The first is that the West has become economically much weaker, which has made it more politically divided, both between countries and within them. The second is that the military and political responses to 9/11 have made the situation in the Middle East and North Africa worse. The third is that Western, and especially American, intervention overseas has gone through a similar cycle to that which accompanied failure in Vietnam in the 1970s, of retreat and withdrawal from other international entanglements followed by remorse over the weakness that such withdrawal appears to imply.
