November 19, 2009

The Asian century, fact-checked, III.

Every time I try to get out, the New York Times’ op-ed pages just pull me back in.

Willy Lam, in a piece headlined ‘Equals at Last, for Better or Worse’:

For the first time, the leaders of the United States and China talked as equals. And the rough parity between an apparently declining superpower and a fast-rising quasi-superpower has major global implications for issues including regional security, nuclear proliferation, trade, climate change and human rights.

Chinese GDP, 2008: $4.33 trillion. US GDP, 2008: $14.2 trillion. Military spending as % of GDP, China: 1.96%; US: 4.28%.

Conversely, of course, the United States and China have talked as veto-bearing equals on the United Nations Security Council since 1971. Not 2009.

I give up.

September 3, 2009

The problem wasn’t just al-Megrahi.

I read through the official documents on the al-Megrahi affair on Tuesday, just after they were released. (I was rejected for work experience by Newsnight once again, so I thought I may as well do something vaguely journalistic to make up for it. Yeah, I’m a sad individual.)

The UK Ministry of Justice, the UK Foreign Office, and the Scottish Government all released papers “relevant” to the Megrahi case because of media reports of a conspiracy. This Times analysis is a good summary of the document drop’s Megrahi-related revelations.

But the documents are far more interesting than just for what they say about the decision to release Megrahi. They are a devastating snapshot of UK policy towards a key state in the War on Terror since 2007.

And I’m going to argue that they provide more than a hint that those relations have evolved very haphazardly, very incompetently, and into a very dubious state indeed.

Full details below the fold.

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