The End of America's "Unipolar Moment"?

I have a problem conceding that we have moved into a world of multipolarity. This would assume that one or more countries have thus increased their political/military/financial clout to the US's level or surpassed that level. I have read the statistics that China has passed Japan as the world's second largest economy and that China holds much of the US trade debt. From a purely economic standpoint I agree that we have moved (or are moving) into multipolarity. Yet many articles which discuss this topic seem to qualify their arguments through alluding to military power.

This source doesn't take a stance on whether the world has moved into multipolarity, yet it illustrates my point in the second paragraph. Using terms like, "...rapidly evolving threat environment." seems to indicate that we are headed towards a war. Perhaps China is poised to utilize the world's largest military against the US? Did I miss those headlines? Does anyone actually believe Iran or North Korea can challenge the US in a full scale military 
confrontation (or any other sort of confrontation for that matter)?


So then what is this discourse about the threat environment which apparently is an argument for multipolarity? Is the global (leaderless) jihad threatening the unipolar order? I am wondering if I am the only one which has noticed these conflicting discourses in polarity discussions.

Video

Video Posted By Cirincione via Twitter:

Just something for those who are still interested in arms control. I feel that arms control is a dying subject, giving-way to the study of irregular warfare and insurgency. Either way, it is still something which needs a significant amount of attention from our policy makers.

New Beginnings

I fly back to London tomorrow morning. Right now I am trying to stay up in order to be able to sleep a bit on this flight.

I'm looking to restart this blog after my dissertation is due; so I will post a few times on this in order to gain some interest, to begin gathering hits again. I may also be bringing on another blogger who posts mainly on Hubpages; he writes primarily on local level, and domestic politics issues. Dissertation is due Sept. 6, looking forward to writing for recreation again.

I may give an executive summary of my dissertation closer to its due date. Due to the possibility the faculty grading it may search passages of my dissertation on the internet, I will not be posting it here. The process of proving this is my blog would be horrifying, I imagine. What I will say it involves a case study of Kazakhstan and makes conclusions about the nature of the state centric system and discourse of the state.

PS: If anyone does read this ever, I'd be interested in hearing ideas for other places to host this blog. I'm thinking this layout looks a bit....bland.

Geopolitics -- France

In keeping with my field of study for next year (“Geopolitics and Grand Strategy”) I have decided to compose a couple of articles about the geopolitical importance of multiple countries.

France will be the target of today’s post.

Looking at a map of Europe, France holds a very powerful position. It borders seven countries and two bodies of water. Andorra, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco and Italy all border France. The English Channel separates France from the only other European nuclear power, the United Kingdom. The Mediterranean Sea separates France from the north coast of Africa and the Western-most coast of the Middle East.

France has neared superpower status on multiple occasions, most notably the reign of Napoleon being the closest. Instead of growing into its potential, France has been subject to English domination in the 18^th century and then subjected to Nazi rule in Germany. Now France holds an interesting position where they may hold the key to the ambitions of the US in Eurasia.

Generally speaking, in a vote that splits the UNSC East v. West the votes will be grouped with China and Russia on one side and France, UK, and the US on the other side. If you need proof of this, look at past votes over whether to impose sanctions on North Korea and Iran. It is hard to imagine the US without the UK by its side. The US/UK alliance is an impotent duo at best. The UK lost its geopolitical importance during the Second World War; since 1945 the UK has failed to be a geopolitical player. It may be a subject of their distance from West/East divide (which I would put probably in Eastern Europe descending on the Eastern border of the Ukraine and Turkey, both of which will be the subject of this series in the upcoming week) or their impotency on the world stage. The other duo is the “Eastern Alliance” (as I will call it) of Russia and China which will reliably protect their interests both in the Middle East and East Asia. This is where France’s situation becomes interesting.

For most who pay attention to international politics, France is often an unreliable, erratic actor. Sometimes they are staunch allies of the United States and other times they are the first to criticize the US. In a contested vote on the Security Council, France often holds the deciding vote. This makes the relationship between the US and France a delicate one. With the rise in potency of the European Union in the past decade France also has the ability to united Europe to reassert itself as the world’s superpower (I say ‘reassert’ referring to the time when Europe was the head of exploration and colonialism). France has the unique ability to do this because of their geographic location, their nuclear weapons stockpile (third largest in the world), and their ability to lead. When consulting my peers about the question of leadership in Europe many asserted it was Germany, not France, had the ability to lead. I think Germany has two problems. The first being the most obvious, they are not a part of the nuclear club. The second harkens back to World War II and Nazi rule. There is still a collective memory of the Holocaust which weighs heavy on any assertion of German leadership. Therefore Germany holds the excellent ability to fight for a united Europe without German leadership.

If Europe united with France leading the way into 2010 and beyond, the US may have to rethink its strategy in Europe. The hundreds of thousands of US troops stationed in Europe would be forced to come home, and the US would lose influence on the world’s largest land mass and population center (Eurasia).

France is clearly the main player in European geopolitics; they hold the key to the entirety of Europe, both in and out of the UN. The alliance between the US and France one that is necessary of frequent nurturing. A hostile France could substantially limit the power of the United States in Eurasia.

Qatar's North Field

In 2006 Qatar quietly announced the development of natural gas refining facilities in their North Field which is also part of the South Pars gas field which belongs to Iran (there is no geological separation; the split occurs at the Qatar - Iran maritime boundary). Here is a map of the area:
The North Field is expected to supply approximately 14% of the world's gas supply; South Pars is expected to contain 10%. Adding to the already LOADED area; this area is non-associated natural gas which means it contains little crude oil and requires less processing.

Iran and Qatar currently have a good relationship despite Qatar's willingness to host US troops. Qatar and Iran cooperate on OPEC, the Non-Aligned Movement, and Organization of the Islamic Conference. Together they hold 24% of the world's natural gas supply which may hold the key to relieving the world's reliance on oil.

One More Won't Hurt

I found this too interesting to not post:

Jeffrey over at ArmsControlWonk came into possession of some DPRK bank-notes and had them scanned onto his blog. You'll notice the 5 is nuclear themed, very interesting!

It's Been a While

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, it's been a busy past week and a half...

Just a quick post for tonight, I'm not going to be able to post until next Friday likely.

I do not know how many of you subscribe to the Economist; every year they put out a "Pocket World in Figures," and I have marveled at this little invention for a while. This book takes a wide variety of statistics and puts them into a small but easy to use handbook. Flipping to a random page I find that:

70% of Cameroon's employment is in the agriculture sector.

or

Macedonia has the highest percentage of unemployed labor in the world at a mere 36.0%, that's pretty incredible.

Other statistics include defense spending and total attendance to cinemas per country (India has the highest in 2006 at 1,473.4 million attendees).

If you are a statistics nut (which I am though I am terrible at any sort of mathematics) this is a must have, it just packs so much information into such a small space.

In the next week I'll be reading Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard and the newest Economist which is labeled, "Waking from its sleep: A 14-page special report on the Arab world"

Until next time keep abreast on world issues and read some books!