Jim, a problem with: <I admit with no shame the chauvinsitic totally Americocentric view espoused in the saying from ancient emperial Rome, "What matter if they hate us so long as they fear us."> Fear doesn't get customers or friends.
The control by fear idea is fine for Caesar, Mao, Stalin, Hussein and Hitler. But the USA is a trading nation with profits a function of voluntary social relationships around the world.
The autocrats get their money and power from theft at the barrel of a gun and that only works for hunter-gatherer, agricultural simple societies where wealth is found [like oil, gold or the like] or produced from land or other easily controlled and confiscated assets.
I don't think fear is a suitable method of control and that's what Kissinger was saying with his emphasis on depending less on outright physical power and more on international mindset and co-operative approaches.
Fear will work if the malevolent individuals can feel the fear, but if fear is generalized across huge numbers of people, hatred will soon follow and self-defence will be the outcome. The malevolent few will be hidden in the crowd and feel little fear - no more than the average person and probably less. The way to make them feel fear is to go hunting the malevolent matrix of individuals, large though it might be.
Humans are on the cusp between our chimpoid antecedents and the biotelecosmictechdot.com cyberworld. It's a messy middling ground. Since the USA is the leader into that new world, it wouldn't be good for them to get stuck in the old world of tribal genocidal warfare any more than absolutely essential.
Sure, it's essential to fight off the alligators while draining the swamp, but blowing up the swamp with everyone else it in too is not the way to eliminate the alligators.
It's a tricky business. So far, so good [more or less] - the Taliban didn't last long. Saddam and Uday won't last long either.
Mqurice |
