Dangerous Evolution

With Future: Tense – The Coming World Order?, Gwynne Dyer performs two very welcome services. First, he delivers a comprehensive, but brief and very readable survey of the dangerous evolution of U.S. foreign policy. Second, in explicating the impetus for the war in Iraq, which he ascribes to the ambitions of American “neo-cons,” he lays out the stakes. “What is really at risk here,” he argues, “is the global project to abolish war and replace the rule of force in the world with the rule of law, the project whose centrepiece is the United Nations.” For those who have difficulty imagining an alternative world to the one we live in, a world without the UN, without international law and norms, and without a universal system of cooperation, Dyer’s analysis makes for worrying reading. For others, especially the neo-Cans who apparently do not want to see beyond the presumed benefits of deeper North American economic integration and who would buy assured access to markets...