Hegemon Down

Among the many risks President Bush is taking in his relentless drive against Saddam Hussein is what theorists call "imperial overreach": the specter of draining American global power suddenly and irrevocably. A war that goes badly – with high casualties, spiking oil prices, Arab and Muslim unrest, and so on – would invite the view that Bush had miscalculated and that the shine was off the American apple.

But now we're seeing signs of this possible decline before the expected assault on Baghdad. The president may have tacitly acknowledged this as well as he backs away from confrontation, not in Iraq but in North Korea.
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