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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: JohnM who wrote (64442)1/5/2003 4:56:00 PM
From: tekboy  Read Replies (6) of 281500
 
it strikes me he writes a good bit like Ajami: good lines, nice use of metaphor, a striking insight here and there, but not a sustained argument.

interesting comment. me, I found little new or particularly interesting in the Ignatieff piece--not because I disagreed with it much, but because I thought much of what he said struck me as pretty commonplace by now. But that may be because I read such a god-awful amount of stuff on this subject that it takes a lot to make me sit up and pay attention.

Also, I think that the bulk of current American foreign policy activism is quite predictable if one takes three things into account--the rise in relative power that has occurred over the last decade, the basic nature of American political ideals, and the catalyzing impact of 9/11. So I personally think that the supposed novelty or importance of the discussion or thought or what have you that has taken place over the last year and change--including the much ballyhooed National Security Strategy--is vastly overplayed. IMHO, that is, it's all been superstructural hot air, driven primarily by changes in the material base and the triggering effects of contingent historical events.

That's why I personally would start discussions of contemporary American foreign policy with the Wohlforth & Brooks piece from the July/Aug Foreign Affairs and the Kagan piece from the June/July Policy Review. I haven't yet seen anything really interesting on the larger or general questions since then.

tb@yawn.com

PS anybody really interested in following what the big-league debate over American grand strategy in the post-Cold-War era has been should check out this collection, which contains many of the "greatest hits" of that discussion:

foreignaffairs.org
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