Sunday, February 29, 2004

Foreign Affairs review of Empire books. Posted here Sunday, February 29, 2004 at 9:20:43 AM     I earlier posted the articles in Foreign Affairs. One is a review of half a dozen books on Empire, critical of the US and praising. Reading them against each other can be very useful. Each is a "true" picture, except for what it leaves out. the whole is complex., and worth study. My own conclusions, the reviewer does not see the internal dynamics of the empire as an economic hierarchy, and those who are critical, such as Johnson, do not put the events against either the achievements, or alternative ways things might have evolved. The fact that since ww2 the world has been in some major ways stable is too ignored, and that too much of the world has been economically subordinated is also not given enough weight. The picture that emerges is of a complex balalnce of goods and bads, not given to a revolution so much as an extention of the good and a suppression of the bad. In my mind the propblem at the core is that employees at a distance that take over our tasks at the local level are often scoundrels, and we, in the center, demand performance they can't deliver except by threat and coersion. More decentralization, and less cash payout to the really successful seems a modest proposal. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040301fareviewessay83212b/g-john-ikenberry/illusions-of-empire-defining-the-new-american-order.html ********