Why the United States can't do as much as you think in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

It's clear now to even the wildest-eyed optimist that the recent Middle Eastern uprisings might not augur a spree of democratic revolution. Where they will lead is uncharted territory, but one thing they seem to signify, for now, is a further breakdown of the world order, a fracturing of global power into still more jutting and jagged shards, another round of the unraveling that started when the Cold War ended. -- Afghanistan War: Why the U.S. has less power than you think there ... - Fred Kaplan