The World's Dispensable Nation

I wrote before the 2004 election (Bahasa), how the Bush win would bring together a unilateral approach and an incompetent administration resulting in policies that divorce themselves from reality-based world. (The article was written before the election, so it also has a lot of stuff on Kerry and Democrats. The relevant stuff is in sections 3.1 and 5.1.)

The current administration of the US seems to manage to always take the least popular position in every important issue matters to the rest of the world. No wonder, the world has managed to get by without the US.
Michael Lind wrote in the Financial Times how the US became the world's most dispensable nation,

In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.