Imperial Decline: Time Lag
In a recent piece I tried to lower the expectations of some of my friends in the reality-based community of foreign policy realists that a President Obama would place the Israel/Palestine issue on the top of his policy agenda. Some of these friends interpreted my analysis as an argument against possible U.S. efforts to play a more active diplomatic role in the dormant "peace process." But forecasting a rainy day doesn't mean that you are hoping for a bad weather. My geo-political forecast was based on the my reading of the current global balance of power and U.S. domestic politics. First, the combination of the mess in Iraq/Afghanistan and the entire collapse of the neoconservative agenda plus the economic crisis have diminished the power (which includes public support) of the U.S. to shape global events, including the Mideast. And the organized support for Israel in Washington has become a form of rent seeking in a sense of capturing monopoly privileges in determin...