Saturday, June 11, 2005
Wise Words
Geopolitics is not really my thing, but I try and stay read up. Victor Davis Hanson usually gets it right, and never more so than this NRO piece on India and China. Here is a taste
As nations come to know the Chinese, and as a ripe Europe increasingly cannot or will not defend itself, the old maligned United States will begin to look pretty good again. More important, America will not be the world?s easily caricatured sole power, but more likely the sole democratic superpower that factors in morality in addition to national interest in its treatment of others.My travels to China were unlike any other travels I have ever made. It is an utterly foreign place -- I could find no common ground with the Chinese, unlike any other place in the world I have been. That makes them scary to me -- I cannot get a clue what motivates them. Thus I think Hansen is dead on here, and we need to heed his words.
China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or naïve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end.
