Tag: Geopolitics

Bush’s Positive Legacy

The lack of a serious U.S.-China confrontation in the years since 9/11 is the most important dog that did not bark across the Bush-Cheney administration.

In the grand sweep of history, this is arguably George W. Bush's greatest legacy: the encouragement of China to become a legitimate stakeholder in global security.

This sort of effort at grooming a great power for a greater role in international affairs is a careful balancing act, and the Bush team sounded most of the right notes, from reassuring nervous allies in Asia, to avoiding the temptation of trade retaliation while simultaneously pressuring Beijing for more economic liberalization, to drawing China into the dynamics of great power negotiation over compelling regional issues like the nuclear programs in both North Korea and Iran.

We can always complain that Bush-Cheney didn't do more to solidify this most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century, but we cannot fault them for any lasting mistakes, and that alone is quite impressive.

Indeed, history will likely judge this success as greater than the Bush administration's failures in Iraq.

via Barnett: What Bush- Cheney got right with China : Columnists : Knoxville News Sentinel

World Changed This Week

This week, the first of November 2008, will go down in history as the week that formally revives Taiwan’s normal relations with the Chinese mainland after a six-decade estrangement. It also may see for the first time the world’s sole superpower, the US, elect a person of African descent to be president.

via World Changed This Week | My Sinchew

What the Candidates were Briefed by CIA

The next U.S. president will govern in an era of increasing international instability, including a heightened risk of terrorist attacks in the near future, long-term prospects of regional conflicts and diminished U.S. dominance across the globe, the nation’s top intelligence officer said Thursday.

Competition for energy, water and food will drive conflicts between nations to a degree not seen in decades, and climate change and global economic upheaval will amplify the effects, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in a speech here.

McConnell, who has given security briefings to both major-party presidential candidates, said the list of worries will soon drown out the euphoria as the next occupant of the White House settles into the job.

via Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces Volatile Era Continue reading “What the Candidates were Briefed by CIA”

Still Pax Americana

Yet the evidence of American decline is weak. Yes, as Zakaria notes, the world's largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore and the largest casino in Macau. But by more serious measures of power, the United States is not in decline, not even relative to other powers. Its share of the global economy last year was about 21 percent, compared with about 23 percent in 1990, 22 percent in 1980 and 24 percent in 1960. Although the United States is suffering through a financial crisis, so is every other major economy. If the past is any guide, the adaptable American economy will be the first to come out of recession and may actually find its position in the global economy enhanced.

via Robert Kagan – Still No. 1 – washingtonpost.com

The World Is Flattened

While the analysis is good, let’s hope Obama doesn’t have to face all of the doom-and-gloom predictions. It wasn’t the world that got flat, contrary to New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman, but the emerging markets that got flattened.

Faddish conventional wisdom over the past few years held that American influence was fading as technology radiated to the far reaches of the world. When America’s economy went into a ditch, though, the supposed economic superpowers of the future went flying, like children on skates holding onto the back of truck.

The American consumer, it turns out, played Atlas to the global economy, taking the exports of Asia, so that Asia could buy the commodities of Russia, Latin America and Africa. Remove the American consumer, and Asian exports crash, taking commodity prices along with them.

via Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs Continue reading “The World Is Flattened”

Post-Caucasian world hardly post-American world

As our financial crisis unfolds, Americans suffer a serious bout of existential ennui. Unsure of whom we are or our global role anymore, our self-doubt scares the world in near-equal measure. Predictably, both skeptics at home and challengers abroad tell us that we must get used to this post-American world. My advice is to resist these sirens’ song.

From the perspective of grand strategy, such pessimism is unwarranted: just as our international liberal trade order — known now as globalization — encompasses the near-totality of the planet, vastly outreaching all previous attempts to establish a global order and doing so in a manner that both enriches and empowers individuals, too many Americans feel alienated from this world so clearly of our creation.

via Post-Caucasian world hardly post-American world | ScrippsNews

The New World Disorder

The world’s bullies are throwing their weight around. But history isn’t on their side.

Our world is both safer and more dangerous. It is safer because the self-interest of the great powers is very much tied to the overall prosperity of the global economy, limiting their desire to rock the boat. But it is more dangerous because capitalist autocrats can grow much richer and therefore more powerful than their communist counterparts. And if economic rationality does not trump political passion (as has often been the case in the past), the whole system’s interdependence means that everyone will suffer.

We should also not let the speculations about an authoritarian resurgence distract us from a critical issue that will truly shape the next era in world politics: whether gains in economic productivity will keep up with global demand for such basic commodities as oil, food and water. If they do not, we will enter a much more zero-sum, Malthusian world in which one country’s gain will be another country’s loss. A peaceful, democratic global order will be much more difficult to achieve under these circumstances: Growth will depend more on raw power and accidents of geography than on good institutions. And rising global inflation suggests that we have already moved a good way toward such a world. They Can Only Go So Far – washingtonpost.com