ANKARA, July 22 (AFP)–Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government Wednesday hailed a change to the education system making it easier for religious school graduates to get into university, a measure strongly opposed by secularists...

Turkey has now crossed a Rubicon of sorts by commiting itself to support of insurgnt Uyghurs in Western China. And Turkey’s involvement evidently helped persuade Russia and China to close ranks against Islamists across Central Asia. There is now an arc of instability from Ankara to Islamabad, with Iran at dead center."

And this:

"Large tracts of the world are becoming unmanageable. Looming above all these other issues as truly frightening threat is Pakistan, which cannot be stabilized by any measures Washington might undertake. Look for a quiet conversation between India and China as to how to dry this problem out.

Obama’s obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian issue has made him slightly worse than irrelevant. If you betray your friends (as Obama surely did by ignoring agreements with Israel on “organic growth” of settlements) and propitiate your enemies (as Obama attempted to do with Iran and Syria) you merely make yourself an object of ridicule and contempt. The rest of the world is taking measures to address real problems in the absence of American help, and in the fear of American maliciousness.

Never in history has a great power cast away so much influence in so short a period of time."

Is President Obama ignoring signs of tectonic shifts beneath the surface of what goes for "immediate" geopolitical calculation?

Events like this are why we need to retain our robust defense posture because it is the unknown that can swallow one up in an instant if one is lackadaisical about the prospects of the unforseen.

If one prepares for the worst and hopes for the best, one is not as likely to be unpleasantly surprised and ill equipped to handle negative contingencies.  If one merely prepares for the best or the "least bad", what happens if your calculations are wrong?