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Subject: Realignment?
Y. pestis    2/10/2003 2:43:17 PM
It appears that realignment may have come to fruition post Cold War. As noted by PR - France and Germany would not be unhappy with the dissolution of Nato. Nato is a relic of the Cold War that is trying to redefine itself. The way it's been growing it will soon rival the UN and that has to stick in France's craw. Do we need a new Treaty Organization to limit Franco-German hegemony in europe and the world? :) As Nato stands now such an organization could emerge. France, Germany, and its close allies (Belgium?) are currently surrounded. UK, Spain, and the US to the west, Italy to the south, former eastern block countries to the east. Who knows maybe Russia will join. Franco-Germany could then form ties to Africa to form the new basket case of the world-one that would rival the Warsaw Pact. China would of course sit on the fringe and profit from both sides-lol.
Seriously, what scenarios can y'all see in a realigned world to come?
 
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Final Historian    RE:Realignment?   2/10/2003 6:14:20 PM
I have no idea. That scares me. At least the Cold War was predictable. But once the wall fell nothing has been the same... At first, we all thought everything was going to be great, that we could start to enjoy the peace dividend and all... but in truth we were just wandering aimlessly, with no idea of where to go. The West, and America in general, had no vision of the future, much less even a simple goal. That has changed somewhat, our goal now is remove bad, dangerous people from the world. But that goal is merely a means to an end, an end we haven't determined yet. I doubt that anyone can accurately predict how things will turn out. Few know what France, Germany, China and Russia will do when the US and UK attack Iraq. And they don't really know how we will respond to their responses. I do see NATO as undergoing some major change, quite possibly France, Germany and a few others may leave, and form their own little group. I doubt it will do much for them myself. I see the US reaching out to nations in Asia, but beyond that I can only guess. Even then that is mostly conspiracy theories. Sorry for the rambling, but this situation is mind boggling in its depth and complexity. I don't think anyone really knows how things will end up after all of this.
 
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Y. pestis    RE:Realignment?   2/11/2003 9:49:12 PM
Well I thought it would be an interesting topic-lol. I'm suprised that you are the only response FH but thanks for your thoughts. I'm with you in not having any idea of what is to come. Perhaps that is the problem-as you said no one has much of a clue as to what is to come.
 
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Final Historian    RE:Realignment?   2/12/2003 12:25:11 AM
I suppose I could quote Yoda: "Difficult to see the Future is."
 
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Phoenix Rising    RE:Realignment?   2/12/2003 12:12:01 PM
First: Go Yoda!! Second: I do see a bit of a realignment, but it's more going to be the partially-accidental result of a realignment in American attentions. Europe is no longer the front line. The Middle East is. American bases in the Middle East are growing. American bases in Europe are shrinking. This is significant in and of itself, but also significant in the sense that it's emblematic of the changing mood of the world's only remaining superpower. --Phoenix Rising
 
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bsl    RE:Realignment?   2/12/2003 5:56:36 PM
Let's not get too excited, yet. But, if we were to try to see how the present fault lines develop, we might, perhaps, wonder if France, Germany (and Belgium, should anyone bother to notice them) are increasingly isolated in their stance. Perhaps we could begin a campaign to ridicule Franco-German unilateralism? (snicker...chortle...snort....)
 
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bsl    RE:Realignment?   2/12/2003 6:01:29 PM
"At least the Cold War was predictable." To whom? It *wasn't* predicted by most of the senior people in America and Britain. Churchill acted as if he had made a deal with Stalin over Europe. (He had. Stalin didn't honor it.) FDR gave no hint, as far as I know, that he realized what was coming before he died. Truman clearly didn't expect the Cold War, although he adapted pretty quickly. One need do little more than review the history of American military appropriations from 1945 to the early 1950s to see that we certainly did not anticipate the Cold War. We slashed spending as quickly as we could post-1945. So much so that we were palpably unprepared to fight the Korean War in 1950. This would *never* have happened had we been preparing for the Cold War. Indeed, even the one insider most closely associated with formulating the policy and the reasoning behind the policy of the Cold War, George Kennan, spent the last part of his life loudly denying to anyone who would listen that he predicted the Cold War as it evolved or favored the American posture towards it.
 
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Final Historian    RE:Realignment?   2/12/2003 7:07:10 PM
Sorry, I guess that you misunderstood the intent behind that statement. What I was trying to get across was that DURING the Cold War things were fairly predictable. We knew who our enemy was, and we both acted in certain ways. This time around things are less predictable. We have trouble knowing who is really a friend, or a foe. We don't know where are enemies are, even if we know who they are. We don't nearly as much about their capabilities, and their timetable. Also, the way countries will act without the 2 super-power balance makes things more complicated. Because the US isn't the USSR, countries will defy us in a manner that they wouldn't have done 20 years ago, like Germany or France. Everything is much more complicated this time. Not to say the Cold War wasn't complicated, this is just more so.
 
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giblets    We know where Belgium stands   2/13/2003 4:04:03 AM
Interesting Belgium, is standing with France t al, during the first Gulf war they refused to sell the UK any shells for use in the war. What can you expect froma countrymade only famous for chocolate cartoons and paedaphiles!
 
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bsl    RE:Realignment?   2/13/2003 5:02:40 PM
FH, Ah. I see. Well, yes, in the sense that the lines were pretty clearly drawn and it was relatively easy to decide which side people fell into (although, in fact, this was an issue for decades, anyway; cf Non-Aligned Movement [which wasn't, really, but spent years claiming to be]). And, because of the bipolar nature of the strategic environment, many other international tensions which might otherwise have acted to separate various nations were suppressed, although here, to, it didn't always work this way. In fact, the Cold War sometimes acted to exacerbate local disputes, turning them into high level international fights by superimposing Cold War considerations on top of the purely local disputes. (The Indochinese War was one example of this.). I don't agree that the world has turned mysterious, post Cold War, however. The enemies we face now, are the same enemies we faced, before, although sometimes we chose to pretend that wasn't so. The Crisis of Civilizations between Islam and the West is in no sense new. It was going on before 1900. The problem with North Korea was part of the Cold War. The French are much more obnoxious, now that they don't believe the Russians are a danger to move west, but they were obnoxious and obstructionist during most of the Cold War, too. More a difference in degree than in kind. bsl
 
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Final Historian    RE:Realignment?   2/13/2003 5:35:37 PM
Good points. I may have been a little hasty of my analysis of the situation. Thanks for the counter-points.
 
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Y. pestis    RE:Realignment?   2/14/2003 4:04:04 PM
Nice points BSL though I don't agree with all of them in toto. I believe the world has turned at least a bit more complicated post Cold War. What is a local event in a non-bipolar world where intricate alliences are made by countries in close proximity to each other and some times quite distant. Prior to the Cold War, wars between large countries were quite common as were proxy wars that were seen during the Cold War. The US was just a pawn for France in their greater dispute with England during the American revolution. The Cold War not only prevented conflicts between large states it also held 'The Crisis of Civilizations' in check for the most part. Many of our 'enemies' of the past are not now. India is a great example of this. It has had strong ties to the USSR and Russia but the US is now repositioning it self as an ally endangering its ties to Pakistan which now wouldn't be so important if not for 'The Crisis of Civilizations'. Some in Europe now seek to find a new identity. Eastern Europe seems to be more closely allied with the US than Russia or even Western Europe. France and Germany want to regain their status as world powers and seek to do so as major members within the EU. They may be isolating themselves now but I don't think this will be the last time it will happen. As you point out the French have been obstructionists for a while but now they may be gaining influence. Without the threat of the USSR, many in Western Europe seem to feel the need to sake themselves of their 'shackles' of the US and US 'imperialism'. The problem with France and Germany now is that they chose the wrong time and the wrong cause to try to counter US influence. Most of Africa is 'up for grabs' but no one seems to care. No, I think the world is definately more interesting now. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
 
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bsl    RE:Realignment?   2/14/2003 5:52:41 PM
"(M)ore complicated"? Yes, I agree with that. Not totally terra incognita, but it is more complicated. I wouldn't quite call India a Cold War "enemy", but it was generally somewhat hostile. The "bi-polar" idiom turns out to be one of the more apt descriptions in international affairs. The polarization of the Cold War tended to channel otherwise local disputes. Countries tended to gravitate to one side or the other, and the movement of one country into one camp tended to stimulate the other camp to orient itself towards the other country in the local dispute. Some issues among nations were suppressed during the Cold War (Western European rivalries, for instance). Others were elevated to worldwide issues. (The Korean conflict, for instance.) The threat that a local dispute could escalate to general nuclear war tended, all else equal, to put a ceiling on most disputes, although it certainly did not stop real wars in many places. The point I think you're making about ties among nations leading to expanding conflicts was nothing new to the Cold War. It's a major part of the traditional explanation of WW1. I'm sure the French are reaching for increased power and influence, as well as trying to cripple America, but I don't quite know what Germany has in mind. I don't automatically attibute the same motives to Germany, as a whole, as I do to France, as a whole. French policy has been pretty consistent in this direction for generations. It's a true national policy, not the idea of one, particular leader. Germany may be different. I'm sure there is general support for a certain kind of pacificism in Germany which tends to quetion almost any use of military force. In this, to oppose American policy in Iraq is not a surprise. However, the specific direction present German policy is taking, the level of activity to actively sabotage American policy and the close collaboration with France strikes me as the specific policy of Schroeder and Fischer. The latter is on videotape, in his youth, assaulting a police officer. At that time, he was associated with groups which were associated with real terrorists. He was also on record supporting groups whose official program included the destruction of Israel. Schroeder, these days, is polling the lowest levels of support from the people in the history of German political polling. He's widely considered to have lied, outrageously, during his campaign, and it seems clear that he adopted a strongly antiAmerican stance as a campaign ploy. IOW, in Germany, the present policies may be far more associated with specific politicians than representing any real national consensus. bsl
 
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Topolino    RE:Realignment?   2/14/2003 6:30:27 PM
bsl, I agree with you about the German attitude being a reflection more of Shroeder than a deep seated trend. See these comments by the leader of the CDU, the primary opposition party. link
 
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Y. pestis    RE:Realignment?   2/14/2003 7:05:22 PM
Argh-I just deleted my post To sum it up--- Good points BSL but I think you misunderstood my point on expanding conflicts. I meant that I believe the Cold War kept this from happening due to the threat of the conflict going global then nuclear. Without the bipolar world and the threat of global nuclear war, will regional conflict increase and will the threat of such conflicts lead to the kind of entanglements that led to WWI be increased? It is the nature of these new alliences that will be of interest-if they occur. I take it you don't see any major shifts in alliences.
 
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Jeff from Michigan    RE:Realignment?   2/15/2003 10:37:29 PM
As I have put in earlier posts the Cold War put every conflict into a bi-polar mode since the Soviets and the U.S. quickly picked sides. Then they were defused as soon as possible. Now a lot of these conflicts have resurfaced. Ethopia/Eritria, Tuti's/Hutu's, Croatia/Serbia, Kashmir and watch out for Malaysia/Singapore. So it will be a bloodier world. Now we are in the midst of a "clash of civilizations" where Arabic Islam is in a battle with itself. Will it modernize or continue to look backward? My guess is that it will look backwards until the West re-occupies it. As I also said "is it the White Man's burden all over again?" My answer is yes. And after this comes the next "clash" with China. That day will come and it will come in our lifetime. That clash will be over individual liberties vs the power of the state. That story is just starting. All in all a very interesting world with power shifting from Western Europe to the East.
 
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