Reactive orientation to crisis

[remnant]

It seems that the international community especially the West is being caught offguard by the global flux of contingencies especially in the arena of war and terrorism. Nobody saw Al Qaeda and the Taliban coming. In Somalia, the Islamic Courts, a disciplined force was ousted by Ethiopia at the behest of the West paving the way for Al Shabbab. One need not mention ISIS and the assymetrical war that convulsed Iraq after Saddam's ouster.

 

[dogs of war]

It's so sad to see the United States government at it's richest and best having so much trouble being militarily proactive against threats like these. To a degree, though, we retain all our past activeness: we continually sortie with North Korea through the Swedish embarassy and have a great amount of labor in that area trying to defuse potential military situations before they start (less so under Obama than Clinton). We're heading off a pretty good amount of threats, but the rule is: they get a billion chances to try us. We only get one to head them off.