A New Era--Definitely

The Perils of Wishful Thinking - Robert Kagan - The American Interest Magazine: "The President and his advisers presumably do not harbor such illusions, yet neither do they acknowledge the problems posed by the fact that the great powers are, in reality, divided between democracy and autocracy. Their statements and their policies seem to ignore the possibility that China’s and Russia’s autocratic governments may see the world differently, and calculate their interests differently, precisely because they are autocracies."

Robert Kagan was the person who's philosophy started me up in political science and I definitely agree with the above citation. In an article in American Interest Kagan reviews the situation the United States are in at the moment. There is however one opinion where I disagree, Kagan states that there is in reality not a new era at all.

During the election campaign of President Obama I thought the foreign policy would remain the same if he won. The strange thing is, as Kagan points out, it seems like this with the stalled progress in the Middle East and Obama's unfortunate war in AfPak. The serious problem is that things look like they move on in the same way despite the fact that the situation is that of the beginning of a new era as referred to by Kagan in a speech by Hillary Clinton from July 15, 2009 as directed by G. John Ikenberry.

The reason for the entry of a new era is that the relative clout of the US internationally have diminished and also that people around the world have organized themselves differently. There is no historic precedent for this. People now feel their way forward in the dark. Clinton, for example points out that the State Department not only engages governments but also individuals. Clinton points out that the US now is organized for engaging the multipolar world in a multi partnership fashion that can turn into coalitions of the willing when need be.

Clinton says: "It does not make sense to adopt a 19th century concert of powers, or a 20th century balance of power strategy. We cannot go back to Cold War containment or unilateralism". Instead we have Anne-Marie Slaughter's center-of-gravity-enlightened nation, multi partnership, that according to Nicolas Sarkozy from his conversation with Condoleezza Rice once, needs to become more popular, something which is inherently difficult with an escalated war scenario.

But I have not lost faith all together because I agree with Clinton when she says: "America will always be a world leader as long as we remain true to our ideals and embrace strategies that match the times".

Torture?

Pew Forum: The Torture Debate: A Closer Look: "It shows that currently, more than six-in-ten white evangelical Protestants (62%) say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can be often or sometimes justified. This is significantly higher than the number of white mainline Protestants (46%) and religiously unaffiliated (40%) who say torture can be often or sometimes justified. Additionally, those who attend religious services at least once a week are much more likely than those who seldom or never attend religious services to take this view (54% vs. 42%)."

These counter-intuitive data are interesting. Briefly, religious and weekly church going individuals are more prone to agree that torture could be used than religiously unaffiliated people. About 25% agrees that torture can rarely be used and about 25% claims that it should never be used. The data are from April-May 2009. Personally I am religious but on the rarely or never side.

In USA Today one reads that a Rasmussen poll last week claimed that 70% of respondents either says that waterboarding of the underwear bomber is OK or are unsure of which and this is after an unsuccessful attempt. 30% are for Obama's standpoint. This tend to verify David Brook's assumption that the situation in the USA is currently a little sensitive.

The New York Times, called Yes, it was torture, and illegal, ran yesterday an editorial that discussed if it was not time to remove the right to torture individuals from the executive branch and make it constitutionally impossible via the supreme court. It should be of some interest for Swedes, since we do have troops in Afghanistan presently. In any case, it does not take much for the mood to swing in this issue. Perhaps, the more important that it is clarified as illegal?

The American Revolution 2.0?

Op-Ed Columnist - The Tea Party Teens - NYTimes.com: "The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation."

According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll 41% of people had a positive view of The Tea Party movement. Only 35% and 28% had a positive view of of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, in the same poll. Brooks himself is not a fan of this conservative type movement. I went through the 40 comments on the column and Brooks got a lot of bile for being against the movement. Brooks think that America is very sensitive now for anything that can be held against the elite which might color the next decade in this light.

This debate reminds me of the "verklighetens folk", or 'down-to-earth people', debate in Sweden. I never understood the complaints on the elite in Sweden. After all we don't have a giant deficit to blame the elite for. Some people are irritated on the left-intellectual faction in Sweden. We have had a social democratic power grip for many years and a lot of intelligent people have accumulated on its side. Also, as Reinfeldt did point out, there is an invisible hand that among other things act through media with a left tilt. Perhaps Brooks is talking about the same thing concerning the elite?

I note with some interest that the debate between left and right resembles the debate between secular humanists and religious people where the religious people gets hammered all the time with "scientific" arguments that I encountered in the beginning of my blog. They simple don't bother to defend themselves. The winning left arguments are moral in character, the recent problem with employment insurance as a prime example. Mutating into a populist down-to-earth scenario is then a cowardly escape.

Climate Science and Gene Modified Organisms

"Avdramatisera genmodifierad växtförädling" - Aktuella frågor - Sydsvenskan - Nyheter dygnet runt: "För att klara framtida behov av livsmedel är det nödvändigt att utveckla olika tekniker inom växtförädling. Med genmodifiering kan växtförädlingen uppnå resultat som inte är möjliga med andra förädlingstekniker, skriver docent Anders Falk på Jordbruksverket."

There is still a great controversy between the US, which is for GMO, and the EU which is highly restrictive. It is also so that Europeans does not seem so fascinated with the technology as such, notwithstanding the safety concerns. They simply don't like it. Since the US currently are more deft in science than the EU, it is clear that scientific arguments in this case don't work on the Europeans.

It is interesting to compare the use of science for the argumentation of using GMOs and that of scientific arguments in the climate change debate. It is, for example, obvious that scientific arguments work better in Europe than in the US. There has even been arguments for letting the scientists rule the world even if this is a little too Platonic for most people. Turning this against the Europeans it might be so that the issues at hand cannot only be discussed by scientific arguments.

Anders Falk in the article in Sydsvenskan therefore seems to be American in character and I must spontaneously agree with him that in all probability there should be great possibilities with GMOs. Science in general, and molecular biology in particular, has shown tremendous progress during the last century. However, this is more of a political opinion than it is a thorough scientific investigation of possible hazards with the technology in question. The use of scientific argumentation is seemingly very political.

Hearts and Minds?

Cheney Was Right - Page 2 - The Daily Beast: "When people in countries like Yemen and Nigeria see America and its allies as a force for progress and dignity and al Qaeda as a force for misery and oppression, America will win the struggle against al Qaeda where it won the struggle against the USSR: on the battlefield of hearts and minds."

Carl Bildt points out in his blog that extremism has lost out in afflicted countries but that the problem of the extremists remains. Peter Beinart compares the war against terrorism, his article claims that we are back in this business, is like the cold war. I'm not sure he is right about this. There are no hearts and minds to win among the fundamentalist extremists, unfortunately. Does it not rather look like we are having a problem with a certain fraction of the world population that it is very difficult to get rid of. Calling this a war is very unfortunate. Isn't it just a level of criminality that we have to adjust for.

Peter Beinart points out in his article that the problem with military fight attempting to solve this problem is that it kills civilians. Such activities creates more problem than they solve. It is why I am very wary about the continued effort in Afghanistan--it escalates every year so far.

The head of the German 25m Protestants, Bishop Margot Kässmann, claims the war in Afghanistan cannot be justified. She has many Germans behind her but has also come under fire from senior politicians lately, who claim Germany is in Afghanistan on a UN mission. The article in Spiegel Online does not give her justification but I would be surprised if it not fairly in line with my own. A person interviewed in the radio in Sweden from the Swedish Afghan Committee, an aid organization, meant that his colleagues did not become targets in Afghanistan until they were escorted by military personnel.

Beinart wants to win his war by leveraging America's greatest assets its economic, diplomatic and ideological. Wrong again, according to my mind. Extremists could not care less and afflicted governments might be more impressed by China's way of doing business these days. However, leaving this people alone would probably lower the risk of getting terrorists on your ground. It will diminish the arguments the extremists have against their respective governments. It was local forces that made the difference in Iraq.

Israel and Turkey in EU?

10 frågor för 2010 - Anna Dahlberg - Expressen.se: "En av det gångna årets största besvikelser var när Obama retirerade från kravet på Israel att stoppa bosättningsexpansionen på ockuperad mark. Samme Obama som kritiserat Bush för att inte ha engagerat sig tillräckligt i den israelisk-palestinska konflikten framstod själv som både passiv och tafatt."

According to The Jerusalem Post, Israel is in love with Europe, a love that is not reciprocal. 30% of Europeans believed Jews created the financial crisis. However, many argue for adding Turkey to the EU despite animosities against Muslims in Europe as viewed recently with the anti-minaret vote in Switzerland. The time period discussed to peace between Israel and Palestine varies from 2 years to 15 years.

Dahlberg wants Obama to act but why do we not act ourselves. David Brooks, a Op-Ed writer of The New York Times, wrote that Israel is in reality a Middle Eastern country rather than an outpost of the West in the Middle East. However, if you compare with allowing the entry of 80m Muslims that also are Middle Eastern, adding 7m Israelis is not much to argue about. I don't know why I have never seen this issue discussed in the press but the 1.3m Jewish diaspora in Europe would not mind, I guess. Israel is participating in the European Song Contest after all.

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians depend on the security aspect of the Israelis to a great extent. Military control over the West Bank is necessary to protect the Israelian heartland. Obviously the security of Israel would be significantly improved if it would become an EU member. Being 7m Jews among 300m angry Muslims is one thing but being part of a 500m EU block is quite another. The constitutional state of Israel should not cause the same problems as does that of Turkey. The discussion of a one-state or two-state solution becomes much less important if one or both countries merge into something greater.

The membership of both Israel and Turkey in the EU would greatly balance anti-semitism and anti-Muslim sentiments. If we really are interested in peace in the Middle East, why don't we get involved seriously. Just adding Turkey to the EU would greatly increase anti-semitism in Europe to perhaps intolerable levels.

Most Important Issue?

Gunnar Hökmark » Arkiv » Ett Gott Nytt År!: "I Afrika och i Asien ser vi de politiska konsekvenserna av ett ekonomiskt allt mäktigare Kina, de investeringar som görs i Europa av såväl Kina som Ryssland, med i båda fallen ägande nära kontrollerat av den politiska makten ger nya intressen och nya säkerhetspolitiska utmaningar. Ryssland står med Gazprom närmare Europas centrum i dag än vad Sovjetunionen någonsin gjorde med militär förmåga."

I think Hökmark is making a very important point in this paragraph of his latest blog post. It is understandable that Western press is emphasizing the terrorist bit now when there is desperate need for a reinforced support for the Afganistan war, however, over all it has since 9/11 been reasonably stable on this front. Obama have had Fort Hood and an aborted flight 253 attempt but feel free to compare this with Finland.

The fascist style retaliation against the Muhammad caricature painter is really bothersome in principle but a professional police act abolished the threat. Both in Europe and in the US the protection systems can't be said to be entiredly dyfunctional. What fascinates me is how these few terrorists are undressing Westerners at airports, now seemingly down to the last thread. Muslim fundamentalists must feel very content. 100 nicabs in Denmark against all travelers in airports.

No, I refuse to sing the song we are terrorised by terrorists. The situation seems to be very much under control.