Chinese "soft power" consists not so much of bribery as in the veto power of dollar dumping, and should be recognisable to the US, since they used it at Suez and thereby definitively ended the last delusion of British empire.

What goes around, comes around.

In my view this Chinese veto has probably already been quietly exercised: I do not think the Iraqi's could ever have been permitted by the US to reinstate Saddam-era contracts with the Chinese,

Iraq revives Saddam deal with China

if this were not the case.

It follows that I think that all of the current US posturing re Iran is a colossal bluff.

"...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,signifying nothing".

...and I love the concept of "intellectual interoperability"!

The Long War promises to be a thinking man's war.

I can just see this guy wishing for a table full of thinking men like Torquamada, Richelieu, a couple of Caesars, and it would go without saying who the inspirational characters of the 20th Century would be...people who will act when a threat is identified, eh?

As a full-fledged Alliance, NATO possesses the kind of staying power that mere ad hoc coalitions cannot deliver; but NATO still has to come to terms with the fact that thinking power will matter more than fighting power.

Really, this guy is an idiot who can throw clever phrases together. A thinking man's war - possessive man's, men possessing war while thinking. Unless it is a bunch of Strangeloves sitting around, he is saying that this epoch of his is a place for clever people from a lot of places getting together and figuring this out. In other words, doing the work of the United Nations, except in a more manly way.

My feeling is that NATO will be gone long before the UN is gone. My feeling is that the US will have to collapse into itself and NATO will be one of the places to go. The thinking men will be thinking men and women and they will realize all the talent that is wasted in the military industrial complex, all the potential assets and intellectual property locked away instead of helping to burgeon the nation. It is really the only hope for the US. I just can't imagine the steps to get there.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland