> FRIEDMAN: When I realized that the Soviet Union had really collapsed
> as an international force, that the Cold War was really over and where
> everybody was really celebrating the coming of a wonderful age where
> the coalition that had defeated the Soviet Union -- the United States,
> NATO, Japan -- was going to live together happily and in harmony. I'm
> a political scientist, and the study of political science is the study
> of conflict.
Great methodology: 'I am a political scientist so I take conflict as a given. When it was finally demonstrated to me that my belief that the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe was a pipe dream, I decided to go paranoid about the Japs instead.'
I think this was the same reasoning that led Gen. Schwarzkopf to alert us all to the threat posed by Iraq, once that the threat from the Soviet Union no longer justified the manoeuvres. -- Jim heartfield