It is a funny thing about paradises occupied by fools: They are always of the fools' own making. Successive administrations in Washington qualify for residence because they have missed an essential feature of the post-Cold War world: While American hegemony has been (and for now remains) undeniable, it is not eternal. It is an interim state of affairs.
The Bush administration, in raising the military ante in its war on terror to the exclusion of any other credible policy, also raises a worrisome prospect: Is America now dedicated to the preservation of its hegemony against the inevitable emergence of a multipolar world? Is that how the Bush people read the present moment? Is Washington, after a dry decade, still hooked on useful enemies? Is Osama bin Laden -- remember him? -- more useful to Donald Rumsfeld on the loose than he is in one of the defense secretary's cages at Guantanamo Bay? These may seem provocative questions. But the Bush administration -- by what it is doing and what it is not doing -- is turning them into good questions, too.
Washington now stands directly opposed to South Korea's recently revived efforts to improve ties with its other half and reduce tensions on the peninsula. This is destructive -- present tense. In the Philippines, US personnel are chasing dope addicts, wayward peasants, and rebel leaders whose influence extends just beyond the next cornfield. Never mind: They're global terrorists now, and these are their "cells." (Now there's a fine, evocative term for you -- straight from the frightening 1950s.) Further out, even to float the idea of a war against Iran is foolhardy. Strange as it may seem to some, Iranians have embarked on a political process that is slow and frustrating but altogether to be encouraged. There are few Iranians who do not oppose the absolutism of religious conservatives. I know not a one who thinks this should be resolved by inviting the Americans back in for another round of extra-political intervention.
"The American president's remarks," Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said over the weekend, "show that he does not have the ability to learn from history." Finally, someone is beginning to understand Americans.
At the World Economic Forum in New York, the talk this year was of "fragile times." It's time to ask what makes them fragile. Unless you assume that the world is going to drop its very evident desire to live in harmony with America but not under it, it is time to consider whether Washington's limited view of our post-Sept. 11 predicament promises to make our planet less or more perilous.
Americans cannot go to sleep again, as so many did in the 1950s. There are too many dangers. And there's too much noise outside.
Patrick Smith is a former correspondent in Asia and the author of Japan: A Reinterpretation. The opinions expressed are his own.
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