'The bad old days of great-power security competition are coming back'

"... The first problem arose from hubris. Convinced that no one could stand up to America's daunting combination of might and right, members of the U.S. foreign-policy elite began expanding NATO in the mid-1990s, but without giving much thought to its potential costs and risks, most notably the possibility that this expansion would adversely affect relations with Russia. They also committed the United States to containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously and eventually decided to try to transform much of the Middle East essentially at gunpoint. The adverse results are painfully obvious: a heightened danger from terrorism, a costly debacle in Iraq, the quagmire in Afghanistan, and a deteriorating relationship with Moscow. Yet even a steady diet of setbacks did not end America's evangelical impulses entirely, as NATO's ill-fated intervention in Libya in 2011 and the protracted drone wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere attest. Not only did these mistakes cost several trillion dollars and thousands of lives, but they also diverted attention from more fundamental long-term challenges..."