Contra Walter Russell Mead
June 22nd, 2010




WRM has a typically incisive post on Brazil’s retreat from its Iranian indiscretion. However, he includes this strange note:

[t]he light and casual way in which the world’s pundits (many of them utterly ignorant about Brazil’s long history of diplomatic disappointment) concluded from a single, ill-advised diplomatic initiative that Brazil had decisively changed its place in the world is evidence of just how little reflection and experience goes into world politics today.

Second, we should think about why so much commentary (and, unfortunately, serious policy making) is so frequently seduced by quick and silly analysis. 

Says the writer with Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds placed prominently on his blog roll. (Go ahead and look. I’m serious.)
The answer to Mead’s question–or at least a very large part of the answer–is the internet, which favors speed over deliberation and rewards people like Andrew Sullivan rather than people like, well, Walter Russell Mead.


  1. Jacob June 23, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    "Says the writer with Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds placed prominently on his blog roll."Dude, you work for the Weekly Standard.

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