WASHINGTON, March 11 (UPI) -- In global terms, the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was to end that curious twilight decade that we called the post-Cold War period. We are all now living in a new era altogether, and a lot of scholars and thinkers are trying to define it.
Only President George W. Bush wants to call it the age of the War on Terrorism. Max Boot in the Weekly Standard has hailed the coming of a new American Empire. Some say Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington predicted the new age in his 1993 book predicting "The Clash of Civilizations." French intellectual Paul Baudillard says it is the Fourth World War (the Cold War being the third), as the rest of the globe rises to challenge American dominance.
Russian thinker Semen Novoprudsky calls it the emergence (and Russia's absorption into) "the Empire of Good" in which America becomes "the exclusive exporter of liberal values to the savage outposts of the modern world." The point is that Novoprudsky, though a supporter of liberal values, fears the trend could be dangerous, as the Americans take over the traditional Russian role of stabilizing Central Asia.
In a sense, all of these various new descriptions are right, because they are all grappling with the same two hard facts. The first is that in his "with us or against us" speech, Bush has redefined the nature of American friendship and alliance. Henceforth, the mission will define the coalition, rather than the coalition defining the mission -- which may not bode well for NATO as we have known it.
The second fact is that the decade since the end of the Cold war has seen an extraordinary widening of American power and presence around the world. The result of the Gulf War of 1991 was to establish a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf. The result of the wars of the Yugoslav Succession in the 1990s was to establish what looks to be an equally permanent U.S.-NATO presence in the Balkans. The result of the Afghan war so far is to extend the American presence into the heart of Eurasia.
American military dispositions during the Cold War were logical. U.S. troops were based in Western Europe and Northeast Asia to contain the threat of Soviet expansion. Some suggest the new logic of America's global military presence is to secure the energy supplies of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin.
Not quite. If there is any logic to current American military basing it seems to be to insert itself in the most dangerous places on the planet, those wild frontier zones where Huntington's civilizations meet and traditionally clash. The Balkans, for example, is where the rival religions of Papal Christianity, Russian Orthodox Christianity and Islam have all met and fought.
Central Asia is an even more turbulent place, where the great civilizations of Muslim and Hindu confront one another with China and Russia glowering from the wings. And at the airbases in Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a look of permanence is starting to accrue to the American presence as local contractors start filling contracts to build barracks and extend runways.
Almost a century ago, a British strategist called Sir Halford Mackinder developed a geopolitical theory that looked at Eurasia as the origin of so many of the world's civilizations, and concluded that the Russian core and its areas of natural expansion into Asia and Europe contained the potential to become a world power. His Heartland Theory says that whoever rules Russia and Eastern Europe commands the heartland, and whoever rules the heartland commands the World Island (Eurasia and Africa), and whoever rules the World Island commands the World.
This elegant theory, however, ran aground on the way that history seemed to suggest that the oceanic powers of the rim of the world island, Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries and America since the 20th century, have done rather better than the heartland powers. Maybe the rim powers, with their command of the seas and their inherent commitment to trade, had the real secret of global mastery.
In the age of President Bush, America seems to be taking out insurance. Heartland or Rimland, wherever and whatever it takes to get the job done; in its mission of retribution for Sept. 11, the U.S. military is prepared -- and more than ready -- to dominate them both.
And there is one more measure of the way the world has changed in the past six months. Most thoughtful commentators, when considering the concept of American Empire in the past, would stress that it was essentially benign and even benevolent, seeking not conquest but the extension of its own freedoms and prosperity to others. The benevolence is over.
If we think about it, we know what new world we are living in; it is the era of No More Mr. Nice Guy.
