Dominik Zaumįellow in international relations, Oxford University Extra Credit Reading Thanks to winston_dodson for suggesting Thomas Barnett, who was previously on our China: Watching from the Sidelines show. Senior Managing Director, Enterra Solutionsįormer strategist for the Office of the Secretary of DefenseĪuthor, The Pentagon’s New Map and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating Author: Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors Thomas Barnett

Professor of history, Harvard University. Ross DouthatĪuthor, What Year Is It?, The Wall Street Journal, Charles Maier So what year is it? Extra points if you can come up with a year not in the twentieth century, and double extra points if you can suggest your favorite history prof from college to jump in on this.Ī belated thanks, by the way, to Chris Suellentrop’s Opinionator for pointing us to Douthat’s original article. 1972ists believe we’re engaged in fruitless illegal wars (like the secret bombing of Cambodia) that are only making things worse.Īnd Douthat himself leaves open the possibility that it’s actually 1914, that we have our hand resting lightly on the lever that will unleash a hell we couldn’t begin to imagine. They tend to be the ones suggesting we attack Iran.ġ948ists - Peter Beinart, Francis Fukuyama - are chastened by Iraq but hope to stand resolute for the long struggle of containment. The 1938ists - Douthat lists Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich among them - are thinking back to original appeaser Neville Chamberlain. Ahmadinejad is Tojo Bush is Truman or, as Tony Snow sometimes dreams at night, perhaps Churchill. According to his research, the “1942ists” think we’re at the beginning of a long war. In the office we sometimes play a game called “appeasement or quagmire.” One of us will read a passage from a blog or a newspaper and Mary will yell “Appeasement!” or “Quagmire!” The idea is that almost any argument can be reduced to Vietnam or Munich, the Munich of 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to the Germans and returned to predict that we would have “peace in our time.”ĭouthat’s piece is a little more thorough. (You can read Douthat’s article on his blog.) Ross Douthat, in an op-ed last week in The Wall Street Journal, took on the unenviable task of wading through yards of commentary - on Lebanon, on Iraq, on the UN, on Iran - to discover not what pundits think we should do but what year in history pundits believe the present most resembles. (OK, it’s all a battle for the control of oil, but stay with us here.) If war in the Middle East is a battle for the control of images, right now in the US it’s a battle for control of the analogy.

Liberas defend yalta