Is Obama a "superdove"? No.

Max Fisher's analysis of the foreign policy doctrine Obama laid out today at West Point includes a pretty serious misreading:

Obama argued, directly and repeatedly, that the US would have to reduce its use of military force as a tool of foreign policy. Obama argued that the US could and should not use military force, including even limited actions such as off-shore strikes, except when absolutely necessary to defend "core interests" or to "protect our people, our homeland, or our way of life."

That's a very high bar for the use of military force. Obama didn't just make the point abstractly, going through several major US foreign policy changes to explain why, in each, military force was not and should not be applied.

Obama did not suggest that the U.S. would use force only when core interests were at stake. He said that the U.S. would use force unilaterally only when core interests are at stake. Or rather, that unilateral action would be on the table only under such circumstances. Here is the distinction he actually made:

Worth reading on Syria

As a Labor Day labor, I thought it might be useful to share some of the strongest analyses I've read about Syria, some of which are at odds with each other. The choices below address three interrelated questions: what should any U.S. response to the Assad regime's chemical weapons attack seek to achieve? How, if at all, does U.S. (and Obama's) "credibility" factor into the equation? And how, if at all, should we engage with adversaries other than Syria with a stake in the conflict?

1. How narrow a mission?

The Washington Post's Max Fisher argues that the "red line" is not about Obama, it's about a hundred year-old international norm. A strike narrowly focused on upholding the international taboo against chemical weapons use makes sense: