Related Resources On NationalJournal.com National Journal: "Influence Wanes Abroad" (7/28/07) · National Journal Cover Story: "Fowl Territory" (7/27/07) · National Journal Cover Story: "Baghdad, Surged" (7/13/07) · National Journal: "Keeping Iran Off Balance" (6/9/07) · National Journal Cover Story: "The Decline Begins" (5/18/07) · National Journal Cover Story: "The Shadow Hunters" (4/27/07) [an error occurred while processing this directive] Additional Resources On The Web DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff on his "gut feeling" that an attack is imminent (Chicago Tribune, "The Swamp," 7/11/07) · PBS's Frontline: "Hunting Bin Laden" · Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warns Senate Foreign Relations panel of potential war with Iran (2/1/07) [PDF]

By James Kitfield, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Sept. 7, 2007

In mid-September, the nation's capital will be transfixed by the political spectacle surrounding the long-anticipated report on Iraq by top U.S. officials. In the realm of grand strategy and politics, however, it is the sucker punch unleashed outside your peripheral vision that often lands with the most bone-crunching impact. Such strategic blows have the power to shatter carefully crafted political narratives and game plans, and to make a mockery of Washington's conventional wisdom. In the White House, the phenomenon is talked about often enough that it has been given a name: "game changer."

Certainly, tactical surprises are nothing extraordinary, and sometimes administrations even manufacture them to break a negative cycle of news or to stop a plunge in the polls. President Bush's recent and unexpected application of the Vietnam analogy to Iraq and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a day after the GOP defeat in last year's midterm elections were viewed by the White House as just such useful communications "circuit breakers."

Truly strategic surprises are beyond manipulation, however, and they are outside the control of even the most powerful leaders on earth. Recall John F. Kennedy riding the razor's edge of the Cuban missile crisis, or Lyndon B. Johnson in the terrible thrall of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Think of Richard Nixon undone by a Watergate burglary, Gerald Ford consumed by the seizure of the Mayaguez, or Jimmy Carter buffeted by the maelstrom created by an angry mob of Iranian students. Consider Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, George H.W. Bush and the fall of the Berlin Wall, or Bill Clinton fighting off impeachment in the midst of the Kosovo war. Remember George W. Bush on September 12, 2001. Game changed.

What is so extraordinary about this political season is just how many storms are brewing around the world, any number of which could plausibly grow into Category 5 game changers. That's largely the price of a protracted war that is deeply unpopular both at home and abroad. Historically, wars are game changers in their own right, and Iraq has shown the pernicious tendency to exacerbate or ignite other crises, as evidenced by an increasingly unstable Middle East and an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran. Similarly, the fate of the American intervention in Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda are closely tied to the deteriorating situation in neighboring Pakistan.

"In my career, I can't remember a time when there were so many crises simultaneously affecting U.S. national security interests, so there's no doubt that this is an unusual period and that we're being tested," said a senior administration official, speaking on background. Like Europe was for much of the 20th century, the Middle East is increasingly becoming the epicenter of the security tremors rocking the United States, this official said. "In addition to Iraq, we have to contend with this alliance between Iran and extremist groups throughout the region that affects the stability of Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank, and Afghanistan. And that's before we even talk about the challenge of managing the rise of China and India, dealing with a difficult Russia, coping with a crisis in Darfur, and taking on Hugo Chavez in an ideological argument about the best political future for Latin America. So this is an extraordinarily complicated time for our country."

Distracted Superpower
With America the superpower distracted in Iraq and deeply divided at home, other problems fester either from a lack of attention or ineffective crisis management. Add to that an unpopular and frustrated commander-in-chief with an eye on his place in history and no stake in the next election, and some experts discern a period unusually ripe for strategic surprises.

"There are a number of dynamics at work in the world right now that do make this a particularly volatile period, and a key ingredient is the diversion of U.S. attention to Iraq and away from the rest of the world," said Paul Pillar, the National Intelligence Council's officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, and a former deputy chief of the CIA's counter-terrorism center. "Iraq defines our agenda and distorts our priorities, and it's consuming our political chips with friends and allies overseas. Just about every bilateral relationship we have in the world, for instance, is now judged on how much that government supports us on Iraq. That limits the flexibility of our diplomacy and makes it harder to manage other crises and situations that arise."

With the U.S. presidential campaign fully afoot and the Bush administration increasingly relegated to the political sidelines at home, the domestic dynamic also shows signs of inflaming global tensions. Potential crises abroad have already become fodder for presidential candidates anxious to play to their political base and to one-up their opponents. In debates, Republican candidates have broken with a tradition of restraint and ambiguity on the subject by seeming to support a possible nuclear first strike on Iran, for instance, and Republican candidate Tom Tancredo even proposed targeting the Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina if Al Qaeda were to launch another attack on the U.S. homeland.

For their part, Democratic presidential contenders pilloried Barack Obama for daring to suggest that he would talk to the leaders of unpopular countries such as Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela. Obama predictably responded by ratcheting up the testosterone quotient of his rhetoric, expressing a willingness to launch strikes against Al Qaeda inside Pakistan without that country's approval, a remark that didn't go down well in an already besieged ally in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Such comments receive wide airing in overseas media and are used as propaganda by adversaries.

"I am concerned that these issues get horribly politicized during the silly season of a presidential campaign," said Pillar, now a visiting professor in security studies at Georgetown University. "Already it's really hard for any candidate to stake out a nuanced position or say something reasonable and pragmatic. And the nightmare scenario that I most worry about is that the frustrations surrounding Iraq will prompt the Bush administration to do something foolish, like launch an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in an attempt to burnish the president's legacy."

As a former ambassador to NATO, a special counselor to Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra affair, and the co-founder of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, David Abshire has made crisis management his life's study.

"Because of Iraq, we have lost our unity at home and much of our standing and influence abroad, and as a strategist and a historian, that tells me that we lack freedom of action when it comes to managing crises. I think we're in a very perilous situation in that regard," said Abshire, currently head of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. "Both our friends and adversaries around the world know that we are polarized in this country and entering a very divisive presidential election campaign. Anyone who wants to gain comparative advantage over the United States is going to see that as an opportunity to exploit. That's asking for a major calamity in American history."

Uncertain Reaction
If the atmospherics suggest a particularly dangerous season for strategic surprises, predicting what they might be and how they could change the domestic political calculus of the presidential campaign is an altogether different matter. Conventional wisdom holds that the public tends to rally around the commander-in-chief in times of crisis, but true game changers have a way of standing conventional wisdom on its head.

"A lot of potential game changers can conceivably cut either way politically, and it's really a jump ball in terms of whose side of the court the issue lands on," said a source knowledgeable about internal White House discussions. "There are scenarios where it could hurt us in some ways and strengthen our hand in others. It can even depend on when in the election cycle the event occurs. Who is the spokesman for the opposition party? Is it a presidential candidate, or is it still [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi? Is [Sen. Hillary Rodham] Clinton still protecting her left flank from Obama, or not? Then you have all the specific issues associated with the event itself to consider."

To cite one example of this uncertain dynamic: George H.W. Bush presided over one of the most positive game changers in modern history by helping to engineer a soft landing to the Cold War in 1989-90. He followed that by overseeing one of the most lopsided military victories in history in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. However, shortly after giving Bush 41 a sky-high 89 percent approval rating in 1991, a fickle public concluded that the Cold War dangers had passed and that he was out of touch with their economic struggles and their desire to enjoy a "peace dividend." In the 1992 election, they handed the senior Bush a stinging defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton.

"If there was another attack on America or a major crisis overseas, the public would probably rally behind President Bush initially, but at the same time it would likely resurface questions about his competence and approach to world affairs," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes. Historically, major strategic surprises have thus proved to be the true wild cards of international affairs. "They have a tendency to reshuffle the political deck, but it's very hard to predict in whose favor. A lot depends on the scenario and circumstances, and who is most successful at interpreting events in a way that becomes the dominant narrative, and thus works to their advantage."

Though inherently unpredictable by their very nature, potential shocks to the global system are the subject of intense analysis both inside and outside the U.S. government. Inside the military they are the subject of nearly constant contingency planning and war-gaming, while the intelligence agencies, think tanks, and business community all frequently engage in strategic forecasting. In the White House, sources say that such "what if" drills are routinely done in thinking through policy options and as a form of preparation.

The following 10 possible game changers are offered in the same spirit. Some are perhaps more likely than others, but all have the potential to rearrange the geopolitical deck in unpredictable ways, for good or ill. If the list seems skewed to the latter, however, there's a reason. "Frankly, it's much easier to come up with plausible, rapidly accumulating negative game changers than positive ones," an administration source admitted.

America Attacked
When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff admitted earlier this summer to a gut feeling that the threat of a terrorist attack on the homeland was growing, some pundits ridiculed him and questioned what color on the threat-level coding system corresponded to an inkling. As it turns out, guts throughout the entire intelligence and law enforcement communities have been churning of late.

In July, for instance, a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate [PDF], which represents the collective view of the intelligence community, judged that a resurgent Al Qaeda has the means and the intent to conduct an attack inside the United States, and that the group was increasing its efforts to place terrorist operatives here. As have other threat analyses, the NIE noted that Al Qaeda still retained its top leadership, had largely replenished its ranks of operational lieutenants, and had reconstituted a safe haven for training and planning in the largely ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan.

"I'm not recognized in the field of prophecy, but the possibility of an attack on the homeland by a handful of hotheads who are the jihadist equivalent of Timothy McVeigh remains a distinct possibility," said Brian Jenkins, a longtime counter-terrorism expert at the Rand think tank, recalling the Oklahoma City truck bomber. The chances that such a small group could fly beneath the radar of law enforcement agencies is significant, he noted, and they could strike at an almost infinite variety of soft targets inside the country.

"While it's a realistic possibility, I think such an attack would most likely inflict scores or possibly even hundreds of casualties, falling somewhere between the London and Madrid terrorist attacks but well short of the magnitude of another 9/11," Jenkins said. "Nevertheless, that would be significant enough to really change the political dialogue in America. People would certainly be reminded of the danger that still lurks out there."

Iraqi Tet Offensive
When insurgents launched the deadliest attack of the Iraq war in mid-August, killing more than 250 Iraqis in a series of four truck bombings in the country's northwest, U.S. officials held their collective breath. Certainly the attack bore all the lethal hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Iraq: simultaneous suicide bombings intended to inflict the maximum possible carnage. What worried U.S. officials even more was the thought that this was the beginning of a long-feared Tet-like offensive in Iraq, a coordinated and sustained assault designed, like its namesake, to totally dominate media coverage and to deal a decisive blow to American public will.

In private, U.S. commanders say that Al Qaeda in Iraq very nearly engineered such a strategic game changer last year with the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The destruction of one of the holiest sites in the Shiite religion ignited a firestorm of sectarian violence that very nearly engulfed Iraq in all-out civil war. With public support for the Iraq war at low ebb in the United States, and the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, set to deliver his key report in mid-September, U.S. commanders are bracing for future terrorist spectaculars.

"We think about a Tet-like offensive in Iraq a lot because it's easy to imagine that being part of [Al Qaeda in Iraq's] strategy," said a senior military source with responsibilities in the region. "They know that it worked in Vietnam, and we're approaching the Ramadan holy season, when violence almost always increases. We really shouldn't be surprised if it happens, because shock is how they reap the information-warfare advantage."

Anbar Model Spreads
Upon returning from a recent trip to Iraq, two respected analysts from the Brookings Institution co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times positing a novel notion, at least for analysts closely associated with the Democratic Party: U.S. forces were producing good results on the ground, and a stable outcome was achievable in Iraq.

Anti-war forces on the left immediately excoriated the article and its authors, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack; those on the right, meanwhile, held the op-ed up as Exhibit A of the Bush surge's success. The surprisingly upbeat tone of the piece was largely grounded in the "Anbar model," a tactical anti-Qaeda alliance formed between U.S. forces and Sunni tribal sheiks in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni triangle. It was this model that President Bush touted in his surprise visit to Anbar this week. If the Anbar model holds and continues to spread to other Sunni areas, as U.S. military commanders in Iraq insist is happening, it has the potential to decisively alter the widely accepted narrative of the Iraq war as a botched and all-but-hopeless effort that is destined to drag Republicans down in the coming election season.

"Half of the American public sees red the minute you talk about a positive or even passable outcome in Iraq, and I still think this is going to be an unsuccessful presidency in the eyes of history, because any outcome in Iraq will be less than it might have been and purchased at a higher cost than was necessary," O'Hanlon told National Journal. "Having said that, I believe if you think in terms of avoiding the worst outcomes in Iraq, rather than achieving some glorious victory, there is room for hope. If the United States maintains its resolve, I think our chances of achieving a passable level of security and avoiding the worst-case scenarios in Iraq is probably 50-50."

War With Iran
The ongoing war of words and threatening rhetoric between Tehran and Washington has reached a fever pitch. Iran's radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently gave an incendiary speech in which he predicted: "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum" in the Middle East that Iran is ready to fill -- a clear reference to U.S. troubles in Iraq. Shortly after, Bush let loose by declaring his intent to "confront Tehran's murderous activities" in Iraq and to deal with a nuclear program that threatened to put "a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."

When it was reported in mid-August that the Bush administration was planning to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, many analysts believe it moved both countries another major step down a path of confrontation that has included not only saber-rattling but also real provocations. Iran has armed anti-American insurgents in Iraq and detained Iranian-American academics visiting Tehran, for instance, while the U.S. military has sent extra carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf and seized Revolutionary Guard officials in Iraq. Shortly after Bush's recent speech fingering Iran's actions in Iraq, U.S. military officials arrested a delegation of eight Iranians in Baghdad. They were later released.

And senior Bush administration officials close to Vice President Cheney's office still believe that as bad as a war with Iran might prove, it's the lesser evil compared with allowing Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. The history of U.S.-Iranian relations also suggests that today's tit-for-tat provocations could easily escalate into a shooting war as a result of miscalculation.

"The nature and implications of the Bush administration's recent moves do not have the characteristics of a customary rhetorical deflection exercise," Trita Parsi, author of "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.," and head of the National Iranian American Council, wrote recently in an article carried by the Inter Press Service. "Accusing Iran of seeking to put an already unstable Middle East under the 'shadow of nuclear holocaust' and promising to confront Tehran 'before it's too late' echo statements made by the Bush White House about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein prior to the invasion of Iraq."

Pakistan Implodes
Of all the nightmare scenarios that disturb the sleep of straetgic forecasters, none is more alarming than a possible government implosion in unsteady Pakistan, a Muslim country with nuclear weapons and a large, radicalized minority and that is also most likely home to Osama bin Laden and other top Qaeda leaders. Yet so shaky has been the rule of President Pervez Musharraf of late that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly phoned in the middle of the night to warn him not to follow through with plans to declare a state of emergency in Pakistan.

Essentially Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless military coup in 1999, is a leader with a rapidly shrinking domestic constituency. He greatly angered secularists and democrats earlier this year by sacking the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court. (The justice was reinstated after intense public pressure.) Musharraf was then slow to confront Islamic militants who boldly took over the Red Mosque in Islamabad and were challenging the government's authority. His delaying tactics upset many Pakistani army officers. When in July he finally cleared the mosque of extremists, the violence predictably sparked riots and terrorist attacks by other sympathetic Islamic radicals.

"Musharraf remains in serious trouble, and most likely scenarios at this point still look messy, whether it's possible mass street protests or even a move by the Pakistani army to dump Musharraf at some point," said Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "My bottom line is that some level of chaos is a distinct possibility in Pakistan, and while that's not necessarily cataclysmic, it would mean a large, nuclear-armed country with a nasty extremist minority going through an unpredictable transition. That scenario makes me nervous."

Afghanistan Fails
As a result of the Iraq war, perhaps no crisis has festered more because of a lack of sufficient U.S. attention and resources than Afghanistan, an epic nation-building and counterinsurgency operation in its own right. A resurgent Taliban has found sanctuary on the Pakistan side of the border, and has increasingly adopted tactics from the Iraqi insurgency in challenging U.S. and NATO forces. Meanwhile, local warlords funded through an exploding opium trade have filled the power vacuum left by a weak central government in Kabul. These warlords have been able to increase opium production 34 percent in the past year alone and are threatening to turn Afghanistan into a narco-state in the mold of Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ironically, Afghanistan was always bin Laden's chosen battlefield and the place where he wanted to inflict a resounding defeat on the United States, just as he and other mujahedeen warriors had defeated the Soviets in the 1980s. While bin Laden remains far from that goal, Al Qaeda is still hanging around and its leaders undoubtedly take heart from recent opinion polls [PDF] showing that a majority of the public in many European countries now oppose the presence of their troops in Afghanistan. A dramatic turn for the worse in Afghanistan could thus have a potentially game-changing ripple effect on trans-Atlantic cooperation.

"On a recent trip to Europe, I was struck by the degree to which Afghanistan fatigue is setting in, and how European publics are increasingly lumping Afghanistan and Iraq together and raising questions about why they should be taking casualties for wars the Bush administration started," said Philip Gordon, director of the Europe Program at the Brookings Institution. "If the mission in Afghanistan were to fail, I do think there would be very serious consequences for trans-Atlantic relations. That would probably be the death knell for the notion of NATO ever doing anything together again as an alliance."

Bin Laden Captured
After intelligence indicated that as many as 500 jihadists had infiltrated the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan this summer, U.S. forces launched an offensive sweep there that immediately ignited speculation that bin Laden had returned to his old mountain redoubt. In the end, it was just another rumor in a manhunt defined by them.

When the Iraq war drew the elite Delta Force commando unit and many of the CIA's most experienced agents away from Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, intelligence experts concede that the trail for bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri -- high-value targets Nos. 1 and 2 to U.S. Special Operations forces -- went stone-cold.

Still, it takes only one serious slipup by the producers or the couriers of the 70 propaganda videos and audio tapes that Al Qaeda's media arm has released so far this year to give U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel the break they have been desperately seeking since 9/11. In the end, bin Laden's capture could resemble that of the fugitive Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, who became an almost mythic figure on the run and then was captured rooting around in a garbage bin.

"In terms of the impact of bin Laden's capture or death on the overall jihadist enterprise, I think it would probably be relatively small because his daily contribution has been diminishing for some time," said Jenkins of Rand. "But certainly bin Laden's capture would be portrayed by the Bush administration as a huge psychological victory, and vindication of its 'wanted poster' approach. Bin Laden's clearly the most wanted of them all. So bringing back his head on a platter would undoubtedly be very satisfying for Bush."

Middle East Peace
In recent years, Secretary of State Rice has reversed the de facto policy of disengagement from peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians that characterized George W. Bush's first term. The reasons are not hard to discern. The election of the Islamic extremist group Hamas to the Palestinian government -- and its violent toppling of the secular Fatah organization in the Gaza Strip -- were seen as direct threats to the Bush administration's counter-terrorism campaign and Middle East democratization agenda.

Last year's fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, combined with rampant sectarian violence and terrorist bombings in Iraq, have also convinced senior administration officials that they badly need a positive game changer to counter a tide of instability in the Middle East.

Though the Mideast peace process has historically rewarded pessimists, experts nevertheless see opportunity amid the current turmoil. Eager to polish his legacy, Bush sent Rice to the region in July to prepare the ground for a peace conference in September. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally in the war on terrorism, also began work in July as the special envoy of the Quartet of would-be Middle East peacemakers (the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations). And after peering into the abyss of a Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have resumed high-level talks.

"Any American president who delivered a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians would be transformed in international opinion, and it would be the single most important achievement in winning back world opinion to America's side," said Gordon of the Brookings Institution. "I think Bush has belatedly realized this and is serious about pursuing peace, though it's a testament to just how bad things are going around the world that an administration would see the Middle East peace process as its best chance to salvage some vestige of a positive legacy."

Bush Impeached
With each new assertion of executive authority and privilege, the Bush administration seemingly digs its heels in deeper for a protracted, bitter fight on multiple fronts with a Democratic-led Congress. Most notably, the administration has insisted that even if Congress passed a veto-proof timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, it would consider that an unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority as commander-in-chief.

Constitutional lawyers believe that the Supreme Court would be hesitant to intercede in such a "separation of powers" showdown, meaning that Congress might be left with only its powers of impeachment to force the president's hand. Though Democratic leaders have said that impeachment is off the table, they could be tempted into reconsidering if Bush's approval ratings remain in the basement.

"During impeachment and the Kosovo war, we definitely faced a hostile Congress, but we never faced a serious deficit of support from the American public," John Podesta, chief of staff in the Clinton White House, told National Journal. Even in the midst of the impeachment drama, he said, Clinton's approval rating hovered around 60 percent, or nearly twice Bush's approval rating, which recently dipped below 30 percent. In the end, that relatively high approval may have been what saved the Clinton presidency. "When you look at the job-approval ratings Bush is experiencing now, which are really around the level of Richard Nixon, it really takes a toll on a president's maneuver room," Podesta said.

A Mass Hostage Crisis
In recent direct negotiations with the South Korean government, Taliban rebels who held 19 Korean hostages won a pledge that South Korea would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year (albeit as already planned) and prevent any future activities by Korean evangelicals in Afghanistan. To date, the South Koreans have denied persistent rumors that they also paid a huge ransom for the hostages. If anyone needed reminding, the incident revealed once again the potency of mass hostage situations as international game changers.

Certainly, few Americans who were alive at the time have forgotten how a mob of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and took 66 Americans hostage, marking the start of one of the worst years in the modern U.S. presidency. After diplomatic initiatives to free the hostages failed and a military rescue attempt turned into a disaster at Desert One on April 25, 1980, President Carter's approval rating plunged to 28 percent. The Iran hostage crisis was widely viewed as turning a very close presidential race into a decisive win for Ronald Reagan, making it one of history's most dramatic game changers.

Ironically, Reagan himself was nearly undone by a hostage crisis involving Iran. When it was revealed that an administration that had sworn never to negotiate with hostage-takers had done just that, trading arms to Iran for the release of Americans held captive by Iranian proxies in Lebanon and then using the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, it spawned the worst scandal of Reagan's two terms.

"History shows that one of the most perilous events in terms of creating a crisis for a sitting president is a hostage situation," said Jenkins, the counter-terrorism expert at Rand. Examples include Ford and Carter launching disastrous rescue attempts for hostages seized by Cambodia and Iran, respectively, and Reagan foundering in the Iran-Contra affair. More-recent dramas involving Iran and captive British sailors and Iranian-American academics held in custody in Tehran only underscore the point. "Hostage situations are difficult crises to manage, and they often get tangled up in domestic politics as candidates for office make threats and debate how strongly to react," he said. "For people in office or running for them, hostage crises are just radioactive."

Is a mass hostage situation actually likely this election season? Probably no more than another attack on the homeland, or a Tet-like offensive in Iraq, or any of the other potential game changers brewing in an uneasy world. If history is any judge, it may be this sense of global uneasiness itself that most concerns strategic forecasters.

"My own view is that these sudden shifts throughout history, when viewed in retrospect, were not all that sudden," said Richard Kohn, a professor of national security studies at the University of North Carolina. "More often they came in the wake of trends that had already been building, and served as an epiphany or clarifying event for an American public that already sensed a lot of uncertainty in the world." [an error occurred while processing this directive]

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