April 28, 2009: Oil, Trade, Globalization
and/or Eternal GWOT "Overseas Contingency
Operation": Alternative Futures?
The News:
- Iraq
Resists Pleas by U.S. to Placate Hussein’s Party, NYT April 27, 2009
- Clinton
in Beirut Ahead of Key Vote ,
NYT April 27,
2009
- Lebanon
Arrests 3 on Charges of Spying for Israel, NYT April 27, 2009
- Jailed
U.S. Reporter Refuses Food in Iran,
NYT April 27,
2009
- Iran
blames US and Israel for attacks in Iraq , The
Peninsula, April 26, 2009
- After
a U.S. Raid: 2 Iraqis Dead, Protests and Regrets, NYT April 27, 2009
- Exceptions
to Iraq Deadline Are Proposed,
NYT April 27,
2009
- Abbas
Rejects Calling Israel a Jewish State,
NYT April 28,
2009
Two years ago:
- Bush Won't
Accept Iraq War Timetable, AP, April
24, 2007
- Syrians
Vote in Parliamentary Elections,
Reuters, April 22, 2007
- Settlers’
Defiance Reflects Postwar Israeli Changes, NYT April 22, 2007
- Israel
Finance Minister Steps Down, AP April
22, 2007
- "The
Absent Middle East" in the French
elections, Counterpunch April 21-22,
2007
- Bush
Administration Gains Support for New Approach on Food
Aid , NYT Apr 22, 2007
- Officials
Backing Down From Plan for Wall in Iraq, NYT Apr 23, 2007
- Say It Loud.
Improvise. Keep ’Em Guessing. (about
Moktada Al-Sadr) NYT, Apr 22, 2007
- Readings:
- Brzezinski and Scowcroft, pp.
157-274
- Glenn P. Hastedt, American Foreign Policy, 5th ed (Prentice Hall, 2003), pp.409-423
- Mark Twain on War and Imperialism (sources and quotes), including "The
Flag is Not Polluted" (1901)
- Charles A.Kupchan and Peter L.Trubowitz,
"A
Grand Strategy for a Divided America," [full
text]Foreign Affairs, July-August
2007
- Parag Khanna, "Waving
Goodbye to Hegemony,"
NYT Magazine, Jan. 27, 2008
Globalization and US hegemony: in pursuit of
the national interest?
- (from last time) US-based NGOs: Carnegie
Foundation, Arab
Reform Bulletin
- Globalization: driven in part by new
information technologies but remember the earlier globalization,
supported by the telegraph:1870-1914. Death of traditional
diplomacy, birth of informal global community --ZB examines the
"global political wakening" (pp. 229 ff) and both wise men stress
the "politics of cultural dignity." Obama: soft poweer regained.
- Is the current phase of globalization
(=increased cross national flows of goods, capital, labor, and
information) "the economic equivalent of a force of nature - like
wind and water" (Clinton in Vietnam Nov 17, 2000) - incidentally
legitimating the power of the post Cold War superpower...and
therefore viewed by many outside US also as a new form of
imperialism. For whom is the World Trade
Organization (WTO) a level playing
field? Prospects for the Doha
Round of multilateral tariff
reductions.
- traditional geopolitics and oil - Asia's needs!
- the counter creed of anti globalization - cf
Russia! China's multipolarity and Asianism. US Democratic Party
and labor interests.
- Does globalization increase or diminish
economic inequality? market reforms promoting local elites, and
look at the "youth
bulge" in the MENA.
- Note the growing world demographic imbalances.
Europe's decline from 25% to 9% of world pop 1900-2020; North
America 5%; Asia 60%
- dilemmas of the aging populations -and
Europe's need for more Muslim immigrants despite difficulties of
assimilating immigrants. Their GWOTs and ours.
- America: from melting pot to cultural mosaic -
dilemmas of hegemonic democracy: how retain a sense of strategic
purpose in a multicultural democracy with potentially clashing
ethnic roots? Cuban, Jewish, Greek, Armenian lobbies.
Institutional weaknesses - who can plan strategy, much less agree?
Cultural strengths? How regain some of the soft power lost since
our responses to 911?
- The Choices? - actually we will discuss nine
of them!
- Robert Jensen et al, Peace Propaganda and the Promised Land
-
a film designed to sensitize you to US
media propaganda and biases.
Main
page | classes
| syllabus
April 28, 2009
- Department
of Government, College
of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at
Austin.
- Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to
chenry@mail.utexas.edu
