Huffington Post contributor and Former Assistant Secretary and Spokesperson for the US State Department P. J. Crowley, who resigned on principle over the shadowy incarceration of font of embarrassment and entrapment, has an excellent and thoughtful entry regarding the disposition of super-powers for a super-power without an operational government.
Whatever compromised is reached with the current quibbling certainly does not yield a balanced budget or new fiscal and monetary policies that will promote solvency and sustainability, however, cuts would remove America's ability to go questing and peddle influence through foreign aid. NATO and the UN can and probably should assume a leading role in peace-keeping, with the checks and balances of an international framework, but just as neither NATO nor any other organization can take over the administration of federal aid programs for the US, one has to wonder, what influences are filling that void in foreign policy. It may be positive or profoundly negative. Maybe the International Red Cross or the
Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta will never be expected to make sure American federal judges, national guardsmen and national park rangers receive their pay-checks, but the dysfunction (and bargaining that might wrest defeat from the clutches of victory) and indecision in serving its citizens and promoting the general welfare--for which no politic animals are accomplished experts, it seems--makes its emissaries suspect. Money, after all, is not the measure of all things--including statecraft, and is a rather a tenuous shared delusion, opposed to health, well-being and dignity, and a grand unequalizer.
