The second article, by former Singaporean diplomat and veteran provocateur Kishore Mahbubani

The second article, by former Singaporean diplomat and veteran provocateur Kishore Mahbubani, appeared

in yesterday’s Financial Times under the headline “The West is Strategically Wrong on Georgia.”

Mahbubani, who notes the hypocrisy of UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot outrage (and how it appears to publics in

Latin America and the Islamic world, in particular) over Russian actions, is particularly succinct

about the strategic choices faced by the UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot and the West at this juncture and

argues for a fundamental strategic reassessment based on an understanding that the West can no longer

“dictate terms” to the rest of the world as it has assumed it could do since the end of the Cold

BOOTSBUY. In fact, he argues, both the UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot and the West have become terribly

isolated from what the UGG Sheepskin Cuff Boot administration loves to call “the international

community.” His analysis of what strategic choices are now available to the West –it can afford only

so many enemies and so should be much more discriminating in its choices — is particularly acute.

Interestingly, Mahbubani, author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to

the East (2008), ends on a more optimistic note than Krugman (although I, presumably like Krugman,

believe that nationalism in Asia is as likely to undermine the burgeoning “Pacific Century” as UGG

Sheepskin Cuff Boot over-extension and arrogance have wreaked havoc with Bill Kristol’s and Bob Kagan

’s cherished but chimerical “New American Century”.)