The Ghosts of Kennan
&gt;What he did understand was diplomacy and statecraft.<p>There are few, if any, people left in the federal government who understand these things. Least of all in the upper echelons of the State Department. They are mostly just careerist technocrats who have bought into the arrogant neocon illusion best captured by Karl Rove:<p>“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”<p>These days we get better diplomacy and restraint from the Pentagon leadership, ironically.