Posted on 05/25/2009 9:10:30 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Edited on 05/26/2009 6:13:22 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
We are on the edge of one of those periods of history when the gimbals on which the established order is mounted shift and a new world order begins to emerge. And these are, almost always, the most frightening and turbulent of times.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenews.com.pk ...
It’s kind of weird that Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the UK’s ultra left-wing Liberal Democratic Party, is talking about Europe having to worry about security threats. I thought Europeans believed that the period of peace after WWII was the result of European moral virtue, not American military might. Maybe they’re not too coked-up to see reality for what it is, and there’s hope for them after all.
well if the writer refers to the troops in Germany for example he is correct saying that they are not there to protect anyone but most of this “report” is just total wrong (to say it polite :-) The US will no longer have a euro centric policy? and so will Europe the other way around? Shuuuure ;-) this writer just ignores such little facts that only for example the US and Europes economys are tied so close together that this is just not possible without resulting in a total desaster for both. so i guess this will not happen.
I think you've just called them on it.
Anti-Americanism in Europe, in the last century, has usually been associated with Marxism. I noticed it in the writing of English youth writer Arthur Ransome many years ago, and I wondered why he seemed to dislike America. Years later I found out Ransome was a Eurocommunist who'd been to Russia during and immediately after the Russian Revolution, and he'd married Politburo member Grigoriy Zinoviev's personal secretary.
If the US slips, there will not be another pre-eminent superpower. THere will be many super-powers but no one completely dominating like the US did for 50 years after WWII.
The zero was invented by the first cave man who ran out of food. :)
And therefore is still a Raj -- an Empire without the Empress of India and Defender of the Faith.
Which an enterprising enemy could attempt to screw with by fomenting internal regional and religious resentments, Hindu vs. Moslem, Hindu vs. Sikh, etc., etc.
In contrast, Europe was NOT the world-shaping force until the age of discovery and it really took off after the Ottomans were defeated in the 1600s and when the Mughals collapsed around the same time.
If there were no political-protective or solidarity dimension there, our support activities would be run out of southern Europe or Turkey or Egypt.
If the Russians go charging into Poland, we'll be there in three days.
By 1500, the only remnant of China's big-junk, ocean-going navy was a stone junk in the imperial palace grounds. Ostensibly a tribute to China's glorious navy, it was instead an inside joke, a self-congratulatory trophy put up by the mandarins to celebrate their political-infighting victory over the admirals.
It's still there -- saw it in the travelogue footage broadcast during the Olympics last summer.
If there were no political-protective or solidarity dimension there, our support activities would be run out of southern Europe or Turkey or Egypt.
If the Russians go charging into Poland, we’ll be there in three days.
How's this?
This sentence was chosen for response because seems to make the point. How can a foreign policy that consists mostly of doing very little become more subtle and sophisticated. Perhaps the diplomats can be more decisive in their choices of wine and hor’derves.
Then there is the part about the gathering into groups to project power. There have been attempts in the Western hemisphere that are failures. He left out the Gulf where there is the grouping of the GCC countries that are making steady progress toward becoming a very strong economic force and more important in world affairs than the stodgy Euros.
George Bush changed the world by invading Iraq and destroying the status quo. That action and the results flowing from it removed the Euros from having a voice in the change in the mid east. America, The GCC and Iran are now the players. Israel became less important because the moderate Arabs learned that fighting the Palestinian battle was small potatoes compared to the coming war with Iran. It is better to have an ally you don't like than fight a bad enemy alone.
When Iraq joins the GCC and the might of the military there is honed to American quality, the power shift will be complete. Iran will be isolated and all alone. In ten or fifteen years, there can be a resumption of the ostracicing of Israel except by that time there will be enough trade to temper animosity.
The rise of the Gulf is already a threat to the Euros. Trading companies owned by UAE Arabs and staffed by Indians are making strong inroads into the century old trading relations between excolonial Africa and Europe. Stodgy French trading companies are losing out to fast moving and technically savvy Gulf traders. Plastics and such derived from oil are being made in the Gulf because there are better, newer plants staffed by non union Asians. The oilless Euro petro chemical plants are doomed.
The Gulf states know that there can be extremely rapid progress when American organizational skills, oil money and third world labor are combined. Those forces will be applied by Kuwaiti, Saudi and Dubai companies to cause Iraq to explode with economic capability. Now that the shackles are gone, the pent up power can be released.
This growth will obsolete Europe.
Meanwhile in the Western hemisphere, most will stagnate. Brazil and USA/Canada will do well but the rest will writhe in the slime of the patriarchs fighting against the masses.
Then there is Asia...... India, China, Japan? how will they get along?
Well, no, and yes — it could be called a Raj, but more correctly is a confederation, like Switzerland. And yes, enemies have tried to screw with the Swiss too — the Zurich wars as an example.
Remember if you will, in the 70’s armed Iranians attacked Mecca and were killed off to a man. That fight is at least 30 years old already
Ditto Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Columbia, and Georgetown and the other privilege academies.
Dartmouth, however, earns a reprieve for having given us Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingraham, the Dartmouth Review, and Poisoned Ivy (with foreword by Wm. F. Buckley).
I might relent on Yale for similar reasons, but the Bonesmen would have to go, for the same reasons as Harvard's Porcellians. No "Brotherhoods of the Bell" in America, thank you.
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