Navigating the Ship of State
February 23, 2006
Thanks to Michael Kruse for pointing out this insightful article in the New York Times. For me it sharply underscores the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, for coherent navigation of a mammoth U.S. Ship of State.
After Neoconservatism - New York Times
Churning around in what passes for my brain are thoughts about the many cross-currents that existed at the beginning of World War II. I recently finished reading the memoirs of Winston S. Churchill, which contained many transcripts of correspondence and minutes of conversations btween the world leaders of the 1930s and 40s. Policies evolved as events shoved the decision-makers this way and that. Without a Churchill around to gather it all together and give an on-the-ground report of the era, I wonder how future historians will make us out.
Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.
Dave, waiting for those new ideas.
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