Imperial Policy

Fareed Zakaria, one of my favorite foreign policy commentators, writes:

The problem with American foreign policy goes beyond George Bush. It includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement. Other countries can have no legitimate interests of their own. The only way to deal with them is by issuing a series of maximalist demands.

This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world.

Fortunately, he is writing this mostly about recent criticism of Obama administration initiatives, so it shows that at least the Obama administration is moving in strong ways to break open old ways of thinking.