Putin has been busy - but I would imagine there is still quite a way to go before the technology is perfected.
Russia has successfully tested a modernised anti-ballistic missile at a range in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, its defence ministry says. The A-135 missile is said to have successfully hit a training target.
The Guardian have published an edited version of a speech Hans Blix gave last week at the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. The full text can be found here.
His criticism of the American right is telling:
We also see an intense and large-scale campaign of vilification, depicting the UN as “corrupt” because the oil-for-food programme – instituted and supervised by the security council and its most powerful members, including the US – enabled Iraq, the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of products to Iraq, to siphon off money fraudulently and pass it on illegally to Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The fraud, although widely suspected and estimated at about a billion dollars a year in the media, was not easy for the programme administration to track down and prove. The council and its members saw it with open eyes just as they saw the billions that flowed to Saddam from oil exports to neighbouring states. The programme functioned as a reasonably effective break against the import of weapons and dual-use items, which was its major objective. Today it serves as a campaign platform against the UN. So long as the current climate remains, it is doubtful if any meaningful discussion about UN reform can be pursued.
This all comes around the time of the latest UN report – billed as one of the most important since the founding of the organisation.
James Fallows in the Atlantic asks the question posed on here not so long ago – will Iran be next in line? A subscription is required for this lengthy piece…
Prospect has an interesting interview with uber-hawk, Paul Wolfowitz. He makes some curious remarks. Go have a look.
Anne-Marie Slaughter in the IHT, with a piece on the EU. She cites the number of times both George Bush and John Kerry have referred to the European Union – and it’s not often. This bit is good:
Suppose the citizens of Ohio or Oregon or Alabama understood that the EU has a larger population and gross domestic product than the United States. That English is widely and increasingly spoken as a second language. That most of the students who are either no longer applying to American schools or unable to enter the United States for a lack of a visa are choosing European universities instead. And that EU representatives are thick on the ground in many developing countries, both trolling for business and doling out aid and advice.
Suppose further that at a time when one of the most important issues in the U.S. election is which candidate is better placed to “win the peace” in Iraq and Afghanistan, American voters knew something about the EU model of building democracy – through assistance, admonition and accession negotiations. Americans would not likely believe that the prospect of EU membership, even if such a thing were possible, would have convinced the Taliban or Saddam Hussein to lay down their arms. But they might think that after the first flush of military victory the EU could teach America quite a lot about the exercise of civilian rather than military power.
EU citizens may be dubious about the EU’s effectiveness, particularly in political and military affairs. They may be unhappy about the democracy deficit. And they may be skeptical about their new constitution. But they know that the EU is an entity distinct from “Europe,” a rising entity of their own creation that is not simply an imitation of the United States. As a result, American voters are genuinely living in a different world from their European counterparts.
This trans-Atlantic divide results not from policies but from the most basic perceptions of relevant political actors in the international system. It should worry us all, well beyond the election.
Nick Kristof praises the US president for his action on Darfur, but laments the tardy and inadequate response to the overall situation. He pointedly asks if a mediocre effort saved so many lives, how many lives could a full and immediate international response have saved? And to those out there who seem to either dislike or even despise the United Nations, read the figures:
Even within Darfur itself, the UN World Food Program managed to get food to 1.3 million people last month out of the 2 million who need it.
Sterling work indeed. Do people still think the UN is a waste of time?
George A. Lopez, Director of Policy Studies at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and David Cortright, President of the Fourth Freedom Forum and Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute, argue in favour of the sanctions regime in Iraq during the 1990’s.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, they propose that far from being a complete disaster, the sanctions regime, and the subsequent introduction of “smart� sanctions, was a resounding success.
They base their argument largely on the fact that the UN inspection teams, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC, were successful in both destroying existing weaponry (as evidenced by the non-existence of WMD after the invasion) – and in monitoring the Iraqi regime to a sufficient extent that a new weapons program could not be implemented. The sanctions were essentially the stick with which the inspectors could threaten the regime, while the carrot was the lifting of sanctions.
The sanctions regime was also successful in stopping Saddam reconstituting his conventional weapons, as evidenced by the lack of medium to heavy weaponry after the March 2003 invasion.
Lopez and Cortright are quite convincing, while also being critical of the current administration, they note:
Having failed to understand how sanctions and inspections worked in Iraq, the United States risks repeating its mistake in the future. The crisis of intelligence that pundits and politicians should be considering is not why so many officials overestimated what was wrong in Iraq; it is why they ignored so much readily available evidence of what was right about existing policies. By disregarding the success of inspections and sanctions, Washington discarded an effective system of containment and deterrence and, on the basis of faulty intelligence and wrong assumptions, launch a preventive war in its place.
Critics might point out that the war in Iraq had the effect of getting Libya into line, and abandoning its WMD program. But Lopez and Cortright deal with this issue too:
The case of Libya shows that sanctions can indeed influence regime behaviour in the long term. Muammar al-Qadaffi was once as much an outlaw as Saddam Hussein. But over time, and under the weigh of international sanctions, Libya accepted international norms, ended its support of terrorism, and gave up its clandestine efforts to acquire or build WMD. President Bush and other supporters of the war in Iraq have attributed Libya’s dramatic turnaround to what Representative Tom Lantos (D-Calif) termed the “pedagogic value� of the war. But in reality, Libya’s reversal began years earlier. UN sanctions during the 1990s brought about the negotiations that convinced Libya to turn over suspected terrorists for trial in The Hague.
Are Lopez and Cortright correct? Could the introduction of smart sanctions brought about a more prosperous Iraq while preventing the spread of WMD? And would this have brought an eventual end to Saddam’s regime without the need for invasion? We will never know.
Viktor Yushchenko, candidate in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential elections, makes some interesting points about the future of the Ukraine, and worries concerning the expanded European Union.
He states:
While welcoming the enlargement of the European Union, Ukrainians are anxious about European integration halting at our western frontier and in fact creating a new dividing line.
Our neighbors in Belarus, Moldova and Russia feel the same way. Our anxiety is also shared by Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic states – neighbors who understand the gravity of problems resulting from the incomplete unification of Europe and the emergence of a new phenomenon: a bipolar Europe
There is an interesting concept. What is also interesting is that Ukraine has a population of some 48 million people. A healthy injection of people in the future, for Europe’s aging population. A bipolar Europe is a worry, but Europe really has to decide where exactly Europe stops and Asia/Middle East begin.
Is there ever a case for EU borders extending all the way to the Eastern parts of Belarus and Ukraine? Turkey will almost certainly join within the next 6 years, meaning that an EU country would border Iraq – a strange thought indeed.
It’s all quite hard to call, but important decision on the future expansion of Europe will have to be made.
Bernard Bot, minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands and the current president of the EU Council of Ministers writes about Europe’s efforts in relation to Darfur.
If the European Union talks to the rebels, we will declare a unilateral cease-fire,â€? said Vice President Ali Osman Taha of Sudan after his meeting with a Dutch government delegation visiting Khartoum on Jan. 30. This was one of the first results of the EU’s diplomatic involvement in the crisis in Darfur, an involvement that began long before the international media became interested in events there.
Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 have I been as frightened by a single news story as I was by the revelation late last year that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program, had been selling nuclear technology and services on the black market. The story began to break last summer, after U.S. and British intelligence operatives intercepted a shipment of parts for centrifuges (which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs as well as fuel) on its way from Dubai to Libya. The centrifuges turned out to have been designed by Khan, and before long investigators had uncovered what the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has called a “Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation”—a decades-old illicit market in nuclear materials, designs, technologies, and consulting services, all run out of Pakistan.
Jiang Zemin, China’s military chief and senior-most leader, has told Communist Party officials that he plans to resign, prompting an intense and so far inconclusive struggle for control of the armed forces, two people with leadership connections say.
Jiang’s offer to relinquish authority as chairman of the Central Military Commission potentially gives Hu Jintao, who became Communist Party chief and president in 2002 and is now vice chairman of the military commission, a chance to become China’s undisputed top leader, commanding the state, the army and the ruling party.
But people here who were informed about a bargaining session under way at a government compound in western Beijing said it remained unclear whether Jiang genuinely intended to step aside or if he would do so on terms acceptable to Hu.
I wonder how this one will play out.
Dan Drezner links to an informative article in the New York Times.
Drezner sings her praises, perhaps correctly, she notes:
American military supremacy remains unquestioned, regional officials say. But the United States appears to be on the losing side of trade patterns. China is now South Korea’s biggest trade partner, and two years ago Japan’s imports from China surpassed those from the United States. Current trends show China is likely to top American trade with Southeast Asia in just a few years.
China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, as much as threw down the gauntlet last year, saying he believed that China’s trade with Southeast Asia would reach $100 billion by 2005, just shy of the $120 billion in trade the United States does with the region.
Mr. Wen’s claim was no idle boast. Almost no country has escaped the pull of China’s enormous craving for trade and, above all, energy and other natural resources to fuel its still galloping expansion and growing consumer demand. Though the Chinese government’s growth target for 2004 is 7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for 2003, few are worried about a slowdown soon.
Will Pfaff muses on the situation developing in Iran. There seems to be increasing media comment on a likely intervention by US forces in Iran – prompted in part by stories that Iraqi Shia militias are being armed with advanced weaponry by the Iranian government. Worries over their nuclear facilities are also making headlines, while Israel considers its position. Pfaff notes:
Israel reportedly contemplates a unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. It would want America’s permission, so it needs to get it while it is sure Bush is president.
The recent decision in Israel to distribute antiradiation kits to people living in areas that might be contaminated by “an accident” at its own nuclear weapons facility is aimed at American opinion. The indirect message is that Israel is preparing for an Iranian attack on Israel’s nuclear weapons manufacturing installations; hence, pre-emption is necessary.
Israel’s basic position is forthright and simple to understand. Iran, like Iraq before it, is a major – and hostile – neighboring Islamic state. If the danger it potentially presents can be removed without disproportionate political or military costs, Israel – under Ariel Sharon – will probably do it.
The American case against Iran is entirely different. Its rests on the neoconservative notion that every society instinctively yearns to become an American-style democracy, and would do so if its despotic leaders were removed, by force if necessary. As the world’s leading democracy, the United States has an obligation to propagate democracy. Overturning despots is therefore a duty, and the result will be a better world. The argument, of course, is familiar: It is why the United States invaded Iraq.
Another piece by Martin van Creveld goes into more detail on the Israeli position.
A summary of the essays in Foreign Policy:
“Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds” noted Albert Einstein. Ideas can be good things, but sometimes, as in Einstein’s case, good ideas can lead to the creation of destructive power. Ideas are benign things, but some ideas once applied can result in serious consequences.
Atomic weapons were developed some 60 years ago, and their development has lead to the possibility of humankind having an ability to destroy itself. But looking to the future, what ideas may effect us in the coming years, what developments that are now being made will pose a threat to the future of humanity?
The latest edition of the US periodical, Foreign Policy, features eight essays by some of the top political and scientific thinkers today. The magazine, funded by the Carnegie Endowment for International peace, asked what ideas, if they were embraced, might pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity in the future. The writers provide a range of answers, some more surprising and obscure than others.
Robert Wright, visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values and Seymour Milstein senior fellow at the New America Foundation, believes that any moral crusade on ‘evil’, or the concept of ‘evil’, maybe a significant threat in coming years. Writing from an ethical perspective he believes that George Bush’s vow to “rid the world of evil”, and declaring Iran, Iraq, North Korea and others as part of an “axis of evil”, are dangerous ideas.
In taking this idea to task, Wright asks pointed questions into the over-simplification of evil into a black and white scenario. The world is just not that simple. If, he says, you believe all terrorists to be evil, then you’ll be less inclined to fret about the civil liberties of suspected terrorists, or treating accused or even convicted terrorists decently in prison. And merely calling Iraq, Iran or North Korea “evil” says nothing about the entirely different situations in those countries. What if these policies actually increase the number of terrorists as Muslims at home and abroad feel persecuted?
Wright believes he may have a remedy – accept that evil is something at work in all of us. If this is the case then the world does not look like the Lord of the Rings, where the bad guys are hideously ugly for the sake of easy identification but is instead more ambiguous, that evil is something human and just about anybody can play host to it.
Paul Davies, professor of natural philosophy at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, has a different take on the future. He believes that some of the more dangerous ideas come from who we are, our genetics, psychology and our own free will.
The belief that we can decide our own fate, and that we are the authors of our own destiny is, he believes, something that is being thrown into doubt by an ever increasing amount of scientific data.
Modern genetics has undermined the belief that we are born with freedom to shape our destinies – evolutionary psychologists root personal qualities like altruism or aggression in our genes. Biologists like Richard Dawkins believes we are essentially slaves to the will of our genes. So too with memetics, the mental equivalent of genes – beliefs, ideas, fashions are essentially memes, and we are merely the vehicles for passing these on to other people.
And how does Davies belief these ideas can be dangerous? There is, he says, an acute risk that these ideas will be oversimplified and used to justify and anything-goes attitude to criminal activity, ethnic conflict or even genocide. If you thought eugenics was bad, imagine a world where people do not believe in free will.
Samantha Power, lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is fervent in her views on the idea of the future of international peace and security. Her view is that the United Nations, since its foundation, has been continuously eroded in its power, and any further erosion set a dangerous path for the future.
Unless, she believes, the UN is reformed to more accurately reflect the present, we will see it fall into disrepair, much as happened to the previous League of Nations. The Permanent membership of the Second World War victors is anachronistic – and only reflects the views of 29 per cent of the world’s population, and entirely excludes the Muslim world. A hobbled together UN, as it presently stands, cannot face the 21st century’s deadly transnational challenges, and without a strong and reformed UN, we will endanger the peace and stability of the world.
Eric J. Hobsbawm, emeritus professor of economic and social history at Birkbeck, University of London, is scathing in his views about current efforts, such as those underway in Iraq and Afghanistan, to spread democracy throughout the world.
The idea of powerful states spreading democracy is something rather trendy at the moment. It believes that spreading standardised Western democracy and believe that it will succeed everywhere, remedy transnational dilemmas and bring peace is simply foolish.
It is not only dangerous and foolhardy to attempt it on other states, but also dangerous for the states attempting it. He believes that electoral democracy and representative assemblies really had little do with decisions to invade Iraq, it was instead decided by small groups of people in private – a dangerous precedent for Western democracies.
Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has something of a science-fiction type scenario facing us in the future.
‘Transhumanism’ or humans that have been genetically altered, or altered using technology such as microchips could create huge problems for humanity in the future. As technology develops we will increasingly use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter, less prone to violence and maybe even live longer.
But what happens when bit by bit, a group of humans become less and less ‘human’ through the use of technology? Will the phrase “all men are created equal” still be valid? It is a dangerous prospect, since modifying what is a very complex animal can have unforeseen consequences. All kinds of ethical dilemmas will come to pass should some humans decide to ‘improve’ themselves, essentially giving rise to a whole new set of racial and social problems.
Fukuyama urges caution, prescribing humility in the face of the awesome possibilities science is giving us.
Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freud distinguished service professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago – and her thoughts on future dangers center on religious intolerance.
She cites various recent examples such as the killing of several hundred Muslims in India in 2002, or a worrying rise in anti-semitic attacks in Europe. These are symptoms of something that could become an immense problem in the future. Religion, she says, helps people to cope with loss and fear of death, it teaches moral principles and motivated people to abide by them. But because religions are such powerful sources of morality and community then can often manifest themselves by imposing hierarchy and indeed oppression. Clinging onto a religion one believes to be the right one, inevitably could lead to conflict, as it has in the past.
As a remedy, Nussbaum suggests greater emphasis on using rhetoric to support pluralism and toleration, much as Martin Luther King used it to help people imagine equality and see difference as a source of richness rather than fear. Our leaders must have greater respect for the plurality of religions, or a path to religious intolerance could lead to a dangerous future.
Alice M. Rivlin is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a visiting professor at Georgetown University. She was director of the Office of Management in the first Clinton administration and vice chair of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 1996 to 1999.
Her warning: the US needs a tighter fiscal policy, or the consequences could be devastating to the world economy. Currently the US national debt is at record levels, and the US still believes that the ordinary rules of global finance don’t apply to them.
The current problem is much worse now than it was under Reagan, who, like Bush Jnr, lowered taxes to stimulate growth while increasing public spending. Now the US is two decades closer to the baby boom generation, those born after WW2, retiring. Their retirement will cost a huge amount of money, and couple with this the US has gone from being the world’s largest creditor to the largest debtor, with a substantial portion of debt being held by Asian and European central banks.
It will be Americans that will have to pay for this debt with higher interested rates and slower growth – and this means slower growth for the rest of the world. In a worse case scenario the dollar would plunge with a migration of capital out of the US, which in turn would devastate developing countries. The fiscal policies of the next administration in the US will have huge consequences for the future.
Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International and author of The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. The idea that worries him the most for the future is the idea of anti-Americanism.
The rise of anti-Americanism, he says, really took hold after the election of Bush in 2000. In that year, 75 per cent of Indonesians considered themselves to be pro-American. Now the figure is 80 per cent anti-American.
Increasingly anti-Americanism is becoming the way people think about their position in the world. But if anti-Americanism continues to grow and fester it could be an idea that is dangerous for humanity.
So ideas that trouble the minds of some of the world’s greatest thinkers cover a wide range of interests and viewpoints – but one thing is certain, there are many more dangerous ideas on the way, some of which we haven’t even imagined yet.
Chavez has claimed victory…what now for Venezuela?