Dean Acheson used to disparage his critics by...

Dean Acheson used to disparage his critics by comparing them to the farmer who pulled up his seedlings every evening to see how successfully they were taking root. It was a good line, but it did not really describe the success of American policy in the early Cold War. Acheson did not simply plant the right seeds and wait patiently for the harvest. Nor did Henry Kissinger or George Shultz. Effective policy always has in it more experimentation, improvisation, even process of elimination, than its authors like to admit. If a year from now, the Obama administration has not run through at least three or four new ways of thinking about its problems in the Middle East, I’ll be very surprised.

Stephen Sestanovich, former U.S. ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the secretary of state for policy toward the states of the former Soviet Union.

foreignpolicy.com