America Watching from the Sidelines

Pundits agonizing over what seems like a flurry of year-end diplomatic activity between sovreign states reflects the current trend of nations on every continent scrambling to re-fashion their alliances in light of U.S abdication of its traditional dominant role. The vacuum that has been created, either by ineptness or intent, since Barack Hussein Obama came to power is beginning to cause global concern. Unease has followed hope and ridicule. America is beginning to be perceived as ‘changed’, quite without the assurance that this change will translate into something better. Quite to the contrary, there is every indication that America is heading for something worse. It is time for the rest of the world to divest itself of its reliance on America’s teat or, at the very least, to begin scouting around for alternatives.

Specifically with respect to Asia, what is happening there is way overdue. Systems of governance should determine which countries should align and which should not. Democracies such as Japan, Australia, Israel, and India would make for a natural alliance. Authoritarian governments, of which China is the biggest in the region, make for an obvious counterpoint. Though some may see the democratic model as messy, history has shown that the democratic template generally yields greater and more profound advances in the long run. A profitable alliance between democracies in the Far East may even convince its non-democratic neighbors to adopt some democratic measures; that is, provided that ideology – often closely linked with corruption - does not cloud the obvious.

Unless America can regain some sense of its former confident self, she will be relegated to watching from the sidelines while the rest of the world advances through the next century.