>That's not what I suggested. My point was that the US wasn't going >to
>attempt >to control its allies by direct use of militray force against
them,
>so >that the US >naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterrean
>isn't a real >lever against >Europe or Japan. Nor are US bases on European
>or Japanese soil. >The US >needs subtler means os contriol, Control over
>Middle Eastern oil would >be one >such.
I agree that the US uses both the subtle and not so subtle means of control. But the US attacking Iraq to acquire a stranglehold over EU and Japan wasn't my idea.
>> As for Japan, Japan needs the US power in the Pacific to counter China
and
>>N.Korea.
>Sure, and?
Do you see Japan taking an independent position vis-a-vis the US? If the claim is that the "old Europe" doesn't want to be a US subsidiary, what stops Japan from emerging as an autonomous power centre?
Europe:
>It's getting to be one. There'[s a definite slow progress towards variour
>form sof >unification -- the EU, the Euro, etc. and the US's uniltaerlaism
>is creating a >pressure towards an independent foreign policy/
This may happen, say, by 2020. We don't know what kind of foreign policy this Europe will have in 2020. It is not productive to speculate about scenarios 20 years from now. But I don't see any country or a group of them acquiring comprehensive global superiority to challenge the US in the forseeable future.
>Europe doesn't care about Sddam. It does car about keeping the US from
>setting >up a satapy in the Middle East.
Europe doesn't have much leverage in the Middle East: Isreal, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. There isn't much that the EU can do about the US hegemony in the Middle East.
>Are you seriously suggestoing that the US sayiong My Way or the Highway is
>just a difference over tactics?
They agree that Iraq should be disarmed. They disagree on how it should done. P-5 countries are concerned about proliferation, it threatens their monopoly over WMDs.
>>Why does European capitalism require an independent path?
>Because it doesn't want to be a wholly owned subsidary of US capitalsim.
>But >you err if you reduce foreign policy disputes to economic ones.
>Politics matters >here too.
Nobody wants to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the US. What is in question is how you go about doing it. If the idea of Europe vs the US as a probable terrain of fundamental conflict is to be seriously argued, it must be based on more substantive analyses.
Ulhas
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