I have long (considering I've been part of the blogosphere about three months) read Den Beste's blog USS Clueless because of his knowledge of military matters, and because he thinks about problems in depth, but I never would have thought him capable of this. Good for Den Beste! Even if your attention span is too short for long thoughtful posts, click through to this one.

Having made the case that French and German opposition to the US is motivated by a desire to dominate the EU, or by fear of damaging revelations coming out of post-war Iraq, there is an entirely different way of looking at it: it's a clash of cultures. It's a great big miscalculation. It was never intended to become this serious but it got out of hand because everyone trapped themselves.

You can have cases where the cultures of nations are tuned just exactly right so that each side, for the best of intentions, does exactly the wrong thing. American and Japanese soldiers fought a particularly brutal and unforgiving war in the Pacific for exactly this reason.