Quote Originally Posted by LawVol View Post
MikeF: you are absolutely correct. Although I didn't discuss it in detail in my initial post, this is what I was referring to when I spoke of R2P being a tool for the developed world. Particularly with regard to a broadened interpretation of R2P, as with the Canadian documents, I can easily foresee R2P as an excuse for action. Maybe a Russian-Georgian conflict part two based on perceived "crimes" against ethnic Russians in Georgia? I'm sure you can imagine other examples. While the moral underpinnings of the doctrine may seem worthwhile, the doctrine itself leave too much open to interpretation and misuse. Of course misuse is in the eye of the beholder, so criticism can be made of nearly any intervention I guess.
Well, the SWJ team here (JMM, Ken White, Steve Blair, and many others) have been helping me for the past four years really sorting through things, and I wanted to find reoccurring patterns throughout history that reflect today. Initially, I narrowed it down to 1866-1910, but I am now convinced that we are literally in a period that reflects the beginning of the twentieth century-small protracted wars of limited ends, contested global hegemony, economic shifts with the rise of the middle class and the Industrial Revolution, and the Rise of the West with an nascent American Empire blossoming. Theodore Roosevelt rose to the challenges of the day by building the Panama Canal and sailing the Great White Fleet.

As we (US, UK, and everyone else) move past Iraq and start to figure out how we're going to talk to each other, interact, trade, etc, in the future, we must understand what happened last time, but we cannot be bound by feelings of guilt either. We must move forward wisely.

This will take leadership.

When design theory was first introduced in the late 1960's, it came from systems thinking, and one rule that has since gone away, but has always stuck in my mind is

The planner has no right to be wrong.