The End of an Era

We are witnessing the second phase of the closing of the post World War II era in international affairs. Within the western world, it was an "era of good feelings" toward international leadership by the United States. The first phase of the demise of the era was the fall of the Soviet Union, unwittingly midwifed by Mikhail Gorbachev, and forever iconized in photographs of celebrating Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall. This second phase has been unwittingly midwifed by George W. Bush, and will forever be iconized in photographs of American war crimes at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (and, I expect, images yet to come, of global anti-American sentiment with a vehemence and on a scale never before seen).

This epochal change marks a time of great danger for the United States and the world. The best contribution that the U.S.A. can offer to international stability in this new context is restraint in international affairs, equivalent to the restraint in domestic policy exercised by Mr. Gorbachev during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Any action premised on belief that the good of the world depends on prompt, forceful reassertion of American global dominance in the face of the collapse of American foreign policy's legitemacy in the eyes of the world would be deluded and dangerous - and would be just the sort of thing to be expected from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. We can only hope, pray, and exercise every means that citizenship provides to ensure that the U.S.A. will be blessed, during the remainder of this transition, with a leader as stubbornly, fundamentally decent as Mr. Gorbachev.