They are, in no particular order: Syria, Iran, the greater Islamist Near East, and the United States Department of State.

Diplomats - especially the established, self-important ones - can be worrisome to the best wishes of free nations when acting as interlocuters between other democracies; downright dangerous when dealing with dictatorships. Theirs is an existence derived from dischord. On-the-fly negotiations and hammered-out, triplicate-signed treaties are among the greatest achievements a tough diplomat can claim; so when faced with the permanent solution to problems, they shrink away lest their usefulness cease to be. Their purpose becomes not the agency and ideology of their superiors, but a slavish devotion to their own superior objectives in conflict arbitrament. Victories or losses cease to matter, wholly supplanted by a desire to play the game while playing up one's significance in world politics. Hans Blix is the patron saint of negotiations for negotiations' sake - he'd have let stymied "inspections" continue indefinitely, never minding the intuitive failure from the beginning and lack of progress thereafter, or the damage inflicted in that diplomatic perpetuity to the due process of law.

But American diplomats are just as susceptible to hubris. Ramesh Ponnuru explains it further:

State isn’t keen on democratizing the Middle East, period. The same day President Bush announced his support for a democratic Iraq, at the American Enterprise Institute, the department issued a classified report throwing cold water on the idea that Iraq could lead a democratic wave in the region. The old saw about the State Department — that its employees tend to regard themselves as the world’s ambassadors to the United States, rather than vice-versa — is true in spades of its Middle East hands. If you see your job as ensuring good relations with, say, Bashar Assad, it will always be easier to reach that goal by changing our behavior than by changing his.

Unless the department is given strong political direction from the top, it will follow its own instincts rather than the policies of whoever happens to be president. There are isolated voices for administration policy at State — notably John Bolton, Elizabeth Cheney, Paula Dobriansky, Mark Lagon, and David Wurmser. But Powell mostly chose State careerists to fill the key jobs. To the extent Powell, Armitage, and their circle have a philosophy of their own, it's the kind of "pragmatic" acceptance of the world just as it is that gives realism a bad name. That philosophy reinforces State’s weaknesses.

Considering State's poorly concealed contempt for Ahmad Chalabi and original choice of American diplomats for post-Saddam Iraq - every one boasting histories of coziness with Near East dictatorships - a State Department-run reconstruction is very ominous for the prospect of Iraq emerging anywhere near stable and democratic. Thankfully, the White House prefers good advice in diplomacy to traditional sources. The Department of Defense appears to have gained the upper hand in democratization, and this priority may be seen through the rest of Bush's term:

So far, the concepts that guide Bush — the doctrine of pre-emption, its application to Iraq, the new national-security strategy — have been coming from the Department of Defense and the vice president’s office. State has offered resistance and foot-dragging, but no alternative concepts. The intellectual agenda is being set by the hated Wolfowitz. Colin Powell, meanwhile, seems content to serve as the State Department’s ambassador to the Bush administration.

So the progressive instincts of Wolfowitz and company - democracy and free markets as the vaccine against the rule of force and terrorism - are set to be vindicated in their clarity and authority. On with it, then! State has had its chance to prove detente over the past fifty years, ending in a grand finale of the United Nations Security Council tarbaby, beneficial only by affording vital military preparation time for Saddam's deposition. Strategies from the true allies of democracy deserve implementation.