Sorry, I think we're mostly on different levels of analysis. I was discussing the transformation process of the Middle East and Iraq in particular -- and the dangers of either "side" in the US internal political debates drawing the wrong self-serving lessons from the elections. You're really talking much more about the overall role of the US in the world writ large. No question, major challenge to balance the timing and location of applying pressures for reform (either economic or political) on regimes in severe need of reform -- and when the point is reached where regime change is probably the only answer. I personally am very cautious about taking upon ourselves the job of regime change (overtly or covertly). For a "liberal," I'm pretty conservative on that score. I would also, in the case of Iraq, quarrel with the particular timing and method selected by the BushAdmin to effect regime change. To say nothing of the conduct of the occupation. Personally, I thought it would have been wiser to have held direct national elections over a year ago, and certainly much wider spread use of municipal and provincial elections. But the point I was trying to make is that it really doesn't matter whether I was right or Bush or Chirac or even Bremer or Chalibi was wrong. Let's look at where we are today instead of rushing to draw major conclusions about what we should do going forward. Yes, it's a momentus event that is going to continue to have unpredictable ripple effects for some time to come. And it's only the first of many steps to come. Today, the question facing us should be, how do we go on from here to build a better Iraq. And that means our starting point needs to be -- what did the elections mean for the Iraqis, not whether the US can or should impose democracies in countries with uncongenial governments through overt or covert regime change. Another way to say it -- to both sides -- let's stop fighting the last battles, because we're wasting energy and it's distorting our ability to understand what's important today. On the geostrategic issues you've raised. I generally agree, but must quarrel with your writing off Europe. I think that the eastward influence of the European Union -- into Turkey and the Ukraine and less directly providing another source of stabilizing influence in the Russian near-abroad-- is likely to be a critical dimensiion to building a global order that can accommodate the dynamism of globalization while managing some of the worst fallout from the process, such as terrorism. I don't think it's a matter of "either or" in terms of the priorities for key US relationships. And I think if you watched the work that goes on among nations within the international economic and financial institutions you wouldn't be writing off European influence quite so readily. Japan has always fought under its weight class, and I see few indications that's going to change any time soon. For the US, I see the great geostrategic challenge as how to help manage the pluses and minuses of interdependency in the global order (economic, financial, political, cultural, and security). The main area of focus should be in what I call a Eurasian quadrangle of key change agents -- China, India, Russia and Iran -- and the more economically developed continugous parts of the "West" (including Japan).