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International-UN-NGOs
Belmont Club: Back of Beyond
2005-07-29
The Belmont Club on the threat today posed by failed states, and American resolve in the face of Western inaction. This is part 2 of his essay. Money graf: "What is most striking is that action itself in the face of the threat of Failed States has become discredited. The great debate in the West today isn't over what to do, but whether it isn't better to do nothing."
Posted by:Steve White

#3  "Ethnicity" nor "Culture", as far as I've read and believe, are NOT precepts of any local or Global Jihadist/Islamist State - that is, are not supp to be.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2005-07-29 22:35  

#2  the response was:

wretchard said...

Anointiata Delenda Est,

"the rate of change"

Which is why Al Qaeda, despite its pretensions to antiquity may be thoroughly a creature of the 21st century. The formal state is a 17th century invention. But there were other state-forms before, and maybe, after it.

The modern state, like the earlier empires, is no longer coextensive with cultural units called nations. America and radical Islam may represent two rival forms of organization based around an vision. The City on the Hill versus the Mosque in the Desert. Part of the weakness of modern Liberal Europe is that it is neither founded on ethnicity nor on principle. The sand has run out from under its foundations and it is vulnerable in consequence.
Posted by: 3dc   2005-07-29 14:07  

#1  The comment this was taken from is great:


But of the most recent three, there was an agent provocateur, Perfidious Albion, and lately America. Their provocation? They ramped up the rate of change. Of all things, change is the most difficult thing to deal with. It makes winners and losers. As a poster on the previous thread said, the times they are a'changin'. The worse bit is that it makes winners and losers of your entire life, everything you stand for - just ask an Imam.
Posted by: 3dc   2005-07-29 13:57  

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