Adam Smith vs. George W. Bush Jr

Rereading The Long Twentieth Century, I was struck by a quotation from Adam 
Smith.  Smith notes the deleterious effects of European Imperialism on 
non-Western parts of the world:  "To the natives..  all the commercial benefits 
which can have resulted from these events (the creation of a world market) have 
been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned."  
Arrighi emphasizes that Smith was aware that the key element in this process 
was the 'superiority of force' possessed by the Europeans at the time of 
expansion.  However, I was more struck by the next sentence: "hereafter, 
perhaps, the natives of those countries may grow stronger, or those of Europe 
may grow weaker, and the inhabitants of all the different quarters of the world 
may arrive at that equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual 
fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of 
respect for the rights of one another."  In other words, in contrast to both 
Bush and liberal Western peace and human rights advocates, Smith argues that it 
is necessary for non-Western nations to possess the means to 'inspire mutual 
fear' in order to lay the foundations for an equal and just world order.  I 
wonder what he would say about the efforts to eliminate the 'axis of evil's' 
capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction?

Steven Sherman