The future of our time: Rewriting ‘Westphalianism’

Past master. (Image via Outside the Beltway)

Reading Henry Kissinger’s typically well-considered and intelligent article for the Wall Street Journal this weekend (“A Path out of the Middle East Collapse”), I had a growing sense that it isn’t so much a prescription for the future as a description of the past.

The sense began with the first paragraph, in which Kissinger defines the scope of what’s collapsing, and dates it only to 1973, when the U.S. moved to stabilize the Middle East during the Yom Kippur War.

But far more than recent U.S. policy on the Middle East is collapsing today.  What we’re seeing is more like the collapse of “Rome” itself:  the organization of Western power as a Europe-centric territorial phenomenon, setting unbreachable boundaries north, south, and west of a restless and perennially “unorganizable” Middle East.

A world without a hegemon

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

State Dept. condemns ‘disgraceful shelling’ that wasn’t a shelling and didn’t hit UN school

 

Appalled.

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Liberty 101: The principle of establishment

Developments at home and abroad are forcing Americans to think anew about the meaning of liberty and the proper nature and function of government.  What is important to us, and what must we do to keep it?  How do we change the things that manifestly aren’t working, and are in fact doing us daily harm?

Liberty 101 is a series devoted to discussing these topics.  And the subject for today is what I call the principle of establishment.  Very simply, the principle of establishment recognizes that liberty and the protection of natural rights

Finally, the Obama Doctrine: “Atrocities Prevention”

Numerous news outlets have reported on the new Atrocities Prevention Board unveiled by President Obama as part of commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, and quite a few have expressed skepticism.  It’s one thing to create a board; another entirely to take action using the tools of national power.

Defining “atrocity” will be a stiff challenge.  If something seems awful but the US administration doesn’t really want to intervene in it, will it be defined as an “atrocity”?  If it’s defined as an atrocity but we don’t do anything other than blather about it, what exactly will be the point of the Atrocities Prevention policy?

Presumably, a due-out from the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) will be