Friday, November 25, 2005
PHC Prof Published
Dr. David Aikman, PHC's new history prof, was recently published in UPI, having written a quick outline of his views on US-China relations. The article is available here.
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3 comments:
he has an impressive amount of sense.
the idea of a bilateral commission is interesting, but something I know nothing about.
The bilateral commission(s) has one great advantage over the current consular system.
Traditionally, it has been hard for members of the private sector to have a voice in international relations. Some groups like Greenpeace have had some success in the field (enough so that France blew up one of their ships, but that's another story for another day...), but individuals and corporations with international grievances have only been able to ask their own government to talk to the other government about the problem. Needless to say, this leaves a lot of people out in the cold if their grievance might create waves in the middle of, say, treaty negotiations. Basically, if your problem doesn't line up with the State Department's agenda for that country, tough luck.
The WTO was set up to solve this problem in the field of trade, and is largely successful because all of the members have a vested interest in keeping trade open. By having an outside actor which keeps track of a single issue, it doesn't matter for resolution of my trade grievance whether the US is negotiating a tense military treaty with Bulgaria.
Similarly, a series of bilateral issue commissions with at least some private sector representatives could go a long way toward confronting (and, in some cases, clearing up) issues that stand between the two countries.
That said, I don't think we should ignore the importance of a stronger India and a friendly Japan in maintaining a balance of power in Asia.
Since I brought it up, any interested in the last great French military operation, see the Wikipedia article on the matter, which is a good summary.
Also, Outside the Asylum is at http://www.outside-the-asylum.blogspot.com/
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