Editor’s Page

For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, we are engaged in a serious debate about the shape and character of global politics. What produced the debate was, first of all, the growing arrogance and recklessness of the remaining superpower and, second, the odd combination of irresponsibility and opposition in the rest of the world-most of all in Europe. The significance of the rift between Europe and the United States is hard to gauge right now, but it already provides an opportunity to think about and work toward a more balanced world order and a more equal, even if only a little more equal, division of power and responsibility. We feature a group of articles dealing with these questions by two Americans, a German, and a British American. In subsequent issues, we will try, in the name of internationalism, to extend the argument.

For reasons that are hard to figure out, we are not engaged right now in a serious debate about the shape and character of domestic politics. None of the Democrats running for president has managed to describe a clear alternative to the agenda of the Bush administration, even though this is the most right-wing government in American history. Because arrogance and recklessness are features of its domestic as well as its foreign policy, we need (whatever its global value) a rift at home. As in the world, so in the United States, countervailing powers would make for a better society. I remember when writers in Dissent critici...