Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 23 September 2004
Surfacing carefullyÖ looking left and right before crossing the street . . .
And I'm off!
First, a technical announcement: Hope you like the black font. Now all you older types can stop sending me those emails about taxing your eyes.
Second, a legal announcement: I don't conduct book-signings in my office at the college. I very carefully avoid such "appearances." I am, however, willing to verify my identity as author of PNM through the free provision of handwriting samples to anyone who shows up unannounced. Any paper will do, though I have a preference for acid-free.
Got an email today from a Penn State student-journalist who wanted to share his reference to a core concept (actually, the Core concept) from PNM. He claims to be the first collegiate journalist to employ such an off-hand reference, and he may be right.
Here's the piece posted today in the Collegian:
My Opinion
Olympics keeps tabs on world economic progressThis past August I really enjoyed tuning in to the Summer Olympics in Athens. Aside from watching the United States clean house in just about every competition (except, of course, men's basketball), there were certainly some memorable scenes.
The Iraqi soccer team reaching the tournament's semifinal match and Robina Muqimyar and Friba Razayee becoming the first women from Afghanistan to compete in the Games gave their war-torn countries an enormous emotional uplift and restored pride to their homelands that had sorely suffered under their now-deposed dictatorial regimes.
The Olympics have always provided the perfect stage for such unforgettable stories and seemingly bring the world a little closer together in that warm, fuzzy, kumbaya kind of way. That's certainly all well and good.
But there's also another perspective from which you can look at the Olympics, which I think is probably not really noticed by your average Joe or Boris or Khalil.
Every morning during the Olympic fortnight, I'd go online to check the medal count. The usual top guns were always leading the pack: the U.S., the Russians, the Chinese and the Aussies. When the Games ended, the aforementioned countries made up the top four medal winners, respectively, followed by Germany, Japan, France, Italy, South Korea and Great Britain to round out the top ten.
I thought about those countries for a moment, put on my geo-political and political economy thinking caps, and began to realize why these particular countries were racking up all the medals. First of all, look at where these countries are located - or should I say not located. None of them are found in unstable regions where economies and means of communications are isolated from the rest of the world. They are part of, as U.S. Naval War College senior strategist Thomas Barnett terms it, the "functioning core" of globalized, interdependent states.
In other words, these countries' economies make the world go 'round. You cannot pick up the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times Business Day section without reading about the explosion of the Chinese and Russian economies. Despite China's recent dabbles in protectionist trade policy, China's GDP blazed ahead at annual rate of 9.1 percent last year. And in the face of creeping authoritarian rule from the Kremlin, the Russian economy was firing on all cylinders at 7.3 percent in 2003.
Not to be left out, the American economy, despite the ruminations of what Arnold Schwarzenegger would call "economic girlie-men," is also humming along quite nicely.
But what really drives the world economy is these countries' interdependence with one another.
Put the paper down for a moment and look at your Nike Airs or Adidas for a second. I'll betcha a large crab bisque at the Allen Street Grille that the shoe size label on the underside of your shoes' tongue reads "MADE IN CHINA." It is no surprise that the United States makes up China's biggest export market. And it certainly says a lot about the world's attitude toward China when the International Olympic Committee approved the Chinese capital of Beijing for the host for the 2008 Summer Games.
Russia has also joined this vast web of global economic interdependence in a radically short period of time. The financial news channel, CNBC, is airing from Russia this week.
This is certainly a tell-tale sign of the economic progress Russia has made over the last decade (the political side is another, unsettling story). I don't know if anyone could have imagined 20 years ago, during the height of Ronald Reagan's standoff with the Evil Empire, that Russia would be hosting America's premier financial news outlet attempting to attract new business and investment from Western CEOs. Not to be outdone in their contributions to the world economy are the Asian tigers of Japan and South Korea and the European heavy-hitters of Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy.
So is it any wonder why the top ten medal winners make up the majority of the movers and shakers of the global economy? For the good majority of cases, where you find globalization entrenched in a country's everyday life is where you'll find the most gold, silver and bronze medal winners. You can't argue with the numbers.
In Athens, Robina Muqimyar, one of two women who competed for Afghanistan, ran the 100 meter dash in 14.14 seconds. American Lauryn Williams clocked in at 10.96 seconds to win the silver medal. That difference is a gaping 3.18 seconds. That difference is symbolic of how far countries like Afghanistan have to go to catch up with everyone else.
But Muqimyar isn't worried. "I'm going to train harder and I hope to have the facilities in Afghanistan," she told the Associated Press. "I will really get ready for the 2008 Olympic Games. I hope I can win a medal, at least a bronze medal."
I hope she does, and that her country is as optimistic as she is.
Matthew Valkovic is a junior majoring in history and international politics and is a Collegian columnist.
It's an interesting point Mr. Valkovic makes.
Doing well at an Olympics points to a country on the rise, but hosting an Olympics isóI would argue todayóreally a sign of integration into the Core. Check out the hosts listed below for the Summer Games (not fair to include Winter Games, since the requirement for snow pretty much keeps you out of the Gap). No city that has ever hosted the modern games currently lies inside my Gap. Doesnít mean they were all secure inside the Core at the time (e.g., Moscow, Mexico City), nor that some didn't later lapse into war with one another (something great powers could still do before nukes), but it's an interesting correlation:
Athens (1896), Paris (1900), St. Louis (1904), London (1908), Stockholm (1912), Antwerp (1920), Paris (1924), Amsterdam (1928), Los Angeles (1932), Berlin (1936), London (1948), Helsinki (1952), Melbourne (1956), Rome (1960), Tokyo (1964), Mexico City (1968), Munich (1972), Montreal (1976), Moscow (1980), Los Angeles (1984), Seoul (1988), Barcelona (1992), Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000), Athens (2004).
Hereís todayís catch:
■The good and the better on China■The good and the better on India
■Network-centric warfare meets a truly networked opponent
■Why I hope to brief at Leavenworth