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March 21, 2006
Hubris and Nemesis
Strike a pose [fuego81/flickr]
Last night, Open Source recorded Neo-Conservatism: The Last Throes? with Niall Ferguson and Francis Fukuyama. The show gave these two prominent public intellectuals a chance to reflect in the state of American foreign policy ideology on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I highly recommend listening to the show, which is available at the same link.
Hubris and Nemesis are terms that Ferguson proposes to describe the greatest challenges to American Empire. In the first case, the United States vastly miscalculated the situation in Iraq and the ramifications of occupation. The Iraqi debacle has not only been extremely costly, but it has kept the United States from addressing the real mounting threat, Iran. Ferguson says that one of his major faults was not recognizing how much Iran would benefit from instability across the border. For some, apparently, the winds of war are always blowing.
Each in his own way, Fukuyama and Ferguson agree that the failure in Iraq show that the United States cannot sustain its aggressive behavior. Fukuyama urges a return to internation norms and cooperation. Ferguson insists that realism should not be abandoned because decisive military force and 'nation building' was mis-applied by an inept regime.
Posted by Henry Shepherd at March 21, 2006 12:19 PM
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