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As to the comment about the American's not being involved and that it was all our faults save Eisenhower's...I'm not sure how to comment on that. At the start of the war, Eisenhower was a minor figure languishing on the general staff somewhere. The key person for persuading the American public that Hitler's agression was a large enough issue to predicate involvement was Roosevelt.

He clearly saw the threat that Fascism represented and took steps to make sure that America would be involved somehow. Technically the whole Lend Lease program and the Destroyers for Bases thing were a violation of America's delcaration of neutrality.

However, if one thinks about the concept of collective action against agresion, at least in terms of national entities, that is a fairly new idea. Woodrow Wilson proposed the Leage of Nations after WWI, and the Senate rejected it. However, that was more out of political spite than out of real isolationism. But that was the first time that real collective action was thought of in the world community.

If one takes the American Civil War as an example, that conflict makes the crisis in Kosovo look like a party on the beach. Over 600,000 soldiers and civilians died during those four years. And yet Britian postured and France rattled it's sabres, neither steped in to recognize the Confederacy or to send troops to stop the struggle. I think at one point Britian sent like 12,000 troops to Canada, and both Britian and France gave Confederate raiders freedom to use ports, but that was about all.

At some point we have to come to terms with what collective action really means. Do we as a community of nations need to get involved in every struggle in the world? Or does collective action come down to just what the rich and powerful nations who sit on the U.N. Security Coucil has come to define it as: "I'll use collective action only when it suits my national interest."

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Liam's answer:

The American Civil War may have made Kosovo look like a walk in the park, but WWII makes the American Civil war look like my family having dinner, and going to bed.

I didn't mean EVERY Americans fault. In general, the people who created the atmosphere in America of isolantionism are to blame. Besides, to get technical, the American Civil War was just that, a Civil War. Even the Federation would go with this. Look, Redemption II: Klingon Civil War, Feds stay out of it. Looks like the Romulans are involved...Feds join.

The moment it stops being a civil war is when others should get involved.

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Liam, you missed the point of the second half of my post. That is my fault because I didn't make it as clear as I should have.

The point being, the American Civil War took place before the concept of collective national or peacekeeping action took hold. Were it the case today, the American Civil War would most certainly have intervention to some degree.

To point a fact, what is happening in Kosovo can easily be termed as civil war in its own right. But the current climate dicates that some collective action be taken, even though it may be couched in the terms of "national interest" rather than for pure humanitarian reasons.

But, also like I said before, we are going to have to come to grips with what collective action really means. A clear definition as it were. As it stands right now, we have rhetorical answers to some very tough questions.

Do we stomp on the local petty tryant of the week? Do we let internal strife go as long as a certain limiting number of civilians (say 1,000) have been killed? How far do we as a community let the internal politics of country A interfer with the interal politics of weaker and poorer country B?

Like I said, these are tough questions that need to be answered outside the terms of singular national interest.