Fareed Zakaria slams the beltway's "imperial" foreign policy

An excellent piece by Fareed Zakaria in yesterday's Washington Post slammed the beltway and its "imperial" foreign policy. In doing, he also slammed his own newspaper's editorial pages. Classily but pointedly done, as always. Definitely worth reading.

The problem with American foreign policy goes beyond George Bush. It includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement. Other countries can have no legitimate interests of their own. The only way to deal with them is by issuing a series of maximalist demands. This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world.

As Zakaria points out, a lot of Obama's changes from Bush on policy towards Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iran are welcome and necessary, but are getting pooh-poohed in Washington. The problem here, I think, is Washington.