In his weekly installment of Under the Influence today, WPR columnist Andrew Bast argues that in formulating foreign policy, no received wisdom, no matter how seemingly sound, or how widely accepted, should escape scrutiny.
That principal is lately being practiced by a number of iconoclasts within the U.S. foreign policy establishment, who are making it a point to question the most sacred cows of U.S. strategy:
Bast points to Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones on al-Qaida, Stephen Walt on the threat of terrorism, and John Mueller on the Taliban.