| | Kurt, your theory that Pax Americana is on the cusp of ending warfare is mistaken.
Consider the attempt by the American military to subdue and occupy comparatively tiny Iraq. There are roughly 300,000 American soldiers stationed there at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, armed to the teeth with the most expensive sophisticated weaponry, equipment, and gadgetry known to man, and barracked and fed in comfort. What has the world's "sole superpower" accomplished with this overwhelming economic and military superiority against an impoverished population that scrambles and scratches for its next meal? Large areas of the country are effectively though informally controlled by Iraqi guerrila fighters; US equipment and personel are routinely blasted by bomb throwers who use low tech, inexpensive incendary devices readily avaliable to any fighter; and American generals testify before Congress that the war effort requires more troops and better equipment! Consider the ratio of men and money put up by the Superpower to that put up by the rag tag insurgents: possibly 5,000 rebels versus 300,000 troopers; possibly 300 billions in dollars versus a few thousands in dollars.
I am no expert on military theory, but I think that modern technology has eroded rather than reinforced the efficacy of huge military organizations and our status as "superpower". Our generals are fighting the last war with its emphasis on terrifying aircraft and missles with awe-inspiring accuracy (though they may not be consistently accurate--another subject). As contrasted with the trillions the United States spends on Pax Americana, a bad guy with fifty or a hundred thousand dollars and some Eastern European or Asian connections can buy a nuclear bomb deliverable in a backpack or suitcase. I do not think this frightening and ugly propect is seriously disputed; rather it's ignored. Bad guys routinely smuggle drugs into prisons, in spite of intensive government management designed to keep them out. Violent political movements around the globe have become experts in smuggling drugs and weaponry into and from the USA and elsewhere. If some embittered, ugly terror organization is determined to murder many innocent Americans by smuggling in a nuke, then I assume that eventually they would succeed.
One example that approaches this possibility was the "on-board explosion" that brought down a commercial aircraft off Cape Cod during the Clinton years. The official line, which was unsupported by evidence and contradicted by many facts, was that some mysterious explosion destroyed flight 107. However, numerous eye witness accounts from credible, affluent Cape Cod residents, together with other theoretical analysis, proved that the flight was brought down by a missle launched from a small boat at sea. The boat rapidly departed the area when the aircraft was hit. Of course, Bill Clinton was not about to admit that a terrorist attack had murdered 200 innocent Americans on his watch, not with an election approaching. But it had.
The security and the liberty of Americans depends on rights-respecting, non-interventionist foreign policy. When our military kills thousands and thousands of innocent people in adventures billed as "wars of liberation", they resent and often hate us for that injustice--even if we throw them food packets and set up elections. True, some positive benefits flow from deposing dictators, just as one can showcase success stories from the War on Poverty. But the longer range consequence will be much unnecessary bloodshed and destruction; and an American populace that is less affluent, less free, and less secure.
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