Rogue Superpower

For book research purposes, I've recently been re-reading Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. It's an interesting experience. This passage appears on page 353:

The United States is not a rogue superpower determined to do what it wants regardless of who it threatens or angers. If we behave in this fashion, we will alienate our allies and convince much of the rest of the world to band together against us to try to keep us under control. Rather than increasing our security and prosperity, such a development would drastically undermine it.

I was thinking about that when I wrote my latest and very shrill column for TAP Online. It's a much more polite commentary, but fundamentally I think John Ikenberry's continuing work on the "Security Trap" concept is expressing the same idea.

Comments

For your book be sure to read Chalmers Johnson (Blowback and Sorrows of Empire), if you haven't already.

Posted by Miracle Max | September 27, 2006 2:35 PM

Good piece. But if you call your book "Rogue State" it will be filed next to Chomsky in the alternative bookstores. You need to find your way towards sticking your finger in the eye of the Democratic party foreign policy establishment without wholly marginalising yourself. Not an easy trick.

Posted by otto | September 27, 2006 5:36 PM