It didn't attract much attention, but the respected chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton, did the republic a signal service this week by asserting that the nation lacked "a comprehensive strategy for advancing U.S. interests."

The Missouri Democrat contended: "Our international actions can be likened to a pickup sandlot baseball game rather than a solid course of action. Major policies are sometimes inconsistent and contradictory and so we sometimes suffer from a splintering of national power, and an inability to coherently address threats and reassure and cooperate with allies around the world."

Skelton, who has traveled mostly the middle of the road during his 31 years in Congress, opened a hearing by declaring that whoever is elected to the White House in November, he should engage in a sweeping review to determine "critical U.S. interests and how to advance them using all elements of national power — economic, diplomatic and military."

The congressman concluded: "To ensure that a new strategy for America can truly develop support across the political spectrum, Congress should be involved in the process. ... And, to build support for any new strategy, the general outline of the debate should be shared with and involve the American people."

Since the end of the Cold War, through the Democratic administration of President Clinton and the Republican administration of President Bush, the U.S. has been floundering.

Perhaps most notably, the nation has squandered the international goodwill generated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A Gallup poll last month reported that 81 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the direction of the country compared with 36 percent 10 years ago.

America went through a similar phase after World War II. Americans were tired from four years of bitter war, the casualties and the deprivations on the home front and wanted to return to normalcy. That didn't last long, however, as threats from the Soviet Union and Communist China appeared.

In September 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, which triggered a reaction by President Truman. He ordered his administration, led by the policy planning staff in the State Department, to devise a strategy for countering the Communist threat.

Out of that came a document known as NSC-68, NSC being the National Security Council. NSC-68 set down the strategy for mobilizing political, economic and military power to contain the Soviet Union. The strategy included a triad of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers and submarines to deter Moscow from employing its nuclear forces.

In a 1994 assessment of NSC-68, Col. Drew Nelson, an Air Force officer at the National War College in Washington, wrote that its strategic guidelines "remained in place throughout the Cold War" even though its execution varied with changes on the international and domestic stages.

A fresh strategy forged in 2008 that looked out for eight to 10 years would focus not on a single threat from a nuclear Soviet Union but on multiple threats, from nuclear proliferation to rogue states like North Korea and Iran, and from a militant Islam that few in the West seem to understand.

The strategic review that Skelton called for would assess possible threats from potential adversaries in an emerging China, a resurgent Russia, and a restless Latin America that the U.S. has long ignored. It would consider a retrenchment in the deployments of American forces that have been stretched further than those of Julius Caesar's Rome, the Mongols under Genghis Khan, and the British Empire.

The new strategy might set fresh priorities in America's alliances, giving precedence to Canada and Mexico because the U.S. must have friendly neighbors on those long, undefended northern and southern borders.

Next would come Japan, Australia and Britain, the island nations off the coasts of the Eurasian heartland.

India might be added since that peninsula is almost an island surrounded by desert, mountains, jungle and ocean. And Israel, with which America has emotional as well as strategic ties, would be an allied island in a hostile Arab sea.

Because almost everything today is connected to everything else, a revised strategy must include forging a healthy economy, as we have been vividly reminded of this week, and resolutions to crises in energy, the environment, illegal immigration, healthcare and education.

Come to think of it, wouldn't it be better if Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama were to proclaim the McCain and Obama doctrines now instead of taking petty potshots at each other about pigs and lipstick until Nov. 4?

Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. His column appears weekly in Sunday's Focus section.