From The Washington Note:
My colleague Michael Lind has a compelling commentary piece in today's Financial Times that clearly articulates the stark and bitter gap between American pretensions as expressed last Thursday by President Bush and the realities of global disdain for and rejection of America's current foreign policy behavior.
The importance of Lind's piece is that he points to a new global rejectionism of American policy and leadership in the world. Charles Kupchan predicted that this would happen; and G. John Ikenberry saw the potential of what Lind writes about in his formulation of the "Liberal Leviathian." I think that America is intoxicated by the notion of its powerful position in the world and is unaware that its circumstances are rapidly eroding.
The article is so good that I am going to reprint in its entirety here. (Normally I italicize articles or long quotes, but I won't today to make it easier to read.)
Financial Times, 25 January 2005
How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation
by Michael Lind
In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.
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