Reply to Paul Berliner on Asia Foruum
"As exepected, Taiwan has hopped on HK's bandwagon and
has implemented restrictions on trading. But as we speak, Taiwan MoF
officials are flying to Malaysia to meet with captain crony.
I wonder what the result will be".
They will all invite the foreign investors in their currencies and stocks and derivative instruments to a barbecue. Then, they will barbecue them.
...this is devil take the hindmost time. Forget the rule of law.
If you haven't seen this.
Ref: Stratfor
For Private Use Only
(C) Stratfor
"Asia's problems are no more amenable to economic solutions than are Russia's. The core issue in Asia is political. Asia is no longer economically viable. It cannot compete with the United States except by exporting at or near a loss.
Asia is being forced to take political measures to protect its economic security. Asian countries can solve their economic problems internally only through political action. Externally, they can stabilize their economies only by forming a regional trading bloc that protects their weakened economies and by creating a new reserve currency to substitute for the dollar. This is not only an economic decision, but also one with profound political and even military consequences.
The current economic crisis is forcing the world back to politics. In the very long run, the return of politics will resurrect war in the traditional sense of Great Power conflict. In the immediate future, this crisis has demonstrated the impotence of multilateral organizations to manage the world. The United Nations can't deal with Iraq, the IMF can't do anything with Russia or Indonesia, and the WTO can't stop the trade war that will be the inevitable consequence of Asian export surges and protectionism. The multilateralism of the New World Order has shown the hollowness of these institutions by revealing that it really isn't a small world after all, but a very complex, variegated and dangerous one.
Like the Congress of Vienna, the New World Order tried to freeze in place institutions that had meaning only in the context of a great struggle.
Whether that struggle was against Napoleon or Brezhnev, the fact is thatwhen the war ends, the institutions that made the alliance function must go away. This crisis shows the impotence of such institutions in the face of reality. It also shows that the New World Order, rather than being a brilliant vision or a dark conspiracy, was merely a failure of imagination.
Or more precisely, it was imagination run wild, believing that politics and war would be replaced by economics and good feelings.
So, now the history of the post-Cold War period finally begins in earnest.It is not, in our view, the Russian question that will be the most important. That is merely the first question. The most important question is the relationship of the United States to Asia. More precisely, the question is the relationship of the United States to the genuine if reluctant leader of Asia: Japan.
First, a redefinition of Japanese politics is going to occur, with a more political and nationalist view of the world emerging. Then, just as economic reality is prying U.S. and Japanese interests apart, political reality will divide their interests as well. As American and Japanese interests are forced apart, a new global politics, the politics of the 21st Century, will be defined".
|
