Are the US, Britain, Japan, India gonna be the world's 4 biggest powers for the years to come?
The Big Four Alliance
The New Bush Strategy
By Thomas Donnelly
Posted: Friday, December 2, 2005
NATIONAL SECURITY OUTLOOK
AEI Online
Publication Date: December 2, 2005
December 2005
Over the past six months, the Bush administration has upgraded its budding “strategic partnerships” with India and Japan. Along with the steady "special relationship” with Great Britain, what is beginning to emerge is a global coalition system--it is too soon to call it a true alliance--for the post-Cold War world. Much work remains to be done to translate the expressions of similar political interests and values into usable military strength. Still, the prospects for expanding the number of genuine “stakeholders” in the Pax Americana are quite bright.
It used to be the fashion to pillory the Bush administration for its unilateralism. The worst offense was not removing Saddam Hussein from power, but “going it alone” (never mind the British and the other members of the coalition). And even in Afghanistan, the snub of NATO’s offer to slow the operation down to a Kosovo-like pace was thought to cloud the justice of the war.
Now, the editorialists of the New York Times have discovered:
[T]he Bush administration has been going out of its way to build up its military ties with countries surrounding China. India and Japan are the two most troubling examples. Washington has pressed ahead with an ill-advised initiative to share civilian nuclear technology with India, despite that country’s refusal to abide by the restrictions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And it has actively encouraged an already worrisomely nationalist Japanese government to shed postwar restraints on its military and embrace more ambitious regional security goals. Washington has also taken steps to strengthen military cooperation with Vietnam and Indonesia. Mr. Bush’s stopover in Mongolia [was] likewise . . . aimed at cementing a new security partnership.[1]
The reactionary Left is shocked, but there has been an even larger pattern of alliance-building that has been going on out of sight of the newsrooms of the mainstream media. Indeed, far from maintaining a unilateralist approach to American security, the Bush administration has been cementing a globe-spanning structure of strategic partnerships that has the potential not only to “contain” China, but also to sustain and enhance the liberal international order of the post-Soviet era.
Teaser and link....thanks
The Big Four Alliance
The New Bush Strategy
By Thomas Donnelly
Posted: Friday, December 2, 2005
NATIONAL SECURITY OUTLOOK
AEI Online
Publication Date: December 2, 2005
December 2005
Over the past six months, the Bush administration has upgraded its budding “strategic partnerships” with India and Japan. Along with the steady "special relationship” with Great Britain, what is beginning to emerge is a global coalition system--it is too soon to call it a true alliance--for the post-Cold War world. Much work remains to be done to translate the expressions of similar political interests and values into usable military strength. Still, the prospects for expanding the number of genuine “stakeholders” in the Pax Americana are quite bright.
It used to be the fashion to pillory the Bush administration for its unilateralism. The worst offense was not removing Saddam Hussein from power, but “going it alone” (never mind the British and the other members of the coalition). And even in Afghanistan, the snub of NATO’s offer to slow the operation down to a Kosovo-like pace was thought to cloud the justice of the war.
Now, the editorialists of the New York Times have discovered:
[T]he Bush administration has been going out of its way to build up its military ties with countries surrounding China. India and Japan are the two most troubling examples. Washington has pressed ahead with an ill-advised initiative to share civilian nuclear technology with India, despite that country’s refusal to abide by the restrictions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And it has actively encouraged an already worrisomely nationalist Japanese government to shed postwar restraints on its military and embrace more ambitious regional security goals. Washington has also taken steps to strengthen military cooperation with Vietnam and Indonesia. Mr. Bush’s stopover in Mongolia [was] likewise . . . aimed at cementing a new security partnership.[1]
The reactionary Left is shocked, but there has been an even larger pattern of alliance-building that has been going on out of sight of the newsrooms of the mainstream media. Indeed, far from maintaining a unilateralist approach to American security, the Bush administration has been cementing a globe-spanning structure of strategic partnerships that has the potential not only to “contain” China, but also to sustain and enhance the liberal international order of the post-Soviet era.
Teaser and link....thanks