Dewey:

But it's such a BIG stick? C'mon, one swing around the parking lot before it's full!

Seriously, I just saw a CSPAN presentation from June of this year ('04) wherein a fellow who works at the U.S. Naval War College, Thomas Barnett, was putting forth a global view as to what's going on and what the US should do. He's got a new book out called "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century". It was late and I didn't catch it all, so I don't feel up to summarizing it except that he's one of the few people I know to articulate a world view. I did understand him to be in support of globalization as an overall modernizing and civilizing influence in the world today. He seemed to be saying that the countries which embraced globalization had less terror and mayhem, the those which weren't getting into it were the opposite, and they were mainly the Arab countries and Africa. He was critical about several aspects of American policy, especially not getting other significant powers in the world to join us.

I'm going to follow up on this. If any of you are familiar with him please chime in.