{For America to be displaced, not in the world, but only in the western Pacific, by an Asian people long despised and dismissed with contempt as decadent, feeble, corrupt, and inept is emotionally very difficult to accept. The sense of cultural supremacy of the Americans will make this adjustment most difficult. Americans believe their ideas are universal -- the supremacy of the individual and free, unfettered expression. But they are not -- never were. In fact, American society was so successful for so long not because of these ideas and principles, but because of a certain geopolitical good fortune: an abundance of resources and immigrant energy, a generous flow of capital and technology from Europe, and two wide oceans that kept conflicts of the world away from American shores.}