Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Deacon addresses Robert Kagan’s Washington Post article and its optimism that the US and Europe can mend fences. He identifies the prime error in Kagan’s reasoning:

Kagan seems to embrace the fallacy, so often derided by neo-conservatives, that differences, no matter how fundamental, can always be bridged because ideology doesn’t really matter much.

It is interesting to me primarily because I read a Parameters article just this morning by Ralph Peters, The Atlantic Century. I respect Peters, and agree with much of his assessment. In fact, I have always believed we need to be more active in Africa. Now, we have more reason than ever.

Old Asia and Old Europe have devoured American lives and consumed our wealth. The regressive societies of the Middle East are sick?and contagious?with hatred, jealousy, and congenital disrepair. Whenever the United States is forced to engage cultures whose glory days are behind them, we win, but we often pay a bitter price.

Peters explains why he thinks we should be building alliances with Spain, Portugal, and the UK in working with the two continents abutting the South Atlantic, and distancing ourselves from the likes of France and Germany. He makes points about both Africa and Latin America we should heed.

In the Arab world, we play down the negatives. In Africa, we ignore the positives. As a nation proud of our rationality, we are behaving very irrationally, indeed.

Latin America?s family secret is that everybody really wants to be a gringo, though it dare not be said in public. The ?Yankee go home? era is over, except for the dwindling revolutionary hardliners who have failed the continent as badly as did their nemeses, the caudillos, the strongmen and the land barons.

With what he suggests, I have great optimism. If we can only get our focus away from the Middle East and Old Europe.