Kaplan, Robert D., The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1994
"How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet."
Kaplan, Robert D., Was Democracy Just a Moment?, The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1997
"The global triumph of democracy was to be the glorious climax of the American Century. But democracy may not be the system that will best serve the world -- or even the one that will prevail in places that now consider themselves bastions of freedom."
Friedman, Thomas L. A Manifesto for the Fast World, The New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1999.
He begins by juxtaposing two images: One is the citizen of African countries who would gladly pay American taxes to enjoy the domestic security, safety, and order that we take for granted. The second is the isolationist Congressmen who brag about their limited exposure to foreign countries. Friedman argues that we need a "active and generous" foreign policy since sustainable globalization requires a stable geopolitical order. We need to be responsible and engaged. He quotes Paul Schroeder:
"If you look at history, the periods of relative peace are those in which there is a durable, stable and tolerable hegemon, who does the adjusting and preserves the minimal necessary norms and rules of the game. And that hegemon always pays a disproportionate share of the collective costs, even gorgoes opportunities for conquest or restrains itself in other ways, so as ot to build up resentments and to make sure the system stays tolerable for others.
"The difficultty comes when the benign hegemonic power, which is responsible for keeping the system stable, is unable or unwilling to pay the disproportionate costs to do so, or its hegemony becomes intolerable and predatory rather than benign, or when enough actors rebel against its rules and insist upon a different kind of system that may not beneft the hegemon."
Zacharia, Fareed. The Superpower That Couldn't Say No. The New York Times, March 28, 1999.
This short op-ed presents a pessimistic view of the world: "[The U.S.] could strengthen the basic foundations of global peace, expanding the open world economy and liberal order that the industrial states enjoy. Or it could keep up its efforts to put a lid on ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts whenever they break out. This will be an unending task, since the world is not going to stop changing, and new groups will always make new claims to power.
"Great global power -- no matter how benevolent -- always arouses envy and resentment.
"John Dryden wrote in the 17th century, 'When the chosen people grew too strong / The rightful cause at length became the wrong.'"