Vague commentary on U.S. strategic paralysis and global order decline

effective foreign policy or politics or economics can’t be improvised, the speed of the networks now outstrips the velocity of our decisions — even as citizens expect reactions at the ever-faster pace of their own connection. Think about the speed with which answers are expected in almost any job; all those pressures are yet more extreme at the highest levels of government. Fifth: Though the changes working through the global order depend generally on innovation rooted in American institutions, corporations and ideas, there is now an uneasy sense: This order is slipping from American control. Look back just two decades. Then America stood as the sole superpower, the global leader in finance and economics and technology - and embracing other nations into rules we’d written. Today, allies and enemies alike wonder: Is global order is collapsing? At what speed? And: What comes next? And, sixth, perhaps obviously to you by now: We don’t know where we're going - and our leaders don’t seem to have much ofa clue either. Though nations are capable of adjusting activities at the tactical and operational levels - devising better drones, sharper monetary policy - we've still set no clear strategy. American negotiations are aimed now at small problems, not the heart of the issues we face. In what area of our national security today do we appear more confident than a decade ago? What nation does conduct the confident, creative, energetic an global negotiations of the sort that mark a power with a clear sense of direction? Taken as a whole, these six paradoxes represent nothing less than the potential unbuckling of the greatest power the world has ever seen. And because the whole world is connected to that power, still more of the system may yet be rattled apart. We are surrounded today not only by fish, but enmeshed in a world of connective links that are the tissue of our real power - and a source of danger. A sense of direction. You have to feel as you look at this rotten, dangerous landscape we've made for ourselves in recent years. We need a sense of direction. 6. In response to these challenges, America’s leading figures are now proposing a range of ideas that don’t honestly resonate with much confidence. Really they are having a debate about if they should use more of the old style of power or less. What they aren’t doing is grasping the nature of the age. So no clear, imaginative and coherent picture of where we might head yet exists. In fact, as you're probably starting to suspect, the very best ideas of our incumbent figures may yet make the world more dangerous, may firmly and enthusiastically pull us into connective webs of danger and waste and mis-calculation they don't see. With our Seventh Sense we'll be able to spot and think about many of these dangers in a new, better and more rational way, free from the blinders of habit, but we should know what the world looks like to the blind. Two approaches are predominant among the most respected American elites, who - as leaders of the leaders of the establishment represent an important group for us as 47 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018279