Expectations Should Not Always Be Taken As

Civilizations Evolve Over Time, And Most Scholars Of Civilization, Including People Like Carol Quigley, Argue That They Go Through Periods Of Warring States, And Eventually Evolve Into A Universal State.

I Think In Theory, The United States Finds It Much Easier To Deal With Situations Where There Is A Leading Country. You Can Go To The Leaders Of That Country And Say, For Example, To India, "there Are All These Problems In Bangladesh, We Really Have To Do Something About It, What Do You Suggest We Can Do To Work Out A Common Policy?" But When You Don't Have The Equivalent Of India, You Have To Go Capital To Capital Trying To Put Together A Coalition, Which Is Extraordinarily Difficult, Especially In The Arab World, Because Of The Historic Rivalries And Branches Of Islam.

Countries Will Cooperate With Each Other, And Are More Likely To Cooperate With Each Other When They Share A Common Culture, As Is Most Dramatically Illustrated In The European Union. But Other Groupings Of Countries Are Emerging In East Asia And In South America. Basically, As I Said, These Politics Will Be Oriented Around, In Large Part, Cultural Similarities And Cultural Antagonism.

Expectations Should Not Always Be Taken As Reality; Because You Never Know When You Will Be Disappointed.

The U.s. Has And Still Is Cooperating With Various Military Dictatorships Around The World. Obviously We Would Prefer To See Them Democratized, But We Are Doing It Because We Have National Interests, Whether It's Working With Pakistan On Afghanistan Or Whatever.