A striking bipartisan consensus exists today across the think tank community on the need for Pentagon and Congressional leaders to address the growing imbalances within the defense budget that threaten the health and long-term viability of America’s volunteer military.

When President Barack Obama hosts Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Thursday, their talks about Syria will have a fresh urgency. On Saturday, car bombings in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli killed at least 50 people. The Erdogan government blamed the Bashar Assad regime in Damascus for the attack.

As America's top diplomat heads to Moscow, here are some tough questions he needs to answer about the Obama administration's flawed nuclear treaty.

The Case for Striking Before It's Too Late

For the second time in three decades, a substantial American investment of time, money, and effort to strengthen the Lebanese government and support its fledgling democracy has come to very little. Hezbollah, Tehran, and Damascus now dominate the country’s intractable domestic politics. US diplomacy is left powerless, wondering how to make the best of an increasingly untenable situation in the Levant.

Although finding a peaceful way to preclude Iran from getting nuclear weapons is obviously desirable, Washington will likely have to decide between two unattractive options: pursuing a military strike to prevent Iran from going nuclear or implementing a containment strategy to live with a nuclear Iran. The resort to force is always risky, and it would be particularly so in this case because a substantial number of U.S. troops are deployed near Iran. Whether force should be used will depend on the answers to three difficult questions: How close is Iran to achieving a nuclear weapons capability? Would an attack be effective? How might Iran retaliate, and what costs would the United States and its allies and partners suffer as a result? The risks of war must be weighed against the likelihood that containment could preserve regional stability and avert further proliferation, the demands of implementing and sustaining a containment strategy, and the inevitable reduction in the United States’ ability to defend vital interests elsewhere.