The challenge for Washington is no longer whether it possesses sufficient capabilities, but whether the political system can align those capabilities behind a coherent long-term priority.
So, to succeed in the trough of graft, a politician must have a profusion of scandals, so many of them all at once such that they would eventually overwhelm the system’s capacity to cope.
European autonomy - military, technological, economic, and financial - is beginning to take shape as Europe hedges against current and future fluctuations in [U.S.] policy.