Romney for President

Looked at what I could find on the Republican presidential debates. Mathias Sundin writes on his blog about it but I decided to take a look myself to get a feel for the candidates. By now there is in principle only Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich left the couple of weeks before the election. Romney is the stable one and Gingrich is getting all kinds of critique but is most popular in the polls right now. That is a pity. I think Romney comes across at the most suitable candidate. As a businessman and former governor he would be able to contact the important business sector that Obama has alienated himself from. As a former governor that has balanced budgets and gotten rid of a deficit he has the right experience. He also personally comes across as the most presidential of the candidates. He returns to the subject of reorganizing America for growth and function all the time when other candidates get lost in details. Republican candidates are really serious about not increasing federal spending something that just gets lost here in Europe because of the way they tax and spend here. They say that they don’t afford increasing spending, period. There is apparently also a discussion on how to change Medicare which is totally unfunded by now. If the republican voter choses Gingrich rather than the moderate Romney there would be a distinct shift to the right. Gingrich have said he would choose the firebrand John Bolton, the UN ambassador of George W Bush, to become his Secretary of State. I could not see the US with this package. Also Romney is scoring better against Obama than Gingrich and thus would have a greater chance of becoming president.

The Next Trend?

Samuel P Huntington wrote the following in his 1996 book Clash of Civilizations:

“In the early 1990s, Chinese made up 1% of the Philippine population but were responsible for 35% of the sales of domestically owned firms. In Indonesia in the mid-1980s, the Chinese were 2-3% of the population but owned roughly 70% of the private domestic capital. Seventeen of the twenty-five largest businesses were Chinese-controlled, and one Chinese conglomerate was responsible for 5% of Indonesia’s GDP. In the early 1990s, the Chinese were 10% of Thailand’s population but owned 9 of the 10 largest business groups and were responsible for 50% of its GDP. Chinese are about one third of the population in Malaysia but completely dominate the economy.”

The US is going Pacific and the UK is pondering Europe. David Cameron is talking about a “networked Europe” rather than a block Europe. The Germans, however, wants “more Europe” which probably means a more German Europe, if Angela Merkel is going to get full support from the Germans. Thus the new trend is that the US is facing stiff competition from the Chinese in East Asia and the Pacific and the UK in Continental Europe.

Another new trend might be the language question. Mandarin Chinese might take over much of the English dominance in East Asia and German might have a renaissance on the Continent. Culture follows power! Before World War II Swedish children learned German as their first foreign language.

Anglo-Americans and also other Europeans might though find comfort in the following statistic:

“If demographic trends continue, well over 50% of the world’s Christians will be in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia within 25 years—a clear shift from Christianity’s traditional home in Europe and North America.”

It is from the 2010 book Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture, and Strategic Choices by Robert Booth Fowler et al. Perhaps we should let the Chinese dominate East Asia and focus on South America and Africa which even lies in our time zones and where we are more likely to find hearts and minds than in the assertive Asia.

This book also tries to explain how a religious America works compared to a secular China. The religious pluralism observed in America functions as a vent for freedom making possible a streamlined collective approach in the economy. People will feel free with maintained integrity as long as they can exercise their faith.

The last 20 or so years in the US feature what could be called the Fifth Great Awakening with an increase especially in evangelical Protestantism. The First Great Awakening in American came before the Revolution in the 18^th century. Periodically America turns spiritual and looks for the next political reform. We have yet to see what lies in stock this time.

American Exceptionalism turns Universalism then What?

Samuel P Huntington’s epos from 2004 Who Are We? is an interesting read even for Europeans. The Jews have claimed that they are God’s chosen people, which of course have irritated quite a few,  but if 300m Americans claim the same thing this must be considered preposterous, or? After the fall of the Soviet Union Francis Fukuyama, a student of Huntington, wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man. We had, according to Fukuyama reached a point where liberal democracy was the Universal remedy for world politics. With the rise of China, without God and democracy, we have seen that East Asia can create prosperity as well. That leaves the Western Civilization divided: Europe, the cradle of Western Civilization and the Scientific Revolution, which could also be called exceptional, and the New World now led by Obama, the first Pacific President, no longer universal.

The attitude to the economy and the respective solutions to the financial crisis is different between the US and Europe. The US want to stimulate and Europe choses austerity. The welfare state is more developed in the EU. The US population is growing whereas the European countries are contracting relatively speaking. Immigration takes place in both with the US filling up with Mexicans and Asians and Europe with Africans and Muslims. The US is highly religious whereas Europe is more secular. Americans work harder than the Europeans, at least more hours per year, and are genetically from adventurous, more risk prone, Europeans. Americans have involved themselves more in world security and have a significantly larger military force. Since World War II the Americans have excelled in science and technology but the Europeans are catching up.  I will always work for maintaining good relations between the US and Europe but have seen during the last years that they are distancing themselves from each other more and more.

There is, however, one big difference: America is the United States of America but the EU can’t make up its mind about federalizing. When I started out in Political Science a few years ago, I thought the United States of Europe was a good idea. I thought English as a second language for all EU states was commendable and would keep a common culture alive trans-Atlantically. Then I realized that this was unattainable due to public nationalism. The European debt crisis gives Europe a push in the United States of Europe direction. How strong this push is going to be is an obvious question? Greeks are out demonstrating for World War II money from Germany so tensions have evolved to a malign degree.

The Davos Men or economic transnationals, that Huntington discusses, live in a global world already where they have less nationalism to start with but they might not actually need the Western Civilization either because they do a lot of business in Japan, India and China as well. However, they might just have to start thinking about getting the public with them a little considering for example the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this sense I am very Huntingtonian. They used to say there is more trans-Atlantically that we have in common than separating us. I still think this is true. The lesser evil is probably to keep the EU together, despite democracy deficit, to develop this market as a global competitor. We are going to need people around us that do business our way and that continue developing science as we started. In this way southern immigration into our civilization becomes a good thing that maintains the Western world in an amiable relationship with this world.

Freedom of Religion in the US is Individualistic

Denis Lacorne wrote in his book that Samuel P Huntington claims that the US is a deeply religious country, defined by an American Creed, and that the US is neither secular nor a religious theocracy. It was actually Gunnar Myrdal who in 1944 defined the American Creed. After reading Huntington’s Who Are We? from 2004, I’m convinced that Huntington’s idea is more correct. He says that the new US was already forming as John Locke was born 1632 thus staying with Tocqueville on this one. American exceptionalism, he says, is not to a little part due to its religiousness. What also makes the US unique and the most religious protestant country is that many sects were allowed to form and thus made possible a more individualist religious life. What Lacorne also forgot to say was that the Catholicism in the US is very protestantized which makes it less authoritarian.

However, if you ask Americans what about the US they are most proud of 85% say the political system. This should be compared with 7% for Germans. It therefore seems like the Americans are united under an American Creed, a political idea, at the same time as they have religion for community and support. In 2002 a court in San Francisco decided by a 2 to 1 vote that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were a violation of the separation of church and state. The words therefore were unconstitutional. However, this became highly controversial and the Senate passed a resolution 99 to 0 that the decision be reversed. A Newsweek poll claimed 87% of the public supported inclusion of the words while 9% opposed. Atheists are less popular than Muslims in the US.

President Clinton claimed that America needed a third “Great Revolution”, in addition to the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Revolution, where they “prove that we literally can live without having a dominant European culture”. Huntington means that this multiculturalism would threaten American Identity. He sketches four development possibilities: multiculturalism; bifurcated into Latin and English; exclusivist with revival of racial and ethnic concepts: and a preferred cultural path where Americans stick to their Creed. In light of the dismissal of multiculturalism in Europe this is interesting. Currently “ever closer union” is what seems most popular to save the Union in what could be described as a desperate attempt to find a European Creed.

Which culture will make the next major move?

Took a walk down to the Ersdal Bay and back via the harbor today again, as I did yesterday. 15 to 17 degrees Celsius, thus perfect. Time to make some plans for the fall. The overall subject that I am researching is which culture should carry mankind into the future. Into the unknown. It is not going to be just one. East and West will probably continue to run parallel. The two party system of the world. The main hypothesis is that the West has found out a path of higher fidelity than the East with a more mature political development. Thus assuming that there are no genetic differences between the two populations. The political system of the West is more mature for the simple reason that people are allowed to think and act politically. From Ian Bremmer’s book The End of the Free Market form 2010 it is possible to extrapolate that there is about 25% state capitalists in the world currently which is offsetting the balance and currently causing a slump in the West. Since the rich in the West are making money in the East as austerity is mandated in the West for ordinary people, notable billionaires are talking about paying more in tax for the sake of stability. Personally I think it is not wise with too progressive tax tables since the rich allocate money better than the state for the performance of the economy. Bremmer brings up this point, while claiming that the state is not that good as the shareholders in allocating funds, why state capitalism risks being less efficient economically.

Although I’m not so sure myself, it seems like most people think the power of science and innovation on all levels is going to play out equally well in the East as in the West. That would remove Joseph Nye’s argument of the higher recruitment of talent to the US than to China and leave Gideon Rachman’s focus on the economy more pertinent. The economy will depend on how people organize themselves in the functioning parts of the world and how areas like the Middle East and North Africa develops from lower levels. The fight on how to build up Libya has started and the obvious question is if it’s going to be free-market or state capitalism which is important since Libya’s development could become a blue-print for the entire area. State capitalism is probably easier to apply to a country of Libya’s type, Algeria is already state capitalist to a certain degree and also runs on oil, but I hope they will convince the Libyans to choose free-market capitalism due to the better harmony possible with the EU in this case. Bremmer has a series of comments in his book as to the prognosis of state capitalism and he seems to think that it represents a dead end, which I tend to agree with. Improvements of free-market capitalism are a more probably path of development. In an era where the economists have problems understanding the economy it is troublesome that we ask politicians to regulate it, understanding it even less, but it seems to be necessary.

The Symbol of Cooperative Individualism--"Alliansen"?

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, yesterday in his Summer Speech thanked Maud Olofsson, the retiring Party Leader of the Swedish Center Party, because the Swedish right of center Political Alliance would not have come into existence without her. Apart from he skill as a minister she then must have projected a cohesive function and it would be interesting if it is this talent Hilary Clinton, the US State Department Secretary, is tapping now by consulting Olofsson.

If Olofssons largest talent is as a cohesive force for keeping four individualist parties together in an alliance, the current search for a new party leader in the Center Party would have to balance the need for cohesion and a profile that keeps that party above the 4% barrier for membership in the Riksdag, the Center Party just polled 4,3%. The unusually open search for a new party leader in the Center Party is of course highly dependent on the latter and Reinfeldt yesterday was careful with inviting the new leader to the "Alliansen".

It is of great importance that this coalition is maintained for the wellbeing of Sweden and as Reinfeldt pointed out in his speech the left of center coalition that challenged him last year does not exist anymore. All leaders will be exchanged shortly when also the Left Party is electing a new leader and furthermore they don't have a common project. We were lucky that the Swedish people called their empty hand.

The World Financial Order?

S&P, one of the three large credit rating agencies in the US, late on Friday, after the markets closed, downgraded US one notch to AA+ from AAA. In this context it should be noted that a Chinese credit rating agency, Dagong, downgraded the US last week to a level on par with Spain. There seems to be a war on the interpretation of what is important and the reason might be that we are witnessing a clash between two economic cultures. The Chinese being state capitalism.

My own confidence in the US and its people is completely unshaken and it should be mentioned that France, Japan and South Korea don’t see any problems with US creditworthiness according to the Financial Times. China, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, makes a lot of noise and seems to disregard the fact that you do take a risk buying state papers. Instead they want to remake the world financial order to secure their investments. It would be interesting to read an initiated Swedish article evaluating the benefits or disadvantages to Sweden if China gets their way?

Technology dependent states--China and the EU?

The first unified China, the Qin Dynasty, lasted only fourteen years, from 221BCE. It was a highly suppressive affair that alienated everyone in society although there was a unification of the spoken and written language. It was replaced by the Han Dynasty, 202BCE to 220CE, where Confucianism came back and the moral of the emperor ruling for the benefit of the ruled moral came back from the Legalist tradition under Qin. In 5BCE there were 60m people in China together with 130,000 bureaucrats.

Today there are 1,350m people in China and it occurred to me that Deng Xiaoping in 1978 would never have embarked on the Chinese miracle if it had not been for the technology that no one dares to speak of. Controlling such an amount of educated Middle Class Chinese the way the party wants to would not have been possible. If I am right in my conjecture, this would mean that the protocol used by the 80m people in the Communist Party is a prerequisite for the state whereas the West is using the technology on preexistant functioning states.

This would mean that governing such large conglomerates as China and the EU needs the technology. Francis Fukuyama discusses how China’s development compared with that of Europe and it is interesting to note that the seemingly blind alley that the Chinese already embarked on in 221BCE with the first modern dictatorship is something they might have cemented with the technology today making it virtually impossible for a democratic development. Fusing Europe in the EU is also something that has reversed democratization.

The frustrating discussion that have been ongoing since the financial crisis in 2008 on the fate of the EU then in all probability to a certain extent revolves around the question if national states are going to let go of their regular governance to the governance aided by the technology and thus emulation of China. Historically Europe never mustered the coercion needed by Qin to unify China. The geography was configured so as to promote different cultures and languages and the brute force of unification never materialized. Furthermore, the Catholic Church induced a social development that never happened in China which lacks the rule of law and an accountable government still today.

The latest gossip on the EU is that a two-speed super-state will form on the Continent with Britain on the side. The question then is if Germany will lead the Continent in the Chinese technology dependent fashion and that democracy with functioning governments using the technology will remain in Anglo-America?

Checks and Balances?

In the Afterword of The End of History and the Last Man from 2006 I find a possible reason for the 2011 book of Fukuyama called The Origins of Political Order. Fukuyama says that what is missing is a treatise that deals with the political development devoid of economic concerns. My humble question is if this really is possible? Probably as a research project. As Gideon Rachman points out in today’s column the political system needs a fix in the US. Or does it? Isn’t the battle between Republicans and Democrats that is ongoing the cradle of a new solution to the deadlock and America’s problems? Rachman says that left to themself either D or R can solve the problem. The problem seems to be whether the US is going in a European direction or if it is going to become more “American”. The crucial point here is that it can’t do both. The Americans have to decide which they are going to choose. My guess is that the debt crisis in Europe is going to give the Republicans an edge. The Americans are currently feeling out the new multipolar world. Obama’s potential doctrine from Anne-Marie Slaughter with the US as the most connected country that everybody wants to talk to might not have materialized, although I liked the idea. This would mean we are back to balance of power.

I listened to Carl Bildt’s Sommar program on the radio on Sunday. It is interesting to find the only foreign political statement in Swedish media in the entertainment section. Outlining Sweden’s interests he pictured a unified Europe as the vehicle of Sweden. In my current judgment he was a little too optimistic on Europe. Then he painted a grand importance of the Balkans and Afghanistan way out of their importance globally. Towards the end of the program though he said important things like that science is going to solve many of our problems with environment etc. He radiated a positive view on the world and was very nationalistic. He called Swedish the language of honor and heroes. A good foreign minister could thus be excused. It could be contrasted with the American “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. The Swedish is definitely more Hegelian. Freedom is more important than honor and all brave people are not necessarily heroes. If Bildt is more German than Anglo-American, he will become disappointed over that Germany is not going to jeopardize its economy by saving the Euro which is the most probable outcome of the current situation.

The right of center Allians of Sweden will break up?

Reading today in Svenska Dagbladet about a fragmentation in Swedish politics. The Center party in Sweden wants to break lose from the Allians, a right of center coalition of the Moderaterna, Folkpartiet, Centerpartiet and Kristdemokraterna. Recently the ten year party secretary Maud Olofsson announced that she will leave her post coming a congress in September. She had been instrumental in forming the Allians that initially won the election of 2006.

Small parties like Kristdemokraterna and Centerpartiet have suffered from losing voters being minors in the Allians. People have moved to the largest party Moderaterna to gain influence. They now poll around 4% which is the entrance bar to the Parliament. The finance minister Anders Borg, Moderaterna, have made an invitation at the yearly political gathering in Almedalen to offer collaboration with The Green party. I guess he saw the fragmentation coming. Another reason is that the Alliance is ruling as a minority government, a phenomenon that is common in Swedish politics, and is thus looking for a more stable situation. The Greens are moving forward like in Germany.

Also Jan Björklund, the minister of education, is suggesting that Sweden as the first country in Europe should introduce Chinese at the high school level. He says it will be more important for Sweden than French and Spanish. He did not say German, which gives the general direction of the thinking of government. They are German Chinese in their minds and will combine this with the Anglo-American presence. I have heeard comments that it is easier to collaborate with the Chinese than with neighbors in the EU so I guess it all makes sense. China seems to be successfully ruling by dividing in Europe.

Which brings me to the question of the prospects of the US. Walter Russell Mead, the editor of The American Interest and a professor of foreign policy at Bard College in NY, wrote a very up-beat article about America on wsj.com because of Fourth of July that was nice to read. It all made sense in the gloom given in the press about America at presence. I am a firm believer that the US will work themself out of their current fiscal problems and stand tall again. I even kept my American pension money in New York. Europe on the other hand seems to lean towards Chinese help rather than self-reliance.

Sweden is an engineering country and today there is a debate article in Svenska Dagbladet where people claim they should broaden the engineering education which is overdue. The article is a response to a report issued by Svenskt Näringsliv where the relative role of Natural Science/Technology and Humanistic subjects was discussed. I tried to read most of the main articles in this debacle but did not see the question about what the competition from China and India study. Volumewise they will churn out hundred of thousands, almost a million, engineers per year that work for lower salaries. I guess what Sweden wants to achieve is to produce engineers that can make Swedish companies rather than working for foreign companies in Sweden. This might require a modernization of an earlier successful educuation as Nina Wormbs and Sverker Sörlin argued in their article.

Katas in Industry?

I'm working on the problem on which culture is best suited to harbor the future and an interesting thing occurred to me.

The Japanese did very well in making cars. This probably depended on the fact that performing motorical sequences assempling a car resembles performing so called katas in martial art. A kata is a series of motions executed to practise a sham fight. They are practised by repetitive performances and it is known today that some 10,000 repetitions is necessary to optimize a motion program. Katas are part of Zen Buddhism and it is religion for many Japanese.

However, the assembly line was invented in the individualistic USA where free spirits probably suffered more in straight jacketing themselves into repetitive motion schemes. It would appear that the Japanese could have had an easier path to inventing the assembly line by just setting up a series of katas to make a car? Today the Japanese assemble cars faster than the Americans. They also write more patents per capita. They are doing worse on the GDP per capita though. They lost ground against the Americans on this parameter lately.

Perhaps it is time to start talk about what you innovate and not how much you innovate?

I'm beginning to feel that the political culture is very important for the quality of research. Therefore it is very hard to be Swedish globally speaking because what Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton did was trendsetting and very mature early on, still going strong. If Germany is going their own way now, it is also very hard to be a European because they will part philosophically and value wise. If this split becomes real in the wake of the euro-zone debt crisis this might have effects on coordinating research EU wise but it might be good for the competition in Europe.

What happens if the US pulls out of NATO?

The US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a talk recently that has been commented today by Gideon Rachman on his FT.com column. Jan Kallberg also writes on his blog about the change in US preferences "after" the war on terrorism. Kallberg says that nuclear weapons are going to make a comeback.

What we observe now is a US that might lower their defense costs a bit and a Europe that is substantially lowering theirs. China is significantly increasing their costs yearly. This obviously reflects how these different power centers view the global risks and the projection of global power. Although I think that the difference in risk taking within NATO is more severe than the actual amounts the countries are contributing, I am not sure why the European countries downplay military risks in this fashion when the economically booming China is thinking otherwise. China is apparently not content with economical weaponry.

Kallberg argues that what is going to become important is the actual military capability. If the European countries cannot even keep up a fight in Libya for a few weeks, as Gates pointed out, there is no capability. So if NATO falls, Europe will be dangerously alone. A country like Sweden would have problems paying for the benefit of being under the US nuclear umbrella and in practice be without defense. I hate to bring this up in this apparently risk-free era but I simply do not trust Russia.

Tony Blair pointed out the other day that the EU for the sake of power should join the US to defend Western values. He also said that he advocated for an elected EU president to minimize the democratic deficit, although he did not see this as realizable but spoke of it as a goal. The president he discussed should not be above the national heads of states in this case. I think it is statesman-like to speak up for the West in light of the above discussion. It is highly reasonable.

However, reasonable or not it does not seem to reflect what is happening even if the EU could need common views on common problems these days of debt problems and polarity in the future of an ever closer union. Proponents against military matching with the US probably say that we can't do much in Libya or Syria anyhow. The fact remains though that a country that crash Iraq in a matter of days has a different leverage on events given a unified West that is not divided on itself.

Returning to the reason for why Europe does not spend much on military defense, it may be very difficult to invade EU with soldiers. However, if nuclear weapons will be in vogue a country like Iran would want to get some and can thus threaten the EU with severe damage, something the EU might have to act upon. If European countries run out of munitions after a few weeks, it would seem like a coordinated raid to eliminate a nuclear threat from Iran would be highly hypothetical?

The trans-Atlantic alliance?

The ft.com ran an article about Robert Gates, the US secretary of defence, on Friday. Gates claimed that NATO alliance was at risk. The reason was the bad performance of allies in Libya. It is the old problem having some people doing the light work and others doing the hard work and the difference in how much resources they spend per capita.

I reread the book Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan from 2003 for the occasion. Henry Kissinger said of this book: "Though in the past we have often disagreed, I consider this essay one of those seminal treatises without which any discussion of European-American relations would be incomplete and which will shape the discussion for years to come".

Kagan says the following: "One of the things that most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a philosophical, even metaphysical disagreement over where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the laws of the jungle and the laws of reason. Americans do not believe we are as close to the realization of the Kantian dream as do Europeans."

Furthermore, Kagan does not think the Europeans want to strive for a unified "West". So what have happened since 2003? Well, Obama turned out to be very popular in Europe compared to Bush but this does not seem to have bridged the difference in how Europeans and Americans view their security. The Arab Spring, however, in my humble opinion, should make the Europeans more willing to view things the American way.

The Global Position?

I see that some people claim that they are global liberals or that Sweden is a global country. Is this an escape from the real people "verklighetens folk"? I must admit I feel a little guilty myself but the question is what such a stratification does to a country. The global postion is a little fuzzy.

As I noted before, the Libya debacle is a case in point. Swedes and Danes share the same base in Italy but do not do the same job and Germany is not doing anything. This is examples of different penetration of the stratification problem.

As a global liberal it is necessary to take a strand for helping the so called rebels in Libya which means you get in trouble supporting Germany's new anti-nuclear line as the path forward for Europe especially when you get 40% of your electricity from nuclear power. Again it is possible to escape as a global liberal with global values but such values are theoretical. They don't exist in reality in a country. I wonder if calling Sweden a global country is not the same as declaring it neutral in all conflicts and keeping one's options open? Saying that we do what the EU does is not true either. We are not even part of the euro-zone.

Then again how homogenous is the global position. Is it the position of global peace? Or the position of global finance? Is it the defunct G20? Jeffrey D. Sachs suggested the world should be divided into self-sustaining regions instead of a G20 mechanism where the regions take care of economical and security questions. Our region would then be the Nordic countries. Some 25m people. Since Norway is not part of the EU and Sweden and Finland not part of NATO we are not even ready to take care of our immediate environment.

With our language education we are part of the Anglo-American culture domain. But apart from security issues, Great Britain and the US are not so close anymore. Germany just took a path that seemed unpalatable for Sweden and thus an ever closer Union does not look potentially good right now, which is what is necessary to save the Euro. You see, neutrality politics becomes tempting again.

Where is the future forming right now? 1523 when Gustaf Vasa got financial help from Lübeck to take back Stokholm from the Danes and then help to organize Sweden saw a development where Holland slowly took over control from Lübeck and thus formed the Western civilization with England during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sweden became on their own then from their benefactor, independence, but did not get part of the real action until later. Are we doing the same mistake today?

The Swedish Independence Day?

2005 they decided to make the 6th of June an official holiday in Sweden. A little nationalism in exchange for a religious holiday called Annandag Pingst.

Gustaf Vasa was crowned on 6th of June 1523 and made Sweden into a unified country. He introduced Protestantism 1527 and 1536 there was a meeting in Uppsala where the religion was formally changed. Gustaf Vasa used this change to enrich himself on behalf of the Catholic Church and paid back debts to the Hansa town Lübeck which had helped him gain power. He used German advisers to reorganize the country between 1538 to 1543 and made Sweden a kingdom based on heredity in 1544.

Gustaf Vasa was not a renaissance man but an organizational genius. Another well-known Swede, a man of the people, that has characterized himself as an unconcerned poet that wanted happy people around him dancing in an opulent nature is Evert Taube, the most famous Swedish troubadour. Gustaf Vasa did leave one important trace the Nordic ski race, the worlds largest, but Evert Taube has left many more. He is the great romanticizer of the Swedish archipelago and it's cult day Midsummer.

I myself have reached a point in my life where I try to figure out who I am and I have realized that Evert Taube gives me some clues. I got some of his songs from iTunes today to refresh my memory. Evert Taube was born on the lighthouse island Vinga not far from where I live and since I spend many summers of my youth in the Göteborg archipelago I definitely feel having roots in the simplicity and frugality of this environment.

However, my father emigrated to the US and became an English Professor in a small Wisconsin town called Menomonie which I visited first time 15 years old. My father and I used to listen to Evert Taube songs in their kitchen and I therefore have feelings of home in the small American town as well. Working almost ten years in Philadelphia later made me indifferent and for non-national reasons I ended up back in the Göteborg archipelago. Politics had not been important in my life.

After having become a new kind of prisoner, with an artificially lowered intellect as the result of some kind of arbitrary judgment, I became very interested in the political history of the US. Today I am probably more American than Swedish. Standing up for freedom and individualism rather than for peace is the most probable discriminator. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not more American than my two American-born children.

Unsustainable?

Something is unsustainable in the West as this word is being used more and more. However, Sweden is currently having a growth of 6,4% during the first quarter 2011 with some of the highest taxes on Earth. It should be mentioned that the OECD ranking of GDP growth in Sweden is going to fall during the upcoming years.

The health care spending in the US is twice as expensive per capita as the one in Sweden and some say that it is on the average not of the same quality, even if the US has the sharpest health care in the world. The Republican Congress is presently not raising the debt ceiling of the nation. Some say that instead of pondering the size of the ceiling they should balance the budget. There seems to be a general consensus that expenditures rather than revenue, or taxes, should be considered.

Perhaps it is a little frustrating that the Nordic way does not ring any bells at all in the US. What is perhaps of great interest is why this is so. I have not calculated on this but my gut feeling is that is would not be possible to lower costs and fund a balancing of the US budget. Taxes have to be raised.

So we are talking about cultural differences where Sweden seems to be a posh suburb of the US and that a comparison straight off country by country is not really possible. A surplus country like Sweden also fared better during the financial crisis that highly leveraged deficit countries like the US and the UK.

It would be interesting to know whether the US or Sweden scores best on innovation per capita? I don't have that comparison but if Sweden was to score better there should be an argument for the US following Sweden's lead. However, if the US scores better Sweden have to ask themselves if contributing to the top class innovation of the world is not more important that living poshly. Is living standard more important than contribution to progress?

Weakly deterministic?

Francis Fukuyama's book The End of History and the Last Man is an interesting book. It constantly provokes the reader. However, I'm a little surprised that Fukuyama in 2006, when he writes the Afterword in the book, still believes in his weak determinism that the world is destined for liberal democracy only. I have said most of this earlier but this is a summary.

Despite that 2006 was the culmination of problems of starting democracy in Iraq, Fukuyama discusses this problem in the Afterword and speculates that the problem of separating state and religion might be a permanent problem for Muslims to endorse democracy. The development of the Muslim communities in Europe will probably cast light on this issue. Will Europe become a Eurabia that plays down democracy for authoritarianism and sharia?

However, the largest problem with the idea that liberal democracy will win out eventually is the success of China the last 30 years. They took ideas from West, worked hard and managed to come out on top. At least temporarily. They claim that once ideas are generated democracy is inefficient. If they are equally strong, authoritarianism and liberal democracy might start to oscillate and thus co-exist peacefully.

There is a problem though. If authoritarians buy a company they will affect the lifestyle of the employees more than if liberal democrats buy a company. This asymmetry will definitely cause problems. There was an article on wsj.com the other day that advocated for letting the Chinese buy companies in the US. The argument went that there are now 700,000 Americans working for Japanese companies in the US and this is working just fine. But then, the Japanese do play baseball. In Sweden the Volvo Cars experiment with Chinese ownership is ongoing with initial positive results.

The main philosophical argument used for the weak determinism for liberal democracy is that its driven by the need for recognition. I'm not sure why the strong determinism of Hegel and Marx are to be taken serious. In retrospect they are ridiculous and why spend time on ideas from thinkers that have proven ridiculous ideas? In my own experience philosophers often have a few gems and then a lot of crazy ideas, which could be such an argument.

It is a great difference between the Anglo-Saxon pursuit of happiness and the need for recognition. I was under the impression that the latter created two world wars and that the former saved the day. Ideas that fascinate the masses can be very dangerous when wrong. Fukuyama is in principle saying that a scientist is working for the recognition he might get rather than out of curiosity when the latter is probably more biologically correct. Money comes to you. So does fame. When a scientist is getting a crazy idea the possible effects on his life comes after the fact, obviously.

The reason for why liberal democracy is more universal would be that the majority of people like being free. However, with 1,3bn Chinese, 1,2bn Muslims and 1,1bn Catholics it is possible to start wondering if this really is true. Part of mankind prefer order and no responsibility. They are natural or cultural followers and thrive in hierarchical systems. Liberal democracy is more demanding. I believe liberal democracy is a higher developmental form and that future improvements will derive from it but perhaps not as a majority system.

A good question is if it is possible to figure out if an idea is wrong even if it is popular. Have Fukuyama's idea led to too much give-aways to China so that they have evolved too fast and therefore will become intoxicated of their own invincibility, which could be a risk. During Mao, 1949 to 1976, China bottomed out in relation to the GDP of the UK. Now they will match the US GDP in 2016. If people start thinking like this, we will probably see more protectionism. A few years ago it was not uncommon to hear that doing business with China will make them change their political system. I remember watching Swedish TV where a commune politician from Karlstad was going to China and changing them.

Individualism vs community

Henry Kissinger has written a book that is coming out this week called On China. Kissinger had an article on wsj.com yesterday with excerpts from the book. He ends with a wish that Zhou Enlai's "this will shake the world", from 1971 when Nixon and Kissinger opened up China, will instead become the China and the West will build the world together.

Francis Fukuyama claims that individualism is doing the US a disfavor the last decades and that more of community is in need to better the economy. In this respect is should be remembered that Barack Obama was a so called community organizer early in his career. The first Pacific president. I'm beginning to sense the real reason for the polarization of the US. It might be individualism versus community. If the Republicans are for individualism, I'm definitely on their side. The Americans might have to take a charge on their GDP per capita but this is due to reorganizations in the world economy and not due to the underlying principle on how they work.

Individualism does not mean that people can't work in a group but it means that the individual perspective is protected to prevent the status quo. Some people like to say that "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" but I believe that it is better to have an attitude of always wanting to improve things. If you believe that we have not reached the end of history, and that we need to make new leaps of faith like the Scientific Revolution to further human evolution, the principle of individualism is paramount. Our next future is not going to depend on engineering but on new profound ways of looking at things. I firmly believe that individuals do this most effectively. What has been interesting to see is that great ideas often have come from outside of universities.

So what we seem to have now is a situation where China is going to suppress the West or the West is going to destabilize China. It is going to be interesting to see if building the world together is going to work. Let's hope so but it will in all  probability be due to a realization of the need to tolerate each other's ideas and values. Not on a merger.

Trust

"As this book should have indicated by now, the more one is familiar with different cultures, the more one understands that they are not all created equal. An honest multiculturalism would recognize that some cultural traits are not helpful in the sustenance of a healthy democratic political system and capitalist economy."

The above citation comes from the 1995 book Trust by Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama says the neoclassical economy is to 80% correct. The rest is culture dependent. All individuals are created equal with human rights to match but then they end up in various cultures with different potentials.

I found this book when I arrived at the conclusion that I did not know how to increase trust in societies that lacked this. Fukuyama's book does not mention the Middle East as low-trust but well France and Italy that aspires to good relations with the low-trust North Africa and Middle East in the Club Med association. He does not have a recipe for increasing trust either.

The main message of the book is that familiarism countries, with low-trust to people outside the family, like China or Italy, does not produce such large corporations like high-trust countries like Japan, Germany and the US. These countries would then not have the same potential economically. China today seems to defy this rule, however. Perhaps they are compensating for high-trust outside the family with "systems" of people held together by fear?

Leading by example is in my opinion much superior to leading by fear. Protestantism offered a more individualistic situation for people that then could relate to each other rather than to an authority like the parish priest. The fear of God was not used as a motivation. God became someone you related to directly on a more equal basis than Catholics and Muslims.

If the high-trust outside the family has not passed the North/South divide in Europe it is not likely that it will spread to North Africa and the Middle East. Today we have a situation in Europe where Southern European countries are in worse economic shape than Northern states. It should be remembered in this context that the Western Civilization started in the Netherlands and England. Cultural factors then important for breaking the Malthusian ceiling could still be in operation.

As Fukuyama points out, the melting pot America have managed to unite around common values and principles but have recently performed worse in this context. Fukuyama speaks about individualism taking precedence. The EU project is in actuality not even trying with its divisive motto "united in diversity". Is this good or bad? Perhaps it all depends on how large the optimal size of a nation is.

A land of peace or a land for peace?

I recently argued that Sweden might return to their old neutrality politics because of their peaceful attitude. In Sweden the US is probably seen as a warring nation. However, here is an interesting statistic.

Sweden feature two important political assassinations. The prime minister Olof Palme in 1986 and the foreign minister Anna Lindh in 2003, both Social Democrats. There are 33 times more people in the US which would mean that we would assume that we would find about 67 political assassinations in the US, all things equal.

The assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King and now Gabrielle Gifford, who is actually showing some vital signs, amount to only four. So, although crime rates are higher in the US, they don't seem to attack their politicians to the same degree.