Stealth Empire

Feckless is not a term normally used to describe a strategy that involves wars spanning decades that cost trillions of dollars accompanied by the creation of a worldwide network of bases and outposts. Yet it is appropriately applied to the mindless exercise in stealth empire building that the United States is pursuing. Careless, irresponsible, lacking in clear purpose, no logical links between supposed ends and actual means. That fits what we are doing to a tee. The "we" refers to the nation at large, the Obama administration and its Bush predecessor in particular, and the community of foreign policy thinkers that orbit it. It embraces our follow-the-leader European allies as well.

The events in and around last week's NATO summit in Lisbon are emblematic of the backhanded way that America's historic project habitually is treated. We learn of a firm commitment to be militarily engaged in Afghanistan at least through 2014 via a public announcement by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Washington's latest man in Brussels. Suddenly the touted pledges about a 2011 drawdown are eclipsed. The explanation, such as it is, is conveyed to the American people, and the world, via a short Obama op ed in the International Herald Tribune. It goes unremarked -- as doubtless the White House intended. For the basic questions of what we are doing there and elsewhere in the region never have been addressed -- or even publicly recognized.

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