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Behind the Headlines by Justin RaimondoAntiwar.com April 8, 2002 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA POSTREL?Post-9/11: Who speaks for libertarianism – the Old Right or the Neocon Clones? A note from the author: I apologize, in advance, for the sheer length of this column, but since it addresses the sell-out of basic libertarian principles by people and institutions who purport to speak in its name, I thought it important to address these questions thoroughly, with extensive quotations from those I name. Too bad, in attacking Antiwar.com, these pathetic losers didn't do the same – but then what can one expect from craven...

Just call us “leader of the free world.” The United States is getting tagged as an “empire” from all quarters. Indeed, it’s been a century since the notion of an American empire got such wide circulation, and back then Washington truly had designs on such expansion. (Google “Spanish-American War” if you’re interested.) The empire charge has long been a staple of the political extremes. It’s even bubbled up in the presidential race. Lefty Rep. Dennis Kucinich insists that we must abandon “the ambitions of empire.” Hyper-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul says we could afford health care if we weren’t running...

So Americans should be thankful they have one of the last functioning nation-states. Europeans, because they've been so inept at exercising it, no longer believe in national sovereignty, whereas it would never occur to Americans not to. This profoundly different attitude to the nation-state underpins, in turn, Euro-American attitudes to transnational institutions such as the United Nations. But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too. When something terrible and destructive happens – a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan – the United States can project itself anywhere on the...

Summary: Controversies over the war in Iraq and U.S. unilateralism have overshadowed a more pragmatic and multilateral component of the Bush administration's grand strategy: its attempt to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy and international institutions in order to account for shifts in the global distribution of power and the emergence of states such as China and India. This unheralded move is well intentioned and well advised, and Washington should redouble its efforts.

Mr Putin said the US "has overstepped its borders" The Munich security conference was born in the 1960s - the height of the Cold War. Forty years on, there been talk of a new chill. Given the tone and content of Russian President Vladimir Putin's address to the gathered defence ministers, parliamentarians and pundits, it is not, perhaps, hard to see why. Warming quickly to his task after only the briefest of greetings, President Putin accused the US of establishing, or trying to establish, a "uni-polar" world. "What is a uni-polar world? No matter how we beautify this term,...

Two years ago, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, much of the opposition in Europe focused on the need to restrain the American "hyperpower" from running roughshod over international norms. But as President Bush nears the end of his goodwill tour of Europe this week, it is increasingly clear the attitude has shifted. With the United States pinned down in Iraq, where the continued deployment of nearly 150,000 troops has severely strained the U.S. military, European leaders no longer expect further military expeditions in Bush's second term. And so they have been gracious -- but assertive, thus reflecting...

Two years ago, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, much of the opposition in Europe focused on the need to restrain the American "hyperpower" from running roughshod over international norms. But as President Bush nears the end of his goodwill tour of Europe this week, it is increasingly clear the attitude has shifted. With the United States pinned down in Iraq, where the continued deployment of nearly 150,000 troops has severely strained the U.S. military, European leaders no longer expect further military expeditions in Bush's second term. And so they have been gracious -- but assertive, thus reflecting...

Economics: Europe has been the source of many of America's most beloved fairy tales. Not all are of ancient origin. Take the European Union's insistence five years ago that its economy would leapfrog ours by 2010. The so-called Lisbon Strategy was unveiled with much fanfare. Struck in the Portuguese capital, the deal essentially predicted the EU economy would pass up America's and leave it in the dust. At the time, it sounded reasonable. The EU was adding new members, and the common wisdom was that the U.S., though a big military power, was suffering from what geostrategists like to call...

President Bush travels to Europe in February -- stopping first in the old continent's pint-sized capital city. Why Brussels, instead of London or Paris or Warsaw? Not for the chocolate. A small but increasingly prominent cluster of foreign-policy thinkers -- call them bipolarists -- believe they know the answer: Whether Bush likes it or not, there are two superpowers in the world, and the other is Europe. Unlike communism, the E.U. seems to represent not an enemy of liberal capitalism, but a new and possibly improved version of it. In 2002, Charles A. Kupchan, a professor of international relations at...

<p>We may now be witnessing the most radical reshaping of the Middle East since it acquired its modern form (and many of its modern problems) in the wake of World War I. What the British Empire began, the American Empire may be about to finish.</p>