Ralph Peters' 2, Straw Men 0

■"Myths of globalization," op-ed by Ralph Peters, USA Today, 23 May 2005, sent by librarian brother from Yahoo News.

Peters is very intriguing. Former Army intell, writes projections of future warfare as well as Tom Clancy-like novels, and his next book is boldly entitled, New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy. The man know no subtlety, but he believes what he believes and he says it loud and hard. He gets invited to a lot of conferences because, as everyone says, he can always be counted upon to stir the pot by offering several provocative and often outrageous statements. He's generally fun to be around, but I worry about someone who always seems so naturally pissed off.

If Peters has a weakness, it's that he tends to be an intellectual bully. Not a mean one, mind you, because he prefers to box alone, laying waste to straw men both far and near. In this piece, he crushes two straw babies: 1) globalization immediately brings universal peace to the planet; and 2) globalization is new.

Second one is not even worth explaining, and I wonder why Peters bothers after several thousand historians have already plowed that field to fine dust. As for the first one, the notion that anything as disruptive to traditional societies would engender anything but serious tumult amidst all that social, economic, political, technological, and environmental change is at least worth explaining to anyone who thinks Europe constitutes the rest of the world outside America.

Me thinks old Ralph is gearing up to flog his book by promoting the notion that globalization needs a bodyguard and that it's spread will be accompanied by civil strife and transnational terrorism. No argument there. But the answer to this conflict won't be American global supremacy. By 2005, no one besides Ferguson is seriously talking about American "empire."