Hope among unprecedented challenges

The president’s enduring concentration of effort to disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat global extremist organizations is absolutely essential. Of equal importance are the president’s enduring economic initiatives that feed the engine that allows us to continue to play a central role in the world. We find ourselves at an interesting juncture in history when the challenges in number, complexity, gravity and speed bear no parallel to a past time. The situation is compounded by an unrivaled level of interconnectedness that is brilliantly bold one moment and in the next breath deceptively subtle.

Another convergence of these two themes is the importance of maintaining world peace through military deterrence and sometime war-fighting for the purpose of expanding U.S. markets abroad. A corollary to open markets would be maintaining open lanes of transportation and communication.

An example of which would be Somali pirates and cyber-attacks. For commerce to flourish, we must have open sea lanes and unencumbered Internet communication so goods and ideas can pass freely anywhere in the world.

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