On David Miliband's blog in Reuters, 25 August 2011 "America still needs to engage the world"

From history I remember Ralph Miliband writing in The Socialist Register in 1967 about US getting engaged into Vietnam and the consequences of the direct engagement which are part of the history of dominance every body trying to forget as unpleasant memory but no one succeeds as the ghosts of the past have an afterlife to keep on coming back and making formation of a stable multipolar world political economy difficult as the advanced countries face more financial troubles and the talk of 'poles'exchanging places gains momentum.

Today's direct engagement is based in identifying the new forms of conflicts but its strength lies in (1)return of support to groups of democratic struggle begetting support from these very struggling groups or at least a large scale applaud from many quarters and sections of the world for variety of reasons and (2)return of moving forces getting support from victims of terror and applaud from its universal haters. It is,therefore, a new version of engagement as 'socialist takeover' or 'imperialist sweep over' is no more feared, and its consequences hurt the people of the advanced world. Beyond USA, Europe, other developed regions, the peoples are no less scared of the consequences. If history has any takers, given the course of melt down and the economic state just short of double dip, the act of engagement is in direct proportion now with the next recession and that is a question being asked. The question of disengagement brings more worries to the governments of USA, NATO and other military and political alliances and global and regional economic fora. In this piquant state of affairs, I think that there is a chance of gradual, cautious and slow reduction of 'direct engagement' with far more political and economic measures getting strengthened, innovated and experimented with more and more countries and people joining in such effort as equal stakeholders. Economic compulsions will change the future course of events.