Eighth July Two Thousand Nine

Item 1: "Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93" by Tim Weiner

- He was 93
- the most influential defense secretary of the 20th century
- Served Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968
- Half a million American soldiers went to war on his watch. More than 16,000 died; 42,000 more would fall in the seven years to come
- He had spent decades thinking through the lessons of the Vietnam war - The greatest of these was to know one’s enemy — and to “empathize with him... We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes,” as Mr. McNamara explained
- “What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”
- McNamara's idea — a secret deal in which Kennedy offered to withdraw his missiles in Turkey if Khrushchev removed his warheads from Cuba — resolved the Cuban missile crisis
- Congress authorized the Vietnam war after Johnson contended that American warships had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964 - The attack never happened
- his often aloof and occasionally arrogant conduct left him with few allies inside the Pentagon when the war began to go wrong
- he listed reasons America lost the Vietnam War: a failure to understand the enemy, a failure to see the limits of high-tech weapons, a failure to tell the truth to the American people and a failure to grasp the nature of the threat of communism
- “War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” he concluded. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”


Item 2: "Obama's Style Trumps Substance, Again" by Stephen M. Walt

- Russia diapproves of the US because - Bush administration abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, invaded Iraq in 2003, pressed forward with plans for missile defenses in Eastern Europe, cultivated close ties with several post-Soviet republics in Central Asia, and pushed NATO to accelerate membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008
- US disapproves Russia because - Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, his use of Russia’s oil and gas exports as an instrument of leverage, his none-too-transparent effort to re-establish a sphere of influence around Russia’s borders, and Moscow’s reluctance to help stop the Iranian nuclear programs
- Obama and his foreign-policy team understood that the United States could not continue to challenge Russia’s sensitivities on missile defense, NATO membership for Ukraine, etc., and still expect to get Russian help vis-à-vis Iran, North Korea, or Afghanistan
- Obama - “the arc of history shows us that governments which serve their own people survive and thrive; governments which serve only their own power do not.”


Item 3: "Oil Prices Need Government Supervision" by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy

- For two years the price of oil has been dangerously volatile, seemingly defying the accepted rules of economics. First it rose by more than $80 a barrel, then fell rapidly by more than $100 before doubling to its current level of around $70. In that time, however, there has been no serious interruption of supply.
- windfalls from brief price surges are offset by the consequent difficulties of planning national budgets and investment strategies
- International Energy Agency - cut its long-term forecast of oil consumption by almost a quarter
- We therefore call upon the International Organization of Securities Regulators to consider improving transparency and supervision of the oil futures markets in order to reduce damaging speculation


Item 4: "My Message to G8 Leaders" by Ban Ki-moon

- The last two years have witnessed a cascade of interconnected crises: financial panic, rising food and oil prices, climate shocks, a flu pandemic, and more
- G8 and other major emitters of greenhouse gases must intensify their work to seal a deal at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December
- G8 should take specific steps needed to honour long-standing but unfulfilled pledges of support to poor countries to help them achieve the millennium development goals
- G8 should focus urgent attention on the intensifying global hunger crisis - the world's hungry now number one billion


Item 5: "Seven Ways to Build a Cleaner Planet" by Tony Blair

- Breaking the Climate Deadlock project, a strategic partnership between my office and The Climate Group, shows how major reductions even by 2020 are achievable if we focus action on certain key technologies, deploy policies that have been proven to work, and invest now in developing those future technologies that will take time to mature
- 70 per cent of the reductions needed by 2020 can be achieved by investing in three areas: increasing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation, and use of lower-carbon energy sources
- Implementing just seven proven policies - renewable energy standards (say, feed-in tariffs or renewable portfolio standards); industry efficiency measures; building codes; vehicle efficiency standards; fuel carbon content standards; appliance standards, and policies for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation - can deliver these reductions


Item 6: "Spiegel Interview with Henry Kissinger" by Der Spiegel

- The map of Europe which emerged from the Treaty of Versailles is, more or less, the map of Europe that exists today
- Any international system must have two key elements for it to work:
i. A certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the system difficult and costly.
ii. A sense of legitimacy.
- The American view was that peace is the normal condition among states. To ensure lasting peace, an international system must be organized on the basis of domestic institutions everywhere, which reflect the will of the people, and that will of the people is considered always to be against war. Unfortunately, there is no historic evidence that this is true.
- Before World War I, Germany faced three major countries on its borders: Russia, France, and Britain. After Versailles, Germany faced a collection of smaller states on its eastern borders, against each of which it had a huge grievance but none of which was capable of resisting Germany alone
- Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions.
- The outcome can only be a two-state solution, and there seems to be substantial agreement on the borders of such a state
- I do not see any conflicts between such major countries, China, Russia, India, and the U.S., which will justify a military solution
- The relationship of China with the rest of the world is a lot more important in historic terms