(via Instapundit) FANTASTIC article in TCS from Lee Harris on the need to shift our vocabulary & meme maps to address the new world of force / anarchy / and liberalism we contend with. 

Harris argues that our current language and ideological norms for international diplomacy are inadequate in the face of rogue states, global terror networks and weapons of mass destruction.   This is a topic that folks like myself, Parapundit, Den Beste, Ralph Peters, and so on have written about at length.  Harris goes one further by providing a very formalized, structural theory for why these norms came about and how they are being systemically attacked.

Most doctrines that govern our "liberal world order" assume similar goals / motivations for all players -- e.g. Realpolitik.   Germany and Japan in WWII sought more territory for greater GNP.   Their actions were fundamentally grounded in a motivation that we were able to wrap our minds around because they mirrored our our own desires for greater wealth (although Americans tend to see domestic avenues for securing this).   This predictability was the essence in preventing "anarchy of the mind"  and thus anarchy amongst nations -- it's what concepts like deterrence are fundamentally predicated upon.  You nuke me into the stone age and I'll nuke you back there too and it will suck cuz neither of us will have our new Pentium 4 laptops.

But what happens when you a playing chess with someone who refuses to accept the rules of the game? How do you respond if your opponent begins to jump his knight in all sorts of bizarre zigzag patterns, so that you cannot predict where he will land or what piece he will seize?

In a game of chess the answer is obvious: You stop playing with the madman and go your separate way. But this, unfortunately, is not an option in dealing with genuine conflicts arising in the real world. That is why the supposed realism expressed by the concept of Realpolitik can only be of value in a world comprised exclusively of rational actors.

Harris' discussion of the role of wealth creation in providing a reality check was particularly well done:

Why does this matter? The answer to this question has been provided by Hegel in his Master/Slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit, and was subsequently taken up as a fundamental theme of Marx's own thinking.

When people are forced to create their own material world through their own labor, they are certainly not setting out to achieve a greater insight into the nature of reality - they are merely trying to feed themselves, and to provide their children with clothing and a roof over their heads. And yet, whether they will or no, they are also, at every step of the way, acquiring a keener grasp of the objective nature of world. A man who wishes to build his own home with his own hands must come to grips with the recalcitrant properties of wood and gravity: he must learn to discipline his own activities so that he is in fact able to achieve his end. He will come to see that certain things work and that others don't. He will realize that in order to have A, you must first make sure of B. He will be forced to develop a sense of the realistic - and this, once again, is a cultural constant, measured entirely by the ability of each particular culture to cope successfully with the specific challenge posed by the world it inhabits.

But all of this is lost on the man who simply pays another man to build his home for him. He is free to imagine his dream house, and to indulge in every kind of fantasy. The proper nature of the material need not concern him - gravity doesn't interest him. He makes the plans out of his head and expects them to be fulfilled at his whim.

The wealth of the Arab world -- having sprung from the ground with no incremental work necessary to create it -- is a case of the "man who pays another to build his home."   Harris argues that perversely, had the West simply robbed the Arab world of it's Oil, it would have seeded the Hegelian dialectic long ago resulting in a more "reality-bound" mindset in the region. 

Leaders in that region, in the process of forming the inevitable insurgency against Western power would have then been forced to adopt more of the tools & intellectual strategies necessary to mount an effective campaign against Western military.   These tools and intellect would have then seeded a more modernist world view and one that would be more compatible with underlying belief systems of the Western world.  By contrast, Western willingness to pay for Oil rather than steal it directly facilitated the fantasy ideology -- a very provocative line of argument indeed.