Humanity is entering its fourth age. We’ve gone through hunting/gathering, agriculture, and industrialization and are now seeing the beginning of the technological age. One of the key components of this new age is the replacing of human labor with robotics which raises the question of what humans will be doing in 50 years. One example of this brave new world is happening right now in China.
Leslie Gelb has written an article in Foreign Policy about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gelb is an astute foreign policy analyst but the essay is truly overblown. We have known about Kennedy’s concessions to the Soviets in the crisis for many years and yet Gelb believes that information about the concession would have somehow changed the dynamics of American foreign policy if it had been more loudly telegraphed. Perhaps. The people who actually formulated foreign policy knew about Kennedy’s behavior from day one.
Here’s what Angela Merkel has waiting for her when she visits Greece on Tuesday:
Apparently, there will be 7,000 police on guard for the visit.
We’re getting a little more information about the drone incursion into Israeli territory. It was a very substantial incursion if the flight path from west to east is accurate, and if so, it flew over several Israeli settlements. On the one hand, shooting it down was a victory for the Israeli air force; but the extended flight is a defeat for Israeli radar. We still don’t know the payload the drone carried, but there is some suspicion that the drone was programmed to fly over the Israeli nuclear weapons site at Dimona. The Israelis have responded with flyovers in Lebanese territory which suggests that the Israelis suspect that Hezbollah was involved.
There has been persistent violence in Nigeria over the last few months as adherents of the group “Boko Haram” (“western education is sacrilegious”) have stepped up attacks in the northern parts of the country. The tension between the Muslim north and the Christian south of Nigeria is long-standing and ever simmering. But the recent escalation of violence raises worries about the integrity of the state as a whole.
A new dimension has been entered in the Israeli-Iranian dispute as the Israelis shot down a drone that entered its air space from the Mediterranean. No one knows who launched the drone, but if either Hamas or Hezbollah did, they most likely received the drone from Iran. The Israeli response will probably be determined by the type of drone it was and whether it was carrying explosives.
The damage inflicted by imperialism never really ends, although its manifestations evolve over time. A court has recently given Kenyans tortured by the British in the 1950s the right to sue their tormentors. The most telling aspect of this decision is that those Kenyans will finally be given a voice, something which is likely more important to them than revenge.
Venezuelans will have a chance in their national election on Sunday to choose between President Chavez and his opponent, Henrique Capriles. This is the first genuinely competitive election in Venezuela since Chavez came to power in 1999. It’s hard to predict the outcome, but Chavez is genuinely popular among the poorest sectors of Venezuelan society and he also controls most of the news sources in the country. A Capriles victory would be a stunning upset.
The nation-state continues to get rattled. First, Scotland wants its independence; then, Catalonia from Spain; now, Venice, from Italy.
A few weeks ago I posted an article by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times who posted an essay written by a Chinese scholar on China’s claims to the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. He has now posted a response by a Japanese scholar. The contrast in claims is dramatic.
The tension between protecting free speech and protecting the sensibilities of religious adherents is a difficult task, but one that needs to be resolved. One aspect of the debate is the purpose of anti-blasphemy laws: are they to protect the faith, or to protect the authority of those who uphold the faith? The Daily Beast has a fascinating essay on the nature of this problem.
Greek citizens have stormed the Defense Ministry in a clear sign that Greeks are losing patience with the austerity programs. The rhetoric coming out of Greece is getting both heated and dire. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel is slated to visit Greece on Tuesday. I wonder what kind of reception she will receive?
The economic sanctions against Iran seem to be having a very dramatic effect: the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, has dropped precipitously in recent days. There are reports of scattered protests within Iran against the economic pressures, but it is not at all clear whether these pressures will induce any sort of change in Iranian nuclear policy.
European states are not the only ones in the world imposing austerity policies. Argentina, in the midst of a serious financial crisis, has ordered severe pays cuts on a number of public employees. These cuts led to large protests by security forces throughout the country. The financial crisis is truly a global phenomenon and the variety of responses to it is remarkable. Nonetheless, the protests form a dangerous pattern shared by many countries.
There is usually a generational pattern of leadership in most countries: a small cohort from every generation usually dominates politics, until that cohort gets too old and the baton is passed on to a new cohort. Such was the case in the US when President Clinton won election from George H.W. Bush in 1992. The US is currently in a very young generational cohort. Not so in Asia, where the old generation is reaching the end of the line. The new generational cohort is quite interesting, and prides itself on being comprised of political “outsiders.”
Drones have become one of the most important weapons in the US arsenal, but also one of the most problematic. We actually know very little about how drones are uses, but extremists in Pakistan have been a frequent target. Their use in Pakistan has infuriated many Pakistanis, not only because of a strong belief that innocents have been killed, but also because they are an affront to sovereignty. The BBC has an excellent report about how the use of drones has affected Pakistan.
There has been a strong undercurrent of great power involvement in the violence in Syria, and the spillover into surrounding countries has always been a great concern. Turkey has finally responded to cross-border attacks, and the fear is that now NATO, of which Turkey is a member, will be drawn into the conflict. Such are the consequences of UN impotence.
For the Mount Holyoke students who are now looking forward to Mountain Day during winter, here is the latest forecast for the South Hadley area (southern New England). It appears as if we should order some extra snuggies.
We’ve talked briefly in class about the effects of the Federal Reserve’s policy of “Quantitative Easing” (QE3). In class, I indicated that the fear of QE3 is that it will generate inflation in the future (when consumer demand returns) because the policy is, in effect, printing money that has no substantive backing. The Federal Reserve (and the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan) are creating a situation where there will be too much money chasing too few goods, leading to price increases. Many financial analysts are convinced that this will happen and are raising cries of alarm. Perhaps the most disturbing alarm comes from an analyst at Societe Generale, one of the world’s largest banks.
Over the last three weeks it has been clear that President Obama has determined that he will not pay a serious political price by moving a little further away from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The most dramatic evidence of this calculation was the decision by Obama not to meet with Netanyahu during the recent UN meeting–usually an American President would relish the favorable press from such a meeting so close to an election. Obviously, Obama believes that those who most fervently support Netanyahu will vote for Romney no matter what he, Obama, does. Now the speculation begins: will Obama punish Netanyahu for being so outspoken about Iran during the election, particularly in a way that so obviously benefited Romney.
The issue of freedom of speech is one issue that divides liberal societies from many other societies in the world. Liberal societies tend to protect speech attacking religion because the separation of church and state is one of the bedrock principles of liberalism. Abdulaziz H. Al-Fahad has written a nuanced critiqued of this position, linking the recent anti-American protests in Muslim countries to the process of globalization.
The British newspaper, The Guardian, has apparently seen a private memo from a US official to various European governments warning of negative consequences if those governments support the Palestinian bid for observer status in the UN. Private memos are generally used when the government involved does not wish to take a public position on a matter, and prefers to be able to (truthfully) deny the policy in question. But the memo suggests that the US is taking the status of the Palestinians as a very serious matter, and will push hard to prevent Palestinian standing in the UN.
One of the most serious issues facing the world right now is the likely loss of biodiversity due to human activities. No where is this trend more apparent, or more tragic, than the loss of the African great apes because of the growing human encroachment into their habitats. Human populations are increasingly running out of space due to the limited amount of arable land. How to protect the great apes and to accommodate the human population is a seemingly intractable question, but one that will have a default answer soon unless strong action is taken quickly.
Turkey’s role in the Middle East and in the world more generally has changed during the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. It is now more assertive and determined to chart its own course. In the process of change, Erdogan has also walked a delicate line running a secular government with a large Muslim population. In the aftermath of many of the recent changes in the Arab world, many are now looking to Turkey as a possible model for governance.
The Syrian tragedy continues as the fighting reaches deep into the city of Aleppo. Perversely, the spread of violence to the cities makes outside humanitarian intervention less likely. The key military assets of the Security Council members are too powerful to use in dense, heavily populated areas without a high probability of civilian casualties. It seems as if the only option now is for Assad to either be assassinated by one of his inner circle, or for him to get asylum in another state. Neither option appears likely soon.
Kenya has bravely faced the fighters of al-Shahbab who had ruled for many years in the neighboring state of Somalia. It now seems, however, that al-Shahbab is counterattacking in Kenya raising the possibility of a wider war in East Africa.
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