A Theory of Everything

Thomas L. Friedman outlines some of the reasons much of the world has come to dislike the United States. Unfortunately the current Bush administration’s policies and behavior are doing little to reverse the trend.

Why didn’t nations organize militarily against the U.S.? Michael Mandelbaum, author of “The Ideas That Conquered the World,” answers: “One prominent international relations school — the realists — argues that when a hegemonic power, such as America, emerges in the global system other countries will naturally gang up against it. But because the world basically understands that America is a benign hegemon, the ganging up does not take the shape of warfare. Instead, it is an effort to Gulliverize America, an attempt to tie it down, using the rules of the World Trade Organization or U.N. — and in so doing demanding a vote on how American power is used.”

Posted by Cameron Barrett at June 1, 2003 05:19 PM

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