Loading ...I’ll post the link if anyone wants it. Parts:
“Let me mention three cases. The first is Russia; second is Iran; the third is Afghanistan.”
“A word about Afghanistan. We have stated, as an objective, the creation in Afghanistan of a democratic state with elaborated rights and modern institutions of government. We need to ask ourselves whether this is a conceivable objective. Modernization has a different time scale than pacification. The attempt to establish a central government in Kabul by foreigners has always been automatically resisted, regardless of the merit of the government. And if that is true, we need a different strategy, one that is designed, possibly, to prevent what we fear most and what needs to concern us most – namely the reemergence of terrorist centers and the projection from Afghanistan of terrorists into other countries – at least within one presidential term. But to achieve these objectives, it may not be possible or necessary to pacify the entire country or to turn it into a modern state.”
“In the Middle East, the nation state is in a process of dissolution because the nation, as a concept, never established itself. The states in the Middle East were created at the end of the First World War by the victors in the First World War with borders that reflected their competition. These states are now challenged by a universalist philosophy which has its roots in the Islamic tradition of one Islamic nation. The states have relatively weak and fragile foundations, and the challenge is how to construct an international order on the basis of cooperation and international law rather than jihadism.”
“I was brought up on the Atlantic alliance. I formed my ideas on foreign policy in the period at the end of World War II. Europe seemed at the mercy of a potential aggressor. Economic recovery was very slow. Russia seemed overwhelming, and America was still basically isolationist. In 1944, President Roosevelt said to Winston Churchill, whatever you do, don’t ask me to leave any American troops in Europe.
Yet, in a five-year period after the war, America and its allies created a structure that lasted for half a century, won the Cold War and, in a way, produced many of the challenges that the alliance now faces. ”
Comment: Right, they shoved a lot of square pegs into round holes, and now we have all kinds of problems that started with 9/11, leading to the 2008 global financial crisis, that led to even more financial problems resulting in mass immigration and zero interest rates. Lets not forget cheap airfares with very promiscuous vacation and business travel to make sure of global equality getting sick spreading a black swan virus coincidently while Trump was in office. Hmmm.