by David Steven | Oct 8, 2007 | Conflict and security
Neal Stephenson: “Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that I’m afraid might turn out to be quite stable.”
by Alex Evans | Oct 8, 2007 | Europe and Central Asia
David Miliband’s blog links to something I missed in the FT last week: the formation of a new European Council on Foreign Relations, as a complement / competitor to its American counterpart. The article announcing its launch – penned by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer, Mark Leonard and Mabel van Oranje, is candid about the EU’s foreign policy failings:
Despite these successes [single market, generous aid budget, lots of peacekeepers, uses incentives instead of threatening to invade people, leadership on WTO, Kyoto, International Criminal Court and so on], the EU continues to underperform on the world stage. Since the Iraq war and the French and Dutch No votes on the constitutional treaty, the EU has shown the faltering confidence of adolescence. European leaders, who struggle to adapt to a new global environment characterised by a weakened US, a resurgent Russia and a rising China, have too often turned inwards.
Instead, they continue, Europe needs to get its act together on issues like enlargement, Russia and the Middle East. To do this, it needs to rally behind Javier Solana; take a more co-ordinated approach; and think hard about additional incentives to draw the EU’s immediate neighbours into its sphere of influence.
by Alex Evans | Oct 8, 2007 | East Asia and Pacific, Influence and networks, North America
Yesterday’s NY Times had an excellent piece about what it argues to be the US’s increasing reliance on China in numerous matters diplomatic. The piece quotes Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation at length, who also has his own piece on his blog here. Here’s a sample from the Times article:
China, by virtue of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, has always been an important diplomatic player. But its importance to the Bush administration has grown for two reasons: it has become more assertive around the globe and the administration has exhausted a lot of its options.
“I think we need China almost everywhere in the world because we’ve disengaged from the rest of the world,” Mr. Clemons said, criticizing the administration’s initial disdain for concerted international diplomacy and citing its preoccupation with Iraq.
Meanwhile, China has steadily expanded its diplomatic and economic ties far beyond Asia. Mr. Clemons suggested that that has caused a subtle tectonic shift in how nations view it and, conversely, the United States. “They see China as an ascending power,” Mr. Clemons added, “and they don’t see us that way any more.”
On his own blog, Clemons is even more blunt as he rebuts calls made in the Washington Post for the US to boycott China’s 2008 Olympics if it doesn’t force the Burmese government to back down over the recent protests.
So, folks can pine on about America boycotting the 2008 Olympics — or they can get back to the “serious” problem that America isn’t taken all that seriously anymore, and China is.
