Left Flank

It's not just that the Democrats will nominate the first African-American person to be president, or that Senator Obama put down Senator Clinton's race-baiting campaign (both links via bjkeefe's "Racial Politics") in Midwest states. Both of these remarkable feats are just the aftershocks of a larger dynamic:

MR. RUSSERT: But, Gerry and John, we're going to have big difference on the big issues. John McCain will say, "We're going to stay in Iraq"; Barack Obama say, "Get out." Barack Obama will say, "Roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top income earners"; John McCain will say, "Keep it going." John McCain will say, "No national healthcare as such"; Barack Obama will say, "national healthcare." Every issue, people are going to have to make a big choice, a big decision. John McCain will say, "No conversations with Iran, period"; Obama will say, "We'll talk to our adversaries." Big differences.

Keep reading →

Matthew Lee pursues the question of which countries can aid Myanmar, by what the UN calls the "right to protect" (R2P). The Burmese case doesn't fall into the four categories, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity, that would trigger R2P. That would rule out UN action. Mark Leon Goldberg, however, advocates a less rigorous criterion: "...the international community is permitted to violate the sovereignty of a country when that country is unwilling or unable to prevent mass atrocities from being visited upon its own citizens."

Although western-donated aid is mostly stymied by Burmese authorities, Chinese and Indian-donated aid has reached Myanmar, according to Lee's reporting. Spencer Ackerman confirms this willful obstructionism, and pleads for a solution, even by force. I think Lee is onto a pertinent issue: not R2P, but how states disburse aid.

Keep reading →

Brad DeLong pits Megan McArdle against Greg Clark on the odds, that food prices will cut global economic growth. DeLong backed Clark's optimism about "...the race between technological improvement and growing demand...". Still, the price of rice continues to rise.

It seems DeLong was right. Technological improvement might save the day.

Keep reading →

Could beef start a war?

As I was sitting here in Busan, working on a paper about natural resources and civil war and listening to news of South Korean protests against the importation of American beef, I discovered the War of the Farrapos. According to the Correlates of War database, this civil war between Brazilians resulted in over 200,000 deaths on both sides and lasted ten years. The cause was trade.

Keep reading →

The post-mortems on Hillary Clinton are starting to appear in print (ironically, the MSM resuscitates her, and then tramples all over her). The Nation's Ari Berman wants to gloat that Senator Clinton's demise in 2008 resulted from her vote authorizing the Iraq War and the Kyl-Lieberman resolution on Iran. That's the angle that will help put Senator McCain in the White House. More plausibly and soberly, Time's Karen Tumulty doesn't rely on one explanation, but five. I would add: Clinton couldn't adapt nimbly enough.

Clinton's stodginess appears mostly in her inability to recover from the January 29 debacle in Florida and Michigan. After not advocating a strategy to correct for the two states' Democratic parties' embarrassing bids to join the early primary season's scrum, she got what she deserves: a delegate count just lower than the number she should have received and the loss of momentum had both states been in play. She didn't show leadership then, and now she does not deserve to be the nominee now. Senator Obama did no better, even if he's trying to tempt Florida back into his statistical column. But, then, he didn't run as the "experience" candidate!

Keep reading →

Tom Engelhardt asks probably the easiest question possible on American foreign policy:

Almost seven and a half years later, an observer might be pardoned for wondering whether there hadn't been two super losers in the Cold War. Had the Soviet Union, the weaker of the two great powers of the second half of the last century, simply imploded first, while the U.S., enwreathed in a cloud of self-congratulation, was almost unbeknownst to itself also slowly making its way toward an exit?

Keep reading →

10% is the Burmese junta's disaster score, the amount of cyclone survivors NGOs have assisted, according to Save the Children's Joe Lowry. Alright, maybe 25%, if UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes!

In what appeared to be a bid to get the regime to stop hindering the relief effort, the UN launched a $187m programme of emergency food and relief for Burma.

Keep reading →

UN Charge d-Affaires Shari Villarosa offers as succinct an answer for why the Burmese junta refuses international aid.

Keep reading →

Minding my Chinese readers, there is a certain symbolic "WOW"-ness related to the lighting of a torch on Mt. Everest. I just wish it weren't an Olympic torch. And, I hope those torch-bearers clean up after themselves.