Just a couple of quickies. I should clarify on the moral behavior thing. I said when our behavior gets out of sync with our values is when we get in trouble. I think that's what prak and Simon are saying, and prak's critique of Gaddis is that Gaddis -- who of all people knows better -- is glossing over that issue when it comes to "remaking the Middle East." Gaddis has put that structural grand strategy item as a national interest ahead of the behavior -- and the blowback and fallout -- the pursuit of that objective entailed. Simply saying the Bush folks didn't do it competently isn't good enough. The problem was with the "moral foundation" of the objective itself given the type of behavior that objective necessarily called for. I think you're too much of a Euro-pessimist. Don't focus so much on the collective security and military issues. Even Kagan, who was off bashing the Europeans as headed down a trajectory that would take them away from the US, is singing a different tune recently. Remarkable how much better old friends look when you need them, huh? As for Barnett, he's focused on the sources of chaos, and getting the US military to pay attention to the wars they're likely to be called upon to fight, not the ones they'd prefer to prepare for (e.g. China). So he glosses over both the rest of the Old Core and the uncertain trajectories of the New Core. I don't begrudge him. If he can change mindsets in the Pentagon, he deserves many gold stars and a free pass from St Peter.