‘That Was Amateur Night’, (Newsweek)…John Barry, Nov 3, 2008.
Interview with Robert Gates … More dangerous than the Cold War …
Look around. Iran. North Korea. A Russia that people have a hard time figuring out what to make of. The Chinese are not so much a security challenge, but they clearly have some very significant military modernization programs underway that are worrisome. North Korea: what’s going to happen now? The entirety of Central Asia, where you have pressures on them from Russia to toe the line, and their wanting to maintain some sense of independence—but how much? Again, nobody knows where that line is… The problems that Pakistan faces. So you’ve got all of these. You’ve got the whole Israeli-Palestinian-Syrian challenge. In our own hemisphere, Venezuela. And then, of course, there is Al Qaeda and a variety of violent extremists that are still very much out there. That’s a pretty long list of challenges that the new guys need to be prepared to deal with from day one.
An ambitious agenda.
Yes, and one of the many obstacles to reform is that, at the top of government, the urgent always tends to crowd out the important. And that tension has gotten worse now, I think, because of the complexity of the world we face. I recall Henry Kissinger in 1970. There had been the Syrian invasion of Jordan. I think something was going on in Lebanon. And we had discovered the Soviets were building a submarine base in Cuba. I always thought Kissinger managing two or three crises at the same time was an act of legerdemain. I tell you: that was amateur night compared to the world today.
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