Their ineptitude is gargantuan because their organization is an umbrella over diffuse and contradictory interests and forces. Those at the top don’t know what goes on beneath them, cannot obtain good information, can’t control those below them, can’t formulate clear goals, can’t measure whether they are attaining those goals, are subject to biased advice, act on their own biases, and govern with the weaknesses and limitations endemic to all human beings.

The relations between the U.S. government and NATO are a case in point. Just as the colonial and imperial projects of past empires typically cost more than their gains, proving to be albatrosses, so is keeping NATO alive when it should have been killed in 1989.