clinton, whom he describes as a "better than average president," adding, "perhaps someday historians, looking over the bloody wasteland of [George W.] Bush's failure, will raise Clinton from C+ to a B-. Since context is so important, that would not amount to grade inflation." Now that is clever, and there are many similar sarcastic touches in the book.

The structure of O'Neill's storyline is quite simple. We start our walk down memory lane with a chapter about George H.W. Bush, followed by the discussion of the first Gulf War, and then an overview of the 1992 presidential election. O'Neill devotes two chapters to the two terms of Clinton's presidency. Then there are separate sections about the O.J. Simpson trial and the rise of PC culture—that's "politically correct," not "personal computer"—the "sexualization" of American culture, and the depressing condition of American higher education. In between, the author inserts three shorter "interludes" including one about Alan Greenspan with a not very original title, "The God That Failed" and another about the popular TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which O'Neill considers to be "the most complex and original show introduced in the 1990's." He praises "its wit, cleverness, originality, intricate plot and sly references." I was more of a "Seinfeld" fan, a show "about nothing" that kind of summed up the Clinton Age. I never watched "Buffy," so I am not sure whether she deserves this adulation. But then, unlike the former Fed chairman, at least Buffy did not slaughter our wealth.

Indeed, like Andrew Lloyd Webber, that great cultural icon of the 1980s and 1990s, O'Neill helps us "smile at the old days." He lets the memory live again. If you had fallen into coma when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989 and woke-up on 9/11, this book would probably be an informative and lively guide to what you had missed (or not), including the birth of SUV's, DVD's and cell phones—a kind of "America in the 1990s for Beginners." As O'Neill admits in an early chapter, the "book is primarily a narrative history," or an "informal" history, and it does not introduce us to a great theory that explains what it all meant. O'Neill is not an apolitical historian, however. His thinking is characterized by what could be described as a "radical centrism." He colors his exposition and provides us, if not with a grand theory, with a thesis or a set of intertwining theses that seem relevant in the Age of Obama—not to mention our just concluded journey to hell on earth, which is how O'Neill seems to regard the sordid Bush-Cheney interval.

The 1990s, says O'Neill, will be recalled as "a happier and more prosperous age unmarred by terrorist attacks, long inconclusive struggles abroad, contempt for human and individual rights at home, botched disaster-recovery attempts, and a government whose arrogance was exceeded only by its ineptitude." Hence, compared to the presidency of Bush II, the administrations of Bush I and Clinton seem in retrospect "like a miracle of sanity and good leadership." In addition to being characterized by peace and eventually widespread prosperity, the 1990s also marked a period of "freedom from fear," a time after the end of the Cold War when people felt it safe to assume that "the world would not be sucked into fiery oblivion." Since 9/11, Americans have not only entertained legitimate concerns about further terrorist attacks, but also suffered from "relentless fear-mongering by the Bush Administration [that] has frightened people while the administration's own actions have greatly increased the amount of terrorism in the world," which explains why today the 1990s look like a "bubble in time," suspended between the Cold War and the War on Terror.

According to O'Neill, one of the major "missed opportunities" of this "decade of lost chances" was the "painfully bungled" attempt at some kind of universal health insurance in 1993. He blames that on the Clinton administration's "clumsiness and inexperience," as well as on the relentless lobbying of the health-insurance industry and the failure of congressional Democrats to rise to the occasion.

Even more troubling, from O'Neill's perspective, was another missed opportunity, the absolute refusal of the political class to reform the military so as to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War world. Modest cuts were made under Bush I, but the "overwhelming power of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about long ago soon reversed the process, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 led to an orgy of defense spending that has become astronomical." Indeed, according to some of the estimates cited by O'Neill, more than 50 percent of the entire federal budget for fiscal year 2009 went to cover the many military-related expenditures: the costs of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, operating the intelligence services, homeland security, veteran affairs, etc. O'Neill blames the failure to conduct a serious debate over defense spending in the aftermath of the Cold War on political pressure from the military and the national-defense establishment, which meant that, after the trauma of 9/11, efforts to control spending became almost hopeless.

But O'Neill seems to disregard another and perhaps more crucial reason why that post-Cold War debate on defense spending did not take place, which was the failure to conduct a broader debate on America's role in the world in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, American foreign-policy goals seemed to expand at a time when Washington was not facing strong resistance from a global challenger. Influenced by Washington bureaucrats, interest groups, and the rest of the foreign-policy establishment, the U.S. attempted to extend NATO to Russia's border; to establish a hegemonic role in the Middle East; to launch humanitarian interventions here, there, and everywhere; and to export democracy worldwide. These costly policies created the conditions for U.S. intervention in the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia as well as the two Gulf Wars, providing the rationale for increasing defense spending into to the stratosphere.

Ironically, O'Neill seems to applaud the decisions to intervene on the side of the Croatians and the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs as well as to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in the first Gulf War and criticizes the Clinton administration for failing to send U.S. troops to bring an end to the civil war in Rwanda. But without a reassessment of America's strategic role in the world and a shift to a more selective form of intervention, the old Cold War-era paradigm with its emphasis on America as a global policeman remained intact and has continued to survive and thrive, igniting more anti-Americanism around the world and leading to more wars—and by extension, creating pressure to increase spending on defense.

It can be hard to locate O'Neill precisely on the American political map. At times, he sounds like a Rockefeller Republican, or in the context of his historical narrative, a Bush I Republican. Unlike political analyst and historian Kevin Phillips, the long-time basher of George Herbert Walker Bush (and the entire Bush dynasty), O'Neill portrays Bush I not as a "preppy wimp" but as a great American patriot, a war hero, a hard-working entrepreneur, and a selfless public servant whose place in history will probably turn on his role in ending the Cold War and his skillful management of the first Gulf War. Indeed, O'Neill implies that America would have been better off if the experienced and world-savvy Bush I and not the inexperienced right-wing ideologue Ronald Reagan had been selected as the Republican presidential candidate in 1980 or if this decent and honorable man had beaten the sleazy Clinton in 1992.

Perhaps today O'Neill can be tagged as an Obama Republican. While he disapproves of some aspects of the social-cultural agenda of the political Left, such as identity politics and affirmative action, he also denounces Reaganism for its notion that government is the problem and not the solution. He subscribes to a progressive axiom that aggressive action by the federal government is necessary in order to tame destructive market forces and repair social ills. Hence the notion that Barack Obama could become another Bill Clinton would probably be bad news for him. O'Neill is very critical of Clinton for applying the strategy developed by his political adviser Dick Morris, who operated under the assumption that Clinton could only win elections by "neutralizing" the Republicans, "stealing" their issues—balanced budget, tax cuts, welfare reform—while "triangulating" the Democrats by abandoning so-called "class-war dogma" and de-emphasizing traditional liberal issues such as wealth redistribution and government spending on the poor.

O'Neill suggests this Clinton-Morris strategy has hurt the long-term interests of the Democratic Party. By turning away from their core liberal ideology and trying to embrace conservative economic and cultural positions, the Democrats have been gradually transformed into a Republican Party II, and in the process they alienated lower-middle-class voters who had not benefited from the prosperity of the Clinton years. In fact, as O'Neill sees it, many of them lost their jobs as a result of the downsizing of American businesses and the decline of the manufacturing sector. Angry at Washington, Wall Street, and the "elites," many lower-middle-class voters were drawn to the populist cultural agenda of the Republicans with its emphasis on so-called traditional values, post-9/11 radical nationalism, and xenophobia.

Clinton's main asset had been the economic and political reality of the 1990s, which included the end of the Cold War, the resultant "peace dividend" at home, the opening of new markets abroad, and the lack of global challenger to the U.S. in a time of the high-tech revolution. This created the conditions for the Clinton Age economic boom, and international peace benefited many sectors and demographic groups who supported the status quo and helped elect and then re-elect Clinton.

O'Neill contends that an important feature of Clinton's success was the "evil things" that didn't happen under his watch, though they were seeded during it. "The new age of blood and iron ushered by President Bush II, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the three men of the apocalypse," didn't come out of nowhere, he writes. "Beneath the frivolity of the Clinton years dark forces had been gathering their strength, waiting for a chance to slouch towards Bethlehem, the opportunity that 9/11 would give them." In little-read publications, think tanks, and "other shadowy venues, neoconservatives and their allies plotted to invade Iraq, alienate the rest of the world, and ruining the American economy by means of runway spending, massive tax cuts, and lax regulation—the trifecta of looters." Or to put it differently, the many disasters of the Bush years were "incubating in the heart of Clinton's America."

O'Neill concludes his study without any reference to the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. Obama is not even mentioned in the index. But my guess is that he would urge the new Democratic occupant of the White House to resist taking Clinton's road down the political middle and accommodating Republicans. There are some signs, however, that Obama may be trying to do just that. By selecting leading Wall Street-friendly former Clintonites as his top economic advisers and choosing a veteran Republican figure as the Pentagon chief, Obama has demonstrated that, like Clinton, he has no desire to challenge the status quo in Washington, despite the fact that more and more Americans are becoming disenchanted with the political system. It would not be surprising if O'Neill's next volume of "informal" history chronicled the many disasters that incubated in the heart of Obama's America.

Looking back now, that scene seems drawn from another era. Combined with victories in the first Gulf war and Kosovo – when the US did not lose a single soldier in combat – it suggested a new level of military dominance.

"The revolution in military affairs", it was called. Bombs were smart, armed forces were networked and the US owned the night.

All of which was very effective in defeating conventional armies or fanatics who had never encountered such weapons and tactics. But in its overconfidence, the US overlooked several things.

Like Napoleon, it underestimated the resentment many people feel at foreign occupation.

Napoleon had also achieved a revolution in military affairs, and consequently he was exceptionally effective in defeating armies in battle. His invasion of Russia, culminating in the occupation of Moscow, seemed initially like a stunning triumph.

But the people did not submit, and he had to abandon Moscow. With his army in retreat, his allies deserted him. He lost the war and was sent into exile.

Napoleon thought the message of French democracy would be welcomed. When France began to send its armies abroad following the revolution, its leaders thought they would be greeted as liberators. "It will be a crusade for liberty," confidently proclaimed one of its leaders, Jacques-Pierre Brissot.

Not everyone was convinced. "No one loves armed missionaries," responded Robespierre. But his caution, which proved prescient, was overruled.

This is an age of nationalism – an age effectively inaugurated by the French revolution. Ironically, the French revolutionaries did not understand their own time. Their military efforts to promote democracy were ultimately defeated by the nationalism of the people whose territory they occupied.

For the Russians, the war against Napoleon is known as "the patriotic war". And the war against Nazi Germany is similarly known as "the great patriotic war". Even the Soviet leaders knew that Russians were not fighting and dying for communism, but for Russia.

That reality challenges the effectiveness of America's military superiority, just as it did Napoleon's. The US armed forces are extremely effective at destruction. But the US does not want to destroy. Rather, it wants the threat of destruction to produce obedience.

What if that is not enough? It can escalate. The US can even kill people in cities in order to convince the remainder to yield to its superior power.

The US did it in the second world war – ultimately using atomic bombs – and there was no further resistance in Germany and Japan after the wars ended.

That is not an option now. To be sure, civilians are killed, but all efforts are made to try to avoid that. One of the military challenges confronting the US is how it can use its superior firepower in areas in which civilians are present.

The enemies it fights are not so restrained. Indeed, in Afghanistan, the other side specifically targets adults who dare to vote or young girls who seek an education.

Yet, despite the repulsiveness of these tactics, Taliban resistance has grown. US military commanders are warning about the deteriorating situation, and the Obama administration is bracing for a request for additional troops.

Can it be that the "revolution in military affairs" misunderstood war itself? Can it be that Americans convinced themselves that we could sanitise war, confine it to the "evil-doers" and thereby win almost effortlessly?

"It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it," Robert E Lee is reputed to have said at the Battle of Fredericksburg, during the American civil war.

Did Americans, intoxicated by successes, grow too fond of war? After Afghanistan, the Bush administration came up with reasons for invading Iraq, notably the threat from weapons of mass destruction.

But was that the most important reason? Or did the US go to war because war was regarded as easy?

If you are faced with a choice, and one of the options has advantages but no disadvantages, what do you choose?

We are now paying the consequences for misunderstanding war, for thinking it can be easy. There was no revolution. War is still terrible, and we should never forget it.

Remember the good-old days when the perceived Soviet threat had served as an opportunity for politicians, bureaucrats and interest groups, encompassing what President Dwight Eisenhower called the Military-Industrial Complex, to stimulate new arms races in the name of protecting U.S. interests and defending its allies?

Indeed, Republican lawmakers and neoconservative pundits depicted the shelving of Bush-era plans for the deployment of 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic as nothing short of capitulating to pressure from Moscow by abandoning two key eastern European allies, warning in somewhat apocalyptic terms that the move weakens U.S. status in the region and encourages Russian aggression.

Expect the sounding of the alarm by the same critics in the coming days: Beware. The Spirit of Yalta is haunting Eastern Europe and could bring about the "Finlandization" of Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the Baltic states.

But according to Bush Administration officials and its allies in Congress, the U.S. defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was not aimed at defending these two countries against a potential threat from Russia — but was intended to protect Europe against future missiles from Iran. Now that the Obama Administration, with the full support of the U.S. military, has proposed to replace the Eastern European based missile defense shield with a more mobile, agile and cheaper naval-based missile defense system, the Republicans and neoconservatives who are deploring this decision seem to be admitting that the main strategic rationale behind the deployment of the missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic was, in fact, to keep Russia — and not Iran — in check.

It was not surprising, therefore, that the Russians — who lest we forget had already dissolved the Warsaw Pact and the entire Soviet Union and withdrawn their military forces from Eastern Europe — have regarded the planned defense system in Eastern Europe, coming after the continuing extension of NATO to their borders, as part of an aggressive American posture. After all, Russia has no plans to deploy a similar system in Cuba.

Those who disregard these genuine Russian concerns tend to draw attention to the alleged fears among Poles and Czechs over the Russian threat to their security and, hence, the need to deploy the U.S. missiles in Eastern Europe. But then, according to opinion polls, majorities in Poland and the Czech Republic have been opposed to the plan.

And if, indeed, both the Poles and the Czechs are so worried about Russia's military might, why is it that in the list of countries ranked by order of military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, Poland and the Czech Republic are respectively in the 95th place and 135th places (according to the World Fact Book 2008 published by the CIA)?

These numbers indicate the relatively low priority these countries place on military expenditure and suggests that their leaders are either not really worried about the threat from Russia; or more likely, they are expecting the U.S. to serve as their protectors. Indeed, reflecting the strategic goals espoused by some of the elites in Washington and in capitals in Eastern Europe, the planned missile defense shield would have served as a "trip-wire" — not unlike the American troops stationed in the divided city of Berlin during the Cold War who were expected to lead to U.S. military retaliation if and when the Soviets attacked West Germany.

But while the American people and Congress had conducted an extensive debate over U.S. strategy in Europe during the Cold War, and the American commitment to protect West Germany from Soviet aggression enjoyed wide bipartisan and public support, the notion that Americans were going to die defending Poland and the Czech Republic against real or imagined Russian threat has never been introduced as part of the national conversation. Instead, those promoting the deployment of U.S. missiles in Eastern Europe had hoped to present the American people with a fait accompli in the form of this trip-wire.

The Obama Administration should be complimented for disrupting this planned sneaky move to press the U.S. into another long-term and costly military intervention at a time when American military forces are overstretched and its budgets are soaring to the stratosphere, and most important, America is not facing a geo-strategic and ideological threat in the form of the Soviet Union.

But as political economist F. A. Hayek warned in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, those who during a major war "have tasted the powers if coercive control" will always find it difficult "to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play" in the aftermath of the war. By scrapping the planned missile defense shield, Obama is helping to accelerate this process of reconciliation.

But for the reset to work, Russia must also back away from provocative actions it is taking in America's backyard. In particular, Moscow needs to end its political and military flirtation with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Instead, the Kremlin seems to be escalating its hostile and destabilizing moves. In the summer of 2008, a Russian general spoke of the possibility of Russia acquiring a military base in Venezuela. While civilian leaders quietly disavowed such intentions, in the following months Russian naval forces conducted joint maneuvers with Venezuelan units, and there has been a proliferation of arms sales, which topped the $4 billion mark by September 2009. The latest installment, which Chavez announced on September 13, is a $2.2 billion "loan" from Russia to purchase tanks, air-defense missiles, and other hardware.

Such manifestations of close political, economic, and military cooperation between Caracas and Moscow is more than a matter of academic interest. Relations between Venezuela and neighboring Colombia have deteriorated markedly in recent years, and tensions along their border have flared on several occasions. Most, although not all, of the provocations have come from the Venezuelan side, including Chavez's blatant support for the radical leftist insurgency in Colombia, spearheaded by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Russia's willingness to boost Chavez's military capabilities makes Moscow an enabler of such behavior.

Perhaps most worrisome, Chavez has recently indicated an intention to commence a nuclear program. Given his track record of duplicity, Venezuela's neighbors understandably view with some skepticism his assurances that such a program would be solely for peaceful purposes. It is also quite likely that Chavez hopes — and perhaps assumes — that Russia would aid the development of a Venezuelan nuclear effort in much the same way that the Kremlin has aided Iran's program.

This increasingly cozy relationship between Moscow and Caracas approaches, if it does not already cross, a red line when it comes to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. It has been a long standing policy of the United States — beginning with the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s — not to allow European powers to establish political or military clients in the hemisphere. Cuba, of course, has been an irritating exception to that policy for the past fifty years, but American leaders need to make it clear both to the Chavez government and the Medvedev/Putin administration that Washington will not tolerate another exception.

Unfortunately, as the United States grew more powerful in the early twentieth century, the Monroe Doctrine became perverted into a policy that included U.S. attempts to meddle in the internal political affairs of its Latin American neighbors. Any effort to revive the Monroe Doctrine must take precautions not to go down that same path.

Even as the Obama administration should enforce the original intent of the Monroe Doctrine with respect to Venezuela, it needs to stress that if Chavez refrains from becoming a Russian client and avoids actions that threaten Colombia or other states in the hemisphere, the United States will not seek to undermine his regime. As a tangible reassurance on that front, Washington should rescind plans to establish seven military bases in Colombia, a step that has generated fierce criticism from governments throughout South America. Ostensibly, those bases are designed to help wage the war on drugs in the Andean region (a dubious enough motive), but Chavez argues that their actual purpose is to intimidate Venezuela — or worse, to serve as staging areas for an attack. Abandoning plans for the bases would effectively discredit that argument and reassure uneasy Latin American leaders.

Chavez may be an odious, authoritarian thug, but his abuses inside Venezuela are up to the Venezuelan people to deal with. They do not pose a threat to important U.S. security interests.

A Russian-instigated arms buildup, to say nothing of the onset of a nuclear-arms race in the Western Hemisphere, is another matter entirely. Such actions menace the political and military stability of the region and undermine Latin America's status as a nuclear-weapons-free zone. That prospect is very much a matter of legitimate concern to the United States. Washington should convey a message — in words of one syllable, if necessary — to both Caracas and Moscow that they are playing a very dangerous game. Chavez needs to know that his current course could lead to a regime-ending event. And Moscow needs to be told that even reasonably good relations between Russia and the United States will depend significantly on a change of its policy regarding Venezuela.

President Obama has made a conciliatory gesture with the end of the missile defense plan for Central Europe. It is time for Medvedev and Putin to reciprocate.

President Obama initially called the war in Afghanistan one of necessity, and proposed a big US troop increase. But with voter support slipping, Obama now says he will not rush the decision. Democratic Congressmen say in private that US withdrawal is a matter of time. One told me, "The British couldn't pacify Afghanistan, the Russians couldn't, and we can't either."

So, do not be surprised if the coming year witnesses contacts between the US and Taliban to find a face-saving formula for US exit. Afghan president Hamid Karzai has long argued for a negotiated deal with what he calls the good Taliban. He was earlier discouraged by the US, but maybe not for much longer.

Back in 2008, the Bush administration actively considered talks with the Taliban. Ashley Tellis, a former state department official, says a deal with the Taliban is possible provided it is based on US military victories that diminish rewards for insurgency. Malou Innocent and Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute point out that US security is threatened by al-Qaida, not the Taliban, and argues that the US can deter the Taliban from giving safe havens to al-Qaida if it comes to power again.

US hawks disagree strongly. They recall that a peace accord was signed by the US and North Vietnam in 1973, which was violated by Hanoi after US troops left. Nevertheless, even some conservative journals are now making the case for withdrawal.

Ralph Peters, a military expert writing in the conservative New York Post, asks, "What does the Obama administration hope to do in Afghanistan? Establish a stable democracy in a land where blood vendettas last for centuries and tribal loyalties trump all? Force a secular constitution on a society that prefers religious law? Develop a modern economy where running water is a rarity? Why?"

He adds, "Even if we achieved each of those goals, would the result be worth the cost in blood, money and time? Don't we have better things to do with our strategic capital? Al-Qaida is a global franchise — yet we're concentrating our investment on the Taliban, the equivalent of a local chain of blacksmith shops." US hawks worry that Afghanistan will become a safe haven for terrorists if US troops leave. But Paul Pillar, former deputy chief of the CIA, has warned in the Washington Post against exaggerating the value of safe havens to terrorists.

"The preparations most important to the September 11, 2001, attacks took place not in training camps in Afghanistan but, rather, in apartments in Germany, hotel rooms in Spain and flight schools in the United States. In the past couple of decades, international terrorist groups have thrived by exploiting globalization and information technology, which has lessened their dependence on physical havens. By utilizing networks such as the internet, terrorists' organizations have become more network-like, not beholden to any one headquarters.... Al-Qaida's role is now less one of commander than of ideological lodestar, and for that role a haven is almost meaningless."

The debate is by no means over, and US troop withdrawal is by no means certain. Yet, the will and stamina of the US has clearly been sapped, and momentum is building for an exit. For the Taliban, a comeback will be a huge victory, one that will cause much dismay in India.

This will be a fabulous victory for Pakistan too. It helped create the Taliban, through which it obtained influence in Afghanistan as never before. Pakistani military planners view Afghanistan as strategic space in the event of a war with India, and for this they need the Taliban's cooperation.

After 9/11, Pakistan was forced by the US to disown the Taliban, cooperate in tackling al-Qaida, and curb the activities of jihadis in Kashmir. But it is an open secret that Pakistan actually gave sanctuary to top Taliban leaders, and the US winked at this. If US troops exit, Pakistan may once again encourage jihadis to stir up trouble in India, and not just in Kashmir.

Clearly, India must prepare for the day when US pressure is no longer effective on jihadis in Pakistan. India must quickly upgrade its own counter-insurgency skills and get the best technologies and institutional arrangements from the US. The future bristles with dangers.

Such an undertaking, amounting to a large-scale social-engineering project, is unwarranted. The cost in blood and treasure that we would have to incur -- coming on top of what we have already paid -- far outweighs any possible benefits, even accepting the most optimistic estimates for the likelihood of success.

The essential question now is not whether the war is winnable, but whether the mission is vital to U.S. national security interests.

From this perspective the current open-ended strategy fails. The United States and its allies must instead narrow their objectives. A long-term, large-scale presence is not necessary to disrupt al-Qaida. Indeed, that limited aim has largely been achieved, with the exception of capturing Osama bin Laden.

What we have seen over the past eight years is a classic case of mission creep. U.S. military operations today draw from the "clear-hold-build" model offered in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, a volume that didn't even exist in 2001. It states, "Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors rebuilding infrastructure and basic services."

But for how long? Afghanistan has not made any progress toward being able to function without the assistance of the U.S. and its allies. Congress mandated that the Obama administration come up with a set of benchmarks to measure progress, but this list -- supposedly 50-items long -- has still not been presented publicly. And no wonder. These metrics, due by Sept. 24, will surely raise questions about whether such ambitious objectives can be achieved within costs acceptable to the American public.

The United States does not have the patience, cultural knowledge or legitimacy to transform what is a deeply divided, poverty stricken, tribal-based society into a self-sufficient, non-corrupt, and stable electoral democracy. And even if Americans did commit several hundred thousand troops and decades of armed nation-building, success would hardly be guaranteed, especially in a country notoriously suspicious of outsiders and largely devoid of central authority.

It is, of course, unreasonable for any administration to guarantee success in times of war. Planning will always fall short of our expectations, and no one can reliably predict the future. But we should be especially wary of nation-building. In a study of seven nation-building projects carried out since the end of World War II, the RAND corporation concluded that only two, Germany and Japan, could be characterized as unalloyed successes -- a failure rate of 71 percent. The prospects in Afghanistan are worse. As the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations stated in an August 2009 report (.pdf), "Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is not a reconstruction project -- it is a construction project, starting almost from scratch in a country that will probably remain poverty-stricken no matter how much the U.S. and the international community accomplish in the coming years."

Washington's hope for nation-building and counterinsurgency, particularly in the context of Afghanistan, is not so much misguided as it is misplaced. Containing al-Qaida and disrupting its ability to carry out future terrorist attacks does not require a massive troop presence on the ground. Committing still more U.S. personnel to Afghanistan undermines the already weak authority of Afghan leaders, interferes with our ability to deal with other security challenges, and pulls us deeper into a bloody and protracted guerilla war with no end in sight.

As Robert Jervis, a professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, recently noted, "[President Obama] has devoted much more attention to how to wage the war than to whether we need to wage it." It is becoming clear that going after al-Qaida neither requires a large-scale, long-term military presence in Afghanistan, nor does such a mission constitute a vital national security interest.

The Senate hearings this week on Afghanistan are displaying the increased skepticism among many top lawmakers toward a war that is rapidly losing public support. At a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked Mullen, "Do you understand you've got one more shot back home?" alluding to polls showing most Americans oppose the war and oppose sending more troops. "Do you understand that?"

Sadly, a common view among policymakers and defense officials is that if America pours in enough time and resources--possibly hundreds of thousands of troops for another 12 to 14 years--Washington could really turn Afghanistan around.

But while military leaders like Gen. Stanley McChrystal say a new strategy must be forged to "earn the support of the [Afghan] people," Washington does not even have the support of the American people. The U.S. does not have the patience, cultural knowledge or legitimacy to transform what is a deeply divided, poverty-stricken, tribal-based society into a self-sufficient, non-corrupt, and stable electoral democracy. And even if Americans did commit several hundred thousand troops and pursued decades of armed nation-building--in the middle of an economic downturn, no less--success would hardly be guaranteed, especially in a country notoriously suspicious of outsiders and largely devoid of central authority.

The U.S. and its allies must instead narrow their objectives. A long-term, large-scale presence is not necessary to disrupt al Qaeda, and going after the group does not require Washington to pacify the entire country. Denying a sanctuary to terrorists that seek to attack the U.S. can be done through aerial surveillance, retaining covert operatives for discrete operations against specific targets, and ongoing intelligence-sharing with countries in the region. Overall, remaining in Afghanistan is more likely to tarnish America's reputation and undermine U.S. security than would withdrawal.

Those who support this approach frequently point to the resolution of the Irish "troubles" via the Good Friday agreement. But even if that assessment of Northern Ireland is correct, it is not the only way such conflicts have ended. The Vietnam War ended when North Vietnam sent virtually its entire army into South Vietnam in 1975; achieving a decisive military victory that overturned the negotiated Paris Accords it had approved just a couple of years before. North Vietnam then proved that its military approach was no fluke by invading Cambodia and crushing the Khmer Rouge.

In short, sometimes there is a military solution. Some questions need to be addressed however, as the U.S. increases its military forces in Afghanistan to determine if that is the case in Afghanistan.

The first has to do with supply lines. Afghanistan is a land-locked country. Supplies have been transported through Pakistan, but those supply lines have been increasingly threatened. Accordingly, the U.S. has been seeking other routes. As General David Petraeus — the former military commander overseeing the war in Afghanistan — explained, "all roads do lead through Uzbekistan and into Afghanistan."

But Uzbekistan is also landlocked. A quick look at the map shows that any supply lines that use Uzbekistan will be dependent on cooperation from Russia; both politically and logistically.

Moscow has offered cooperation, but we should have no illusions: whatever Russia's weaknesses, they are immaterial so long as the U.S. and its NATO allies need its assistance in Afghanistan. With the safety of tens of thousands of troops at stake, risks need to be minimized.

The success the Taliban have had in interdicting supply lines also raises an interesting question: why hasn't it happened to their supply lines? It is extraordinary that an insurgency with no state sponsor is able to supply itself against the mightiest alliance in the world. Who is providing their ammunition? How does it get to their fighters?

Another set of questions grows out of the effort to accelerate the growth of Afghanistan's security forces. This is seen as imperative since any strategy for defending the population needs "boots on the ground," and there is simply no way that the United States and its allies can provide the requisite numbers. Moreover, it is the Afghans' country, and they have to assume the responsibility for protecting it.

But if the forces are expanded quickly, how could infiltration by enemies be prevented? In August 2008, a French unit was ambushed while patrolling near Kabul. According to Army chief of staff General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the French had entered "a well-organized trap." A French newspaper claimed the interpreter had disappeared shortly before the encounter, which would explain why the Taliban were able to organize such an effective ambush.

Additionally, the Taliban's ability to recruit effectively remains intact. According to public opinion polls, their popularity has declined. NATO forces have also been inflicting casualties on them. Yet they seem to have no difficulty replacing their losses, which is one reason NATO and the U.S. feel compelled to build up their forces.

Even if the Taliban can exploit a poor economic situation to attract new followers, the ability to thwart this strategy by building up the Afghan economy is extremely limited. Afghanistan is still an agricultural economy, and if it is to earn money from agriculture, it must be able to export (the poppy trade is lucrative because there are foreign purchasers). Yet Afghanistan's location and poor transportation infrastructure are not suited to export. Any economic improvement is bound to be gradual.

Finally, there is the question of training. As Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently acknowledged, the Taliban "has grown much more sophisticated in the last two or three years."

They are being trained somewhere — but where? Why is it so difficult to discover those locations and destroy them?

At the end of 2001, it all looked so easy. The United States has traveled a hard road since then. Americans, along with their NATO and regional allies, need to answer these questions - and others like them - to gain a better idea of how they got where they are, and where they are heading.

Given the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, a definitive, conventional "victory" is not a realistic option. Denying a sanctuary to terrorists who seek to attack the United States does not require Washington to pacify the entire country, eradicate its opium fields, or sustain a long-term military presence in Central Asia. From the sky, U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles can monitor villages, training camps, and insurgent compounds. On the ground, the United States can retain a small number of covert operatives for intelligence gathering and discrete operations against specific targets, as well as an additional small group of advisers to train Afghan police and military forces. The United States should withdraw most of its forces from Afghanistan within the next 12 to 18 months and treat al Qaeda's presence in the region as a chronic, but manageable, problem.

Washington needs to narrow its objectives to three critical tasks:

Security. Support, rather than supplant, indigenous security efforts by training and assisting the Afghan national army and police and, where appropriate, paying off or otherwise co-opting regional militias. Training should be tied to clear metrics. If those benchmarks are not achieved, Washington must cut its losses and cease further assistance. U.S. forces should not become Afghanistan's perpetual crutch.

Intelligence and Regional Relations. Sustain intelligence operations in the region through aerial surveillance, covert operations, and ongoing intelligence-sharing with the Afghan and Pakistani governments. Seek cordial relations with all of Afghanistan's neighbors, particularly Russia and Iran, as each has the means to significantly undermine or facilitate progress in the country.

Drugs. Dial back an opium eradication policy to one that solely targets drug cartels affiliated with insurgents rather than one that targets all traffickers, including poor local farmers. Harassing the latter alienates a significant portion of the rural population.

Central Asia holds little intrinsic strategic value to the United States, and America's security will not be endangered even if an oppressive regime takes over a contiguous fraction of Afghan territory. America's objective has been to neutralize the parties responsible for the atrocities committed on 9/11. The United States should not go beyond that objective by combating a regional insurgency or drifting into an open-ended occupation and nation-building mission.

Most important, Afghanistan serves as the crossroads of Central Asia. From its invasion by Genghis Khan and his two-million strong Mongol hordes to the superpower proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union, Afghanistan's trade routes and land-locked position in the middle of the region have for centuries rendered it vulnerable to invasion by external powers. Although Afghanistan has endured successive waves of Persian, Greek, Arab, Turk, Mongol, British, and Soviet invaders, no occupying power has ever successfully conquered it. There's a reason why it has been described as the "graveyard of empires," and unless America scales down its objectives, it risks meeting a similar fate.

The normal result is an agenda without end — and almost as long a list of failures. Presidents leave office having suffered multiple frustrations, broken numerous promises, proposed extraordinary outlays, and caused occasional wars.

President Obama seems set to repeat the pattern, unless he learns from his predecessors. The answer is simple, though counterintuitive: do less.

Barack Obama entered office with an ambitious foreign policy. He was aided by the positive international response to his election. No one could deny that he was different from his unpopular, confrontational predecessor. For the first time in years, there was widespread optimism around the globe about an American administration.

However, the president has quickly learned the limitations facing even the world's most powerful nation. Again and again, Washington has failed to achieve its objectives. In some instances the results are delayed or the costs are inflated. In other cases success appears unlikely or well-nigh impossible.

Perhaps the administration's highest current priority is Afghanistan. Yet the military situation continues to deteriorate, with combat commanders requesting more troops. Air strikes continue to cost civilian lives and undercut popular backing for the allied cause. Attacking the expansive drug trade risks increasing support for insurgents. The Karzai government's credibility, already at low ebb due to corruption and incompetence, fell even further with the recent fraud-ridden election. President Obama has been in office for less than eight months and already he appears to be channeling Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam.

The endgame in Iraq appears increasingly likely to be a stalemate at best. Violence remains distressingly high: the latest spate of bombings underlies the weaknesses of the security forces, limits on political reconciliation, and dangers for the future. Baghdad is unlikely to be either a liberal democracy or an American ally. There isn't much for the Obama administration to do but draw down U.S. forces and watch the denouement.

One of the president's most dramatic breaks with the Bush administration was a willingness to talk to America's adversaries. Yet the wheels came off the Barack express with the fraudulent Iranian election and ensuing popular protests. Unsure whether criticism or silence was more prudent, the administration looked ineffective and confused. While engagement remains possible — and, frankly, essential — Washington has found it hard to negotiate with an Iranian government that so recently was breaking demonstrators' heads in the streets and even now is conducting Stalinesque show trials in its courtrooms.

North Korea wasn't even supposed to be on the administration's early agenda. But "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il had other ideas, testing a nuclear weapon, shooting off missiles, and arresting two U.S. journalists. Pyongyang now is proposing negotiation, leaving President Obama, who sharply criticized his predecessor's intransigence, to appear to put procedure before principle in refusing to engage outside of the so-called Six-Party Talks. Yet it isn't clear that negotiation in any setting would be more effective under this administration than the last one.

To his credit, the president is determined to reset relations with Russia. However, talking sweetly has had only limited practical impact on Moscow's attitudes since Washington continues to proclaim its support for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Yet the administration's best efforts to promote more responsible governance in those two states, including a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, have had equally little effect. Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili seems chastened neither by his military defeat last year nor growing political unrest at home; politics in Kiev retains its soap opera-like quality as America's favorite, President Viktor Yushchenko, blunders his way towards likely defeat in next year's election.

Europe should be an area of expanded cooperation, given President Obama's popularity throughout much of the continent. However, as part of the European Union the Europeans failed to follow his advice to engage in an American-style spending orgy in the name of stimulating the economy. As part of NATO the Europeans affirmed the importance of Afghanistan but refused to commit substantially more troops or resources; to the contrary, even the British now are talking about drawing down their forces. An international film version of American Alone appears to be in the offing.

Washington continues to push its stalled project for an independent Kosovo, with the half-recognized state divided by the unrecognized secession of ethnic Serbs in its north. Stubborn controversies between Macedonia and Greece and surrounding Cyprus have grown no less stubborn over the last eight months. After having embraced participation in America's missile defense project, Poland has been estranged by the administration's plan to drop the system.

The U.S. has had no more success winning cooperation from Israel, a nation which has received largely unconditional support in the form of money, weapons, and political backing for decades. Insistence on a freeze in settlement expansion, one of the most serious barriers to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, has been met with shock, hostility, and scorn. Along with the demand to keep writing the blank checks, if you please.

The administration has brought its power and prestige to bear on little Honduras and yet has been unable to force Tegucigalpa to restore Manuel Zelaya to the presidency. President Obama risks going from the sublime to the ridiculous by threatening not to recognize the results of the upcoming, regularly scheduled election which would replace Zelaya even if he was reinstated. The administration appears to be intent on destroying democracy to save it.

It is still early, but the incoming foreign policy team has not been able to turn a friendlier attitude towards Caracas into any relaxation of Hugo Chavez's tightening restrictions on opposition activity. A new and long overdue American openness to dialogue with Cuba has not accelerated reform in that impoverished, oppressed land.

China and India are no more willing today to slow their economies to reduce CO2 emissions at American insistence than when George W. Bush was president. The Japanese election result is likely to reduce Tokyo's readiness to underwrite U.S. geopolitical priorities. Egypt's politics remains as corrupt and authoritarian as ever, despite President Obama's high-profile visit and speech.

In short, the world has turned out to be a lot less malleable and willing to adjust to American preferences than the president may have thought before taking office.

The administration could continue muddling along like most of its predecessors. Just not creating any new policy disasters would be a welcome change from President George W. Bush, who bungled an unnecessary war in Iraq, oversaw North Korea's move towards full nuclear status, and damaged relations with both Europe and Russia. Heck of job, George!

Another option is more intensive intervention. More troops for Afghanistan, more lecturing of Georgia and Ukraine, more pressure on Israel, more threats against Honduras, more sanctions on Iran, more recalcitrance with North Korea, more pleas to Russia, more advice for Iraq. Unfortunately, most of these won't work, and their collective cost is likely to be far higher than the benefits of one or another isolated success.

The better choice would be to do less. Involvement in some issues obviously is inescapable: the U.S. is heavily engaged in Afghanistan, for instance. However, Washington should moderate its objectives. The goal of ousting and weakening al-Qaeda has been achieved. Bringing good governance to Kabul, making Afghanistan drug free, and spreading American culture to Pashtuns, whatever their value, are not worth war. Washington should be working to escape, not escalate.

Expanding NATO into the Caucasus and further along Russia's border reduces rather than increases U.S. security. Washington has no reason to meddle in Honduras' political imbroglio. Rather than badger Israel over its policies, the U.S. should cut official support for the Israeli government and step back from the conflict. Kosovo was never an important concern warranting meddling let alone war. And so on.

World War II and the Cold War turned the American republic into a quasi-empire, engaged in constant intervention and war. The demise of hegemonic communism and rise of populous and prosperous democratic states in Asia and Europe allow the U.S. to return to a more traditional role. President Obama should seize the opportunity and initiate real change in U.S. foreign policy.

The president will suffer the usual failures of his predecessors if he continues to attempt to micro-manage global affairs. To leave a positive legacy, he should move in the other direction, returning America to, in Jeane Kirkpatrick's words, the status of "a normal country in a normal time."

"Afghanistan," according to Obama, "is a war of necessity... [And] If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

President George W. Bush was adept at keeping the American public in an elevated state of panic. That tactic may be useful for advancing controversial policies. But if policymakers continue to downplay the drawbacks of our current course of action, America risks intensifying the region's powerful jihadist insurgency and entangling itself deeper into a tribal-based society it barely understands.

Americans must be told the truth about the war in Afghanistan. To understand the disadvantages of pursuing present policies, we must unpack the myths that war proponents use to justify staying the course.

Myth #1: Both al Qaeda and the Taliban Are Our Mortal Enemies

Given the magnitude of the atrocities unleashed on September 11th, removing both al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that sheltered the terrorist organization was appropriate. But eight years later, is waging a war against the Taliban a pressing national security interest? Not really.

The Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other guerilla-jihadi movements indigenous to this region have no shadowy global mission. In fact, what we are witnessing is a local and regional ethnic Pasthun population — divided arbitrarily by a porous 1,500-mile border — fighting against what they perceive to be a hostile occupation of their region. Prolonging our mission risks uniting these groups and making U.S. troops the primary target of their wrath.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, even if the Taliban were to reassert themselves amid a scaled down U.S. presence, it is not clear that the Taliban would again host al Qaeda. In The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Lawrence Wright, staff writer for New Yorker magazine, found that before 9/11 the Taliban was divided over whether to shelter Osama bin Laden. The terrorist financier wanted to attack Saudi Arabia's royal family, which, according to Wright, would have defied a pledge Taliban leader Mullah Omar made to Prince Turki al-Faisal, chief of Saudi intelligence (1977-2001), to keep bin Laden under control. The Taliban's reluctance to host al Qaeda's leader means it is not a foregone conclusion that the same group would provide shelter to the same organization whose protection led to their overthrow.

As the war in Afghanistan rages on, President Obama should be skeptical of suggestions that the defeat of al Qaeda depends upon a massive troop presence. Globally, the United States has degraded al Qaeda's ability to pull off another 9/11 by employing operations that look a lot like police work. Most of the greatest successes scored against al Qaeda, such as the snatch-and-grab operations that netted Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi bin al Shibh, have not relied on large numbers of U.S. troops. Intelligence sharing and close cooperation with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies have done more to round up suspected terrorists than blunt military force.

Myth # 2: We Must Remain in the Region to Protect Pakistan

The "Pakistan-is-imploding" meme that coursed through the Beltway like wildfire last spring was excessively alarmist.

First, the danger of militants seizing Pakistan's nuclear weapons remains highly unlikely. Pakistan has an elaborate command and control system in place that complies with strict Western standards, and the country's warheads, detonators, and missiles are not stored fully-assembled, but are scattered and physically separated throughout the country.

Second, average militants have no viable means of taking over a country of 172 million people. The dominant political force within Pakistan is not radical fundamentalist Islam, but a desire for a sound economy and basic security. In fact, if the country were to be taken over by al Qaeda sympathizers, it would likely be because U.S. policies in both Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are being exploited by militants to undermine public support for the government in Islamabad.

Third, policymakers have underestimated how greatly leaders in Islamabad fear the rise of pro-India government in Kabul. India inspires a sense of profound insecurity in Pakistan. For all of Washington's talk of the "Af-Pak" border, eighty percent of Pakistan's military still sits on the border with India, not Afghanistan. Pakistan's fear of India has existed for decades, and Pakistani military leaders are committed to securing "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, their regional backyard, and they do so to prevent India from establishing influence there and encircling Pakistan.

Finally, and most importantly, while America has a vital interest in ensuring Pakistan does not become weakened, its America's own policies that are pushing the conflict over the border and destabilizing the nuclear-armed country.

Airstrikes from unmanned drones are strengthening the very jihadist forces America seeks to defeat by allowing militants to exploit the popular resentment felt from the accidental killing of innocents. On August 12, the U.S. special envoy for the region, Richard Holbrooke, told an audience at the Center for American Progress that the porous border and its surrounding areas serve as a fertile recruiting ground for al Qaeda. One US military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called airstrikes from U.S. unmanned drones "a recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban."

Citizens living outside the ungoverned tribal areas also detest drones. A recent poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan for Al-Jazeera found that a whopping 59 percent believed the U.S. was the greatest threat to Pakistan.

If America's interests lie in ensuring the virus of anti-American radicalism does not infect the rest of the region, discontinuing policies that add more fuel to violent religious radicalism should be the first order of business.

Myth #3: Terrorists Dwell in Ungoverned Parts of the World

According to the president, our strategy is to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda. Yet in order to accomplish that goal, the Obama administration believes we must create a functioning national state there. Why?

Beltway orthodoxy tells us that because extremists will emerge in ungoverned parts of the world and attack the United States, America must forcibly stabilize, liberalize, and democratize Afghanistan.

This thinking is flawed for several reasons.

First, the argument that America's security depends on rebuilding failed states ignores that terrorists can move to governed spaces. Rather than setting up in weak, ungoverned states, enemies can flourish in strong states because these countries have formally recognized governments with the sovereignty to reject foreign interference in their domestic affairs. This is one reason why terrorists find sanctuary across the border in Pakistan. [Note: 9/11 was planned in many other countries, Germany included].

Second, as my Cato colleagues Chris Preble and Justin Logan point out, there's reason to doubt whether state failure or poor governance in itself poses a threat.

Third, such an extraordinarily costly, open-ended military occupation gives Osama bin Laden and his ilk exactly what they want: America's all-volunteer military force is pressed to cope with two protracted irregular wars, we are inadvertently killing innocent civilians and our policies are recruiting militants to their cause.

Myth # 4: We Can Have a Successful Nation-Building Mission in Afghanistan

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps' Counterinsurgency Field Manual states, "Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors rebuilding infrastructure and basic services." That sentiment is shared by many of the people informing administration policy.

Stephen Biddle, civilian advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, America's top commander in Afghanistan, said a critical requirement for the success in Afghanistan "is providing enough of an improvement in Afghan governance to enable the country to function without us."

But like many within the Obama administration, Biddle's advice is more goal than strategy.

First, Afghanistan has yet to demonstrate the capability to function as a cohesive, modern, nation state, with or without us — and perhaps never will. Many tribes living in rural, isolated, and sparsely populated provinces have little interest cooperating with "foreigners," a relative term considering the limited contact many have with their country's own central government.

Second, arguments supporting a multi-decade commitment of "armed nation building" — the words of another civilian advisor to the mission, Anthony Cordesman — overlook whether such an ambitious project can be done within costs acceptable to the American public.

Our attempt to transform what is a deeply divided, poverty stricken, tribal-based society — while our own country faces economic peril — is nothing short of ludicrous, especially since even the limited goal of creating a self-sufficient, non-corrupt, stable electoral democracy would require a multi-decade commitment—and even then there'd be no assurance of success.

Myth #5: It's Altruistic to Help Afghans

This video at "Rethink Afghanistan" upends this myth, particularly on the issue of women's rights.

In addition, while it's understandable for the President and other elected leaders to empathize with the plight and suffering of others, why Afghanistan? What about Haiti? Or Congo? Or the dozens of other poverty-stricken countries around the world, and at that point does America stop nation-building?

As Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich argues:

For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbor...outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude...Yet any politician calling for the commitment of sixty thousand U.S. troops to Mexico to secure those interests or acquit those moral obligations would be laughed out of Washington—and rightly so. Any pundit proposing that the United States assume responsibility for eliminating the corruption that is endemic in Mexican politics while establishing in Mexico City effective mechanisms of governance would have his license to pontificate revoked.

Over the past year, the mission in Afghanistan has shifted from the limited goal of taking down al Qaeda to a much broader counterinsurgency approach. Americans are now being told their troops must protect the villages of Afghanistan. Planning will always falls short of our expectations because we can't reliably predict the course of future events. As the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations stated in an August 2009 report, "Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is not a reconstruction project—it is a construction project, starting almost from scratch in a country that will probably remain poverty-stricken no matter how much the U.S. and the international community accomplish in the coming years."

Denying a sanctuary to terrorists who seek to attack the United States does not require Washington to pacify the entire country or sustain a long-term, large-scale military presence. Afghanistan does not have to be Obama's Vietnam, but whether it will be or not is entirely his decision.

[The Cato Institute will be hosting a forum "Should the United States Withdraw from Afghanistan?" on September 14th.]

Not only is Afghanistan an extremely unpromising candidate for such a mission, given its pervasive poverty, its fractured clan-based and tribal-based social structure, and its weak national identity, U.S. and NATO officials should also be sobered by the disappointing outcomes of other nation-building ventures over the past two decades. An audit of the two most prominent missions, Bosnia and Iraq, ought to inoculate Americans against pursuing the same fool's errand in Afghanistan.

The Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian civil war nearly fourteen years ago. Yet as Washington Post correspondent Craig Whitlock discovered during a recent visit, Bosnia is no closer to being a viable country than it was in 1995. It still lacks a meaningful sense of nationhood or even the basic political cohesion and ethnic reconciliation to be an effective state. The reality is that if secession were allowed, the overwhelming majority of Bosnian Serbs would vote to detach their self-governing region (the Republika Srpska) from Bosnia and form an independent country or merge with Serbia. Most of the remaining Croats — who are already deserting the country in droves — would also likely choose to secede and join with Croatia. Bosnian Muslims constitute the only faction wishing to maintain Bosnia in its current incarnation.

Political paralysis continues to plague the country. To the extent that political power has been exercised by Bosnia's inhabitants at all, it has been at the subnational level, i.e., the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat federation. The national government is weak to the point of impotence. Most real political power has been exercised by the UN high representative, an international potentate who rules like a colonial governor. High representatives have routinely removed elected officials from office, disqualified candidates for elections, and imposed various policies by decree.

The economic situation is not much better. Bosnia's economy is in terrible shape. Indeed, without the financial inputs from international aid agencies and the spending by the swarms of international bureaucrats in the country (which account for more than a third of its gross domestic product), Bosnia would scarcely have a functioning economy at all. Even with that assistance, the country's unemployment rate stands at a staggering 45 percent.

Although Bosnia verges on being a nation-building fiasco, it eventually may be less of a disaster than Iraq. Recent events there suggest that those Americans who cheered the success of the surge strategy were premature in their elation. Violence is again on the rise, and tensions are soaring, both between Sunnis and Shiites and between Arabs and Kurds.

Iraq has already ceased to be a unified state. The Baghdad government exercises no meaningful power in the Kurdish region in the north. Indeed, Iraqi Arabs who enter the territory are treated as foreigners — and not especially welcome foreigners. Although the Kurds have not proclaimed an independent country, in every sense that matters Iraq's Kurdistan region is de-facto independent, and the "Kurdish regional government" is the governing body of a sovereign state with its own flag, currency, and army. Moreover, it is a de facto sovereign state with far-reaching territorial ambitions. The Kurds claim the city of Kirkuk and its extensive oil deposits. There have also been nasty clashes with Iraqi Arab factions in the ethnically mixed province of Ninevah, where Kurds insist that several villages should be under the jurisdiction of the Kurdish region.

Kurdish-Arab tensions have grown so severe that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made an unexpected trip to Iraq in late July to urge both sides to back away from a dangerous confrontation. General Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, admits that the Arab-Kurdish feud — especially over the status of Kirkuk — is the "number one driver of instabilities" in the country. Tensions in both the area around Kirkuk and in Nineveh province are so palpable that Odierno has suggested that U.S. troops be deployed to establish a buffer between Kurds and Arabs to prevent an outbreak of open warfare.

There are also serious questions about the degree of stability in the rest of Iraq. True, the carnage that afflicted the country following the U.S. invasion, and which reached especially severe levels from early 2006 to mid 2007, has declined. Nevertheless, the casualty rates are still disturbingly high. Shiite-Sunni sectarian tensions simmer, and the massive bombings in Baghdad and other cities in mid-August suggest that they may soon again come to a boil.

Even the improvement in the casualty numbers should not be overstated. According to the Ministry of the Interior, there were 437 deaths in July. Since Iraq's population is only 25 million, the July toll would translate into an equivalent of more than 5,000 deaths from political violence in the United States — or an annual rate of more than 60,000. Iraq is still in the throes of a civil war, albeit a relatively low-intensity one. That does not bode well for unity or even stability going forward. There are already calls by American pundits to abandon — or at least delay — plans for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces by the end of 2011, lest Iraq again erupt into chaos.

Despite a fourteen-year effort and the expenditure of billions of dollars, the Bosnian nation-building mission is a failure. Despite a six-year effort (and counting), the expenditure of at least $700 billion, and the sacrifice of more than 4,300 American lives, the Iraq nation-building mission is failing. Yet, instead of learning from those bitter experiences, U.S. leaders seem intent on pursuing the same chimera in Afghanistan.

As Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass has suggested, we need to "define success down" in Afghanistan. That means abandoning any notion of making ethnically fractured, pre-industrial Afghanistan into a modern, cohesive nation state. It means even abandoning the goal of a definitive victory over al-Qaeda. Instead, we need to treat the terrorist threat that al-Qaeda poses as a chronic, but manageable, security problem. That requires a willingness to work with any Afghan faction prepared to oppose the organization, harass it, and keep it off balance. Such a modest approach would be an imperfect and unsatisfying strategy, but foreign policy, like domestic politics, is the art of the possible. Containing and weakening al Qaeda may be possible, but building Afghanistan into a modern, democratic country is not. The increasingly evident failures of nation-building in Bosnia and Iraq — which were both more promising candidates than Afghanistan — should have taught us that lesson.

But while Americans are turning against the war, President Obama has staked his presidency on what he insists is a "war of necessity."

It's not surprising that many see a parallel with Lyndon Johnson, another president of grand domestic ambitions who wrecked his presidency with an unwinnable war.

But there's another aspect of the LBJ parallel that deserves more attention. That's liberals' temperamental affinity for nation-building, which may help explain why Obama is doubling down on a bad bet.

Historian and Vietnam veteran Walter McDougall calls Vietnam the "Great Society War," one shaped by liberals' conviction that no social problem is too difficult for a determined and well-meaning government to fix.

As McDougall tells it, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara "put more than a hundred sociologists, ethnologists, and psychologists to work 'modeling' South Vietnamese society and seeking data sufficient 'to describe it quantitatively and simulate its behavior on a computer." "Dammit," LBJ exclaimed to an aide in 1966, "We've got to see that the South Vietnamese government wins the battle… of crops and hearts and caring."

True, Obama admits that we can't "rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy." But the administration's vision for Afghanistan is quixotic enough nonetheless.

In addition to troop increases, the Obama team plans a "civilian surge" that would double the number of development experts deployed to the region. (The Pentagon prefers the term "civilian uplift.")

The Obama plan for the drug war in Afghanistan rests heavily on "crops, and hearts, and caring." We're supplying Afghan farmers with wheat seeds, fruit saplings, and loans, hoping to wean them from the lucrative drug trade, while at the same time targeting high-level drug kingpins.

So will the administration go after Afghan President Hamid Karzai's running mate, Marshal Fahim, whom CIA officers strongly suspect of using his prior position as Karzai's defense minister to transport heroin into Russia?

In Iraq, the administration wants more time to let the nation-builders work their magic. They're pressuring Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to abandon a planned referendum that would force U.S. troops to leave a year ahead of schedule.

You'd think Obama would welcome a move that would help him honor a key campaign promise. But among other things, apparently we need more time to oversee joint exercises between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish militias — in the hopes that the two implacable enemies will learn to get along.

According to the U.S. top commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, Al Qaeda is "exploiting this fissure between the Arabs and the Kurds," and "what we're trying to do is close that fissure."

The Right's embrace of nation-building during the Bush years was perplexing. When the government announces a massive effort at social transformation, you expect conservatives to be the leading skeptics.

"When you hear the phrase 'nation building,'" columnist George Will cautions, "remember, it is as preposterous as the phrase 'orchid building.'" Yet even now, a majority of Republicans — 70 percent in the ABC/WaPo poll — back Obama on the Afghan war.

Meanwhile, the president is losing the liberals: Fewer than 20 percent of Democrats support increasing troop levels, and seven in 10 say the war hasn't been worth the cost. Antiwar groups plan a series of protests for the eighth anniversary of the war in October, and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, demands a "flexible timetable" for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But if history is any indication, stronger measures will be needed. Democrats, who seem obsessed with honoring Sen. Ted Kennedy's legacy, might look at a bill the Massachusetts senator introduced in 2007.

Short and sweet, it was designed "to prohibit the use of funds for an escalation of United States forces in Iraq." That measure never passed, but in the early '70s, Congress successfully used strings attached to spending bills to wind down our involvement in Vietnam.

Obama has made Afghanistan a "liberal war;" ironically enough, it may also be a war from which only liberals can disentangle us.

"They feel, the North Koreans, that by giving us the two American journalists, that they've made an important gesture," explained Gov. Richardson. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea certainly knows how to spell chutzpah.

The government of Kim Jong-il is owed nothing. The DPRK is a relic of the Cold War, a Stalinist remnant in which some 23 million people suffer and even starve. The impoverished and backward nation would matter little but for its nuclear weapons program. With the latter, however, Pyongyang can command international attention.

The North has now formally invited the U.S. to send an envoy for negotiations. How to respond? Seven steps would help the U.S. promote peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.

1. Keep expectations low. Otherwise sober-minded analysts and policy-makers occasionally proclaim the latest "breakthrough." Yet North Korea thrives on isolation, fears Western freedoms, and relies on brinkmanship as a negotiating technique. Diplomatic progress is possible, but neither certain nor even likely.

2. Negotiate with North Korea. Refusing to talk is a grade-school tactic that has gotten the U.S. nowhere. Indeed, one of the Bush administration's great policy failures was refusing to deal with the North as it began reprocessing spent fuel that had been set aside under the so-called Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration.

Pyongyang both augmented its arsenal and became more confrontational. Washington should engage in both bilateral and multilateral discussions.

3. Beware making the perfect the enemy of the good. An increasing number of analysts doubt that the North will ever give up its existing nuclear materials and weapons. On the other hand, Pyongyang still might be willing to halt any expansion of a program currently capable of yielding only a handful of weapons.

Although a nuclear-free peninsula remains a worthy goal, a freeze might be a more realistic objective in the short-term, while offering a potential way station toward full denuclearization as the North Korean regime evolves or dissolves.

4. Treat North Korean provocations with bored contempt. The U.S. needs to reward the North when it acts responsibly and punish or ignore it when it acts badly. Reprogramming the DPRK won't be easy, but the regime has been on markedly better behavior over the last month than previously. For that Washington and other nations should respond favorably.

5. Let other countries, which have the most at stake, take the lead. The DPRK is primarily a problem for its neighbors, not the U.S. The North's antiquated military has only limited reach. A messy DPRK regime collapse would loose refugees on South Korea and China, not America.

A North Korean nuclear arsenal similarly would most threaten the region. Pyongyang lacks both an accurate delivery vehicle and the miniaturization technology to put a nuke on a missile; moreover, Washington has overwhelming retaliatory capability.

6. Press China in particular to take a more active and forceful role. Economic sanctions are largely futile without the cooperation of the DPRK's northern neighbor. Yet so far Beijing has been more concerned about preventing a North Korean collapse and forestalling creation of a united Korea allied with America.

However, the current situation is highly unstable, with the possibility of regime failure and all the attendant consequences anyway. Moreover, American military action could plunge the entire peninsula into war and South Korea and Japan might respond to a growing North Korean arsenal by developing their own nuclear weapons.

If China acted responsibly, however, Washington could offer to share in the cost of caring for any refugees created as well as promise not to take geopolitical advantage of Beijing by turning the Korean Peninsula into a permanent American military outpost.

7. Withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea. The Republic of Korea has a vast economic and technological lead over its northern antagonist and is fully capable of defending itself.

Nor do American conventional forces help resolve the nuclear issue; to the contrary, by putting U.S. military personnel within reach of the North, Washington has created 28,000 nuclear hostages.

Moreover, eliminating America's military presence on the peninsula would be the strongest possible signal to Beijing that it need not fear pressing the North to deal and reform, even at the risk of the latter's collapse.

The North's coming leadership transition will yield both opportunities and dangers. The Obama administration should recognize the limitations inherent to any policy toward the North, while doing its best to promote a peaceful resolution of the Korean confrontation.

The targeting of tribal safe havens by CIA-operated drone strikes strengthens the very jihadist forces that America seeks to defeat, by alienating hearts and minds in a fragile, nuclear-armed, Muslim-majority Pakistani state.

During a recent visit to the frontier region, I spoke with several South Waziri tribesmen about the impact of US missile strikes. They recounted how militants exploit the popular resentment felt from the accidental killing of innocents from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and defined themselves as a force against the injustice of a hostile foreign occupation.

Missile strikes alienate thousands of clans, sub-clans and extended families within a tribal society that places high social value on honor and revenge. To the Pashtun tribes straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, personal and collective vendettas have been known to last for generations, and are invoked irrespective of time and cost involved. Successive waves of Persian, Greek, Arab, Turk, Mughal, British and Soviet invaders have never successfully subdued this thin slice of rugged terrain.

On August 12, the US special envoy for the region, Richard Holbrooke, told an audience at the Center for American Progress that the porous border and its surrounding areas served as a fertile recruiting ground for Al-Qaeda. One US military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called drone operations "a recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban."

Military strikes appear to be the only viable recourse against the tribal region's shadowy insurgents, with US officials pointing to the successful killing of high-value Al-Qaeda militants like Abu Laith al-Libi in January 2008 and chemical weapons expert Abu Khabab al-Masri in July 2008. However, even if tomorrow Osama bin Laden were killed by a UAV, the jihadist insurgency would not melt away. The ability to keep militant groups off balance must be weighed against the cost of facilitating the rise of more insurgents.

Citizens living outside the ungoverned tribal areas also detest drones. "Anti-US sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan … especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties," conceded US Central Command chief General David Petraeus in a declassified statement written on May 27, 2009.

Drone strikes also contribute to the widening trust deficit between Pakistanis and the US. A recent poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan for Al-Jazeera found that 59 percent believed the US was the greatest threat to Pakistan. Most Pakistanis oppose extremism; they simply disagree with American tactics.

America's interests lie in ensuring the virus of anti-American radicalism does not infect the rest of the region. Yet Washington's attempts to stabilize Afghanistan help destabilize Pakistan, because its actions serve as a recruiting tool for Pakistani Taliban militants. Just as one would not kill a fly with a sledgehammer, using overwhelming firepower to kill a single insurgent creates collateral damage that can recruit 50 more. Military force against insurgents must be applied precisely and discriminately. On the ground, Pakistani security forces lack training, equipment, and communication gear to carry out a low-intensity counterinsurgency. But drones provide a poor substitute if the goal is to engage rather than alienate the other side.

A better strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is for the United States to focus on limiting cross-border movement by supporting local Pakistani security forces with a small number of US Special Forces personnel. To improve fighting capabilities and enhance cooperation, Washington and Islamabad must increase the number of military-to-military training programs to help hone Pakistan's counterterrorism capabilities and serve as a confidence-building measure to lessen the Pakistan Army's tilt toward radicalism.

Ending drone strikes is no panacea for Pakistan's array of problems. But continuing those strikes will certainly deepen the multiple challenges the country faces. Most Pakistanis do not passively accept American actions, and officials in Islamabad cannot afford to be perceived as putting Washington's interests above those of their own people. Long-term success in both Afghanistan and Pakistan depends on the people's repudiation of extremism. Continued US actions add more fuel to violent religious radicalism; it is time to reassess both US tactics and objectives in the region.

That position has a certain nobility. It is, however, wildly unrealistic.

In the first place, spheres of influence exist, even if some choose to not recognise them. The power of a state is like gravity: it has its greatest influence on those objects closest to it. As a saying popular in this hemisphere goes: "Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States."

The most dangerous crisis of the cold war, the Soviet placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba, was settled on the basis of mutual acknowledgement of spheres of influence. Moscow agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba after the US provided assurances that it would remove similar missiles from Turkey. Even though Turkey was a member of Nato, the US in effect recognised that, at least for this purpose, it was within a Soviet sphere of influence.

If Georgia or Ukraine has a confrontation with Russia, there is not much the US can do. There are certain realities of geography that present military technology simply cannot overcome. They border Russia, and the US is far away.

American promises would be as valuable as the French assurances to Poland before the second world war. It is not well known, but France had pledged to launch an attack on Germany within 15 days of any German attack on Poland. Unfortunately for the Poles, the French promise was not serious. When Germany invaded, France declared war – and did nothing.

Placed in a similar circumstance, that is what the US would do – nothing. The US would do nothing because there is nothing it can do. Geography cannot be changed. In addition, American forces are now fully engaged. In order to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan, the US will have to reduce them in Iraq. Apparently, 200,000 American troops are now all that can be deployed in combat theatres at any one time.

For all the talk about the lone superpower, that number needs to be kept in mind. In Vietnam, the US deployed 500,000 in theatre at the peak, with a smaller population, and was not responding to an attack on its territory.

Today the US can deploy far fewer troops. Something has changed in American society. With defence spending increasing to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, George Bush did not even propose a way to pay for the war, either through raising taxes or by cutting other expenditures. No war bonds were issued. The country just quietly accumulated debt.

A political judgment was made: the American people were told to go shopping. The war would not touch the general public. Only an honoured few would bear the burden.

The US did not take war seriously, but was not alone in underestimating the costs and complications of war. After 9/11, Nato invoked Article 5 to show its solidarity with the United States. Nato forces took increasing responsibility in Afghanistan. Thinking the war had been won, they focused on postwar reconstruction.

But as the fighting has intensified and their casualties have mounted, public support for the Afghanistan mission has sagged. "No one will say this publicly, but the true fact is that we are all talking about our exit strategy from Afghanistan," a senior European diplomat revealed during last April's Nato summit. "We are getting out. It may take a couple of years, but we are all looking to get out."

When the cold war ended, the US concluded that its power was overwhelming. The appearance of relatively easy victories in the first Gulf war and in the Balkans reinforced that conviction.

But those triumphs now seem the exception, rather than the rule. Americans thought all their enemies in the future would crumble the way enemies in the 1990s did. They were wrong.

And yet the US continues to make promises. And people will believe in them. And if they get in trouble, they will wonder why the US does not help them.

It is time to be honest – with Americans, and those that depend on their promises.

The 67-year-old Kim allegedly suffered a stroke in August and disappeared from public view for months. When he reappeared he looked gaunt and sickly. Kim is thought to be afflicted with diabetes and heart disease and has been rumored to have cancer.

Since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established in 1948, only two men have held supreme power: Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, and his son, Kim Jong-il. The latter's rise to power was carefully orchestrated by his father.

Since the 1994 Agreed Framework, the North also has engaged in an on-and-off negotiation with the U.S. and North Korea's neighbors over ending its nuclear program.

Despite the common assumption that the North was willing to deal, Pyongyang had obvious reasons to reject even a seemingly generous offer. Nuclear weapons offer the North security assurance, international status, and extortion opportunities.

Still, hope of a solution rose in the aftermath of the October 2007 denuclearization agreement. Alas, North Korea subsequently denounced the arrangement, expelled international inspectors, and even renounced the 1953 Armistice. Earlier this year Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test and several missile tests.

None of this means that North Korea could not come back to the table. The Clinton visit demonstrates that surprises are ever possible. However, today there is increasing doubt that the DPRK will abandon its nuclear program, let alone yield up its existing nuclear materials.

Moreover, North Korea's current internal instability will make reaching a deal even more difficult.

The military is central to Kim's rule. He has long pushed a "military first'' policy. In his prime Kim may have had sufficient authority to sacrifice the military's most powerful weapon as part of a political deal. A seriously ill Kim may not. A transitional collective leadership likely would not.

The North already is restricting private markets and closing up the little private space that had recently opened up. Equally significant is the rising influence of the military.

Kim may have decided he must placate an institution capable of ratifying or blocking any leadership transition; the military may have become more demanding in the wake of his incapacity.

This would explain the rapid multiple international provocations, punctuated by the nuclear and missile tests. Moreover, the National Defense Commission, of which Kim is chairman, is gaining internal authority.

Even more problematic is the leadership transition. The uncertainty created by Kim's condition is compounded by the age of many other top officials. For instance, 81-year-old Kim Yong-nam is chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly and nominal head of state.

Moreover, North Korea has evolved into the modern equivalent of the Ottoman Empire. "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung was married twice and had many other relationships.

Kim Jong-il apparently has had four wives or long-term mistresses. The result has been several children from different spouses as well as a number of illegitimate children.

Earlier this year Kim apparently designated 26-year-old Kim Jong-un, his youngest son, as his heir. However, unless Kim Jong-il survives and rules for at least several years, the younger Kim is unlikely to have an easy time claiming his political inheritance in a culture that typically reveres age and in which potential rivals are many.

The regime number two appears to be brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, who might not be satisfied with playing a secondary role in the event of Kim Jong-il's death.

Many other senior officials have been waiting for years and even decades to take charge. Moreover, there are more than a few Kim family members available to front for competing factions, including Kim's half-brother, two other sons, and current wife/mistress.

How this international soap opera will turn out is anyone's guess. But it could have a significant impact on Pyongyang's relations with the rest of the world.

Given the horrors perpetuated by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, it is hard to imagine the situation getting worse in the DPRK.

However, overt factionalism, a brutal power struggle, and political instability would add an incendiary element to peninsula affairs. At the very least, an insecure leader, weak collective rule, and/or de facto military rule all would make North Korean concessions on the nuclear issue even less likely.

The U.S. and South Korea should continue diplomatic efforts, both bilateral and multilateral. Moreover, both governments should intensify efforts to involve Japan and engage China in a concerted campaign to pressure Pyongyang and/or seek to effect regime change.

At the same time, however, policymakers must realistically assess the future. The U.S. and North Korea's neighbors had better prepare for the possibility of an even more unsettled and dangerous future.