After all, America is trying to make its defence strategy more flexible.
Mr Obama should tell Israel, if it fails to be flexible or just, that America's defence of it in every diplomatic forum can no longer be guaranteed.
Even if they did, most emerging economies have better defences than ever before, with flexible exchange rates, large stashes of foreign-exchange reserves and relatively less debt (much of it in domestic currency).That's the good news.
If America's missile defences do evolve into the networked, flexible and globally deployable system that Mr Obama is seeking, western officials say, Russia may yet loathe it more than the hated "George Bush Interceptors".
My other line of defence is that farce is an infinitely flexible form.
The War Precautions Regulations had a broad scope, and were generally supported by the High Court, which adopted a much more flexible approach to the reach of the Commonwealth's defence power during wartime.
Those who had worked in intelligence gathering – including Putin and Sergei Ivanov, Russia's hawkish former defence minister – tended to be brighter and more flexible.
According to defence counsel Charles Sherrard, risk limits were regarded as flexible and management gave mixed messages to traders.The second witness was John Hughes, a trader who worked on the ETF desk alongside Mr Adoboli.
But it is pleased that 2% of GDP will be spent on defence, which its sees as "an example of the flexible pragmatism that has become a hallmark of Mr Osborne's style".
Defence policy is not an area of EU activity that falls under the scope of EU law, and so relatively flexible ways of ensuring the continued participation of the UK in foreign and defence policy activities will be easier to develop than, say, partial membership of the single market.
