Monday, April 07, 2008

Kissinger Reflects


Here's an editorial by Henry Kissinger from today's Washington Post. Nice points are made, some of which I've italicized. The link to the entire piece is included.
The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Conventional wisdom holds that disenchantment with President Bush's alleged unilateralism is at the heart of European-American disagreements. But it will become apparent soon after the change of administrations that the principal difference between the two sides of the Atlantic is that America is still a traditional nation-state whose people respond to calls for sacrifices on behalf of a much wider definition of the national interest than Europe's definition. The nations of Europe, having been drained by two world wars, have agreed to transfer significant aspects of their sovereignties to the European Union. Political loyalties associated with the nation-state have proved not to be automatically transferable, however. Europe is in a transition between its past, which it seeks to overcome, and a future it has not yet reached.

In the process, the nature of the European state has been transformed. With nations no longer defining themselves by a distinct future and with the cohesion of the European Union as yet untested, the capacity of most European governments to ask their people for sacrifices has diminished dramatically.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/06/AR2008040601660.html

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