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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (56154)	11/7/2002 10:23:44 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Here's the text of the latest UN resolution abcnews.go.com It still has the "material breach" language in it. Steven Den Beste explains that the French (not for the first time) are claiming victory because they blinked: All diplomacy is always successful. Every diplomat always wins. It doesn't matter what actually happens; when a diplomat finishes he'll always declare victory and claim that he got what he wanted out of the diplomacy. France is proclaiming victory in the negotiations in the UNSC, but they're lying because they can't admit that they blinked. The AP reports: French diplomats said the compromise was reached through negotiations at the United Nations and in telephone calls between President Bush and French President Jacques Chirac over the last day. According to French diplomats, the United States agreed to change wording in a key provision that would declare Iraq in "material breach" of its U.N. obligations. The change addresses French and Russian concerns that the original wording would have let the United States determine on its own whether Iraq had committed an infraction. Such a determination, France and Russia feared, would have triggered an attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "The Security Council will now be the ones to decide whether Iraq is in material breach," said a French diplomat, on condition of anonymity. That was always the point of contention: France wanted to require a second UNSC resolution after Iraqi failure to comply before hostilities could begin, but a careful reading of the latest text doesn't support the claim by the French diplomat. The UNSC will not make the decision as to whether Iraq is in "material breach". denbeste.nu

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (56154)	11/7/2002 10:28:13 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

>>The US created the current global economic and financial system after the end of WWII. We also created the UN and gave it a place to exist in NYC. Thus, if one wanted to stretch it out just a tad, we could say that we're the creator, and the referee... << I think it's somewhat more complicated than that, for reasons that harken back to one of the people I respect a lot, Bob Mundell. There are several parallel tracks that nations are moving on, at present. Mundell argues, and I have no reason to doubt him, that there are, essentially, three. I've argued this before, and hate to sound like a wet blanket, but I will argue it again. International relations only matter to the extent that they affect situations outside one's own nation. The US geopolitical financial situation can be boiled down to a decision in favor of floating exchange rates, free mobility of capital, and control of domestic fiscal and economic foreign policy. Our major trading partners, China and the EU, made different policy choices. I've gone into this before and won't again unless I feel that it's necessary. Outside of China and the EU, and NAFTA, nobody else matters, much, if at all, to US trade policy.