An Italian would smile and proudly admit he had sex with that woman; a Frenchman would just shrug and say of course I did, so what. But look at someone like Berlusconi and you see how power and vanity corrupts the political class all over. The Dutch politicians seem pretty decent but I don't follow the local media carefully. And the country is too small to matter much.
One of the major downsides to the ad hoc coalition of the willing with Albania and Pallau is that it excludes the major players we need for effective antiterrorism, trade agreements, immigration issues, etc. Foreign affairs is not a game where you can take your ball and go home in a huff. It doesn't accomplish anything. And huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf also doesn't get anywhere. Just ask Krushchev, the shoe-thumper.
I never heard the idea about nuking the USSR preemptively. Even if we had (which would have been a tragedy on many levels) do you doubt that they would have become a nuclear rival later, short of the US occupying the whole Soviet Union like we did in Iraq?
Most pre-emptive wars are a fantasy substitute for doing the hard work of achieving your aims in a multistate system.
The "world's only superpower" theory has some serious holes. The US can obliterate any single country we like - but we won't dare attack most of the other significant powers in the world for various reasons - alliances, nuclear retaliation, etc. First big hole.
Economically the US is far from dominant. We can talk more about why but the trends seem obvious. Hole #2. Politically, we no longer have a leadership position for the 100+ countries that opposed our Iraq policy. Hole #3.
So we should be careful how far we take the "world's only superpower" argument. If you can't operationalize an advantage in foreign affairs, it's a rhetorical flourish at best.
Back in the bad old 90's, most countries we dealt with were interested in making an effort to deal with common problems. There were clashes and disappointments and breakdowns, but a system was evolving where we could work together.
Today the US cannot dictate a new system - that is a proven fact. And the old fora are broken - UN, NATO, G8, WTO, etc. Blaming others for the breakdown is the equivalent of doing nothing.
In my mind, only a systematic effort to rebuild the world order to everyone's satisfaction has a hope in hell of providing the US with real long-term security. |
