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From Plato to NATO in real-world contexts
Here's the thing, right? There are two clear underlying causes to all the major problems on earth. The first is overpopulation. Overpopulation means that there are too many people chasing after too many resources - energy, water, land etc. which inevitably leads to conflict. Enough has been written about that to sink a battleship.
Second, there's subjectivity. What's that? It's a lack of objectivity in our approaches to these problems. It's a natural trait of humanity to form into groups, but every group defines itself by a subjective outlook on the world around it. It's thus these groups that enter into conflicts.
Some examples. No objective discussion of the Middle East is possible due to Israel's emotional outlook: thanks to the Holocaust, any criticism or compromise is decried as 'anti-Semitic'. Likewise, Arab nations and Islamic terrorist groups cannot see past the Palestinian question.
The same is true wherever you look. Such is China's emotional attachment to Taiwan and Tibet that any questioning of the situation is condemned as "interference in our internal affairs". Same goes for Serbia, Russia and Kosovo. The dysfunctional tendencies of the UN and EU are all down to questions of national interest. Even the US defines itself these days with reference to 9/11 and any attempt to rationally tackle the greater issues are met with the same response.
So states and other actors are not rational - they are indeed irrational. International relations theory has it exactly wrong.
The only answer is to find a unifying threat or goal, a way to bring all the conflicting groups together into one. And, ironically, overpopulation provides us with that. We are faced with a significant common problem, that of climate change, for which overpopulation is a major cause. Too many people needing too many products, burning too much fuel and cutting down too many trees... you get the picture.
So work together to solve the population crisis and you have an answer to the irrationality that causes conflict and environmental degradation. It's so simple.
 Next Thursday, 7 February, sees the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Rat, the first in the Chinese Zodiac cycle. No, this isn't some cod astrological analysis: but it does put a little bit of mystical context in. Just look at all the international factors that are just about to converge and you'll see what I mean.
Basically, the next weeks and months could see some rather serious developments in the global political picture.
Kosovo might soon be declaring independence, and despite dissent it looks like most of the international community is going to recognise it. What few realise is that, for Serbia, the secession of Kosovo would be a disaster of monumental proportions. And they're holding an election this weekend in which a hard-right president could be selected.
Already locking horns with the UK, Russia is probably going to stand by Serbia - which means increasing antagonism with the rest of Europe. I can certainly foresee the gas spigot getting turned off for a couple of days, which given the present frigid economic (let alone meteorological) climate could have a severe impact.
Speaking of elections, it's Super Tuesday this week, another moment that's going to define the course of things to come. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or John McCain: the field of four will probably narrow down to two candidates for the top job in the world.
Not long after that, Monday 18 February is finally going to see elections in Pakistan. Whether rigged or not, there will inevitably be implications for regional stability.
Furthermore, set that against the context of Afghanistan. President Karzai has just shot his nation in the foot by turning away one of Britain's most competent statesmen, Lord Ashdown, as a potential UN envoy.
Moreover, NATO is lumbering towards a crisis with Germany refusing to pull its weight and Canada getting very cold feet in the face of what looks like sheer petulance from its allies. Thus, the NATO conference set for next week could well define the future of the mission, and general stability in Afghanistan. Condi is already jetting in do do her firewoman act.
We don't want to see either Pakistan or Afghanistan go down; both of them falling apart at the same time would be disastrous.
And finally, look at China.
Anyone who's queued for rail tickets at Spring Festival - even in a good year - will tell you what a nightmare it is. This year has seen the worst weather in half a century and chances are that the world's largest internal migration is not going to go ahead as planned. That means some unhappy chappies down Chinatown.
Add to that the very real danger of a food crisis - a failed crop could tip China over the edge - compounded by the general economic malaise and you have a recipe for civil unrest in Olympic year.
And finally, add to that a touch of spice in the form of an upcoming referendum in Taiwan (set for 22 March) and you have a fiery plate of noodles indeed.
In summary, there are various crises impending in Eastern Europe, South Asia and East Asia. The year 2008 could well be going for a bag of rats.
"Yankee go home, but take me with you!" How long is that going to last? This writer seems to believe tha the European and Chinese ways are catching on more now than the American way. I'm slightly sceptical as to the former, but there's certainly an element of truth in it.
On the other hand, the strength of America's style of democracy - I say 'style' since it's not an absolute democracy as one gets from proportional representation methods - does mean that we will have regime change in a year. It's the Bush administration that has sown alienation against the US, not America per se. It can still be turned around, though of course the trend is a general one.
Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.
But Europe lacks a coherent foreign policy, even now, and the Treaty of Lisbon probably won't alleviate that fundamental weakness by 2016. Then again, as pointed out, the Euro is now the real tool of Brussels foreign policy.
As for Beijing: "Every country in the world currently considered a rogue state by the U.S. now enjoys a diplomatic, economic or strategic lifeline from China, Iran being the most prominent example." That's a Warsaw Pact in-the-making if ever I saw one.
Note also the logical follow-on from my 2012 scenario and big picture theory of simultaneous bipolar-multipolarity, plus the importance of Gwadar.
United States - International Diplomacy - Economic Trends - World Economy - Politics - New York Times
It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.
The author Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation (sounds disturbingly like PNAC to me, but will let that one go. The essay is adapted from his book, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, to be published by Random House in March. Gonna add it to my Amazon wish list, I think.
Well, it's that time again - as the year 2007 draws to a close, we look to the future. And one thing is for sure: the primary foci of this weblog, Pakistan and China, were hardly out of the news this year and won't be in 2008 either.
 For China especially, 2008 is the crunch year. The Olympics have acquired a kind of existential significance, and their success or failure have become intertwined with China's contemporary sense of its national identity.
Unfortunately, I can't see the games being the resounding success that the CCP hopes for. Chinese athletes will probably haul in the most medals, but with the enormous pressures upon them there will inevitably be doping scandals. Other athletes will scorn the terrible pollution; tourists will be messed about, pushed, shoved and spat around (most Beijingers will behave admirably, but it'll still be the negatives that get remembered); and journalists will lament the restrictions on free reporting. Few Chinese yet realise how things will be perceived, and it will come as a shock.
Most of all, this most political of sporting events will inevitably be deeply politicised. There will be incidents: medal-winners standing up for Tibet, Taiwanese declarations, perhaps even Uyghur violence. Expect 888 to be a very interesting moment in the definition of the new China.
Turning to Russia, there Putin will remain in control, despite the appointment of a new president in Medvedev - little more than a deputy, really, But I have confidence in Putin: he is not stupid, and will not wish relations with the EU and NATO to deteriorate further. Things were getting silly, what with all this missile defence rubbish, not to mention Litvinenko and Lugovoi, and in 2008 Russia will attempt to repair some of the damage - though not with Britain, who will be the main losers.
Meanwhile, it will be a period of reflection for the EU itself, as the member states attempt to digest the implications of the Lisbon Treaty. Expect at least one ratification to fail.
 There is at least reason to positive about the Middle East. Iraq has calmed in 2007, though of course it's not the end by any stretch of the imagination. We are also thankfully unlikely to see action against Iran either. Bush desperately needs a positive legacy to speak of, so with elections in full swing at home he and his cronies may attempt at least to broker a compromise solution. Does he have what it takes? We shall see.
But there are clearly going to be fireworks in Pakistan. Far too early to tell how things will pan out, but it probably won't be good. This writer is already predicting a Balkanisation of the country: that may be going too far, but with the conflicts in NWFP and Balochistan likely to gain pace as society fractures after the elections then the prospects for stability are low. Great map too - worth examining to see what it suggests about Iran and Iraq and all
It is almost certainly the end of the road for Musharraf, and with Bhutto gone there will be a power vacuum. Power vacuums mean conflict, as we have seen in Iraq. But the West and India have meddled enough in Pakistan - it is up to them.
Recognition of global turmoil as the basic challenge of our time requires confronting complexity. That is the weakness of the issue insofar as the American political scene is concerned. It does not lend itself to sloganeering or rouse the American people as viscerally as terrorism. It is more difficult to personalize without a demonic figure like Osama bin Laden. Nor is it congenial to self-gratifying proclamations of an epic confrontation between good and evil on the model of the titanic struggles with Nazism and Communism. Yet not to focus on global turmoil is to ignore a central reality of our times: the massive worldwide political awakening of mankind and its intensifying awareness of intolerable disparities in the human condition
Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership
 When I started this blog two years ago, crude was priced at $60 per barrel. Now it's $96. The dollar was $1.21 to the Euro then: now it's $1.44.
So go the figures. Something is up. There is a big picture to this, and - shock and awe - after spending the best part of the last two years studying International Relations, I have a theory.
The basic idea is this: there are too many people chasing too few resources. Breaking down this simple statement brings us to two key players - the US and China. And the hidden factor is the instability of a multipolar world that is evolving into a bipolar structure: the 'West', led by Washington, and the 'Rest', very loosely led by China, competing for dominance over those resources, particularly energy.
 The thing is that, unlike the Cold War where two political ideologies were in competition, current US hegemony is still based on military and political power projection, whereas China's ace of spades is economic soft power.
The misuse of firepower is adding to rather than reducing the global instability that came to our notice on 9/11 (but had existed well before then). The World Trade Center attacks were as much a protest against US foreign policy than a statement about political Islam, and since then Islamist terrorism has increased exponentially.
The instability caused by terrorism is adding to the energy crisis by contributing to high prices if not yet directly threatening supply. Meanwhile, China's economic leverage means that the only way that US industry can compete is with a weak dollar. However, both things mean that oil producers such as Russia and manufacturers such as China are building enormous reserves of dollars, shifting the centre of the world economy away from the West. Thanks to events such as the subprime crisis, an economic meltdown is probably imminent.
China and Russia themselves are involved in abetting instability. While they do not directly support terrorism, they sponsor states such as Iran, the key outside player in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a pivotal state in all this, since if Pakistan goes down Afghanistan goes with it.
If Iran is bombed too, as looks increasingly likely, there will be a black hole of chaos slap bang in the middle of Eurasia - from Iraq through to Pakistan - creating a massive geographical chokepoint that most of the world's energy needs to get past.
The more terrorists that are bred in the black hole, the more the West has to spend on security, thus diminishing economies and general confidence. The US is already spewing vast quantities of blood and treasure on Iraq, a situation that can only be helping China's peaceful rise and Iran and Russia's leverage over the energy market.
Add to this the threat of WMD. After the Cold War ended in 1989, only the US had the capability to launch a decisive military blow. Now anyone, terrorist groups included, with a bomb (probably with uranium sourced from Russia and technology from Pakistan, itself donated by China) and a suitcase can hold any other entity to ransom - just as energy suppliers like OPEC and Russia can cut off dependent economies overnight.
Iran and Pakistan are both the key proxy players and the key potential battlegrounds. China and the US are vying for control of both, since whoever calls the shots in Tehran and Islamabad calls the shots over Gulf oil and the terrorist training grounds in Iraq, Afghanistan and the lawless badlands of Pakistan.
 Russia sits in the middle, ostensibly neutral but leaning towards China and away from the US. It got burnt in Afghanistan in the '80s, but isn't shy of lending a helping hand to Iran. Conversely, India is also on the fence, but looks to Washington rather than Beijing. It needs stability in Pakistan above all else, since the threat of a nuclear standoff could suddenly become very real.
Thus it's all connected. That's what this blog is about - making the connections. It's not a dissimilar situation to the Cold War with its proxy conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it is a more complex one. Instead of two or three, there are now four horsemen of the apocalypse - the West, meaning America and its rather powerless allies (notably Europe and probably India), versus the Rest's nexus of counter-hegemony - China and its partners-in-crime Russia and Iran.
The prospects for war? Unlikely at the time being, since Beijing and Washington are still playing different games. Should they ever go head-to-head, however, over Taiwan for example, then all hell will break loose.
 On the back of the BBC's excellent analysis of the Bush administration's failure on Iraq, 'No Plan, No Peace' comes a similar analysis from The Economist. The essence of both is that Cold War thinking is useless in the modern era.
It's hard to summarise two hours of BBC documentary, but the essence was this: the US didn't have a plan for the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and while the British had deep misgivings they failed to make an impact. Memorable moments include: the admission that the only intelligence on Iraqi culture came from the Lonely Planet; the discovery that orders for the aftermath had been copied directly from the Marshall Plan ("the only currencies shall be the US Dollar and the Reichsmark"); and the description of Rumsfeld's deputy as "the dumbest m****f***** I've ever met". Timeless comedy, were it not so tragic.
There needs to be a realisation in the corridors of power that the days of pitched battles and supremacy by superior firepower are gone. That was true in Vietnam, and arguably as far back as the Battle of Jutland. What matters is intelligence and boots on the ground - not soldiers brainwashed in bootcamp but educated professionals able to understand and adapt to the alien culture around them. No amount of technology can replace that. After all, the true weapon of mass destruction is the AK-47.
The reluctance of politicians to accept that this is the true 'Revolution in Military Affairs' is saddening. Rumsfeld's assumption was that a light force could take Saddam out in a matter of weeks, which was correct: but this did not dovetail well with his deeply flawed assumption that everything would be fine afterwards. The surge does appear to be working, but it would have been better in 2003 than now, after thousands have died, the country in chaos and Iran is in the ascendency. You need lots of well-worn boots, not a few shiny new hi-tech weapons.
Armies of the future | Brains, not bullets | Economist.com
The “transformation” advocated by Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush's first defence secretary, envisaged that the armed forces would be slimmed down and money invested in “smart” weapons, reconnaissance systems and data links. Speed, stealth, accuracy and networks would substitute for massed forces. The army's idea of its “future warrior” was a kind of cyborg, helmet stuffed with electronic wizardry and a computer display on his visor, all wirelessly linked to sensors, weapons and comrades. New clothing would have in-built heating and cooling. Information on the soldier's physical condition would be beamed to medics, and an artificial “exoskeleton” (a sort of personal brace) would strengthen his limbs.
The initial success in toppling first the Taliban in Afghanistan and then Saddam Hussein in Iraq seemed to vindicate such concepts. But the murderous chaos in Iraq, and the growing violence in southern Afghanistan, have shown that America is good at destroying targets, and bad at rebuilding states. Firepower is of little use, and often counter-productive, when the enemy deliberately mingles among civilians.
The comment below, delivered at a conference on genocide is heretical but true. In the 2005 film Lord of War it is said that "the real weapon of mass destruction is the AK-47". That's entirely correct, but the real engines of genocide are poverty and weakness - accompanied by complacency on the part of the "international community".
Give people the arms to fight evil - it's bloody and nasty and lots of people suffer terribly - but in the long run, less of them will die. Allow them to retaliate back with superior armed force. Horribly Machiavellian, but such is the reality of geopolitics.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Can the world stop genocide?
French author Gerard Prunier, like the proverbial ghost at a wedding, said genocides could not be prevented by the international community.
"When you see a dictatorial regime heating up, everyone starts talking, talking, talking ... and by the time the talking stops, either matters have quietened down or they have happened."
And that is the crux of the matter, according to Mr Prunier - it is difficult for politicians or the military to intervene in a situation that has not yet evolved into a crisis.
So what is Mr Prunier's solution?
"Genocides can only be stopped by the people directly involved - and usually that means people involved in the war that accompanies most mass killings."
And if it is the government committing the genocide, the solution is "arm the rebels", he says.
"It won't be clean - it will be messy," the French author said, "but it is more likely to stop the mass killing than international intervention."
Finally, I've found an IR thinker who isn't wrapped up in misconceived notions of 'science', 'method' and 'theory' and sees the field for what it really is - an infinitely complex and mutable non-systemic entity that warrants close examination in context of itself, not someone's tired old ideas from the last century.
The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity. In addition, the idea is detrimental to science, for it neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions, so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for -ranted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens. Case studies such as those reported in the preceding chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only 'rule' that survives is 'anything goes'.
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method
Will need to check this guy out in more detail...
QUOTES: Paul Feyerabend
It is conceited to assume that one has solutions for people whose lives one does not share and whose problems one does not know. It is foolish to assume that such an exercise in distant humanitarianism will have effects pleasing to the people concerned. From the very beginning of Western Rationalism intellectuals have regarded themselves as teachers, the world as a school and 'people' as obedient pupils. In Plato this is very clear. The same phenomenon occurs among Christians, Rationalists, Fascists, Marxists. Marxists no longer try to learn from those they want to liberate; they attack each other about interpretations, viewpoints, evidence and take it for granted that the resulting intellectual hash will make fine food for the natives.
Against Method, 1975
I would say, for most of the misery in our world, wars, destruction of minds and bodies, endless butcheries are caused not by evil individuals but by people who have objectivised their personal wishes and inclinations and thus have made them inhuman.
Farewell to Reason, 1987
Travel did many things to a person, but the one thing it did most successfully was break a person down. Admittedly, my travel experiences were not very representative. My experience with travel was Central Asia. Central Asia, then, broke a person down. It did so first by exhilaration. Was this place real? Was I really here? It did so next by exhaustion. Nothing was easy, and each hassle and bribe and malfunction and injustice took something of one's spirit, bent it, made it meaner. Then came the most brutal breakdown of all: the knowledge of how easily one could live within that meanness.
Tom Bissell
Chasing the Sea
Rising China, Shining India; the quagmire in the Persian Gulf and America’s Global War on Terror. These are some of the focal points of international politics in 2007, and none of them exist in isolation.
For the giant populations of Asia to continue their slow grind out of poverty requires economic growth; industrialisation and development must be fuelled. Both China and India are increasingly dependent on oil and gas imports, and in order to safeguard their futures energy security is vital. So each needs to command new sources and new ways of bringing in fossil fuels.
There are some vital strategic areas that can serve as transit routes in both China and India’s energy security policies. Thus geopolitics return to the historical heartland of Kipling’s Kim – the territory now known as Pakistan. It is as if the original Great Game has gone back to square one, only with some fresh rules and new players.
This thesis aims to examine the geopolitical implications of developing Pakistan as an ‘energy hub’, and to analyse the impediments to its fruition and the interested parties’ strategies for seeing it through. And, whereas other studies tend to focus on individual factors at work, it aims instead to critically observe them in the context of the situation as a whole.
Bound copies are available at lulu.com for around $10 plus P&P; downloadable PDF files are free of charge. Click here to access the virtual storefront.
This work is made available on the understanding that it will not be copied, plagiarised or otherwise reproduced without the explicit consent of the author.
No man likes to be beaten. But to be beaten by the man who has always stood as the particular example of mediocrity in his eyes, to start by the side of this mediocrity and to watch it shoot up, while he struggles and gets nothing but a boot in his face, to see the mediocrity snatch from him, one after another, the chances he’d give his life for, to see the mediocrity worshipped, to miss the place he wants and to see the mediocrity enshrined upon it, to lose, to be sacrificed, to be ignored, to be beaten, beaten, beaten – not by a greater genius, not by a god, but by a Peter Keating – well, my little amateur, do you think the Spanish Inquisition ever thought of a torture to equal this?
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“I want you to hear. I want you to know what’s in store for you. There will be days when you look at your hands and you’ll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they’ll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can’t find that chance, and you can’t bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he’ll only be asking for a dime, but that won’t be what you’ll hear; you’ll hear that you’re nothing, that he’s laughing at you, that it’s written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you’ll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to creature on a platform talk about buildings, about that work which you love, and the things he’ll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you’ll hear the people applauding him, and you’ll want to scream, because you won’t know whether they’re real or you are, whether you’re in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you’ll say nothing, because the sounds you could make – they’re not a language in that room any longer; but if you’d want to speak, you won’t anyway, because you’ll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?”
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Peter Howard-Comment-Obituaries-TimesOnline
During 2000, Peter Howard was my boss at Jane's Navy International, and I couldn't have asked for a better editor and mentor in my early years. He will be missed.
His family's nominated charities are The British Lung Foundation and The Gurkha Welfare Trust, and donations would be appreciated.
Peter's obituary from The Times reprinted below.
Continue reading "Goodbye, Peter" »
Who said democracies never go to war with each other? If this escalates, and Lebanon is extremely shaky at the moment, it's goodbye and good riddance to Immanuel Kant.
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Clashes on Israel-Lebanese border
Israeli and Lebanese forces have exchanged fire on the border between the two countries, reports say.
The clash broke out after Israeli troops searched a border area for bombs, following the discovery of four explosives on Monday.
Lebanese troops fired on Israeli tanks inside the border zone, prompting retaliatory fire, Israeli reports said.
Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia fought a 34-day war last year sparked by flare-ups on the tense border.
It is becoming more and more obvious by the day that the post-Cold War world is not, after all, multipolar but bipolar. The great powers are the US and China. This is especially obvious when it comes to Middle East affairs, though interests coincide as much as they conflict. Of course, the biggest leveller is energy security - and that's the central objective for Chinese foreign policy.
Chinese foreign policy | A quintet, anyone? | Economist.com
Never mind that China, in the more than four years since it appointed a special envoy to the Middle East, has offered no original ideas. To all sides, it still has much to offer. To oil-exporting countries, China has rapidly emerged since the 1990s as a big customer and investor. Some 45% of China's oil imports from January to November last year were from the Middle East. To countries such as Iran and Syria, eager to check American power in the region, China's veto power at the UN and its shared misgivings about America make it a welcome friend. Refreshingly, China asks no questions about democracy...
China worries about its dependence on American military might for the security of its oil shipments from the Middle East. It is still a long way from being able to project military power over such a distance itself, though a Chinese official was quoted in the state-owned press this week as saying China had the ability to build an aircraft carrier, but had not decided when to do so. China is trying to diversify its sources of energy, buying more from Russia, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But experts predict that China will long remain heavily dependent on energy from the Middle East. So it has little choice but to support efforts to stabilise the region. It may not agree with America's tactics, but will share the same broad objective. Jeffrey Bader, a former senior American diplomat now at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says that China's resistance to American initiatives in Sudan and Iran depends on Russian support for its position. If Russia were to switch sides, so too would China, he argues. It is in no mood to take on America alone.
No, not Tiananmen, Tiawan, Tibet and torture (hope that doesn't get this website blocked). Now we're talking about the traingular relationships of China, India, Pakistan and the US. I might add Iran in there as well - see below.
Asia Times Online :: China News - The geometry of Sino-Indian ties
Hu's visit will be the crowning event to mark a decade of steady improvement in bilateral relations and serve as an impetus for further strengthening ties between Asia's two emerging powers. However, the substance and consolidation of the improving bilateral relationship will have to overcome what I term the four Ts - threat perceptions; territorial disputes; and the two triangulars, ie, China-India-US and China-India-Pakistan.
Despite progress in bilateral relations over the past few years, mutual suspicions remain. Partly this is due to the dynamics of security dilemma and structural conflicts between the two Asian giants. India has watched China's phenomenal growth in economic and military areas with both envy and alarm. The very fact that China continues to lead India on many indicators of power poses a greater threat than its military defeat 40 years ago.
Likewise, China is paying close attention to India's growing military power and its nuclear and missile developments. Beijing is wary of New Delhi's eastward strategy of developing greater economic and military ties with Japan and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Just to really complicate matters, let's stick oil and and gas into the equation too. Then you have the Iran-US-China triangle over Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the Iran-Pakistan-India triangle relating to gas pipelines. No-one said this would be simple...
The Asia Times neatly throws structural realist theory straight out of the window. Also known as neo-realism, this Cold War theory rests on the idea of a balance of power between two giants (then the US and USSR); with equal military capabilities, the peace held for 50 years.
However, with information warfare and nuclear proliferation on the rise, and several examples in recent history of how a small, clever enemy can defeat the conventional military forces of a superpower (think Vietnam, Aghanistan I, 9/11, Afghanistan II, Iraq), it seems that asymmetric warfare is well and truly in. Sheer strength is irrelevant, as long as there is a David who knows how to topple the Goliath.
Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.
a conventional confrontation between the US and the comparatively smaller, less powerful Russia-China axis would quickly result in a catastrophe for the East. In fact, the rising East has intentionally kept its relations with the West as friendly as possible in order to avoid the terrible costs of a direct, conventional confrontation. This policy has facilitated, without needless interruption, the ongoing and massive transfer of wealth from the West to the emerging (rising) economies of the East. It is a very smart and pragmatic policy for the East.
Nevertheless, simultaneous with that policy another one is being actively pursued. The rising East is not content to merely assume that the US colossus will treat, or will learn to treat the globe's lesser powers in a fair and equitable manner, taking proper account of their legitimate views and interests.
Unilateralist, overly muscular and mostly self-serving US policies and actions since the 1991 collapse of the roughly balanced bipolar order of the two superpowers demonstrate that nothing can be taken for granted in that regard. Prudently, the rising multifarious East has been learning ever deeper and wider multilateral cooperation within itself in the energy, economic, diplomatic, political and military spheres aimed at developing and putting in place potent asymmetric leverages in all those same spheres.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
The last few weeks - which have seen China tighten its grip over Africa and Asia, and the Republicans lose their grip in the Capitol and rethink their whole strategy - has generated a slew of articles over at Asia Times Online.
One author speaks of a new East-West Cold War style conflict developing, though I'm not so sure how stable or even feasible a China-Russia-India alliance would be:
It isn't yet fashionable to speak openly of a world subdividing itself again into two camps - those aligned with the US and those aligned with the Russia-China axis at the core of a new rising, multifarious yet coherent pole of the East - with the dividing line between the two camps consisting of the contest for control over global strategic resources.
Despite all the relevant signs pointing precisely in that direction:
# The deepening accord in all key spheres between Russia, China, India, the other rising powers of the East and the key resource-rich regimes of the world.
# Steadily rising East-West tensions, the ever-more divergent interests between East and West.
# The increasingly incompatible approaches to global issues and problems resulting in an ever-widening chasm between East and West.
Far too long to analyse in full, but worth looking at at a later date.
Another writer re-examines the China-India relationship:
Professor Ma Jiali, a veteran South Asia expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), says India's recent economic performance combined with its growing importance in international affairs has led to a rethink in Beijing of India as zhong he guoli, a Mandarin term that translates roughly as a "comprehensive national power".
For Beijing, relations with India are now considered the highest priority, according to Professor Ma, given that India is what he calls a "four-in-one" country. "India falls into each of the four major categories of countries that China wants to focus its diplomatic energies on," he explained. The four categories are: Developing countries, neighboring countries, rising powers, and influential actors on the international stage.
Another still looks at China and Russia, and finally we have the four horsemen of America, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.
There's really far too much to read here, but the implication is clear - the world is shaking into what looks like being its new order for quite a while. I personally will suggest that the US will remain one major pole, with China its key rival and Europe, Russia, India and Iran as second-tier powers that either ally with the gig pair or stand their distance. Both a multipolar and a bipolar environment at the same time - twice as nasty, twice as unpredictable.
The Faith and the State lecture series closed with a general debate held at the ISHSS in Amsterdam. Moderated by Maarten Huygen of NRC Handelsblad newspaper, the speakers were chosen to embody as best as possible the different strands of the discussions over the last two months.
In the right corner was atheist philosopher Prof Herman Philipse; ranged against him were the Labour party Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, and Professor Hakan Yilmaz of Bogazici University, Istanbul. Also present was Cornell historian Professor Laurence Moore, representing the American dimension of the debate. Their main statements are detailed further elsewhere: what follows is a summary of the public forum itself.
Read on below.
Continue reading "Religion, Enlightenment and Democracy" »
  Oh, irony of ironies. It's not been a good week for warmongering dictators. Heads had to roll for Iraq. First, almost literally, was Saddam's. It was kind of his fault in the first place. Now Rummie's out too: someone had to take the fall for the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.
But getting rid of either them isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference.
Seven Sisters (oil companies) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interesting to see how 'big oil' is interlinked. If they were once the 'seven sisters', then now the key companies - Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil - are more like the the four horsemen of the apocalypse...
Dutch Multiculturalism in Question
A draft report of proceedings in New York, by Jessica Serraris and Philip Sen.
Those who managed to get in – people were literally lining up around Washington Square to attend the debate at NYU’s Tischman Auditorium – were warned that they’d hear some views that would be “a little more direct than Americans are used to”. They were not to be disappointed.
Integration and its Discontents
Students, professors, journalists and VIPs alike gathered to see arguably one of the most celebrated Dutch women in recent history. The notoriously outspoken Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been invited to discuss the dark side of Islam and Dutch multiculturalism, and along with former EU commissioner FFrits Bolkestein and writer Bas Heijne she certainly managed to captivate the audience.
But the debate was deeply one-sided. If Heijne was supposed to counter the rightist views of the other two, he did not live up to the task. Perhaps the debate would have benefited had a prominent and outspoken Muslim been invited to the stage too. Still, what ensued was otherwise a representative discussion on Holland’s controversial and divisive integration issues. After Professor Tony Judt's introduction, in which he set recent upheavals (including two political assassinations) into context, it was time to hear the speakers make their cases. It soon became clear that there would be more than one star of the show.
Read on below.
Continue reading "Religion and the Limits of Tolerance" »
 Today's what, in the business, they call "a fast news day". Stuff happened. Lots of it.
We awoke to images of anti-government protests in Hungary, sparked by the Prime Minister's admission of misconduct. Though rain stopped play today, the storming of the TV station (always the fist thing to go down in a revolution) was eerily reminiscent of the end of the Cold War back in 1989.
Then, though perhaps we should have seen it coming, a military coup in Thailand. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had been on shaky ground ever since calling a snap election to prove his credibility, and tacitly admitting defeat and withdrawal from politics yet never really letting go of the reins (Tony Blair - something to ponder there. But the sight of tanks in Bangkok is still quite a shocker.
All this distracted attention from the backdrop of UN headquarters in New York, where world leaders are gathering for Kofi Annan's final session in charge. It's not been a day of minced words, with prominent personalities calling for moves to end the Israel-Palestine conflict and even the sight of Bush - commendably - demanding action on Darfur:
Mr Bush said that if the Khartoum authorities did not do so quickly, the UN had to act. "Your lives and the United Nation's credibility are at stake," he added, addressing the people of Darfur.
The US president also announced the appointment of a special US envoy to the region.
Fine words then, but not much action for now. But Bush was also struggling to justify his increasingly isolated position on the Middle East, the bigger fish being fried at the expense of Sudan.
All this and also a shake-up in Saddam's trial: continued protests in Taiwan; and bombs in Somalia. Anchors across the rolling news channels were looking somewhat out of breath.
What does all this mean? Well, for now it is of course too early to tell. But I think that today has dealt quite a blow to the institutionalising agenda of neo-liberalism. Hungary's problems stem from economic failure that has, if anything, been exacerbated rather than assuaged by EU membership:
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the biggest problems facing governments in former Eastern Bloc countries has been how to marry the expectations of the electorate with the harsh realities of running free-market economies that aspire to join the single European currency.
 Even worse in Thailand, one of the leading lights of ASEAN but also the source of the 1997 financial crisis. I expect that investors will be watching events with dismay: the image of Asia as a stable region for trade has been shattered once again.
China, on the other hand, will probably be laughing all the way to the bank as foreign companies get the jitters and pull out.
And finally, the UN as an institution is once again under the microscope. It came out of the Lebanon fiasco somewhat bruised, and the mainly European contingent of peacekeepers have yet to prove their worth under any major test. Now there is a growing onus for it to engage with the fractious Israel-Palestine conflict, an issue at the very root of much of the tension in the world today.
What happens with Sudan and Darfur is an even graver immediate issue: can this embattled institution stand back yet again and allow genocide in our own time? We shall see.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Lecture
...there are no internal affairs left on our crowded Earth! And mankind's sole salvation lies in everyone making everything his business; in the people of the East being vitally concerned with what is thought in the West, the people of the West vitally concerned with what goes on in the East.
 Even now, five years on, the events of 11 September 2001 possess a certain surreality, a lack of context in the state of things then and the state of things now.
It's certainly one of those 'Kennedy moments', which we will all look back upon decades from now. For me it was doubly unreal, since I was at that time on a military exercise up in the wilds of Scotland, at Garelochhead, an army base near Faslane submarine station. Our SOPs were to remain isolated from external influences, even other units, and when the news broke all we has was a tiny transistor radio that could only pick up the crackly local Scottish station.
The fumbling attempts of those underfunded reporters to take stock of the situation were typical of all media outlets, in a way: CNN didn't do much better. It was weeks before I got to see the footage, by which time its impact had faded; it felt like it hadn't really happened, it was just another late-night disaster movie on repeat showing.
But it was real, and the world we live in now is as much a consequence of 9/11 as 9/11 was a consequence of the world we lived in then. But no-one saw it - it was impossible - even if we had effectively (in the words of IR professor Steve Smith) "sung that world into existence".
The world we are singing into existence now is certainly a bleaker one than we thought we had in 1989, the year of revolutions. It's telling that despite the failure of China's 1989 pro-democracy revolution and the success of those in Europe, it's China that is leading now while Europe is swiftly falling behind.
But that's by the by. The new world disorder is one where terrorist attacks are more, not less, likely. Afghanistan seemed to be a success for a while, but that image is fading fast. Post-Iraq the suicide bombers there and elsewhere have added motive and impetus. This year's 'spectacular' failed, but there'll be another.
North Korea and Iran are both enjoying their spell in the limelight due to the nuclear issue, and post-Lebanon, Israel and Palestine are further than ever from reconciliation while Britain and Blair are now looking like the lame ducks of international affairs.
Ultimately, it looks as if the bigger picture is one where the enemies of the US are winning. In the past five years it has lost so much of the legitimacy it built up since World War II, and squandered the sympathy, solidarity and support of 12 September. It's almost as if 9/11 didn't happen: Bush started it, didn't he?
Perhaps the world didn't change on 9/11; perhaps we just perceived it to have done. If anything, it's a massive distraction from the real underlying and interlinked problems of the planet: overpopulation, poverty, pollution.
But what is happening now and what happens next is and will be the result of the changes that we have wrought. Let's hope that we can turn the tide before that cycle spins out of control.
 Faith and the State
Remarque Institute (NYU) and ISHSS (UvA) US-Europe Public Forum 2006
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Edmund Burke, 1729-1797
Be afraid. If recent press reports are to be believed, Europe – and Britain in particular – is positively crawling with Islamic terrorists, bent on death and destruction in the name of Jihad.
The media tends to exaggerate, of course, but after the uncovering of plans to destroy 10 aircraft in mid-air, the discovery of terror training camps and the arrests of Al-Qaeda commanders, no-one can deny that something is going on. What lies at the roots of this militancy among Europe’s Muslims, and what, if anything, can be done to assuage it?
Download Word file or read main text below. (See Word file for bibliography and footnotes).
This essay is the joint winner of the US-Europe Public Forum 'Faith and the State' competition 2006. You can also read the original blog entry from which the paper was extended.
Continue reading "A Taste of Reality and the State of Things to Come" »
 It's not in my usual remit, but the Economist article reprinted below strikes a timely chord.
I used to believe that the Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, were havens of peace and harmony in a seething sea of troubles. Safe, if sordid, Holland was 'fluffy'. No longer. After Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, things won't be the same again.
The apartment complex I've just moved into - in fact the whole area I now live in - is populated predominantly by Turkish-origin and other Muslims. The guy who cut my hair was Moroccan. The woman in the launderette is Kashmiri. And there's a definite tension between the austerity of the hijabs I see among my neighbours and the swinging sexuality of the city centre's red-light district.
The contrast couldn't be greater: it's a tale not just of two cities but of two worlds.
The Economist draws our attention to two books upon this subject - one by Ian Buruma (co-author of Occidentalism) on the death of Theo van Gogh; the other by celebrity politico Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who effectively brought down the Dutch government this year.
Murder in Amsterdam, will deal with the murder; the other is a collection of essays primarily on the plight of Muslim women.
I'd better get hold of a copy; in October I'll have the chance to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a debate at NYU's Remarque Institute having won an essay competition on 'Faith and the State'. That'll be going up soon on a dedicated documents page.
The Economist, however, summarises the basic idea pretty well. It's got to be give and take - it's got to be a bit of both:
Ms Hirsi Ali is a fierce opponent of multiculturalism. She believes it is wrong and even dangerous for the tolerant and liberal to accept the intolerant and illiberal. And she thinks the West should not be afraid to proclaim the superiority of its system.
Yet attempts to coerce Muslims into adopting Western values risk a backlash. Europe needs to come to terms with Islam as a European religion. It is also striking, as Mr Buruma notes, that the most radical Muslims are not immigrants, but the second generation: those born in Europe who grow up disaffected, rootless and (all too often) jobless. These are the people who must be persuaded that they have a stake in a modern, liberal democracy. For the Netherlands, as for all of Europe, that requires better education, better housing, lower crime—and more job opportunities.
Maybe so. There has to be a carrot - but there has to be a stick too.
Continue reading "Dutch Courage, Dutch Fears" »
 In '69 they got Woodstock. This is what we get.
The average death toll per day in Iraq is hitting 60. The NATO operation in Afghanistan is faltering, and looking like the biggest shoot-up for the British Army since Korea. In Lebanon, Israel will not bend to international pressure but is instead gearing up for the big push. And on our own ground, there was a plot to blow up nine planes.
Sure, in '69 they were heading off the Tet offensive. But we don't even get a seminal rock concert to appease us. They had Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendix. We get Bob Gelfof and Bono. Some trade off. We even get a defender for England captain. Fantastic.
We're all going to die. I make it 2012, when China gets involved, but I'm sure other people have other predictions.
There are also those, for example Emma Brockes in The Guardian, just feel enveloped by gloom:
One night last week, the main item on the 10'clock news was Israel sending troops into Lebanon. It was accompanied by footage of tanks throwing up dust and people crawling out of bomb damaged housing. The second item was news of three British soldiers being killed in an ambush in southern Afghanistan and nine hundred more British troops being committed to the region, bringing the total to 4,500. The third item was that Corporal Matthew Cornish, a 29-year-old British soldier, husband and father of two young children, had died in a mortar attack in Basra, bringing the total number of deaths in Iraq that day to 60, which the reporter pointed out was slightly below average, and the death toll over the past two months to nearly 6,000.
At this stage, the shelf starts to buckle. Embedded in these stories was speculation about Iran's nuclear threat, a reminder that Gaza is still under siege, analysis of Tony Blair's fallout with his cabinet and footage of his joint press conference with George Bush, which when it was shown the first time round - Blair frowning powerfully, Bush sinisterly jocular - was a tipping point into despair for lots of people. The final item on the news that evening couldn't have been more symbolic if it had shown the ravens leaving the Tower of London. Fidel Castro, the one constant in all our lives, was on the blink. That's when I reached for the phone and -
"We're fucked."
OK, in seriousness, a number of small-to-medium wars at the same time is nothing new, but their interconnectedness is what is disturbing - oil, Islamic extremism, anti-Americanism/Israelism/Westernism, the environment (Emma Brockes forgets to mention the recent incredible heatwave, the latest in a veritable spate of them), the rise of India and China and the massive drain on resources this entails etc. etc..
The question is when will these reach critical mass?
Original article below.
Continue reading "Omens of a Second Coming?" »
Comment is free: The new world immaturity
This is one of those moments in history when people recognise that they are in some kind of interregnum. They can describe the past - the old bi-polar world shaped by the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. And they can pick out the new things that will shape the future - Chinese industry, al-Qaida, Russian energy markets, Israeli confrontation with Iran, Aids in Africa, and environmental degradation, for example.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The Economist's choice of title (from a poem by Dylan Thomas) for its analysis of the collapse of the WTO talks is apposite indeed. Think of what you might, for better or for worse the WTO is now the light that failed.
The historic chance to truly liberalize the world economy looks like it has eluded us, and at the end of the day those who will suffer most will be the poor and the deprived. Europe's ludicrous and insane Common Agricultural Policy will continue to screw people in Africa and elsewhere:
This is a tragedy, especially for the developing world. Last year, the World Bank estimated that global gains from trade liberalisation would equal roughly $287 billion, of which $86 billion would accrue to developing nations, lifting at least 66m people out of poverty. Activist groups including Greenpeace and Oxfam were quick to condemn both Washington and Brussels for intransigence over agricultural subsidies, saying that rich-world self interest is leaving the poor to suffer.
For the benefit of a few French farmers, cheap subsidised grain will continue to flood the world market putting local producers out of business and ultimately creating the conditions for famine. As Amartya Sen correctly says, it's not just drought that triggers starvation - it's economics.
It's not often that I spring to Bush's defence, and this is not one of those times, but The Economist has a point:
The collapse will probably be blamed on America, which has been pushing for bold action on agricultural tariffs, and resisting a modest compromise deal that includes caps on its own agricultural subsidies. This is ironic, because America has been one of the grave men pushing hard to revive Doha after the round’s first collapse at Cancún in 2003. Despite high-profile deviations, such as slapping tariffs on imported steel, Mr Bush has largely been a committed free trader.
The truth is that while there have been grave men and wise men, the good men have had no real voice. And I too think that the blame lies squarely with our very own beloved EU.
What has not been said, so far, is who else will gain from this. I think there's going to be one big beneficiary... it's coming... China. Without demands to relax trade tariffs on manufactured imports etc. China may well continue to resist becoming the 'world's largest market', as so many expect it to be.
On the other hand, if the West begin slapping tariffs and quotas on imports from China, the whole edifice of the PRC could swiftly begin to crumble. I don't think it'll come to that, but it could be one of a cocktail of factors that lead us further down that dark road, burning and raving at the close of day.
Continue reading "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night..." »
 Oxford Professor and all-round commentator Timothy Garton-Ash takes a timely look at the state of the world in mid-2006.
His analysis is bleak. Of course, no writer on current affairs has the benefit of hindsight and it'll be a long time before we know how history will view this little episode. But Garton-Ash takes the essentially neo-realist view that a multipolar order is a recipe for disaster.
The neo-liberalist argument that the US will create stability through institutions and 'enlightened self-interest' no longer washes, and the hegemon is clearly on the decline as other powers rise. The kernel of the argument is quite succinct:
This new multipolarity is the result of at least three trends. The first, and most familiar, is the rise or revival of other states - China, India, Brazil, Russia as comeback kid - whose power resources compete with those of the established powers of the west. The second is the growing power of non-state actors. These are of widely differing kinds. They range from movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, to non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace, from big energy corporations and drug companies to regions and religions.
A third trend involves changes in the very currency of power. Developments in technologies with violent potential mean that very small groups of people can challenge powerful established states, whether by piloting an aeroplane into the World Trade Centre in New York, targeting a missile at Haifa, taking on the US military in Iraq, bombing the London underground, or squirting sarin gas into the Tokyo subway.
Not to mention the US's loss of EH Carr's third kind of power, 'power over opinion' (the others being military and economic power). Since the war America has been much better at provoking than winning hearts and minds. It just can't let go of those balls, and unfortunately Israel tends to follow suit.
Most of all, Garton-Ash displays his disillusionment with the tenets of liberalism (which encompasses a convenient jibe at the commander-in-chief of misplaced liberal values, the French President):
When Jacques Chirac spoke fondly of multipolarity, back in 2003, he conflated two claims: the world is multipolar, and that's a good thing. Claim 1 is being proved right. Claim 2 has yet to be confirmed. For a start, it matters a lot whether this is multipolar order or multipolar disorder. Order is a high value in international relations. It stops a lot of people being killed. At the moment, we have multipolar disorder, and it's not clear what the shape of a new multipolar order might be. Historically, the emergence of new powers, elbowing for position, has increased the chances of violence. So has contested authority within the frontiers of states.
I disagree with the author's fears that nuclear conflict is impending; no state (apart from North Korea, perhaps) would be willing to act in such self-disinterest, and I can't see any terrorist organisations gaining the capability or the will to use the bomb.
But the essence of his fears is spot-on:
We liberal internationalists dream of a world of democratic, peace-loving, human-rights-respecting states... Some of the growing powers fit that vision... to a large extent, India and Brazil. China and Russia definitely do not, nor do many of the non-state actors that are currently making the running in world politics. Henry Kissinger has suggested that the geopolitics of Asia in the 21st century could resemble those of Europe in the 19th century, with great powers jockeying for position, using war as the continuation of politics by other means. But it could be worse. It could be that kind of great-power rivalry on a world scale, plus terrorists. And corporations. And transnational religious communities. And international NGOs. No moral equivalence is suggested between these very different kinds of actor, but what they all have in common is that they don't fit neatly into a world order of states.
By other means, indeed.
Continue reading "New World Disorder 2.0" »
 Diplomacy at work again. Probably it'll provoke Hizbollah to continue doing their shit.
So, in the spirit of the academic study of international relations, if this is the language of political discourse then there are some things I too would like to add:
Hamas - you can stop doing this shit to boot. And Israel, for that matter. Get your shit together and just be friends.
North Korea and Iran, stop doing this nuclear weapons shit. It's really bad for regional stability, OK?
Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, just turn this shit in and live in peace for God's sake.
That goes for you too, Taliban. Get your shit out of here.
Meanwhile, America, lose that shit-for-soul Guantanamo Bay shit.
India and Pakistan - enough Kashmir shit already. Don't want to see any more of this blowing up trains shit. You Pakistani boys from Yorkshire had better give over this shit and all.
Burma - stop this shit and release Aung Saan Suu Kyi
You Islamic terrorist groups in Indonesia and the Phillipines can cease shitting with us as well.
Get over yourselves and stop this Taiwan shit, China. And forget about that Japanese shit too. It's just shit.
Orangemen, stop doing this shit in Northern Ireland. It just pisses everyone off and makes matters worse. Hurry up and die, Rev Paisley.
Russia, Chechnya, you know what's coming. I shit you not. And Uzbekistan, you'd better sort your shit out too over that massacre at Andijan.
Somalia, Sudan. Just stop this shit.
You and all, Columbia.
In fact, all of you, just stop this shit. Now.
Original Bush-Blair conversation below.
Continue reading "Stop Doing This Shit" »
 Of course it is impossible to predict what course the future will take with regard to potential conflict with China. What follows is thus quite speculative. But there are a few factors pertaining to the period around 2012, the next Year of the Dragon, that stand out:
Economic superpower status. Over the next five or six years, China's economic ascendancy will be complete. Publications such as Newsweek are already writing on what they call 'China's Century'. What happens in the Chinese economy sends shockwaves around the world. Not to mention the US budget deficit, much of which is already down to China. With this kind of authority, China is going to be far less shy to act, perhaps radically, in its own interests.
Games over. The Chinese are greatly looking forward to the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo and are unlikely to do anything to scupper them before they are over. But by 2012 they will have neither of these to lose.
Impending implosion? Over the next decade China's resources will be stretched to a crippling limit while, despite the one-child policy, the population will have continued to rise. Rampant environmental pollution is not going to help put food in the mouths of 1.4 billion hungry citizens. Peasant protests and nationalism are both on the increase and by this time the CCP may no longer be able to keep them under control.
Resources on the wane. And oil: never forget oil. By 2012, unless it has taken serious measures to secure resources for itself, it's going to break down like an old banger - and the incredible economic growth that legitimates the Party's grip on power will break down down with it. Many theorists predict this year as a critical point - see for example the Olduvai Gorge theory, itself based on Hubbert's Peak.
Election year. The year 2012 will see elections in not only the US but possibly also in Taiwan. Elections are also due in Hong Kong; whether or not the authorities will allow them is another matter. It may even be time for the current leadership of the CCP to stand down after eight years in power. The year is thus extremely volatile politically with world leaders distracted and potential flashpoints waiting to happen within 'One China' itself.
 Military superpower status. Finally, if speculations are correct, by 2012 China's military build-up will be complete. It will have its motive, it will have its carrier group, it will have its opportunity. If the PRC moves to retake the ROC, will the US act to defend it or not? If things continue as they have done since 9/11, by 2012 the US military itself will be embroiled in conflicts across the Middle East, from Syria, via Iraq and Iran, as far as Afghanistan. Weakened and overstretched it won't be in a position to fight upon a second front. In a Presidential election year as 2012 will be, the prospect of even more American body bags will not be a vote-winner. And if Taiwan falls undefended, what would happen next?
I hope that it does not come to this. The only outcome that is in all our interests is peace. But as if all the above are not enough, there are enough mystical predictions out there to indicate that something is up: we just don't yet know what.
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Update - since this hypothesis was first written in Autumn 2005, I've found a couple more articles which seem to justify it. Of course they must be taken with a large pinch of salt, but this Epoch Times report confirms similar thinking on the 2012 date - see also the analysis by the Association for Asian Research.
Read on below for more detailed explanations.
Continue reading "Flashpoint 2012" »
Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and an Oversight in International Law
When the Charter of the United Nations was drafted in 1945, the aim was to eliminate both war and the causes of war. In a world devastated by conflict, the Allies dreamed of a new order governed by the rule of law, where human rights and the self-determination of peoples overrode the spent era of empire.
So when we think of colonialism today, we tend to imagine white European settlers sweeping aside the indigenous populations of the Americas or Australia in their lust for land; the creaking imperial administrations of Dutch Indonesia, French Indochina and the British Raj; or the unruly scramble for Africa. It is a period we shamefully consign to the history books.
But inherent contradictions of the UN Charter’s first two articles, which also enshrine the sacred right of nations to sovereignty and territorial integrity, leave chinks in the armour of international law. Colonialism is alive and well, and with us now in the 21st century.
A case in point is China, which following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the close of the last century constitutes what may well be the world’s last real empire. In its wild western province of Xinjiang, the politics of colonisation continue, intertwined with the modern obsessions with political Islam and the hunt for oil. Is there anything international law has to say about the predicament of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs, a people who are rapidly becoming strangers in their own land?
Download Word file here or read main text below. (Word file contains additional bibliography, maps and appendices)
Continue reading "Colonialism in the 21st Century" »
 A recent post by Ralph Jennings got me thinking about some of the differences between a society that works and one that doesn't. What is it that prevents corruption and dishonesty, as we conceive them in the West?
It all comes down to the concept of social capital - the idea that in a developed society there are expectations and social norms that make things work better. For example, if you buy something, you don't expect it to be broken - the financial transaction in the act of buying entails an unwritten social transaction - ie. an expectation that you're going to receive the thing you paid for.
It's an idea that also comes up in a book I've been reading, India Unbound by Gurcharan Das. I've lost the reference, but in it he asserts that in an environment when businessmen are able to assume from the start that their transactions will be free and fair, the economy can flourish. But if there are suspicions of any kind, it stagnates.
In China this idea has developed altogether differently to the Western conception - instead there's guanxi.
Here's a few relevant snippets from what Wikipedia has to say about it:
"Social capital "refers to the collective value of all 'social networks' and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other," according to Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the concept's leading exponent (though not its originator). According to Putnam and his followers, social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy...
Nan Lin's concept of social capital has a more individualistic approach: "Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace". This may subsume the concepts of some others such as Bourdieu, Coleman, Flap, Putnam and Eriksson as noted in Lin's book Social Capital (2001; Cambridge University Press).
Francis Fukuyama described social capital as the existence of a certain (i.e. specific) set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permit cooperation among them..."
Catch my drift?
 Another exchange in the argument at Comment is Free between various factions attempting to explain India's current success. The current essay is by Gurcharan Das, whose book India Unbound I began yesterday.
Das pulls no punches when it comes to lamenting the failures of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty in hampering India's development. However, he is not lacking in patriotically-inspired conclusions too:
India's path is unique, and this is a bit scary because it is not following any of the proven success models. Rather than adopting the classic Asian strategy - exporting labour-intensive, low-priced manufactured goods to the west - India has relied on its domestic market more than exports, consumption more than investment, services more than industry, and high-tech more than low-skilled manufacturing.
Surely every country's path is unique? You can't really compare Japan and the tigers of Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore though people often do: India should not be any different.
Das is also pretty clear about his reasoning:
Unlike China, the entrepreneur is clearly at the centre of India's success story, not the state. As a result, India is spawning highly competitive private companies, such as Reliance Industries, Jet Airways, Infosys, Wipro, Ranbaxy, Bharat Forge, Tata Motors, Bharti, and Tata Steel. Some of these are likely to become global brands soon...
This is in marked contrast to China, whose success is largely based on exports either by state enterprises or by foreign companies.
I'm not so sure about this. China does have a strong state, but competition is king there just like anywhere else. If anything, the state does its job building infrastructure and the like while steering clear of regulating industry. tUnfortunately, in India The opposite is still true; the 'Licence Raj' still exists - see this horror story on driving from Calcutta to Bombay.
I'm also not convinced that Indians have the resiliant characters that Das lauds here:
India's real success lies with its self reliant and resilient people. They are able to pull themselves up and survive, nay, even flourish, when the state fails to deliver. When teachers and doctors don't show up in government primary schools and health centres, they don't complain. They just open up cheap private schools and clinics in the slums, and get on with it. This makes for a tough and independent people.
Many do, of course, I don't dispute that. But on the other hand, when things go wrong many Indians are all to ready to resort to the picket line rather than working together to solve the problem. That's another thing that holds them back, not to mention corruption and incompetence at every level.
In conclusion, I'd like to believe Gurcharan Das. I just don't.
Continue reading "A Hindu Rate of Growth II" »
Cold War Standoff, Lukewarm Co-operation or Something Else Altogether?
In Iran is embodied all of the issues of our time: nuclear ‘rogue states’; Islamic fundamentalism; energy security. And both the US and its rising rival, China, have vital interests in its future.
America’s policy is heavily discussed, and the newspapers are filled with fact, hearsay and rumour about its next move. But what will China do? Given that it has more significant stakes in Iran than in the other ‘Axis’ members, can the Chinese ruling classes just look the other way as they did with Iraq? Will they push for a settlement as they are doing with North Korea? Or will they confront the US in the United Nations and even on the ground?
At this crucial junction for the world order, neither neo-realism and neo-liberalism – both written and practised by ‘Occidental’ thinkers, not ‘Oriental’ – may be fully adequate to explain what happens next. Indeed, are our understandings of Chinese interests correct at all?
Download Word file here or read the main text below. (File contains additional footnotes and bibliography).
Continue reading "Theorising China's Iran Crisis Policy" »
 With great fanfare and slapping of mutual backs, The Observer and Amnesty International today launched a new campaign against censorship of the Internet - 'Irrepressible.info'.
I'm not totally sure, however, that they understand the situation completely.
Without wishing to pour cold water on this laudable effort, it's important to make a distinction. There are three parties involved - states, companies and individuals - each of which has a different perspective.
Above all, it must be recognised that it is states that censor, torture and imprison, not companies.
I lived in China for a couple of years and was involved in building an English-language bloggers network (livinginchina.com now defunct) so I came into contact with the censorship every day.
It works like this. Aside from sweeping censorship of blogs and personal websites (typepad- and geocities-hosted sites etc. were inaccessible while I was there) the state identifies certain sites or clusters of keywords it doesn't like (BBC's news site is one), and blocks you from accessing them.
So, if you enter 'tibet', for example, into google.com, you'll see results for the Dalai Lama's government in exile and the Free Tibet movement. It's just that if you click on the link, they won't open. You get the good old 'page not found' screen.
I have no particular love for Google, but what the Chinese version (google.cn) does is simply lead you to those sites that you CAN access. It's not doing the censorship itself. It's Cisco Systems, I believe, that actually provided the hardware for the Great Firewall of China.
The result is that many individuals practise self-censorship, in order to avoid their sites being blocked or getting into worse trouble. This saves the state a lot of time effort and money.
Compare this with Yahoo!'s tip offs to the Chinese government about subversive e-mails etc.. Shi Tao and others are not in prison due to censorship - they are incarcerated because they were betrayed by Western companies they didn't think would collude with the Party in this way.
That is the real tragedy of the situation. All I am saying is that you must make the distinction between censorship and active oppression of individuals. Some of this you can influence by lobbying the Western companies involved and actively colluding and I commend it.
Some companies, however, are simply submitting to the restrictions that the state imposes. If anything, google.cn actually helps users find the content that isn't censored by the state.
Finally, there has never been freedom of speech in China and many other places. They are not going to change their whole policy just because The Observer and Amnesty tell them to. Prepare to be blocked.
Leader from The Observer reprinted below.
Continue reading "Altogether Repressible" »
A New Alliance or Another Sino-Russian Split?
Every period of history has its ‘stories of the day’. For us, in the post-Cold War era, these are now obvious: the threat of Islamic extremism and the consequent ‘War on Terror’; the rapid economic growth of what is already dubbed the ‘Asian Century’; and the increasing strain on the environment by the over-exploitation of resources and the under-management of the consequences.
The continued ‘rise of China’ in particular depends upon a number of external factors – most notably, energy supply. In order to keep its restless millions in check, the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has to fuel the breakneck economic growth of the last decade, or at the very least prevent collapse.
Yet China’s oil and gas reserves are inadequate for its future needs, whereas neighbouring Russia and Central Asia are major providers of energy. So upon them and their pipelines it must rely – although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a nation that disdains reliance on others and prefers to go it alone.
The answer is to build its political and economic influence over Central Asia. Russia, however, also has hegemonic ambitions in the region. The scene is thus set for a confrontation within what some authors describe as the ‘New Great Game’. At present, relations remain benign, but how long can this continue? Could we soon be facing another Sino-Russian Split reminiscent of the 1960s row between Mao and Khrushchev? Or will Russia be pulled into China’s orbit in an uneasy partnership of mutual interdependence?
Download Word file here or read main text below. (Word file contains additional bibliography, tables and maps).
Continue reading "Pipeline Politics in Central Asia" »
 It's 1 May, and that means rioting! Well, maybe not today. Oh, and it's this blog's six-month anniversary too.
The hijack of Labour Day by globalisation (whether pro- or anti-) is continuing, however, in the shape of a strike by immigrant workers in the US, as pointed out in The Economist's Global Agenda.
Immigration is the subject of this week's study, and I concede that it's something I haven't thought an awful lot about before. But I myself am the product of immigration in many ways:
My father is an immigrant, who came to the UK in the 1960s and stayed on, though now he lives between both New Delhi and London.
I emigrated from Canada to the UK, and still hold a Canadian passport. I am now naturalised as a British citizen, and thus as an EU citizen.
I spent two years in Shanghai, as a 'foreign expert' transferring my skills to Asia.
I now live in the Netherlands: I'm waiting on my resident's permit.
In the west, it is something that affects us all - it's a further breakdown of the boundaries of the nation state.
Full article below.
Continue reading "The True Labour Day" »
Thought from the day, from Rabindranath Tagore:
A most important truth which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of this subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge, but merely repeats his lessons to his students, can only load their minds; he cannot quicken them. Truth not only must inform but inspire. If the inspiration dies out, and the information only accumulates, then truth loses its infinity. The greater part of our learning in the schools has been wasted because, for most of our teachers, their subjects are like dead specimens of once living things, with which they have a learned acquaintance, but no communication of life and love.
This comes from Tagore's essay 'An Eastern University', published in 1922 in the Creative Unity collection.
In Tagore's other essays that I flicked through in a borrowed book, I glimpsed ideas on the nation state that predate by decades the debate current in International Relations. I now can't wait until my package arrives from New Delhi. Like all great writers, he is still a man for our times.
 It's really starting to feel like the summer of '69, not that I have any nostalgic feelings for Woodstock nor was even born then. I'm taking about the music with a political message. In stark contrast to the Right Brothers (assuming they weren't ironic) now comes this protest song from Nerina Pallot.
With lyrics like this:
If love is a drug, i guess we're all sober
If hope is a song, i guess it's all over
How to have faith when faith is a crime?
I don't want to die
If God's on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don't want to die...
...who needs Joni Mitchell? However - and I do know it's a protest song - I think the chances of Nerina Pallet getting shot in her safe cozy living room in Jersey is highly unlikely, no matter how much it might worry her. Unless she goes on tour in Baghdad, which I can't see either.
More lyrics below...
Continue reading "Battle of the Bands" »
 I was astonished to read in The Economist that I am, in fact, a neocon:
...neoconservatives came to believe that American power should be used for moral purposes, that democracy and human rights in other countries were a legitimate foreign-policy concern, but that international law and institutions were generally unable to solve serious security problems. This strand of thinking blended some fairly left-wing elements with a right-wing belief in the use of military power...
The snippet comes from a review of Francis Fukuyama's latest book, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy, which I'd like to get my hands on once I have time and money.
I didn't agree with much of Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, and he doesn't agree with much of it any more either. The reason is Iraq, the invasion of which occurred three years ago today.
This raises the question of the lasting effects of the Iraq policy and of George W in general, another subject raised by The Economist this week. At present, it certainly does not appear that Iraq has dug the foundation for democracy in the Middle East, far from it.
But hold on - what's this? The US holding talks with Iran over Iraq? OK, on the one hand they are fighting a war by proxy in the south of the country. On the other, anything that gets the US and Iran into dialogue isn't a complete disaster; America has to begin at least listening to the other side of the story and I suspect it's about to get an earful.
Finally, with Bush and Blair's credibility at their lowest ebb, what next? Though many are eager to demonstrate against the war, it is a question few are ready to answer. Simple withdrawal from Iraq would be catastrophic and would almost certainly lead to wider Sunni-Sh'ia conflict that may well spill over across the region. Yet as long as they are there, the troops are part of the problem as well as part of the solution.
The Economist passes on a couple of ideas in the last paragraphs of the article 'Resolve, but no solution':
For instance, one of the war's main cheerleaders, Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, recommends securing the calmest parts of Iraq first, rather than concentrating American forces in Sunni Arab areas where the insurgency is strongest. That way, he argues, more Iraqis can establish normal lives more quickly. Political power and oil revenues should be decentralised, he says, and some powers transferred to a UN high commissioner, as happened in Bosnia.
By contrast, in the latest Foreign Affairs Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations urges America to concentrate on brokering a compromise between the Kurds and Shia and Sunni Arabs by threatening to manipulate the military balance of power between them. To force the Sunnis to the negotiating table, America must threaten to arm and train a Shia-Kurdish army. To force the Shias and Kurds to compromise, it must threaten to pull out of Iraq prematurely, or back the Sunnis. Mr Biddle admits that such a radical shift from idealism to realpolitik would be a challenge to explain to American voters.
It may be a challenge to explain to voters, but not as hard as explaining 2,000 more American bodybags and tens of thousands of forgotten victims in the Middle East.
I reproduce this last article below.
Continue reading "An End of History, Three Years On" »
 A comment piece on the two worlds we live in - the Eurocentric western perception and the Asian century.
Is the West lost? Not yet. There's enough other people who realise that increasingly we are going to have to look at the east not as potential resources for exploitation but at best as partners and at worst as dangerous rivals.
The author Martin Jacques correctly identifies the key problem with this relationship: put very simply, we don't understand them:
It is difficult living in two worlds - especially when it is the world called home that is becoming more and more parochial and less and less able to understand the wider world. It is becalmed, bemused, defensive, increasingly introverted and fearful. But there aren't many people I can talk to about it - you see, not surprisingly they are part of the problem.
And he also realises that the Middle East is simply a distraction:
How are Americans going to react to their country's decline and the rise of China and India? At the moment they don't believe it could possibly happen. Despite the disgraceful mess they have made of Iraq, they are still gung-ho. They are still convinced it is the right of God's chosen people to boss the world. And 9/11, unilateralism, and the invasion of Iraq have hugely encouraged that.
I suspect, though, that it was all a huge historical miscalculation. Always beware your moment of triumphalism: such emotions are a poor steer on the future. And that future is not primarily about the Middle East, but east Asia...
Also take a look at the comments, this one for example:
I don't kid myself that China is free from virulent racism and nationalism. Racial epithets are commonly used (Westerners are "Big noses", KOreans are "pancake faces" and Japanese are "Little noses") and the language used about Africans is sometimes appalling. They can be very parochial and extremely nationalistic.
We shouldn't be surprised by this- we are all human beings and we share the same failings. In fact our common humanity means that we are prone to the same stereotyping and beliefs in our own superiority.
Jacques' big mistake is to assume that these are unique to Westerners or are uniquely bad in the West. Factually this is simply not true.
My own comment is below.
Continue reading "Worlds Apart" »
 Condi's new buzzword, as elaborated upon in this lengthy Guardian special report (also below) is hijacked from DoD-speak: probably coined in this speech back in 2002, 'transformational' originally referred to a huge shift in military doctrine (including strategy and procurement) inspired by the end of the Cold War and then, of course, 9/11.
Now, according to Ms Rice, we need 'transformational diplomacy'.
Perhaps it's a shame that transformational diplomacy didn't precede transformational military doctrine, but better late than never. The article below elucidates on the new policy - which is basically a diplomatic paradigm shift of the West away from Europe (particularly the former Warsaw Pact) and towards - you've guessed it - Asia and the Middle East.
We can already see it in action:
Exemplifying the new American thinking, George Bush this week travelled to three countries at the heart of the new strategy. First stop was Afghanistan, to reassure its nascent yet fragile government that the US would not abandon its fight against the Taliban. Then India, a new economic powerhouse, which according to some is being courted as a counterweight to the rapidly expanding ambitions of China. And finally to Pakistan, another nuclear power, whose volatile regions provide a harbour for al-Qaida.
This attention to diplomatic in addition to pure military power perhaps reflects a small nudge to the left in US policy, and can only be read as a positive move.
However, Condi and George would do well to read a book by Harvard history professor, Niall Ferguson, named 'Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire'. It's reviewed here by The Guardian.
I admit, from a personal point of view as someone who's considering a Foreign Office career, that I wouldn't like a posting to Baghdad or Kabul, and certainly wouldn't want to take my loved ones there.
But for diplomats to have just one-year postings defeats the purpose of ambassadorial staff. Why send them home just as they gain contacts, linguistic skills and experience? Is America really in this for the long run?
It's exactly the kind of 'attention deficit' that Ferguson criticises:
...namely, the attention deficit that seems to be inherent in the American political system and that already threatens to call a premature halt to reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not intended as a term of abuse. The problem is systemic: it is the way the political process militates against far-sighted leadership.
The US needs to realise that it's in this for well beyond the forseeable future. It can't just walk away from Iraq, Afghanistan, or China and India for that matter. Transformational diplomacy is all very well, but the first thing it needs to transform is itself.
Continue reading "Transformational Diplomacy" »
 The true realist, according to Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov:
...if he is not a believer, will invariably find within himself the strength and the ability not to believe in miracles either, and if a miracle stands before him as an incontrovertible fact, he will sooner disbelieve his sense than admit that fact...
In this early stage of my MSc, at the core of the study is the difference between realism and liberalism. Basically, realists believe that mankind is inherently selfish and that there will always be war and conflict, while liberals believe that mankind can progress through co-operation and mutual trust, if only it tries.
Each of these of course dissolves into a multitude of subdivisions: classical realists; neo-classical realists; neo-realists etc. etc.. So where do I fall?
At first I believed that I was firmly in the realist camp. Perhaps when I was 18 I was a liberal idealist, but age and experience have made me firmly cynical. On the other hand, there are branches of liberalism that make a lot of sense, for example the newer liberals who remark that interdependence and democracy are lessening the potential for conflict.
The simple answer is that as yet I don't know. But what I do know is that to impose a theoretical straightjacket on the study of International Relations is not going to help us as the human race to move forward.
We need instead to assess with a mixture of cold pragmatism and ambition the situation that is current at the present time. And only once the ideological shackles are thrown off can we then aim to improve upon it - as much as we (realistically) can.
 Finally polished off Francis Fukuyamas influential 1992 treatise on political philosophy, The End of History and the Last Man.
For the most part, it makes sense. One of Fukuyamas main themes is exploring the ideas of Hegel (and his critic, Kojeve) in contemporary contexts. Coupled with frequent references to Locke, Hobbes, Nietzsche and the like it is a fairly erudite analysis of modern life.
The author concentrates particularly on the master-slave relationship and the concept of thymos, a Greek term referring to mans spirit and will to prove himself.
This he applies to various political theories, with the key principle being that modern liberal democracy is the ultimate if not the perfect political model and thus the end of history as in the struggle to create an ideal state.
Then again, my big problem with the text and one that Fukuyama makes only passing reference to without serious consideration of the implications is the question of culture.
Continue reading "The End of 'The End of History'" »
 Aboard the Kathgodam-Delhi train, recovering from a nasty bout of D&V incurred via Saturday night's meal (note to self - when kitchen staff are sniggering during the preparation of your food, go without), I read Ruskin's seminal essay from The Stones of Venice, The Nature of Gothic.
Why, you ask, are you writing about architecture? Isn't this meant to to be a blog on international relations and global politics? Well, since visiting the Ruskin house at Brantwood in September, my interest in the nineteenth century critic and man of letters has revived.
Ironically, at Oxford I was taught by one of Britain's foremost Ruskin scholars, Dr Francis O'Gorman, but regrettably I must have been having an off week at the time. After two years in China, however, I found myself rediscovering Ruskin with a new understanding of his contemporary relevance.
Ruskin was something of an early socialist, and an inspiration for Gandhi. The excerpt reprinted below, I think, has great relevance for the modern era and in its condemnation of the slavery of mass production and exhortation of the benefits of variation offered by the fallible but free craftsman, much can be read into the current economic situations in China and India.
Continue reading "The Nature of Gothic" »
Switch on the TV or open a newspaper or magazine and what you see or read are events and themes in isolation. Each exists by itself: you watch a programme or read an article and that's it. Nothing more. Over.
 Surf the Internet, on the other hand, and everything is interconnected, part of the overarching phenomenon known as the World Wide Web. And that is a lot more like real life. Things don't happen on their own. They happen for a reason, often a multitude of reasons and they are driven by a host of differing influences.
War, the nineteenth century strategist Karl von Clausewitz once wrote, is a continuation of politics by other means. It is a bold statement of the most simple but the most profound and important of connections. This blog is about war and politics, but more specifically about the inextricable links and parallels between the events we see unfold every day. The things that the papers don't always pick up on, or that the networks don't have time to run.
So, in the true pre-commercial spirit of the Internet, what I aim to write here is not conventional journalism: but maybe journalism by other means.
You can read more about the idea behind this blog on the about page. In summary, my interests are in the global politics that lead to the breakdown of diplomacy and the advent of war, plus the technology and operations of war itself.
And since the events that we know of occur only on this one planet, I also aim to examine the broader contexts of environmental issues - since the depletion of our natural resources and environment are perhaps the biggest single threat that 'the international community' - if such a thing exists - will have to face. If only they would see it.
My personal background is in defence and technology journalism, but in a larger sense I consider myself not a subject of the country I live in but a citizen of the world. In many ways, I am a product of globalisation - born to an Asian father in North America, yet raised in Britain as a European.
I have two passports, Canadian and British, I am entitled to a special 'Person of Indian Origin' permit and for the last couple of years I lived in a country and among a culture quite alien to my own, China. Other than my interests and my general journalistic skills, these are my only qualifications - but that's the beauty of blogging. You don't need to be an expert, just an observer.
My areas of interest are thus these three continents - North America, Europe and Asia - and the relations between them. South America and Africa are not specifically covered (other than under the 'Unrepresented' and perhaps the 'Travel and Miscellany' categories), not because they are unimportant, but in order to keep some kind of focus.
In brief then, I aim to examine the news and events of the day in context, viewing them not in isolation but paying attention to the wheels within wheels that turn to drive the world we live in. As the motto reads, I study war and peace that my sons may study mathematics and philosophy. As a private individual I acknowledge that I don't stand a chance of changing the world, but it's my generation that's got to at least start.
Many thanks for reading, and welcome again to the weblog.
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