Stephan:   I have chosen to publish this because I too wonder how it is that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on supposed geopolitical analysis and yet time after time we are caught flatfooted and unaware of major changes. Our failures in the Middle East one would think would occasion a call for a reassessment of this vast bureaucracy. But no. Once bureaucracies  reach a certain level they are very difficult to dismantle or even to correct and redirect. And so we lurch from one grave error to another.