FYI – amazon.com still hasn’t sent the book I ordered in mid-March. Each month the shipment date is moved to the following month. I even called their customer service no. 800-201-7575 (don’t say or press anything. Just wait and a customer rep will come on) and was told there was absolutely no problem and the book would be shipped on the date noted in the email. I think that was May.

I've since ordered the book elsewhere, but will continue to play out the string to see how long it will get.

[Unilateralism] was the ideological basis for the Cold War, with a self-righteous superpower leading subservient allies who did not have the wherewithal to resist it.

1: Unilateralism is not an ideology. 2: So Britain wanted to resist what we wanted to do in the Cold War? Other than a few colonial issues (e.g. Suez), I thought we were pretty much on the same page. 3: France did a pretty good job of resisting us, dropping out of NATO, etc. But since it was France dropping out of a collective international agreement, wouldn't they be the unilateral one?

If there's that much wrong in one sentence, I don't really need to read the rest.

Having read the rest, I must ratify your decision as to its superfluity.

Liu. when not writing as an apologist for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, goes on and on about the clash of civilizations and nuclear weapons. He seems to have fallen into the error of treating the clash as a children's schoolyard game, with safe zones from which the United States and its interests may be attacked and into which the bandits may return safely.

How piddling nuclear capabilities can function as a countermeasure to massive, biocidal capability is never explained.

The author misinterprets the clash of civilizations in another way. Peoples make decisions about how they will live. When they opt for inefficient and irrational systems they are opting against significant military capability. This may be a good or a bad thing for them, but is a fact, nonetheless.

You wish to defy the World Government? Fine--show me the guns.

Unilateralism is a necessary consequence of morality.

erp,

I ordered it from Amazon and received it within a few days. That was about a month ago, I think.

It was the ideological basis for the Cold War, with a self-righteous superpower leading subservient allies who did not have the wherewithal to resist it.

I think Liu has a point here. Whom of us can't but remember that bad-mannered, misbegotten, culturally challenged, imperialist and moreover ugly America forcibly restraining the brave citizens of its miserable European vassals from following their consciences to pursue freedom at all costs---to cross over to those lands of liberty and opportunity on the far side of the iron curtain?

It is an embarrasing spectacle for all lovers of truth, justice and the American way, made all the more (I am loathe to say it) disgusting by the building of that awful automatic machine gun defended, mine-filled barrier built expressly to prevent the eastward flow of those luckless Europeans whose great and only misfortune it was to find themselves stuck in the American sphere of influence in Western Europe after the war.

This is a chapter of history that America, sadly, will not, without much difficulty, if ever, be able to live down; an immense and awesome wrong for which a steep price will have to be paid---as recognized almost universally by those arbiters of truth, morality, justice and inner struggle, by those leaders of enlightened civilization, who actively and enthusiasticlly seek its redress.

Well done, Barry.