Two items, tenuously connected.

First, there was the article today in the Guardian quoting sources claiming that the calls for additional NATO troops for deployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans is putting a large strain on national resources in the member countries. This is consistent with the recent reports that the U.S. is calling up more reserves to bolster our troop levels in Iraq. Apparently, the western alliances are approaching the limits of police power.

Second is Wesley Clark's article espousing a multilateral foreign policy that reaches out for consensus with other nations and the UN before acting aggressively. What stands out is his overriding emphasis on the role of NATO as our main strategic partner in any multilateral program. His is a strong anglo-saxon / indo-european bias, and one logical extension of his position is that he would support a further entrenchment of the indo-european axis (from America to Europe, then through Israel, Turkey, and India on to Australia and New Zealand) against the Islamicists and Asians.

From Sun Tzu forward, knowing thy enemy has been a core teaching. If it is Islam and the Muslim world that we are against, then we are in an extremely weak position. They know considerably more about us than we know about them. They speak and read our languages. They have studied our beliefs. We don't know there's.

It is time, if for only strategic reasons, that we reach out and infuse their cultures rather than try to impose ours. A hardening of lines will only lead to greater ignorance of the outside (and, almost inevitably, increased scrutiny of the inside) and this will only increase our weakness. Our military resources are already stretched, and more isolation only leads to more demand on those resources to maintain the barrier. Reaching out to Islamists, rather than pro-American Arabs, is the only way that we can acheive a satisfactory security based on an informed understanding of other positions.