Archbishop attacks American "imperialism"

Whilst in the last post I said that politicians in the UK don't do religion, the same does not happen in reverse and religious men most certainly do do politics. Thus we have the Archbishop of Canterbury reported in the Sunday Times giving an interview to a Muslim magazine and pushing the all too typical anti-American line about how the US is a nasty imperial nation. As usual the word imperialism is not used of course and instead we have the notion of it being the "one global hegemonic power" instead.

The problem with the Archbishop's neo-marxist analysis of geopolitics is that as with almost every one on the Left who makes this argument it ignores the nature of power in the global arena. Thus America, because it is the top dog, is, by default, the cause of all the world's trouble, and in fact, Western modernity as a whole comes under attack.

Before one blindly accepts the Chomskian world view of America though it's worth remembering this. If America wasn't the "one global hegemonic power" someone else would be, and the alternatives are much much worse. The idea that if we could just bring America down a peg or two the world would become a giant group hug of love is absurd.

Countries like, China and Russia know this very well, but it serves their purposes to feed the idea that a single hegemonic power is a bad thing, but be under no illusion that if they could replace the US as top dog they'd be more than happy too, and the world would be a much worse place if it happened.