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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (1366)	8/9/2002 5:50:35 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 3959

Even Globaloney Evangelist Fukuyama has eventually found out that "West" and "Western" were nothing more than Cold-War buzzwords... The set of "shared values" between Eurasia and America was basically cheap agitprop: The West may be cracking Francis Fukuyama Friday, August 9, 2002 Europe and America MELBOURNE Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and radical Islamism more generally represent ideological challenges to Western liberal democracy that are in certain ways sharper than those offered by communism. But in the long run it is hard to see that Islamism offers much of a realistic alternative as a governing ideology for real world societies. Not only does it have limited appeal to non-Muslims, it does not meet the aspirations of the vast majority of Muslims themselves. In the countries that have had recent experience of living under an actual Muslim theocracy - Iran and Afghanistan - there is every evidence that it has become extremely unpopular. [...] iht.com What Fukuyama still fails to grasp is that world powers don't challenge the US's leadership in world affairs.... Nobody in the world want to displace the U.S.A. as the undisputed power broker of last resort. Actually, what the EU, China, Japan and Russia are vying for is the #2 slot. So far, on the military level, Russia has enjoyed the #2 status... However, her nuclear deterrence was jeopardized by the US's missile defence scheme. Economically speaking, Europe (that is, the EU) is unquestionably the world's second largest economic bloc. But then again, Transpacific trade is gradually displacing the Transatlantic one....