USA-EU differences on role of PRC

FT piece on polling that says Euros take more pessimistic view of China possibly showing global leadership in years ahead than Americans do.  Oddly enough, the Germans were the most pessimistic.  Why odd?  Germany is doing so well economically WRT China.

Polling by German Marshall Fund.

Data says Americans to the tune of 91% predict China will exert strong leadership within next five years.  That may just be our ennui talking.  Only two-thirds of Euros think this.

I think the Euros are being more realistic, as I think China global leadership will be underwhelming for a long time.  Bluster will go up, as will hubris, but serious visionary leadership?  Not China's style nor comfort level--not yet.  In a single-party state, people who go out on ledges get pushed off.

The delicate dance: EU carmakers and PRC wheelmakers

WSJ story on how European rim makers (not the tires but the metal wheels) want antidumping protection from China, whereas European car makers fear they'll get caught up in the fray and lose market share there.

Good quote that captures China's rapid move up the production chain:

"Trade disputes with China used to be about bras, T-shirts, shoes and ironing boards," says Simon Evenett, a professor of trade economics at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.  "Now they're moving downstream, and increasingly, they're going to be about cars."

America coming out of the Civil War sold basic consumers goods like that overseas (shoes were a biggie), but by the end of the century, we were likewise elevated to complex manufactured goods, thus increasingly the complexity of our trade relations with the world.

More in the "weakened Russia turns to Europe for help" vein

Where are all my "resurgent Russia" guys now?

The severe blow dealt to Russia by the West's financial crisis is prompting a recalibration of Russia's foreign policy. Among the ideas now surfacing in Moscow: a much closer relationship between Russia and the European Union.

After years of rapid economic growth, Russia was hit hard by the crisis. Last year, its economy shrank by 7.9%. That put its economic performance in 206th place out of 213 countries, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

"What became clear from the financial crisis is that Russia is not a sustainable BRIC," said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations . . .

I mean, weren't we supposed to wage another Cold War with Russia because of Georgia?  

Gotta wonder how George Friedman is swallowing all this.

The enthusiastic "Russia is Back" slogans being bandied about two or three years ago have been replaced by growing fears of further decline.

Duh!

This is why the freak-out artists are always good entertainment but bad guides for action: they don't see the feedback loops that increasingly define globalization's connectedness.  They still see the world in 20th (or even 19th) century terms, especially in the primacy of "pow-waaah!" as my friend Hank Gaffney likes to say.  That romantic view of global affairs is quaint all right, but useless.

Turkey: too good for the EU?

NYT story on Turkey's amazing economic ride relative to the EU's troubles:

For decades, Turkey has been told it was not ready to join the European Union — that it was too backward economically to qualify for membership in the now 27-nation club.

That argument may no longer hold.

Today, Turkey is a fast-rising economic power, with a core of internationally competitive companies turning the youthful nation into an entrepreneurial hub, tapping cash-rich export markets in Russia and the Middle East while attracting billions of investment dollars in return.

For many in aging and debt-weary Europe, which will be lucky to eke out a little more than 1 percent growth this year, Turkey’s economic renaissance — last week it reported a stunning 11.4 percent expansion for the first quarter, second only to China — poses a completely new question: who needs the other one more — Europe or Turkey?

“The old powers are losing power, both economically and intellectually,” said Vural Ak, 42, the founder and chief executive of Intercity, the largest car leasing company in Turkey. “And Turkey is now strong enough to stand by itself.”

It is an astonishing transformation for an economy that just 10 years ago had a budget deficit of 16 percent of gross domestic product and inflation of 72 percent. It is one that lies at the root of the rise to power of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has combined social conservatism with fiscally cautious economic policies to make his Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., the most dominant political movement in Turkey since the early days of the republic.

So complete has this evolution been that Turkey is now closer to fulfilling the criteria for adopting the euro — if it ever does get into the European Union — than most of the troubled economies already in the euro zone. It is well under the 60 percent ceiling on government debt (49 percent of G.D.P.) and could well get its annual budget deficit below the 3 percent benchmark next year. That leaves the reduction of inflation, now running at 8 percent, as the only remaining major policy goal.

Here was my crazy prediction in "blogging the future" back in 2005 (Blueprint for Action's afterword):

Turkey's Surprisingly Rapid Entry into EU Signals Europe's Tilt Toward Arab World

My logic?  I expected pain within Europe to rise to the level where taking Turkey in would seem like salvation versus suffering.  I had expected the pain to be social or political unrest; I just didn't imagine the economic causality being so profound.  I also underestimated how far Turkey would come economically in such a short period of time.

In short, I erred in my too heavy social-political pessimism and in my lack of economic optimism--just like Africa.  

O me of too little faith in globalization!

The SysAdmin's workload remains heavy

Christian Science Monitor story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Gist:

It may be only his second day of military training, but Abdullahi Ibrahim Aden is already convinced that he can help bring peace to his war-ravaged nation, Somalia.

Clutching an AK-47 in a field two countries away from his homeland, Aden, a former street kid, refugee, and nurse, is one of the first recruits in an ambitious program run by the European Union (EU) to help train 2,000 soldiers for the fledgling Army of Somalia's fragile Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.

"Somali children, grandfathers, and grandmothers are dying in the streets," says Aden. "That is why I came to be a volunteer, to change what is happening in my country."

Involving 150 instructors from 14 EU countries at a cost of $6 million to European taxpayers, the program is the latest in a series of internationally funded training efforts around East Africa designed to bolster the beleaguered government and nudge Somalia closer to peace after almost two decades of conflict.

Money for logistical support is coming from the United States, which has reportedly already pumped millions of dollars into similar smaller training programs run by local militaries in Uganda and Djibouti over the past 18 months.

Why so crucial? Lack of local resources.

Like all things SysAdmin, it is a matter of pay-me-now-or-pay-yourself-later.

Of course, my critics have long asserted that my vision is so naive in its assumption that Core countries will be willing to do SysAdmin work.  And yet the efforts continue and grow, and Core militaries progressively shift resources from the Leviathan bin (way too expensive for the EU anyway) and into the SysAdmin portfolio. What is needed, of course, is to steer rising New Core powers in similar directions, instead of encouraging their own fantasies regarding the utility of great-power war.

It was never a question of political will, but rather one of finally recognizing the international security landscape for what it is: an era of intense frontier integration that can either be addressed or put off by the dream of future great-power war.  But the integration will proceed apace whether we engage it or not. Globalization is simply that powerful--the essence of our 5GW victory that few on our side are ready to embrace.

Yes, there is plenty of naivete on this subject, but it rests primarily with those who cling to their romantic notions of past warfare.

The EU's "terrible" rules: better or worse for entrepreneurship?

Economist story lauding the "blooming" environment of Europe's tech entrepreneurs.

The EU is derided as biz-unfriendly with all its rules and regs. But the chart suggests otherwise.

So yes, a small entrepreneurial pool compared to Silicon Valley America, but moving in the right direction and hardly damaged by the EU integration process per se.

Taking Turkey seriously

 FT column by Philip Stephens.

The conventional narrative says Turkey has traded in western democracy for Islamism.

Stephens sees it a bit more subtly:

In any event, the message I took from policymakers and business leaders at a recent conference in Istanbul convened by Chatham House was far more subtle than the present discourse in the west. Far from turning its back on Europe, the government hopes that the country’s rising regional influence will strengthen its claim for admission.

It is not often these days that you hear anyone praise the EU. Turkish politicians are the exception. The Union, one of Mr Erdogan’s ministers told the conference, had been a “greatest peace project in the history of mankind”. Securing Turkey’s membership remained a “national and a strategic” objective.

In sum, no breach with West, but a rational attempt to boost Turkey's negotiating hand.

France raises it retirement age from 60 to 62

WSJ story.

Of course, we'll see this headline countless times in coming years as the rest of Europe moves in a similar direction as all those Euro Boomers head into retirement age.

I mean, really France, 58?

I think people my age should expect to work to at least 70 and probably 75.  My kids should add a decade to those numbers.

Why? As more people make it into their 60s in solid health, the actual life expectancy for that cohort extends much farther than the norm.

In fact, I foresee more intra-generational tension over that divergence than inter-generational.

Gates to EU: I blame you on Turkey!

WSJ story.

Gates just being blunt.

The EU began membership talks with Turkey in 2004--about a half century after the country first expressed interest in joining anything Europe put together on economics.  The talks have gone nowhere, despite Ankara's heroic efforts to meet requirements.

Thank-you France and Germany:  your racism comes back to haunt you once again!

I agree with those who says Turkey's "turn east" is exaggerated, but you reap what you sow, my friends.

Balkans: the remapping isn't done?

Economist piece.

The US and EU want no redrawing of borders between Serbia and Kosovo, and no diplos on either side makes the case publicly yet.

And yet, expectations are rising that a slice of Serb-heavy northern Kosovo will get handed over in the ongoing custody battle.  Why?  Something like half of Kosovo's Serbs are found there.

The EU warns Serbia that it's jeopardizing its admission application, and yet, nobody wants a new Cyprus.

Very familiar dynamic: small population tied to neighbor is trapped inside border; that nation's government can't really extend its writ there; so the upshot is continued unrest and non-resolution, because the would-be-breakaway region can neither break away or come under stabilizing rule.

Custody decisions get revised all the time.  This one should too.

More on "assertive Turkey" being a good thing

map here

David Gardner in the FT (column "Global Insight").

The EU ambivalently delays any serious negotiations on Turkey's admission, and meanwhile, the Turk's, with their "zero problems with neighbors" foreign policy, seem to be outshining everyone in the region in terms of diplomatic zing.  So Gardner asks, does Turkey care about the EU any more?

Is Turkey playing "hard to get" with this "neo-Ottomanism" under foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu and prime minister Erdogan?

A local academic says, "AKP people feel more comfortable in Damascus than Rome.  The new elites want the best of both worlds."

Good for them, I say, and good for the Core as a whole for Turkey to come into its own as a frontier integrator and globalization networker.  Even if it means we don't always get out way on things.

Gardner's point is apt here:  no longer the Western bulwark against the hordes, now Turkey is the prime bridge, whether the EU rewards it or not.  Turkey has opening 30 new embassies in Africa and Latin America. Bravo!  I say.

Gardner:

This is not the return of the Ottomans but a commercial comeback--timed to pickup the slack from the recession in the EU.

Turkey ses itself as a regional power as well, and is determined to show the EU two things: that it has options; and that, unlike the EU, it knows how to deploy "soft power" in Europe's Middle Eastern backyard.  In short, that is is an asset.  "Turkey is using the transformative power of the European Union, which the EU itself appears to have lost," says Ayhan Kaya of Istanbul's Bilgi University.

Germany and France have told too-big, too-Muslim and too-poor Turkey to f--k off.  And Turkey took that advice to heart.

We are all better off for that ambition unleashed.

What! No naval war over Arctic resources?

Image found here

Moscow Times story:

Russia and Norway have reached an agreement on a long-running border dispute, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday, in a deal that will provide a framework for how the two countries divvy up the vast energy reserves on the Arctic shelf.

"The decision [we have reached] provides that the disputed territory in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean are divided into two equivalent parts," he said Tuesday at a joint news conference with President Dmitry Medvedev. "The way in which the border line will be drawn satisfies both states."

The agreement will regulate both fishing and drilling on 173,000 square kilometers of the Arctic shelf, which will be divided into two approximately equal parts. Details of the agreement were not disclosed as documents are still being prepared for the final deal.

The scuffles over the countries' Arctic border area have been a sore point in relations for some time. The Norwegian coast guard has detained a number of Russian fishing vessels over the years for various violations. In 2006, Russia temporarily banned the imports of fish from four Norwegian enterprises in what was largely seen as a political move.

Rights to develop the Arctic's vast energy resources have been another sticking point, but in a sign that the two sides may be warming to a more cooperative approach, Medvedev on Monday invited Norway's Statoil to explore the giant Prirazlomnoye oil field in the Barents Sea.

Don't you just hate it when things work out like that?

[thanks to WPR's media roundup]