If you've read my blog, you know that I believe that there is a crying need for an optimistic, positive grand strategy to replace the outmoded cold warrior think of post WW II. I also think that the leading candidate for this is the new rulesets.project work of Thomas Barnett. He does important work that seems to be highly influential in the Bush administration's approach to the world today. In fact, he's got a book version of his theories which you should preorder right now.
I was lucky enough to get a review copy and have read it. It was better than I hoped, a true call for a decent foreign policy that has the twin virtues of working (so we can escape the specter of perpetual war) and being moral, true to our most cherished ideals. I also found out how consequential some of his analysis has been in the recent history of our country.
I was absolutely surprised to find out he was a Democrat. I suspect that he's going to be in desperate need of a copy of How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy : (and Found Inner Peace) as he's likely going to go through a meat grinder of insults and brickbats from the left after this book.
It's not that he advocates anything that an honest Democrat would be constitutionally opposed to. It's that he's had the honesty and courage to say that the Bush administration (outside of some fairly serious communication faults) has pretty much made the right moves on national security and his strategy is largely the correct one. And he's done so in an election year when national security is likely to be the most important issue on the voters' minds.
He ends up being a Scoop Jackson Democrat updated with all the nerve and an updated vision fit for a new century. If there were a thousand like him leading Democrat think tanks, I wouldn't be so worried about this country. Unfortunately he's committed the sin of truth and he's likely to be hounded out of the party for it.
I hope that I'm wrong, that there is still room for sane Democrats with a broad vision for America's security future. I doubt it though. Then again, God's in the miracle business so here's to the warrior Democrats, may they thrive, multiply, and take back their party to a sane road.
Posted by TMLutas at February 20, 2004 08:54 PM