Global Archive

Turkey and Greece have been taking baby steps towards improved relations lately, so the Turkish shipment of humanitarian aid in the aftermath of the Greek earthquake is hardly a surprise. The humanist in me continues to applaud the way countries manage to put aside their territorial disputes in response to natural disasters. The cynic in me wonders how long it will be before the impact of such gestures wears off. There’s also a case to be made that there are any number of slowly unfolding natural disasters that ought to, but don’t, motivate the same sort of international solidarity. Ronald […]

If you haven’t read today’s WPR cover piece by Shawn Brimley and Vikram Singh, you should. I’ve been convinced for a while that more than any individual issues, or even collection of issues, this election is going to boil down to a generational choice. I don’t know the demographics of U.S. voters well enough to know who that really favors. That said, the logic of the piece seems to argue for Obama without mentioning his name, although that might not be the authors’ intention, and it might be my reading of it. I’m curious to hear from anyone who disagrees. […]

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael “Buzz” Moseley has resigned his post, and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne’s resignation is coming next, according to numerous reports (Air Force Times, Reuters, AP). Noah Shachtman at Danger Room has the background: The move isn’t exactly a shocker. The Air Force has come under fire for everything from mishandling nukes to misleading ad campaigns to missing out on the importance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For months, the Air Force’s leadership has been on the brink of open conflict with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. In […]

Thomas Barnett compares international opinion on globalization to the wealth divide created by America’s 19th century industrialization. Barnett’s a big believer in the rise of the global middle class as globalization’s meal ticket. I suspect he’s right about what will drive globalization’s supporters, but I wonder whether the resentment caused by the stagnation (or in some cases rollback) of the developed world’s middle class won’t outweigh the eagerness of the developing world to accede to it.

Max Bergman floats the idea over at Democracy Arsenal. Thoughts?

The LA Times article Judah cites in his previous post frames opposition to the Lisbon Treaty inIreland and elsewhere as largely a matter of a backlash against globalization.I obviously haven’t done any polling, but at first glance this smells to me like the spin of EU constitution proponents, and seems to seriously underestimate the role some of theconstitution’s more undemocratic provisions play in opposition to thedocument. And the process by which Europe’s political elites have tried toget around the inconvenient fact that voters often tend to reject giving away their political prerogatives to the Brussels bureaucracy only reinforcesthe often justified […]