Carrot and Stick

I suspect if US economy improves when say DOW gets to 15000 Obama will change his tune on "engagement" with our adversaries. We have in the past 60 years only "so called" engaged our enemies when we had a short stick. When due to economical and geopolitical circumstances our STICK gets longer then forget the carrot and engagement.

This is how powerful pushes their extra territorial agenda to secure "national interest" which really in short means leveraging fire power to maintain tactical and strategic advantage. War and conflict are often only tools to short cut what otherwise would take a long time to achieve with even playing field.

Unfortunately now a days almost any relevant nation in the planet uses this approach so future conflicts with nastier results are inevitable until the power balance reaches an equilibrium. That is relatively when large number of nations stockpile nuclear weapons and other means to deter preemptive "war" by powerful factor. In that case I am sure Bush types or Obama would opt for "ENGAGEMENT" more often.