2014: The World Without America. Or Is It?

Michael Ledeen / PJ Media

At the end of last year, President Obama was in Hawaii. French President Hollande was in Saudi Arabia, whose leaders openly declare their contempt for American leaders. Obama is basically having fun. Hollande and the royal family are basically doing strategy. They are designing actions to advance their interests in the new world;  not, as is often said, a world without America, but a world in which American leaders have turned against America.

Which is not an easy task.

Those of us who lived abroad during the Cold War were given a window that was closed to our fellow citizens back home: if our eyes and ears and, above all, our noses were sufficiently sensitive, we could understand the importance of America, which defined the world for quite a while. Most of my years abroad were in Italy, and I was constantly amazed by Italians’ assumption that, over in Washington and New York, as in Hollywood and Detroit, “the Americans” were following Italian affairs in great detail.  One day an important national leader asked me, “What do they think in Washington about Aldo Moro’s editorial in today’sCorriere della Sera?  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that maybe three people in Washington might have read it, or that fewer than a dozen had ever heard of Aldo Moro.

The point being that all over the world, the people who mattered always had an eye on America, assumed that America was watching them and had plans for them, and thought that at the end of the day America was likely to be decisive in their future.

These convictions, most of which were fantasies, became even stronger when the Soviet Empire imploded, in the Bush-Clinton-Bush era when America was the lone superpower. One way or another, the world had to come to terms with the United States, because there was no effective counterforce, and, aside from a few fanatics, no one could imagine a fundamental change. Who could challenge American power?  Our enemies had to be very careful, our friends felt very comfortable, and the events of those years–our intervention in the Balkans, our smashing of Saddam when he ventured into Kuwait–removed any delusions of grandeur by would-be uppity nations.

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http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2014/01/01/2014-the-world-without-america-or-is-it/