A New Foreign Policy

In the Asia Times: DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Is perpetual war our future? By Andrew Bacevich ...Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency among civilians - with Bush a prime example - has been to confuse strategy with ideology. The president's freedom agenda, which supposedly provided a blueprint for how to prosecute the "war on terror", expressed grandiose aspirations without serious effort to assess the means required to achieve them. Meanwhile, ever since the Vietnam War ended, the tendency among military officers has been to confuse strategy with operations. The problems in Georgia and the ensuing developments in Poland, combining with the implications for the Ukraine and others, emphasizes the importance of a rational Foreign Policy that has real national interests in mind. Right now, we have the corrupt ideology of intellectually lazy right-wing types. This is best symbolized by the Secretary of State who is an expert on the Soviet Union, but has little to offer when dealing with Russia, other than references to 1968 Czechoslovakia.