ABSTRACT
Backward countries that are dependent upon the machinery and markets of advanced societies threaten that they will withhold the fluid that keeps those markets and machines alive. How very strange. Terrorist groups that are so weak that they can mount neither war nor guerrilla action, seek to bend to their will states that are militarily potent. Very strange indeed. We are witnessing the weak pushing around the strong. A well-intended social welfare designed to help poor people may yield bureaucracy and inflation which hurts poor people. Military action designed in part to demonstrate global credibility and constancy may end up yielding not only neither, but the reverse of both — as witness American activity in Vietnam. That is, or ought to be, an issue beyond conventional Western right versus left ideology. Indeed, it would be a political tragedy if this struggle becomes identified with one wing or the other.
