We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media. Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box. How many faithful New York Times readers have no idea what American conservatives think, much less how Russian oligarchs do? Well bred and well read Americans live in an ideological and cultural cocoon and this makes them fatally slow to understand the very different motivations that animate actors ranging from the Tea Party to the Kremlin to, dare we say it, the Supreme Leader and Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As far as we can tell, the default assumption guiding our political leadership these days is that the people on the other side of the bargaining table (unless they are mindless Tea Party Republicans) are fundamentally reasonable people who see the world as we do, and are motivated by the same things that motivate us. Many people are, of course, guided by an outlook not all that dissimilar from the standard upper middle class gentry American set of progressive ideas. But some aren’t, and when worlds collide, trouble comes.I'm skeptical of the value of pure diplomacy, but surely one thing it can do is ensure that we have a corps of people who have studied their corner of the world and learned something about how its inhabitants think. --OK, who am I kidding? It's nothing new to make know-nothing political appointments to ambassadorships, but there still needs to be a solid base of professional staff who know something about their host countries instead of congratulating themselves and their masters that geopolitics are a relic of the barbarous past.
It was a great week in which to announce the proposed dismantling of the military.
H/t Ace.
