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RULE-SET DUELS AND DUAL RULE SETS MAKE FOR CORE CONFLICT

The Belmont Club has a two part essay ” The World Standard” on the quiet but important battle over Rule-Sets going on between the EU and the United States that is occurring, in Wretchard’s words ” mostly under the radar”. ( Part I. and Part II.) As always, Wretchard is thoughtful and provocative

The attempt by the EU to use novel and arbitrary standards to establish non-tariff barriers violates the WTO agreement and they will, when these barriers become pervasive enough, face potential WTO sanctions. There are three possible outcomes at such a juncture:

The EU Rule-Set may get- properly in my view- trumped by the Meta-Rule-Set for Globalization epitomized by the WTO and the EU will back down under threat of sanction the way the Bush administration did over steel tariffs. A happy ending that reaffirms Connectivity, Core unity and the WTO as an honest broker and guardian of Globalization.

The WTO may uphold some or all of the EU’s higher standards, legitimizing the use of non-tariff barriers and setting off a situation not only of Dual Rule-Sets but openly dueling Rule-Sets within the Core. A peaceful but intense diplomatic-legal struggle that will aggravate other tensions within the Atlantic World and demonstrate that the WTO is moving away from it’s founding principles to become an agent to ” manage” or ” slow ” Globalization.

The WTO may sanction the EU and the EU defiantly embarks on a trade war, becoming a rival protectionist bloc. Unlikely you say ? I agree but not if the choice meant conforming to a global Rule-Set that will make the generous welfare state – democratic socialism of the EU’s member states subject to the kind of market competition that would cause a slashing of domestic budgets. I can’t say if the Euros would still fight for king and country but I’m pretty sure the French will go to the wall for their 11 week vacations.

In the meantime Dual Rule -Sets can only coexist for so long before they become Dueling Rule-Sets, sparking division within the Core.

UPDATE: Praktike on QIZ Rule-Sets ( Hat Tip to Glittering Eye)

PNM THEORY IS ON THE VERGE

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius highlights the impact that Dr. Barnett is having on the Pentagon and raises The Pentagon’s New Map from the purview of foreign policy wonks, military professionals and bloggers into the big-time bright lights of the MSM. He even gets a lot of the story right:

“The enemy “is neither a religion (Islam) nor a place (the Middle East), but a condition — disconnectedness,” writes Barnett. “If disconnectedness is the real enemy, then the combatants we target in this war are those who promote it, enforce it and terrorize those who seek to overcome it by reaching out to the larger world.” It’s hard to think of a better definition of the cleavages that underlie the war in Iraq or the battle against al Qaeda.

Barnett doesn’t see America’s role as a neo-imperialist global centurion. Instead, he argues, the U.S. goal must be to promote “rule sets” that are shared by Core and Gap alike. “All we can offer is choice, the connectivity to escape isolation, and the safety within which freedom finds practical expression,” he writes. “None of this can be imposed, only offered. Globalization does not come with a ruler, but with rules.”



Congratulations Tom !

AND FURTHERMORE:



Dr. Barnett takes on ” The Beeb “

ARE ARAB WOMEN THE KEY TO MODERNIZING ISLAM ?

The Chicago Tribune today has a provocative story on a program that uses education as a tool to break the cycle of child-marriage, female ignorance and backward village obscurantism that plagues the rural parts of the Muslim world.

“School suddenly crystallized, in their words, as salvation. “No one ever explained reproduction before,” said Nora Abdullah, now 18. “Women are just expected to have babies. . . . Then they have all these children and they have to marry them off to get rid of the burden.”I would’ve been married without this class,” she said, in Arabic. “We all would have. . . . There are still parents who want to get us married.”



Child marriage exists almost everywhere in the world, but slums and rural areas of developing countries produce some of the most luckless young brides. Daquf’s girls were part of a fresh and holistic approach to changing possibilities and expectations of adolescent girls and their families in rural Egypt.The web of programs launched in 2001–based in literacy, sports, life skills education and family seminars–is being examined as a possible model for the rest of Egypt and other troubled spots to ensure that childhood doesn’t end in forced marriage.



In many countries, social workers have combated child marriage through education programs. India, for instance, has focused on keeping girls in school with the idea that a one- or two-year delay in marriage has a positive effect on their health.



Still, even with a broad government effort, girls often do not find support within their families to remain in school. Unless families and communities are pulled in to help preserve a girl’s childhood, there are powerful religious, cultural and economic forces that can overwhelm any girl.



“We’re talking about married girls, not married women,” said Judith Bruce, a program director at the Population Council, an international policy research group. “When you consider the health consequences and the human cost, this is probably the largest human-rights abuse you could name.”



Girls wed as young as 7 have little say in when or whom they marry. Deemed women once they are made wives, the girls no longer, if they ever did, attend school. They rarely have access to contraception. More to the point, they usually have no inkling of why they might want contraceptives anyway. A good wife should give birth in the first year of marriage, and, often married to older men, the girls must succumb to all sexual demands.”

The story reminded me like nothing so much as the recollections of former American slaves in Reconstruction America who explained the vistas that opened to them by learning to read. With a fair portion of half of their total population kept ignorant and devalued – far beyond anything required even under the Sharia’s regulations – the Arab world cannot but help suffer an enormous economic drag.

Furthermore, in such oppressive circumstances, where often even men cannot speak completely freely without anxiety of government or religious vigilantee persecution, politics will tend to be dominated by the angrier and most aggressive voices. Islamist voices.

The Arab world could use a conservative dose of liberal thought – schooling for both sexes, microloan programs for village-level, female-owned businesses, progress toward universal literacy – given the demographic tilt toward youth in many Arab states the results from relatively modest but consistent efforts could be an explosive leap toward modernity within a generation.

LIBERALISM AND TERRORISM ROUND-UP

Marc Shulman has a superb post at The American Future on the response of the liberal blogosphere to the now famous Beinart article. It’s the sort of post I’d wished I’d written but didn’t, so I recommend that you read Marc’s in full.

UPDATE: Centerfeud – which links to Marc Shulman’s post as well – has their own analysis by Purplestater

DO PNM BLOGGERS HAVE A ROMANIAN CONNECTION ?

First I need to say ” Thank You” because Dr. Barnett allotted a generous amount of space today on his blog for my commentary on his Deleted Scene on System Perturbation– very generous because it turns out that I am quite a wordy bastard – and then he added his own comments to my commentary. In Tom’s words, ” a megaposting”. For those of you who came here from elsewhere than Dr. Barnett’s blog, here are his links:

Dr. Barnett’s Intro.

Post I.

Post II.

Post III.

Post IV.

Post V.

PostVI.

Post VII.

Post VIII.

After reading these straight through I’m kind of longing for some greater mathematical ability – I’m pretty confident System Perturbations will later prove to have some validity as a predictor and not just as a strategic concept. Most likely, Bayesian probality theory analysis will be involved to some degree but unfortunately that’s the extent to which I can take my speculation. Maybe Dr. Barnett needs to brief the NSA cryptological brain trust and bestir their professional interest.

Another thing I noticed today is that in the backgrounds of a lot of the bloggers who have posted extensively on PNM have some interest or connection with Romania. Dr. Barnett, who holds a doctorate in Poli Sci, previously wrote a book on Communist Romania’s foreign policy. I wrote my thesis for my MA in History on American-Romanian relations during the Nixon administration, emphasizing the connection to Nixon’s China policy. TM Lutas, interestingly enough, actually is Romanian ! I’m not sure what this means but if Dave Schuyler, who is working on a Wave Theory post for the Core-Gap relationship, has ever visited Bucharest or something similar I’m going to fall off my chair.