Passed on by my fav CENTCOM major (on road, not scanning papers).ARTICLE: "Time to Talk: Diplomatic jujitsu could help create a new Middle East," by Leslie H. Gelb, Wall Street Journal, Friday, July 28, 2006
As the major noted, it's a great summary of where things stand. Plus it echoes most of my recent themes, especially the riskiness of pursuing the Sunni-Shiite split on a strategic basis and the clear need for some regional security dialogue (which mitigates the danger of that split segueing into an Old Core/Sunni-New Core/Shiite Yalta-like divide that imperils globalization).
Most salient is the critique of the Bush Admin's lack of strategic imagination, which I see here, in the Doha "collapse." in the absurd "anti-China axis," etc.
This Old Core deficiency (meaning Euro and Japan are just as bad right now) is what leads some pundits to wax enthusiastically on "globalism's demise" (or at least their preferred strawman parody), as if the concept is the West's pet fish to flush down the head the minute it gets bored.
Remember, globalization comes with rules, not a ruler. Globalism isn't an ideology, but rather a realization of that emerging reality.
Declaring globalism dead is like declaring Darwinism dead: it is the declaration of ideology (realism), not it's repudiation.