Editorial :Asean-US ties: be seen, be heard, The Nation, July 16, 2007

This is a bad sign of the combined effects of the Bush post-presidency and the Jimmy Carter/Rose Garden-like imprisonment imposed upon Bush by Iraq. The Middle East is certainly the future of "weeds" in globalization's spread, but South and East Asia is obviously where the "lawn" is being grown most heavily right now.

True to form with this administration, America lives to kill weeds, leaving China to grow the lawn elsewhere (including everywhere inside the Gap except the Middle East, by and large, where Beijing's economic strategy of limited regret, when married to our own security version of the same, accomplishes virtually nothing while empowering Iran in the meantime). This strangely myopic approach (No wait! We are tracking Chinese sub developments, so we're on top of that all right!) gives China's "charm offensive" (Kurlantz's term) far more sway that it should have, given all of China's clear associations with globalization's negative externalities.

The clear irony for the neocons is, of course, that the more they try to maintain the one-superpower world, the more they unintentionally push the planet toward balancing us asymmetrically.

Thanks to Doug Clark for sending this.