Following up on Jim D's post on the U.S.'s global ambitions. If the motivation is not oil and resources, If it is not humanitarian concern, If it is not sheer irrationality, Perhaps the motivation is territorial. Rather than Jim's theory of attempted global dominance, it might be more appropriate to see the United States as the center of an imperium which through a series of interlocking spheres of influence, military alliances and troop deployments, client regimes, treaties of various sorts, and political and economic alliances, extends across North and South America, Europe to the Russian border, through the middle east to the island nations of Asia and Australia and linking back across the Pacific to the Western Hemisphere. In this scenario, the American imperium confronts a number of powers on the Asian mainland; Russia, India, China and the militant Islamic states of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, nuclear powers with the exception of Irand and Afghanistan. Africa can be seen as a disorganized hinterland, economically and politically dominated but not controlled. Within this territorial framework both the Iraq and Serbian conflicts can be seen as essentially border conflicts. The difference between ethnic conflict in the Balkans and ethnic conflict in various parts of Africa is that Africa is not central to this territorial scheme. Terry McDonough
