INTERESTING PIECE ON TURKEY in The New Yorker. Here’s a passage that leapt out at me:

Like the subjects of all former empires, we look at the United States with awe and disgust.

Envy, in other words. This is actually a real problem: Not only in Turkey (which many Turks still think of as a former empire, even if most Americans don’t) but in France, Russia, Germany, even Britain, to some degree. Bad enough that the United States exercises such power, but by doing so it reminds them of their own failures. Here’s a spot-on observation:

“I have no hangups about the United States,” Nuri Colakoglu said. “It’s a one-superpower world, and that is a fact. Russia is dead. Japan is in perennial economic crisis. Germany is trying still to deal with reunification. England is a bygone era. There is no one except the United States. Being alone is hard. If you fine-tune your policies, you can create a peace that could last a long time. But, if not, an opposition front will grow over time, and it will develop alliances and counter the existing supremacy.”

The question, of course, is what “fine-tuning” will mean.