For the next several decades, the most volatile and dangerous region
of the world--with the explosive potential to plunge the world into
chaos--will be the crucial swathe of Eurasia between Europe and the
Far East. Heavily inhabited by Muslims, we might term this crucial
subregion of Eurasia the new "Global Balkans."1 It is here that
America could slide into a collision with the world of Islam while
American-European policy differences could even cause the Atlantic
Alliance to come unhinged. The two eventualities together could then
put the prevailing American global hegemony at risk.
At the outset, it is essential to recognize that the ferment within
the Muslim world must be viewed primarily in a regional rather than a
global perspective, and through a geopolitical rather than a
theological prism. The world of Islam is disunited, both politically
and religiously. It is politically unstable and militarily weak, and
likely to remain so for some time. Hostility toward the United
States, while pervasive in some Muslim countries, originates more
from specific political grievances--such as Iranian nationalist
resentment over the U.S. backing of the Shah, Arab animus stimulated
by U.S. support for Israel or Pakistani feelings that the United
States has been partial to India--than from a generalized religious
bias.
The complexity of the challenge America now confronts dwarfs what it
faced half a century ago in Western Europe. At that time, Europe's
dividing line on the Elbe River was the strategically critical
frontline of maximum danger, with the daily possibility that a clash
in Berlin could unleash a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, the United States recognized the stakes involved and
committed itself to the defense, pacification, reconstruction and
