Image from Voltaire Network: Dominance of US Superpower?
Jules has an interesting post up about an article from the Guardian, written by one Martin Jacques. After dealing with what Jules calls a tremendous case of revisionist history, he deals with what Martin wrote about Iraq:
Which brings us to Iraq. Jacques correctly notes that in the wake of U.S. failure there, Iran will emerge as a power. He fails to notice any problem with that, only equating Iran’s rise with a hypothetical but laughable notion of a rise in European Union power.
What is interesting here is the Euroview Jacques is treating us to: A U.S. failure in Iraq does not have dire consequences, but in fact is desireable in how it will give the neo-cons their comeuppance and force the United States into what Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer once accurately disparaged as “multilaterism of the lowest common denominator.”
Unfortunately, Jacques is in the end correct, though not quite in the way he intends: The United States, post-abandonment of Iraq, will be rendered as toothless and worthless on the world stage as the multilaterist European Union.
One should not be surprised about this attitude from Mr. Martin. It is quite common here. Most Europeans seem to have some kind of strange “ha, this should teach them that they’re not the police of the world” attitude. Extremely disturbing… and worrisome. On a more subjective note, it seems to me that above-described attitude is more common in France than in, say, the Netherlands.
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