Issues - Globalization, terrorism, use of force, poverty, trade, UN reform, non-proliferation, energy, democratization, environment ....

...(Kissinger) warned that the global battle for control of energy resources could become the modern equivalent of the 19th century “great game”

...“The amount of energy is finite, up to now in relation to demand, and competition for access to energy can become the life and death for many societies. It would be ironic if the direction of pipelines and locations become the modern equivalent of the colonial disputes of the 19th century.”

... tensions over the building of a $4.5bn (£2.5bn) gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan, which has become a critical part of the two-year India-Pakistan peace process.

... “When nuclear weapons spread to 30 or 40 countries and each conducts a calculation, with less experience and different value systems, we will have a world of permanent imminent catastrophe.”

Mr Kissinger called on India to join a dialogue on energy and proliferation and suggested “a global conference among the nuclear powers on how to do it. It has to be one of the top priorities of a US administration.”

... “I do not believe India will join a crusade to spread democracy. For the US to crusade in every part of the world simultaneously to spread democracy may be beyond our capacity.”

... (Kissinger) disagreed with suggestions that India should be built up as a counterweight to the growing strength of China in the region.

“India will be concerned with its own security and independence and should not be part of an American desire to counterbalance China ... It is not a situation where good relations with one country have to be aimed at another.” '

...Wolfowitz ... believing that he is leaving behind a big job at the Pentagon and taking on an even bigger one.

... has confronted the bank's formidable culture. Taking over this multilateral institution is a bit like showing up at elementary school halfway through third grade.

... Probably 90 percent of the bank's staff opposes the Iraq war, and a similar proportion regard President Bush as a dumb cowboy.

Wolfowitz ... eating lunch in the staff cafeteria ... given out his personal e-address ... and stressed his respect for the World Bank's professionalism. ... planned an early trip to Africa. ... spent more time listening than talking ...

... The whole development business is befuddled by the unknowability of answers to some fundamental questions. What, beyond obvious things such as macroeconomic sanity and a focus on exports, is the key ingredient of poverty-reducing growth?'

... generalized answers are elusive. Some countries have implemented just about all the standard prescriptions of the "Washington consensus" and yet failed to grow; others have nibbled selectively from that menu and yet have grown dramatically. ... The keys to growth ... vary from country to country.

... health, education and other projects in a given country may all be rated "successful," yet poverty in that same country may show no sign of falling.

... stop lending to governments that aren't competent enough to lead a broad battle against poverty.

... World Bank's effectiveness will remain elusive -- assessing its contribution to global poverty reduction is like assessing the contribution of McKinsey or Goldman Sachs to the overall productivity of the U.S. economy.

... groups that want to use the bank to advance single-issue campaigns against dams or oil or logging.

... in Asia -- which believes its turn has come to pick a U.N. leader -- the politicking has been underway for more than a year.

... that the secretary general is just a hired hand, with no more authority than the member states, particularly the five states with veto power on the Security Council, choose to give him. But a U.N. leader who cares about human rights (like Annan) can operate very differently, all the limitations notwithstanding, than would someone who views human rights concerns as an annoyance or an impediment.

... Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra ... example of a breed of modern leaders who confound democracy advocates: democratically elected, genuinely popular, but not all that committed to democracy. His cousins include (Chavez and Putin) -- leaders who achieve power through the ballot box and then erode the institutions (free press, independent judiciary) on which democracies depend.

... a Democracy Caucus at the United Nations ... held meetings, to cheer each other on and develop common standards, which is fine. But why not unite on a practical objective: finding a secretary general who really believes in political freedom and human rights?

... Annan's replacement need not be Asian. ... that the formerly communist bloc of Central and Eastern Europe has never had a chance, and there are many fine democrats in Poland and its neighbors.

... But if Asia's claim is accepted, surely there are admirable candidates in such democracies as Indonesia ...

... ideal Asian candidate might embody the entrepreneurship of the continent's vibrant economies with the political values of its young democracies ...

... two fundamental truths are clear: Catastrophic terrorism can and must be prevented, and Europe can and must do more to prevent it.

... highly enriched uranium, is stored and used at civilian research reactors across the globe, including more than 50 sites in and around Europe, and many of these are poorly secured. The hardest part of building a crude nuclear device is obtaining the nuclear material.

... Since 1993, the United States has financed efforts to work with Russia to lock down, destroy or relocate vulnerable materials. ... progress has been far too slow in recent years.

... Russia is an essential partner in these global efforts.

... At the 2002 Group of 8 summit, European members and the EU pledged, along with Japan, to raise $10 billion over the next decade to secure or destroy vulnerable materials for nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry. Three years later, they are about $3 billion short.

... Significant amounts of dangerous materials are stored in and around Europe. ... identify all materials and providing state-of-the-art security.

Finally, Europe should be a leader in fully developing multilateral instruments for reducing the threat of catastrophic terrorism. ... increase in the share of the budget devoted to these programs. ... more generously support effective programs undertaken by international organizations ...

the U.S. and Europe must recommit themselves to jointly confronting common security challenges. No priority is more urgent than preventing terrorists from acquiring bomb-ready nuclear material ...

... Some people argue that nuclear proliferation will actually reduce risks. Call it the "porcupine theory." In such a prickly world, no country would dare aggression. But this assumes perfect rationality. In the real world accidents occur, so more proliferation means a greater chance of eventual inadvertent use, weaker capacity in managing nuclear crises and greater difficulty in establishing controls and reducing the role of nuclear weapons in world politics.

In addition, the more states that possess nuclear weapons, the greater the prospects that terrorists will gain access to them.

... Europe is less vulnerable to offshoring than America. Rigid labor laws insulate its workers from pay cuts and layoffs. '

... Europe faces an arguably more serious dilemma. If its companies start offshoring more, unemployment could rise—and with it the impulse to enact self-defeating protectionist laws. If it doesn't offshore more aggressively, the Continent will lose global competitiveness and become something of a long-term loser itself. Many economists argue that the EU needs labor-market flexibility and U.S.-style job churn to spark innovation

... Says Harvard economist Richard Freeman: "We knew the Chinese would make cheap toys, and the Indians would maybe do data input, but they certainly don't do sophisticated engineering. In fact, it turns out the Indians and Chinese are pretty smart.

... Daniel Trefler, a University of Toronto professor ... notes that currency appreciation and rising wages will eventually work against China, India and other ascendant developing countries, though it may take a long time. "Japan in 1959 was not that different from China today," Trefler said... "It had a skilled and disciplined labor force that was paid 10 percent of U.S. wages. Yet Japan was never able to dominate world manufacturing. Why? Because Japan succumbed to the comparative-advantage police by steadily revaluing the yen." He asserts that the same thing will happen to China. "It does not matter that they have hundreds of millions of citizens willing to work for next to nothing. If the yuan strengthens, Chinese wages will rise to a point that they are no longer dominantly competitive." Trefler also argues that institutional handicaps—corruption, weak legal and financial systems—could hamper the rise of new corporate powerhouses.

... His wealth of experience as an academic, lawyer, government minister, diplomat and arms inspector has underlined the importance of:

1. Promoting critical and balanced thinking. He is an advocate of nuclear power, but says that it is important for credibility's sake to acknowledge the risks and costs. "I like to see the different sides."

2. Being professional. Be clear about your mandate. "Know your dossier. That's important in all negotiations."

3. Being consistent and never lying. He says he did not believe the Iraqis, but felt they should be able to believe him.

4. Being disciplined. "I'm not terribly keen on administration, but there must be order in an organisation."

5. Having high expectations. Be demanding of those who work for you, but also humane. '

Whether or not you believe that Bush and Cheney went into Iraq in a bid for direct control of oil supplies -- and I do not -- it is now unlikely that what they accomplish there before leaving office will much affect global petroleum markets. The legal framework, physical security and infrastructure repair that oil companies will need to function in Iraq take much longer to put into place.

In any event, any freely elected government of Iraq would fall into line with other OPEC members to maximize oil revenue. The spread of democracy Bush champions in that region is also a spread of popular pressure on rulers to manage resources purely for local, not foreign, benefit.

Oil-producing countries detonated the dispersal of political and economic power by seizing control of ownership or production of their petroleum reserves in the 1970s....

Bush had come to office impressed by Cheney's oft-voiced concern that they needed urgently to restore power and prestige drained from the White House since Watergate....

This reflex is understandable, even commendable, to a point. But over time it creates its own obstacles. Every conflict, whether with Senate Democrats over judges or Jacques Chirac over Iraq, gradually becomes a contest of wills that has to be won in power terms. The abstraction of power swiftly overwhelms the specifics and merits of the problem.

... vague theories on "soft power" or "multi polarity" that missed the point of the rapidly changing international environment as much as the drive for restoration of a chimerical American dominance did.

The withering of the powers of nation-states, and virtually every national leader, under the pressures of globalization is more of a mixed blessing than the proponents of soft power or multipolarity acknowledge. And the consequences of fragmentation are also far more difficult to resolve than the restoration effort assumes.

... the Bush administration, while proclaiming that proliferation is the greatest danger in the world, lets other concerns take priority.

China and South Korea similarly cannot be convinced that Kim Jong Il's possession of nuclear weapons is a greater threat to them than a collapse of the North Korean regime would be. They rationalize their fears by claiming that Kim has no nuclear weapons, or that he won't use them if he does.

Much of the conflict and confusion apparent in international and American politics today comes from fearful, at times almost panicky, reactions to the migration of power away from national leaders and its fragmentation at national levels. (This is true in Beijing and Moscow as well as in Washington and Paris.) What our leaders have to fear is fear itself. Fear will inhibit the vision and judgment needed to adjust and rebalance power on a global and equitable basis. '

... What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause.

... First, nearly all suicide terrorist attacks (I studied) took place as part of organized political or military campaigns. Second, democracies are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists; America, France, India, Israel, Russia, Sri Lanka and Turkey have been the targets of almost every suicide attack of the past two decades. Third, suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a strategic objective: from Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to Chechnya, the sponsors of every campaign - 18 organizations in all - are seeking to establish or maintain political self-determination.

... Spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a panacea so long as foreign combat troops remain on the Arabian Peninsula. If not for the world's interest in Persian Gulf oil, the obvious solution might well be simply to abandon the region altogether. Isolationism, however, is not possible; America needs a new strategy that pursues our vital interest in oil but does not stimulate the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.

...BEYOND recognizing the limits of military action and stepping up domestic security efforts, Americans would do well to recall the virtues of our traditional policy of "offshore balancing" in the Persian Gulf. During the 1970's and 1980's, the United States managed its interests there without stationing any combat soldiers on the ground, but keeping our forces close enough - either on ships or in bases near the region - to deploy in huge numbers if an emergency. This worked splendidly to defeat Iraq's aggression against Kuwait in 1990. '

...in the past six weeks or so, oil prices have fallen by nearly 20 percent.

... 1. Oil prices, in real terms, were at 20-year highs for most of 2005, but were always far from their 30-year highs. 2. Oil prices have been falling fairly dramatically for several weeks. 3. The current price (not the fantasy price) of oil is, historically, modest.

... We thus far have been obsessed with the effect of higher oil prices on consuming economies. We now need to flip the question: Whether oil prices hold at current levels or drop precipitously, what are the potential effects on producing countries? Assume that oil prices move back down into the $30s or even $20s, what happens then?

... Expectations about the future of energy prices are built into the political systems of key producing countries. If those expectations are not fulfilled -- or if the assumption becomes that they won't be fulfilled -- anticipatory political maneuvering will begin. In other words, politics follow the expected direction of things.

... Putin finds himself in a bit of a bind. Like Yeltsin before him, he is trapped between the nationalists on one side and the liberals on the other. Also like Yeltsin, Putin has had to reach out for the support of the nation's oligarchs to maintain power. That puts him under double constraints. On one hand, Putin needs to keep the oligarchs reasonably happy; but on the other, the oligarchs tend to sock their money away -- abroad -- as a matter of course, and particularly whenever Russia's macroeconomic picture darkens... Just imagine the oligarchs' panic when oil prices head south. Meanwhile, Putin is losing the public's trust.

... the Russian government, much like its Chinese counterpart, finds itself held hostage to its economic growth and the resulting social expectations -- and that growth is a result largely of oil prices. In order to head off a nationalist uprising, Putin has little choice but to buy off disaffected portions of the population. That takes money.

Though Kazakhstan and Russia produce roughly the same amount of crude on a per capita basis, they are not equally vulnerable to price pressures.... Astana has three advantages Moscow lacks. First, while oil income remains critical to the Russian budget, most of it goes to the oligarchs who control Russia's oil companies. In Kazakhstan, what is not siphoned off by President Nursultan Nazarbayev's family makes it directly into the state coffers.... Second, Nazarbayev is concerned that his regime might be the next target in the ongoing wave of "velvet revolutions" sweeping the former Soviet Union. That has led him to be more generous with state payouts than in the past. Finally, unlike Russia -- where the trend is toward barring foreign participation in the energy sector, and therefore toward flat production -- Kazakhstan is aggressively seeking foreign investment and is actively participating in multiple export projects....

... The House of Saud is notorious for avoiding short-term inconveniences at the risk of long-term crises. ... Luckily, as the world's largest oil exporter and OPEC kingpin, Saudi Arabia need not be limited to simply cutting expenditures in order to deal with falling oil prices. The kingdom's internal oil wealth means that, in the event of a financial crunch, the country would be much more likely to turn to Saudi citizens (read, someone in the royal family) than to any international creditors to see it through. Riyadh also has more traditional market-based options -- such as reducing OPEC quotas -- for keeping oil prices high. The only problem with slashing production, however, is that it can take more than two years for the effects to feed through the system and push prices up in any sustained way.

... If Riyadh finds itself under pressure, it has ways of stoking crises that can spook the markets and push prices higher, while making the regime ultimately appear to be large and in charge. Intentionally spooking the markets is a truly dangerous game to play, but it is something the Saudis apparently are confident enough to do...

... At the moment, everything that Tehran is trying to achieve geopolitically -- stability at home, nuclear capability, international recognition, regime consolidation, influence over Iraq, achieving status as a Middle East hegemon -- is predicated on financial stability. It takes money to pacify the population, build a nuclear program, engage in international commerce at sufficient levels to keep Europe's interest and tempt the Americans, and exert influence over neighboring countries.

...More than any major exporter in the world save Saudi Arabia, Iran needs its oil income to project power. Therefore, a drop in prices will affect the extent to which, and speed at which, it can achieve its objectives.

...Unlike the Saudis or Russians, the Iranians have no significant internal pools of capital to tap and ... they cannot easily turn to international creditors either.

... That leaves Tehran looking for ways to push prices up... Hezbollah to provoke Israel into bombing Lebanon or Syria would do wonders for the tautness of oil traders' nerves. Iran can maneuver its nuclear program in a similar manner. For Tehran, telling the EU-3 -- with whom it currently is engaged in negotiations -- to go suck a lemon, or to recommence its own uranium enrichment activities, would raise international tension and threaten a storm of military action within the Persian Gulf.'

... having ugly friends can only work if people don't look at your companion too closely - and this week the world saw Karimov in action

... When crowds demonstrated in Lebanon, Ukraine and Georgia, the Americans welcomed it as "people power". But the brave stand in Uzbekistan brought a different response. Washington called for "restraint" from both sides, as if the unarmed civilians were just as guilty as those shooting at them. In the past couple of days, the tune has changed slightly. Now the state department wants Tashkent to "institute real reforms" and address its "human rights problems". It is at least possible that Washington may soon decide Karimov has become an embarrassment and that he should be replaced by a new, friendlier face - but one just as reliable. Less of a sonofabitch, but still ours.

... the case that America, and Britain for that matter, should not only talk the democratic talk but walk the democratic walk is powerful - and not only in pure, idealistic terms. This argument has realpolitik on its side, too.

First, despots make bad allies - who all too often become adversaries....

Second, pragmatic pacts with the devil don't work. For one thing, by repressing their peoples, tyrannies foment, not prevent, terrorism....

Third, if democracy really is the panacea the Bush doctrine insists it is, then shouldn't it be trusted to work its magic? '

... if the west made the vast financial and military aid it already gives to these regimes conditional on perhaps a three-year programme of gradual liberalisation - lifting emergency laws, allowing proper funding of political parties - then soon some space would open up, terrain occupied neither by the despots nor the mullahs. Different parties and forces could start organising for a future ballot in which they had a decent shot at success.

... It is a choice between two principles that, taken together, constitute the foundation of Bush's policy toward the Muslim world. First, the administration is committed to fighting Islamic terrorists and militants. Second, it is committed to promoting popular democratic government in the Muslim world. '

For over two years now the Bush administration has insisted that there was no conflict between these two principles. .. Yet if Muslim popular sentiment turns out to be violent anti-American and virulently pro-terrorist, then what?

Given this unattractive choice, there are only two solutions. The Bush administration can continue to insist on more democracy, even if this ultimately means the Talibanization of the entire Muslim world, and the dissemination of virulent anti-Americanism from one end of the region to the other. Or else the administration can do a complete about-face on democracy: discourage the spread of popular government in Islamic societies, and be prepared to back authoritarian governments that are willing to use brutal means to check popular uprisings whenever these uprisings, however popular, threaten to overturn pro-American governments and to replace them with hostile anti-American Taliban-like regimes.

Of course, there is always a third alternative, which is simply to pretend that there is a third alternative, when in fact there isn't. Regrettably, this is the course that the Bush administration appears to be following at the moment.

...concentrating on the one thing needful, namely, how to meet the challenge posed by an enemy who has made it clear, over and over, that he does not like us, and will never like us, and that he will use any opportunity given to it to embarrass us, to attack us, and to kill us.

'The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is the most successful arms control agreement in history.'

... six major anomalies. First, the definition of a nuclear weapons state is chronological - a country that manufactured and exploded a nuclear device before Jan. 1, 1967. India, Pakistan and Israel could test, deploy and even use nuclear weapons, but cannot be described as nuclear powers. In principle, Britain and France could dismantle their nuclear edifice and destroy their nuclear arsenals, but would still count as nuclear powers.

... can the treaty definition be opened up for revision through a formal amendment of the 188-member document with all the unpredictable consequences? If not, whither realism?

Second, even as the threat from nonstate actors has grown frighteningly real, multilateral treaties like this one can regulate and monitor the activities only of states....

Third, the cases of Israel, India, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and North Korea show that decades after a problem arises, we still cannot agree on an appropriate response inside the NPT framework...

If international institutions cannot cope, states will try to do so themselves, either unilaterally or in concert with like-minded allies. If prevention is strategically necessary and morally justified but legally not permitted, then the existing framework of laws and rules - not the anticipatory military action - is defective.

The fourth anomaly is lumping biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in one conceptual and policy basket. They differ in their technical features, in the ease with they can be acquired and developed, and in their capacity to cause mass destruction. ...

... If nuclear weapons are accepted as having a role to counter biochemical warfare, then how can we deny a nuclear-weapons capability to Iran, which has actually suffered chemical weapons attacks?

Fifth, the five nuclear powers preach but do not practice nuclear abstinence. It defies history, common sense and logic to believe that a self-selecting group of five countries can keep a permanent monopoly on the world's most destructive weaponry. Not a single country that had nuclear weapons when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed in 1968 has given them up.

Can the country with the world's most powerful nuclear weapons rightfully use military force to prevent their acquisition by others? The logics of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation are inseparable.

The final paradox concerns the contradiction between rhetoric and example. It is not possible to convince others of the futility of nuclear weapons when the facts of continued possession and doctrines and threats of use prove their utility for some. Refining and miniaturizing nuclear weapons, developing new doctrines and justifications for their use, and lowering the threshold of their employment weaken the taboo against them and erode the normative barriers to nuclear proliferation.

... The new director-general has few rivals in his technical knowledge and bureaucratic skills. But there are legitimate concerns about some of his past actions.

Mr Lamy's selection owes something to his initiatives to help developing countries while he was European Union trade commissioner. Some were welcome, such as the Everything But Arms scheme to open markets to exports from the poorest countries. But others smacked of unhelpful dirigisme and political game-playing, such as his plan to require less fortunate developing countries to sign 27 international conventions and treaties, some of them with tangential relevance to trade, to continue receiving trade preferences.

Early on, Mr Lamy needs to show that he can reach out not just to those that supported him - the EU and its former colonies that have been granted special preferences - but also those that did not, such as more pro-liberalisation emerging market nations in Latin America. There must be no more toying with another of his misguided ideas - woolly notions about nations choosing with whom they want to trade on the basis of "collective preferences" or shared values.'

But none of the more than 200 questions asked about Bolton's definition of leadership, his approach to managing people, problems he might have had with subordinates, his commitment to public service, his definition of ethical conduct, or his own supervisory behavior. '

... Brazil has forged stronger ties with countries such as Russia, India, South Africa and China, as well as forming regional forums such as the South American Union that exclude the US.

... Mr Chávez's populist experiment .... He has channelled his country's oil windfall into schools, clinics and grass-roots health care: the popularity of these policies helped the Venezuelan leader win last year's recall referendum and regional elections. '

The liberal elite (in Pakistan), somewhat to its astonishment, has suddenly found a new affection for the military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf.

... the democratic politics of Pakistan throughout the 1990s proved so violent, so corrupt and so socially and economically disastrous that Musharraf's rule is now widely regarded as the least awful option.

... few middle-class Pakistanis have much relish for the return of Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif, the leaders who took Pakistan to the brink of collapse in the 90s.

... fundamentally flawed political system where land-owning remains the only social base from which politicians can emerge. The educated middle class - which in India seized control in 1947 - is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process... Politicians tend to come to power more through deals done within Pakistan's small feudal-army elite than through the will of the people.

... (Under Musharraf) Pakistan is enjoying a construction and consumer boom, with growth approaching 7% - although some of this has been generated by the mass repatriation of Pakistani drug fortunes after the tightening of money-laundering regulations in the US and the Gulf. Sectarian violence is down, the jihadis have been restrained and the ISI, which encouraged them, has been partially reformed. Press criticism has been tolerated and the airwaves freed up.

The wider lesson to be drawn from this is that while US support for democracy is preferable to its previous policy of bolstering client autocracies, electoral democracy is not on its own an automatic panacea. As Pakistan shows, rigged, corrupt, unrepresentative and flawed democracies without the strong independent institutions of a civil society - a free press, an independent judiciary, an empowered election commission - can foster governments that are every bit as tyrannical as any dictatorship. Justice and democracy are not necessarily synonymous.

... As Dr Sima Samar, the leading human rights activist in Afghanistan, put it... "democracy and freedom are simply meaningless without justice and the rule of law". '

1 The asymmetry between the "hyperpower" and the other members of the international community has no precedent: the Roman Empire or the Chinese Tang Dynasty were macro-regional superpowers, but the hyperpower's extension - less than 5% of the world population and in 2003, 47% of the world's military expenditure - is global.

2 A fifth of the world's population sharing the oldest continuous history and belonging to the same political entity, China is entering into a world system designed by the West : such a phenomenon is unprecedented. Russia's rise was within the 18th-century European system, the German and Japanese rises at the end of the 19th century were comparatively processes of far lesser magnitude. Moreover, China is a state of 1.3 billion inhabitants, but also - and before all - a unique civilization with deep, consistent and strong values different from the values developed by the West.

3 Effects of the Soviet disintegration are producing instability and uncertainty at the very heart of Eurasia, in both the "pivot area" and the "heartland".

4 An intensifying techno-economic globalization is producing a large zone of exclusion.

5 Five hundred years after having invented the nation-state, Europe is transcending it for a not well defined political construction without clear geographical limits. '

Instability is the main corollary of this evolving configuration. How long can our unbalanced system last? Is there a path to stability? In the foreseeable future a relatively stable system will depend very much on positive dynamics between the EU/US and China.

... Immediate trends and current events do not conduct to such a triangulation. The EU is not one political player, the US tends to place the continuation and the consolidation of its socio-economic model above other considerations, China's emergence collides with various geopolitical interests of the hyperpower. However, it is precisely because we might be on the verge of major contradictions that we have to explore ways to avoid tragedies, or to indicate directions above a purely competitive and one-dimensional chessboard.

"Obviously, intelligence agents have an incentive to hide the use of unlawful methods," says the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer. "On the other hand, when they use rendition and torture as a threat, it's undeniable that they benefit, in some sense, from the fact that people know that intelligence agents are willing to act unlawfully. They benefit from the fact that people understand the threat and believe it to be credible."

... This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will.

... But there's a problem: No one claims that torture is an effective interrogation tool--least of all the people who practice it. Torture "doesn't work.... The Army's own interrogation field manual states that force "can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear." '

... International law sets minimum standards of behaviour. Outside of bullying and force, it is all we have to provide a framework for resolving those differences. Without it, we are back to the law of the jungle.

It is dangerous indeed to begin to imagine a system of international governance in which some states - the large and powerful ones - feel that they can pick and choose the international rules they like and discard those that they don't....

That approach degrades international law, and it makes it more difficult to rely on rules when others violate them. If you begin to tinker unilaterally with the international rules you don't like - on human rights, on the Geneva conventions, on the use of force - then others may begin to tinker with the rules they don't like - on trade, on intellectual property, on the rights of foreign investors. If you send out a message that you consider the rules to be obsolete and incapable of meeting new paradigms, you prevent yourself from challenging others who then act in the same way....

We now have a system of international rules and breaking them has consequences, domestically and internationally. The rules of international law which have been the subject of so unremitting an assault in the aftermath of 9/11 have shown themselves to be remarkably robust. They have not been washed away. They have their detractors but, in far larger numbers, they have their supporters.

... And privately, a number of senior (u.S.) administration officials have recognised that the administration may have made serious mistakes in its so-called "war on terrorism" and in respect of Guantánamo, and that a more consensual and rules-based approach is needed if necessary cooperation from other states is going to be engaged.

... Britain and the US are bound to re-engage with their commitment to a rules-based system, that international law is alive and kicking, and that the world is not quite as lawless as some may wish. '

Globalisation, even in a single democratic world, strips power away. "Parliament is degenerating into a subsidiary of the stock market," says Günter Grass. The German debate, like the French debate, is about despair and incomprehension

What can democracy do about a planet warming and frizzling towards extinction?...

The democracy we primp for global export may divide the spoils among egoists, as in Baghdad. But it doesn't answer the big questions of survival, equality, peace. It's a concept barely 60 years old, not a torch blazing irresistibly over millenniums, nor the bill of goods George sold Georgia.

The four nations - Brazil, India, Germany and Japan - are unhappy about that position. "The Security Council is not like an aircraft, with first class, business and economy seats," said Ryozo Kato, Japan's ambassador to the United States.

(Brazilian ambassadır to the UN) said his country would propose that the four nations be granted veto power that they could not use for 15 years. In 2020, he said, the United Nations could hold a conference to decide whether to lift the ban on the use of veto power. The four need the support of 128 nations, two-thirds of the United Nations' 191 members, to amend the United Nations charter. The issue is scheduled for a vote during the September meeting of the General Assembly.

...The proposal Mr. Annan offered would expand the 15-member Council to 24 members, with the six new permanent members without vetoes, and three new two-year spots for rotating members.

... no nation can count on its neighbors. Argentina and Mexico oppose Brazil. Japan is facing serious opposition from North and South Korea as well as China, where tens of thousands of protesters took part in angry anti-Japan demonstrations last month. Italy opposes Germany, while Pakistan is trying to block India.

... The Bush administration's ability to block the four nations is indirect. If 128 Assembly members vote to allow them to join the Security Council, Council members must accept that decision. But then they must submit the revised charter to their governments for ratification. The Bush administration could simply withhold the treaty from the Senate, meaning it would not take effect. '