A Slower Decider

Joe Klein admires Obama foreign policy patience:

It is becoming an Obama signature that he doesn't deal with foreign policy issues in isolation--he doesn't just look into Putin's (or Musharraf's, or Karzai's) eyes and decide whether he can trust them. He sees the problems in context: what happens in Afghanistan has an impact on what happens in Pakistan, in Iran, with Russia and India, and vice versa. The disadvantage to this method is that it doesn't yield quick decisions, a potential problem in times of crisis. The advantage is that it can yield smarter, more comprehensive decisions, and a more global sense of the challenges we face overseas.