The Sleepy Superpower Awakes

摘要

The great wall of china, roughly defining the northern contours of the Chinese empire, has stood in the same place for 2,200 years. The Great Wall of America ― the barrier of bases set up around the world to define the contours of the free world and hold back the Soviet empire ― is about to disappear after just 50 years. We are living a revolution, and hardly anyone has noticed. In just the three months since the end of the Iraq war, the Pentagon has announced the essential evacuation of the U.S. military from its air bases in Saudi Arabia, from the Demilitarized Zone in Korea and from the vast Incirlik air base in Turkey ― in addition to a radical drawdown of U.S. military per-sonnel in Germany, the mainstay of the Great American Wall since 1945.