Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Would Yasuo Fukuda Envy Gordon Brown, or Does He Even Think about Things Like That?

Here, you may think that Prime Minister Brown is merely hitching Britain’s wagon to the US Hummer. But that’s what you do, unless you’re the big dog in the junk yard. It’s Churchilesque, actually.

Short of giving up the national language, there’s no way that we can emulate the Brits, but that’s all the more reason to rethink the ways that we engage the world. We don’t have that safety blanket. At the end of the day, America will not save the last dance for us.

There must be many people here who find the political divide between the superpower fantasists and the head-in-the-sand minimalists utterly unproductive. There must be many people here who believe that there’s something wrong with a nation that has so many self-imposed taboos on the debate over national security and diplomacy.

We’ve had a good sixty-years-and-counting run outsourcing all that mess. (Watchdog-sama? Honestly…) But I have a hunch things are changing and we’re not paying attention.

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