For the U.S., a Disappointing World

From Walter Russell Mead, at WSJ (via Blazing Cat Fur), "The chaos in Iraq is just the latest evidence that history doesn't follow America's optimistic script":

It has not been a good year for the liberal world order. Not since the end of the Cold War have so many crises erupted in so many places: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's relentless push in the East and South China seas, and the surge in jihadist violence and terror from Boko Haram in Nigeria to the religious war that now engulfs Syria and Iraq. This is not what Americans thought the world would look like in the third decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As we struggle to understand why the post-Cold War world has been such an unpleasant place, it is tempting to turn foreign policy into a political football. There are plenty of Democrats who think that everything would have been fine if President George W. Bush hadn't blundered into the Iraq war. There is also no shortage of Republicans who think that everything would have worked out fine if only Barack Obama hadn't made it to the White House.

While it is true that both presidents got some important things wrong, it is what unites them rather than what divides them that is the root cause of our troubles. Both Messrs. Bush and Obama, like many of their fellow citizens, radically underestimate the dangers and difficulties in the path of historical progress...

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