Volume 18, Issue 2 (2003)

Much has changed in the world since the last issue of this journal. All is indeed changed and changed utterly. But we have no terrible beauty with which to console ourselves. For the foreseeable future, the debate over whether we live in a unilateral or multilateral world is moot. A new Rome rules with an arrogance only the truly certain can master.

The invasion of Iraq definitively answered the question: What is the New World Order? America is, and America’s order will continue until Americans themselves decide otherwise, and that, in the short term at least, means whether they will reelect George W. Bush president of the United States in November 2004.

When you receive this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy, let us hope that we have begun to come to our senses, that there is some sense of international healing, that the Administration or its opponents on the Democratic “chase,” realize that unilateralism is indeed a one way path, but not in the direction its advocates so adamantly insist on, that the “free” people of Iraq have less contaminated sewage, less looting and lawlessness, more clean water, electricity, security and a sense of belief that they can, with lots of help, put their country back together again.