Sex, Strategy and the Limits of American Power

Lecture by Janet Breslin-Smith.  What is the purpose of American power?

In World War II we developed a strategy and used our power in war to defeat two authoritarian regimes. In the Cold War we expanded our concept of power and strategy, to meet the threat of an aggressive nation state—the Soviet Union—and an aggressive economic model—international socialism. But we have been hobbled without strategy in the current struggle over Islamic Extremism. We forgot about sex, in other words the complex cultural, religious, historic, and social dynamics that mark the war at hand, a war within the culture, within Islam.