Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

A Switzerland in British Attire:

...rather than validating the neoconservative vision, Iraq, a year on, has discredited it. For all America's brilliant show of arms, it seems likely to be another instance of Ferguson's paradox of a mighty America that miscalibrates its attempts to project that power.

The challenge for the United States, especially after our reversals in Iraq, is to model American power to fit the real strengths and limitations of our culture and political experience. The most intriguing passage in Ferguson's book is his discussion of an imperialism that would be an appropriate fit with globalization. I suspect he's wrong in thinking the answers can be found in a centuries-old British tradition. We haven't the stuff for that, as Ferguson says, but we may have the stuff for something else that will suit the world far better. We will surely fail as a modern-day version of Gladstone's Britain, but we may yet succeed as America.

What if you were given an empire but didn't want it? Yes.