Kori Schake

It's easy to overstate both the rise of Asia and the degree to which they could supplant U.S. influence. As a benchmark, per capita GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity (which strips out currency fluctuation and standard of living differences and therefore gives the most robust relative index) in the U.S. is $46,000; for China it is $7,000 and India a mere $3,000. These standings are reinforced by their correlation with Transparency International's corruption index and states' rankings on the UN Human Development Index.

Asia is rising, but more slowly and with much more difficulty than we often acknowledge. China is in a race between prosperity and gerontocracy, with a political system in a crisis of legitimacy, and "strategic" investments in the developing world tarnishing efforts to brand themselves positively (they would do well to read the history of United Fruit in Honduras). The law of gravity applies to them as well as us, and their aggressive behavior in Asia has created a strong pull by other Asian states for greater US involvement.

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Even with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, I doubt we'd see a "Tea Party foreign policy" because establishment Republicans would predominate. A Republican congress would help the President hugely, though -- especially if he demonstrates a heretofore unseen ability to work across party lines.

Imagine how different the Obama Presidency would be viewed if he insisted any healthcare bill achieve 70 votes, or top Republican priorities were funded with stimulus money, or taken up Rep. Paul Ryan's roadmap for putting entitlements on fiscally sound footing, or kept Senator Graham engaged in climate change and immigration efforts. Moderate Republicans are winnable for the President, but the way the White House is going after Congressman Boehner suggests they're not planning a Clinton pivot.

It looks to me as though the White House has realized the damage to the war effort of the President's timeline for reducing forces in Afghanistan; their personnel choices have become strategy choices (and a tip of the hat to Secretary Gates for that artistry

Imagine the circumstances reversed: what would Turkey do if Israelis supportive of the PKK set out to break Turkey's ability to prevent weapons being shipped to that terrorist organization? Or how about an even more incendiary example: Armenian activists creating a disturbance intended to draw attention to Turkish killing of Armenians in the early 20th century, provoke a reaction to make this Turkish government appear no different than the one that committed those killings. Would the Turkish government have permitted it to occur? Or overturned its policy in response, as Turkey is now demanding of Israel?

Israel's choices in the flotilla incident don't seem to me surprising -- it has a legitimate concern about weapons being shipped to Hamas in Gaza, had a policy in place of searching ships bound for Gaza, had warned the Turkish government it would intercept the ships, had offered to deliver the aid once it had been searched. The interdiction of the ships may have been clumsy, but was not a departure from expected Israeli behavior.

The choices of the Erdogan

Quite a lot has been achieved in Iraq. A hostile government armed with nuclear weapons -- which is what the Bush administration believed it was preventing in 2003 -- is no longer a threat in Iraq. Domestically, what struck me most when I was in Iraq last fall was how much Iraqi politics have returned to normal -- they have the same concerns about 3rd grade reading proficiency and sewer systems that the mayor of Des Moines has. Thier politicians are engaged in envidiously gaming the rules to exclude competition, but they are doing so by political means. Internationally, give the neo-cons their due: they said that changing Iraq would change the middle east, and they may yet be proven right. It's not implausible that Iranian opposition to their government corrupting last summer's election would not have occurred without the sting to their pride of Iraqis running fair and competent elections that produce representative governments.

Whether the gains can be sustained depends principally on Iraqis at this point. In part, because with the return to sovereignty and the