MSI,
Re: I thought the Taliban were bad, with primers for children showing tanks and bombs for counting exercises.
Those primers were the product of USAID, and were printed in Kansas.
Re: We've got our vaunted media with grown-ups using military attacks and takeover of entire countries as idle conversation.
While the real policy wonks are discussing things like Kaplan's "Warrior Politics" and Brzesinski's "The Grand Chessboard",
amazon.com
From which a reviewer comments:
It displays an unabashed and unapologetic view of the U.S. as a world 'hegemon' (author's word) and divides the rest of the world in 'vassals' (author's word), rivals, 'pivots' and strategically irrelevant countries. Western Europe and Japan are the prominent members of the first category, Russia and China of the second. The pivots are the countries that have strategic choices important to the U.S., such as the Ukraine. United Kingdom is an (amusing) example of strategically irrelevance.
The book proceeds by systematically and often tediously analyzing case-by-case scenarios and what-ifs concerning the strategic impact of the policy decisions of the players (vassals, rivals and pivots) in four main theatres: Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Far East. The analysis seemed rather un-principled to me but by the end I could discern some key points. The most important of them is that the U.S., despite is global hegemony cannot afford wars but it has to maintain its dominance by smartly playing the rivals against each other so that a major global rival does not emerge.
I think the book's shocking disregard of democracy and national self-determination is quite consistent with the way the American administration tends to act in international affairs. |
