Governments and the media need to wake up to the fact that east Asia can increasingly look after itself and doesn’t need or want western help
The mood music has changed. David Miliband has fallen silent. The railing of John Humphrys on the Today programme has subsided. The agenda has changed. A week ago it was all blood and thunder, western righteousness and the imperative of some kind of military action.
Then suddenly, on Monday, the penny finally dropped and the bubble of bluster burst. The idea of helicopters from assorted western warships moored off the southern coast of Myanmar (Burma to the Foreign Office and the British media, but few others in the world) dropping aid from a great height over the Irrawaddy delta – dismissed by aid organisations as counter-productive and even dangerous to the local population – died a quiet death.
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A key appointment at the World Bank shows the importance of Beijing to the institutions it will soon come to dwarf
In June Justin Lin Yifu, a Beijing professor, will take up the post of chief economist at the World Bank. Nothing could be a clearer sign of the times. This is the number two job in one of the two major international economic institutions, the other being the International Monetary Fund. Earlier incumbents have included the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and the UK’s Nicholas Stern. Previously the top jobs in these two outfits have always been shared between Americans and Europeans. Lin’s appointment thus marks a major break with political tradition. Hitherto there have been hardly any appointments of Chinese to senior positions in the major international organisations. China’s burgeoning importance, however, is set to change this state of affairs, with Lin’s appointment likely to set the tone for the future.
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Tata’s purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover signals that India and China are turning the old hierarchy of global trade on its head
The cost to Tata of purchasing Land Rover and Jaguar may have been small, but its wider symbolic significance is enormous. Western societies are slowly becoming used to the idea that India and China are set to emerge as major economic powers, but there remains an underlying assumption that the process starts in the economic and technological foothills and only much later reaches the summit.
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Around a decade ago, Bernie Ecclestone, the guy who runs Formula One, began to make ominous noises about the prospects for F1 in Europe, suggesting that the sport’s future instead lay in the East. Now Bernie is no mug – you don’t become as rich as he is without being very smart. Not least, he is perceptive at spotting new trends. He recognised the potential of TV broadcasting and its associated rights before virtually anyone else in Europe. And he was right about the growing importance of East Asia (though hardly the first to notice it).
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The source of the current tension between Moscow and the west is US and Nato military provocation
Those who feel a certain sense of deja vu about the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the west can be forgiven. But this is no simple return to the cold war. Russia is far weaker than even the atrophied superpower of the late 80s. Its population has been more than halved, its gross domestic product halved, and living standards diminished. It simply does not have the capacity to be what it once was.
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The French presidential favourite’s pandering to the far right is indulged because of his pro-US stance and neo-liberalism
It is a disturbing mark of our times that Ségolène Royal enjoys such little support from the media and politicians on this side of the Channel, notwithstanding her highly credible performance in Wednesday’s TV debate. Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be their overwhelmingly preferred choice. Downing Street, unsurprisingly, is backing him: Tony Blair prefers the right as always – Silvio Berlusconi, José María Aznar, Angela Merkel, George Bush. David Cameron is supporting Sarkozy. So is the Economist. Matthew Parris, the Times columnist, is backing Royal, but only for the perverse reason that France is not yet ready for Sarkozy, but a Royal presidency will prepare the ground for his subsequent triumph.
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Vietnam traumatised the US but left its power intact; Iraq, however, will be far more serious for the superpower
Just a month after the American electorate delivered a resounding rebuff to the Bush Iraq policy, the great and the good – in the guise of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) – have subjected that policy to a withering critique. The administration has had the political equivalent of a car crash. George Bush is being routinely condemned as one of the worst presidents ever, and his Iraq policy no longer enjoys the support of a large swath of the American establishment. The neoconservatives suddenly find themselves isolated and embattled: Rumsfeld has been sacked, Cheney has gone quiet, the likes of Richard Perle are confined to the sidelines. The president is on his own and it is difficult to see how Bush can avoid moving towards the ISG position. The political map is being redrawn with extraordinary alacrity.
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Bush’s failure to grasp the limits of US global power has led to an adventurism for which his successors will pay a heavy price
Just a few years ago, the world was in thrall to the idea of American power. The neoconservative agenda not only infused the outlook of the White House, it also dominated the global debate about the future of international relations. Following 9/11, we had, in quick succession, the “war on terror”, the “axis of evil”, the idea of a new American empire, the overarching importance of military power, the notion and desirability of regime change, the invasion of Iraq, and the proposition that western-style democracy was relevant and applicable to every land in the world, starting with the Middle East. Much of that has unwound with a speed that barely anyone anticipated. With the abject failure of the American occupation of Iraq – to the point where even the American electorate now recognises the fact – the neoconservative era would appear to be in its death throes.
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Israel’s long-term future lies in connecting with its Arab neighbours, not a western superpower thousands of miles away
This has been a war that did not happen by accident. The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah was merely the pretext, long since forgotten in the absurdly disproportionate response by the Israelis, and the death and destruction that their country has wrought on Lebanon. Israel has, throughout its short existence, lived by the sword, safe in the knowledge that its military power, as an honorary western nation, is far superior to that of its enemies. Israel has managed to justify this behaviour, in the eyes of the world (or at least the west), by two means: first, the insistence that its very survival always hangs by a thin thread; and second, the remorse felt by the west over the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust.
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As developing countries acquire a powerful voice, the US shuns multilateral trade deals because it can no longer get its own way
The freer movement of trade and capital has been a fundamental characteristic of the past 25 years of globalisation. The Doha round, initiated in 2001, was the latest attempt to keep the process rolling. It now looks doomed. The deadlock between the US, the EU, Japan and the developing countries seems final. And with the fast-track powers of the US president – which enable trade agreements to bypass Congress – scheduled to come to an end in 2007, any agreement later than this year will be subject to the unpredictability and delay of Capitol Hill. In other words, it is now or never, and it looks more and more like never.
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