Sunday, January 5, 2014

Wrong Tweet To Go Viral? I Blame the EU

This morning I tweeted thusly:
And it kind of went viral, getting a heap of retweets instantly.  Given that I also tweeted about the new book, which I would like to have sold and cited far and wide, I would have preferred that tweet to get more action.  Oh well.

So, about this Ukraine thing, the article itself is a bit better balanced than the headline, showing that it really is about Russia and about Ukraine more than about the European Union.  Still, the timing is good because the NYT has an article on the US and the Mideast with the same kind of disease: the Western actor (EU/US) is seen as unwilling to impose its will.  The reality, of course, is that Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other policies that have not been super-wonderful demonstrate that it is not just the exertion of power and cleverness by the western outsiders that matter but the incentives and institutions in the countries that are in play that matter.

Which is why Andrew Exum ended his rant on the NYT article thusly:







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