Why Don't Western Elites and Governments Comprehend International Realities?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
30 November 09

The question readers most often ask me is an extremely basic, vitally important one.

So how can we explain the world's second biggest problem today. The first is the flourishing of radical, often violent forces, committing aggression, making gains, increasing repression. The second is the refusal of all too much of the Western leadership and intelligentsia to notice that reality, then try to do something about it.

And so why does so much of the political and intellectual establishment in the United States and Europe fail to understand what's going on in the world? How do they not see that radical forces are enemies of their societies, not just misunderstood or mistreated potential friends? What prevents them from championing Western civilization's democratic, humanist, liberty-oriented, and free enterprise with reasonable government regulation system?

In short, why don’t they get it?

There are lots of answers, of course but even after one goes through the list the basic disconnect between reality, perception, and policy remains baffling. To see a society with such advantages and assets act as if it were intent on suicide, or at least with blind disregard for its survival, is a strange phenomenon. To view the stronger obsessed with making concessions, the more moral consumed with guilt, a blind inability to identify enemies who keep proclaiming their nature and intentions is just plain bizarre.

If I had to put it all in one sentence--admittedly a long, complex one--it would be this like this:

American and Western policymakers and intellectuals cannot believe or comprehend that so many would fight for bad causes out of ideological--nationalist, religious, traditionalist--worldviews, turning down material betterment in exchange for years of sacrifice, defeat, and suffering; engaging in a battle that a pragmatic assessment says they cannot win.

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