Cliff,

If we encourage governments to dialog with their populace and be open to reasonable evolution with one hand, and encourage non-violent challenges of poor governance by oppressed populaces with the other, we can realign ourselves with our national ethos. Not the neutrality of a fan sitting in the bleachers watching, but rather the neutrality of an umpire on the field keeping things from getting out of hand as the competition plays out.

To proclaim that U.S. interests and US values are "universal" as we do in our National Security Strategy though,blows me away. The hubris is off the chart, or maybe it's just ignorance, I don't know which. Glenn Beck has been ranting about how we are out to form a world government; I guess if you think everyone shares your interests and values, why not? Worrisome stuff, that. People need to chart their own path; extremes of behavior don't fare well in the light of day, and there are fewer and fewer dark corners in the globe every day.

Our current doctrine for COIN presumes keeping the current government in power. I am no fan of regime change, but I think we approach the troubled states where AQ has so much sway more effectively when we do not just grant the government a guarantee that we will help them maintain the status quo. We become more effective when we don't take sides and don't project our interests and values onto others. To wage this kind of diplomacy is nothing that our "state" department is trained, organized or inclined to do. We need to tune our own government and policies up to be more effective in the emerging world, and then go out to engage it.

Who knows, our greatest allies 20 years from now may well be states that have not yet formed, or governments that do not currently exist. They might not even be states at all. Now is not the time to attempt to rigidly enforce the past, but rather to develop a greater flexibility for embracing the future as it emerges around us.