Wallowing in Decline or Clashing Moon Shots

Have Thomas Friedman and others since September 11, wallowed in the decline of America? As a matter of fact, Thomas Friedman in his recent Sunday column does compare negatively the American versus Chinese economic trajectory Their Moon Shot and Ours. However, there are increasing voices on the opposite end urging not Wallowing in Decline - By James Traub | Foreign Policy

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds Business: vanityfair.com

A very sad sad but very true story, which points not only to the case of Greece, but unfortunately the world of easy credit and lack of transparency that has dominated the recent wave of globalization. Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds Business: vanityfair.com

The 2010 Failed States Index | Foreign Policy

On the day that seven European banks failed the stress test of a possible double dip recession, Foreign Policy published its The 2010 Failed States Index | Foreign Policy. Is the European Union on its way to being a failed experiment or is it too simplistic an analysis? There is however, a distinct model that is being tried in Europe to deal with the Financial Crisis, than the stimulus approach of the Obama administration and by what Paul Krugman has been demanding to Redo the Voodoo.

It's all about Branding

I remember the first time, I noticed the new BP logo, being fully aware of the history and the marketing of British Petroleum from its influential role in the geopolitics in Iran and the Caspian since 1908, the new logo of the green energy sun with the new "Beyond Petroleum" tagline was indicative of the importance of branding and rebranding in our flattened world. The oil leak in Gulf of Mexico has sensitized our consumerist environmental concerns and blemishes the green and yellow sun of the logo. However, the logo of 2001 attempts to whitewash the history of a corporate giant that has mixed state and corporate interests in imperial geopolitical games. It is our value added perceptions of corporations and imperial games that necessitate marketing rebranding to make consumption palatable for us. Whitewash can only cover so much; inevitably the darker past comes through. The leak in the Gulf is not unusual in oil exploration; there are leaks that last months until they can be tapped. One has to look to the frantic drilling in the Caspian Sea since 1989 and the environmental degradation that has resulted from it. So advertisers get ready BP is about to put out a new RFP for a new branding campaign as the 2001 logo is washing away.

In case you thought BP's PR problems couldn't get any worse... - By Steve LeVine | The Oil and the Glory

Glocal Politics

Some months ago, while I was reading the New York Times, I saw the word glocal for the first time. My immediate suspicion that it sounded like a marketing term conjured up for a focus group by a PR firm was confirmed a couple of days later when I heard it on one of the Sunday morning news shows. In today's New York Times, (July 6, 2010) David Barboza in his technology column reviews the Supply Chain for iphone in order to highlight the costs in China, but in the process provides ample information of the interconnection of the world. (Never mind the profit margin for Apple)

While Roger Cohen in his column (NYT, July 6, 2010) A World of Hope uses the backdrop of the World Cup in South Africa to give another angle of this international system which appears to be less state-centric arguing that states " are as obsolete as my old Olivetti? Networks outstrip nations that are left playing catch-up, like those long-haired Argentines chasing trim German shadows. Networks are hopeful. They’re where the coming generations live and love."

Are we in the age of Glocal Politics, where it is the networks and not the distinct boundaries of the states that determine and separate domestic from international.

Actually, It's Mountains - By Robert D. Kaplan | Foreign Policy

Actually, It's Mountains - By Robert D. Kaplan | Foreign Policy,

I recently finished reading "A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul in which he describes the importance of the river in the function of society. Rivers and bodies of water such as the Euphrates, the Nile and the Mississippi have been considered the geographic highways that have contributed the formation of great empires. Kaplan's geographic argument and the contribution of mountains to failed states has merit in the Balkans and the Andes as well.

The Runaway General | Rolling Stone Politics

The Runaway General | Rolling Stone Politics This article is another example of how a failed policy in Afghanistan can not be undone simply by electoral politics. Foreign policy has a memory and stems from domestic conditions as well as the actions of individuals.

The Larger Struggle

Last week, on June 14, David Brooks wrote a column to describe the struggle between democratic capitalism and state capitalism as to deflect the incovenient truth of the larger struggle around us. Although for David Brooks the larger struggle is about the type of capitalism, as he conveniently places together in the "evil" state capitalist systems those of Iran, China, Venezuela, and every other evil doer that he can remember. Surprise, surprise, he places BP and the Obama administration on the democratic side. By using some Shumpeter and "creative destruction" or by saying that Mobil Exxon is not as big and bad as we think, because there are worse out there as the state-owned energy companies. Brooks is really stretching in his argument because what the untappable hole in the middle of the ocean point to is the uncontrollable greed that drives capitalism and now threatens to drown all of us in oil. How ironic after a century of expansion, political intimidation and war over fossil fuels, we are about to be drowned in oil.

However, Brooks is right, there is a larger struggle over the loss of power and legitimacy of government everywhere: from the inability of the US government to stem this global environmental disaster, to the European governments being helpless to deal with the rating houses of Moodys and Standard & Poors, to the government of Kyrgyzstan, which fires live bullets upon its own people. The larger struggle Mr. Brooks is over governance in a global world where the imperative of the market is greater than imperative of regulation.

Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future

I just recently finished the book by Stephen Kinzer, Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future, which I found to be an interesting historical read, especially as it is filled with anecdotal evidence of American foreign policy exchanges. His retelling of the US-Iran story is a must read for anyone that's interested in understanding the divisions and apprehensions that define the current state of affairs between these two states. Narrow American interests that were tied to fighting the cold war and at the same time acting as a protector of business created a blind spot among American policy makers toward the abusive and dictatorial regime of the Shah, which made the US accomplices in the eyes of the Iranian people.

Beyond the historical anecdotes, Kinzer rushes through the story to very quickly suggest that the US should follow Turkey's lead in the region as "American have come to realize that they lack some of the historical and cultural tools necessary to navigate effectivel through the Middle East and surrounding regions. They need a guide. Turkey is the best choice." (pg. 201)

Although I like the historical story telling, I am not convinced of the conclusion as he doesn't make a good case. Kinzer was on OnPoint this week and here is the interview: Turkey's Moves

China Floods Greece With Money, Saves Europe? | The Atlantic Wire

This is not immediately possible since the situation in Greece is more complex than needing foreign direct investment. Greece is unfortunately a failed state, which is unable to collect taxes or provide the basic functions within the scope of the modern state. China Floods Greece With Money, Saves Europe? | The Atlantic Wire

Is Apple destroying the social fabric?

Yesterday the New York Times published an article Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price outlining a scientific study that that found that our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information from e-mail and other interruptions. This is the latest piece of evidence of how our social and personal interaction is being affected by gadgets and technology. In 2008, The Atlantic Magazine published an article on the effects that Google has by raising the question, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

As we witnessed the events in the national and international arena from the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil still flows, to the shifting geopolitics in the Middle East, as Turkey, Russia and Iran are moving further away from the US, the issue of attention span and ability to maintain focus is critical.

This on the day that Apple has just introduced a new iphone and has released figures that there is an ipad selling every 3 seconds. The question that becomes even more important then is what is this doing for the social fabric of society and the effects that it has in democratic governance? By democratic governance the reference is to the effects on the political culture and level of subjective or participatory attitudes that develop.

The Tragic Event in Eastern Mediterranean

Any comments would be welcomed. This is from blog in the New York Times which makes a parallel with an event of 1947, that if not ironic tragic.

Stephen M. Walt | FOREIGN POLICY

Stephen M. Walt | FOREIGN POLICY

The Obama Doctrine

Remember when Charlie Gibson asked Vice President candidate Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine, well the Bush Doctrine which had outlined preventive war as foreign policy option for the United States is over. President Bush outlined this argument at the Commencement speech he delivered at West Point Military Academy on June 1, 2002, months prior to the Iraq war. A Frontline documentary titled "the evolution of the Bush Doctrine" best reviews the policy and its effects.

It's not insignificant that President Obama chose the same forum to outline bis approach to foreign policy for the United States one that relies more on diplomacy and one that takes into account the limits of American power in view of the financial crisis and the two wars. This new Obama Doctrine that was outlined at this year's West Point graduation has many elements of Andrew Bacevich's argument of the "Limits of Power".

Many have argued that this is just a continuation of the Bush Doctrine by different means while others find this just to be a naive version that leaves America vulnerable.

Shall We Dance?

When Deborah Kerr (Anna Leonowens) asks Yul Brynner (The King of Siam) "Shall We Dance" in the 1956 film The King and I, the ambivalent encounter between West and East turns into a romantic dance of the literate school teacher and the exotic king. In a sense this 1956 film incorporated many of the high culture assumptions of enlightened colonialism and the civilizing nature of free markets and free societies which pushed sleepy exotic backwaters into industry and prosperity.

The romance depicted in film didn't not materialize as the romantic dance with the school teacher turnout to be a dance with the currency markets. A dance that destroyed the Thai Baht in 1997 and with it the economy of Thailand and effected most of the economies of Southeast Asia. Since 1997 Thailand the modern incarnation of the peaceful Siam, has been a society teetering at the edge of the abyss. In the past two weeks the country has fallen into bloody chaos.

There is growing popular anger on a global scale stemming from the economic crisis that is testing the interest articulation ability of political systems. As the political structures are failing political violence increases and the instinctual response of the state to maintain power results in the use of disproportionate power that only a state is capable off. In our "Flat World" what had been advantages at the time of economic growth are becoming detrimental at a time of financial contagion. From the Tea Party in the US, which is still using electoral means, to the demonstrations in Greece, to the violence and death in Thailand, this is all part of the same process at varying degrees with two constant variables: there is an economic cause; and there is a test of political structures.

Shall We Dance? A Polka, a Tango or a Syrtaki?

Accountablty, Populism and Political Expediency

Paul Krugman in his last three columns has been trying to effectively distance the European Debt crisis from the American shores. (We're Not Greece, A Money Too Far, The Euro-Trap)This is the same Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman who was widely recognized for his criticism of the Bush administration and its free-spending and reckless approach that would bring the US economy to an Argentinian end. (Our Banana Republics, Passing it Along, (2003)). Krugman's apparent memory loss or argument reversal, takes place at a time that accountability, populism and political expediency proliferate. From the populist pronouncement of new British Prime Minister David Cameron announcing a pay cut and a pay freeze for his ministers to the lack of accountability of the great disaster of the Gulf Oil spill not by BP but by American citizens who still are not willing to make drilling corporations accountable because it might cost them as consumers at the pump.

The Art of Compromise

I spend a great deal of my lectures in distinguishing for students the difference between zero-sum and mutual gain as ideological approaches that define actors in the political arena. Today's nomination of Elena Kagan by President Obama and the resignation of Gordon Brown, are examples of political leaders that have chosen to compromise as a tactical maneuver in a strategy toward mutual gain. President Obama and Gordon Brown could have taken a zero-sum process dictated by narrow political interests instead chose what they perceive to be the greater good.

Happy Mother's Day

First of all on this inaugural post I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Mothers' Day. The idea of this blog is to create a forum as to continue and to initiate discussion on political and social issues that we have at times taken up from time to time. As the title of the blog indicates, we are all living the chronicles of the flat world, as the distinction between the local and the global is quickly disappearing. Just looking at some of the events of this past week one can quickly conclude that these perceived international and global events have immediate and local consequences whether you live in New Orleans or in La Paz. The inability to limit the scope of the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the failed terrorist attack at New York's Times Square, the social and political unrest in Greece, the Stock Market glitch that caused billions of dollars to be gained and lost, in a matter of 16 minutes, or the inconclusive British elections are all connected in a world that's increasingly linked though technology, economy, markets, communication, and environment.

In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman refers to the Root Canal Politics as he believes that these events are not only connected, but they have deep social and generational causes. While co-columnist paul Krugman argues that in the case of the European Debt crisis things are not as interconnected as many believe A Money Too Far

As you read these lines and you think of these issues or you want to bring up something else, whether you are in Santo Domingo or in Boston please remember to check back at 400Fenway