ChristopherM

After re-reading the posts you and I have posted I have decided that the historical context is irrelavent.

I touched on this in my last post.

What is going on now is what is important. The historical context does little for this discussion because the current ebb and flow of world politics does not seem to take it into account.

I appreciate the importance of the history of both entities, but they do not factor much into the discussion. The fact is that now there is a disagreement on how to handle foreign policy. The "how" now is the problem.

I started a book two days ago about strategy in the new world. It waxes historically to set the stage for its discussion, but talks mainly in the present (1995). One item it mentioned is that a fear of the smaller European countries is that the US will make one of 2 choices. One that it will become imperialistic or worse, that it will return to its isolationism policy (pre-WWI and WWII) and let the smaller countries fend for themselves. This is somewhat dated, being almost 10 years old, but seems to hit the target, if not the bulls-eye.

However, the colonialism of Europe, and the militaristic history of Europe is not relavent to the discussion except to build background for the current trend to use diplomacy instead of soldiers to solve problems.

Now I go back to work.