Part of the American fabric? Exactly. That's why there have to be power counterbalances to the United States. The European Union should be one of them. During the Cold War, with the Soviet Union as a superpower, American leaders knew that if they did something gross, they would wake up in the morning and find a big hole in the ground where Chicago had been the night before. Britain's Margaret Thatcher pointed out a number of times that the superpowers' mutual threat kept the peace for a very long time, and that was an awful truth to admit. Now, we've seen adaquately what the Land-of-the-Free-and-the-Home-of-the-Brave gets up to when the United States takes center stage alone. It's an ugly picture, and the trend is going to continue with the next US president.