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I promised a week ago to answer a question that had come up frequently in your emails; namely, whether the U.S. has an "arrogant bunker mentality" and should it, and so on.

First, there seems to be some confusion as to what "bunker mentality" means, with many people assuming it means gravitating towards simple-minded military solutions. That's not what it means. Merriam-Webster defines "bunker mentality" as "a state of mind especially among members of a group that is characterized by chauvinistic defensiveness and self-righteous intolerance of criticism."

So, when Secretary of State Rice responds to the criticism by saying, "The idea that somehow this is a go-it-alone policy is just simply ludicrous," and, "One would only have to be not observing the facts, let me say that, to say that this is now a go-it-alone foreign policy," she A) demonstrates that she does not know what "bunker mentality" means, and B) demonstrates that the administration has an arrogant bunker mentality.

But the larger issue that so many reader emails addressed is whether the policies themselves are effective. So let me give you a very brief overview of various recent Middle East policies.

1) Keep the various factions fighting each other, supplying them with semi-advanced weaponry. Since they need your weapons/intel/etc, they will continue to sell you oil. This option works particularly well (as it did for Reagan) when a second super power is playing the same game. When the second super power collapses, there is significant danger that all factions will wise up to the game, and begin to identify you as the real enemy. This may be particularly aggravated when the new President is a former CIA director.

2) Enjoy your sole super-power status (a.k.a. peace dividend) and abandon Machiavellian tactics, enjoying low oil-prices, so that your dependence on the Middle East rises just as fast as their dependence on you falls.

3) Start picking the newly empowered rogues off one by one, dramatically inflating oil prices and military expenses, in return for which you get to watch the occasionally satisfying hanging. This option is considerably slowed by the need to establish ground-up stable governments in the wake of the deposed regimes, in order to keep pumping and selling the oil.

The paper which produced the "arrogant bunker mentality" line (found here, or in audio version here -- also look for parts 2-7 there) presents an option somewhat like the first policy described above, only rather than making instability the goal, a drift towards stability is encouraged by demanding the institution of human rights and sound economic policies. Simultaneously, a track of energy independence is pursued, which removes the requirement of leaving stable governments to continue pumping oil.

Full disclosure: I didn't cut my teeth stabilizing governments by demanding the institution of human rights and sound economic policies. I took a different tack, but I won't bother you with the nuances. Having said that, the notion of playing factions against each other in order to influence policies towards the betterment of the average person in each faction, while meanwhile trying to remove your own need to play the game (what should we call it, "Compassionate Machiavellianism"?) -- I approve.