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ID:
087951
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
FORECASTERS OF the fortunes of nations are no different from Wall Street analysts: they all rely on the past to predict the future. So it is no surprise that China's rapid economic growth in the last thirty years has led many to believe that the country will be able to continue to grow at this astounding rate for another two to three decades.
Beijing's Exceptionalism by Jonathan Anderson
IS CHINA'S rise inevitable? Well, as we've learned to our great chagrin over the past twelve months, there's nothing inevitable about continued rapid economic expansion or the near-term success of any economic model, and past performance is most emphatically not a guarantee of future returns. And, as with any lower-income developing country, there are plenty of visible and unforeseen pitfalls that could hurt China's growth prospects over the coming years and decades.
However, as author and newspaperman Damon Runyon famously remarked, "The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong-but that's the way to bet." And when taking odds on the potential of today's emerging markets to mature into wealthier and more powerful states, you had best be betting on China.
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| 2 |
ID:
087953
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2009.
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AS THE new year opened with Hamas rockets and Israeli shells exploding over what we used to call the Holy Land, that frightening fireworks display also obliquely illuminated one of the great political developments-and great challenges-of the past generation, the growing gulf between the United States and Western Europe. The two have been closely allied before and may be so again, but the odds against that are lengthening, and recent events only see a culmination of the trends of decades past, as Europe steadily drifted in one direction and America in the other. When seeking friends in the coming century, each may be increasingly tempted to look elsewhere than across the Atlantic.
As usual, Washington offered "unwavering" support to Israel. Meantime, and also as usual, the European Union was cutting an ignominious figure, or figures. In a painfully accurate jibe, Henry Kissinger once said that he would take "Europe" seriously when "Europe" had a number he could call in a crisis. His words were given fresh meaning by the antics of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who failed to notice that France had just relinquished the rotating presidency of the eu to the Czech Republic and set off on his own peace mission to the Levant, to the great confusion of the Czechs and everyone else.
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| 3 |
ID:
087950
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2009.
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AS THE United States settles into its eighth year of military operations in Afghanistan, and as plans for ramping up U.S. troop strength are under way, we might reflect on an observation made by the Chinese military sage, Sun Tzu, about twenty-five hundred years ago:
In military campaigns I have heard of awkward speed but have never seen any skill in lengthy campaigns. No country has ever profited from protracted warfare.
These words tell the tale of the string of superpowers that have found themselves drawn into a fight in the inhospitable terrain we now call Afghanistan. Their stories of easy conquest followed by unyielding rebellion are hauntingly similar, from the earliest accounts of Alexander's Afghan campaign, when, in 329 BC, the great warrior found the struggle longer, more brutal and more costly than his battle in Persia. And through six centuries the Mughals never managed to bring the Afghans to heel, and most certainly not the Pashtuns. Of course, there were also the disastrous expeditions of Britain and the Soviet Union. Now it is up to the Obama administration to try to change the long odds in what will become America's longest war.
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| 4 |
ID:
087955
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2009.
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THE OBAMA administration will face human-rights issues at every turn in confronting terrorism, insurgency and ethnic cleansing along the arc of crisis from South Asia to Sudan. To tackle these strategic challenges as well as chronic rights abuses, the new administration and nongovernmental advocacy groups need a new, more pragmatic approach.
In the past, the strategies of neoconservatives and liberal activists have been long on the rhetoric of freedom and rights, but have fallen short on results. Wary of overpromising, the U.S. public has become skeptical about promoting American ideals abroad. Yet the real lesson of these setbacks should not be to abandon idealistic goals, but to pursue them in more pragmatic ways. Without developing a more effective human-rights policy, the United States will neither recover its tarnished reputation nor accomplish its strategic goals.
Some human-rights activists have begun to learn this lesson in their own work. While pronouncements from the headquarters of advocacy organizations still sound doctrinaire, pragmatists in the field are developing eclectic outcome-oriented approaches that take into account the power of local actors and the need to tailor tactics to local circumstances. Both realists and idealists should find value in these effective approaches, which can help restore America's political standing in the world while also doing good.
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| 5 |
ID:
087954
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
FOR THE first time in nearly two centuries, the United States will find a Latin America that has unapologetically dropped the region's traditional deference to U.S. power. When President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive for the Fifth Summit of the Americas in April, they will step into a political and diplomatic environment dramatically different from that confronting any of their predecessors. Understandably, the Obama administration will assert its disposition to forge partnerships, recover ground lost in recent years, and work toward the shared prosperity, social inclusion and common security agenda to which the region's governments have loosely agreed. But, with a global financial crisis and domestic recession constraining resources, not to mention a foreign-policy agenda that is all but saturated with other strategic priorities, the United States faces clear limitations on what it can achieve in its own neighborhood. Still, the forces of interdependence within the Americas remain as compelling as ever and require a strategy that advances U.S. interests in this new environment. As the countries of Latin America become stronger and more independent, the United States will face an uphill battle to make relationships work.
President Obama must take stock of several new hemispheric "facts of life" that will frame the political-diplomatic calculus for U.S.-Latin American relations in the coming years. Most important, the new administration must endeavor to see the hemisphere as it is and not through the lazy filters of "best-friendism," wishful thinking or demonization. Only then will the president be able to leverage the goodwill his election has bestowed and forge tangible policies that both enhance U.S. interests and reflect a healthy respect for those of the region.
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| 6 |
ID:
087952
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE NORTH Atlantic Treaty Organization is one of the most successful alliances of all time, but after the cold war and the successful completion of its mission, NATO suffered an identity crisis. It now has three main functions and self-images that compete with each other. The first persona is the enforcer, the pacifier of conflicts beyond the region's borders; the second is the gentlemen's club for liberal and liberalizing countries of the West; and the third is the residual function of an anti-Russia alliance.
One must wonder why, with the end of the cold war, NATO did not dissolve. How do we explain the organization's transformation and vitality at the end of the twentieth century? NATO did not retire after victory because it was not just any old alliance. Rather, it had become a genuine institution, complete with transnational, integrated command structures, a permanent bureaucracy, buildings, regular meetings and ceremonies, its own logo, website and so on.
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