The Story Nobody Believes

This only slightly deviates from the private promise I mentioned yesterday because it so closely relates to my overriding interest in life as storytelling. In other words, bear with me.

Let me see if I understand this situation correctly. According to Jack Straw yesterday, if France and/or Russia don't cooperate and either abstain from voting in the Security Council or use their veto, then then "reap a whirlwind," by pushing America "into a unilateral position in which they are the centre of a unipolar world." Meanwhile, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld continue to insist that a second resolution isn't necessary either way. If I'm reading this right, correct me if I'm wrong, the rest of the world remains America's bitch either way the vote goes, right -- be it through explicit punishment and retribution, or tacit threats that are intended to keep up appearances.

The fact is, though, America's unilateralism has a flipside, as we're seeing unfold with North Korea now; as such, and due to the tenuous state of the worldwide economy, I think it's only capable of going so far. Of course, Bush's threat that America won't forgive or forget is a not-so-subtle economic threat, but let's not kid ourselves into forgetting that the economic war between Europe and America already began a few years ago. This is a patriotically-driven escalation that I very cynically dismiss as a temporary blip -- Americans (the public, if not the government) are not known for sustaining their interest in these kinds of things, especially when they're out of work and hypnotized by the latest reality show (I'm still awaiting word, incidentally, on my reality show proposal about college athlectics, Slave Labor); and let's not forget, French wine is fucking good!

In all, the only thing that this yawn-inducing imbroglio will effect is an equally banal story that nobody but the West buys anyway. Honestly, I just don't see the maintenance of American multilateralism as a viable, all that convincing story anymore. Either way this next Security Council vote goes, until something fundamental changes in American foreign policy the story of its cooperative involvement with the world as a whole is not going to be one that anybody truly buys. Some of the implications of this are downright frightening. For instance, I can't fathom how this will help diminish the effects (and the dangers) of anti-Americanism abroad; and if this is the case, you of course then have the heightened risk of terrorism, which in all likelihood will thus extend the encroachment upon the same civil liberties that enflame the passions, sometimes violently so, of domestic fringe groups (one need only think of Oklahoma City). And this is only one train of thought amongst many more (admittedly, some of the possibilities are not nearly as bleak [i.e., the democratization of the Middle East], but they are mostly predicated upon a best-case, ideologically-free scenario we have little to no reason at all to expect). If the Bush administration does actually think beyond an outdatedly simple paradigm of cause-and-effect -- for every action there is a (predictable) equal reaction -- they sure as hell, for one reason or another, are not articulating this.

I'm not sure which is scarier, their possible ignorance or their outright duplicity.