The Persian Gulf war in '91 was the first major war fought on television. The current Iraqi war will be the first major war fought on the internet.
I'll get into what that means in a moment. But first i'd like to point out what bothers me most about the world situation: the fact that the US is so powerful that it can mobilize this war in the face of opposition from the UN and a host of UN member countries — and there's not a damn thing anyone can do to stop it.
Uncle Sam is playing world supercop. That's not necessarily a bad thing... Having a single dominant superpower does help keep the world stable. We are much better off with the US as the one superpower than we probably realize. Imagine a world with no superpowers, or one with an America wholly concerned with domestic affairs — it would be a world stumbling in chaos, with little wars continually breaking out between nations, ever teetering on the brink of nuclear apocalypse.
That said, the current situation isn't a lot better. For the US is a lumbering giant in foreign affairs — a bully in trade, an ugly American in diplomacy. This has become apparent in the brewing controversy over Turkey's plan of sending troops into northern Iraq — not to fight the Iraqis, but to contain the Kurdish people. The war against Iraq seems poised to ignite another, completely separate conflict, something the US obviously hadn't planned for.
The US may think it can act like a supercop, but it can't. Policing the world is like trying to control the weather. It's a chaotic system, where tiny actions can have huge, unimaginable repercussions.
The world situation would be a lot more stable if another power existed that could effectively "police the police" — stand up to the US when it oversteps its limits. But who would that be? The European Union? Its "union" is a joke: you can see how they're split over the war, with France and Germany against it and the UK, Spain and Italy siding with the US. Russia? Its hands are full just dealing with the former Soviet nations. China? Economically it may soon be a match for the US, but it has absolutely no credibility when it comes to handling world affairs.
Article comments
1 - Tom
The problem with the internet,and bloggers in particular, is that it represents a clique of sorts. Because not everyone has access to computers, because not everyone who gets online blogs, those that do tend to fall into a specific political schema. Most of the bloggers I read are against the war, but their numbers do not reflect the reality of the public. Bloggers just tend to feel the need to express their feelings, and if they oppose something it feels like everyone feels the same way. In reality, the bloggers represent a very small number of people in the US and especially the world. Our opinions may mean a lot to other bloggers, but they mean very little to the general public, and therefore, to the government.