Dẫn đầu hướng tới hòa bình Lời khuyên về đến điểm yếu của Mỹ và sức mạnh của châu Âu là không thuyết phục vì những lý do đặt ra trước đó trong cuốn sách này. Đối với hiện tại, Châu Âu thiếu sức mạnh kinh tế và quân sự và sự gắn kết chính trị cần thiết để hút những người khác vào con đường làm việc. | 370 Leading Toward Peace The counsel about coming American weakness and European strength is unconvincing for reasons set out earlier in this book. For the present Europe lacks the economic and military strength and the political cohesion necessary to suck others into its way of doing things although it doesn t lack the self-assurance to try. But in the longer run should the European Union become increasingly like a nation-state building cohesion and military strength then it may well attempt to dictate the structure of global politics as it did during the centuries of European imperialism. The transatlantic trap invites America to deny some of the most evident risks in the world today. Denial isn t responsible statesmanship. America must openly confront nuclear proliferation the Crescent of Fire the widening gap between rich and poor nations Russia s dangerous unpredictability and China s rapid emergence as a military challenge - not simply presume that these sources of danger are going to disappear of their own accord in the way that harmonism and convergence do. In a situation of long-term and dramatic economic divergence between nations and regions in which the United States is widening the gap between its economic and military strength and that of the rest of the developed world the strategy of the weak is to show the United States that there is no politically acceptable way for it to exercise its superiority. All talk of the sanctity of international law the legitimacy of the United Nations and the moral imperative of multilateralism is simply the implementation of a strategy of this sort. The European approach to world problems is generally either a stern rebuke for bad behavior or an offer of incentives for better behavior. For example a senior human rights envoy of the European Union to Russia issued what the Financial Times called a stern rebuke over judicial standards to Russia on September 30 It s hard to believe the Russians were much affected
