Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scumbria who wrote (136094)	4/6/2001 3:23:22 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769670

No one is paranoid. We have international responsibilities. Stability is in our interests. After World War Two, we knocked out the strongest regional powers in Europe and East Asia. The threat of Soviet expansion required a defensive alliance of the states in Western Europe, but Germany had to participate, and there was no way anyone could tolerate that without American participation. Similarly in East Asia: Russian and Chinese ambitions in the East required defensive alliances, but the natural balance wheel, Japan, had abdicated its position and bred distrust, so the United States had to step into the void. Finally, the British Empire had largely maintained freedom of the seas, and tended to stability in South Asia, Asia Minor, and, with the French Empire, Africa. With the sudden devolution of power to the former colonies, a process beginning in the late 40s, and nearly ended by the early 60s, a great deal of exploitable chaos was left, and the United States sought to fill the gap. Anyway, we are still necessary to the continued stability of the international system. That means that we have to maintain credibility as a Super Power, and that we have to monitor the activities of potential aggressors and prepare ourselves against various contingencies. That is, in fact, the old fashioned balance of power system, only we have a greater burden than has historically been the lot of a Great Power.......