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The Atlantic Century
Ralph Peterâs latest strategy think piece in Parameters. Itâs been Peterâs thesis that we should deal with the Arab Middle East through containment and strong punitive raids (on an operational level, or strategic if need be) to prevent acquisition of nukes, etc. The goal of his strategy is to let the Arab "polity" rot from within, only engaging when they finally awaken from their murderous mass psychosis. In his previous article in Parameters, he had advised engaging with the non-Arab muslim states as a bridgehead into Dar al Islam and to further isolate the Arabs. He now seems to have abandoned that illusion. Throughout the previous decade, strategists and statesmen asserted that we were about to enter the âPacific Century.â Global power and wealth would shift to East Asia. American interests, power, and investments would follow. The Atlantic would become a dead sea strategically, its littoral states and their continents declining to marginal status. Economic opportunities, crucial alliances, and the gravest threats would rise in the east, as surely as the morning sun. An alternative view of the evidence suggests that the experts were wrong. Although the United States will remain engaged in the Far Eastâas well as in the Middle East, Europe, and nearly everywhere elseâthe great unexplored opportunities for human advancement, fruitful alliances, strategic cooperation, and creating an innovative, just, and mutually beneficial international order still lie on the shores of the Atlantic. The difference is that the potential for future development lies not across the North Atlantic in âOld Europe,â but on both sides of the South Atlantic, in Africa and Latin America. Especially since 9/11, the deteriorating civilization of the Middle East has demanded our attention. But we must avoid a self-defeating strategic fixation on the Arab Muslim world and self-destructive states nearby. Any signs of progress in the Middle East will be welcome, but the region overall is fated to remain an inexhaustible source of disappointments. While Africa suffers from an undeserved reputation for hopelessness (often a matter of racism couched in diplomatic language) and Latin America is dismissed as a backwater, the aggressive realms of failure in the Middle East always get the benefit of the doubt. When the United States places a higher priority on relations with Egypt than on those with Mexico or Brazil, and when Jordan attracts more of our attention than does South Africa, our foreign policy lacks common sense as much as it does foresight. Our obsession with the Middle East is not just about oil. Itâs about intellectual habit. We assign unparalleled strategic importance to the survival of the repugnant Saudi regime because thatâs the way weâve been doing things for half a century, despite the complete absence of political, cultural, or elementary human progress on the Arabian Peninsula. EFL. Read the rest. Posted by: 11A5S 2003-11-17 |
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