The actual title of Ralph Peters' article is Putin vs. the preppies and the Ph.D.s: Outsiders, not insiders, change the world. My thoughts: Ivy league elites, hidebound and limited in experience and street-level savvy, can't cope with street-level international reality. Peters nails it. I have long felt that Obama's "education" narrowly ideological, his knowledge of history abysmal, his grasp of (sinful) human nature non-existent, and his prejudices blinding. Here are two pull-quotes from Peters' valuable article:
Once-great universities have turned into political indoctrination centers worthy of the high Stalinist Era or the age of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Their aims may be more benign, but their unwillingness to consider alternative worldviews is every bit as rigid. . . .
Putin, that “petty bureaucrat,” has won every significant confrontation with the West, conquering foreign territory and humiliating presidents. Iran’s negotiators have outmaneuvered their Western interlocutors so spectacularly that they really don’t need Obama’s deal, having gotten most of what they needed: time and partial sanctions relief. And the Islamic State has confounded not only our elite’s prejudices about how the world should work, but demolished their platitudinous nonsense that “All men want peace.” In fact, some men delight in inflicting grotesque forms of violence on others.