Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic

The most striking point about Robert Kaplan's profile of Col. Tom Wilhelm in Mongolia in The Atlantic (March '04) is the leader that describes Wilhelm as a "soldier-diplomat." (Are the leaders in the Atlantic written by the article's author?) I'm always suspicious of these admiring profiles in the first place, but where is the State Department? The reason a U.S. colonel is in Mongolia isn't revealed until the end of the profile, when Kaplan notes that Mongolia's eastern border is 500 miles from North Korea, and "an air base here could be an important asset." (A very questionable idea, incidentally.) Although Kaplan doesn't mention it, his profile shows the extent to which foreign policy is run by the Defense Department, not State. Of course, State, to some extent, self-inflicted this wound -- when you spend several decades frittering away your time on migratory bird treaties, Congress gradually gives you smaller budgets.