Old reflexes, born of the victories of 1945 and 1989, linger among Britain and America’s political elites, which seem almost incapable of shaking off habits bred of the long Anglo-American imperium – what the American diplomat and writer George Kennan in his last years denounced as an “unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable” tendency “to see ourselves as the centre of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world”. In Afghanistan, the Anglo-American alliance hopes to bomb the Taliban to the negotiating table, baffling Afghans who, like most people, believe that the end of war – not more war – is a necessary prelude to dialogue. Culturally blind, tough-guy tactics also tend to be strategically dumb. Full article.