No Strategy Yet

A broken clock is right twice a day. And even a president not given to truthfulness occasionally is candid.

One such blue moon occurred yesterday when Barack Obama responded to questions about what his administration was going to do about the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria by saying, “We don’t have a strategy yet.”

Regrettably, the same applies to other unraveling international crises. We don’t have a strategy yet for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Or for China’s increasing belligerence towards U.S. ships and aircraft and its neighbors in the Western Pacific.

We don’t have a strategy yet for our insecure borders and the threats coming across them, or for Iran’s incipient thermonuclear menace.

Worst of all, Mr. Obama seems to have no strategy for formulating any of these strategies.