What does everyone outside the US think about the war on Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria?
As for me I’m movin’ out of the US 
and that pretty much states my opinion.
I can tell you this for sure. It doesn’t get any better once you get outside the U.S., although you may gain a more accurate perspective. We tend to be blindfolded to all of the mistakes that the U.S. makes. The media is a bit one sided.
I would say a single world order is where we’re heading and we’ve tried twice to do it peacefully with the League of Nations and the UN. But they have failed, as Authority requires Power, which neither had, as it was always the country’s local interests that guided those international bodies. (If your interested in a topic on Legitimacy and Power then you might enjoy Law and Morality)
To have a united world will require a Superpower willing to forcefully make it united. I believe that initially, to have a single world order Authority will require a perceived “tyrant†to make all other countries comply. But yet over time it will reform to become a more democratic order.
True power comes from economic wealth and military strength. A 1/4 of the world’s wealth belongs to a single country and that same country controls an Army the size of the next 27 countries. If American companies can own and control most of the world’s multinational corporations it can effectively control other country’s local economies, hence as they say, “If America sneezes Europe catches a cold.†The key to winning world Authority is not military strength but economical prowess. If another country can’t afford to fight then the battle is already won, look at Russia! Yes they could fire some nukes but after that they have nothing there’s no money to rebuild it would require a return to communism.
America has only two weaknesses: 1. There Local Public Opinion, and 2. There massive need for Oil (or to put it another way, Energy Sources). To stop America dominating the world it’s local public must have there opinions changed to believe that America should not be trying to solve all the worlds’ problems. Plus its source of energy must be reduce, so they have less expendable energy to turn into financial wealth. Only if these two things can be achieved can Americas march be stopped.
But that being said I don’t think American world dominance is a bad thing. It’s not nice to lose your local identity or have other country’s control what you can and can’t do. But all things being the way they are America is a better country the most to fulfil the role of world leader. True it has many problems but I would say no more then most other countries. The real problem with them taking control is that people don’t want to lose their national identity. Or feel inferior to another country, as America has a very Aryan type outlook as “USA Number 1!†“USA is the Best!†These are all similar to German beliefs. But of course the America’s are not out to kill all the inferior races, no! They have enough sense to make them economical slaves. A free market controlled by America supernational corporations. Yes everybody is free, but we all are slaves to money, control the money and you control the people! A much more subtle ideology.
So I would like to end this post by saying!
USA! USA!! USA!!! Number 1!
What can I say, I’m a cynical pragmatic!
I don’t exactly argee with all of your views, but they are intresting.
Anyone else got anythin’ to say? 
I pray not is all I can say. Would you want a bunch of murderous illiberal religious fanatics in your government? As that’s what the some of the UN is made up of.
That point aside, the world is nowhere near ready for global governance, we are far too different. Even some sort of federalbody will not be sufficient, how can any world authority justify perpetuating the misbalance of power in the world today?
On another point, authority/power is a dangerous combination to start justifying one with the other or vice versa. Authority usually needs legitamacy, which tends to be granted by the people rather than any “power”. Guns can only rule for so long and is also an extremely ineffective way of ruling (see machiavelli for more on that, that guy got a lot of stuff spot on).
I would think that if a tyrant gripped power in the world the first chance the world would get is to tear itself into parts again, self-determination is an extremely powerful force. The US are gonna have a hard enough time convincing the 3 seperate races in Iraq to stay as one country, imagine that with more than 200 oddd factions. Probably far far more than that. We’ve also seen a move away from singular empires such as The British Empire, French colonies, Spanish, etc. towards smaller and smaller nation states (e.g. Chechnya, Czech/Slovak split, Yugoslavia split, etc.). Why would that current trend reverse?
The US maintaining its position in world politics is very unlikely as well, it is maintained by a relatively good stock market performance inthe last 50years, it only takes one massive crash to cripple them. There’s also the theory that capitalism maintains itself by expanding evertime it goes through a whole system recession, e.g. expanded to african countries, far east, middle east and eventually ex-communist states and finally presently communist states. The theory states that as soon as capitalism cannot expnd any further the next recession will be unstoppable. I don’t know how popular this theory still is.
Finally the US is actually fully dependant on satellite countries to support it, without them it would fail. Thus it can never take up an overtly agressive stance to world power, it must always present its power as defensively or covertly or it could rouse serious opposition which could cripple it economically.
Finally, how many wars could America actually fight at once? Bearing it’s weight on one country its victory is assured, but 3 or 4? It may have superior technology, but just wouldn’t have the man power. Remember the Russian army dwarfed the Americans’.
That was also a good post Pangloss, though I disagree with the ending, for me there has never been a worse time for global governance. We must mature as nation states before we can prosper as a globalcommunity. National identity was unknown until the 1500s in the west and as late as the 1900s in ex-colonies such as India, Africa, the middle East, etc. Global governance is a case of trying to learn to walk before we can crawl. I’ll try and reply fully to your one next time if I can snatch another moment.
As for Violet’s original questionmy answer is:
nice one, nice one and go get 'em boys. It’s a pity it has to be America though, would far prefer it were the citizens themselves doing the overthrowing. It’s just the way that though the world with our technology is so much smaller, it’s also so much easier to track people. And one man with a gun is like a hundred men with spears. And with all our books and stuff tyrants can read up on the best ways of being really bad. Or just wait for the infidel’s media to speculate on the terrible things the tyrants could do and then just actually do them.
If America protecting its own interests is a way some of the world gains freedom, so be it. Can only be a good thing. Apart from that breeds terrorism. Dammit. Am all confuzzed now. Oh why is the world so complicated?? 
The only way to keep your Authority if it’s challenged is by having the force to beat your challenger. This does not mean weapons of destruction in the sense of military war. It’s things like public opinion, economical sufficiency to the point of excess. I’ve read Machiavelli and found him brilliant, up there with Sun Tzu. But the greatest of all teachers is Darwin!
Legitimacy means nothing, the UN had legitimacy to stop the US, but it didn’t have the force/strength to stop them from doing what they wished. Without the power (in all its many forms: military, economical, public opinion) Legitimacy is just a word. There is no such thing as Legitimacy, as force will remove Legitimacy. Saddam was the legitimate ruler of Iraq, so what if he killed people. That doesn’t remove your legitimacy. What removed Saddam’s legitimacy to rule his country was American might nothing else. Saddam had not attacked anybody in years, why all of a sudden did he become public enemy number one? I’d say it was mostly to do with the weakening American economy from the blow-out of Tech. stocks and then the further insecurity fuelled by the 9/11 atrocity. Bush needed to show he was able to fight back at the hearth terrorism. When he couldn’t get Bin-Ladin’s scalp he went after Saddam’s. Speaking of legitimacy, Bush got less public votes then Gore! But the way the American system works you don’t need public majority to be President. Haha, now that’s what I call REAL Democracy!!! He’s now trying to buy his way back into the Whitehouse with those massive tax cuts just around the time of the election! Politics is really becoming a cliché!
How will America rule other countries? Like I’ve already said! Not with weapons but with Economy, Economy, Economy! Let me say it one more time, Economy. It’s all about the money! The majority of people are greedy, and in most democracies all you need to do is make sure you appease the most people, and money is a great way to do this. By choosing it’s battles wisely, as they don’t need military might to control countries just multinational contracts. Look at Mexico, England, and Ireland just to name a few. In all the real money making industry’s they require American companies to a very large extent. England knows what would happen to its place in the world if it went against America! England is slowly ostracizing itself from Europe as their seen to be too pro-American. Yet Europe knows that England has some influence with the US so tries to use this to their advantage. While Ireland is the equivalent to a prison bitch that turns tricks for any country that’s promising money. Economical warfare is the invisible war, as people don’t notice it, till it’s to late.
This will sound extreme but I think the “3rd World War†will start as an economic war, between Euro-Asia Vs America. And depending on how America handles future relationships between the Palestine – Israeli question over land and statehood; this will effect how the Muslim world with its religious fervour hiding pure power-politics, will choose to either accept America or go jihad on the west. The most important international contracts are those to do with energy-sources, as all economics require cheap energy to be profitable. OPEC is one of the biggest problems to American dominance.
It’s precisely because of this America will have strength. Look at the EU that was partly formed to counteract American dominance on the world stage. Lone states/countries can’t survive without international cooperation. It will be international money that pays peoples wages in those countries. It’s like the old saying, “United we stand, divided we fall.â€
In the future the word Capitalism will just be another name for slavery of the working class. So long has people have it better then they did before, they’ll be happy to be controlled by an invisible American hand. But the point I’m trying to make is not that America will be seen to be in control, but that it will be mostly American money fuelling other country’s economies. There will be no occupation of military forces, just businessman! Most countries in the world require a combination of Foreign Investment and International Exports to balance the books. So if you want to control the world, control the flow of international money. America controls a 1/4!!! of the worlds wealth so they’re in a stronger position then most to control economies. Do you remember what George Soros did to the English Pound about 11 years ago??? One-man single handily wrecked England’s gold reserves. Now imagine if a country had the foresight to do this to another! The results could be devastating, and not a single bullet would be fired and the majority of the public wouldn’t even understand what happened or who was responsible.
I worked for 5 years with the Bank that did the day to day management of that Fund. I learnt an awful lot about how the money game works. While I didn’t see it first hand my old boss filled me in on what when on at the ground level.
I agree with you here, except about the US losing its political world position. To put it quite simply no other country can compete yet on an economical level with them. Purely for this reason they will remain number one. Yes, I agree that capitalism needs expansion, but not just the expansion of new markets, but also the invention of new things to market. Take cars or the holiday industry, these are relatively new, only the rich at one time could afford them, but now most can have a holiday every year and a couple of cars in the driveway. For capitalism to survive it requires market innovation and reinvention. But I can’t see it running out of steam in the near future. Only if it gets to the point where the rich own everything will it get out of hand, i.e. economically spark an revolution! It’s the root of most uprisings.
True, but those other countries need America more then America needs them. Yes, it would be a great inconvenience if they pulled away, but they would require the breast of another country to suckle from.
This is a truism just as much as it’s propaganda. That’s why America will rule, because it’s good at putting the spin on things.
Final Comment:
True most of what I’ve said sounds like madness, and probably a large portion of it is. But America is a powerful young youth with teenage insecurities, so who knows what it’s capable of doing.
i don’t mean to make any connections here other than an interesting point that caught my eye.
the same sentence that pax concluded his last post with:
was the same comment that was said about Germany before WWI
Because we make it that way. We could keep it simple, but why stop when your haven’ all this “fun”?!
It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks.
Right is right, regardless of popular opinion.
Yes, if popular opinion is heavily against a certain act than there may be certain undesirable consequences from that act–but that doesn’t make it any less right.
what is right? when do you know you’re right? because you are you, and you can’t ever be wrong?
Let me as you one question before I begin, so I know how to go about this.
Are you a relativist?
who, me? if so, me don’t even know what that word means. I don’t like to put myself in a box…
(edit) ah, I see (I looked the word up in the dictionary.) well, It depends.
Haven’t thought much about there being absolutes in truth, or not. Anwyas, answer me question, dosen’t matter what I belive in
You know you are doing a morally correct action when all of the following conditions are true:
- the course of action promotes the continuance of your life or, when life is not at stake, causes you to gain more of what you value
- your actions do not affect, for better or worse, any individuals who did not choose to participate in what you are doing unless those individuals have or are attempting to initiate fraud or violent force against you
- the value of what you gain is, to you, more than the value of what you lost to obtain it
I don’t believe in killing people. but there was a need for that. for something to happen. and people who watch hollywoodfilm and want to live in a certain fantasy/utopian world are pathetic or decadent. but they can change. and the usa will thus inevitably change sooner or later. but it is interesting what reasons lie behind Bush’s coming to power. but then i don’t believe the current american system favours the possibility of a good president. gore and bush are really in the same wagon, in the same way of Western thought-system that is so narrowminded and limited. and all this “i swear to god” - stuff… 
What was that about?