Friday, November 28, 2008
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Martin Kramer: What do the financial crisis and U.S. Middle East policy have in common? - '...It is time to question risk-defying policies in the Middle East. The slogans of peace and democracy misled us. Let's not let the new slogan of engagement do the same. The United States is going to have to show the resolve and grit to wear and grind down adversaries, with soft power, hard power and will power. Paradoxically, that is the least risky path -- because if America persists, it will prevail.'
This desperately needs to be said. Every poli-sci student and anybody who might ever be in a position to make or advise on foreign policy should have an intimate and deep knowledge of the concept of moral hazard and its application to diplomacy.
Nearly every war Israel has gotten in, and not a few wars the US has gotten in, were staged and framed by idiotic diplomacy that essentially guaranteed that those conflicts would occur.
I can give examples but it would be long. it's a book, actually.