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May 22, 2013
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 Learning to Speak Anew in a Tribal WorldPosted on Nov 5, 2009MARRAKECH, Morocco—The international conversation among foreign policymakers and political specialists (on the Western side of the world, at least) has since the Cold War and the Second World War tended to be Anglophone and something of an American monologue. There has been a perfectly good reason for that, at least on the Western side of the Cold War, since ambitious young politicians, officials and military men from Europe and elsewhere went to the United States to study after 1945, and the U.S. government conscientiously subsidized many scholarships and overseas policy studies centers. There wasn’t the same traffic the other way across the Atlantic by young and ambitious Americans. This is why, until Gen. Charles de Gaulle came back to power in France in 1958, Western Europe was an Atlanticist and Anglophone bastion. This now is changing. I use the terms Anglophone or English-speaking rather than the usual French and Continental expression Anglo-Saxon, meaning Anglo-American. That term is still widely used in Europe, but erroneously, as Anglo-Saxon actually means a (German) Saxon in England. The Saxons and Angles were Germanic tribes who took over England in the fifth century—together with the Jutes; but we won’t go into the Jutes, since they were a Low German tribe. Saxony, today, is High German, and, in any case, all of them, once settled in England, were in 1066 taken over by the French Normans—who, of course, were really Scandinavians. Advertisement I’m not aware of any modern Americans who think of themselves as descending from Angles or Jutes—and certainly not from the French, even the Norman French; to do that on the recent American political scene might be considered un-American. (Barack Obama, on the presidential campaign trail, did not face the accusation of being French, as John Kerry did four years before, even though the Kerrys are presumably Celts, from Ireland, which one would think OK for an American to be. For a hundred years now, all the football players at the University of Notre Dame, wherever their parents happened to come from, have been Fighting Irish.) It might seem that the world today, in an era of terrorism, would be becoming more rather than less tribal than it was in the early post-Second World War years. Woodrow Wilson, in 1919, had thought it would be good for all the Europeans to have their own nationalistic little countries. This made an enormous amount of trouble and helped bring on the Second World War. Slobodan Milosevic, in tearing apart Wilson’s united Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and the 1990s, was making a start toward a Third World War. Some terrorists have the same thing in mind. At Marrakech, a new version of the international policy conversation has been taking place. It is called the World Policy Conference. It has been created by France’s (unofficial) Institut Francais des Relations Internationales and is meant to become an annual affair devoted to the proposition that the world has arrived at a point when serious things have to be done to strengthen international institutions of governance. The principal speakers at last week’s meeting were officials or scholars from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Turkey, Togo, Bolivia, South Korea, India, Israel, Algeria, Egypt, Senegal, Mexico and Mongolia, with a considerable unofficial Russian presence. The usual European governments were prominently represented at official or semiofficial levels, as well as the IMF, the Arab League, the International Energy Agency—but curiously enough, not the United States, despite a “high-level” commitment. The United States today is widely perceived as a large part of the current world problem. Today, the effort is how to cultivate new institutions of international cooperation and “governance.” Washington used to do it all alone, but a major part of the world is restless. People speak of a “multipolar world,” and the reason that Europeans are leading the effort to develop the new international dialogue is simply that the European Union now is seen globally as the modern model for democratic international institutions. Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.  TAGS:
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Another Memorial Day in This Endless War
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By Folktruther, November 8, 2009 at 1:30 am Link to this comment
It’s a useful effort for Europe to try to develop more effective world governence, but it doesn’t have the power to do so. In addition to the US not being there, and Russia, neither was China. And China is rapidly becoming the leading power in the world.
The Western world doesn’t like to accept it, but world power is moving to Asia, where 60% of the world’s people live. It is most likely therefore that new forms of world governence will emerge from there, since east Asia is developing much more rapidly eocnomically than the West.
Ideas of historical change always lag behind the reality, but the world transformation of power has accelerated in the modern age, as economic growth has which powers it, and the West, and especially the US, has to become more realistic. A conference on new forms of world governence is meaningless without China.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, November 7, 2009 at 7:05 am Link to this comment
I was so tired last night at first I thought the title was “Learning To Speak Agnew”, which sounded like the great double-talk lines William Safire used to write for the talking groundhog (remember Pogo?)
But Pfaff is right-on. The EU IS the model for cooperation to create both economic and political power in a democratic framework.
Report thisBy Jason, November 6, 2009 at 10:39 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I have a strong feeling that, sometime in the future, a sort of “day of reckoning” is going to happen for the USA society. I do not know what it is or when it will be; except that it is probably going to be ugly and very bad news for the USA society. I hope that the USA will be prepared for it too.
For example, I have long believed that China is eventually going to be the most powerful nation on Earth - at least from an economic standpoint. The USA more than likely will have to declare bankruptcy much like what Iceland had to do here a couple of years ago. Subsequently, Iceland had to do a complete starting over in every which way imaginable. Plus, Iceland wound up having a lesbian Prime Minister (Wouldn’t the tea party people and fundamentalist evangelical Christians LOVE for that to happen in the USA?) when all was said and done for their nation.
Something is going to give here to the detriment of USA society and I hope that the USA society is prepared for it when that something happens. We just recently had the 80th anniversary of Black Tuesday, which began the Great Depression. I thought that was interesting timing (not coincidental, only interesting) with our current economic situation.
I am tired of the USA being on a high horse and giving people who live in the third world a headache. I am also tired of the general societal arrogance and ignorance of its people. It is becoming old.
Report thisBy C.Curtis.Dillon, November 6, 2009 at 3:25 am Link to this comment
This move away from American Exceptionalism is a good thing. A world in which a single country and philosophy pervails is not one that can sustain and grow. And, unfortunately, our worldview has become corrupted by corporate greed and a vain belief that we know what is good for everyone. Obviously, that is no longer true (if it ever was). I’m heartened by the courage that others are showing and by this move to truly internationalize the world community. It bodes very well for the future (except the US which seems determined to stomp its feet and hold its breath until someone pats us on the head and tells us what a good country we are).
Report thisBy poonchkie, November 5, 2009 at 11:58 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I have been taking notice of the alignment occuring around the World since our invasion of Iraq. Russia, India, China, South Korea, and our so called allies in the Middle East, have formed an alliance to offset the power of NATO. It is really only a matter of time before they see the need for “regime change” in the US. We have been living off the WWII win and the infrastructure built during that time, which is crumbling at an alarming rate.
Since then we have done nothing but invade country after country, killing innocents in the name of national security. We have gone into Panama killed thousands and dragged their President to a US jail. Somehow we have decided that our military might gives us the right to kill anytime we need to test some new weapon or just for the hell of it.
The World will ultimately turn against us and we will be in no condition to respond. Our manufacturing has been surrendered to China and more Americans are in poverty since the Depression. The military is the only one hiring.
While we dither about abortion and gay marriage our Country is deteriorating at a fast clip and we will be fighting over crumbs while corporate sponsored politicians laugh all the way to the bank.
Report thisBy tim, November 5, 2009 at 9:08 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
John Kerry is actually of Czech jewish ancestry. His family name was changed from
Report thisKohn to Kerry.
By Samson, November 5, 2009 at 3:54 pm Link to this comment
Someone please tell them that there are plenty of Americans who would be interested in joining them.
“79% favor mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.
...
81% oppose torture and support following the Geneva Conventions.
76% say the U.S. should not play the role of global police.
79% say the U.N. should be strengthened.
63% want U.S. forces home from Iraq within a year.
47% favor using diplomacy with Iran. 7% favor military action.
67% believe we should use diplomatic and economic means to fight terrorism, rather than the military.
64% believe that on the whole, immigration is good for the country.”
source, Progressive Review, “Putting Obama behind us.” http://prorev.com/obamabehind.htm
Report thisThe problem is, we do not have a democracy. Our government does not represent the views of a majority of Americans. Please remember that.