Niccolo Machiavelli, perhaps the shrewdest political philosopher in history, believed that great events were shaped by luck — or “fortuna” as he called this unpredictable force of life. The same actions might produce success or failure, depending on the whims of the goddess Fortuna.
You wouldn’t know it by listening to gloomy commentators, but the United States has been extremely lucky of late. Its inherent economic strength has become more obvious. Meanwhile, its adversaries have suffered reversals — some of their own making, others because of bad luck.
With this advantageous position, the U.S. can afford to think like a superpower. It shouldn’t rush to make concessions to weaker nations, or to gain agreements that aren’t fully ripe, as may be the case with the current nuclear talks with Iran. It shouldn’t be shy about helping its friends, or making its adversaries pay the costs of their reckless behavior, as in dealing with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
It’s a diabolical piece of luck, too, that the Islamic State, which poses a deadly threat in Syria and Iraq, has taken the hideous action of burning alive a Jordanian Muslim pilot. Millions of Arabs are outraged and calling for revenge. With this death-cult action, the extremists have done more to undermine their standing than a thousand U.S. bombing raids or a million State Department propaganda tweets could have accomplished.
Americans are always asking why the Arabs don’t denounce atrocities committed in the name of Islam. Well, it’s happening now. “Barbarity,” screams the headline in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat. “Vicious,” says the emir of Kuwait. A “brutal, heinous crime,” says Saudi Arabia. The U.S. shouldn’t raise its voice louder than the indignant Muslim world. Restrain the rhetoric; use force invisibly; act like a superpower.