International Affairs: August 2008 Archives

I read somewhere that at the end of World War 2 there were only around 60 countries in the world, while there are now around 200 (depending on how you count). I'd really like to see a timeline that shows the number of countries throughout history. Any pointers?

Looks like it's not all wine and roses in the Iranian economy either. Unfortunately for them, their economy isn't as broadly diversified and as free as America's.

Ahmadinejad is expected to run for a second term in Iran's next presidential election, slated to take place early in 2009. His reformist rivals are expected to attack him especially on his economic policies.

Iran suffers from a rising consumer price index, high percentage of unemployment and an inflation of 26 percent.

Ahmadinejad's radicalism is the duct tape that's holding the Iranian state together. Without the Islamic nationalism he foments Iran would collapse from within. As the situation deteriorates, demographic forces will push Iran towards regional imperialism, which will force the West to fight to stop it.

John Stossel is right about the economic idiocy of "energy independence":

Most every politician and pundit says "energy independence" is a great idea. Presidents have promised it for 35 years. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were self-sufficient, protected from high prices, supply disruptions and political machinations?

The hitch is that even if the United States were energy independent, it would be protected from none of those things. To think otherwise is to misunderstand basic economics and the global marketplace.

To be for "energy independence" is to be against trade. But trade makes us as safe. Crop destruction from this summer's floods in the Midwest should remind us of the folly of depending only on ourselves. Achieving "energy independence" would expose us to unnecessary risks -- such as storms that knock out oil refineries or droughts that create corn -- and ethanol -- shortages.

Trade also saves us money.

I think Stossel misunderstands McCain's desire for "strategic independence", however.

"I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lexington Project -- named for the town where Americans asserted their independence once before," John McCain said. "This nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025".

Barack Obama, promising to "set America on path to energy independence," is upset that we send millions to other countries. "They get our money because we need their oil".

I don't think the idea is to use domestic oil/energy exclusively, but to break the strategic power that OPEC and our enemies derive from their oil reserves.

Sen. John McCain says he would seek to break U.S. reliance on foreign oil by 2025 by stepping up offshore drilling, nuclear power and conservation.Aides to the Republican presidential contender say his aim is strategic energy independence - a U.S. economy where oil is no longer be the primary fuel or dependent on cartels such as OPEC.

"Strategic independence" is part domestic energy policy, and part foreign policy.

Our Olympics correspondent has snapped this exclusive photo of the Chinese women's gymnastics team preparing for the 2012 games in London.

Unfortunately, not all the women make the cut.

I'd been meaning to post these for a week or so but hadn't gotten around to it.

Jonah Goldberg explains that our capitalist system itself is the most valuable national asset we've got.

Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.

People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger, and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.

The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”

At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own.

For generations, many thought prosperity was material stuff: factories and forests, gold mines and gross tons of concrete poured. But we now know that these things are merely the fringe benefits of wealth. Stalin built his factories, Mao paved over the peasants. But all that truly prospered was misery and alienation.

A recent World Bank study found that a nation’s wealth resides in its “intangible capital” — its laws, institutions, skills, smarts and cultural assumptions. “Natural capital” (minerals, croplands, etc.) and “produced capital” (factories, roads, and so on) account for less than a quarter of the planet’s wealth. In America, intangible capital — the stuff in our heads, our hearts, and our books — accounts for 82 percent of our wealth.

Which is why idiot ideas like "stimulus" tax rebates do far more harm than good: a few dollars in our pockets are worth far less than the damage such a stimulus (and the oppressive tax regime that underlies it) causes to our fundamental capitalist system. We need to aggressively protect our economic liberty if we want to protect our economic health. The latter is a result of the former.

Andrew Roth explains how globalization and economic liberty not only create wealth, but also foment political liberty. As he excerpts from The PayPal Wars:

We're definitely onto something big. The need PayPal answers is monumental. Everyone in the world needs money - to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment. You can run out of it. It wears out. It can get lost or stolen. In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection.

Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world. Many of these countries' governments play fast and loose with their currencies. They use inflation and sometimes wholesale currency devaluations, like we saw in Russia and several Southeast Asian countries last year, to take wealth away from their citizens. Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars.

Eventually PayPal will be able to change this. In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.

Capitalism breeds liberty of all sorts, and when you squelch it (as the global left is wont to do) you can't help but engender oppression of every kind.

In case anyone is curious, I've compiled a table that shows the number of medals China has won in past Olympics, along with their ranking. It appears that China either did not compete or was not competitive before 1984.

Considering the performance of American athletes at the 1984 Olympics, China's medal count (so far) in 2008 isn't so far out of line that one must suspect them of widespread cheating. (Other than in women's gymnastics, anyway.)

China confiscated over 300 Bibles from four American Christians yesterday.

The Bibles were taken from the group's checked luggage after they landed at the airport in the city of Kunming, said Pat Klein, head of Vision Beyond Borders. The group, based in Sheridan, Wyoming, distributes Bibles and Christian teaching materials around the world to "strengthen the persecuted church," according to its Web site.

The group arrived in China on Sunday and had intended to distribute the Bibles to people in the city, Klein told the AP in a telephone interview while still at the airport.

"I heard that there's freedom of religion in China, so why is there a problem for us to bring Bibles?" Klein said. "We had over 300 copies and customs took all of them from us."

Officially, you heard right; in reality, you heard wrong. China doesn't have much freedom of anything.

(HT: JW.)

Potential Obama VP Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia, credits Obama for the cease-fire between Russia and Georgia. (If there really is a cease-fire.)

It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I’m very, very happy that the Senator's request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.

Just imagine how powerful he'll be if he actually gets elected!

While it's appealing on the surface to push for an "everyone wins" solution to the Russio-Georgian war that allows the break-away provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to vote on independence, the long-term result of this approach will be a proliferation of tiny, fragile nations that are incapable of protecting and maintaining their own sovereignty. Is a nation that cannot deter its enemies from attacking and defend its borders when necessary really sovereign? Is a nation that depends on the good-will and assistance of international power-brokers to sustain its territorial integrity sovereign?

It's not that might-makes-right, but might is what transforms rights into reality. Without might, rights are an ephemeral abstraction that can evaporate in an instant.

Update:

The brilliantly cynical Spengler agrees that "loser" states shouldn't be coddled:

There is no longer any reason to put up with the tantrums of long-redundant tribes. If 3.7 million ethnic Georgians have the right to break away from the 142 million population of the Russian Federation, why shouldn't the 100,000 Ossetians living in Georgia break away and form their own state as well? Most of them have acquired Russian passports and want nothing to do with the Georgians. The Ossetians have spoken their variant of Persian for more than a millennium and had their own kingdom during the Middle Ages.

If the West is going to put itself at risk for 3.8 million ethnic Georgians, roughly the population of Los Angeles, or 5.4 million Tibetans, or 2 million Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, why shouldn't Russia take risks for the South Ossetians, not to mention the 100,000 Abkhaz speakers in Georgia's secessionist Black Sea province? Once the infinite regress of ethnic logic gets into motion, there is no good reason not to pull the world apart like taffy.

Forget the Kosovo Albanians, the South Ossetians, the Abkhazians, Saakashvili and the Dalai Lama. These are relics of an older world that might deserve their own theme park, but not their own state. Precisely what are 3.8 million freedom-loving Georgians supposed to contribute to American strategic interests with its US$2 billion a year of exports consisting (according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook) of "scrap metal, wine, mineral water, ores, vehicles, fruits and nuts"? Georgia's hope was to lever its geographical position on the Russia border by making itself useful to the American military.

I'm starting to think Spengler has been right all along and that we were foolish to take the Georgians in as allies in the first place. I'll need to do some more pondering.

Georgians are asking tough but fair questions:

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

Georgia stuck out its neck to align with the West instead of its former Russian masters. If we won't stand by our friends, we won't keep them for very long.

Russia and Georgia at War gives up-to-the-minute details and first-hand accounts of the war.

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising, but Barack Obama doesn't understand how the United Nations works.

Obama called for direct talks among all sides and said the United States, the U.N. Security Council and other parties should try to help bring about a peaceful resolution. ...

"The current escalation of military conflict resulted in part from the lack of a neutral and effective peacekeeping force operating under an appropriate UN mandate," Obama said. "Russia cannot play a constructive role as peacekeeper."

Russia is the UN-authorized "peacekeeper" in the region at the moment, so set aside the underlying irony of Obama's proposed solution. His suggestion that the United Nations play a role in restraining Russia is idiotic for one simple reason: Russia is on the UN Security Council and has veto power over everything the UN does! The UNSC can't even issue a statement condemning the war without Russia's approval, much less authorize "peacekeepers".

It's scary that Obama knows less about international affairs than I do.

TigerHawk has a good round-up of posts about Russia's invasion of Georgia, a staunch American ally in the region and the nation with the third largest contingent of Coalition troops in Iraq. TigerHawk warns that his reactions to the invasion are only alcohol-fueled speculation, but I think several of his points are spot-on. (CIA factbook page on Georgia.)

# Vladimir Putin is exploiting George W. Bush's weakness, which is brought on by the fact that he is thought to be too unpopular and his administration too distracted for the United States to mount effective opposition to the Russian attack.

# The United States has invested credibility in Georgia's security (the article notes that 1000 United States Marines were in the country just last month on a training mission). If we do not respond in some fairly firm way other former Soviet states are going to wonder, with more than a little justification, whether our friendship is valuable.

# The Europeans will intensify their recent internal debate about their security against resurgent Russian expansionism. The doves will campaign for appeasement and anti-Americanism, and the realists will call for closer ties with the United States.

And of course the timing -- coinciding with the start of the Olympics -- is no coincidence.

And of course also, don't forget to thank the United Nations for its role in enabling this aggression.

The fighting in South Ossetia and Abkhazia had stopped over a decade ago, because Georgia could not muster sufficient military force to regain control of the two breakaway border areas. Then a UN brokered peace deal brought in several thousand Russian peacekeepers.

Who are now attacking Georgia.

Everyone knows that Barack Obama will be spending the next week in Hawaii on vacation... but what if he decides to keep going east west and makes an appearance at the Olympics instead! No one would see it coming (except me) and he'd yet again get loads of free press and visibility on the largest international stage of the season.

Just remember that you heard it here first!

The Voice of the Martyrs website was attacked by hackers a couple of weeks ago.

On July 24, VOM’s Web site was deliberately attacked forcing us to take the site offline temporarily. Our network engineers say the attack originated outside the United States. We have to believe the intent was to silence the online voice of the persecuted church. ...

We apologize for any inconvenience this interruption has caused, but at the same time we are thrilled our work is so effective that enemies of the Gospel took notice. Please pray for persecuted Christians around the world, especially during this Olympic season as the attention of the world turns to China.

I'd bet anything that the attack was the work of Chinese state-sponsored hackers trying to silence VoM in the run-up to the Olympics. VoM's mission is to publicize the persecution of Christians around the world, and China is one of the worst offenders.

Be in prayer for the Christians who are under constant persecution in China and other hostile lands around the world. Pray that their suffering will help bring the light of the Gospel to the other victims of these repressive regimes.