Obama: from grand tour to grand strategy?

by | Apr 7, 2009 | Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America

President Obama’s grand tour of Europe may rank as one of the most remarkable diplomatic forays since Nixon’s trip to China, but David Sanger of the New York Times points out the visit’s limits:

So, 77 days into his presidency, is there an emerging Obama Grand Strategy?

Not yet — but some outlines are emerging that may hint of what lies ahead.

From the Thames to the Bosporus, and at several landmarks in between, Mr. Obama spoke softly without even hinting that he might ever reach for the big stick. Barely mentioning his predecessor, he emphasized one of their main differences: that the United States planned not only to give greater authority to international institutions that George Bush often shunned, but also to embrace the creation of some new ones. Not surprisingly, these were the applause lines of his journey across the continent.

But with the notable exception of his approach to nuclear disarmament and countering proliferation — where radical shifts appear to be under way — what Mr. Obama described in public veered more toward a restoration of the old order than a vast strategic realignment. “There will be a moment for that,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior advisers said in London, Mr. Obama’s first stop. “This trip was more about reattaching all the cars on the train, and convincing them other leaders that we’re no longer headed for derailment.”

In other words, Europe may be swooning for Mr Obama, and Mr Obama seems to quite like Europe, but don’t assume he’s going to concentrate on the Old West from here on.

The Twitter Revolution

by | Apr 7, 2009 | Influence and networks

In the Moldovan capital, Chisinau protesters have stormed the parliament and the presidential palace denouncing Sunday’s Communist election victory and claiming the elections were fraudulent. Over on EUobserver, Nicu Popescu is blogging what has become known as the “Twitter Revolution”.

Text messaging played a key role in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, but in Moldova they have gone one step further and are using Twitter to organise the days’ events. As this blogpost explains,  the most popular discussions on Twitter in the last 48 hours have been posts marked with thetag “#pman“, which is short for “Piata Marii Adunari Nationale”, the main square in Chisinau, where the protesters began their marches.

The Italian Earthquake

by | Apr 6, 2009 | Europe and Central Asia

The L’Aquilan earthquake is a huge tragedy and it looks like the death toll may rise further as the emergency services continue their search among the rubble. Already the blame game has started – a normal reaction to disasters like this. According to newspaper reports an Italian scientist, Giampaolo Giuliani, predicted the earthquake but was reported to the police for scaremongering.

Mr Giuliani told locals to evacuate their houses and posted a video on YouTube in which he said a build-up of radon gas around the seismically active area suggested a major earthquake was imminent. Several tremors had been felt in the medieval city of L’Aquila, around 60 miles east of Rome, from mid-January onwards, and vans with loudspeakers had driven around the city spreading the warning. But instead of heeding Mr Giuliani’s warnings, the local authorities reported him to police for “spreading alarm” and he was told to remove his findings from the internet.

It sounds worse but we should be careful not to read too much into the following snippet. Context is crucial here.

The local authorities are already facing serious questions over why they gagged Mr Guiliani rather than taking his findings seriously.  Italy’s Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee, grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L’Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.

The civil protection agency argue that the tremors felt by the population from January onwards were part of a typical sequence which is normal in a seismic area like the one around L’Aquila.  So while it may not have been possible to predict the earthquake it should have been normal for organisations and communities in the area to prepare for its eventuality given Italy’s history and vulnerability to tragic earthquakes:

Italy is notorious among scientists not only as one of the most seismically active regions of Europe, but as a place with extremely complex geology that makes its earthquakes hard to understand. The peninsula sits at the foot of the Eurasian tectonic plate, at the point at which the African plate is pushing up against it, and such boundary zones generally have a high risk of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The situation in Italy, however, is further complicated because the peninsula is also being stretched in an east-west direction. This has left it riddled with faults, particularly along the north-south spine of the Apennine mountains, which were raised up by this seismic activity. John McCloskey, professor of Geophysics at the University of Ulster, said that Italy has “extremely complicated geology”, in which “the entire country is criss-crossed by lots of faults”.