WHAT NEITHER SIDE GRASPS IS THAT IT'S ALL JUST OPPORTUNITIES:

This gets to the main point: Romney doesn't seem to understand--nor do some of his advisers--the extent to which the world has changed since the end of the Cold War. International politics were never as cut and dried as that era's image suggested--two superpowers, each dominating its sphere of the globe and competing for influence at the margins of the other's domain.

Still, the superpowers did tend to view the politics of "strategic regions" in that broader framework, and the leaders within those regions often acceded to the interests of one superpower, in order to stave off the other, or tried to play the two off each other.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it the demise of the Cold War system, this wedge of entry is no longer open. This is not to say that the United States is a "declining power." By every traditional measure of national power, the United States still dominates the rest of the world. But because the world has changed, those measures no longer translate so directly into influence. Or, to put it another way, the rules of the game, the dimensions of the playing field, have changed. The tokens of strength in the old game don't have the same potency in the new one.

Obama seems to understand this (though, for obvious political reasons, he can't say so directly); Romney and his people seem not to. In April, one of Romney's top surrogates, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, told reporters that Obama was "withdrawing in leading the free world," leaving us open to "huge new vulnerabilities." Asked to cite an example, Lehman said, "We are seeing the Soviets pushing into the Arctic with no response from us."

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