Have just found out that the better part of the argument that I made in “this post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/24/3351/, and which I imagined in a rather self-satisfied way to be quite original, was made (apparently some weeks ago) by Mark Leonard in this “online piece”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2821&page=0 for _Foreign Policy_ (online). Oh well. Great minds and all that … (or perhaps, as has just been revealed in my case, not so great).