harvey, you will probably say that I am repeating a heap of cliches, but I feel that whether it is in domestic politics or global politics there is a pendulum swinging and the law of diminishing returns controls it's upward swing. Too much energy is increasingly consumed for increasingly little forward motion. The fact that some nations at a given point in time are perhaps better than others to provide a positive leadership role for the rest of the world is not because of some biological advantage, but the position they are at in building the foundations of their own society. I don't believe that all those depised leaders around the world that have come and gone have started out with entirely evil or selfish intentions. It's like in war, for your superior values to prevail, it's not only winning the war, but through surviving the war are you in a position to ensure your values do prevail. As we can see in the cases of both leaders and nations, getting mired deeper and deeper into a dirtier and dirtier conflict with those that oppose you, means that virtually all the principles that you started out to uphold end up being compromised or completely sacrificed. To immediately forget your own attrocities and chastise others discounts your own credibility andv so the pendulum starts to lose momentum. I don't know if I have answered your question or got off track, but it will have to do.
