Prime Minister Netanyahu laid out Israel’s “red line” on Iranian nuclear development in his speech to the UN General Assembly: 240 kg. of 20% enriched uranium. There are two points that are relevant to this threshold. First, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran already has 189 kg of 20% enriched uranium. Second, one cannot build a bomb from 20% enriched uranium–you have to enrich above 90% to attain a critical mass for a bomb. So the “red line” will be reached next spring, even though it will not signal the capability to build an atomic bomb.
One of the most extraordinary innovations of the technological revolution is the development of digital fabrication, or 3-D printing. Essentially, digital fabrication is quite literally printing out objects that used to be assembled by hand. Just a moment’s reflection is enough to appreciate what such a change will do to the world of work (and then think about how you would fit into such a world). It is a long essay with a lot of detail, so I won’t ask any quiz questions about it. But I recommend it highly.
Our understanding of history is always changing, and the last 10 years have seen some remarkable revisions to imperial history. Bernard Porter’s essay on the British Empire is a great example of hos we are constantly refining our understanding of what empires are.
There were dueling speeches at the UN General Assembly: Mahmoud Abbas spoke on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Assembly as Prime Minister of Israel. What was most interesting is how the speeches really didn’t address the same issues. Abbas argued for observer status for the Palestinian Authority in the UN and Netanyahu emphasized the nuclear threat from Iran.
Much is being made about the tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama. They are real, but US-Israeli discord is nothing new. The Christian Science Monitor has a good article on previous periods of strain between the two countries.
The Syrian tragedy only promises to get worse as many expect about 700,000 refugees to flee the country. The refugees will be a serious burden in surrounding states, and they will also be, as is usually the case with refugee camps, terrible places to live. The predict by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees also signals a determination that the international community will continue to fail in its responsibility to address the violence in Syria.
We tend to think that climate change poses a future risk, but some analysts are asserting that climate change is already causing economic losses and leading to deaths. Such an assertion is difficult to prove, but the study raises some important questions about how we go about assessing costs and benefits of different courses of action. The study is worthy of further examination.
The protests have spread from Spain to Greece, as people argue against the further implementation of austerity. It appears that the “troika” (the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International monetary Fund (IMF)) will delay, however, a decision about further austerity measures until after the US election. The suspicion is that the US has requested the delay in order to avoid any sort of economic crisis that might disrupt the chances of President Obama’s re-election. Such is the power of the largest contributor to the IMF.
The Asahi Shimbun (a Japanese newspaper) ran a great article on the Japanese position on the Diaoyu/Senkaku island dispute.vvNotice how history plays such an important role in the interpretation of what is going on. Here’s the Chinese side which is not nearly as fully developed. The good news is that both sides have decided to talk more intensively about their disagreements.
China has launched its first aircraft carrier, joining 9 other nation-states with such a vessel. Carriers are probably the most complex military weapons ever developed and it will be some time before China develops the manpower to use it effectively. Nonetheless, the capability inherent in a carrier signals a dramatic increase in Chinese power. Given the current dispute with Japan, one can be certain that the launching raises the tension in East Asia.
Spanish protests against the austerity measures demanded by the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the IMF turned violent today. In such cases, it is always difficult to determine what changed the peaceful protest into a violent one, but we will get more information as the days pass. But one of the most important states in Spain, Catalonia, is going to hold a referendum on whether to secede from Spain, a move that the Spanish military has declared will be treated as “treason.” The stakes in Europe continue to get higher and international financial markets are beginning to show strain.
Global Post ran a story on President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly and then compiled a number of tweets from the Middle East about the speech. The tweets make for fascinating reading.
We don’t much about what happened, but Reuters is reporting that a “riot” broke out in a Foxconn factory in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company that produces most of the components for Apple’s iPhone. The company has been plagued by reports of subhuman working conditions for a number of years, and it seems as if this outbreak is associated with the working conditions. There is a global movement to boycott Apple products because of the poor working conditions–globalization works in many different ways. Nonetheless, Apple has just sold 5 million new iPhone 5s.
The Chinese-Japanese confrontation over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands has led to calls in both countries for boycotts of the other. Foreign Policy ran a post on how each country would be affected by such boycotts. It seems as if there could be serious consequences; but it also seems as if there are ways around such boycotts if the will to do so is present.
Take a break: Here’s a link to the National Geographic Photography contest. Needless to say, these won’t be on the quiz. But enjoy the beauty of the world.
The quiz on Wednesday, 26 September, will be on the notes on the Balance of Power (not the recommended reading–just the notes), and the blog entries from 20-24 September.
We’ve talked a great deal about the nation-state, and the realist belief that it is the be-all and end-all of world politics. But the nation-state itself is relatively plastic. The New York Times ran a post today that has a series of interactive maps about nation-states that could fall apart and the new nation-states that might emerge. It is a fascinating series of maps and analysis that I recommend highly.
Diplomacy is usually the practice of saying bad things nicely (telling someone to go to hell, but make them look forward to the trip). The new President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, however, believes in rather blunt talk. His critique of American foreign policy is unsparing and deserves to be taken seriously.
Iran has announced that female college students will be prohibited from majoring in 77 different majors, including accounting and engineering. The decision offends the liberal, Western view of non-discrimination, but is consistent with the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It will be difficult to assess what the reaction within Iran will be to this decision.
There’s not much reporting on the war in Afghanistan. Since President Obama has vowed to pull out all US combat troops in 2014, many simply regard the war as “over.” Nothing could be further from the truth for the US and NATO soldiers in the country, and certainly not for the civilian population. The end game to wars are, however, very difficult and we have witnessed the emergence of a new phase in the war: attacks on the NATO troops by Afghan soldiers who are ostensibly working together. This breakdown suggests that the war should end more quickly, but it also suggests that the end will hardly be peaceful or stable.
Simon Johnson and Peter Boone, both quite prominent economists, have published an essay which I have seen cited three times today. In short, it rapidly has become the main stream explanation for what is going on in the global economy. It is a very intelligent essay, but we’ll see how long it stands up to scrutiny. It is particularly grim (most of the headlines associated with it contain the word “doomsday”). Some of the analysis is difficult to follow, so you should just skim the article for the central argument.
The situation in the West Bank seems to be deteriorating quite rapidly. The economic supporters of the Palestinian Authority are being less generous toward Fatah (the wing of the Palestinian movement that recognizes the right of Israel to exist) and more generous toward Hamas in the Gaza Strip (and which has yet to recognize the state of Israel). This dynamic is troubling since an economic breakdown in the West Bank would likely lead to violent protests.
For my colleagues in the UMass class, here’s the song I mentioned in the discussion about King Leopold and the Congo. This is Randy Newman’s interpretation of the Bush/Cheney years and the decline of the American empire.
We’ve been following the Diaoyou/Senkaku dispute, and Nicholas Kristof has published a careful analysis of the Chinese and Japanese claims to the islands (in fairness, I should point out something that Kristof fails to do: he is married to a woman from China and may be less than completely objective on the issue). As you can see from the essay, territorial claims rest heavily on historical evidence. As such, you should assess such claims knowing that not all the evidence may be being brought to bear–none of us has the ability to know what else might be in other archives.
The anti-US (and, to a lesser degree, anti-French) protests have spread to Pakistan, an important US ally. Relations between the US and Pakistan have been incredibly strained over the last few years, as President Obama has ordered many drone attacks within Pakistani territory in pursuit of fighters from Afghanistan. It is very hard to figure out how US-Pakistani relations can be repaired any time soon, but both sides desperately need each other for their foreign policy goals.
There has been a steady increase in violence along the Egyptian-Israeli border, and yesterday an Israeli soldier was killed in one of the attacks. Increased tensions between Egypt and Israel is the last thing the Middle East needs right now. It doesn’t appear as if the Egyptian government is in any way involved in the activities, but Israel will not accept any situation in which its southern border is unprotected. How Israel can fill that vacuum without violating Egyptian territory remains to be seen.
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