Stephen Walt on the arrogance and delusions of the current state of the US

Stephen Walt has a really thoughtful article on the consequences of what his post's headline calls "America's Paranoid 'Stop and Frisk' on a Global Scale" Foreign Policy 08/13/2013:

The United States is still the world's strongest economy, and it has the world's most advanced and capable military forces, the world's most reliable nuclear deterrent, and no great powers nearby. Yet it finds itself chasing spooks and ghosts all over the world because it has somehow convinced itself that it is in fact very, very vulnerable. I'm not saying that no dangers exist, but hardly any pose a serious threat to the American way of life. Until the U.S. political system is able to calibrate these dangers in a more sensible way, the country is likely to continue chasing fantasies. And the tragic part is that many things the country is now doing may in fact be making these problems worse.

U.S. leaders are fond of saying that America's great power and moral values give it a "special responsibility" for global leadership. In fact, America's great power seems mostly to give U.S. leaders a remarkable sense of indifference to the consequences of their actions. (Have you heard any members of the Bush administration apologize for the carnage the United States helped unleash in Iraq?).

Lawrence Wilkerson is the only one who comes to mind.

Tags: us foreign policy