A number of experts share my concern that the Obama Administration is taking undue risks with its Iraq policy. In a compelling analysis, Meghan O'Sullivan lays out the potential upside of a more prudent Iraq policy. And in an equally compelling analysis, Kenneth Pollack lays out the potential downside of the path that the Obama Administration appears to have chosen. Together, they make a powerful argument for reconsidering the current trajectory and for making a mid-course correction.

I worked closely with O'Sullivan on Iraq policy in Bush's second term, and I found her to be one of the most candid and insightful internal critics of our policies. She was an early advocate of the shift to the surge strategy and she was especially good at understanding the interplay of U.S. policy and internal Iraqi politics.

Pollack was one of the more important outside voices on Bush's Iraq policy. He was an early supporter of efforts to confront the Hussein regime, but he also was an early critic of missteps. By 2006 his critique was especially trenchant. Then in late July 2007, he co-authored (with Michael O'Hanlon) one of the most influential op-eds in the entire Iraq saga. At that time, Republican backers of Bush's efforts in Iraq were losing heart and Democratic opponents of the surge were close to realizing their goal of stopping the new strategy. The Bush White House was reduced to pleading for a few weeks delay so Congress could hear from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker directly in September, but the mood in Congress was unwilling even to do that. In the midst of the political storm, Pollack and O'Hanlon wrote that the new surge strategy was working and that political opponents at home should give it more time. Since Bush opponents had regularly used Pollack and O'Hanlon's earlier critiques as a club with which to bash the Administration, their surprising notes of optimism gave their op-ed outsized influence.

I hope the Obama Administration is listening to O'Sullivan, Pollack, and others today. If Obama policymakers have a good counter-argument, I would like to see it developed in a thoughtful way -- addressing these real critiques, rather than strawman arguments. The Obama team has the benefit of inside information that even the most well-informed outsiders might lack, so it is possible the Administration understands something that these recent pieces are missing. But it is also possible that the Administration has locked onto a policy that is wrong-headed and the President is in a state of denial over the likely consequences. Only a careful and candid engagement of the arguments can resolve the matter. Time is running out for that engagement.

The "democratic deficit" of the European Union as currently constructed is well understood.  The treaty under which the EU operates was rejected in its prior ghost as a European constitution by French and Dutch voters. Recast by German lawyers in deliberately incomprehensible language, it was rejected by the Irish before Brussels and its beholden Dublin minions told the benighted sons and daughters of St. Patrick to go back to the voting booths and get it right, or else there would be yet another round of voting. So we have a "president of Europe" who sits in an office established by elitist non-democratic means, and who was personally selected for said office through a backroom process that would make early 20th century Chicago and New York politicians blush. Should we be surprised by anything that emerges from the same people who gave Europe this, ah, system?

But even by the standards of what we've come to expect from European elites, the Sept. 8 Financial Times op-ed by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager is a head-spinner. These Dutchmen propose a solution to the Euro-crisis that would involve three stages of supervision by a new European commissioner over the profligate states that threaten the Euro itself. Such states would first be put under the "independent supervision" of a new EU commissioner with powers "at least comparable to those of the competition commissioner." This functionary would be "given clear powers to set requirements for the budgetary policy of countries that run excessive deficits." That may not be enough: "If the results are insufficient, the commissioner can force a country to take measures to put its finances in order, for example by raising tax revenue.  At this stage, sanctions can be imposed..." But that still may not be enough: "...in the final stage" of failure on the part of Eurozone miscreants, the offending nation's budget will "have to be approved by the commissioner before it can be presented to parliament."

Wandering the terribly orderly streets of Amsterdam or Berlin or Copenhagen, one can well appreciate how the austere, decent northern Europeans would loath the intemperate habits of their formerly Catholic southern cousins. But what is the right name for the Dutch remedy? An EU commissioner who is a tutor? Empowered advisor? Mentor? Life coach?

Actually, the name for what M. Rutte and M. de Jager propose is "despot." These gentlemen see the failure of democratically elected governments in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, to a different degree Ireland, and soon France. They see no hope for democratically elected governments to fix their fiscal problems absent an iron fist from a central authority. They are bold.  They are authoritarian in their defense of a common currency. They have concluded that such a currency, the Euro, is much more important than the beliefs and ideas of the union the currency was meant to solidify. Their view of European integration is technocratic, power-centralizing, and uniquely anti-democratic. They have no apparent memory of European integration as envisioned by Adenauer, Schuman, and de Gasperi.  

There is an alternative.  Many Europeans, including the entrepreneur and financier Declan Ganley, have put forward a vision of an integrated Europe with fiscal and monetary discipline, as part of real integration within European democratic institutions. That will be a big step beyond Lisbon. But it will be a much better step than the materialist-grounded view of Rutte and de Jager, who seem to believe that a currency is more important than democratically accountable leaders and the freedom of citizens. The economic component of the Euro crisis is very serious. The larger crisis of Europe is even more serious. Rutte and de Jager are right to be anxious for a big solution. But they should not throw European democracy out to assuage their anger over southern European irresponsibility. Europe gave the world democratic values. The Dutch should lead the integration of Europe according to those values, not toss them over the side of a false life raft in another plush Brussels office.

America's entry into the European theater of World War II was a military disaster at Kasserine Pass. We suffered heavy casualties and were pushed back over fifty miles. Taking the measure of this force, the Axis powers were smug -- the Americans might be fresh to the fight and have enormous resources, but there was little reason to believe any of their advantages would make a difference.

But after his initial successes against the U.S. military, Rommel wrote worriedly to his wife that although the Americans made mistakes, they were learning from them. And indeed, after our losses in the Tobruk campaign, the American military replaced ineffectual commanders, reorganized units to improve operational control and coordination, trained better fundamental soldiering skills.

Looking back across the decade of America's response to the al Qaeda threat that resulted in the attacks of September 11th, both our government and our military made assessments and improvements of similar magnitude: revamping our intelligence collection and assessment, developing strategies for countering insurgencies, building intellectual capital on the nature of the threats and means for disrupting and destroying them, finding ways to balance liberties and security in ways our public will support and sustain.

We have made grievous and well-documented mistakes: circumventing legislative and judicial oversight of executive authority, underestimating the difficulty of successful regime change and its associated costs, isolated instances of brutality, misreading what we look like to friends and enemies. We responded to the attacks in ways expensive to ourselves and others.

Yet it is also important to note that our response has for the most part defanged the narrative of our enemies. We have fought our wars with an extraordinary care for being a positive force in shaping those societies. We have had domestic debate about the wars, as every society should, but still demonstrated the determination to prosecute those wars and bear the losses they imposed on us -- something our enemies believed we were too dissolute to do. We have demonstrated the resilience to question our own choices and find better solutions with time. We are not the brittle and overbearing leviathan they thought.

Forecasting America's decline has become a mainstay of punditry, yet the analyses almost always overlook the fact that our political culture and our political system are attuned to solving problems. Granted, it is difficult to see up close, amidst the dust and noise of our messy domestic debates; and our mistakes are many. But we are an impatient culture, one that demands solutions and excels at building better mousetraps.

In other words, America is a society that often doesn't have it right, but given a little time, generally gets it right. Fortunately, because of our prosperity and strength, our country has a wide margin of error that generally leaves us time to adapt. Whether future conditions will sustain that margin is an important question, but a question for another day. For now, it is enough to be thankful we have had the space to find solutions that have kept our country remarkably safe despite the threats to us.

On this sad anniversary for our country, let us mourn the people, the freedom, and the innocence we lost on September 11th, 2001. But let us also be proud of the vitality of our people and the institutions of our government. For all our mistakes, we have done passably well. And to America's enemies -- al Qaeda and others -- that should be as worrying as what Rommel observed in the aftermath of the battle at Kasserine Pass.

Countless memorials are being written to note the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001, and I have little to add to them. I dislike the 9/11 memorial ceremonies that crop up every year. So much of it seems to be sentimental pabulum from those who make a living by having opinions. I understand the importance of the collective grief and mourning for families of those killed in the attacks. But outside of that small, private circle, most of the ceremonies are addressed to the general public, and this is where I have trouble: the ceremonies try to give public shape, meaning, and closure to something that is still unfinished.

That is because 9/11 was the declaration of a war that is not yet over. We cannot mark this day until we know how this war ultimately ends. The public meaning of 9/11 will be profoundly different depending on whether we can look back with pride or with shame at the war that followed. That means the global war against al Qaeda and, importantly, the war in Afghanistan. 

Most Americans and journalists forgot about Afghanistan between 2002 and 2008. It was the sideshow to Iraq, often used to demonstrate (wrongly) how badly Iraq was going by comparison. The South Asian country also didn't fit into the grand narrative peddled ad nauseum by foreign policy wonks everywhere about The Vital Importance of The Middle East (an elaborate story in which I am increasingly disinclined to believe). During these years 9/11 memorials were pious, simplistic, vacuous affairs used to berate us for losing a sense of national unity amidst our discord over Iraq.

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Apparently, apropos of nothing, the Obama administration has decided to restore normal diplomatic relations with Ecuadorean radical populist Rafael Correa.  Shadow readers will recall that it was only last April that President Correa, in a fit of anti-American pique, expelled U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges because of an innocuous comment in a Wikileaked cable about a corrupt senior police official.

Given the unceremonious departure and treatment of Ambassador Hodges, one would have assumed the announcement of her replacement would be accompanied by some sort of statement explaining why the administration deemed the moment appropriate to restore ambassadors. Have there been any commitment from the Correa government to abide by any notions of civil discourse? Any understanding that the U.S. ambassador isn't there to be used as a stage prop in his populist theater? We are only left to wonder.

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The confusion inherent in the Obama's approach to Iraq continues, according to this New York Times account.

From a short term perspective, the confusion hasn't seemed to matter much. August, which by some measures was the bloodiest month in Afghanistan, was an exceptionally low-cost month in Iraq. If one tabulated success in U.S. body counts, Obama's approach appears to be working for now.

The long term outlook is more worrying. According to several unnamed sources, military commanders are "livid" with President Obama's decision to authorize a plan that is resourced at a fraction of the level that the military considered to be the minimum -- and even that minimum  would only work "in extremis." Obama's approach appears to involve several multiples of risk beyond what the military consider prudent. Reportedly, even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued for a level of resources above what Obama appears to have authorized.

Reasonable people can disagree whether it makes national security sense for Obama to adopt such a risky path. For my part, I wish he had invested more effort in the Iraq file, especially working more closely with Prime Minister Maliki to push the process towards an outcome that is more favorable to American (and, I would argue, Iraqi national) interests.  

The part that mystifies me is why his team thinks it makes political sense to have taken this course. His administration has already pocketed as much political benefit as there is to be wrung from Bush's surge -- and the media has generously refrained from pointing out that whatever positive developments came in Iraq came because of policies Obama and Biden tried strenuously to thwart in 2007. Given that the administration has already claimed Iraq as a great achievement, why take so risky a course now, one that could result in a great unraveling during the presidential campaign?

There is no domestic political pressure to speak of demanding a reckless withdrawal from Baghdad. The cost savings of denying the military the resources they say they need is trivial compared to the stakes. For that matter, the amount of time and effort it would have taken Obama to invest in Iraq policy so as to achieve greater progress with Maliki was probably trivial, too. Yet it seems that when it comes to Iraq, Obama is determined to do whatever is less than the minimum.

This is a strategy that depends heavily on luck. For the sake of U.S. national security, I hope Obama is lucky on Iraq. If he is not, at some point his choices could produce outcomes that are seen to be Obama's doing, and not merely the legacy he was handed. That point may well be this winter.

It is good news that James Traub, a highly regarded journalist and writer, may be startled out of his belief that China is a "status quo" power, based in part on a paper we wrote.

We hope that more writers of Traub's caliber will be similarly startled by China's growing menace. The truth is that like every rising power in history (including the United States) China wants to change rules, territorial delineations, and laws written while it was weak.  

Traub notes that China is "famously patient and slow-gestating" and thus it "seems odd" that it "would have so radically, and so quickly changed its posture to the world." But he is intellectually honest enough to allow for the possibility that its famous "patience" may have been "an elaborate show, or a transitional phase."

But maybe that patience was always overstated. Throughout its history, China has lumbered into disaster after disaster, costing untold sums in lives and treasure (e.g. the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Beijing's war with Vietnam).  Certainly as China re-emerged as a power it had its chance to "bide its time and hide its capabilities" as Deng Xiaoping instructed. But instead, it decided to build a highly destabilizing military (see the last decade of Department of Defense reports on China's military power, the latest of which is here) and has proceeded to rattle its saber against Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and, most troublingly, the United States. It has now created the conditions for the encirclement is so fears.

It is not only former Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg who, as Traub writes, "noted that China's "enhanced capabilities" and "overbroad assertion of its rights" in the South China Sea had caused Washington and its allies to "question China's intentions." America's diplomatic and military leaders have expressed similar unease. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a very sober man, noted his concern about China's military to the Washington Post. The Chinese military, he said, "clearly has the potential to put our capabilities at risk... We have to respond appropriately in our programs."

And speaking on China's military buildup last June, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen stated, "I have moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also spoken on the matter. Responding to years of Chinese harassment of U.S., Japanese, Vietnamese, and Philippine ships, last year Clinton broke new ground by declaring at a summit in Hanoi that "The United States, like every nation, has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea." This is a diplomatic way of telling China that we will continue to exercise our forces inside its exclusive economic zone, consistent with international custom, and we will ensure that our partners in Asia are able to resist Chinese bullying.

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he feels "great" after another dose of chemotherapy for his as-yet-unspecified cancer. If only the Venezuelan economy was in as good shape as Chavez says he is in. In fact, what Chavez ought to explain is why his vaunted "21st Century Socialism" bears an uncanny resemblance to the garden-variety 20th century kind: replete with widespread inefficiencies, declining production, and rampant shortages.

A new study out, Gestión en rojo (Management in the Red, a play on the ubiquitous color of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution), explains why, in part, the Venezuela economy remains in critical condition: Chavez's excessive confiscation and nationalization of private sector companies.

Convinced that profiteers, speculators, and assorted other chislers have been rooking the Venezuelan people by charging "unjust prices" for their goods and services, Chavez has ordered up the seizure of some 1,000 companies since 2002. In fact, this week, while lying in a military hospital where he is being treated, Chavez demanded that the takeover of land from Irish company Smurfit Kappa be expedited. "We have to take the last square meter of land from Smurfit," he announced on TV. "Let's move more quickly, that's an order."

It's telling how Chavez announces each nationalization with great fanfare, but then never seems to report back to anyone on what becomes of that enterprise a few years down the road.

In Gestion en rojo, three Venezuelan economists did just that, tracking the performances of 16 nationalized companies over a two-year period. The results are hardly surprising: most of the enterprises are running at only a fraction of their capacity and depend on direct government subsidies to maintain operations, if they are operating at all.

According to the lead author, Richard Obuchi, "Government ownership of companies is often accompanied by deficit problems and lack of incentives to be effective and efficient.

Add to that price controls that force companies to sell products for less than their production costs and directives that companies devote resources to overtly political initiatives and you have egregious economic dysfunction.

Chavez's problem is that he is fast running out of cash to sustain this dysfunction and all of his grandiose spending projects that fuel his popularity. Oil production -- his golden goose -- is declining, forcing him to borrow at a record pace. (According to Bloomberg, because of Chávez's anti-market policies, Venezuela already has the highest borrowing costs among major emerging-market economies.)

What all this portends for Venezuela's presidential election in 2012 remains to be seen, but it doesn't bode well for Chavez, who, despite his potentially debilitating illness, insists he will run for reelection. It may be that his working and lower class base won't care much that their country ranks 129 out of 129 economies in the 2011 International Property Rights Index or that it ranks 172 out of 183 countries in the World Bank's 2011 Doing Business Report (behind Iraq and Afghanistan).

But they will care about the shortages of basic goods, the electrical blackouts, the region's highest inflation that is cutting the value of their incomes and savings, and the mortgaging of their children's future that is the result. A reinvigorated Venezuelan opposition promises to focus on those bread-and-butter issues and Chavez will no doubt try every trick in the book to avoid discussing that record. The Obama administration needs to keep a close eye on Venezuela over the next several months, as Chavez -- if he remains healthy -- will have no qualms about tilting the playing field in an election that is looking increasingly unfavorable.