Manipulations

Elizabeth Bumiller leads her retrospective on Benazir Bhutto with wise words: "Benazir Bhutto always understood Washington more than Washington understood her." This is the kind of thing I was driving at when I observed that "it's much easier for Pakistani actors to manipulate US policy than the reverse." We don't have American political leaders who speak fluent Urdu, went to Pakistani schools, and count a wide swathe of influential members of the Pakistani elite as among their personal friends.

We can and should take steps to improve the US governing class' understanding of foreign countries, but we shouldn't have any illusions about our ability to totally upend the imbalance in Pakistani elites' ability to understand the US versus our elites' ability to understand Pakistan. Our efforts to meddle can have a big impact (since the United States is a very large, rich, and powerful country) but they seem unlikely to have the intended impact.

Comments

I completely agree, but I'd take it a bit further.

Why are American elites so incredibly ignorant of the rest of the world? I teach college--the social sciences, especially globalization--and I can understand why the average college student (especially here in the Midwest, at a very good but not Ivy League school) doesn't know much about the rest of the world, but why Eastern or Western elites, who've gone to grad school and who lived with either European, Asian, or Latin American influence, know so appallingly little about the rest of the world? So many people on the left, and some on the right, predicted a civil war in Iraq, because of its ethnic history and composition. But the Administration went forward, and Congress voted overwhelmingly to support it. And the predicted civil war developed within two years of our invasion.

As Gomer Pyle used to say: surprise, surprise, surprise.

The same thing applies to Afghanistan (which the British and the Russians could not ultimately crack), to Pakistan, to all of Asia, for that matter, to Latin America, to Africa, and even to Europe. Most Americans know so little of these places but assume we can do what we want. And here's where Matt's post makes the most sense. We can indeed have a big impact, but usually not the one we wanted--and I say it's because we're so IGNORANT about anything beyond our borders.

Thoughts, anyone?

Posted by ThomasC | December 30, 2007 3:29 PM

Benazir Bhutto is an aristocrat, more or less a princess. We don't have aristocrats, or a ruling class, in America. We're not supposed to have elites well groomed to run this country. We're supposed to have a government of educated citizens who consult experts. I can't remember how it worked under Clinton, but the Bush administration has lacked expertise because it has given all the jobs to cronies.

Posted by Gary Sugar | December 30, 2007 3:43 PM

Asymmetric blindness

It isn't just that we don't have many folks who study Urdu, though the lack of interest in Urdu that results in our not having many folks who know Urdu is an aspect of the real problem. The real problem is that we are powerful, rich and successful, and Pakistan isn't, therefore most of us will never be able to even begin to imagine that Pakistan has anything worthwhile to teach us. The individual exceptions in our society will not be able to make an impression on the complacent many. The situation is reversed for Pakistanis in relation to the US. We're the 800 pound gorrilla. They have to cultivate at least a rudimentary understanding of us, if only to stay out of our blind ignorant way.

The best we could do in this situation is to keep our level of intervention in foreign societies down at the level of our interest in them, which is approximately nil. And for that near-absolute-zero level of involvement, we should defer heavily to the judgment of those few among us who actually have some proven ongoing interest in foreign societies. It's why we have a State Dept, and why we shouldn't have a CIA, NSA, NSC, or a military capable of doing much more than defending our own shores.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | December 30, 2007 3:44 PM

That's an important point, Glen. To put it in terms Americans might understand, it's sort of like the way most college rivalries are asymmetric-- that is Dartmouth considers Harvard their big rival, but Harvard couldn't care less about playing Dartmouth. The U.S. (except *perhaps* for a couple of specialists) can never know enough about every country with which we have an important bilateral relationship-- as measured from the other side.

Here's a better example/explanation. From 1985-1995 there was a law that would bar aid to Pakistan in the event that Pakistan ever obtained nuclear weapons. This was known as the Pressler Amendment after the Senator who added to pending legislation (although it's not clear it was his idea, or he even understood its significance at the time). The Pressler amendment was of course well known by Americans who worked professionally on south Asia issues, but most Congress critters don't fall in that category and I would be most of them couldn't have explained it. However, when I travelled to Pakistan during that time period, cab drivers would ask me what Senator Pressler had against their country. To Americans, the Pressler Amendment was just another obscure provision in some foreign aid bill. To people in Pakistan it was the law that determined whether or not they could get US aid.

Posted by Doh | December 30, 2007 4:04 PM

1) One of the aspects of EMPIRE is that our elites have more in common with fellow elites in the provinces than they have with their fellow US citizens.

The elites in the provinces have strong incentives to engage in forceful manipulations in the hyperpower's capital -- usually by exploiting widespread corruption. With frequently disasterous results for the hyperpower.

2) The Roman historian Sallust gave a compelling description of how African king Jugurtha was able to tie the Roman Republic in knots via bribery of Roman politicians -- see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugurthine_War .

3) One of the books on my planned reading list is Amy Chua's new book , "Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall ". My initial scan of her book indicates that she addresses how our meddling around the world may come back to bite us -- that we are importing not only goods, labor, and capital but also alien grievances.

4) When you give Israeli Billionaire Haim Saban dual US citizenship, you don't just get his $14 Million in political donations -- you also get his fanatical devotion to Israel and his indifference to the lives of AMERICAN soldiers.

Posted by Don Williams | December 30, 2007 4:08 PM

"So what of this horse, then, that actually held opinions, and was sceptical about things? Unusual behaviour for a horse, wasn't it? An unusual horse perhaps?

"No. Although it was certainly a handsome and well-built example of its species, it was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them.

"On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever."

--Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Posted by Hogan | December 30, 2007 4:10 PM

Her father wrote from his death room that the Pakistan suffered from twin hegemonies, an external one in the form of the U.S. and an internal one in the form of the Pakistani military.

What happened to her father was green lighted if not initiated) in Washington and his daughter went on to become part of the instition that murdered him and she was able to rise to power because she sold the U.S. that she would work for them as their democratic figleaf and alievate them of the embarassment of the military regime in Pakistan. She was dispatched to try and fulfill the same role once again and died in the process.

The idea that Bhutto took advantage of a bunch of naive Americans is so ass backwards and screwed up I don't know where to start.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 30, 2007 4:16 PM

Well there's another misunderstanding... Urdu linguists won't be able to decipher all of Pakistan for us. Also need Pakhtun, Punjabi, etc.

As to understanding of others in general, we do have enough people who do this. Complaining about why not everyone understands political dynamics in south Asia or Africa or post-Soviet states, etc is missing the point. Why don't you also complain that not every football fan also understands lacrosse? Why don't mechanics know more about homeopathic remedies?

Societies delegate these roles. We have State Dept area specialists. The military has its FAO (Foereign Area Officer) program. There are regional SMEs in every intel agency. Civilian universities and think tanks abound with area experts. All of these and more can be tapped upon when formulating policy.

Our problem is not a lack of omniscience. Our problem is not listening to the people who do know these things. When you have an illness you see a doctor, not an op-ed columnist. When you have a dictator calling martial law, you should likewise consult experts, not hacks. That is the problem we have. There is no need to force janitors to care about foreign affairs.

Posted by bubba | December 30, 2007 4:23 PM

Re "The idea that Bhutto took advantage of a bunch of naive Americans is so ass backwards and screwed up I don't know where to start."
-------
Ed's got a point. However, the exploitation definitely works both ways.

For example, Dr Khan stole the designs of centrifuges (for producing weapons grade uranium ) from the West -- the West didn't steal the designs from Pakistan.

Posted by Don Williams | December 30, 2007 4:27 PM

Point number two: Benazir Bhutto's father was executed by General Zia. So what happened to General Zia --and to US Ambassador Arnold Raphael ?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Zia-ul-Haq

Posted by Don Williams | December 30, 2007 4:31 PM

Machiavelli explained why we shouldn't trust exiles like Bhutto and Chalabi (or the Cubans in Miami in 1961) in his Discourses' Chapter XXXI, which is entitled "How Dangerous it Is to Believe Exiles:"

"As to [the exiles'] vain hopes and promises, such is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise in which you ruin yourself.

"How vain are the faith and promises of those who find themselves deprived of their country. For, as to their faith, it has to be borne in mind that anytime they can return to their country by other means than yours, they will leave you and look to the other, notwithstanding whatever promises they had made you."

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 30, 2007 4:32 PM

To my mind one thing that might help would be if the state dept. didn't tend to see experience abroad as a negative in recruiting (it makes background checks harder, makes people look suspiscious, etc.) Secondly, if they didn't rotate people so often (often a FSO has a term of duty in a country as short as a year. It's very rarely more than a few years) then people might be able to build up some expertise in an area rather than constantly being green. My understanding is the worry is about people "going native" but that seems to me to be a lesser problem compared to the the other option of some pretty serious ignorance.

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | December 30, 2007 4:34 PM

We can and should take steps to improve the US governing class' understanding of foreign countries

Don't mean to nitpick, but we shouldn't have a "governing class" at all. That such a thing even exists is a demonstration of how fundamentally anti-democratic our society is.

The best we could do in this situation is to keep our level of intervention in foreign societies down at the level of our interest in them, which is approximately nil.

What I'd like to see is for our involvement in foreign affairs to be channeled, almost entirely, through international governing bodies like the U.N. To the extent that "we" have an interest in what goes on elsewhere, it should be in a communitarian sense, the same basic interest that everybody else has.

Posted by Jason C. | December 30, 2007 4:37 PM

Think about this: the successor to the party leadership of the PPP is Benazir's son, a 19-year-old first-year undergrad at Oxford. Her husband is 'regent'. They are to change their names to 'Bhutto'. Presumably, the young Bhutto will be drawn to the Oxford Union, where his mother was president. (As was Andrew Sullivan.) As such, he'll likely end up with names in his address book that, in time, will be useful. That's using institutions to one's advantage.

It makes George W. Bush's path to the White House look pretty circuitous.

(Let's also say that 'speaking fluent Urdu' scratches the surface. The Bhuttos represent a Sindhi feudal model of politics.)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 30, 2007 5:57 PM

If a wide swath of the Pakistani elite count influential Americans as their personal friends,don't a large number of influential Americans have to have personal friendships with the Pakistani elite- by definition ?

Posted by Joe | December 30, 2007 5:59 PM

If a wide swath of the Pakistani elite count influential Americans as their personal friends,don't a large number of influential Americans have to have personal friendships with the Pakistani elite- by definition ?

But that doesn't extrapolate symmetrically into understanding of the elite power structures of the respective nations.

Another example: King Abdullah of Jordan went to private schools in the UK and US, then to Oxford and Sandhurst, and then to Georgetown. Check, check, check off the list.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 30, 2007 7:12 PM

TC-

More hollow echoes of the "dumb 'mericans" tocsin. Please. Try to get past your elitist tunnel vision.

Do you really think that, say, the average Pakistani, Iraqi, Iranian, Saudi, Oriental, European, S.American, Aussie or Canadian (enough said!) really has a better understanding of foreign affairs than any of our drones? Give me a break. Half the folks in those godforsaken swamps aren't even bright enough to configure their own destiny.

As to our elites-ask yourself whose institutions of higher learning have the intellectual gravitational pull? In other words, everyone who would prefer The University of Islamabad over Harvard (or Temple, for that matter), please raise your hand.

You and the confounded Liz Bumiller can relax. The civil war in Iraq-to use your curious instantiation-did not unfold because our collective heads were buried in the sand. It unfolded because the average Iraqi long ago developed a taste for burying his brethren in the sand.

Posted by resh | December 30, 2007 8:22 PM

Thanks for proving ThomasC's point, resh.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 30, 2007 8:38 PM

Thanks for regurgitating the liberal talking points, psuedo.

Posted by resh | December 30, 2007 8:46 PM

I'm not a big fan of the "dumb american" meme
myself. It often seems like a way to preserve
the image of American innocence while engaging
in the murkiest form of realpolitik.

OTOH, its also conveniently allows the US
to change course once they've "seen the light".

Posted by DJ | December 30, 2007 9:59 PM

Are you sure that's an OTOH?

We've seen the light about every twenty years since the Spanish-American war, and the next war is always there to prove how much we have learned and changed.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 30, 2007 10:33 PM

it's much easier for Pakistani actors to manipulate US policy than the reverse

Their goals are more modest.

Posted by Horatio Parker | December 31, 2007 12:09 AM

Nice posts by Doh and bubba.

Bubba correctly notes that us not knowing who the President of Paraguay is, or the Russians being "blind" to Paraguayan history - but Paraguay knowing Bush, Putin and US history does not make Paraguayans geniuses and Russians and Americans stupid. American tend to go for what is important, what could affect their lives, what languages will be considered a career edge to have. (now that is Chinese, Spanish, German and some argue for great careers in "imprtant niche countries" to learn Javanese, Bengali, Portugese (Brazil flavor), Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese.

Bubba also correctly states that we maintain reserviors of experts and our main problem is not listening to them. I would add that our system is very slow and does not anticipate international areas becoming more important to us and we always seem to have too few. But someone 20 years ago, outside the CIA and NGOs would have found difficult study to learn Pashtun rewarded them with squat, while getting fluent in German or Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin) had instant job-opening opportunities. We also rely too much on political exiles or "friends" like Israel - with clear conflicts of interest to staff up those Studies Centers and think tanks and give "dispassionate" objective advice on the Palestinian issue or invading Iraq after Saddam killed half the think tank members family relatives while they were in exile.

US areas of international advice also suffer from excess academia - people in only a few fields offering advice on the goings on of a whole nation while they have a PhD in politics, history - but have no idea of the countries finances, military, economic sectors in play.

And the experts are distrusted for a reason. Most notably recently as the "CNN Effect". To get access in Iraq, get story connections, stringers that Saddam let report and send financially lucrative soundbite video out CNN made millions off of - CNN agreed not to report on the "bad stuff" they knew about that would get them frozen out. Others spend enough time in a country they "go native" and advocate for the foreign interests sometimes over their own nations. Or if the country is big enough or at the center of a very trendy political system being in power issue that is of widespread interest, those experts frequently fall in the trap of taking sides and becoming that side's champion instead of giving straight advice. They are also increasingly vulnerable to bribes - from Saudis offering windfall consult jobs, academic chair endowments and donations to their favorites - to Zionists and Indian job outsourcers making being pro-Israel, or being an international economist saying how great losing high tech jobs to India is, pay.

The UK had its Teutonophiles and Arabists. America had advice on the ME that tilted to the narrative of the morally pure, peaceful, great victim Jews making the desert bloom and getting only hostility from ungrateful Christian and Muslim Arabs who never actually lived in Palestine before "compassionate, smarter Jews created jobs for them and lured them in from Lebanon and Syria and Egypt..Now we have "Islamic experts", "Cuban experts" with transparent neocon, hard Left motives and all too many exiles long gone from the country they fled with little 1st-hand insight in recent decades.

The civil war in Iraq-to use your curious instantiation-did not unfold because our collective heads were buried in the sand. It unfolded because the average Iraqi long ago developed a taste for burying his brethren in the sand.

Great line Resh! I have always had a faint disgust about America-bashers that always say that America is always at fault for failing to intervene, sacrifice men and treasure to prevent or stop any civil war or genocide globally. How we "failed" to take care of every refugee on the planet and offer them and their whole village US citizenship as a bare minimum after we feed and house them all. Or argue that America is to blame for long 3rd World recoveries from earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves and drought - because we shirked out obligation as "fat rich stupid white Americans who don't care that others suffer."

And the sad truth is that it is sometimes best to let a civil war go full scale and resolve conflict the political system, Jewish human rights lawyers, UN dignitaries in luxury corporate jets flitting in and out - cannot. You let the Civil War continue, let ethnic cleansing happen in certain circumstances and you get long-term stability and increased standard of living and rule of law established more often than not...Obviously, civil wars as good to finally settle matters is truer outside tribal Arab and tribal African conflicts where bloodfeuds survive several internal wars.....

Posted by Chris Ford | December 31, 2007 2:38 AM

I read somewhere that in the decade before LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam war the number of graduate degrees awarded on Vietnam, Vietnamese, or SE Asian Studies in the entire US was eleven (11). Currently the number of US officials in Iraq that are fluent in Arabic is within hailing distance of the same number. This is a real and serious problem.

The solution in my view is to make use of the best possible resource we have for addressing this problem--immigration. We can much more quickly admit and train native Urdu, Arabic, Farsi, or what-have-you speakers than we can recruit US college students to begin the slow process of acquiring just enough knowledge to get into trouble with.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 31, 2007 3:23 AM

If in general we kept from nominating to any government position or listening to the advice of people who use the terms "Congoloid" and "Jewish human rights lawyers" as general descriptions, well, that would be a start.

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 3:40 AM

We can and should take steps to improve the US governing class' understanding of foreign countries

We can't and won't. To get a broader range of educated Americans with better understanding of the languages and politics of countries in the Middle East and Islamic Asia - like Pakistan - the government would need to give vast sums of money to the likes of Juan Cole, when the political decision-makers for these budget allocations are under the influence of - oh, for example - Marty Peretz. Not going to happen. Let's stay ignorant! It's working well so far.

Posted by otto | December 31, 2007 5:28 AM

Ford: "UN dignitaries in luxury corporate jets flitting in and out".

Heh, heh. I got him the other day on the "UN luxury choppers" by pointing to an article where the US is replacing the Presidential choppers with TWENTY-THREE HALF-BILLION DOLLAR choppers.

So he's graduated to "luxury corporate jets" just so he can repeat his rant against the UN.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 31, 2007 8:10 AM

Yes, Resh, you actually did prove my point. "Iraq" is a made-up fiction; in the 1920s, the British cobbled together three old Ottoman provinces that probably didn't belong together, and called it a country. Then the Soviets helped install a semi-puppet, Saddam Hussein, who imposed an Arab version of Soviet Communism (the Ba'ath party) on the country. He did this with the full panoply of Soviet techniques: purges, torture, repression, etc. And he supported the Sunni minority from which he came and represses the Shia majority (though I'll be plenty of Sunnis got repressed along the way). Basically, a boiling mess covered by a lid--Saddam Hussein.

Then George Bush wanted to invade this mess, and plenty of "experts" in the Pentagon, the State Department, and other parts of the executive branch told him and his that if he did this, he'd be taking the lid off a boiling cauldron, and that it might explode in his face. They said, collectively, "here's how to do it to minimize the damage" in venues like the Future of Iraq project. He and his (Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.) ignored this--they dismissed this sort of thinking, and said they'd be right and everyone else would be wrong.

There were plenty of experts, and those in power didn't listen. Nearly everything that the experts predicted came true.

And this proves Bubba's point and my point together: our elected leaders know so little of the world, and are so sure their version of the world is correct, that they willfully ignore the experts.

Experts do get tunnel vision and get captured by local interests--that's why policymakers should have a wider view. But those who are likely to hold the highest elective offices and make policy know so little about the world that they don't even have the background or conceptual tools to (a) put together information from a variety of experts in a variety of fields; (b) criticize or question the experts; or (c) at the very least, get outside of their own heads to listen to the experts in the first place.

Remember, I said elites. You, resh, are the one who said the "average" Pakistani, etc. I did not. I sympathize with the anti-elite posters on this thread, but elites in large-scale societies aren't going away any time soon.

There's a reason for the "dumb 'Merikin" meme: we really are ignorant of the rest of the world, in a way that educated people from Canada, Europe, and even Japan are not. There are two reasons for this, at a minimum:

1. Great powers, empires, etc., always suffer from this.

2. The whole "insula fortunata" thing--Canada, Mexico, and two oceans let us follow George Washington's advice on staying away from entangling alliances for two centuries, thus allowing us to learn so little about anyone we might get entangled with.

This applies to all Americans, but I think it's more important for policymakers. So there are at least three levels: policymakers, people who hold offices that decide what everyone else within the government does; experts, people just below the policymakers who do know quite a bit about their areas, but who don't make final decisions; and voters (most of us) who elect policymakers. At the very least, I wish potential policymakers knew more about the world than they do. And these potential policymakers--people who might get elected--come disproportionately from economic elites.

As for Chris Ford, I never said anything about not intervening at all. I took no position on intervening. In fact, if our policymakers knew more, they could intervene better--not more often or less often, but with better results when they do.

Posted by ThomasC | December 31, 2007 9:29 AM

but we shouldn't have any illusions about our ability to totally upend the imbalance in Pakistani elites' ability to understand the US versus our elites' ability to understand Pakistan

This is the only point I take exception to - we have immigrants from every country in the world. They speak the language, and to a certain extent understand the politics of the countries they originate from. Why not use that brainpower?

Posted by Sajid | December 31, 2007 9:41 AM

ThomasC:

I really think you should read up on your Iraq history a big more.

If anything, it was actually the U.S. who helped install Saddam, in hopes of countering Soviet influence. With our approval, he proceeded to massacre virtually the entire membership of the (once powerful) Iraqi Communist Party, and henceforth mostly served as a American quasi-client leader. Within Iraq, he was therefore widely believed to be a CIA puppet, though this was probably nonsense (although he may have worked for the CIA as a part-time assassin in his younger days).

It really is amazing the sort of nonsense that floats around in American discussions of politics in Third World countries.

Posted by RKU | December 31, 2007 10:25 AM

Hmmm...The words "Bumiller" and "wise" in the same sentence, eh?

Don't forget that 3/4 of her name is "Miller".

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | December 31, 2007 11:43 AM

TC-

I'm not here to quibble with what you may have meant, but let's be clear of your implications based on what you actually said (your quotes):

1) "Remember, I said elites. You, resh, are the one who said the "average" Pakistani, etc. I did not."

Preceded by...

2) "Most Americans know so little of these places but assume we can do what we want."

Well, if "most Americans" don't represent the "average" American, than who would?

More to the point. If you're going to insist on a deficiency within our intelligentsia (your word is elitists), compared to those of other countries, I think the burden of proof is on you to provide some hard evidence. It's entertaining to read your theories and anecdotes of why our folks are "ignorant of the rest of the world," but your half-baked proposition, sans evidence, has all the credence of a college freshman explaining why the world is upside down.

Posted by resh | December 31, 2007 2:58 PM

Hm, resh, I thought I had provided some hard evidence--the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq without preparation, and without listening to those who had prepared. You didn't even address that. You provided an ad hominem instead.

And I didn't say "elitists." I said "elites." Not the same thing. Elitists believe elites should be in power. Elites are in power, whether they believe they should be or not. Perhaps a quibble to you, but mostly I want to be quoted accurately.

Finally, I never used the word "intelligentsia." I said policymakers, experts, and voters. I also mentioned economic elites, from which policymakers tend to be drawn. Policymakers and experts are part of the political "elite," which is usually drawn from the economic elite.

Yes, I would like to see average Americans know more about the rest of the world, but you're probably right that most average people in most countries don't know much about the rest of the world. But they're the ones who vote for policymakers, and I'd like to see the latter know a lot more. So I'd like to see people who want to get elected actually know more about the rest of the world.

But perhaps the people who've posted that the dominated around the world need to know more about the dominant than the reverse are correct, and that there aren't a lot of incentives for imperial elites to know much.

As for RKU, I do stand partially corrected, but it wasn't all "nonsense." Yes, Saddam Hussein was American an ally--the famous photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with him in 1983 is just an indicator of a longer relationship--but the Ba'ath party was, in fact, socialist, and had long-standing ties to the Soviets. I did conflate the two, and they should be separate. But that the Ba'athists slaughtered a bunch of communists doesn't mean anything; communists go all the way, and socialists are a little more wishy-washy. Getting rid of an enemy to your left isn't a surprising strategy. And the Soviets supported socialist parties as well as communist parties, especially in Africa and the Middle East. Yes, they installed direct proxies where they could (like Ho Chi Minh or Castro), but ideological semi-allies when they had to (Nasser, Assad).

Posted by ThomasC | December 31, 2007 4:39 PM

TC-

That Bush invaded Iraq despite sound counsel warning him of a prospective civil war is not evidence...of your proposition. It's nothing of the sort and a classic non sequitur. Regrets.

There was a significant portion of the progressive world-including elites from abroad whom you define as smarter-that enthusiastically supported the Iraq invasion. I need go no further than to mention The United Kingdom. So much for the guiding hand of elites.

I agree with you regarding the soviet sphere that initially catalyzed Hussein. Ironically, his Stalin fixation and Stalin-esque conduct is what purged the Iraqi communists.

And nearly everyone else.

Posted by resh | December 31, 2007 6:43 PM

Yes, they installed direct proxies where they could (like Ho Chi Minh or Castro), but ideological semi-allies when they had to (Nasser, Assad).>

Wow, is that bad. Out of curiosity, what does the Non-aligned Movement become when you stick it through the Cold Warrior filter?

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 31, 2007 6:51 PM