We'd be kidding ourselves to think that neoconservativism -- the outward aspects of conservatives, justified by a liberal rhetoric of bringing Progress to the whole world -- is anything but mental retardation, if we take it at face value. When you look at how complex it is to run a large nation like the USA, however, you can quickly see that the "ideology" mumbled by candidates is secondary to how the system works, and that the rules of power quickly take over from any dogma.

If you're the USA, you have to face the fact that almost every other nation on earth wants you to fail. You're the big guy. In a tribe of monkeys, everyone tries to beat on the alpha male. It keeps the alpha male strong, and replaces him when necessary. In the meantime, he has to respond with prison ethics: do something to me, and somebody -- it may not even matter -- is gonna pay.

This is what Iraq was about. Instability in the middle east may have facilitated a terrorist attack on us? We're going to go kick some ass, install favorable governments in the region, destabilize the progress of said region toward fundamentalism, and maybe that'll take care of the problem -- if not, it'll make any government think twice about what would happen if we did have solid information about who helped al-Qaeda.

What's interesting is that in the blogosphere, and in certain marginalized political camps, people are acting like the other nations that oppose the USA -- even from within the USA. They're following the same political logic which, when examined, turns out to be mostly excuse/justification and very little reason/analysis. This situation comes to a peak with Cold War II -- errr, sorry, I mean NATO-Russia negotiations over Georgia-Ossetia.

As one wit points out:

Our best minds rerunning the 1930s because we're living in EXACTLY THE SAME TIMEFRAME TODAY!

Go ahead and let Georgia declare war between NATO and Russia. Now, any half-wit small-country leader gets to audition for the role of Archduke Ferdinand.

This hardly constitutes a "blowing away" of soft power. Only somebody who only sees the world in terms of military might could offer such a pathetically narrow view of global developments today.

What he gets right: history is repeating itself. We're in pre-WWI mode of thought (not the 1930s, but those were a continuation of the logic of the 1910s).

What he gets wrong: this isn't about globalization. It's about a concentration of power, and the balance between continents: Europe versus Eurasia versus Asia. Russia, as a state in Eurasia between Europe and Asia, is ethnically not Europe, culturally not European, and while it incorporates Asian elements in both genetics and culture, isn't Asian either. It's hard to be on the fence. Russia will not feel stable until it dominates either Asia or Europe. Europe will not feel stable until it dominates Russia. The Americans know that if Russia and Europe merge, Americans will end up fighting against Europe troops controlled by the Russian majority. Problematic.

The WSJ underlines the problem we're facing in this geopolitical Realpolitik nightmare:

Under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which went into force in 1994, both the U.S. and the USSR made radical cuts in their strategic nuclear arsenals -- that is, in weapons of intercontinental range. The 2002 Moscow Treaty pushed the numbers down even further, until each side's strategic nuclear umbrella was pocket-size.

Yet matters are very different at the tactical, or short-range, level. Here, the U.S., acting unilaterally and with virtually no fanfare, sharply cut back its stockpile of nonstrategic nuclear warheads. As far back as 1991, the U.S. began to retire all of its nuclear warheads for short-range ballistic missiles, artillery and antisubmarine warfare. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, not one of these weapons exists today. The same authoritative publication estimates that the number of tactical warheads in the U.S. arsenal has dwindled from thousands to approximately 500.

Russia has also reduced the size of its tactical nuclear arsenal, but starting from much higher levels and at a slower pace, leaving it with an estimated 5,000 such devices -- 10 times the number of tactical weapons held by the U.S. Such a disparity would be one thing if we were contending with a stable, postcommunist regime moving in the direction of democracy and integration with the West. That was the Russia we anticipated when we began our nuclear build-down. But it is not the Russia we are facing today.

Luckily for those in power, the people old enough to remember the 1980s will be written off as too old by the enfranchised younger generation, or people of different cultural background, so no one of demographic importance is going to point out the obvious: we've been fighting WWI since, uh, WWI. We're still trying to settle the issue of Eurasian geopolitical balance.

Under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany moved from a policy of maintaining the status quo to a more aggressive stance. He decided against renewing a treaty with Russia, effectively opting for the Austrian alliance. Germany's western and eastern neighbours, France and Russia, signed an alliance in 1894 united by fear and resentment of Berlin. In 1898, Germany began to build up its navy, although this could only alarm the world's most powerful maritime nation, Britain. Recognising a major threat to her security, Britain abandoned the policy of holding aloof from entanglements with continental powers. Within ten years, Britain had concluded agreements, albeit limited, with her two major colonial rivals, France and Russia. Europe was divided into two armed camps: the Entente Powers and the Central Powers, and their populations began to see war not merely as inevitable but even welcome.

In the summer of 1914 the Germans were prepared, at the very least, to run the risk of causing a large-scale war. The crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire decided, after the assassination on 28 June, to take action against Serbia, which was suspected of being behind the murder. The German government issued the so-called 'blank cheque' on 5-6 July, offering unconditional support to the Austrians, despite the risk of war with Russia. Germany, painted into a diplomatic corner by Wilhelm's bellicosity, saw this as a way of breaking up the Entente, for France and Britain might refuse to support Russia. Moreover, a wish to unite the nation behind the government may have been a motive. So might desire to strike against Russia before it had finished rebuilding its military strength after its defeat by Japan in 1905.

It's a fragile balance: Western Europe knows it must balance Eastern Europe and the Americans, and if Europe-related peoples knock themselves out, the Mongols are ready to invade again:

The Mongol invasions of Europe were centered in their destruction of East Slavic principalities, such as Kiev and Vladimir, under the leadership of Subutai. The Mongols then invaded the Kingdom of Hungary and the fragmented Poland (see History of Poland (966–1385)), the former invasion commanded by Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, and the latter a diversion commanded by Kadan, also a grandson of Genghis Khan, though both invasions were also masterminded by Subutai.

Historians have debated since the 13th century whether or not the Eastern European campaigns of the Mongols had macrohistorical importance. Most military historians believe they essentially were diversions, meant to frighten the Western powers sufficiently to keep them out of the Mongols' affairs in the East, specifically in Russia.

History is like any other cyclic process: until you change how you go about things, the result remains the same. If you step on a rake and the handle hits you in the face, you can't approach that same rake the next day and assume that if you step on it, the handle won't come swinging up again.

Unfortunately, the solution to the problem of European hegemony is not an easy one. As in the middle East, where the USA and Israel keep at bay both moderate corrupt post-Islamic republics (Syria, UAE) and increasingly fundamentalist, less-wealthy Islamic republics (Iran), in Europe-Eurasia the Americans are accustomed to holding off the Russians so that Russia does not inundate Western Europe. (Note: Most cold war scenarios envisioned by NATO centered around a Russian drive into central Europe, or more likely, Russia's eastern European vassal states being used to start a conflict that would culminate in Russian tanks heading again toward Berlin.)

People like the idea of a saviour, and that is one reason for this criticism of one realistic American policy (take what you can get: about half of what they do is sane, and the rest is nutty). What defines a saviour is that he comes bearing pleasant illusions, and requires no destabilization in our lives; the saviour is external, and doesn't require us to get emotionally, intellectually or physically involved in dismantling the mechanism of the problem (moving that rake into the storage shed). We press button, or click a vote, and the Saviour arrives, and suddenly our problem goes away.

It's why we rely so much on institutions, governments, corporations, charities and God; it's why we scan the shelves for the Next Big Thing in theory, hoping there's an easy answer that can be applied without us having to wake up, engage with reality, and cooperate with each other to fix our problems -- knowing that problems NEVER succumb to pleasant illusions, but require often complex, difficult, involved solutions. That might muss my hair, prevent my next promotion, interrupt my car payments, rock the boat, etc. and so we're against it. Change destabilizes the individual and in democracies, the fears of the individual outweigh the wisdom of the culture as a whole.

This is why from the extremes of both the left and the right we see a good deal of pro-Russia propaganda. "Georgia invaded first!" they say, failing to point out that Georgia invaded a republic that had broken away from Georgia; they didn't invade Russia, but ended up facing Russian troops (Ossetia is the surrogate combat arena just like Serbia was in WWI). The far left hates anyone with power, and so they're cheering for the underdog; the far right hates anyone who succeeds in the current corrupt west, and so they're hoping Russia will be the Great White Hope, forgetting that Russians are ethnically as much Chinese as European, and that they have a longer history of multiculturalism than the West. Watch the extremes to see what will soon merge into the mainstream. Of course, both extremes are looking for Saviours and not practical solutions, but it's the desire that counts when it comes time to buy/vote.

While many criticize the Pax Americana, and indeed this author is skeptical of it and any imperial peace, the fact remains that having one big guy on top is more stable than having several people gunning for being the big guy. It may be that we need world government, and not of the moral nature of the UN, but some giant Roman-style empire that is smart enough to leave self-government to its vassal states in exchange for nuclear non-proliferation and yearly tariff. Power, after all, may not be the enemy, but the contest for power might be our doom.