I broadly agree, and I agree with the details of the arguments for and against.
Generally though I think that for all the USA's re-asserted arrogance, the events have accelerated a process of globalising the political agenda and trying to find a global new juridical formation.
An aspect not discussed in this particular post is the effect on the left. Even though Carrol is correct in one sense that the left does not exist, or should not exist, the wider question is whether there is any politically progressive global strategy that can be formulated which can target US imperialism as the main enemy.
We are no longer in the 70's and it is not credible to think of the cities being surrounded by the countryside, and the first world surrounded by the third world, which wins the second world over to its side.
The other strategic formulation of an alliance of all the forces for peace and socialism against us imperialism and its allies, does not have a material base in a socialist camp anymore. Even China, which only some would say is only partly socialist still, found for pragmatic reasons it desirable to accept the idea of global cooperation against terrorism, even so soon after having its embassy bombed in Belgrade.
Obviously the most courageous and isolated of the left can continue to protest along with pacifists against policing activities by the US in principle, but with refugees moving back into Afghanistan as they did in Kosovo, and with some stability under the peace of the Empire in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, it is hard to see how progressives in the US could work with potentially a large body of the US population to oppose global policing in principle.
Although it goes against the grain for me to lift the definition of the USA as the target, and looks very unmilitant, I suspect that progressive people in the USA may be able to contribute to a new global strategy better by making tactical demands about the process rather than the fact of globalisation - eg that it is more practical as well as fairer to invest funds in aid for countries in the middle east than just to spend it on imperfectly guided massive bombs, that it is more rational to support the idea of permanent international court of crimes against humanity and to get international approval for interventions, because it is counterproductive for the USA to intervene alone. etc etc.
Does anyone have a better formula in the new power balance for how the working people of the world should unite?
Chris Burford
London