A Glimpse Into Modern Russia, and the Coming of the Clash with Georgia
The NYTimes Week In Review had two excellent articles on the situation in Russia today and its conflict with Georgia.
Quote of the Week: Barack Obama’s Version of ‘Tear Down These Walls’
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
- SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, speaking in Berlin.
In OneVoice form, he also said:
This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it.
If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks [of terror]
If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.
Quote of the Week: A New World Order Centered Around Civil Society
From an interesting article in Ha’aretz by Michalis Firillas
[T]he concept of hegemony . . . is almost comical in the era of globalization. The sheer number of real or imaginary powers vying for the limelight has made international political maneuvering so complex that real power is hard-pressed to manifest itself in historically familiar ways. Suddenly, "statesmen" are a dime a dozen, and what really matters is whether you are invited to a conference, not what you can actually achieve there.
Firillas goes on to ponder on how civil society and multilateral organizations will somewhat fill that void.
Building Schools Instead of Bombs to Fight Terrorism
Nicholas Kristof considers using schools and education, rather than military force, to combat terrorism.
Oil Revenues In Middle East: Worrisome?
Kenneth Pollack offers a compelling perspective on the effects an oil boom in the Middle East.
Human Rights, Considered
An interesting discussion of human rights in the context of Spain’s "Great Ape Project."
The Danger of Plastic Bags
If you really want to understand the implications of our lifestyle, you should take a look at this scary presentation about the impact that plastic bags are having on the environment, and how this will come back and haunt us.
Campaigning For America
– As we gear towards the general election, a word of caution for US Presidential candidates about an important constituency that will not vote for them –
According to conventional wisdom, Presidential candidates can take campaign stances that will curry favor with particular constituencies of voters, only to be forgiven for adjusting campaign positions once they face the realities of the highest office.
The truth is that a campaign defines how the electorate will see their President – and this all the more true when shaping the President’s image in the eyes of the largest constituency that will actually not vote for them: the international community.
While domestically the President may be able to somewhat reshape his/her image through defining moments and actions, this is far less feasible internationally.
Only Americans vote for their President, but foreigners care almost as much - and sometimes more - about who will lead the most powerful nation in the world.
International impressions about a candidate are forged quite early, and they are far harder to change. Longer distances yield local media coverage that tends to be more one-dimensional and absolute, less nuanced, and more sporadic. Foreign coverage will also tend to be defined more narrowly from the prism of a particular nation’s foreign affairs agenda, as opposed to a plethora of domestic issues.
President Bush caused particular suspicion abroad during his 2000 campaign mocking Al Gore, and then again John Kerry in 2004, for their ‘multilateralism.’ He made it a pillar of his campaign to emphasize he would only pursue narrowly-defined American interests. He rejected the Kyoto protocols not only on their substance but on what they implied - that American policy would be harmonized with - or subservient to - global agendas for climate control.
Perhaps this stance helped him win over nativist constituencies. And he had little to fear about alienating foreigners who by definition could not vote. But global karma caught up with him and has as much to do with his Administration’s ultimate ineffectiveness as any other factor.
Foreign Heads of State in rare uniform fashion viewed him apprehensively, and large swaths of people reviled him across the globe. They could not vote him out. But they could vote with their policies and their currencies. Not only did Bush struggle to build his coalition in Iraq, but the ‘America’ brand was tarnished, American goods disfavored, and the dollar weakened.
America’s perceived weakness today is directly connected to displeasure with Bush’s unilateralist policies, whose perceptions were cemented during his campaign pronouncements even more than through his Administration’s work.
Even when Bush did positive international work, his image (and that of his Administration) had been unalterably shaped. He funded the fight against AIDS and pressed against poverty through far greater foreign aid than his predecessors. But he got no credit for it. Once international personas are shaped, it is close to impossible to alter them.
The same is true with foreign leaders from other nations – Putin vs. Gorbachev, Chirac vs. Sarkozy, Sharon vs. Peres – they are a brand unto themselves and will be hard-pressed to change it abroad no matter what different policies they may enact.
Starting with this general election, future candidates for the US presidency will hopefully bear in mind that the world is watching, and their statements will not be forgotten after the dust settles.
Both Obama and McCain seem to be more in tune to the foreign-policy-shaping impact of their campaign statements than President Bush was. Their visions for foreign policy could not be in greater contrast. McCain projects unwavering strength against militant absolutism and nihilism. Obama urges soft power and diplomatic engagement in tandem with military might. Neither perspective can be dismissed as unfounded or demagogic. Not even history will help us judge such a poignant question to such complex and dire circumstances.
But both will do well to remember that their campaign pronouncements will shape their international personas and will thus have almost as much impact on their ability to advance American (and possibly global) interests as the policies they enact thereafter if elected.
Can you blame "speculators"?
I was initially persuaded by media and pundit assertions that what is behind this meteoric rise in raw materials is at least connected to "speculation" - ie, hedge funds plowing in billions into commodity future contracts and other financial investments that make the goods artificially rise in cost.
But look at the Deutsche Bank chart (which my law school buddy Stanley Haar shared with me) below.
Non-Exchange traded commodities have risen more than those traded on exchanges. Unless hedge funds are also buying the physical goods in all these sectors, the more likely culprits are sheer global over-consumption and over-consumerism. For years the mantra was that we should only hope the rest of the world will have a standard of living that is closer to the Western world’s. Now that India and China are more than catching up, we are learning how this taxes our planet.
A better plan would be for all of us to learn to live just a little bit more modestly and less wastefully.
Just say it: we need to live more modestly
To handle the energy, the scarcity of natural resources from food to raw materials, the dangers of increasing waste and overflowing landfills, and to slow down the threats of climate change, a wide range of measures are being discussed, from tech and scientific progress to come up with cleaner renewable energies, to carbon-trading, resource-planning, energy conservation, etc. etc.
But what policy makers don’t talk about and which our world needs to come to terms with is that we need to learn to live more modestly! So much waste in every aspect of our lives. SUVs drive me nuts. The digital economy could not arrive soon enough - more consumption will increasingly be digital, which takes less space and energy, hopefully.
Is a slow-down in consumerism going to lead to "economic pain" from less economic growth? And if so, isn’t that a price we should need to accept as a condition to continue inhabiting this planet?
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