by Mark Weston | Jan 26, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa
The humble low-tech wall continues to muscle its way stubbornly onto 21st century newsreels, with Palestinians tearing down the barrier that separates Gaza from Egypt and flooding over the border to stock up on much needed supplies. The UN reports that no less than half the population of Gaza has crossed into the Sinai. Egyptian shopkeepers are delighted, of course, but their government has used water cannon to hold back the tide and attempted, unsuccessfully, to seal up the wall to stop further incursions.
Israel, whose blockade of Gaza sparked the crisis, says it is now Egypt’s problem. Gaza is overpopulated anyway, and there is plenty of room in the Sinai, so allowing some immigration into Egypt seems sensible, but Arab governments’ professed support for Palestinians has rarely translated into action. Do the Egyptian leadership’s warm words towards its Muslim brothers mean anything? We will soon find out.
by Alex Evans | Jan 26, 2008 | Global system, Influence and networks
Continuing my mini-series on what happened to the anti-globalisation movement: if some of them became the Yes Men, some of them remain very firmly as the No Men. Here’s one Ben Trott on Comment is Free this morning:
The movement has generally defined itself negatively, in terms of what it is against. In itself, this is not a problem. In fact, it has been one of its greatest strengths: allowing it to recognise what it has in common – a shared opposition to neoliberalism – despite its internal heterogeneity. If from the beginning, the focus had been on formulating more precisely what it was fighting for, it would likely have long collapsed under the weight of sectarian, ideological debate.
However, with the hegemony of neoliberalism now on the wane, the challenge – and opportunity – with which the movement is presented is to redefine what it is opposed to. Of course, one option would be to maintain the focus on neoliberalism, the most fundamentalist form of free market ideology. Hegemonic it may no longer be, but the doctrine is certainly not dead.
Alternatively, it could choose to locate itself more explicitly in the longer, broader, tradition of anti-capitalism. Obviously, this too would involve active opposition to the neoliberal project. But it would also call for a deeper negation of the present, exposing – and developing forms of political organisation capable of taking on – the capitalist organisation of society more generally.
That’s it? That’s the full set of options? Er – thank you, World Social Forum. Don’t call us…
by Alex Evans | Jan 26, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia
Nick Butler – treasurer of the Fabian Society, chair of the Centre for European Reform’s advisory board, erstwhile chief of staff to BP’s former CEO John Browne – is a worried man. Europhile though he is, the omens look not good:
The European economy is just beginning to feel the impact of Chinese growth, which will add to the pressures already created by America’s powerful and accelerating lead in the development of innovation and intellectual property. In a world where both low and higher value added goods and services are traded through open competition based on price and quality, Europe’s comparative advantage is unclear. We are losing on both sides of the playing field.
The risk for Europe in the next ten years is not one of war or starvation, but of gradual and steady decline, with growing structural unemployment, rising public sector deficits, and an expanding gap between the sense of entitlement felt by ordinary people and the capacity of the European economy to meet those entitlements. The image which comes to mind is the gradual descent to shabbiness of a once beautiful country house whose needs have outstripped the means of its owners.
So in a new think piece for CER, he sets out five ideas for Europe’s future. One of them goes like this:
Given the magnitude of the challenge of climate change, Europe should lead the response, not just through rhetoric and support for environmentally dubious products such as biofuels, but through the development of the science, engineering and technology that will cut hydrocarbon consumption.
To underline its determination, the EU should establish a 100 per cent tax credit for all investment, personal and corporate, in all activity which reduces emissions. The credit should be enduring and would stimulate research, development and application. The businesses created would have the chance to be world leaders and contributors to the necessary global solutions. The cost would be minimal, because of the positive impact on employment and activity, and would be a worthwhile investment when set against the eventual costs of unconstrained global warming.
Know what? He’s exactly right. Europe is, as ever, full of talk and targets and short on radical implementing action – whether you’re looking at Afghanistan, the Lisbon agenda, climate change, connecting Europe with its citizens or whatever. And on climate change, as David Steven and I noted in Climate change: the state of the debate, the problem narrative still isn’t commensurate with the solution narrative.
If Europe really wants to be taken seriously on climate change, it needs to be thinking of actions on a different order of magnitude. David and I were talking just last weekend (at an event chaired by Nick Butler, oddly enough) about just this problem – and concluding that the kind of signal needed would be the abolition of corporation tax, to be replaced by a carbon tax. Just think what that would do to inward investment – and to the EU’s emissions.
by Alex Evans | Jan 26, 2008 | North America
Yesterday, in the context of writing about the government’s new Counter Terrorism Bill, I was discussing why MCarthyism had never made real inroads in the UK during the 1950s. Today, what should drop into my inbox but an NY Times review of a new book aiming to rehabilitate Senator Joseph R McCarthy. David Oshinsky – himself a previous biographer of McCarthy – writes:
A full-throated defense of the senator is now in the bookstores. Written by M. Stanton Evans, a conservative journalist whose roots stretch back to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, it carries a title, “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies” (Crown Forum, $29.95), that well explains its thesis. But “Blacklisted by History” is drawing significant attention on the political right, where the reviews have ranged from gushing (The Weekly Standard) to scathing (National Review). If nothing else, Evans has forced his movement friends to look again at McCarthy. For conservatives, the crazy uncle has finally left the attic.
So what can we expect to read about if we buy the book?:
Evans buys into the heart of the McCarthy conspiracy — the belief that leftist elements in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations created a foreign policy to advance the spread of world Communism.
How else could one explain the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe or the fall of Chiang Kai-shek to the army of Mao Zedong? “Who lost China?” propelled McCarthy to the national stage. Along the way, he described General George C. Marshall, the nation’s most respected military commander, as a Communist dupe; urged Secretary of State Dean Acheson to seek asylum in the Soviet Union; purposely confused the names of the convicted perjurer and likely Soviet spy Alger Hiss and the 1952 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson (“Alger — I mean Adlai”); and called Harry Truman a “son of a bitch” who made his key decisions in the midnight darkness while drunk on bourbon.
McCarthy blamed the fall of China on “a conspiracy so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” Evans not only endorses this conspiracy but actually expands it to include “the Eastern, internationalist faction” of the Republican Party, “with ties to Wall Street, large corporations, big Eastern media outlets and Ivy League establishment.” To Evans, the conspiracy passed from president to president — from Roosevelt and Truman to Eisenhower and even Nixon, a former McCarthyite, who “would fall off the teeter-totter, landing with Henry Kissinger in Red China, thereafter pushing on into the mists of détente with Moscow.”
Okaay…
by Charlie Edwards | Jan 25, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia, North America, UK
In the heady days of the late 1990s, European defence was the subject of choice for journalists, academics and think tanks. Then in 2002 it all went phut. No one I’ve spoken to knows why. The most obvious reason – the attacks on 9/11 and the shift in focus on international terrorism – actually sparked more debate about Europe’s role in security and defence. But then, the constant hum of debate on European defence that had been the backdrop to the 80’s , 90’s and early naughties suddenly became a quiet whimper of hostility – between those Europhiles who favoured closer defence cooperation but were resigned to listening to agonising debates about the future of the A400M on one hand, and on the other, those Atlanticists who warned about the costs of such an enterprise (famously summed up by Albright’s 3 Ds – no diminution discrimination and duplication of the alliance), but wanted Europe to get some balls and share the burden with the US.
This year however could see European defence back on the agenda as Philip Stephens comments in today’s FT:
Out of sight, the governments of Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown are quietly discussing the terms of a new accord on European defence. Behind the seemingly arcane discussions on military planning cells, collaborative procurement, interoperability and shared capabilities lies a deep strategic truth exposed by the war in Iraq.
Offered assurances by Mr Sarkozy that nothing much need be said publicly while the treaty is going through the British parliament, Mr Brown has approved the preparatory work. Perhaps more significantly the mood within 10 Downing Street has changed. Mr Brown’s disdain for Europe was summed up by his decision to arrive late for the official signing of the Lisbon treaty, adding his name to the text in unsplendid isolation. Those close to him now say he was badly advised. His officials, prone to tell the prime minister what he likes to hear, had not properly explained the important symbolism of the moment. Mr Brown was badly jolted by the reaction in other European capitals, not least Berlin.
I’m not sure about the rest of the article as I think the briefing(s) may have been heavily weighted in favour of Whitehall’s view of the future. But aside from 2008 being the year of the rat and potato, it is also the tenth anniversary of St Malo – the great Anlgo-French defence agreement. In order for St Malo II to be meaningful the discussion should, in my mind, focus only on capabilities and implementation rather than vacuous rhetoric about Mars and Venus or the future of transatlantic relations (remember, Britain is no longer the bridge between Europe and America – we’re a global hub).
The FT have kicked off the debate today, and the think tank CER have the first of many seminars this year on the subject. But please let’s first focus on the practicalities of European defence – not the politics of a European project that could always do more.
