To follow up:

* TOO MUCH POWER has been captured in Washington for the national system of checks and balances to contain it within a purely national constitutional structure. A CORRELATIVE BALANCING POWER ABROAD is required. “Constructing such a balanced state system for Europe itself” has been the great postwar European achievement, Calleo says.

This article is not about what a Barak Obama administration can or can’t do in foriegn policy. We’ve gone way beyond that on the world stage. If you not a “globalist and semi elitist”, your not going to get into the white house in the first place.

That is the crux of the class struggle that we have in our national politics. NO ONE here is in a position to do anything dramatic concerning US world hegemony except another political national or unified entity. Such as a resurgent Russia, China or vibrant EU.

Until then apparatus is in place, to continue regional destabilization in the name of international management if you are not located in an emerging market or the EU and G8.

* But he reaches his own discouraged—and discouraging—conclusion when he writes that it is unlikely that Europe will “find the will, the means and the confidence to rise to the occasion.” “A Europe that wants to be cohesive and strong, and on good terms with its neighbors,” will not fit easily into alliance “with an America actively pursuing global hegemony.”

IT’s interesting,whatglobal hegemony that the US is implementing in the name of “Terrorism Control”.  isn’it really in a sense “submission to” an elite mindset of ethnocentric worldview. Isn’t that whats meant by global hegemony and international management as the Russians put it. We except a worldview of white European Unionism but reject African or Middle Eastern Unionism even if the will exists in those regions to implement that in our day!
So the issue lies more in the power of elitism in our national politics and the impact that has on our country for the middle class and on the world stage, that the same middle class is helpless to change here on our shores. Thus the more wealthy our nation has become, the more disenfranchised electorate, especially to promote world fairness and peaceful co-existence for those nations and cultures of “difference”. A really ethnocentric and intollerable worldview. Led by the few.

Where is my country’s outrage at what has been perpetrated in our name? It seems to me there isn’t anything, any horror, any crime, committed by our fascist overlords in our name that my fellow countrymen cannot still shrug off.
I wonder if they will awaken when the freefall finally stops and we hit rock bottom.
Nah. Not as long as American Idol is still going strong.

This article should be required reading for an informed eclectorate (which the national ruling class does not apparently want).

The post cold war United States acting as a nation building hegemonious world dictator pretty much reeks of old Roman Empiricalism. Except that we pretty much took over for British world emprialism.

The comment that present day Washington is fairly null and void of checks and balances for this kind of foriegn policy dictates, is spot on.

Meanwhile we have two candidates that one is from and the other doesn’t want to make any kind of waves to the national ruling class.

What we are winessing is a class struggle in US national politics. And we allready know the outcome of that one! Sad.

Maybe the constitution should be revised to be more truthful. We the people of the Corporations of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union….

What? After almost eight years of the Bush belligerence, there’s a “loss of transatlantic harmony?” Wow, go figure! Hmmm, maybe Europe hasn’t forgotten what Dr. Death Rummy had to say about the “old Europe.” The entire planet Earth will reap the whirlwind from Bush’s insane genocidal madness for a long time to come. Amerika’s treasonous spineless Congress sat silent in their capitulation to the Bush fascism. Republicans AND Democrats. That ‘air of arrogant superiority’ has worn out it’s futile welcome and now the piper must be paid.

For seven and half years, we had to depend on foreign media outlets and foreign personalities to tell us part of the truth about the sad realities in our so-called democracy and our so-called bastion of freedom of speech.

Just on a 4th of July event we needed the BBC to tell us that Bush was heckled by few protesters and called by his real name “fascist.”

Now we needed Medvedev, the Russian President, to call a spade spade and describe the real state of our economy as “essentially in a depression,” when just few days ago the spinners of political economy, like the ignorant Greenspan, was telling us his latest deceptive lie about not being in a serious recession yet despite all the clear signs.

My point is that the MSM is 100% in bed with the evil political-military establishment to continue taking all of us for a ride! If this is not time for a real revolution, there will never be one for this sad herd called the people of the United States of America!

•  “..Insofar as America’s hegemonic world view seems to stand in the way of such collaboration, the Atlantic seems more likely to count as a barrier than as a bond.”..

And this is the reality. So, depends on which side of the barrier one takes the risk of being on.

Because, this has been true for a while now…

•  “The United States, he said, is today “essentially in a depression.” He might have added that the whole world is in an economic crisis because of the deeply irresponsible decisions, if not criminal manipulations, of the American real estate investment market, themselves patent betrayals of leadership.

In other words, there is no ‘good place’ to be right now, or any time in the near future.

It remains to be seen what Obama will, or more reasonable CAN do, to make any positive changes. The reality of today makes it clear that the damage is not going to be repaired in one presidential term. The most we can expect is to first STOP the on-going damage. That would be a start. But that means rejecting (entirely) the long standing goal of enforcing US hegemony on the rest of the world, and using the time and resources to clean up our own house.

If Obama can sign on to that, (and I believe that he already has) then there might be a chance to re-balance the global scales.

•  “…So far as one can assess the developing foreign policy views of Barack Obama, the question can’t yet be given a firm answer. Obama is surrounded by advisers who are mostly former officials in past Democratic governments, of the most orthodox cast of thought, so real change seems unlikely…”

This much is true, and I for one, appreciate the reality of Mr. Pfaff’s prose. The foreign policy views of Barark Obama ARE still developing, as conditions change from day to day. And, he has so far kept his hand on that pretty close to his vest. I would argue though, that his advisors are from a larger collection than just former officials in Democratic governments, and that the ‘orthodoxy’ charge is relative to the individuals. Even the ‘orthodox’ cast of thought changes when the reality demands it.

So, we all better do some hard hoping that this team maintains some intellectual flexibility.

Meantime…

“…The more John McCain says about foreign policy, the more this otherwise admirable man reveals ignorance of the subject and, it would seem, his lack of intellectual depth…”

Pfaff is diplomatic here, since I don’t find John McCain to be particularly admirable these days. His decline, (even in just 4 short years) has been drastic. But is lack of intellectual depth isn’t new. Nothing has ever indicated that he had any to begin with.