In Middle East, enlarge solution, not just the problemVice President Dick Cheney states the long war against radical Islamic extremism will "occupy our successors for two or three or four administrations to come." He's right. But the Bush administration's refusal to launch a regional security dialogue is dead wrong. When we don't give all interested parties - both internally and externally - a chance to steer strategic outcomes, we simply invite their counter-productive meddling.
The Bush administration's "big bang" strategy of toppling Saddam Hussein was designed to shake up the Middle East and set in motion transformational change. Done well (the hope going in) or done badly (today's inescapable reality), change is clearly unfolding. But it's arrogance of the worst sort to expect the world's other great powers to follow blindly America's lead in the numerous resulting scenarios - e.g., Iraq's break-up, Iran versus Saudi Arabia in Iraq, Iran versus Israel on nukes, Syria and Iran versus Israel in Lebanon/Palestine.
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Read on at Scripps Howard
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Comments (3)
"Failure is the ultimate driver" Hopefully one of the presidential candidates is thinking the exact same thing in regards to the inability of the Bush administration to construct a coherent horizontal grand strategy. Let's hope Bush, Cheney and Rice don't make it worse. Maybe some sort of prevent defense should be their grand starategy through 2009. Unfortunately, in a world that likes to keep score, I don't think others will be willing to put in the backups, run up the middle and shorten the fourth quarter by a few minutes.
Posted by JJennings | February 25, 2007 12:49 PM
For some reason Scripps cut 45 words, so full version at 720 is found only at KNS.
Posted by Tom Barnett | February 25, 2007 1:04 PM
The situation is like 3-D chess, but we insist on playing checkers. We don't seem to care about the rest of the board(s) and just expect that they will all go our way if we can just win at our chosen level.
Posted by Hof | February 25, 2007 1:34 PM