Much comparison is being made between America’s treatment of Union Carbide responsible for the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India and of BP for the Gulf of Mexico oil leak.  In America, President Obama is responding to the concern of his own citizens.  In India, despite many more deaths and far higher levels of toxic pollution, the government has felt no electoral need to respond and/or the people felt helpless to exert pressure and/or they didn’t care.  As for Bhopal and America, it protected its own. Such are the workings of democracy.

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It’s very interesting to compare the two opening ceremonies of the China Olympics and the South African World Cup. Both contained huge visions of the future. Both came from countries that represented a whole region and the dreams of millions.  Both were spectacular. China was more meticulous, but by God, the Africans could dance.

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Sri Lanka is becoming a focus of the emerging Great Game bewing played between China and India over control of the Indian Ocean.  China is supplying more than half of all Sri Lanka’s development loans while India has just signed a new package of trade, aid and development deals with Sri Lanka.

“China wants to be the pre-eminent power in Asia and whether Asia ends up being multipolar or unipolar depends on what happens in the Indian Ocean. Currently there is a power vacuum there and China wants to fill it,” says Brahma Chellaney of Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research. 

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Documents smuggled out of  Burma (Myanmar) by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, possibly assisted by North Korea.  U.S. Senator Jim Webb has postponed a trip to Myanmar because of the allegations. If true, it means that China could eventually have two rogue states under its thumb with rudimentary nuclear weapons to use as strategic bargaining chips in its power balance with the United States.

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The steady, growing hostility towards BP by Americans is driven partly by BP’s failure to understand the American dream.   While Britain’s tendency is to play down and minimise fuss, Americans like big crises to be solved by big heroes.  It is impossible to underestimate how the power of this narrative feeds into the making of American policy.  It is muddle through against resolution; Full Monty against Independence Day; Midsomers Murders against Dirty Harry.

 

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Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou’s thoughts on the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. They could be applied far beyond China:- 

Surveying history, we see that in conflicts between governments and people which end in bloodshed, governments, as the public authority, must assume the heaviest responsibility. The existence of a government is dependent on the people’s trust. When it resorts to use of armed force against the people, it is not only the people that are hurt; the trust between the government and the citizenry is also damaged, and recovery from such an event takes a long time. In such situations, therefore, governments must bravely face up to this reality and, with the utmost patience and tolerance, take steps to rebuild trust.

I am amazed that my bill from British Gas fails to specify how much I’m actually being charged.  I am told what I’ve paid; how much gas I’ve used; the discount I get for direct debiit; my refund adjustment; and VAT; but no clear final bill. 

Following the nine different numbers I had to call to ask about a BT broadband installation, little wonder that great British companies are foundering.

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Like Israel and Palestine, Taiwan and China are two societies who have grievances over lost land, styles of government and strategic interests.  But forty per cent of Taiwan’s trade is with China and between them they run 90 per cent of the global market for wi-fi routers. In contrast, Israel’s trade with its two Arab neighbour with whom it does have diplomatic relations — Jordan and Egypt — is only 0.6 per cent of the total. 

On paper, neither Taiwan and China recognise each other’s right to exist, but over the years both have found an alternative way to live together.

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Over the past couple of years, a consensus has been emerging over the issue of democracy and elections in the developing world, brilliantly summed up by Borut Grgic of the Atlantic Council.  His topic was the recent uprising in Kyrghystan.

“Illusions that Kyrghystan can be the bastion of Central Asian democracy should be dropped,” he writes in the International Herald Tribune. Among elected members of parliament “There is no sense yet of national duty or sacrifice for the common good…… whoever is elected next will probably not be much different in essence and form from the leader who was last ousted…..Nothing I saw convinced me that we have witnessed a democratic change…..The priority should be on achieving stability and economic growth, a return of functional institutions and a strengthening of law and order.” 

Much of Grgic’s assessment could be mirrored for Iraq, Afghanistan and swathes of Africa.

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With the flourish of e-books, The Third World War  has reached number nine on the Amazon Kindle list of bestselling fiction on war.  It tells of how Pakistan and North Korea could simultaneously become a threat to world peace. 

Does that ring bell anywhere? 

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