epsteinbd -
I have to admit that I, like many other Americans, was not exactly happy about the US being "the policeman of the world", and I was pleased when George W., or as I prefer to call him, Dubya, promised that we were not going to do that anymore.
What a difference a day can make!
But I was starting to change my mind long before September 11, due to a running PM conversation with a fellow SI-er who might not want me to use his name, so I won't. He lives in another country that we have been at odds with in the past.
Instead of looking at it as us being "the policeman of the world," he called it the "Pax Americana," which sounds cool to me. He said we owed it to other nations not to walk away and leave a power vacuum. I agree.
But I think it is preferable that other nations help shoulder the burden, cooperatively, at least a quadrilateral Pax, consisting of the US, EEU, Russia and China, which seems to be happening at least for the immediate future.
Maybe I need to dust off my copy of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and see what comes next.
I have to say that what we are facing looks less like the invasions of Huns or the Mongol Hordes or the Germanic tribes and more like warlords causing trouble for travellers on the Silk Road, aside from September 11. BWDIK? |
