Is hypocrisy essential to the New World Order?
Whilst I appreciate the seductive insights and plausible analysis offered by Lee Harris in this lengthy and generally intelligent essay, I worry that the linking of themes in the intellectual form here merely provides, if not more ammo to the hawks in GWB's Cabinet, the justification for his unending 'war on terror'. There's thinly veiled xenophobia, I'm sure; but also some self-limiting principles compatible with a new kind of 'liberal hegemony' - called 'neo-sovereignty', viz., "It (neo-sovereignty) will only be viable if the U.S. scrupulously refuses to intervene in the self-determination of any state except for the purposes of maintaining the double standards in respect of nuclear weapons... At the heart of the dialectically emergent concept of neo-sovereignty is precisely the double standard that Mr. (Richard, the Chief Arms Inspector of the United Nations) Butler denounced - a double standard imposed by the U.S. on the rest of the world, whereby the U.S. can unilaterally decide to act, if need be, to override and even to cancel the existence of any state regime that proposes to develop WMD, especially in those cases where the state regime in question has demonstrated its dangerous lack of a sense of the realistic." [More inside]
posted by dash_slot- on Mar 11, 2003 - 30 comments

Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror. "During the war on terrorism, George W. Bush has shown a split personality on the promotion of democracy abroad. Bush the realist seeks warm ties with dictators who may help in the fight against al Qaeda, while Bush the neo-Reaganite proclaims that democracy is the only true solution to terror. How the administration resolves this tension will define the future of U.S. foreign policy."
posted by homunculus on Jan 8, 2003 - 5 comments

'How can you exert pressure on someone by saying to them: Even if you accede to our demands, we will destroy you?...That made things difficult for others.' As the attack on Iraq seems to grow more imminent, world opposition mounts to America's free-for-all "we'll do what we please attitude".
posted by Espoo2 on Sep 5, 2002 - 13 comments

Chinese checkmate ? "Those who love to quote Sun Tzu might consider his nationality', says James Webb, as he offers still more cogent reasons why a 30 year "MacArthurian regency in Baghdad" is probably not in America's national interest. Why are the military men the ones who have to keep pointing out the unwisdom of an invasion of Iraq? Quoth Secretary Webb: "The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years."
posted by rdone on Sep 4, 2002 - 18 comments

Terror and Liberalism I have found this piece in The American Prospect to be one of the most balenced pieces I have yet come across. It considers all aspects of the terrorist groups--Israel, American policy, poverty, Iraq, fundamentalisim, history of the area, westernization, etc and finds the rights and wrongs in each, offering finally a way to cope with things in the future while at the same time dealing with present needs. In other words, it avoids the overly simplistic formulas offered by so many stalwarts of the far Right or far Left.
posted by Postroad on Oct 5, 2001 - 12 comments