Shaping a new world order

China, Russia, India and others are rising, and to call the U.S. the world's 'sole superpower' now means little. But Washington can benefit if it is able to manage this geopolitical transformation effectively.

August 17, 2011|By Andrew J. Bacevich

Chief among the problems facing the United States today is this: too many obligations piled high without the wherewithal to meet them. Among those obligations are the varied and sundry commitments implied by the phrase "American global leadership." If ever there were an opportune moment for reassessing the assumptions embedded in that phrase, it's now.

With too few Americans taking notice, history has entered a new era. The "unipolar moment" created by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has passed. To refer to the United States today as the world's "sole superpower" makes about as much sense as General Motors bragging that it's the world's No.1 car company: Nostalgia ill-befits an enterprise beset with competitors breathing down its neck. Similarly, to call Barack Obama the "most powerful man in the world" is akin to curtsying before Elizabeth II as "Queen of Great Britain, Ireland and British Dominions beyond the Seas": Although a nice title, it confers little by way of actual authority.

Read more:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/17/opinion/la-oe-bacevich-multipolar-world-20110817

Nationalism in 21st Century France

ARTS

‘Cultural Revolt’ Over Sarkozy’s Museum Plans
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: March 8, 2011
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to open a history museum in Paris has stoked a debate over what it means to be French in a multicultural nation.

READ MORE :http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/arts/design/sarkozy-wants-his-history-museum-in-paris.html

REMARKABLE STORY OF THE YOUNG VANGUARD OF EGYPT'S REVOUTION

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Tunisian Revolution

Opposition in Tunisia Finds Chance for Rebirth

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: January 20, 2011

TUNIS — Ali Larayedh was imprisoned and tortured for 14 years for his role as a leader of the outlawed Islamist movement here, then hounded for the past six years by the omnipresent Tunisian secret police.

Holly Pickett for The New York Times

Ali Larayedh says his once-outlawed party, Al-Nahda, ascribes to a uniquely liberal version of Islamist politics.

Holly Pickett for The New York Times

Soldiers blocked demonstrators on Thursday in Tunis outside the headquarters of the ousted dictator’s party.

But six days after the ouster of this country’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Mr. Larayedh now basks in a singular celebrity. He is one of the few remaining leaders of the only credible opposition movement in Tunisia’s history. And in the aftermath of Mr. Ben Ali’s flight, that movement’s potential reincarnation is perhaps the most significant variable in Tunisia’s post-revolutionary future — yearned for by legions of working-class and rural Tunisians, viewed with just as much apprehension by the cosmopolitan coastal elite.

In an interview in the lobby of the Africa Hotel here, Mr. Larayedh insisted that his party posed no threat to Tunisians or to tourists sipping French wine in their bikinis along the Mediterranean beaches.  READ ON: www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/world/africa/21islamist.html

An Assassination’s Long Shadow

TODAY, millions of people on another continent are observing the 50th anniversary of an event few Americans remember, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.  READ ON:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17hochschild.html