Electric Politics | Two Roads Diverged In A Wood

Victory Boogie Woogie by Mondrian For a couple weeks now, in anticipation of Memorial Day, I've been thinking of writing about the problem posed by the Tyrant's purposes of neverending war. In the first place, most of us are basically optimists and even those most resolutely anti-war have an automatic tendency to think—wrongly—that after Iraq (and Iran) is taken care of (one way or another) that things may calm down. This misses the critical point: the Tyrant and his gang have everything to gain from further disorder but everything to lose if peace were to become a guiding light of American policy. The scope of the problem is an order of magnitude, or two, greater than its visible tip.

As a thought exercise (Gedankenexperiment or Gedankenübung), it's worth enumerating the many future conflicts that the Tyrant and his successors wish to initiate, though I will not do so in detail here except to note a few: Russia, China, annoyances like Venezuela—it's a long, long list. I fail to see a natural point of equilibrium anywhere, only a slow, constant slide into the abyss.

As I was mulling things over, then, I came across this astonishing article by Gregory D. Foster, a professor at the National Defense University. For those who aren't familiar, NDU is one of the premiere institutions for advanced training for the armed forces and certain select civilians, along with the staff colleges of the various services, such as the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania (the coffee mug I got at Carlisle about fifteen years ago is my favorite). The defense establishment's intellectual elite, they produce the next generation of staff officers. Coming from anybody else the article would be merely on point and provocative. Coming from a senior professor at NDU it's earth-shattering. It's one of the most important articles I've read in years.

Humbled by this discovery I figure I can't do any better and won't try to do anything different for a while. Instead, what I have done is to contact Greg and he's agreed to have a conversation with me for the EP podcast. Hopefully that will happen sometime next week. Stay tuned.



Home FAQ Contact Archive EP Store EP Alerts © 2012 ElectricPolitics	Two Roads Diverged In A Wood For a couple weeks now, in anticipation of Memorial Day, I've been thinking of writing about the problem posed by the Tyrant's purposes of neverending war. In the first place, most of us are basically optimists and even those most resolutely anti-war have an automatic tendency to think—wrongly—that after Iraq (and Iran) is taken care of (one way or another) that things may calm down. This misses the critical point: the Tyrant and his gang have everything to gain from further disorder but everything to lose if peace were to become a guiding light of American policy. The scope of the problem is an order of magnitude, or two, greater than its visible tip. As a thought exercise (Gedankenexperiment or Gedankenübung), it's worth enumerating the many future conflicts that the Tyrant and his successors wish to initiate, though I will not do so in detail here except to note a few: Russia, China, annoyances like Venezuela—it's a long, long list. I fail to see a natural point of equilibrium anywhere, only a slow, constant slide into the abyss. As I was mulling things over, then, I came across this astonishing article by Gregory D. Foster, a professor at the National Defense University. For those who aren't familiar, NDU is one of the premiere institutions for advanced training for the armed forces and certain select civilians, along with the staff colleges of the various services, such as the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania (the coffee mug I got at Carlisle about fifteen years ago is my favorite). The defense establishment's intellectual elite, they produce the next generation of staff officers. Coming from anybody else the article would be merely on point and provocative. Coming from a senior professor at NDU it's earth-shattering. It's one of the most important articles I've read in years. Humbled by this discovery I figure I can't do any better and won't try to do anything different for a while. Instead, what I have done is to contact Greg and he's agreed to have a conversation with me for the EP podcast. Hopefully that will happen sometime next week. Stay tuned. Posted by George Kenney on May 28, 2006 7:17 AM « Mainstream News Missing in Action, Again \| Main \| Freedom to Travel » Share this post: Leave a comment Name Email Address URL Remember personal info? Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

Two Roads Diverged In A Wood

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