Stratfor writes:
New eras do not form spontaneously. There is a brief — historically speaking — period between the sweeping away of the rules of the old era and the installation of the rules of the new. These interregnums tend to be very dangerous affairs, as the victorious powers attempt to entrench their victory as new powers rise to the fore — and as many petit powers, suddenly out from under the thumb of any grand power, try to carve out a niche for themselves.
The post-World War I interregnum witnessed the complete upending of Asian and European security structures. The post-World War II interregnum brought about the Korean War as China’s rise slammed into America’s efforts to entrench its power. The post-Cold War interregnum produced Yugoslav wars, a variety of conflicts in the former Soviet Union (most notably in Chechnya), the rise of al Qaeda, the jihadist conflict and the Iraq war.
All these conflicts are now well past their critical phases, and in most cases are already sewn up. All of the pieces of Yugoslavia are on the road to EU membership. Russia’s borderlands — while hardly bastions of glee — have settled. Terrorism may be very much alive, but al Qaeda as a strategic threat is very much not. Even the Iraq war is winding to a conclusion. Put simply, the Cold War interregnum is coming to a close and a new era is dawning.
In the twilight of GWB’s term, some pundits are coming to the belated conclusion that he’s presided over one of the most crucial junctures in recent history and are amazed to discover that we’re coming out the other end of it.
I think whether or not one agrees with GWB’s policies there’s no denying he has been one of the most consequential Presidents in recent history. He did something; he acted. And whether history judges those acts to be good or bad, they will have something to judge. I’m not sure we are emerging into the ‘broad sunlit uplands’ but one thing’s for sure: the old postwar and cold-war worlds are over and we must make new arrangements for a new world. In the ending scene in Shane, he tells the villain, “our days our over, the difference is that I know it.” For that reason, I’m a little concerned about political ideologies that claim to be “new” and “progressive” but whose world views are essentially rooted in 40 years ago. In Vietnam. That’s over now but not everyone realizes it. The real question is who knows it more: the veteran or the One who has learned about it at second hand.
