WHERE'S WALL? D'OH!

The Sleepy Superpower Awakes: The U.S. is on the move again around the globe, and it's about time (CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, Aug. 04, 2003, TIME)

The Great Wall of China, roughly defining the northern contours of the Chinese empire, has stood in the same place for 2,200 years. The Great Wall of America--the barrier of bases set up around the world to define the contours of the free world and hold back the Soviet empire--is about to disappear after just 50 years.

We are living a revolution, and hardly anyone has noticed. In just the three months since the end of the Iraq war, the Pentagon has announced the essential evacuation of the U.S. military from its air bases in Saudi Arabia, from the Demilitarized Zone in Korea and from the vast Incirlik air base in Turkey--in addition to a radical drawdown of U.S. military personnel in Germany, the mainstay of the Great American Wall since 1945.

For a country that is seen by so much of the world as a rogue nation, recklessly throwing its weight around, this is a lot of withdrawing. The fact is that since 9/11, when America awoke from its post--cold war end-of-history illusions, the U.S. has not, as most believe, been expanding. It has been moving--lightening its footprint, rationalizing its deployments, rearranging its forces, waking from a decade of slumber during which it sat on its Great Wall, oblivious to its immobility and utter obsolescence. [...]

We are in the midst of a revolution, and it has two parts. The first is leaving places where we are not wanted. America is moving out of old Europe, which sees its liberty as coming with the air it breathes, and being welcomed in the new Europe of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, which have a living memory of tyranny and a deep understanding of America's role in winning their liberty. South Koreans regularly demonstrate against the U.S. presence in their country. Since the reason for that presence is for Americans to die in defense of Seoul, one has to ask oneself at what point strategic altruism becomes strategic masochism.

The second part is leaving places that mark the battle lines of a long-dead war.

The lesson that the Buchanacons correctly urge us to learn here is that sixty years from now we may well just be defending a new Great Wall, even though the new threat will have long since vanished. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2003 4:27 PM