The ugly world of power...

What an ugly, dangerous, scary world the world of power is...

I've been reading the reviews of Robert Kaplan's new book...and half of President Bush's Christmas reading, from the reports I read...

Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground...at metacritic.com...

Imperial Grunts...at Amazon...

Imperial Grunts...at Powells...

Imperial Grunts...at Barnes and Noble...

I have a lot of respect for Robert Kaplan...

But his thesis of an inevitable (and desirable) American empire is so corrupt and dangerous a thesis that I will read his book with more than a bit of Lord Acton's famous skepticism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely...

Unfortunately for Kaplan and those of his ilk...American political power is already in serious decline...

And the arrogance to think that American power could or should be wielded so cynically...is repugnant in a way that I can hardly even accept comes from someone so otherwise brilliant at Robert Kaplan...

Appropriate for a book embracing the idea of American empire...Andrew Bacevich writes in the anti-imperial Nation magazine one of the best critiques such a thesis that I have read thusfar...

Robert Kaplan: Empire Without Apologies...Andrew Bacevich...Sep. 8 post/Sep. 26 issue of the Nation Magazine...

Kaplan's own chip about his place in international policy circles seems to reinforced by the chips of the American servicemen and women that he interviews and their place in policy discussions that they, like Kaplan, are not as well prepared to engage in as their more learned colleagues...

Luckily for all of us...power doesn't operate the way that Kaplan would like it to...

But how arrogant for Robert to suggest that it would...

If that thesis turns out to be true -- and it is confirmed by too many sources for me, at this point, to be too skeptical of the veracity of those who present it as such -- Robert Kaplan just lost an enormous amount of respect from a policy student who had otherwise harbored much admiration for Robert's journalism and his willingness to think outside of the box of the international policy establishment...

All those pointy-headed ivory tower scholars, those of this particularly ugly-minded ilk must reason...keeping us from ruling the world properly...as God and the American Constitution would want us to...if it weren't for all those elitist liberal professors...keeping the world from the discovering the truth of our clearer right to that power...whether we have to take that right by force or not...

How conceited and repugnant...and...luckily for the world...damned foolish...dangerous, to be sure...but damned foolish, ultimately...

In so many ways...Robert Kaplan just became everything I don't want to be as a policy thinker...his persistent whines that his brilliance is just not recognized enough in international policy circles culminate in an attempt to end-run the international policy discussion...instead of earning his place in the circles that he so desires to earn respect from...

My mistakes in my own scholarly career and life are my own...I have no interest in whining, any more, about my recognition or lack thereof (to myself, more than anything else), my experiences in grad school, or anything of the kind to somehow circumvent the much more important discussion of ideas, that is far more important than the egos of anyone...policy scholar or not...and certainly my own...

America earned its place in the world by earning the world's trust...

And it will earn its decline in the world by earning the world's distrust...

And ideas like this one will go a long way to promoting that second end...

Let's hope this and next American President and Congress learn this lesson...before much more trust in America's leadership is undermined by such arrogance...

It's very sobering to live through this political moment...a moment of such open hubris...that an honest student of power...can only hope to stay away from the nasty stuff...while we slowly and with much effort...clean the process up...

Love,
Ben