HEE, HEE, HEE...GOOD ONE:

Looking to the Past to Project the End of Pax Americana: a review of The End of the American Era by Charles A. Kupchan (MICHIKO KAKUTANI, December 17, 2002, NY Times)

The vision of the future set forth in Charles A. Kupchan's new book, "The End of the American Era," is a startling and often puzzling one: he predicts that a "decline of American hegemony will play itself out over this decade and the next," with the United States "losing interest in playing the role of global protector of last resort" and the European Union "becoming a new center of global power."

"The stability and order that devolve from American preponderance will gradually be replaced by renewed competition for primacy," he writes. "The unstoppable locomotive of globalization will run off its tracks as soon as Washington is no longer at the controls. Pax Americana is poised to give way to a much more unpredictable and dangerous global environment. And the chief threat will come not from the likes of Osama bin Laden, but from the return of traditional geopolitical rivalry." [...]

[T]he president's avowals that the United States will go it alone against Iraq if necessary underscore the relevance of the many discussions in this book about America's "long-standing aversion to multilateral institutions": its "unwillingness to compromise the freedom of unilateral initiative" and the possibly dangerous consequences of this stance. Mr. Kupchan reminds us of the Bush administration's decision to withdraw from both the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and its opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the International Criminal Court. He describes the resentment that such stands have engendered among our allies, and he suggests that such behavior could undermine the international institutions the country "worked so hard to put in place after World War II."

"The United States may have the luxury of being headstrong," he writes, "while it still enjoys primacy; smaller states have little choice but to play along. But when America's dominance is less pronounced and other centers of power have the wherewithal to stand their ground, its unilateral impulse will serve only to guarantee the return of global geopolitical rivalry."

To get a feel for just how ridiculous this thesis is, we beg your indulgence for a quick and painless exercise. Ready? Okay, close your eyes and imagine that Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac issue the United States an ultimatum... When you've finished laughing and have wiped the tears from your eyes, consider this: if we grant the validity of Mr. Kupchan's argument, that Europe is going to challenge our pre-eminence, is it not significant that we're developing ballistic missile defense and they aren't and that we can test nukes and they can't? Folks like this take great delight in envisioning an America embattled and eventually defeated, but somehow never take themselves, or us, seriously enough to realize that it is rather unlikely we'll go quietly into that good night. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 21, 2002 9:47 PM