[link|http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson031403.asp|Time to wean the world]

Excerpts:

Yet the American people are growing tired of this notion of "it makes sense in the long run." And perhaps they are right since this entire old way of doing business \ufffd treaties, alliances, bases, deployments, arms credit, special aid packages \ufffd and indeed our very mentality of coalition building are all part of a world gone by, one predicated on the old bipolar rivalry with the Soviet Union and finally blown to bits by 9/11.

Building coalitions, crafting containment, surrounding enemies \ufffd all that Dullesque globe-trotting presupposes the need to corral a monstrous nuclear Soviet Union when our present foes are in fact more diverse, weaker, and insidious, our allies no longer allies by any classical definition, and our friends opportunistic rather than benevolent. The only drama left in the looming Iraqi war is whether France & Co. will smile or at least remain mute on news of American losses...

What the United States should seek is a sort of military autonomy, a muscular disengagement that lessens dependence on other mercurial and conniving countries and yet allows us strategic flexibility \ufffd and, yes, the freedom to move in the interest of freedom-loving peoples abroad who wish to act in concert with us. We should prefer a series of bilateral arrangements and a new tactical doctrine that does privilege "exit strategy" but simply states that the purpose of all (rare) U.S. interventions is military victory and the political will to define and then ensure such an outcome. Removal of a fascist like Saddam Hussein from Kuwait or stripping him of weapons of mass destruction both have exit strategies, but will never solve the problem of Iraqi state support for terrorism \ufffd him! \ufffd until the regime is defeated, humiliated, and removed.

I say:

The 20th century is so over.