Everybody (if download times are any indication) has been reading Our World-Historical Gamble, so I suppose I should chime in with comments. The first thing that comes to mind is: couldn't this have been edited a bit? The rhetorical flourishes make it a bit longer than it needs to be. I'm a fine one to talk, of course--but I don't get paid for my writing.
He doesn't talk much about the "failed states" and what their status ought to be. Should they fall under the "get 'em while they're hot" banner, and let the neighbors divvy up the likely portions? If the failed state is surrounded by successful ones, that might make matters better, but consider the case of Liberia. It's a gangster-run basket case, but Sierra Leone is about as bad a shape, and Cote d'Ivoire is headed that way. Territory grabs are probably going to happen anyway, with or without sanction--the question is do we want to try to recognize these?
A lot of the political philosophy of his essay boils down to a very simple principle: "You do what you have to do." If you are threatened by a stronger nation-state, you organize yourself to become a strong nation-state yourself, and work out alliances for defense. If you are threatened by free-floating terrorists, you stomp on their hiding places wherever they may be--in Afganistan or in a Brooklyn mosque.
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