{"id":49603,"date":"2019-11-14T06:39:16","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T11:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49603"},"modified":"2019-11-14T06:39:18","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T11:39:18","slug":"the-blob-still-chasing-after-pax-americana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49603","title":{"rendered":"The Blob: Still Chasing After Pax Americana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/the-blob-still-chasing-after-pax-americana\/\">The Blob: Still Chasing After Pax Americana<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>After all the failure, they still look at our wars in the Middle East as some kind of golden age.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2qkhyt1u78lw1ll02a1kxrzq-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/5185181506_b12c3f6e12_b.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>Credit: U.S. Air Force\/Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wish to call attention to an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/ideas\/2019\/10\/us-has-one-last-chance-halt-its-withdrawal-middle-east\/160975\/\">instructive essay<\/a>&nbsp;about U.S. policy in the Middle East\u2014instructive in the sense that it reveals the utterly impoverished nature of establishment thinking on this subject. The title of the essay is \u201cThe&nbsp;US&nbsp;Has One Last Chance to Halt Its Withdrawal from the Middle&nbsp;East.\u201d&nbsp;The author is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, who shall remain nameless since I bear him no ill will. Let us refer to him simply as X, in honor of George Kennan, author of a famous 1947 essay offering counsel on how to deal with the Soviet Union. Kennan published that essay under the pseudonym X. And so shall I refer to the author of \u201cOne Last Chance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kennan\u2019s purpose was to sound the alarm regarding the Soviet threat and to propose what came to be called the strategy of Containment. The purpose of our present-day Mr. X is to sound the alarm about the United States lowering its profile in the Middle East. To avert that prospect, he proposes what can only be termed a strategy of staying-the-course-while-ignoring-the-facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">X concedes that throughout the region, things have not gone especially well for the United States over the last couple of decades.&nbsp;He rightly notes that Americans are \u201cstill reeling from costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the continuing chaos in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.\u201d&nbsp;He ever so briefly acknowledges that this is \u201ca region where even pro-American governments are often undemocratic and can be disdainful of fundamental human rights\u201d and \u201cwhere billions of dollars are spent that would be better used at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Blob: Still Chasing After Pax Americana After all the failure, they still look at our wars in the Middle East as some kind of golden age. I wish to call attention to an&nbsp;instructive essay&nbsp;about U.S. policy in the Middle East\u2014instructive in the sense that it reveals the utterly impoverished nature of establishment thinking on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17911,16732,862],"class_list":["post-49603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-andrew-j-bacevich","tag-the-american-conservative","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49604,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49603\/revisions\/49604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}