Reference:
...they are trying to convince every other nation on the planet that the United States is the Mother of All Rogue States, run by mad thugs in possession of 15,000 nuclear warheads they are willing to use and spending, as they already are, more on death-making capacity than all the other countries on the planet combined. In other words, they want the rest of the world to think that we are the ultimate weaving driver. Not to be trusted, but certainly not to be messed with either.

By these terrible means, they will create a world where war conducted by any country but the United States will seem simply too risky and the Great American Peace will begin. Unregulated Global Corporatism will be the only permissible ideology, every human will have access to McDonald's and the Home Shopping Network, all 'news' will come through some variant of AOLTimeWarnerCNN, the Internet will be run by Microsoft, and so it will remain for a long time.
Sympathy for the Devil -- John Perry Barlow

Notes:
I think Barlow is correct that Cheney is the driving force in this administration, and I accept Barlow's assessment that Cheney is very smart.

What I distrust about this strategy of imposing a Pax Americana by being the crazy m.f. is that it requires us to continually up the ante in terms of craziness -- they've gotten use to this week's antics, so what's next? Grenada, Panama, Iraq.

I also agree with Barlow that Cheney's prime directive is to support the spread of global corporations. However, I think that this is misguided, for at least two reasons. There is not a systemic parallel between the spread of global corporations and the domination by one national government. And, the governance of business is entirely different from the business of governance.

The alternative direction is for the US to become the prime practioner in a coalition of global democracies that take seriously the task of balancing the power of corporatism with all the other needs of society. It won't happen, if only because the myth of national pride believes that these corporations are still American.