A great power that allows itself to be preoccupied only with the problems of today is likely to end up mired in the conflicts of yesterday. A great power must be guided by a longer-range strategic vision.

Seventy years ago today at 0600 hours Pacific Time on December 7, 1941 Captain Mitsuo Fuchida launched Operation Z from the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Akagi, flagship of the attack fleet.

The mood in the United States is sour. Although President Jimmy Carter never used the term, a "malaise" is infecting the country.

As the G-Plenty and Not-so-Plenty meet in Cannes a big month beckons for the United States. One month hence will be the seventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor which brought a formal and abrupt end to 1930s American isolationism. December 2011 will also see the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq. One year hence the US presidential elections will take place.

Strategy and weather share a common limitation: People constantly talk about both yet, in today's environment, little can be done to affect either.

Above all, strategy is about setting achievable and understandable aims. Sadly, politics and process have made that impossible today.

One symptom of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome. Cynics often accuse the United States of falling into that trap in conducting its foreign policy.

The United States is going through difficult times. Its post-2008 recovery has slowed, and some observers fear that Europe’s financial problems could tip the American and world economy into a second recession.

In life, people inexorably move from infancy to adulthood and on to old age in a series of significant chronological milestones. Countries are obviously not people. But states also pass through stages that mark fundamental transition points and new epochs in their histories, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. And sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.