A new way of doing business with the world?

Victor Davis Hanson agrees that going to the U.N. was a major mistake. In his latest piece for National Review Online, he states: “Nothing is worse for a great power than to ask others far less moral for permission to use its power. Had we simply ignored the U.N. and moved unilaterallly last fall (like Russia and France do all the time), Saddam Husein would be gone, and we now would have more impressed friends than we do disdainful enemies.” But Hanson also recognizes that our U.N. excursion may have taught us some valuable lessons. He notes that the American people “are starting to ask some hard questions about the way we have been doing business for 50 years, and it may well be time to grant the French, Canadians, Germans, Turks, South Koreans, and a host of others their wishes for independence from us: polite friendship — but no alliances, no bases, no money, no trade concessions, and no more begging for the privilege of protecting them.”

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