World Report

Dr. Lamont Colucci is an associate professor of Politics at Ripon College, recent Fulbright Scholar to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and author of The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future, among other books. You can find out more at lamontcolucci.com.

The issue of American allies is often neglected. The mainstream media has propagated a myth that during the George W. Bush years American alliances were hurt and dwindling. They continued the fable by promoting the idea that the current administration has "repaired" the relationship with our allies. Neither of these propositions is true. Not only has the current administration not bolstered the number of American allies, it has actually neglected and hurt the most important ones. In the next few months this column will focus on those alliances: Great Britain, Japan, Israel, Taiwan, Australia, and NATO. We have spent so much of our energy and effort focusing on America's enemies, we have forgotten that it takes much greater effort to support and bolster our friends; we have spent so much time complaining about America's burden, we have forgotten that American allies want American leadership, strong and steadfast. However, just as in any friendship, this requires sacrifice and sincerity.

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The mere prospect of the nomination of Sen. Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense has touched off a raging inside-the-Beltway debate over whether Hagel's views—specifically on the Middle East and Pentagon spending—are sufficiently "mainstream." I'll wait to see who the president nominates before I comment on personalities but this mini-controversy offers a great opportunity to revisit the vexed question of what constitutes the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy.

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E. Wayne Merry is a former State Department and Pentagon official and senior fellow for Europe and Eurasia at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.

The Obama White House is notoriously insular, a quality reflected in its selection process for secretary of state. So far as the country knows, the only two persons that have been seriously considered to be foreign minister of the most important country on earth are Washington insiders who actively campaigned for the job. The qualities desirable—even necessary—to serve the United States well at State have scarcely been mentioned in the controversy over U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice or in the expectation that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry will be the next secretary.

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Andrew S. Natsios is an executive professor at the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and the author of Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know. Natsios served as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and as President George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan.

North Korea's launch last week of a long range ballistic missile caught the United States and its allies by surprise, given that Pyongyang had announced a week earlier it was having technical difficulties and would postpone the event. For understandable reasons U.S., Japanese, and South Korean officials and policymakers focus their analysis of North Korean missile launches and nuclear weapons tests on how these events affect their own national security interests. All three countries fear a North Korea with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles will use them to change the balance of military power and destabilize even further an already unstable region. But the missile launch has as much to do with internal political dynamics in an increasingly unstable North Korea as it does with its external agenda of the nuclear blackmailing of its neighbors. The ongoing missile and nuclear programs send the message to the North Korea people, party elite, and the military itself that the Kim dynasty remains firmly in control—and that Pyongyang remains strong and powerful. The only reason Japan, United States, and South Korea pay attention to North Korea at all is the missile and nuclear weapons programs; otherwise it would be treated as the mendicant it is. Like Soviet Russia during the Cold War, North Korea is no more than a failing, poor, third world country with the bomb. The missile launch allows North Korean leaders to redirect attention away from its people's empty stomachs to an illusory external threat it has created to justify its continued exercise of power.

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