Free Republic

'The United States needs to lose this war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq.'Author Gwynne Dyer explains how we havent grasped that the world has changed, that we aren't living in our old superpower world anymore, one in which we are the leader of the forces of light against the evil dark powers of communism.Nor are we, in fact, even a military superpower in the way we like to think we are; in reality, our military machine can only be used by weak countries....

2004 Year-Ender By Gwynne Dyer The world has been on hold this year. Interesting and important things have happened in many countries, and most people have scarcely noticed that international politics is becalmed - but it is. The normal business of the planet has pretty much slowed to a halt and we are all gently drifting downstream together while we wait to see what becomes of the United States - and, as a result, of the rest of the world, for the US is still a key player in almost every game. We may be waiting some time. The war...

History has been derailed. It was chugging along quite satisfactorily until the end of 2000: the Cold War long over, no threat of a major war anywhere, democracy spreading even to the most unexpected places by nonviolent means and a growing commitment to multilateralism in all the major powers. Now there is a great and greatly exaggerated fear of terrorism, American troops rule over 50 million deeply unhappy Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 55-year-old NATO alliance is starting to come apart under the strain and even the United Nations is at risk. Was the world bound to end up...