Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Walter Russell Mead points out events in India are the big story this week, not Syria. The government there is pushing food subsidies and land-use bills that could hamper India’s growth.
… But because the benefits of globalization are so thinly spread, many in India resist further changes. In China, whatever that country’s political problems, massive numbers of ordinary people know that their jobs in manufacturing or in servicing companies that manufacture for export are linked to China’s integration into the global trading system. While China is in many respects a dangerously unequal economy, its global opening has at least created opportunities for people in all walks of life. That is much less true in India, so dangerous laws like this one have more support.
India must move towards an industrial revolution; tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Indians must move from the countryside to the city, from agriculture into manufacturing and services. That is never easy, even under ideal circumstances, and India will be attempting to accomplish this transformation as Indian labor faces tough competition from China, other developing countries— and automation. There is no time to lose, but India at the moment seems stuck.
This isn’t just an Indian story. Whether or not India moves forward toward a modernizing economy is partly a story about Indian incomes and social conditions; it is also a story about world geopolitics. If India hesitates on the threshold of industrialization while China moves swiftly ahead, the balance of power in Asia will become shakier year by year. If India can keep pace with China, it is likely that Asian geopolitics will settle down over time. With two economic superpowers rising together, and a strong Japan on the scene, the Asian balance of power looks reasonably stable. With one superpower rising and another potential superpower on the sidelines, the picture could change.
In the long run, what India does about its industrial and land use policy matters much more to the world than anything that happens in Syria. It matters more to the happiness and economic security of billions of human beings, and it matters more to the prospects for world peace.
Even in the middle of yet another crisis in the unhappy Middle East, Americans need to keep their eyes on the countries in which humanity’s fate in the 21st century will be hammered out. Land policy in India is a bigger deal than sectarian politics in Syria; we need to keep our eyes on the big picture.
For another story of government overreach, we turn to WSJ’s Weekend Interview.
‘So this is what starting over looks like. I have a seven-by-seven space with two little desks in it.”
Craig Zucker is remarkably good-humored, considering what he’s been through over the past year—and the tribulations that lie ahead. He’s referring to his office, rented month-to-month in a dilapidated building in a dusty corner of Brooklyn. There is construction all around, graffiti on the brick walls, and unfinished doors and windows.
It’s a long way from the Soho digs the 34-year-old used to occupy. Mr. Zucker is the former CEO of Maxfield & Oberton, the small company behind Buckyballs, an office toy that became an Internet sensation in 2009 and went on to sell millions of units before it was banned by the feds last year.
A self-described “serial entrepreneur,” Mr. Zucker looks the part with tussled black hair, a scraggly beard and hipster jeans. Yet his casual-Friday outfit does little to subdue his air of ambition and hustle.
Nowadays Mr. Zucker spends most of his waking hours fighting off a vindictive U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that has set out to punish him for having challenged its regulatory overreach. The outcome of the battle has ramifications far beyond a magnetic toy designed for bored office workers. It implicates bedrock American notions of consumer choice, personal responsibility and limited liability. …
Victor Davis Hanson did a lot of research and compares the poser v. the president.
… On the perils of going it alone without allies
“Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.” (2004)
So far no European or Arab nation has offered military support for our planned effort against Syria.
On the need to obtain UN approval before attacking another country
“You know, if the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it, do we have the coalition to make it work, and, you know, those are considerations that we have to take into account.” (2013)
After misleading the UN in obtaining no-fly-zones for Libya (and then bombing troops on the ground), Obama is not even approaching the UN for a resolution to bomb this time around.
On the idea that armed intervention is ever a good option
“I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” (2008)
The mindset in Iraq was to stop a genocidal dictator like Saddam Hussein who had gassed his own people — apparently the present mission is to stop the genocidal dictator Bashar Assad, who has gassed his own people. …
… Candidate Obama has always been an adroit demagogue. He knew how to score political points against George Bush, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, without any intention of abiding by his own sweeping declarations. The consistency in Obama’s foreign policy is his own carefully calibrated self-interest. Bombing or not bombing, shutting down or keeping open Guantanamo Bay, going or not going to the UN or the U.S. Congress — these choices are all predicated not on principle, but only on what a canny and unprincipled Obama feels best suits his own political interests and self-image at any given moment. In a self-created jam, he flipped and now goes to Congress in hopes of pinning responsibility on them, whether we go or not, whether successful or unsuccessful if we do. …
The New Republic has an ode to The Onion claiming it the best op-ed page in the country.
I largely dislike reading op-ed columnists. All too often, columnists hem and haw and posture and drop references to their famous friends and fancy trips. They make points that are obvious. They are overly pious. They hew to the party line. They love moderation. They love pointing out how they love moderation even more than they love moderation. They give credit where it is not due for politeness’s sake. They gin up fake controversies out of deadline desperation. They feign shock they don’t really feel. Even when I agree with them, I am bored by about paragraph three.
It’s not neccessarily the idea of op-eds I hate; it’s the execution. The best op-eds in the country are written by the staff of The Onion, though they’re often published as news articles. The satirical paper, which turned 25 on Thursday, still does plenty of hilarious articles on the mundane (“Nation’s Single Men Announce Plan To Change Bedsheets by 2019”), but its writing on current events has becoming increasingly biting. What they share in common with the best opinion writing is an ability to elegantly locate and dismantle a problem with an economy of words. In recent months, as Buzzfeed pointed out, the site has published a spate of crusading articles calling out the Obama administration’s inaction on Syria. (“Obama Deeply Concerned After Syrians Gassed to Death on White House Lawn”). …