Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman

As for the breakers, be they individuals or groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, they cannot be deterred. They can, though, be contained and degraded in their various theaters of operation, by using air power, special forces, drones, and local forces. In the end, however, they can only be sustainably destroyed by their host communities’ delegitimizing their narrative and ultimately killing or jailing their leaders. Outsiders can help degrade them, but ultimately only the village can destroy them. Yes, it makes for a rather messy strategic environment. Which only reinforces why, as Waylon Jennings might have put it in song, “Momma, don’t let your daughters grow up to be secretaries of state.” You need to juggle drones and walls where you must; invest in chickens, gardens, and schools where you can; amplify islands of decency wherever you find them; deter competing superpowers—whenever you’re not also enlisting their help; learn to live with the fact that a foreign policy of amplify, deter, and degrade will more often than not require us to side with the least bad over the worst; and finally, appreciate that widening decency is the necessary precursor to electoral democracy—and in many places is more important.