Sure, why not?

Arthur Honegger, a reporter for public broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen, told POLITICO the Swiss consulate in Chicago has confirmed that the former Republican presidential candidate became a citizen March 19. The Swiss consulate in Chicago covers the state of Minnesota, which Bachmann represents.

Marcus Bachmann, the congresswoman’s husband since 1978, reportedly was eligible for Swiss citizenship due to his parents’ nationality — but only registered it with the Swiss government Feb. 15. Once the process was finalized on March 19, Michele automatically became a citizen as well, according to Honegger.[...]

Bachmann's office confirmed that the congresswoman had received Swiss citizenship, and attributed the decision to her children.

"Congresswoman Bachmann's husband is of Swiss descent, so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978. However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family," said Bachmann spokesperson Becky Rogness.

The timing of this is pretty funny given all the fuss over Mitt Romney's Swiss bank account. Super PACs could presumably have had a pretty good time with the all-American congresswoman's dual citizenship. Marcus Bachmann seems to have waited until after his wife dropped out of the race to make his application.

There's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents members of Congress -- or presidents for that matter -- from holding dual citizenship, so long as they don't renounce their U.S. nationality, though it's obviously pretty unusual. (In the video above, Bachmann rules out the possibility of running for office in Switzerland, where she would now be eligible.) When Rahm Emanuel -- who had served as a civilian volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces and whose father was Israeli -- ran for Congress in 2002 he faced untrue attacks alleging that he held dual citizenship.

Google searches for current dual citizens in Congress just turns up a lot of anti-Semitic garbage. Anyone know of any actual examples before Bachmann?

Biden goes on the attack, but doesn't ‘stick' the landing

Vice President Joe Biden continued to step into his role as the Obama campaign's leading national-security attack dog with a speech at New York University on Thursday that questioned Mitt Romney's credentials to serve as commander-in-chief and accused him of distorting the president's record. "If you're looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," Biden said. He also again mocked Romney's suggestion that Russia is America's primary geopolitical foe and defended the administration's handling of the Iranian nuclear program, saying, "The only step we could take that we aren't already taking is to launch a war against Iran. If that's what Gov. Romney means by a 'very different policy,' he should tell the American people."

Unfortunately for Biden, the line of the speech that got by far the most coverage was his confident assertion that "the president has a big stick."

Rubio grabs the spotlight

The day before Biden's speech, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio made a "major foreign policy address" of his own at the Brookings Institution. The speech generated quite a bit of buzz thanks to suggestions that Rubio may be on the shortlist for Romney's running mate. (For the record, Rubio has repeatedly denied that he's interested in being vice president.)

But despite the expectation that Rubio would use the speech as an audition for a spot on the ticket, Rubio differed from Romney on topics including foreign aid, the use of force in Syria and Libya, and negotiating with Iran. Saying that he often feels more affinity with hawkish democrats than isolationist republicans in the Senate, Rubio joked that "on foreign policy, if you go far enough to the right, you wind up on the left."

The Syria debate

Sure enough, the very next day Rubio found himself in a tussle with fellow Senate Republicans over a resolution he had co-sponsored condemning the Bashar al-Assad regime's violence in Syria. GOP Senators including Richard Lugar and Bob Corker objected to language calling on Assad to step down. The debate highlighted a split in opinion within the party on Syria. House GOP members demanded assurances this week that the White House would notify Congress in accordance with the war powers act should military action be taken in Syria.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called his week for the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo and other tough measures on Syria. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey also told Congress that the Pentagon would be ready to provide military options in Syria should it be required.    

Romney has advocated support for the anti-Assad opposition, but stopped short of supporting military involvement -- breaking with more aggressive members of his party such as Sen. John McCain. Romney campaign foreign policy director Alex Wong said this week that the Obama administration has been "shamefully absent from this crisis" in Syria.

Newt out

After five devastating primary losses to Romney, Newt Gingrich's campaign announced on Wednesday that the candidate is finally dropping out ... though not until next Tuesday. A spokesman said Gingrich is "laying out plans now how as a citizen he can best help stop [an] Obama second term and win congressional majorities." It's thought that he will most likely endorse Romney.

The former speaker of the House ends his campaign having won two states and 137 delegates -- but he leaves behind a legacy of out-of-the-box ideas on topics ranging from the virtues of janitorial work to algae fuels to conquering the moon.

Just like Condi

A CNN poll this week found that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a narrow favorite among Republicans for Romney's VP pick. (Now teaching at Stanford, she has said repeatedly that she's not interested in the job.) Rice, at 26 percent, is followed by Rick Santorum, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio. Interesting, despite the Florida senator's moderate views on immigration and internationalist foreign policy, he's still the favorite among self-described Tea Party supporters.

The latest from FP:

Paul Miller makes the case for Gen. David Petraeus as vice president.

Responding to Biden's speech, Michael A. Cohen says the Democrats need to decide if Romney is George W. Bush or Michael Dukakis.

Romney campaign advisor Richard Williamson says the recent North Korean nuclear test was Obama's Jimmy Carter moment.

Aaron David Miller offers 5 reasons why he believes Obama has the election in the bag. 

Joshua E. Keating thinks Rubio's speech was pitched more toward 2016 than 2012.

Scott Clement looks at whether Americans still hate the United Nations.

From Passport, the difference between a slip of the tongue and genuine ignorance.

When Mitt Romney's campaign announced on Thursday that the Republican presidential candidate had hired Richard Grenell, a former Bush administration spokesman at the United Nations, as his foreign policy and national security spokesman, early reports focused on the fact that Grenell is openly gay. 

But this afternoon, Politico highlighted another side of Grenell: The man is a prolific tweeter -- one who dishes out zingers to those who get on his bad side, whether they be Newt Gingrich ("what's higher? The number of jobs newt's created or the number of wives he's had?"), Callista Gingrich ("do you think callista's hair snaps on?"), or Rick Santorum ("im rick santorum and gay people should be deported").

As tends to happen in today's compressed news cycle, Grenell has already apologized for "any hurt" his tweets caused, telling Politico that they were meant to be "tongue-in-cheek and humorous" and that he'll remove them from Twitter.

But Grenell hasn't deleted all his scathing comments, many of them related to foreign policy. Here are some of the issues that provoke his anger again and again (as you'll see, there's a lot of overlap). Now that Grenell is Romney's spokesman, we'll probably be hearing these critiques of the Obama administration's foreign policy more and more in the months ahead.

• U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice: "can someone at the StateDepartment tell SusanRice that SHE'S the US Ambassador to the UN. #StatementsDontCutIt"

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "secretary of state hillary clinton speaks more clearly about finding amelia earhart's plane than the sudan crisis. #AllPoliticsForHer"

• Obama's open mic gaffe about needing flexibility on missile defense: "I'm waiting for Obama to whisper to Mexico's leader 'i need flexibility on the illegal thing til after November'"

• Obama administration's response to Syria: "why is SusanRice the only American left holding out for #Assad to 'seize the moment'. he's seized 9 thousand moments so far!"

• Obama administration's response to Iran: "SusanRice's tenure in short: no action on Syria's violence, trips to DC, nothing on Iran in 22 months, more trips to DC, lots of tweets"

• Media bias: "day 6 and still no tweet from Andrea @Mitchellreports on Obama's secret whisper requests for 'flexibility' from Russian president #oops" (Yes, there were previous updates.)

But come on, people. Today's episode is about more than what Grenell thinks of Callista's hair or Newt's marriage life (or, for that matter, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt's eyebrows -- another deleted tweet not mentioned by Politico).

No, the real question is: Why haven't politicos learned by now that you scrub your Twitter feed of all controversial content before you enter the political limelight?

Rick Santorum announced today that he is ending his campaign for president, which will spare him the possible humiliation of losing his home state of Pennsylvania to Mitt Romney at the end of this month. Credit where it's due, the former senator ran a remarkably impressive campaign. Having lost his last senate election by a whopping 18 points, Santorum seemed like something of an afterthought in the race until literally days before the Iowa primary. He proceeded to win 11 states and rack up 275 delegates, looking for a time like he had a real chance to beat Romney, or at least force a contested convention. 

Santorum's campaign will also be remembered for some downright bizarre utterances on foreign policy. Here's a few of the most memorable:

Dutch death panels

Shortly before the Missouri primary, Santorum -- arguing against Barack Obama's healthcare law -- made some rather startling claims about the medial system in the Netherlands, claiming that 1 in 20 deaths in the country were caused by forced euthanasia, and that elderly Dutch wear bracelets that say  "do not euthanize me" and "don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they're afraid because of budget purposes that they will not come out of that hospital if they go into it with sickness."

When asked by a Dutch reporter where the candidate had gotten these alarming facts, a campaign spokeswoman would only say, "It's a matter of what's in his heart."

Declaring war on China

If China thinks Mitt Romney's rhetoric is bombastic, they should be glad that won't have to contend with President Santorum. During a discussion of Chinese currency policy during a debate in October, the candidate unleashed this one: 

"You know, Mitt, I don't want to go to a trade war, I want to beat China," he said. "I want to go to war with China and make America the most attractive place in the world to do business."

Santorum was a marginal enough candidate at the time that Chinese state media evidently didn't deem it worthy of a response.

The Arab Spring should have started in Iran

Santorum may have "recognized the looming threat of Iran's nuclear ambitions for nearly a decade," but he seems fuzzy on some basic facts about the country's population. In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition last July, he criticized President Obama's policies in the Middle East, saying, “we see an Arab Spring that should have been a real Arab Spring starting in 2009 with the protests in Iran.”

Yes, because the Arab Spring would have been much better without all of the Arabs. 

The inadvertant one-state solution

In a video from last November that surfaced around the time of the Iowa caucuses, Santorum defends Israel's West Bank settlements to a young voter, but seems to accidentally contradict official Israeli policy. 

"All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians," he says. "There is no ‘Palestinian.'"

He should probably check with Tel Aviv before conferring Israeli citizenship on 4 million Palestinians, or whatever he wants to call them. 

The Jelly Belly address

This wasn't so much about what he said as where he said it. For some reason, with his campaign starting to sputter, the candidate seemed to think that a national security address at the Jelly Belly headquarters in California would be a good idea. Yes, Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans. But the Gipper also had the good sense not to deliver the "Evil Empire" speech into a microphone with a Jelly Belly logo on it.

See also: The greatest foreign-policy hits of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.  

If you believe the buzz among political pundits this week, Mitt Romney may have not just picked up a primary win and endorsement from Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) in Wisconsin. He may have found a running mate. The Washington Post's Philip Rucker notes that Ryan, in what smacked of a VP tryout, appeared by Romney's "side at every turn" in Wisconsin, while the Washington Examiner's Charlie Spiering highlights a recent speech in which Ryan sounds very much like a vice presidential candidate -- conjuring up memories of "flipping burgers at McDonalds" and "waiting tables to pay back my student loans" in a paean to the American dream.     

Other political analysts are arguing that whether or not Romney puts Ryan on the ticket, President Obama may run as much against the Wisconsin congressman -- the architect of the House Republican budget plan -- as against Romney. On Tuesday, Obama declared that the budget proposal, which would slash $5.3 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, would pit rich against poor in what amounted to "social Darwinism."   

As the campaign spotlight lingers on Ryan, it's worth pointing out that the House Budget Committee chairman isn't a one-trick pony. Sure, he's styled himself as an intellectual leader on fiscal policy. But he has a distinct worldview as well. Here are some of the components of the other Ryan plan.

• American exceptionalism: In a June 2011 foreign policy speech at the Alexander Hamilton Society, Ryan rejected isolationism and argued that "America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen," warning that "a world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place." A firm believer in American exceptionalism, he agrees with columnist Charles Krauthammer that American decline "is a choice." The country's fiscal policy and foreign policy "are on a collision course," he explains, "and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power."

• China: Ryan appears to be less hardline and hawkish about China than Romney, who has pledged to designate Beijing as a currency manipulator on his first day in office. True, Ryan has shuddered at the idea of a world led by China and Russia and criticized China's restrictions on freedom of expression, "coercive population controls," and "unsound economic policies." But he's also argued that "we stand to benefit from a world in which China and other rising powers are integrated into the global order with increased incentives to further liberalize their political and economic institutions." 

• BRICS: Ryan wants to forge better relations with the world's emerging economies -- particularly "the rising democratic powers of India and Brazil, which share many of our core principles and interests." America, he says, "must be willing to listen and accommodate their legitimate concerns as we preserve the framework of the international system and solidify our leadership within it." More generally, he charges the Obama administration with taking America's "allies for granted" and wants to revitalize those relationships. 

• Arab Spring: Ryan has greeted the uprisings in the Middle East with the same mixture of praise and trepidation that several Republican presidential candidates have displayed this year. "We are seeing long-repressed populations give voice to the fundamental desire for liberty," he's observed, while adding ominously that in these societies "the most organized factions often lack tolerance and reject pluralism." It's too soon, he says, "to tell whether these revolutions will result in governments that respect the rights of their citizens, or if one form of autocracy will be supplanted by another."

• Saudi Arabia: Ryan cites America's alliance with the Saudis as an example of when its interests run up against its ideals, and when "American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in other regions." There are "voices in the Kingdom calling for reform," he notes. "We should help our allies effect a transition that fulfills the aspirations of their people."

• Iraq/Afghanistan: Ryan believes that America's "ability to affect events is strongest in Iraq and Afghanistan," and that the United States can't cut and run from the battle against "global terrorism" in these countries. Ryan was an early supporter of the surge in Iraq. "This whole thing is a big gamble," he said in 2007. "But it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel and allowing sectarian genocide to take over." His estimate that America could save roughly $1 trillion over the next decade by winding down the wars was later adopted by congressional Democrats and the White House.   

• Defense spending: Ryan's 99-page "Path to Prosperity" plan, released last month, provoked an outcry in calling for boosting military spending while slashing the international affairs budget -- funding for entities such as the State Department and USAID -- by nearly $5 billion. When Ryan said "we don't think the generals are giving us their true advice" in reference to the military budget, he was quick to walk back his comments. "I really misspoke," he explained.

In the wake of Ryan's foreign policy address last year, Matthew Yglesias argued in the American Prospect that Ryan seemed to subscribe to "more or less the liberal internationalist vision that's already at the core" of the Obama administration's approach. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait mocked Ryan's "Norquistian-Churchillian foreign policy." The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote that Ryan was one of the few politicians who could draw a connection between "conservative economic principles and American foreign policy and values."

Ryan's worldview, in other words, appears to be a bit of a Rorschach test. And in a general election where appealing solely to the Republican base just won't cut it, that might be exactly what Romney needs.

Russia Rumble

This week, the campaign was unexpectedly dominated by a debate over Russia policy. The back-and-forth was sparked by an embarrassing "hot mic" incident on Monday at a summit on Seoul, when President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more "space" to tackle controversial issues such as missile defense after the election. "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility," he told the outgoing Russian leader, who promised to "transmit this information to Vladimir."

Mitt Romney was quick to seize on the incident to bolster his argument that Obama has ignored the security threat posed by Russia. He went a bit over the top with the rhetoric, however, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "this is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe, they fight every cause for the world's worst actors, the idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed."

Democrats -- and a few Republicans -- disputed the notion that Russia is the nation's primary foe. "You don't have to be a foreign policy expert to know that the Cold War ended 20 years ago and that the greatest threat that the president has been fighting on behalf of the American people is the threat posed by al Qaeda," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Romney doubled down on his charge against the president with an op-ed in Foreign Policy, writing that "In his dealings with the Kremlin, as in his dealings with the rest of the world, President Obama has demonstrated breathtaking weakness -- and given the word ‘flexibility' a new and ominous meaning."

A group of Romney's senior advisors also published an open-letter on the website of the National Review detailing a list of the president's main foreign policy failings. The Obama campaign's senior foreign policy advisors pushed pushed back with a letter to Romney published in FP demanding that Romney "clarify exactly how and why you would depart from many of President Obama's policies."

Romney even got into it with Medvedev himself this week. The Russian president said the candidate's rhetoric "smacks of Hollywood" and advised him to "check his watch" to see that it's no longer the 1970s. The Romney campaign struck back with a press release calling him "President Medvedev (D-Russia)" and accusing him of "campaigning for Obama."

Santorum's Jelly Belly foreign policy

Rick Santorum chose an unusual venue on Thursday for a national security-focused address meant to reinvigorate his struggling campaign: The Jelly Belly headquarters in Fairfield, California. Attempting to associate himself with the foreign-policy acumen of GOP icon and famous jellybean fiend Ronald Reagan, Santorum made the case that "Of all of the failings of this administration, of all of the failings, perhaps the greatest is on national security."

Santorum also seized on the hot mic gaffe: "Ronald Reagan didn't whisper to Gorbachev, ‘Give me some flexibility.... He walked out of Iceland and said, ‘You either do this, or we have no deal.'"

H.W. goes all in

While Santorum while trying to channel the Gipper, his vice-president and successor George H.W. Bush officially endorsed Romney -- no surprise as he had publicly praised the candidate earlier in the race and his son Jeb endorsed last week. The 87-year-old (mis)quoted Kenny Rogers when asked about Romney's rivals, saying, ‘It's time when to hold ‘em and time when to fold ‘em."

The meeting raised questions as to when George W. Bush will make an endorsement in the race. "I haven't met with President George W. Bush. We speak from time to time," Romney said.

Newt loses his sugar daddy

The struggling campaign of Newt Gingrich, who has won only South Carolina and his home state of Georgia so far, has been kept afloat by the largesse of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The staunch Israel hawk has donated over $20 million to Gingrich's Super PAC. It appears, however, that Adelson's generosity has its limits. Speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual TribeFest conference in Las Vegas this week, the billionaire said this week that Gingrich may be "at the end of the line" since mathematically, "he can't get anywhere near the number" of delegates needed. Adelson has reportedly been reaching out to supporters of the Romney campaign.

Gingrich, the onetime frontrunner, laid off one-third of his staff this week.

Is Paul coming around to Romney?

Ron Paul, currently running in fourth place with a total of 50 delegates in the bag, has previously suggested that foreign policy might be an obstacle to him throwing his support behind Romney. This week, however, Paul paid the frontrunner the mildest of compliments in an interview with Bloomberg television: "I think Mitt Romney is more likely to be more willing to listen to his advisers.... If he decides he wants to go and bomb Iran, maybe he might listen to somebody else. I'm afraid the other [candidates] would just go do it anyway."

What to watch for:

Maryland, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia hold primaries on Tuesday. Romney is favored to win all three contests. (Santorum isn't on the ballot in D.C.)

After that, it's a long wait until a set of five northeastern primaries on April 23. Santorum's Gotterdämmerung may very well come in his home state of Pennsylvania, where the latest polls show him in a statistical dead heat with Romney.

The latest from FP:

Romney's Russia op-ed.

The Obama campaign's response.

Scott Clement says that Americans really don't think of Russia as an enemy anymore.

Daniel Drezner on the dirty, little secret of second-term presidents.

Michael Cohen argues the president's real constitutional overreach wasn't healthcare, it was Libya.

In honor of Santorum's Jelly Belly address, Uri Friedman recaps the year in political food fights.

Mitt Romney apparently described Russia as "without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe" on CNN today, while discussing the president's unfortunate hot mic incident. Romney was challenged on the statement by host Wolf Blitzer and a number of commentators are already discussing it as a "gaffe."

Romney stuck by the claim when Blitzer asked if he was really saying that Russia is a greater foe than Iran, China or North Korea: 

Well, I'm saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world's worst actors.  Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran.  A nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough.

But when these -- these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when -- when Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go -- we go to the United Nations, and who is it that always stands up for the world's worst actors?

It is always Russia, typically with China alongside.

While one can certainly argue with the statement, it's not at all inconsistent with Romney's previously stated positions on Russia. This is the same candidate who described the New START treaty as Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake":

New-START gives Russia a massive nuclear weapon advantage over the United States. The treaty ignores tactical nuclear weapons, where Russia outnumbers us by as much as 10 to 1. Obama heralds a reduction in strategic weapons from approximately 2,200 to 1,550 but fails to mention that Russia will retain more than 10,000 nuclear warheads that are categorized as tactical because they are mounted on missiles that cannot reach the United States. But surely they can reach our allies, nations that depend on us for a nuclear umbrella. And who can know how those tactical nuclear warheads might be reconfigured? Astonishingly, while excusing tactical nukes from the treaty, the Obama administration bows to Russia's insistence that conventional weapons mounted on ICBMs are counted under the treaty's warhead and launcher limits.

By all indications, the Obama administration has been badly out-negotiated. Perhaps the president's eagerness for global disarmament led his team to accede to Russia's demands, or perhaps it led to a document that was less than carefully drafted.

Here's his take on the "reset" from an interview with Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin:

He’s under no illusions about Vladi­mir Putin. He is convinced that Putin dreams of “rebuilding the Russian empire.” He says, “That includes annexing populations as they did in Georgia and using gas and oil resources” to throw their weight around in Europe. He maintains that the START treaty was tilted toward Russia. “It has to end,” he says emphatically about “reset.” “We have to show strength.” I ask him about WTO, which has been much in the news as Putin blusters and demands entry into the trade organization. Romney is again definitive. “Letting people into WTO who intend to cheat is obviously a mistake.”

Is the most recent comment an escalation of rhetoric? Absolutely. But it's not really a change in position. (Yes, Romney did once call Iran "the greatest threat the world faces," but that's not quite the same thing as a "geopolitical foe".) Expect more of this line of attack as we move into the general election.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may be riding high after his convincing win in the Illinois primary, but he's still getting the cold shoulder from one demographic group: Swedes.

On Tuesday, Sweden's The Local highlighted a new survey by the Swedish arm of the online polling firm YouGov, which found that 74 percent of Swedes would vote for President Obama over either Romney or Rick Santorum. Eighty percent of Danish respondents and 73 percent of Norwegian respondents said they'd choose Obama over Romney, while British respondents endorsed Obama at a less enthusiastic 58 percent. (A separate study by a YouGov affiliate found that 60 percent of British "influentials" believe Obama is better than his Republican challengers for British interests.)  

Swedes aren't just more receptive to Obama -- they're actively concerned about what a Republican return to the White House could mean for the world. Fifty-two percent said an Obama loss could negatively affect global security, compared with 49 percent in Denmark, 47 percent in Norway, and 33 percent in the United Kingdom. Roughly a third of respondents in each country are worried that a GOP victory could negatively affect Europe's economy and foreign policy.

YouGov also found that Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes are intensely following news about the U.S. presidential election -- so much so that, according to one estimate by a media monitoring service, 498 articles about the American contest have appeared in the Swedish press this year, compared with a mere 107 on the already completed elections in neighboring Finland.

That generally liberal Northern Europe is enamored with Obama may not be all that surprising. And Romney hasn't exactly endeared himself to the region by accusing the president of wanting to turn America into a "European-style entitlement society." 

But while Swedes may not have a vote in the election, overseas perceptions of U.S. presidential contests can matter. Obama's campaign speech before an adoring crowd in Berlin was a major storyline during the 2008 race. In a Foreign Policy article last week, Oliver Kamm argued that David Cameron's recent visit to Washington suggests that the British prime minister is already betting on Obama winning reelection. Today on the site, Tom Ricks wonders whether Saudi efforts to stabilize the oil market amount to a "vote" for Obama.

The YouGov survey isn't the only polling indicating that Obama is wildy popular in Northern and Western Europe -- significantly more popular, in fact, than he is at home. But how about elsewhere in the world? Pew's 2010 Global Attitudes Project report offers the most comprehensive data here. Majorities or pluralities in 16 of the 22 countries surveyed expressed at least some confidence in Obama to "do the right thing regarding world affairs," but only in Kenya and Nigeria -- the two African countries surveyed -- did Obama enjoy Western Europe-level adoration. U.S. allies such as Japan (76 percent), South Korea (75 percent), and India (73 percent) also expressed high levels of support.

But powerful U.S. frenemies such as China (52 percent) and Russia (41 percent) gave Obama an icier response, as did predominantly Muslim countries such as Egypt (33 percent), Jordan (26 percent), and Turkey (23 percent) -- a reality that Obama's handling of the Arab Spring did not alter.

Obama's poorest showing in 2010? Pakistan, where only 8 percent of respondents expressed at least some confidence in him. The good news for the president? We imagine Mitt Romney wouldn't fare any better.

The AP reports on today's Caucus in American Samoa:

What do you get when 50 or so Republicans gather in a restaurant-bar? In American Samoa, you get a presidential caucus.

The U.S. territory, located about 2,300 miles south of Hawaii, gets its chance Tuesday to choose delegates to the Republican National Convention and vote on a presidential candidate. It’s a decidedly local affair.

Republicans will meet at Toa Bar & Grill.

The six delegates picked at the caucus will join three American Samoa “superdelegates” at the convention.

So roughly one delegate for every 5 voters -- not too shabby. (For what it's worth, Washington D.C.'s 30,000 registered Republicans have to make do with 19 delegates.)

Mitt Romney is likely to win today among Samoa's few registered Republicans. (For one thing 25 percent of Samoans are Mormon.)

The territorial contests are a weird quirk of the U.S. primary system. Residents of these territories don't get to vote in November's presidential election, but both parties allow them to vote in primaries.

The territorial contests generally don't get much attention unless the primary is close, as it was four years ago when both Bill and Hillary Clinton campaigned in Puerto Rico. The "island caucus" as a whole, as David Cohen points out,  is worth 59 delegates, more than Virginia or Missouri.

Romney appears likely to sweep the contests this year, even dispatching his son Matt to campaign in Northern Mariana and Guam.  (Delegate hungry Rick Santorum may have forgotten about Guam's 9 votes when joked about exiling liberal judges there.) Romney took both those territories as well as most of the delegates from the U.S. Virgin Islands, despite the fact that Ron Paul got more votes there. (It's complicated.)

Puerto Rico, where Romney is also favored, votes this Sunday. 

Super Tuesday shakeout

Mitt Romney solidified his front-runner status in the all-important Super Tuesday contests this week, narrowly eking out a crucial win in Ohio, as well as Alaska, Idaho, Vermont, his home state of Massachusetts, and Virginia -- where Ron Paul was the only other candidate on the ballot. Rick Santorum took North Dakota, Idaho, and Tennessee, while Newt Gingrich won his home state of Georgia. Despite a near-tie in Ohio, Romney will take nearly all of the state's delegates because of the Santorum campaign's failure to meet the state's eligibility requirements months ago. Despite the lack of a clear referendum backing Romney, there now appears to be little chance of any other candidate closing the delegate gap.

AIPAC attack

The GOP candidates took the opportunity at this week's meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to again attack President Barack Obama's stance on Israel. "The current administration has distanced itself from Israel and visibly warmed to the Palestinian cause. It has emboldened the Palestinians.... As president, I will treat our allies and friends like friends and allies," Romney said.

"As I've sat and watched this play out on the world stage, I have seen a president who has been reticent," said Santorum. "He says he has Israel's back; from everything I've seen from the conduct of this administration, he has turned his back on the people of Israel,"

Santorum was referring to Obama's earlier speech to AIPAC  on Sunday, during which he said, "There should not be a shred of doubt by now: when the chips are down, I have Israel's back." Speaking shortly before a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama said, "When it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say."

Gingrich, for his part, seemed a bit unprepared for his speech. Video released by ABC News showed him nodding off slightly before he was due to deliver his remarks by satellite. He also seemed to be under the impression he was participating in a panel discussion rather than giving a speech.

Iran Drumbeats

As usual, Iran was the major foreign-policy topic of discussion on the campaign trail this week. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Monday, Romney compared Obama's handling of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program to Jimmy Carter's failure to secure the release of U.S. hostages in 1979. Romney pledged to "take every measure necessary to check the evil regime of the ayatollahs. Until Iran ceases its nuclear-bomb program, I will press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must. I will speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom."

At a White House press conference the following day, Obama rebuked his critics in the GOP field and in Congress for their hawkish rhetoric on Iran. "This is not a game," he added. "And there's nothing casual about it....  If some of these folks think that it's time to launch a war, they should say so, and they should explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be."

A Sarkozy endorsement?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, currently locked in his own tough election battle, seemed to endorse Obama's reelection effort during a speech on Mideast policy this week. "President Obama, who is a very great president, won't take the initiative [on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations] before he's re-elected -- and I hope he will be -- but there's a place for France and a place for Europe," Sarkozy said.

World leaders generally refrain from publicly taking sides in other countries' elections, though the practice has recently become more common in Europe.  

What to watch for:

The week ahead could be a tough one for the Romney campaign with contests in Kansas on Saturday, and Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, all of which are friendly territory for Santorum. While victories for the former Pennsylvania senator wouldn't change the delegate math much, they would add to concerns about Romney's ability to rally southern and socially conservative voters.

Leaving nothing to chance, Romney has even dispatched his son Matt to visit the Pacific territories of Guam and Northern Mariana, which also hold primaries this weekend.

Obama hosts British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House for talks on Afghanistan and some March Madness.

The latest from FP:

Ruy Teixeira says the real winner of Super Tuesday was Obama.

Uri Friedman finds six international newspaper columnists who actually like Romney.

Michael Cohen argues that the GOP candidates are mischaracterizing Ronald Reagan's foreign policy.

Tom Ricks thinks Romney has effectively endorsed Obama's Iran policy.

Josh Rogin reports on Sen. John Kerry's response to Romney's Iran op-ed.

Joshua Keating looks at presidential "first trip" etiquette.

Romney gets his pander on at AIPAC:

As President, peace will be my solemn goal. A peace based not on empty assurances, but on true security and defensible borders. This will require American strength, and a demonstration of our resolve. That’s why, as President, my first foreign trip will not be to Cairo or Riyadh or Ankara. It will be to Jerusalem.

If this is a dig at Obama, I'm not sure exactly what Romney is referring to. The president's first trip abroad wasn't to Cairo, Riyadh, or Ankara, it was to Canada. On his first major international trip in April 2009, he visited Britain, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic before hitting Turkey.

This is pretty standard practice. Since Franklin Roosevelt, nearly every president has gone to either Canada or Mexico first. (Carter went to Britain first; Truman and Nixon went to Belgium.)

As far as I can tell, Israel has never been particularly bothered by this practice. But between this and "that oil from Canada that we deserve," Romney is running a serious risk of incurring the wrath of our neighbor to the north. 

Debating Syria

A Wednesday-night debate in Arizona was the first time the candidates discussed the deteriorating situation in Syria at any length, though mostly in the context of what it would mean for Iran's nuclear program and global energy prices. Mitt Romney did suggest that the United States work "with Saudi Arabia and with Turkey to ... provide the kind of weaponry that's needed to help the rebels inside Syria." Newt Gingrich, as he often does, suggesting a policy of having "our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime."

The debate was widely covered as a test for the surging Rick Santorum, who was attacked repeatedly, often by Ron Paul, on his credentials as a fiscal conservative. On national security issues, Santorum touted his long record of urging aggressive polices against Iran and criticized the Obama administration for standing with "radicals" against "a friend of ours in Egypt" -- ousted president Hosni Mubarak. He also seemed to pivot away from his previous concerns about women serving in more combat roles in the military, though he did warn against "social engineering."

Gingrich on the attack

Seemingly eclipsed by Santorum's rise, onetime poll leader Gingrich has repeatedly made news this week for strident attacks against Barack Obama's foreign policy. Gingrich referred to Obama as the "most dangerous president in modern American history" during a speech in Oklahoma, accusing him of putting political correctness above U.S. national security in his administration's response to Islamist terrorism.  Appearing on CBS's "This Morning," Gingrich called Obama's energy policies "outrageously anti-American'' and ridiculed the idea that the electric car "is going to liberate us from Saudi Arabia."

On Thursday, Gingrich again lashed out at Obama following the president's apology to Afghan authorities for the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base. "He is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the United States," Gingrich said. The candidate went on to demand that the Afghan government apologize to the United States for the killing of two American soldiers in the riots that followed the burning.

Romney against the world

The AP's Steven Hurst examined Romney's foreign-policy rhetoric in a news analysis this week, writing that "It often appears that Romney is targeting the rest of the world as fiercely as he does his rivals for the party nomination and President Barack Obama." Referring to Romney's attacks on European socialism, Chinese currency manipulation and Russian duplicitousness, the article asks whether the tone of Romney's rhetoric will hurt him in the general election, or with the governments in question should he become president.

"Other governments are not naive, and they understand the rough-and-tumble of U.S. politics just as we understand the rough-and-tumble of politics in other countries," responded Amb. Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign-policy advisor.

Obama: I'll get to immigration next term

The president came into office promising comprehensive immigration reform, but the issue has largely fallen by the wayside during congressional battles over health care and the economy. In an interview with Univision Radio this week, the president promised to make the issue a priority if he is reelected for a second term. "I've got another five years coming up. We're going to get this done," he said.

At Wednesday night's debate, both Santorum and Romney held up Arizona's tough immigration policies and the harsh tactics employed by controversial Maricopa Country Sherriff Joe Arpaio as models for how to address the issue. 

Santorum's Dutch disease

Santorum has left many scratching their heads with comments made several weeks ago in which he suggested that 1 in 20 deaths in the Netherlands result from forced euthanasia. Santorum continued to claim that elderly people in the Netherlands often wear bracelets that say "do not euthanize me" and "don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they're afraid because of budget purposes that they will not come out of that hospital if they go into it with sickness." The Dutch government declined to comment on the claim this week, but provided the New York Times with documents showing that there is no provision in Dutch law for forced euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia has been legal there since 2002 and accounts for around 2 percent of deaths in the country.

The Netherlands wasn't the only European country Santorum has taken a shot at this week. At a national security focused speech in Ohio, he took aim at the president's relationship with France: "He actually went to France a year or so ago and was with Nicolas Sarkozy and said that, 'Here I am with the French prime minister, our best ally in the world.' Now think about this. Name one time in the last 20 years that the French stood by us with anything."

The remark was given a "pants-on-fire" rating by Politifact.

What to watch for

Arizona and Michigan voters head to the polls on Tuesday. RealClearPolitics's latest poll average shows Romney with a 9-point advantage in Arizona. He also seems to have retaken the lead in his birthplace state of Michigan, but still leads Santorum by less than two points.

Tuesday's victor will have little time to rest on his laurels. The 10 Super Tuesday contests are right around the corner on March 6. The biggest delegate prizes of the day will be Ohio, where Santorum currently leads, and Georgia, where native son Gingrich has the advantage.

The latest from FP

Scott Clement looks at why polls are so all over the map when it comes to attacking Iran.

Joshua Keating rounds up the foreign-policy highlights from Wednesday's debate.

Uri Friedman examines Gingrich's not-so-covert love of covert ops.

Michael Cohen argues that campaign-trail rhetoric touting American exceptionalism is obscuring the real causes of decline.

Last night's debate in Arizona featured the usual rhetoric in the economy, more conversation than usual about contraception, and more evidence for the theory that Ron Paul is essentially running as a blocking tight-end for Mitt Romney at this point, repeatedly hammering at Rick Santorum's credentials as a fiscal conservative. We also got the first extended conversation about the situation in Syria, though everyone seemed anxious to pivot back to the comparatively more comfortable topic of Iran. To the highlights:

We kicked off our national-security discussion with the question of women in combat. Santorum had made some waves a few weeks ago by suggesting that he has reservations about opening more front-line duties to women since "men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way." He also made some inaccurate statements about Israel's stance on this issue. The other candidates proceeded to hang Santorum out to dry on this one. 

Romney: 

I would look to the people who are serving in the military to give the best assessment of where women can serve. We've had over 100 women lose their lives in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was with Governor Bob McDonnell. His daughter has served as a platoon leader in Afghanistan. He said that she doesn't get emotional when she faces risk, he's the one that gets emotional as she faces that kind of risk. And I believe women have the capacity to serve in our military in positions of significance and responsibility, as we do throughout our society. 

He then transitioned to a discussion of defense cuts and national security more broadly. 

Gingrich -- surprise, surprise -- thought it was a "misleading question":

You live in a world of total warfare. Anybody serving our country in uniform virtually anywhere in the world could be in danger at virtually any minute. A truck driver can get blown up by a bomb as readily as the infantrymen. So I would say that you ought to ask the combat leaders what they think is an appropriate step, as opposed to the social engineers of the Obama administration.

Paul's answer doesn't "want even the men to be over there."

Santorum grumbled: 

I still have those concerns, but I would defer to at least hearing the recommendations of those involved. But I think we have civilian control of the military, and these are things that should be decided not just by the generals, but we should not have social engineering, as I think we've seen from this president. We should have sober minds looking at what is in fact the best proper -- proper roles for everybody in combat.

Then it was on to Iran, where Gingrich is no longer so enthusiastic about asking generals for their input:

General Dempsey went on to say that he thought Iran was a rational actor. I can't imagine why he would say that. And I just cannot imagine why he would have said it. The fact is, this is a dictator, Ahmadinejad, who has said he doesn't believe the Holocaust existed. This is a dictator who said he wants to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. This is a dictator who said he wants to drive the United States out of the Middle East. I'm inclined to believe dictators. Now I -- I think that it's dangerous not to.

If -- if an Israeli prime minister, haunted by the history of the Holocaust, recognizing that three nuclear weapons is a holocaust in Israel, if an Israeli prime minister calls me and says, I believe in the defense of my country. This goes back to a point that Congressman Paul raised that we probably disagree on. I do believe there are moments when you preempt. If you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that madman is going to use those nuclear weapons, then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating the capacity to get nuclear weapons.

Romney pounded home his talking points:

Ahmadinejad having fissile material that he can give to Hezbollah and Hamas and that they can bring into Latin America and potentially bring across the border into the United States to let off dirty bombs here. I mean -- or -- or more sophisticated bombs here, this -- we simply cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weaponry. And -- and -- and this president has a lot of failures. It's hard -- it's hard to think of -- economically his failures, his -- his policies in a whole host of areas have been troubling.

But nothing in my view is as serious a failure as his failure to deal with Iran appropriately. This president -- this president should have put in place crippling sanctions against Iran, he did not. He decided to give Russia -- he decided to give Russia their number one foreign policy objective, removal of our missile defense sites from Eastern Europe and got nothing in return. He could have gotten crippling sanctions against Iran. He did not. When dissident voices took to the street in Iran to protest a stolen election there, instead of standing with them, he bowed to the election. This is a president... who has made it clear through his administration in almost every communication we've had so far, that he does not want Israel to take action. That he opposes military action. This is a president who should have instead communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table. They are in our hand. We must now allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. If they do, the world changes. America will be at risk. And some day, nuclear weaponry will be used. If I am president, that will not happen. If we reelect Barack Obama, it will happen. 

Santorum took the opportunity to remind the crowd of his long record on Iran, take a shot at the vice president, and stand resolutely behind.... Hosni Mubarak:

I would say that if you're looking for a president to be elected in this country that will send that very clear message to Iran as to the seriousness of the American public to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon, there would be no better candidate than me because I have been on the trail of Iran and trying to advocate for stopping them getting a nuclear weapon for about eight years now.

I was the author of a bill back in 2008 that talked about sanctions on a nuclear program that our intelligence community said didn't exist and had the President of the United States, president bush oppose me for two years.

And, by the way, so did Joe Biden on the floor of the Senate, and Barack Obama. I always say if you want to know what foreign policy position to take, find out what Joe Biden's position is and take the opposite opinion and you'll be right 100 percent of the time.

But they opposed me. He actively opposed me. We did pass that bill eventually at the end of 2006, and it was to fund the pro- democracy movement, $100 million a year. Here's what I said -- we need to get this -- these pro-American Iranians who are there, who want freedom, want democracy, and want somebody to help them and support them.

Well, we put -- we put some money out there and guess what? Barack Obama cut it when he came into office. And when the Green Revolution rose, the pro-democracy prose, we had nothing. We had no connection, no correlation and we did absolutely nothing to help them.

In the meantime, when the radicals in Egypt and the radicals in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood, when they rise against either a feckless leader or a friend of ours in Egypt, the president is more than happy to help them out.

When they're going up against a dangerous theocratic regime that wants to wipe out the state of Israel, that wants to dominate the radical Islamic world and take on the great Satan, the United States, we do nothing. That is a president that must go. And you want a leader who will take them on? I'll do that. 

Paul, ignoring the boos, said there's no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapon, and went on to plea for a return to declarations of war: 

Now, if they are so determined to go to war, the only thing I plead with you for, if this is the case, is do it properly. Ask the people and ask the Congress for a declaration of war. This is war and people are going to die. And you have got to get a declaration of war.

And just to go and start fighting -- but the sanctions are already backfiring. And all that we do is literally doing the opposite. When we've been -- were attacked, we all came together. When we attacked the -- when we -- when we put them under attack, they get together and it neutralizes that. They rally around their leaders.

So what we're doing is literally enhancing their power. Think of the sanctions we dealt with Castro. Fifty years and Castro is still there. It doesn't work. So I would say a different approach. We need to at least -- we talked -- we talked to the Soviets during the Cuban crisis. We at least can talk to somebody who does not -- we do not have proof that he has a weapon. Why go to war so carelessly? 

Then came what Chuck Todd called the " first news of the debate", an extended discussion on Syria. However, when asked if he would support intervention against the Assad regime, Santorum seemed anxious to bring the discussion back to Iran:

Syria is a puppet state of Iran. They are a threat not just to Israel, but they have been a complete destabilizing force within Lebanon, which is another problem for Israel and Hezbollah. They are a country that we can do no worse than the leadership in Syria today, which is not the case, and some of the other countries that we readily got ourselves involved in.

So it's sort of remarkable to me we would have -- here again, it's -- I think it's the timidness (sic) of this president in dealing with the Iranian threat, because Syria and Iran is an axis. And the president -- while he couldn't reach out deliberately to Iran but did reach out immediately to Syria and established an embassy there. And the only reason he removed that embassy was because it was threatened of being -- of being overtaken, not because he was objecting to what was going on in Syria.

This president has -- has obviously a very big problem in standing up to the Iranians in any form. If this would have been any other country, given what was going on and the mass murders that we're seeing there, this president would have quickly and -- joined the international community, which is calling for his ouster and the stop of this, but he's not. He's not. Because he's afraid to stand up to Iran.

He opposed the sanctions in Iran against the -- against the central banks until his own party finally said, "You're killing us. Please support these sanctions."

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a president who isn't going to stop them. He isn't going to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. We need a new president or we are going to have a cataclysmic situation with a -- a power that is the most prolific proliferator of terror in the world that will be able to do so with impunity because they will have a nuclear weapon to protect -- protect them for whatever they do. It has to be stopped, and this president is not in a position to do that.

Gingrich used the Syria question to pivot to his energy plan: 

Well, the first thing I'd do, across the board for the entire region, is create a very dramatic American energy policy of opening up federal lands and opening up offshore drilling, replacing the EPA.

The Iranians have been practicing closing the Straits of Hormuz, which has one out of every five barrels of oil in the world going through it. We have enough energy in the United States that we would be the largest producer of oil in the world by the end of this decade. We would be capable of saying to the Middle East, "We frankly don't care what you do. The Chinese have a big problem because you ain't going to have any oil."

[...]

Second, we clearly should have our allies -- this is an old- fashioned word -- we have have our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime. There are plenty of Arab-speaking groups that would be quite happy. There are lots of weapons available in the Middle East.

And I agree with -- with Senator Santorum's point. This is an administration which, as long as you're America's enemy, you're safe.

You know, the only people you've got to worry about is if you're an American ally. 

Not sure if "allies" or "covertly" was the old-fashioned word Gingrich was referring to. 

Romney was the only one who actually advocated a position on intervention in Syria, and showed off his briefing on Syria's political ethnography:

We have very bad news that's come from the Middle East over the past several months, a lot of it in part because of the feckless leadership of our president. But one little piece of good news, and that is the key ally of Iran, Syria, is -- has a leader that's in real trouble. And we ought to grab a hold of that like it's the best thing we've ever seen.

There's things that are -- we're having a hard time getting our hands around, like, what's happening in Egypt. But in Syria, with Assad in trouble, we need to communicate to the Alawites, his friends, his ethnic group, to say, look, you have a future if you'll abandon that guy Assad.

We need to work with -- with Saudi Arabia and with Turkey to say, you guys provide the kind of weaponry that's needed to help the rebels inside Syria. This is a critical time for us.

If we can turn Syria and Lebanon away from Iran, we finally have the capacity to get Iran to pull back. And we could, at that point, with crippling sanctions and a very clear statement that military action is an action that will be taken if they pursue nuclear weaponry, that could change the course of world history. 

An exasperated Ron Paul tried again: 

I've tried the moral argument. I've tried the constitutional argument on these issues. And they don't -- they don't go so well. But there -- there's an economic argument, as well.

As a matter of fact, Al Qaida has had a plan to bog us down in the Middle East and bankrupt this country. That's exactly what they're doing. We've spent $4 trillion of debt in the last 10 years being bogged down in the Middle East.

The neoconservatives who now want us to be in Syria, want us to go to Iran, have another war, and we don't have the money. We're already -- today gasoline hit $6 a gallon in Florida. And we don't have the money. 

So there you have it. The first time Syria has come up in a presidential debate, it was taken as an opportunity by the candidates to talk about the Iranian nuclear program, offshore drilling, and the national debt. I won't claim these issues are unrelated, but surely it might be possible to actually talk about potential U.S. policy responses to the situation in Syria for a few minutes?

The war in Afghanistan wasn't discussed. Neither was trade or the eurozone crisis.  

During this year's Republican primary, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum have all suggested that they would use military force if necessary to dismantle Iran's nuclear program. And tensions between Washington and Tehran have only increased as speculation swirls about an imminent Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Iranian officials trumpet their nuclear advances, and mysterious bombings appear to target Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India, and Thailand. 

But how does the American public view the situation in Iran? New polling from the Pew Research Center this morning suggests that Americans are in a rather bellicose mood when it comes to confronting Iran, and pessimistic about the power of sanctions to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

In the survey, 58 percent of respondents said it was more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if that meant taking military action. Only 30 percent preferred avoiding a military conflict even if it meant Iran going nuclear. Republicans (74 percent) were far more supportive of using military force than Democrats (50 percent), but Democratic backing was still substantial.

Around half of Americans, meanwhile, believe the United States should remain neutral if Israel strikes Iran. But, as Pew points out, more respondents said the United States should support (39 percent) Israel than oppose (5 percent) it. A majority of Republicans think the United States should back Israel while a majority of Democrats think it should stay neutral. 

Pew notes that there are nuances in the data as well. Women and young people, for example, are more likely to support the United States staying neutral in an Israeli-Iranian conflict. And, not surprisingly, conservative Republicans, including Tea Party supporters, are more likely to champion American support of Israeli military action than moderate or liberal Republicans.

Where there's more agreement across the aisle is in the belief that tough economic sanctions -- a tactic the Obama administration continues to pursue -- will be ineffective in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Sixty-four percent of the public thinks these measures will not work, compared with 56 percent in October 2009.

Of course, supporting military force if it means preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons (in other words, approving of it as a last resort) isn't the same as a full-throated endorsement of the military option. In a Quinnipiac University poll in November, 36 percent of respondents supported the use of force in any case, while an additional 14 percent backed the option if sanctions failed. In a CNN/ORC survey around the same time, more than six in 10 respondents selected "economic and diplomatic efforts" -- not "military action right now" -- as the best U.S. policy toward Iran's nuclear program.

If Americans are so down on economic sanctions as an effective solution, however, one wonders whether they're beginning to resign themselves to a military conflict, even if they have little appetite for it.