for better or worse? u tell me
None of this matters at all. Bush needs to be investigated for whether he was the reason that Valerie Plame was outed.
A generally good article. Some points I notice:
"As Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations argues, if the focus is exclusively on China's rising power vis-à-vis the United States, the historic model is Europe circa 1914, with China in the role of Germany."
Funny enough that I was reading a biography of Nicholas II of Russia the otehr day. It was written in 1993, just soon after the Soviet Union's dissolution. The author was British (can't recall his name) and he put forth taht the world order was much nearer to pre-1914 world than the previous 70 years, with the United States as the equivalent of the British Empire's position vis-a-vis Japan recasting the pre-1914 Germany's role. Of course the noise is much different, and now these same people consisder (P.R.) China rather than Japan now cast as the new Germany.
"All of this means our lingering Eurocentrism is out of place. We should care less about Jacques Chirac taking offense at our latest alleged gaucherie and more about what Dr. Manmohan Singh — he prime minister of India — thinks of attempts in Congress to torpedo the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. Europe is yesterday's news; Asia is tomorrow's."
Europe is also trying to build up diplomatic, trade, and military focus in Asia, although efforts so far have been rather "dialogues" (read: confabs) like the annual Europe-Asian summits. Asian countries still consider Europe important at least on lip levels, but in reality the only thing that matters to Asian countries about Europe is trade.
Also it is interesting to notice that when the US makes signals about shifting focus to Asia away from Europe, the US liberals, and professional diplomat circles will then wail out about "alienating and cold shouldering our traditional allies in Europe", but nary a peep is heard from them when we watch news about European countries' and Canada etc's statements that they are to focus on Asia away from the US.
Asia is not rising, they are just multiplying.
"Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece."Let me know when the garage sale begins. European junk should have a good resale value in those hot Asian markets.
"America needs to remain...working with Europe, no matter how annoying that is."It's not a matter of annoyance. It's a matter of drain--how much propping up we're willing to to and is it worth it--whether we're willing to save them yet again or just shrug as they go down the drain into Islamic theocracy.
We saved them from mutual destruction We saved them from Naziism. We saved them from communism. Is it worth it to save them yet again?
(Speaking of garage sale, maybe we'd better pick up the European nukes as soon as we can. No need to leave them just sitting there when the Muslims take over.)
"If we offend Europe..."...so what? We offend Europe merely by existing. They can't scrape together the energy or the will to survive. They're going to do something about the offensiveness of the U.S.?
"Taiwan could be an occasion for a war."Okay. Why not tell the Taiwanese to come over here to America? Make them U.S. citizens. They're strongly anti-communist. Then China can have Taiwan. This will also avoid a Fall-of-Saigon scenario.
"India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed adversaries."This is bad, but it does keep India in strong alliance with the U.S.
"China could break up into feuding fiefdoms."Anything's possible, but this is highly unlikely.
"Then, there's the psycho-state of North Korea."Essentially a Chinese puppet. Not likely to do anything serious as long as China's kept happy.