It has long been the position of serious analysts of the Vietnam War that – whatever one may think about the merit or otherwise of the exercise – the project was doomed from the moment it became obvious that the policies sustaining it no longer aligned with reality. (Recently a columnist in the Melbourne Age asserted the same proposition in relation to the conflict in the Middle East. Perhaps he is right. But that is another story.)The same fate appears to be overtaking the global economic syste…
