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Charles Moore in the Telegraph today makes a very interesting observation. He says ” The world is now governed by Mutual Assured Impotence”. I assume he means mutually assured impotence rather than mutually assured destruction of the cold war.

Mr Bush and Mr Blair, obviously, are just individual elected politicians, so their fate might not matter very much. But I wonder if we are approaching a situation, to which Western civilisation is surprisingly unaccustomed, when no one can be said to dominate the world, so that everyone suffers the insolence of everyone else.

When the Cold War ended, that meant that America had won. In many people’s ears, the word “globalisation” sounded much the same as American supremacy. But once globalisation actually happens, that supremacy is bound to diminish.

Mr. Moore looks at world wealth, population, energy and we realize that this is truly a small world. Being connected with other countries, whether directly or indirectly, is not necessarily a good thing.

Think of military power. America has kit which can Shock and Awe anybody anywhere in the place attacked on the day, but that does not provide it with everything it needs against its enemies. People who don’t like America, and don’t mind about their own comfort and safety, can foment endless trouble, indulge in low-tech killing, and more or less get away with it.

So whether it is the Sudanese Arab government killing black Africans in Darfur, or Hugo Chavez of Venezuela trying to call his region to revolt, or China letting North Korea go nuclear, or France abetting African genocide, or Russia throwing its weight about, or Hizbollah and Hamas sniping away at an Israel which can always beat them in battle yet never remove the threat they pose, or Iran undermining a democratic Iraq while building its own Bomb, why wouldn’t they? What’s to stop them?

Osama bin Laden planned his attack on the World Trade Centre partly because he was convinced that America was too weak and decadent to hit back. He was quickly proved wrong. But is he now, more slowly, being proved right?

Mr. Moore sees Kofi Annan and the United Nations for what it is and sees, ” … the ease with which evil can triumph while would-be-good men sit in meetings for too long.” The enemy doesn’t care about ‘collective responsibility, global security, the rule of law, multilateralism and mutual accountability’ like Kofi is preaching in his farewell addresses. The enemy believes “They [the West] love life,” they declare, “and we love death.” That is why the enemy thinks they will win.

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