ForumGarden

I haven't even finished reading this and don't know its conclusions, if any, but I'm so enjoying it I had to share.

From the article:

So, welcome to the new multipolar disorder - and farewell to the unipolar moment of apparently unchallengeable American supremacy. The hyperpower! The mega-Rome! Remember that? Moment turns out to have been the right word: a brief episode between the end of the old bipolar world of the cold war and the beginning of the new multipolar world of the 21st century. This new multipolarity is the result of at least three trends. The first, and most familiar, is the rise or revival of other states - China, India, Brazil, Russia as comeback kid - whose power resources compete with those of the established powers of the West. The second is the growing power of non-state actors. These are of widely differing kinds. They range from movements such as Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, to non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace, from big energy corporations and drug companies to regions and religions.

For a start, it matters a lot whether this is multipolar order or multipolar disorder. Order is a high value in international relations. It stops a lot of people being killed. At the moment we have multipolar disorder, and it's not clear what the shape of a new multipolar order might be.



:yh_rotfl

Think 192 times Canada. Some of the growing powers fit that vision: Canada and Australia, for example, whose natural resources will make them more important in future;



:-3

Nuclear proliferation - the proliferation of WMDs altogether - is one of the greatest dangers of our time. It is right up there alongside global warming, and as difficult to address. It seems to me a sustainable claim that the danger of nuclear warfare is now greater than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, though the scale of a likely conflagration is much smaller. Who would be prepared to risk a bet that we won't see a nuclear weapon fired in anger over the next 10 years? I wouldn't. Would you?



(for those of us who believe in global warming, this is an interesting thought...let's see... who has nukes? US, Russia, UK, France, China, North Korea, India, and Israel. Oh, crap. Did that say Israel?)

ok. done reading. hope you enjoy it as much as I.

koan wrote: Nuclear proliferation - the proliferation of WMDs altogether - is one of the greatest dangers of our time. It is right up there alongside global warming, [...]I didn't get your joke in post #2, but this one is genuinely funny. :yh_rotfl