b*********3 发帖数: 1709 | 1 America: ‘Indispensable Nation’ No More
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/america-indispensable-
nation-no-more/
Rather than seeing 'far into the future,' American elites have struggled to
discern what might happen next week.
“Only those of us who were born under Queen Victoria,” wrote Ronald Knox,
“know what it feels like to assume, without questioning, that England is
permanently top nation, that foreigners do not matter, and that if worst
comes to the worst, Lord Salisbury will send a gunboat.” Knox offered this
trenchant observation, redolent with irony and perhaps tinged with regret,
not as a policymaker or strategic thinker, but from the vantage point of a
clergyman. From the 1920s through the 1950s, Monsignor Knox was the most
famous and influential Catholic priest in all of Great Britain. As such, he
entertained a distinct perspective on what actually qualifies as permanent
and what merely offers the appearance. | b*********3 发帖数: 1709 | 2 The US can’t afford to be the policeman of the world, but the Neocons keep
stirring the pot for more US intervention abroad. The Millennials will pay a
heavy price in coming decades. | b*********3 发帖数: 1709 | 3 I think empires are inherently unstable. The hegemon is not going to rule
other lands out of some desire for selfless good-doing; it will seek a
profit. The vassal states will resist this. This will inevitably result in
pulling apart. Victoria was named Empress in 1879; Ireland was seperated in
1922, and other colonies followed. France lost Vietnam and Algeria. The USSR
lasted sixty years. If we wish to lead the world, we should seek a
different model. Personally, aggressive leadership in science and technology
seems attractive. | b*********3 发帖数: 1709 | 4 Compared to Albright’s assertion that the death of half a million Iraqi
children was “worth it”, her pandering to American exceptionalism is quite
unobjectionable. |
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