Debate over the looming "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts is consuming most of the political oxygen in Washington lately. But President Barack Obama also faces huge second-term foreign policy challenges.

And he does so with an unraveling national-security team.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to move on. But a possible successor, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, faces tough Republican Senate opposition over her factually challenged public comments on the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.