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.

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.

I suppose I could quote Yoda: "Difficult to see the Future is."

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

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....)

"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.

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.

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!

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

Good points. I may have been a little hasty of my analysis of the situation. Thanks for the counter-points.