No 9/11 And A Different US President

What if someone else than Bush would have won the US presidential election of 2000 (I suppose that in this case it means either Gore or McCain.) and, for whatever reason, 9/11 attacks don't happen?

So, without Bush and war on terror, how things are in America and in the world in 2008?
 
Well the U.S. at least would be a little better. No wasted money or dead soldiers=:D me. Anyway Saddam and the Taliban would still be in power, but I always figured that sooner or later Iraq would fall into Civil War. (Americans just spread up the process) Which if that were to happen America would be probably donate supplies to Civilians and stuff. At home Green Energy/Economic Independence type policies will have greater strength and help make the U.S. a better place.


Now a more interesting question is what would happen if the Twin Towers/the 4 Airplanes were ISOTed 5 years into the future, but everyone thought it was a Terrorist Attack?:cool:
 
Regardless of who is President the main Foreign Policy aim of that administration is going to be China. Before 9/11 America was gearing up for focusing its long term military planning onto China.
 

Vivisfugue

Banned
This strikes me as a political, rather than strictly A-H question, but I think under such a scenario (no Bush, no 9/11 - which is two PODs, btw) US-China tensions would be MUCH higher, since without Al-Qaeda and Iraq to focus on, the Neoconservative foreign policy intelligentsia would latch onto China as the Main Enemy to justify US military budgets. North Korea's development of the atomic bomb might become a casus belli to demonstrate (a la Afghanistan) that the US remained a formidable world power able to fight anywhere it pleased, with the same strained letter-not-spirit application of UN resolutions that characterized the leadup to the Iraq war. NK being on China's doorstep wouldn't hurt either. Iraq itself would remain as it was in the '90s, governed by Hussein but militarily contained, with an international consensus growing that economic sanctions were counterproductive. As memories of 1979 faded, US-Iranian tensions would likely ease, especially if Khatami remains President (with Gore, you have the two most conciliatory possible Presidents in the two countries, rather than Bush and Ahmadinejad, the two least able to get along.) The UN would remain a much more important arbiter of international disputes, since neither Gore or pre-2000 McCain gave any indication of the outright rejectionism displayed by the Bush administration (the man appointed John Bolton as UN Ambassador).

Economically, the rise of Asia would go on, as would the inflation in energy prices, and the economic decline of the US would be much more front and center as a political issue. Hurricane Katrina would still devastate New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, although under Gore FEMA would likely still be well-managed, so rescue and resettlement might proceed more smoothly.

Air travel in the US would be less of a drag, and visas easier to get. Especially under Gore, the love affair between Europe and America would continue, as the face of America abroad would continue to be of befuddled but fundamentally benign tourists rather than redneck Gitmo torturers. Tensions over immigration would remain, but with less of the implicit identification of foreigners in general with terrorists.

Steps to curb global warming would be slow and awkward, much obstructed by a Republican congress in Gore's first administration. The US would remain a non-signatory to Kyoto and the ICC, as no plausible US president would be willing to expend valuable political capital on such thankless projects as preventing environmental degradation or enforcing international (read:foreign) norms of justice.

Socially, the political polarization of the US would continue, and business would continue with all the rapaciousness of the '90s but with none of the optimism (especially without the inflationary boost of post-9/11 deficit spending and Bush's tax cuts). As OTL, the middle class would be hollowed out by outsourcing, problems of healthcare provision would likewise remain, and without a foreign enemy to focus on, the American people would most likely target their rage at each other. Politics would be an ugly, zero-sum business, and both parties would most likely be frustrated in enacting their policies in any meaningful sense (this is in contrast to OTL, where the GOP ran rampant for four years after 9/11, enacting torture, war, rapacious natural gas drilling in the West, now likely to be followed by a similar period of Democratic predominance). In such an environment, the winner of the 2000 election would very likely be a one term president, and legislatively the Democrats would still likely be chipping away at the Republican gains of 1994 (instead of staring into their collective graves in 2002 and 2004 before powering back in 2006). Overall, in politics, business, and society the atmosphere would be one of overpowering frustration, without the dynamic illusion of war to animate the body politic.
 
even without Bush and 9/11, the US economy was bound to go into a slow decline... the trends were in place before 9/11. The airlines' decline would have been slower, but still there. The main difference would be in the US budget... it would be smaller, less in the red, and likely to be smaller for the military (without invading Afghanistan and Iraq, the impetus for smaller US military budget and forces would continue).
 
Especially under Gore, the love affair between Europe and America would continue, as the face of America abroad would continue to be of befuddled but fundamentally benign tourists rather than redneck Gitmo torturers. Tensions over immigration would remain, but with less of the implicit identification of foreigners in general with terrorists.

I'm not sure Gore-Europe would stay a love affair that long. He was seen as the more protectionistic of the two so it might have been a trade war. Also some disapoinments if he don't manage to push trough the Kyoto protocol.
 

Vivisfugue

Banned
I'm not sure Gore-Europe would stay a love affair that long. He was seen as the more protectionistic of the two so it might have been a trade war. Also some disapoinments if he don't manage to push trough the Kyoto protocol.

I meant more socially than politically (or rather, soft power rather than hard). Somehow I don't see millions of Europeans taking to the streets to protest banana tariffs. You wouldn't see the term "Old Europe" except in a few far-right wing US blogs. The mutual animosity would never grow beyond mild ribbing and into the realm of actual political policy (I may have my timing backwards, but another butterfly would be that Eastern European accession to NATO might be slowed down a bit, as there would be no "Coalition of the Willing" to reward. This might have helped avert the war in Georgia last week, or at least forced the Russians to come up with a different excuse to invade.)
 
Well the U.S. at least would be a little better. No wasted money or dead soldiers=:D me.
Actually, it wouldn't. Because you wouldn't know (and likely wouldn't suspect, or even believe it possible), you would assume that that state of affairs would be nothing special. Hence it wouldn't especially cheer you up one way or another, though alternative uses for that money would be up for interpretation.

Anyway Saddam and the Taliban would still be in power, but I always figured that sooner or later Iraq would fall into Civil War. (Americans just spread up the process) Which if that were to happen America would be probably donate supplies to Civilians and stuff. At home Green Energy/Economic Independence type policies will have greater strength and help make the U.S. a better place.
Iraq was a conflict waiting to happen at some level, regardless of who the president was or 9-11. Saddam had already largely negated the worst effects of the sanctions (now making the country poor, but failing in their goal to destabilize him), his WMD programs were still in the dark (and we know he intended to revive them when he thought he could), and the No Fly zone was increasingly unteneable as Iraqi forces took shots at patroling fighters.



This strikes me as a political, rather than strictly A-H question, but I think under such a scenario (no Bush, no 9/11 - which is two PODs, btw) US-China tensions would be MUCH higher, since without Al-Qaeda and Iraq to focus on, the Neoconservative foreign policy intelligentsia would latch onto China as the Main Enemy to justify US military budgets. North Korea's development of the atomic bomb might become a casus belli to demonstrate (a la Afghanistan) that the US remained a formidable world power able to fight anywhere it pleased, with the same strained letter-not-spirit application of UN resolutions that characterized the leadup to the Iraq war. NK being on China's doorstep wouldn't hurt either.
A couple of problems with this, not least of which is the fact that China was already increasingly important to the US economy.

First, someone other than Bush likely means that the neoconservatives aren't as influential.

Two, if North Korea tests a bomb, what do you think the likelyhood is that they only produced enough for the test device, as opposed to enough for multiple bombs before carrying out the test?

Three, Afghanistan was not invaded to prove the US could fight wherever it pleased. There are a number of much more relevant places the US could intervene for much better reasons and/or gain, whether humanitarian in Africa or elsewhere. Afghanistan was invaded because the government refused to give up its guests who launched a major terrorist attack against the US. Big difference.

Four, have you considered that the North Korea border is one of the most heavily defended ones in the world, that China would be incredibly unlikely to allow US forces to be on its direct borders, AND that the capital of Souuth Korea is in standard artillery range of NK? There's no way either South Korea, China, or even Japan (in range of Korean missiles) would greenlight it. And without the consent of its basing partners and the nation that intervened the last time NK almost fell to the Americans...
As memories of 1979 faded, US-Iranian tensions would likely ease, especially if Khatami remains President (with Gore, you have the two most conciliatory possible Presidents in the two countries, rather than Bush and Ahmadinejad, the two least able to get along.)
Alternative point: with little/no impetus to make the compromises for reconciliation on either side, the two remain as they were.
The UN would remain a much more important arbiter of international disputes, since neither Gore or pre-2000 McCain gave any indication of the outright rejectionism displayed by the Bush administration (the man appointed John Bolton as UN Ambassador).
The UN becoming more important implies it becomes more effective, something that is less than likely. And while most others would certainly pay more lip-service to the UN, any US president will still only go with the UN in as so much as the UN is useful to American interests.
Economically, the rise of Asia would go on, as would the inflation in energy prices, and the economic decline of the US would be much more front and center as a political issue. Hurricane Katrina would still devastate New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, although under Gore FEMA would likely still be well-managed, so rescue and resettlement might proceed more smoothly.
Katrina's problems in Louisiana were as much about the incompetant local leadership as the much more visible Federal idiocy. Short of wanking out the state and local officials, Katrina is going to be bad regardless.
Air travel in the US would be less of a drag, and visas easier to get.
Very true.
Especially under Gore, the love affair between Europe and America would continue, as the face of America abroad would continue to be of befuddled but fundamentally benign tourists rather than redneck Gitmo torturers.
Wrong. There was no "love affair" between Europe and America, only an increasingly strained relationship that found a remarkable scape goat in George Bush. European governments were increasingly annoyed with American unilateralism and unipolarism under Clinton and Bush Sr., the American government had its own conflicts of interest with Europe, and a lack of any kind of common threat to focus against is going to be even more effective at loosening NATO ties (at least till Russia comes around, but seven years can make a lot of butterflies for US-Russian, US-European, and Russian-European relations). This was and is the time in which European leaders were publicly styling themselves as the "alternative" to America, remember and advocating a 'return' to multipolar world, with Europe as a leading pole with softpower.
Tensions over immigration would remain, but with less of the implicit identification of foreigners in general with terrorists.
Are you kidding? Without 9-11, the terrorist angle will be almost completely ignored.
Steps to curb global warming would be slow and awkward, much obstructed by a Republican congress in Gore's first administration.
Gore would be unlikely to do much either. His reinvention into the global warming prophet/monger was only after he lost the election, remember.
The US would remain a non-signatory to Kyoto and the ICC, as no plausible US president would be willing to expend valuable political capital on such thankless projects as preventing environmental degradation or enforcing international (read:foreign) norms of justice.
There is also the tiny matter of how Kyoto was disproportionately bad for the US economy in comparison to new world economies, something no president will ignore (though few likely to be as blunt as Bush).
Socially, the political polarization of the US would continue, and business would continue with all the rapaciousness of the '90s but with none of the optimism (especially without the inflationary boost of post-9/11 deficit spending and Bush's tax cuts). As OTL, the middle class would be hollowed out by outsourcing, problems of healthcare provision would likewise remain, and without a foreign enemy to focus on, the American people would most likely target their rage at each other. Politics would be an ugly, zero-sum business, and both parties would most likely be frustrated in enacting their policies in any meaningful sense (this is in contrast to OTL, where the GOP ran rampant for four years after 9/11, enacting torture, war, rapacious natural gas drilling in the West, now likely to be followed by a similar period of Democratic predominance). In such an environment, the winner of the 2000 election would very likely be a one term president, and legislatively the Democrats would still likely be chipping away at the Republican gains of 1994 (instead of staring into their collective graves in 2002 and 2004 before powering back in 2006). Overall, in politics, business, and society the atmosphere would be one of overpowering frustration, without the dynamic illusion of war to animate the body politic.
I think this is a bit to over-generalized. The culture war might continue on, but then again it was also slowing down before 9-11. Various foreign affair events could cause a big impact: a continuation of nation-building, more involvement in Latin America with the rise of Chavez, alternate ME crisis, and so on. Too many possible butterflies.
 

Vivisfugue

Banned
If the personal is political, don't take it politically

RE: Dean - I'm trying to objectively consider the butterflies, but even where you agree with me you seem like you're disagreeing with me. I'm not saying that Katrina would have turned into a creampuff, or that Gore would have an open field to fight global warming - merely that without the distraction of the terror war, these issues might have been addressed more adroitly than under Bush.

Yeah, the North Korea scenario was a bit unlikely. Still, North Korea remains a heavily armed black hole in the center of the dynamic economies of East Asia, and China or no China, we have most likely not heard the last from them. I meant it to illustrate the sort of Rumsfeld-esque "war on the cheap" mentality that developed in the 1990s, peaked in Afghanistan and came a cropper in Iraq. I wasn't talking about why Afghanistan was invaded, but why it was invaded the way that it was-with relatively few ground troops and an emphasis on intelligence and special ops rather than boots on the ground. Without an Iraq war-and there's no way you're going to make me believe Gore would have invaded Iraq (McCain maybe) out of the clear blue sky-the flaws inherent in this sort of strategic thinking wouldn't have presented themselves. Some sort of "splendid little war" or "savage war of peace" would eventually present itself (Darfur, perhaps, or a crackdown on Iraq's Kurds) that would savage this sort of pre-2003 (OTL) thinking.

However, until such an event, the neoconservatives, while not as influential as they were after 9/11, would never have been discredited by the failure to find WMDs in Iraq (never going to let that one go, are you?) and so would continue to exist as at least an influential opposition, or in the case of a McCain 2000 administration, as the first team in foreign policy.

Per the UN - What I meant is that under Gore, the UN would remain at least as important as it was in the 1990s (an internationalist fig leaf on US hegemony), not that its power and influence would increase from where it was pre-2000. The UN is effective to the degree that its constituent members take it seriously. Whenever there is a crisis or scandal at the UN, US conservatives see it as a reason why the organization should be sidelined or abolished, rather than as a defect to be remedied. It eventually becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy-When the gov't of a permanent Security Council member chooses to effectively withdraw from the organization to score domestic political points, the place is a bit less likely to function adequately. While I could see McCain pulling something like that, without the xenophobic reaction to 9/11 he could never have gone as far with it that Bush did.

As far as Iran goes, pre- and even post-9/11 there was a distinct warming trend in US-Iranian relations, and without Bush's "axis of evil" formulation, it was an opening that might have been exploited before the door closed with the election of Ahmadinejad. With less invested in Iraq and a less antagonistic US President, we might have had a resumption of normal diplomatic relations by now.
 
the No Fly zone was increasingly unteneable as Iraqi forces took shots at patroling fighters.

that's a good point... Gore would have to deal with that sooner or later... the situation couldn't continue indefinitely... the Iraqis are going to get lucky sometime and shoot down a US plane... then what?
 

burmafrd

Banned
It amazes me how some still somehow think the UN really can accomplish anything important- the latest mess with Georgia is just another illustration of its uselessnes in such matters. Now in healthcare and other areas it can do good work, but that is it.

Love the short memory SOME have here about all the US/EU conflicts before 9/11.

As regards afghanistan there was a very good reason it was light- logistics. As many smart people have pointed out, amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.

Also the taliban was a light force- you do not need lots of tanks, etc to fight them. You need quick hitting forces to take them down. We did that very well. Our problem was that we sat back and got complacent there and worried too much about Iraq.
 
No 9/11, no Bush? Wow a whole buncha wacko conspiracy theorists, protesters, and leftist filmmakers would actually have to get a life and do something constructive with their time. I mean seriously, Michael Moore would probably be out of a job in this world. :p

BUT joking aside...

It'd probably be pretty much the same as it was pre-9/11, and not too much different from how it is now, just no Bush and no troops in the Middle East.

People in America would be ignoring the growing problems in the majority of the Middle East, problems/tensions with China/Iran/Iraq/North Korea, the UN would still be a colossal joke, an approaching downturn in the United States economy (as talk of recessions and economic problems were being spoken of during this time period), the eventual conflict over illegal immigration into the US, with probably some sort of Clinton-esque (depending on the president) action towards Iraq over it's Weapons of Mass Destruction (because we'd still believe he was making them, having been molded into that mindset from the Clinton Administration) somewhere down the road, Saddam would still be in power, and people would still be fuming over the fact that "we aren't doing anything to take him out," we'd probably still have the World Trade Center, etc. etc.

Oh and probably/possibly some sort of attack on the US, by terrorist forces, somewhere down the road. Nobody was really paying attention in and around that time, communication problems amongst the various branches, and so on... it would only be a matter of time before something would've happened.

*shrugs* and probably some sort of combination of what has been mentioned in this thread already.
 

Vivisfugue

Banned
I knew a scenario like this (relatively recent, still currently controversial) would bring out people with political axes to grind. I wonder now if the original poster chose it just to draw such a reaction. I still don't think my answers are particularly Lefty, and even the most partisan Republican couldn't be terribly pleased at the position of the US in 2008 vis a vis 2000. I think the point of a site like this is to consider history as objectively as possible, not to score meaningless points against politicians and institutions you don't like (this thread is starting to remind me of the comments section at Slate, a well-known troll haunt).
 
I knew a scenario like this (relatively recent, still currently controversial) would bring out people with political axes to grind. I wonder now if the original poster chose it just to draw such a reaction. I still don't think my answers are particularly Lefty, and even the most partisan Republican couldn't be terribly pleased at the position of the US in 2008 vis a vis 2000. I think the point of a site like this is to consider history as objectively as possible, not to score meaningless points against politicians and institutions you don't like (this thread is starting to remind me of the comments section at Slate, a well-known troll haunt).
Or maybe you shouldn't take yourself so seriously. Chill, relax. When I posted, I was just pointing counterpoints and/or errors in your initial posts, but that doesn't mean I was taking ideological potshots at you. And if others want to? As long as they bring in relevant points, it doesn't matter that much.
 
No 9/11, no Bush? Wow a whole buncha wacko conspiracy theorists, protesters, and leftist filmmakers would actually have to get a life and do something constructive with their time. I mean seriously, Michael Moore would probably be out of a job in this world.

I guess we would have had the left in both the US and in Europe concentrating more on the economic and social effects of globalization, which was the mainstream issue before 9/11 and the critisism of the Bushies derailed the movement(s). More protests over G8 summits, GM foodstuffs, the Beijing Olympics etc.

Micheal Moore would have still made documentaries, but focused on the economy and local politics and would be both less known and at least a bit more respected than OTL.

All in all, a better world, I think.

the UN would still be a colossal joke,

Probably, but maybe the US would have a President that would at least pretend the organization matters, like Clinton did. In Europe, especially the Nordics the current US hostility towards the UN is really unpopular, because many people a) are at least actively willing to suspend their disbelief about the ability of the UN to work as a constructive force or b) think that a multilateral, international organisation in the LoN/UN mold is ultimately needed and reforming the UN is a lot easier than dismantling it and building a new one from scratch.

So maybe an internationalist US President could have done wonders about the perception of the validity of the UN and this, in turn, would have madethe organization more effective. A US that continues to respect international law (in the degree it did before 9/11) would make a big difference in the workings of international politics. One could say a whole paradigm shift could have been avoided/delayed in the global arena.

For example, without Iraq, Guantanamo etc. the Russian government could not quote similar "previous Western action" as their justification for a new military doctrine including pre-emptive wars on foreign soil and the invasion of a sovereign neighbouring country.
 
Some Things Stay The Same

Hi, I just joined and found this topic...for my own part I think we would have entered into some form of the War on Terror because Bin Laden would still be out there (or Zawahiri would have taken over). The Taliban would probably be trying to topple the Pakistan government by now, or perhaps India might have gone to war with Pakistan to prevent that?

Al Gore might not have gotten a second term even in a relatively more peaceful world. If Iraq was still defiant the Republicans could have used that as an issue in the 2004 campaign. Who would they have nominated? My money would be on Frank Keating since Bush the Younger and McCain had already had their shot. So we might have a President Keating running against Barack Obama right now. The divisions within the conservative movement over fiscal conservatives versus social/religious conservatives and libertarians would probably have appeared earlier. Conservatives were mostly united in the aftermath of 9-11 and during the first couple of years of the Iraq War; without a unifying force or issue the Republican Party might have lost its majority before 2006.

I'd say our relations with China would definitely be worse and there would have been no Olympics in Beijing. We would still have to deal with Iran. As for the neocons, if Gore went to war against Iraq at some point they would find themselves in the position of having to criticize Gore for doing what they had been advocating for years.

There wouldn't have been a Department of Homeland Security, among other changes. Rudy Giuliani might have gone on to become Governor of New York or challenged Hillary for her Senate seat. He would be known as another controversial mayor, not "America's Mayor".

Much of our popular culture would probably stay the same, except that "24" might not have lasted as long as it did, and it would have been seen as entertainment and not as a reflection of the real world. The press would probably be more obsessed with celebrity scandals and meltdowns than they already are. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton would still be annoying. Michael Moore wouldn't have won an Oscar for anything. So some things definitely would be better!:)
 
Wrong. There was no "love affair" between Europe and America, only an increasingly strained relationship that found a remarkable scape goat in George Bush.

Uh? You should really actually get to know a bit about Europe and a feel for it before you keep dredging up this myth that Europe and the US were on some kind of inevitable collision course pre-Bush.

I was very much around then and I can't remember any relationship which was "increasingly strained". Clinton, if anything, was viewed pretty favourably, as was the US. What was there to be angry about? What was straining the relationship? Nothing. Oh, the Kosovo War. But the overwhelming majority of people here supported that. My memory may be fading, but I can't remember one million people marching against Kosovo. All I remember is a few fringe ex-politicians and journalistic never-beens writing in the broadsheets. In fact, Europe was so strenuously opposed, it committed troops.

The idea that there was inevitably going to be some kind of confrontation of the Cheney-Rumsfled type is madness frankly. This is pure Neo-Con ret-conning. If you're going to support Bush, I don't mind, but at least have the decency to take responsibility for his policies. The relationship was never perfect, wasn't perfect, never will be perfect, but the idea that it was destined to descend to some of the depths of 2003-2005 is bizzare. I don't think even Bob Kagan would go with that one.

Read this transcript and talk ye to me of a "strained relationship". It's a nonsense. I don't like Clinton - in fact I can't stand the man as a politician - but he handled America's foreign relations uncommonly well considering his political background. The Bush administration, by contrast, seemed to view foreign relations as an excercise in spreading gratuitous offense. This was not diplomacy. It was not even intelligent or judicious unilateralism.
 
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Uh? You should really actually get to know a bit about Europe and a feel for it before you keep dredging up this myth that Europe and the US were on some kind of inevitable collision course pre-Bush.
I know enough about Europe to know that tales of a pre-Bush 'everything is happy and we all agreed' is wrong, and that the lack of the fundamental part of the trans-Atlantic alliance, a threat to Europe, was allowing interests and relations to diverge. Hence why European politicians started advertising Europe as the "alternative" to the US in a way I doubt they claimed at the height of the Cold War, why Germany and France flirted with counterbalancing with Russia, the official love affair with the greatness of multipolar would and how Europe would be the most benighn pole, and so on. The closeness of the Cold War was unraveling for the very fact that there was no Cold War and that it was natural for relations to loosen.
The idea that there was inevitably going to be some kind of confrontation of the Cheney-Rumsfled type is madness frankly. This is pure Neo-Con ret-conning. If you're going to support Bush, I don't mind, but at least have the decency to take responsibility for his policies. The relationship was never perfect, wasn't perfect, never will be perfect but the idea that it was destined to some of the depths of 2003-2005 is bizzare. I don't think even Bob Kagan would go with that one.
I'm not saying that the Bush-driven depths were inevitable, I'm saying that it was inevitable that the ties would loosen regardless, and a good number of the tensions are non-partisian.

Bush invaded Iraq, but Gore, who campaigned on a nation-building platform, would be just as likely to intervene and continue in the tradition of US policy. Do you think France or Germany would support some American interventions in Africa or elsewhere? Do you think any US administration would be hunky-dory with the European Army project, which would by its very nature would detract from NATO? How about pressure for more troops in Afghanistan, including the German prohibition of sending their troops into dangerous areas that the US and others have to go?

Did Bush exasperate some of these? Yes, and probably others. Does that mean that these problems wouldn't be just as real otherwise, and that many of them were there and growing before Bush took office? No. Europe, if it ever was, stopped being an American vassal some time ago, and the assumption that they gratefully followed the American lead and projects wherever simply because they loved us is what I was condemning. That is hardly a neo-con retcon.
 
I know enough about Europe to know that tales of a pre-Bush 'everything is happy and we all agreed' is wrong,

Read the transcript I edited in. That is a good relationship. That is not a strained relationship. It was not a strained relationship.

Hence why European politicians started advertising Europe as the "alternative" to the US in a way I doubt they claimed at the height of the Cold War,

Funny - I can't remember anyone talking about (I mean seriously talking, not just academic flim-flam in International Relations periodicals and the left-wing press) Europe as a counter-balance to America until the time of Iraq.

There is no inevitability about Europe and America diverging, unless people delude themselves into thinking that it must be so. The Post-Cold War divergence theory is twaddle, IMO.

Incidentally, I don't see the idea of Gore-in-Iraq as particularly credible (Iraq wasn't an arbitrary target - it was a bogeyman for the people behind Bush, like Wolfowitz, before he even became President) but if he had done, is anyone seriously suggesting he would have done it worse, diplomatically-speaking, or had less political capital to spend with Europe, than Bush et al did? C'mon.
 
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