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| Author: | Scott Malcomson |
|---|
March 18, 2009
Scott Malcomson, an editor at New York Times magazine, writes that preparations for the April 2 Group of 20 meeting in London reveal a shift in powers.
Excerpt: The FT columnist Gideon Rachman wrote a column a couple of months ago about the need for world government, and he got more and different readers than he expected (lots of gun enthusiasts). Indeed, he sounded worried. Nevertheless, that column was on the paper's most-emailed list for ages. Following Rachman's lead, I thought I'd title this entry "World Government" as a cheap and base tactic for attracting readers.
But here's the really cunning twist ... it actually is about world government!
The preparations last weekend for the April 2 Group of 20 meeting in London have revealed an interesting set of power shifts. The first and most obvious is the apparent distance and froideur of U.S.-European relations. Some of this can be laid to personalities. Larry Summers can be charismatic in his way but is frequently and easily perceived as over-bearing; and his recent attempts to browbeat the Europeans have only made them spikier. (In passing: Why is Summers out front so much? This crash is dramatic enough without the president's chief economic adviser constantly chewing up the scenery.) The big three of Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy all have their moments as well. But the trans-Atlantic tsurris is not just a clash of personalities. The old Euro-US dynamic--the Europeans depending on the U.S. to make history go, and bitterly resenting that dependence--has been on vivid display. It is the very definition of dysfunction. Obama's dreamboat qualities, and the evident warmth of all the major elected European players toward his administration, don't seem, weirdly, to make much difference.
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