What's Good for America

The Europeans especially are going to be really unhappy with an American that is just one of many nations with no more power or influence than any other. They've constructed a cocoon of safety in Europe bound by laws, treaties, lawyers, and diplomats to resolve conflict (excepting that nasty little bout of killing in the Balkans that required our help).

In that nice little play house they could safely ridicule and condemn America, while those uncouth Americans with their simplistic notions of hard power and action effectively protected that fantasy land of rules and gentlemen.

Now we are asking to enter that play house so we too can enjoy the happy world of rules and gentlemen.

I know it isn't novel to argue that American hard power protected Europe so they could pretend soft power kept them safe. It is true, of course. That is what happened over the last 20 years.

But there is more to it than this. Europe complained about our unilateralism. But our unilateralism was only the unilateralism of action. In fact, what we defended unilaterally (with consistent help from Britain and scattered help from other allies) was actually a multi-lateral objective. Whether defeating the Soviet Union, or protecting the sea lanes and global trade, or fighting terrorism, or confronting despots who'd overturn the international order that has made the Western world (and I include Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the western world as they've embraced democracy, rule of law, and freedom) the dominant faction on the globe, the Western world has benefited from our "unilateralism." The world may not like to accept this, but what was good for America--given what we defined as our good--has been good for the Western world.

So now we propose to enter that cocoon of safety and insulate ourselves from the rest of the world, sending forth our diplomats and lawyers--and speeches of our president on iPods to prepare the minds of foreign rulers--to sort out the messes that always arise.

The thugs will act unilaterally, and the real world will crash through into our play land in a bloody and brutal manner.

The thugs of the world will figuratively (I hope not literally) send the heads of those diplomats and lawyers back to us on pikes.