Michael Cohen needs to pay closer attention:

Jim Jones and Bob Gates are obviously smart men, but one doesn’t get the sense (particularly from the former) that they are focused on recalibrating US strategy. Indeed, one could fairly ask where are all the Obama campaign aides that were pushing the idea of a new mindset for American foreign policy – because they don’t appear to be in the higher reaches of Obama’s foreign policy team.

There’s no real way to judge this, since you can’t refute a “sense” and more broadly Michael doesn’t explain what he means by “strategy.” He’s got something of a point with Jones, though I wonder if Michael wouldn’t watch this speech, in which Jones digresses into bigthink for ten minutes, and then reconsider whether Jones’ is giving some thought to the U.S.’s place in a robust multilateral arrangement.

If you think Gates isn’t focused on “recalibrating U.S. strategy,” you just aren’t paying attention to a man who might shape up as the finest defense secretary in history. His September 2008 speech at the National Defense University, intended to be his valedictory address, is a statement about the need to rebalance civilian and military elements of national security to be relevant to a world of diffuse security challenges from undergoverned areas and unconventional (especially cyber) threats from well-governed ones. (“Where possible, kinetic operations should be subordinate to measures to promote better governance, economic programs to spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented from which the terrorists recruit.”) Gates has made that recalibration a central theme of his tenure under both Bush and Obama, urging larger State Department budgets and a reconsideration of the need for the Defense Department to be the policymaking tool of first choice. You just can’t understand Gates’ budget last year without that strategy-centric context. We also would not be talking about cybersecurity as a major early-21st century challenge if not for Gates, John Brennan and Rand Beers at Homeland Security (and before them, Richard Clarke).

Hillary Rodham Clinton, for her part, is completing an ambitious overhaul of State Department and USAID capabilities to be responsive to precisely the challenges Gates identifies. I don’t think you can fairly read Clinton’s January speech on development and accuse her of strategic myopia.

Should we go on? I’ll have much more on this in a forthcoming Washington Independent piece, but this speech from Adm. Mullen is the early phase of the first vision for the responsible use of military force from a Joint Chiefs Chairman since Colin Powell. And at the White House, the National Security Strategy is in the final stages of production. You’ll see some Obama-Doctrine big think in there as well.

Disagree with all manner of stuff in all this stuff. I certainly do. But you can’t really fairly observe the Obama administration and not see very broad strategic constructs taking form.