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

To: paul_philp who wrote (64413)	1/5/2003 11:25:08 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks for posting the Ignateiff piece from the Times, Paul. I agree with your assessment. There were several things that caught my eye in addition to the obvious ones: 1. If it was possible, as recently as the end of the last century, to have a serious debate as to whether the US is/was an imperial power, it is no longer so. The counter argument, built out of US government statements, that it was not so, are now gone. We are and Ignatieff is right to write now about the consequences. The arguments shift to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, what the consequences of this will be, etc. 2. I thought Ignatieff did a masterful job of taking a look at the biggest of big pictures. He is the sort of person you read to check that out. In fact, as I type, it strikes me he writes a good bit like Ajami: good lines, nice use of metaphor, a striking insight here and there, but not a sustained argument. If, for instance, Foreign Affairs is the place for serious, sustained argument, then the Ajami piece belongs here, alongside Ignatieff. 2. The quote from Gibbon which has been used a great deal lately, to the effect of the consequences of overextending an empire. Given that presumed dynamics, coupled with the clearly demonstrated arrogance of this set of presidential couch sitters, suggests that hubris is still in store for the US and there will be suffering because of it. 3. One should keep clearly in mind, in assessing Ignatieff's argument about Iraq, that while he argues, somewhat elliptically, that an invasion is, perhaps, a necessary thing, he also argues strongly that the blowback from it will be close to intolerable if such invasion is not coupled with a humane settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His terms there are the familiar ones, a settlement that provides a state for the Palestinians built on contiguous grounds with the genuine prospects for economic growth and stable, representative government and security for the Israelis. 4. Again, since the contours of the American empire and the "burden" it represents are the item all of us will be debating in the future, whether here or over coffee with friends or whatever, this piece is an excellent one to get the thinking caps working.