From Yahoo News: “Especially since 9/11, with the American administration’s obsessive focus on democracy as the panacea for all of a suffering world’s ills, it has seemed to many that that was the only way for peoples to develop.
Intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama wrote glowingly, and incredibly, of humankind approaching an “end of history” — i.e., the world now knew that there were no other models for development except ours. The Bush people, sometimes covering up their sheer will to power with ideological sweet-talk, spoke succinctly of “freedom” solving every problem.
But now, three years after 9/11 and almost two years from the beginning of the Iraq war, a fascinating new process is under way. As the United States grows increasingly trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, other international players in the eternal game of nations are systematically gaining strength and influence. ”
