In a piece published today over at Townhall, I talk about Vladimir Putin’s recent disappearance from the public eye, and why it wasn’t as big a deal as you might think.

The rumors surrounding his ten-day disappearance ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was kept busy, scotching speculation that the Russian leader was ill, quashing reports of a power struggle within the Kremlin, and refuting assertions that Putin had been absent to attend the birth of his new child.

When Putin finally reappeared on Monday, he waved away all questions about his absence, simply noting that “life would be boring without gossip.” We’ll probably never know where Putin was for those ten days, though his pallor implied a minor illness. Given the consistent unwillingness of the Kremlin to divulge information about Putin’s personal life, the whole thing may have been nothing more than the flu.

But it’s worth asking why Putin’s disappearance caused such a media furor. Putin’s centrality to the Russian political system is so well-accepted that commentators and policymakers routinely treat Putin himself as sole representative of the Russian state, psychoanalyzing the man for insight into Russian foreign policy choices. His disappearance, therefore, implied the possibility of chaos in Russia.

Putin is certainly the key figure in Russian politics today, in terms of both personality and power. His ability to mediate between key factions inside the Russian state has allowed him to solidify power, and to govern far more effectively than his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, ever did. He is still overwhelmingly popular. Yet Putin is not the only player in Russian politics. He has a number of close, senior advisors, many of whom could fill a central role in the system Putin built. His death or incapacitation would be a shock, but it wouldn’t necessarily result in major political changes.

Obviously, we can’t predict the future. After all, who could have predicted when Boris Yeltsin picked a young, unknown former intelligence operative as his presidential successor how successful Putin would be in reining in the corrupt excesses of the Russian state, or how effectively he would undermine Russian democratic reforms?

Yet it is unlikely that Putin’s departure from office, no matter when it occurs, will result in chaos and the collapse of the Russian government. It is even less plausible that his death would result in a pro-democracy or pro-Western protest movement like the one we saw in Ukraine.

Instead, as I argue in the article, it is probable that one of Putin’s close advisors would become his successor, taking over as Russia’s president, probably with a thin veneer of legitimacy in the form of largely uncontested elections. With a similar background and worldview, this successor would simply continue many of Putin’s policies. In short, Putin’s Russia – and its odious foreign policy – probably isn’t going anywhere, even if the man himself does. 

President Obama raised eyebrows last week when he issued an executive order declaring Venezuela to be a threat to national security. It would be pertinent to ask just how that deeply divided, nearly bankrupt country could menace the security of the global superpower. Venezuela has no long-range ballistic missiles or bombers, much less nuclear weapons. It does not have a large, well-equipped army. The Venezuelan navy is both small and antiquated. Although rumors continue to circulate that the leftist government of President Nicolás Maduro flirts with terrorist organizations in neighboring Colombia and elsewhere, those reports remain little more than rumors.

Most telling, Obama’s executive order did not cite evidence that Venezuela actually posed a threat to the security and well-being of the United States. Instead, it focused on the Maduro regime’s ill-treatment of the Venezuelan people. The executive order is a textbook example of an overly broad definition of national security. The White House emphasized that the order imposed sanctions on officials who undermined democratic processes or institutions, abused human rights, were involved in prohibiting or penalizing freedom of expression, or were guilty of corruption. White House spokesman Josh Earnest declared that the United States now had the tools to block the financial assets of Venezuelan officials “past and present” who dare “violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption.”

Those are all tragic aspects of that country’s dysfunctional political system. There is little question that Venezuela’s government is horrifyingly corrupt and autocratic. Cato’s Juan Carlos Hidalgo has ably described the many abuses committed by both Maduro and his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chávez.. It may well take Venezuela a generation or more to recover from the socialist idiocies of those two rulers. But as I point out in the pages of the National Interest Online, just because a regime is repugnant does not make it a credible security threat to the United States.

Obama’s executive order is ominous because it signals a return to the overuse of national security justifications that was so common in previous administrations. It should be recalled that U.S. officials asserted, apparently while maintaining straight faces, that such small, weak adversaries as North Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, and Cuba posed dire national security threats. The ensuing policies produced frustrating, counterproductive results. Indeed, in the cases of Vietnam and Iraq, the outcomes of such a promiscuous invocation of U.S. security needs were disastrous wars that squandered hundreds of billions of tax dollars and snuffed out the lives of thousands of American military personnel. One might hope that policymakers had learned from those bruising experiences and would avoid such folly in the future.

It is imperative to adopt a more rigorous standard about what does and does not constitute a threat to national security. A foreign regime’s domestic behavior, however reprehensible, does not per se pose a menace to America. The actions of Maduro and his henchmen fall into that category. Venezuela’s government is riddled with corruption and behaves in a disturbingly repressive fashion toward political opponents. But that makes Venezuela an obnoxious neighbor, not a security threat to the United States. 

America has been at war in Afghanistan for more than 13 years. U.S. troop levels peaked at 140,000 in 2010. More than 2200 Americans died in a conflict reflecting little more than purposeless inertia.

The U.S. is leaving, but not entirely and maybe not soon. Warned NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove in January, “we are going to continue to have casualties.” The formal combat mission might be over, but combat is not.

Roughly half of the 10,600 American troops are supposed to depart by the end of the year, with the rest scheduled to go in 2016. But the administration is considering slowing the withdrawal.

Washington intervened in Afghanistan with two overriding objectives: destroy al-Qaeda and oust its Taliban hosts. The U.S. quickly fulfilled both goals. But then the Bush administration lost interest in the country.

Instead of ending Washington’s half-hearted misadventure at nation-building, the Obama administration twice doubled down. Some progress was made, but when I visited I found only limited confidence in private.

Washington and its allies built a large government bureaucracy and security force in Kabul, but on a potential foundation of sand. The Afghan government is noted for venality, incompetence, and corruption.

The administration celebrated Ashraf Ghani’s election since he signed the (U.S.) Bilateral Security Agreement and (NATO) Status of Forces Agreement which Hamid Karzai had rejected. This allowed Washington to retain around 10,000 Americans (joined by roughly 3000 Europeans) in the Afghan muddle. 

These forces are not necessary to confront al-Qaeda, which largely has disappeared from Afghanistan. Little likely would change if the Taliban again dominated the country: the group learned that misbehaving foreign guests bring down the wrath of a superpower.

Some policymakers hope to leave a liberal, democratic outpost in Central Asia. Unfortunately, Afghanistan’s gains are fragile and failures are significant.

Tens of tens of thousands of troops, thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of aid projects from America failed to fix the country. A much smaller U.S. troop presence won’t remedy the system’s deep deficiencies.

Afghanistan still could eventually end up with a reasonably liberal society, but only on its own terms. Thankfully, what emerges won’t be matter much to America so long as Afghanistan does not host terrorists bent on striking the U.S. The conflict has regional impacts, but none of significant consequence to America.

Surrounding countries likely will play the Great Game as Washington’s force levels drop. But U.S. security is not dependent on Central Asian stability.

America’s most important task may be to use its remaining time to encourage resumption of talks between the Afghan government and Taliban. There should be no illusions about the prospect of success.

Of course, Washington hopes to forestall a Taliban victory. But last year was the costliest for the Afghan National Security Forces since the conflict began in 2001. The Diplomat’s Franz-Stefan Gady reported: “There are areas that are a no-go for the ANSF, others where they will only go with U.S. air support, and others where they will go on their own,” mostly major urban areas.

Kabul’s main hope is Taliban weakness. The movement’s brutality has cost support. The United Nations noted “divisions driven primarily by differences over political strategy” as well as factions behaving “with increasing autonomy.” The Taliban also faces violent competition from groups claiming allegiance to the Islamic State.

Afghanistan is most likely to end up with multiple “governments.” Which gives everyone an incentive to reach a modus vivendi to end the fighting. Even Pakistan, after long backing the Taliban, may be ready to encourage negotiations.

The administration should live up to its promise to leave Afghanistan. Thirteen years of war is more than enough. Washington also should abandon its attempts at global social engineering.

As I wrote on Forbes online: “Afghanistan is a tragedy. Unfortunately, that isn’t about to change. It is time for America to leave. Some day Afghanistan must stand on its own. That day should be today. Only Afghans can decide Afghanistan’s destiny.”

I’ve been talking about U.S.-Iran policy to groups around the United States for about eight years now. Many members of these groups—World Affairs Councils, university groups, local groups interested in Middle East policy—disagree with my general take on Iran and the Middle East, but I’ve always gotten a fair hearing and good questions.

Given that, it’s been both amusing and depressing to watch the political spectacle that’s been happening in Washington this week. It all began when Bill Kristol’s favorite senator, Tom Cotton (R‑AR), got 46 of the other 53 Republican Senators to join him in signing an “open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” trying to scare the clerical leadership away from a diplomatic deal by threatening to scotch it themselves once Barack Obama is out of office. Cotton, a Harvard Law grad, was subsequently chided on his understanding of the U.S. Constitution both by the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, as well as by Jack Goldsmith, a conservative lawyer who worked on the legal aspects of the war on terror for the George W. Bush administration.

In response to media inquiries, GOP Senators gave embarrassing explanations of the letter. Most absurd was Cotton’s protestation that the letter was intended to help produce a better deal. This claim is absurd not because the causal pathway from this letter to a better deal is dubious (although it is), but because Cotton has made perfectly clear that his goal is the destruction of negotiations, not improving them. As he remarked at a January Heritage Foundation event:

the end of these negotiations isn’t an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak.

Other legislators’ responses were hardly better. Signatory and presidential hopeful Rand Paul asserted that despite its salutation to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and its translation into Farsi, the letter was in fact addressed to the administration. John McCain took a different interpretation, claiming the letter was intended to signal to Iran that Congress will play a role in implementing any deal, shrugging that “maybe [the letter] wasn’t the best way to do that.” Pulling back the curtain to reveal the care with which senior senators handle the high politics of national security, McCain explained his thought process in deciding to sign the letter:

I saw the letter, I saw that it looked reasonable to me and I signed it, that’s all. I sign lots of letters.

Noted.

Democrats and Obama partisans’ response was also depressing. Noted legal scholar Howard Dean declared that the letter “bordered on treason,” and the absurdity of an online petition asking the White House to prosecute the #47Traitors, as they were hash-tagged on Twitter, under the Logan Act did not stop it from garnering 150,000 signatures in under 48 hours.

It’s always a question whether the American public or the American foreign policy elite have more dangerous views on international politics, and I’m sorry to say this whole spectacle hasn’t helped resolve the question one way or the other. But there is one point that bears noting in conclusion.

The most alarming aspect of this whole spectacle—for the GOP and for the nation—has been the aftermath. In Politico’s story discussing the consequences of the letter, author Burgess Everett noted that Cotton was failing upward: “Cotton has rocketed to the top of TV bookers’ lists, and fellow Republican senators are suddenly flocking to him for counsel on foreign policy.” This is despite the fact that the letter was an embarrassment on its own terms, and perhaps even dangerous on reality-based terms.

In a world where the GOP donor class cared about the party’s stewardship on sensitive national security matters, people who dreamed up these sorts of pranks would be defenestrated. Say what you will about Jim Baker or Brent Scowcroft, they wouldn’t have put up with this sort of nonsense. But in a party where the entire foreign policy apparatus has been taken over by neoconservatives, there’s no consequence for this sort of statesmanship, if one can even call it that. Until the GOP donor class decides it’s had enough of this sort of thing and pushes for change, expect more of it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reached out to one of the poorest and least predictable states on earth: North Korea. So far, the new Moscow-Pyongyang axis matters little. But the effort demonstrates that Russia can make Washington pay for confronting Moscow over Ukraine.

The United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean peninsula at the end of World War II. Moscow’s zone became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, better known as North Korea, while the U.S. zone became the Republic of Korea, better known as South Korea. But North Korea denounced Moscow in 1991 after it recognized South Korea. Since then, Russo-North Korean relations have been minimal.

In contrast, Seoul provided investment and trade in abundance. After President Vladimir Putin held a summit with South Korean President Park, Russia leaned toward Seoul in denouncing the North’s missile and nuclear programs.

However, Moscow is rebalancing its position. Last year North Korea and Russia exchanged high-level visitors and inked a number of economic agreements. Russia indicated its willingness to host a summit. Both governments talked of “deepening” economic and political ties.

Although Russia’s North Korea initiatives are new, the interests being promoting are old: regional stability, denuclearization, improved transportation links, expanded commercial and energy activities, and enhanced diplomatic clout.

So far Moscow has invested little. There is no aid. Last year the Russian government formally wrote off $11 billion in Soviet-era loans, which were never going to be repaid.

As for security, the Putin government is focused elsewhere. Joint military maneuvers with North Korea are planned for later this year, but no one imagines the two countries will ever fight together. Pyongyang wants to purchase Moscow’s best fighter, the Su-35, but has little money to do so.

Pyongyang desires to diversify its international relationships and find a counterweight to Beijing. The Chinese have grown increasingly irritated with North Korea’s determination to build nuclear weapons and refusal to adopt meaningful economic reforms.

Thus, North Korea hopes for Russian investment and trade. The North would welcome another friend on the United Nations Security Council whenever nuclear and human rights issues arise.

For Moscow, North Korea offers some economic possibilities, but the latter’s poverty and unpredictability reduce its attractiveness as a market. Instead, Russia’s chief economic interest in the North is as a transit route—rail, gas, and electricity—to South Korea. In this way the Putin government is interested in north Korea, not North Korea.

As U.S.-Russia relations have deteriorated, especially after events in Ukraine over the last year, Moscow has been looking for other fields to compete with the United States. Pressing for resumption of the Six-Party Talks, intended to peacefully resolve concerns about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, raises Moscow’s diplomatic profile and applies pressure to the United States.

Russia is also applying subtle pressure on Seoul, encouraging it to distance itself from U.S. policy toward Moscow. The Putin government does not expect the South to formally break with America, but would benefit from a less enthusiastic application of U.S.-led sanctions.

Russia also is interfering with Washington’s attempt to isolate and pressure the North. Enhanced economic ties between Moscow and Pyongyang would reduce the effects of existing sanctions and make Moscow less receptive to new U.S. proposals to tighten controls on North Korea.

The Putin government could do more to upend the Korean balance. However, so far the Russo-North Korean performance is largely international Kabuki theater. Greater Russian interest in North Korea will hinder Washington’s efforts to force North Korea to relent. But China was not going to allow that to happen and the Kim regime was not planning to negotiate away its nuclear weapons.

However, as I point out in the National Interest, “Russia’s attention to Pyongyang should remind Washington that Moscow matters to the U.S. Ukraine is of little security interest to America, but Russia may respond to U.S. pressure there by targeting more serious Washington interests elsewhere, such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Korea.”

So far, Moscow has exacted only a small price for U.S. opposition. But the expense could grow. The Obama administration should carefully consider the costs before engaging in a new Cold War with Russia.

Alliances tend to entangle America in confrontations that have little or no relevance to the security and liberty of the republic. A prime example of that problem is the ongoing, bitter dispute between Japan and South Korea over some largely uninhabited rocks and the waters surrounding them. Tokyo and Seoul cannot even agree on the correct name of the islands or the body of water. Japanese call the islands Takeshima, while South Koreans insist on the name Dokdo. For Japanese (and most of the world), the spits of rock are located in the Sea of Japan, but South Koreans hate that name and instead call it the East Sea.

As I discuss in a recent National Interest Online article, outsiders might be tempted to snicker at such a parochial feud, but it has significant policy implications. U.S. officials are seeking to strengthen Washington’s alliances with both Japan and South Korea to counter China’s growing power in East Asia. A key component of that strategy is to encourage closer bilateral military cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul. The Takeshima/​Dokdo dispute is a major impediment to such cooperation. Beijing has been quick to take advantage of the animosity by actively courting South Korea. 

Japanese and South Korean leaders also pressure Washington to take sides in the controversy. Such efforts should be rebuffed firmly. Which country has sovereignty over the islands and the surrounding fishing waters should be a matter of profound indifference to all Americans.

There is a larger lesson in this petty territorial dispute. As my colleague Doug Bandow has correctly observed, Washington collects allies with less thought and discrimination than most people collect Facebook friends. In doing so, we also collect all of the disputes and feuds that those “friends” wage with other parties. That is an unnecessary and unwise policy for a superpower.

There is a lot to say about Israeli Prime Minster’s Benjamin Netanyahu’ speech to Congress today. I could object to his use of worst case scenarios and overstatements of Iranian power. Instead I’m taking issue with his treatment of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. My point, besides being pedantic, is that Frost’s realist sensibility makes him a poor reference for Bibi.

Netanyahu tells us that we face a crossroads. One path is the deal being negotiated, which may contain the Iranian nuclear program temporarily but will “lead to a nuclear-armed Iran whose unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to war.” Or we can do the difficult thing and hold out for a better deal, which “would prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclearized Middle East and the horrific consequences of both to all of humanity.”

To help us navigate the crossroads, Netanyahu references Robert Frost:

You don’t have to read Robert Frost to know. You have to live life to know that the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference for the future of my country, the security of the Middle East and the peace of the world, the peace, we all desire. 

One problem here is that Netanyahu’s evaluation of the options suggests that his preference is far less difficult. The path that obviously avoids inevitable war and horrific consequences is sure to be the more popular, easier one.

Another issue is that the poem doesn’t address difficulty. A harder road may be less popular, but the poem doesn’t say so. The traveler can’t see far down the roads, so he can’t know which is more difficult. 

The biggest issue with Netanyahu’s reading of the poem is typical of those that only read the end: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.”

That bit alone gives you the standard “be unconventional,” conclusion. But the speaker earlier says that he actually can’t tell what’s less traveled. Prior travelers have worn the two roads “really about the same.” But later (ages and ages hence) he’ll tell us (with a sigh) that bravely taking the road less traveled made all the difference. The sighing and stuttering and imprecision (was it a good difference?) are theatrics. A stab in the dark becomes a pat lesson about decision-making.

That authorial wink suggests that Frost would not see this poem, even correctly read, as a guide on whether to take a year off before enrolling at Vassar, let alone international politics. Still, he’d probably agree that its treatment of choice is at odds with Netanyahu’s.

The choice in the poem is uncertain and final. The traveler can’t know what will work out better, because he can’t see too far ahead. He wants to go both ways but cannot get back to the choosing point. So he has to pick irreversibly and sacrifice something. Frost here is with Auden: “Look if you like, but you will have to leap.” Not all choices are like that, but the easy ones aren’t much worth talking about.

This is a realist sentiment. The tragedy that realists describe is that politics, especially the international kind, requires choice between competing goods amid uncertainty. Risks are on both sides. Someone always insists otherwise—that one way reconciles values, maximizing liberty, humanitarianism and U.S. security and every other good thing. It is pleasant to believe that, as it removes tragedy from choice. Netanyahu’s rhetoric is like that. If you believe it, in doing his bidding, we ultimately sacrifice nothing. Then there’s really no choice at all. If there’s a lesson in The Road Not Taken, it’s to be wary of such advice.