I just have to say that this is based on a totally fucked up view of "control"/"willful"/"stubborn" that pervades socializing mode parenting.

Regardless of what application it has to international relations, every parent who would be free from the "problems" children are postulated to present in the above examples should read "Parenting for a Peaceful World" by Robin Grille and Alfie Kohn's "Unconditional Parenting".

/soapbox (grrrr...)

Even working within this godawful metaphor a large problem being the assumption that the U.S. is the parent and not the unruly child.

It goes the other way too: the experience of growing up with four siblings is still, to this day, probably my biggest source of insight into international politics.

Game theory, asymmetrical warfare, forming alliances and getting betrayed, spying, manipulating more powerful entities, using force on less powerful ones -- it was all there.

(I love my family, despite what this may sound like.)

Least useful metaphor ever devised. Whatever the value of Steve Walt's work, this disappoints tremendously.

America as parent-superpower, somehow with the position and capacity to teach or control sovereign nations? No, that conception badly damages the U.S.'s ability to function at all, let alone maintain its national security.

It's the idea that we're smarter or have any authority that has damaged our national security and destabilized the world order. What other nations do is not within our purview.

America is the loose cannon on the deck of the international ship of state.

Walt's done us a grave disservice.

Simple minds posit simple solutions. i.e. "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. . ."

I'm too lazy on this Soltice morn to google the source, but here's a reminder to all the Right Wing War Dogs:

Warfare is the failure of diplomacy.

I'm glad Walt loves his kids. But he's still an ass. And the most illuminating thing about this extended metaphor is that he's made the US the "Daddy" and everyone we're dealing with in the world the "kids."

he's made the US the "Daddy"

Perhaps, the smart-ass know-it-all adolescent, with more muscles than common sense? (Fortunately, my kids have been more thoughtful than the stereotype, at least so far.)

Agreed with almost everyone above. As long as idiot USAmericans continue to see their country as the noble "parent" to all the other unruly "children" countries, the whole world is effed.

"Remember, kids, it's all Israel's fault."

Msybe it's because, as a recently adoptive parent (which means I've got a 2 year old, but the whole parenting thing is still quite new to me), I was reading Walt's piece more for the insights that IR can provide parents, rather than the other way around. but I found his piece both hilarious and insightful. To each his own, I guess.

That this was thought to be worth writing at all is a testament to how screwed-up US social policy is, and to the magnitude of the effects on that screwed-upness on the rest of the world. He's telling us, in effect, that international-relations scholars are still writing tome after tome and having learned discussions about stuff that any involved parent of two or more kids can deal with in their sleep (and often does). And for parents, that's just the starting point for a much deeper, more complex set of actions and relationships.

But for some reason that no one can quite fathom, that wouldn't have anything to do with culture and social policy, the set of involved parents and bigwigs in international relations seems pretty much disjoint...