Language.

MfM, you sound like me thirty years ago.

Sorry if that sounds patronizing, but there it is.
Your entire analysis could have come from a neocon geostrategic briefing paper. You make their most passionately held point--we need the Empire to manage the unruly nations, and the choice is ours or "theirs"--"them" being anyone else who might assert power.

The Generals speak the language of "military" think, in which the basic assumption is that diplomacy is powerless. Perhaps this blindness is caused by the fact that by the time the military option is exercised, the diplomatic one HAS failed. But, in general, (!!) there are few groups with less useful, more dangerous qualifications to make policy than the generals. Read my diary in which I remember Dr. Hansen, who wanted to nuke Red China as a humanitarian obligation.

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/9/8/53024/82110

His logic was a lot like the logic that emerges above, and he was wrong. Had diplomacy failed, (or been absent from the discussion) he might have been proven right.

That said, you may well be right this time--and for the same reason. This sort of blindness creates a situation in which the game played becomes a very special type of game- a negative sum game in which if one player initiates the game, all must play. Think arms race.

This whole discussion deletes that most central human ability-to talk it over and find compromise, common ground, or at least a non-fatal strategy. The US today?

John Bolton:
"I don't do carrots."

More than once I have pointed out that because of this, and the loss of the Empire's other sources of power, the US is in danger of breaking the nuclear taboo.

As a grad student, I found myself traveling ever deeper into the land of the expert, which predisposes "expert think". When I discovered that I was becoming an expert, and therefore losing a broader picture, my education began a different path. I'm grateful for that discovery.
Good (or at least functional) policy is the province of generalists. Policy makers employ experts, and hopefully know when to gently put them back in their box. With luck, someone will be smart enough to put these guys away.

Eisenhower was the exception in the world of the military- he held onto the broader view. I don't know how, but it's a good thing.
 

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.