> deferring to
> the US on geopolitical matters is growing more and
> more distasteful and dangerous as Washington becomes
> increasingly reckless and demands greater obedience
> from its allies while offering diminshing rewards.
My impression is that the US brutality and recklessness is usually reserved for countries that are relatively weak, small and defenseless. e.g. Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq etc.: Countries that don't really threaten the US.
> It will take some time for an alternative market -- no
> doubt a distributed system of developed smaller
> markets, ideally including not only the EU and North
> Asia, but Latin America and Africa as well -- to
> provide a parallel system to the American-centered one
> engineered at the end of the Second World War.
It could take 25-30 years, if not more. Such long range scenarios have little practical use in 2004.
> Realizing such an outcome would depend, in no small
> way, upon American elites' acceptance of the need for
> managed relative decline into more or less 'normal'
> nation status
Is there an implication that the US Left may not be very effective and it depends largely on the US elite?
Ulhas