The State of the World
Mark Steyn's "Happy Warrior" column in the latest NR Digital (subscription required) laments the post-post-9/11 world where the US fist has dissolved into five fingers. Another change has occured, he says. American foreign policy is adapting to a world in which optimistic interventionism has been falsified. He thinks this change is a reversion, a retrogression to the stability politics of old, where the US is unwilling to expend a massive amount of blood and treasure to benefit others immediately and itself only tentatively and in the long run. I do not think it is that simple.
Much of our essential influence derives from a simple fact: our da'sein, our being there. We affect the world merely by existing, or, more specifically, by existing in the fullness of our nature when other, alternative natures could hypothetically exist in our place--with our power. All theories of the world, whether those of our enemies or those of our allies, must at least account for America's existence in fact and interact in a thrown world of high American potential.
In the fitness landscape of society, we are the local peak . As such we exercise a terrible causal gravity on the surrounding population. Simply by being who and what we are, in contradistinction to who and what we aren't, we affect the world: we inform its apparency, and we weight the statistical variables of its possibility space.
In that sense, who and what we are can be determinative in a way that what we do cannot. The latter is a mere derivative of the former, and as such cannot be definitional. What we do is integrated, not integral: it informs, but it can never encompass.
This is why 9/11 was such an epochal event. Carried out under a false assumption of what America is, it surely succeeded in modifying it. Two distant governments have fallen since then, and we are seriously debating a third. Al'Qaeda is reduced to sending taped messages instead of hijacked airliners. The world is on edge, awareness and vigilance are heightened, and events that once would have been obscure are now globally consequential.
Small events loom large precisely because large events are no longer necessary to trigger American reaction. When America debates military action over weapons programs, and not weapons used, there can be little doubt that a shift has occurred in the world. (Think: is there any question about what would happen if America were struck again?)
We may no longer be in a post-9/11 world, but we aren't in a pre-9/11 world either. Our posture and our potential have changed--are changing still. We are less complacent, and we are dramatically self-aware. No longer simply concerned with self-sustenance, our attention and efforts have shifted to the management of our ecosystem. Our survival techniques have graduated to the next level--no longer at war with nature, we now seek to cultivate it.
Strong at home, respected abroad--as a subject--is a harbinger of what's to come, not just for America, but for the entire world. Who and what we are is not just our concern anymore; it is now everybody's.
Failed states cannot destroy us. The are not an existential problem: they are an administrative problem. The only existential threat left is mass defection caused by poorly conceived American overreaction to events.
Our challenge is to be responsive and effective without being precipitous. Therefore, pace Mark Steyn, we should put aside the fist, and use our five fingers. Until we can't.
As the father says in the movie Contact, small moves are what's needed now.
Much of our essential influence derives from a simple fact: our da'sein, our being there. We affect the world merely by existing, or, more specifically, by existing in the fullness of our nature when other, alternative natures could hypothetically exist in our place--with our power. All theories of the world, whether those of our enemies or those of our allies, must at least account for America's existence in fact and interact in a thrown world of high American potential.
In the fitness landscape of society, we are the local peak . As such we exercise a terrible causal gravity on the surrounding population. Simply by being who and what we are, in contradistinction to who and what we aren't, we affect the world: we inform its apparency, and we weight the statistical variables of its possibility space.
In that sense, who and what we are can be determinative in a way that what we do cannot. The latter is a mere derivative of the former, and as such cannot be definitional. What we do is integrated, not integral: it informs, but it can never encompass.
This is why 9/11 was such an epochal event. Carried out under a false assumption of what America is, it surely succeeded in modifying it. Two distant governments have fallen since then, and we are seriously debating a third. Al'Qaeda is reduced to sending taped messages instead of hijacked airliners. The world is on edge, awareness and vigilance are heightened, and events that once would have been obscure are now globally consequential.
Small events loom large precisely because large events are no longer necessary to trigger American reaction. When America debates military action over weapons programs, and not weapons used, there can be little doubt that a shift has occurred in the world. (Think: is there any question about what would happen if America were struck again?)
We may no longer be in a post-9/11 world, but we aren't in a pre-9/11 world either. Our posture and our potential have changed--are changing still. We are less complacent, and we are dramatically self-aware. No longer simply concerned with self-sustenance, our attention and efforts have shifted to the management of our ecosystem. Our survival techniques have graduated to the next level--no longer at war with nature, we now seek to cultivate it.
Strong at home, respected abroad--as a subject--is a harbinger of what's to come, not just for America, but for the entire world. Who and what we are is not just our concern anymore; it is now everybody's.
Failed states cannot destroy us. The are not an existential problem: they are an administrative problem. The only existential threat left is mass defection caused by poorly conceived American overreaction to events.
Our challenge is to be responsive and effective without being precipitous. Therefore, pace Mark Steyn, we should put aside the fist, and use our five fingers. Until we can't.
As the father says in the movie Contact, small moves are what's needed now.
posted by John Aristides at 5/30/2006 05:00:00 PM
1 Comments:
I sympathized with your account of meeting with your Princton friend over at Wretchards (June 19); here in Seattle we're up to eyeballs in the types he represents: educated, knowing, superior and smug and slightly deranged. I see a lack of will or ability (I can't tell which) to recognize the lethality of what we are up against; for me 9/11 was such a clear statement of intent to destroy - of war - beyond anything we might have done to "provoke" the terrorists. But the reserves of self-blame are much vaster than I ever imagined; they are so deep that they pool into Vanity. Our prosperity, bounty and inclusiveness is so vast that we can even absorb destruction; we are the engines of great prosperity? Yes, but also the originators of destruction; the USA as Shiva the author of creation and destruction? Sorry I don't buy it but I think that has become the Democrats' view.
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