Thinking about the nomination of the odious John Bolton to be our Ambassador to the UN, it occurs to me that there is a cost, in both national security terms and in real dollars, associated with the Bush policy of dismissiveness toward other nations. It might be an interesting project for a think tank to enumerate and analyze the various ways that we lose when we alienate foreign governments. At the moment there are probably not a handful of countries in the world who would be willing to join us on another military adventure in the Middle East; thus, we would bear the $$ costs almost exclusively, and would suffer most of all of the casualties as well. And, I would think a good case can be made that trade with the rest of the world will be on less favorable terms if we are regarded as a pariah.

Quantifying the cost of the BushCo foreign policy in real terms that Wall St. can understand might be very useful.