I imagine the Obama administration may be wondering whether or not to release another edition of the National Security Strategy (NSS). They released Obama’s first (and so far only) one in May 2010. Although the law mandating the NSS calls for annual updates, at the time it looked like the administration might follow the George W. Bush precedent of releasing just one per term.

The one-per-term standard makes sense for a number of reasons. First, we shouldn’t expect the overall national security strategy of the country to change on an annual basis. Second, producing a quality document takes a surprising amount of work; better to invest those resources in monitoring the implementation of the old one than in finding ways to repackage old wine in new wine skins. Third, as an administration creeps closer to the silly season of campaigning, the temptation to turn the document into a brag-sheet rather than a serious articulation of the administration’s worldview becomes irresistible. Whether or not you agreed with the content of the arguments, Clinton’s first NSS and both of Bush’s were more substantial and thus more consequential documents than the later ones produced by the Clinton administration.

However, I would not be surprised to learn that a new version is under consideration. Doubtless the campaign temptation is pulling mightily on the Obama team. President Obama will be the first Democratic incumbent in decades — maybe since Roosevelt — to have reason to believe that his bragging rights on national security are stronger than they are on domestic policy and the economy. When the applause lines are louder on national security than they are on the economy, it is easy to predict that the candidate will proffer the former more often than the latter (insert late night comic riff about Giuliani mentioning 9/11 here). Whether or not they can produce a document at least as serious as their first one, let alone on par with earlier ones is tougher to predict. Campaign-induced distortions will be a big challenge.

Yet there is one good reason why they should release another version in the current term — perhaps good enough to overcome all of my other caveats. A few weeks ago, President Obama released a much-ballyhooed “new strategic guidance” and the administration went to considerable lengths to emphasize the boldness and novelty of what they were doing. The commentariat responded in kind — a Google search of “Obama strategic pivot” produces some 1,200,000 hits.

If it really is so new and so bold, it raises the obvious question: is it new and bold enough to require changes in the (now) old NSS, from which, in theory, such defense guidance is supposed to emanate?

On the other hand, if the new strategic guidance does not require a change in the NSS, how bold and new can it be?

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Given how many times Newt Gingrich rose from the proverbial electoral grave to become campaign-relevant again, I will not join the chorus claiming the fight for the Republican nomination is over. However, I will endorse another cliché: the primary season is at an important turning point, or at least it should be. It is high time the candidates focused on providing a compelling alternative to President Obama rather than providing a litany of reasons for detesting the other Republicans in the race.

The urgency is especially acute in foreign policy and national security. I have been fretting about this for some time now and I concede that the worst of my fears have not been realized; there won’t be a crack-up within the party over foreign policy. Moreover, I endorse the conventional wisdom that the election will be won or lost on domestic policy and the economy.

However, that is no reason to settle for sloppy critiques and platforms in the area of foreign policy. Republicans must come to terms with the fact that this will be the strongest Democrat incumbent on national security and foreign policy they have faced in decades. This has more than a whiff of damnation with faint praise, since both President Clinton and especially President Carter were hobbled with substantial national security baggage during their reelection campaign. But for precisely that reason, I think Republicans have sometimes settled for an intellectually lazy critique because, given how weak the opposing party’s record is, that seems to have sufficed.

Not this time. Obama has serious national security weaknesses and a record that warrants critique, but it is immune to superficial sound bite attacks. Soft on protecting America? The SEALs bought Obama immunity on that one when they took down Bin Laden. Naïve about the Iranian threat? Candidate Obama was demonstrably naïve about Iran and governed that way for the first half of his term, but since then has talked tough and marshaled strong sanctions.

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A favorite topic for FP bloggers is the so-called gap between practicing academics and practicing policymakers. I have weighed in, but see also contributions from Dan Drezner (here or here and Steve Walt).

It is an important topic (at least to “yakademics” like me — I don’t sense it has quite the burning appeal for my non-academic Shadow Government teammates) and well worth the focused attention it has received. There are several excellent programs designed to help bridge it, including one run by Eliot Cohen and Tom Keaney at SAIS, another by my Duke colleague Bruce Jentleson and Berkeley’s Steve Weber and American U’s Jim Goldgeier, and a third by Dick Betts at Columbia. There is probably room for more such efforts.

But at the risk of undercutting the urgent language used in grant applications, I think it is only fair to point out that the situation may not be irredeemably bleak. I just had the pleasure of reading through the most recent issue of International Security, the top academic journal in the field of security studies and one of the highest-impact journals in the entire discipline of political science. I was struck by how policy relevant the issue was, without sacrificing in any way academic rigor. Mind you, the articles were too long and perhaps on the academic side to make the reading list of, say, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. But policymakers would benefit from understanding the arguments contained therein and foreign policy specialists inside the administration would benefit from digging into some of the articles more closely.

Consider the menu:

An article by Nuno Monteiro theorizing the conditions under which unipolarity conduces to peace or conflict. This is grand system theorizing in a form that is particularly “academic.” I am not entirely persuaded by his argument, but I can easily see how speechwriters and strategists would benefit from understanding the framework. [Note to entering Ph.D. students seeking dissertation topics: this article also reflects the turning of the wheel of academic fashion as the field cycles through different levels of analysis. In the early 1980s, system-level work like neorealism and neoliberalism were hot; in the 1990's state-level work like democratic peace theory was hot; in the early 2000's transnational-level work on ethnic conflict and terrorism was hot; right now individual-level work on leaders is hot; it is about time for the system-level work like this about power transitions and polarity to have another run.]

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Fareed Zakaria’s interview with President Obama on Obama’s foreign policy is a missed opportunity. Zakaria enjoyed exceptional access to President Obama, but chose to present the gauzy survey that the White House communications office might have served up (perhaps those two facts are linked?). Zakaria is certainly smart and knowledgeable enough to probe more deeply, but he didn’t, or if he did, he didn’t include it in the interview, and those deeper insights didn’t make it into his own summary analysis of the interview either.

That is a pity, because I think Zakaria is a better critic of American foreign policy than he showed this time. Here are just a few questions that a more trenchant interview might have pressed the president on:

You campaigned on the claim that climate change was a national security threat of the highest rank, as important a national security interest as dealing with the threats posed by terrorists and WMD proliferation. Yet, you have not governed that way. Yes, Congress opposed your cap-and-trade program, but they also didn’t want Obamacare yet you rammed that through. Why couldn’t you accomplish your grand strategy shift on climate change?

You campaigned on an unrelenting critique of your predecessor’s policies, yet you have kept so many of them in place. Moreover, where you have enjoyed the greatest success, say the killing of Bin Laden, it is through following techniques, tactics, and procedures developed by your predecessor. And where you have enjoyed the least success, say in Israel-Palestine, it has come after making abrupt changes. Do you think it is time now to refine your critique?

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A few quick-take reactions to the new strategy roll-out at the Pentagon today:

Reporters may emphasize the “scaled back” aspect in their headlines, but President Obama and his team went to some lengths to provide the opposite frame. Indeed, Obama’s opening comments in his prepared remarks could have been taken from any Romney stump speech about America’s exceptional role in the world and the importance of never surrendering American military superiority. At least in tonal terms, this was not a “lead from behind” message the administration was selling today.

The president emphasized that this was a strategy-driven rather than a budget-driven exercise. The team tried to dramatize that by refusing to provide budgetary specifics. However, even if the budget is rolled out later, there was an important resource decision that logically and chronologically preceded this strategy: the decision to cut future defense spending by at least $450 billion, more if the sequester hits. Even some of the major strategic shifts the president mentioned — ending major troop presence in Iraq and cutting short the Afghanistan surge — were dictated as much by a decision about resources (do we want to spend as much on Afghanistan as it would cost to provide medical coverage to the uninsured?) as they were about geopolitical developments in the region. The president established a topline resource figure, and then the staff tried to devise the optimal strategy underneath it. Put another way, this is not necessarily the strategic posture one would choose if more resources could be made available. That is not a critique of the strategy, just of the way it is being described.

This strategy is something of a vindication of Donald Rumsfeld’s arguments about defense transformation. Virtually everything Secretary of Defense Panetta said could have been said (and probably was said) by Secretary Rumsfeld. The search for a smaller, less-manpower intensive, more agile, yet more capable military is the essence of the reforms Rumsfeld pursued.

It is a bit misleading to claim that since defense spending will still be higher in the future than it was five years ago (not counting the direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) therefore the military will be at least as capable and, more to the point, the risks at least as manageable as they were then. There are three big cost drivers that continue to grow and together they undermine this claim, at least somewhat: (1) personnel costs, especially pay and benefits (what President Obama means by the code words “keeping faith with our troops”); (2) per-unit procurement costs of weapon systems; and (3) the Chinese military build-up. In theory, we have more leverage over the first two than we have over the third. In practice, all three seem stubbornly resistant to reform and collectively they mean that a dollar of defense spending five years from now may not buy as much national security as the same dollar five years ago.

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There is a lively debate among theorists of civil-military relations about the appropriate levels of political activity in which the military may engage. Some advocate fairly tight restrictions, even encouraging soldiers to emulate General George C. Marshall who famously refused to vote so as to demonstrate his apolitical professionalism. Others allow for greater leeway, and encourage the military to speak out more regularly in policy debates, even when those debates have a partisan overlay.

I tend towards the restrictive end of the spectrum. I do not discourage the military from voting, for instance, but I do think it is a mistake for prominent retired senior generals and admirals to campaign actively for political candidates (I do not see a problem with veterans of whatever rank running as candidates in their own right. When they do that, they clearly cross over to the pure political side. The problem is trying to maintain the authority, even deference, that comes with professional distance while simultaneously politicking for a candidate).

For a good introduction into the complexities of this debate, I recommend reading Risa Brooks survey of the topic: her chapter on “Militaries and Political Activity in Democracies,” an excellent chapter in a recent compendium. (Full disclosure: I have a chapter in that same book, which I co-authored with a brilliant graduate student. I got permission to present and publish that article while still on the NSC staff because, when my superiors reviewed it, they declared it so academic and abstruse that no one would read it, and thus it would neither constitute a conflict of interest nor expose the White House to any risk of embarrassment — or words to that effect. Sometimes, there is utility in academic irrelevancy.)

It is also clear that there is a spectrum of opinion within the ranks. A first-rate Georgetown U. dissertation by Heidi Urben (more full disclosure: I was on her dissertation committee) documents that Army personnel have some difficulty in determining where to draw the line — is it acceptable to encourage fellow military comrades to vote? How to vote? To demonstrate the same with bumper stickers in the barracks?

So I accept that there are gray zones in the area of military and politics and that it is especially difficult to draw clear lines for reservists who have feet planted firmly in both civilian and military worlds.

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The Iowa results probably indicate that there will not be a big crack-up within the Republican party on foreign policy because the caucus returns are likely to be the high-water mark for the candidate with the most distinctive foreign policy platform in the field: Ron Paul. He did well enough to gain another week of press attention. But in the one contest best-suited to his unusual political operation, Paul did not beat expectations. He would have to really surprise in New Hampshire in order to remain relevant in the later primaries, and those are likely to be even tougher terrain for him.

Paul is no longer likely to be a spoiler within the party. He can still play the spoiler in the general election, if he runs a Ross Perot-style third party campaign and siphons off enough of the anti-incumbent vote to re-elect President Obama. There will be many Obama supporters cheering him on to do just that, but at least one influential Paul supporter argues compellingly against it.

Jon Huntsman is the other candidate who tried to capitalize on foreign policy divisions within the party, but he avoided Iowa altogether, thus delaying his moment of truth until next week’s primary in New Hampshire. Predictions in this campaign season have been notoriously unreliable, but I am willing to bet that New Hampshire will be more of a Waterloo than a surge for Huntsman.

That means that Romney will very likely be the nominee, and whichever runners-up remain in the race to challenge him through a few more primaries will be doing so on the basis of domestic or economic policies or personality, not national security and foreign policy. Romney already had the strongest foreign policy platform of the field, and, if I am right about the fading of Paul and Huntsman, any remaining rivals — even a surprise new not-Romney drafted from the bench — will largely echo him on foreign policy.

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My Shadow colleagues have already taken the best choices for best and worst foreign policy moves of 2011.

I might quibble with them on minor points. For instance, contra Inboden, Obama has not “creat[ed] a new strategic posture in Asia.” Rather, after meandering a bit with some failed efforts (G-2, the 2009 Myanmar outreach), by the end of 2011 Obama can finally and truthfully claim that “America is Back,” by which I mean, “America is back to pursuing the successful Asian strategic posture that President Bush bequeathed to Obama.” And, contra Blumenthal, I think the Trans Pacific Partnership announcement is less significant than it otherwise should be precisely because the Obama Administration’s record on free trade is so equivocal. If the gap between vision and execution gets too large, then the vision itself becomes a source of friction rather than inspiration. The soundings I have taken in the region convince me that we are uncomfortably close to that point when it comes to trade. But these are quibbles; my Shadow colleagues have done a good job compiling cheer-worthy and jeer-worthy steps taken this past year.

Since I have already weighed in with critiques and would like to end the year on a high point, I will only flag a cheer-worthy move (there will be time aplenty in the coming year for further critique): 2011 marked the year when Obama irrevocably embraced the bipartisan war frame in confronting the challenges of transnational terrorism.

Candidate Obama campaigned unevenly against the war frame. On the one hand, he criticized Bush for underemphasizing the war on terror, as when he alleged that Bush took his “eye off the ball” and when Obama boasted about a willingness to do unilateral strikes against Pakistan. On the other hand, Obama blamed what he considered to be excesses in the fight precisely on the war frame and promised to undo a long list of Bush policies.

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Talk to a certain kind of Obama supporter about Iraq – as I do often – and you will encounter a curious line of thinking that goes something like this:

President Obama deserves tremendous credit for keeping a promise and ending the war in Iraq. The departure this month of the last major military units marked a heroic turn in the war — heroic not for the troops, perhaps, but for the policymakers who had the foresight to end U.S. involvement in a foolish war of choice. Well, not end U.S. involvement, since the largest State Department footprint in the world remains in Iraq, to be guarded by the largest private security force the State Department has ever attempted to manage. But still the war is ending and for this “campaign promise kept” President Obama has earned the admiration of his boosters.

If you point out the rapid unraveling in Iraq, and ask whether a slower withdrawal that left behind residual forces might have preserved more stability in Iraq, the Obama boosters rapidly shift their reasoning. Obama had no choice but to take out all U.S. troops, they will say. The Iraqis did not want U.S. troops to remain and the American people were adamant that the war should end (before the 2012 campaign really gets going, is the silent coda). This was not an exit of choice, this was an exit of necessity.

Besides, it is Bush’s fault, the bitter-ender Obamaphiles say, because he saddled Obama with the 2008 framework agreement that set the 2012 troop exit deadline. Of course, to cling to this view requires ignoring that both sides, U.S. and Iraqi, viewed the 2008 agreement as an interim step, one that would be renegotiated after the Iraqi elections to allow for a longer-term U.S. presence. More problematically, it requires ignoring the lengthy but ultimately failed negotiations by Obama-appointed representatives to accomplish just such an extension.

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The New York Times reports that the White House is putting the final touches on a roll-out plan to mark the end of this phase of the Iraq saga.

Apparently, the White House views this as an opportunity to score some political points and, properly managed, it probably will redound to the president’s political benefit, at least in the short run. But as I am quoted as saying in the piece, it is not without political risks. Whether the roll-out is a political plus next year may depend in part on how well the White House manages four key risks.

Risk 1: The danger of a disconnect between the present image and the future reality.

President Obama has repeatedly said that he has brought the Iraq war to a responsible close. Just how responsible a close it is depends on whether Iraq a year from now scores about as well on the following scale as it scores now: united, stable, peaceful, secure, democratic government that is an ally in the war on terror. Of course, we would like to see Iraq score even higher on all of those criteria, but from the point of view of the 2012 election, Obama will be doing well if Iraq does not backslide significantly on any one. While the White House arranges for a bunch of triumphant photo ops in the coming weeks, they would be well-served to remember that events on the ground in Iraq have a way of turning memorable moments from a short-term plus to a long-term negative.

Risk 2: The danger of a disconnect between the present image and the past record.

Candidate Obama talked to the American people about Iraq quite a bit. President Obama has talked about Iraq hardly at all. If what I have heard about the White House plans is correct, the President may do more high-profile, high impact Iraq messaging in the next three weeks than in the past three years combined. If the message pivot is too glaring, it will raise awkward comparisons. It may even raise unwelcome questions about Afghanistan, an ongoing war where the flagging public support might benefit from a bit more persuader-in-chief attention.

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