Something to Keep You Up Nights

From the Anchoress:

It is interesting to think, isn’t it, that if America is brought low (a no-longer unthinkable notion, unfortunately) and the crazymen that we’re hot to appease in Iran, or North Korea or Venezuela get together to do crazy things, the only fully-functioning and war-ready Democracy left to help the world will be…Israel.

Tiny, despised, fierce Israel.

I love irony, but that’s not an irony I want to see played out.

Unfortunately, the Israelis do not have nearly the force projection that we do. And while there are two oceans separating us from our direst enemies, the Israelis' enemies are right next door. The Israelis cannot stand between China and Taiwan or North and South Korea or Russia and the former soviet republics. If President Obama pusses out, many will suffer.

Related: The impending creation of a more sovereign European Union after Ireland's vote to ratify the Lisbon Treaty has Professor Kenneth Anderson musing about American decline and the President's "multilateralism":

Be wary, O Europe, above all, of liberal internationalist Americans bearing gifts of multilateralism. An America that does not assert, rudely and brusquely, its own interests and views first through Nato and elsewhere, an America that sings sweet songs of multilateral interdependence is, surely, a superpower that has decided to simply go along with what everyone else does, which is another way of saying it has tired of supporting the free riders, which is another way of saying that it, too, says one thing but might do another, and what it might do is not show up when the big battalions are finally needed.

Prudent Europeans fear and do not trust, above all, an America that does not put its own interests first and carry the rest along in train. Re-read Raymond Aron. Europe will soon enough face an Iranian nuclear weapon along with its massive dependence upon Russian natural gas, even as its military strength declines yearly – hourly – and in important respects it is today at least arguably more dependent on the American security guarantee, not less, than at any time since 1990.

Anderson is wordy and in great need of an editor, but he's worth a read if you're into international relations.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 11:43 PM

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