Financial Times

Now may hardly seem the time to imagine a more global future, let alone do so with optimism. Most of us are hard pressed just to maintain the illusion that the present system is not breaking down, to deny with conviction what everyone knows -- that the grand trade liberalisation project is, at best, on life support.

It is only natural to think conservatively, even defensively, when witnessing the collapse of an empire. Few outside the US doubt that… more

Within a decade, governments will formalise energy policy into national security policy. If war is too important to be left to generals, energy is too important to be left to free-marketeers. And America is likely to lead the way.

Libertarian purists are correct when they argue that entrepreneurs make for more efficient exploration and distribution. But governments are deeply involved in the oil business anyway, as they control territory in which oil reserves sit. Moreover, the business bottom… more

An old Soviet joke described the Kremlin's approach to policy under Leonid Brezhnev as "pull the curtains and pretend the train is moving." The US National Security Strategy just issued by the Bush administration expresses the same general philosophy.

It would seem, to judge by this document, that the train of US official thinking has not moved for four years. For this NSS basically restates, in somewhat milder language, the notorious National Security Strategy of 2002. This is in… more

A measure of western hostility to Russia is justified, given both the nature of Russian external policies and the crude, clumsy way in which they are often executed. Unfortunately, this hostility can take on an irrational and hysterical tone absent from western attitudes to China, for example.

In recent years one reason for this particular western attitude has been growing dislike of the semi-authoritarian character of the Putin administration. A good deal of hypocrisy is involved here. The west made… more

The rise and fall of great powers makes exciting history -- all the more exciting if, as in the case of the Soviet Union, we can watch the spectacle unfold before our eyes. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that much of the discussion of the role of the US in the world is warped by the natural human desire for drama. The US is a declining power headed for collapse, says one side. No, says the other, America is the… more

What will it take to wake us up to the ever-tightening grip of oligopolies over ever more of our global marketplaces? Even though their power increasingly warps our production systems, and our free market system, alarms are rare and fleeting.

The collapse of an overly consolidated US flu vaccine system two years ago did not set off any bells. Nor did the revelation, by experts studying the potential impact of an avian flu pandemic on commerce,… more

US global power, as presently conceived by the overwhelming majority of the US establishment, is unsustainable. To place American power on a firmer footing requires putting it on a more limited footing. Despite the lessons of Iraq, this is something that American policymakers--Democrat and Republican, civilian and military--still find extremely difficult to think about.

The basic reasons why the American empire is bust are familiar from other imperial histories. The empire can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers,… more

With President George W. Bush's Tax Commission about to issue its recommendations--opening up a rare opportunity for fundamental tax reform--we would do well to remember one of the iron rules of economics: whatever we tax, we will get less of and whatever we do not tax, we will get more of. In other words, we should tax what is bad, not what is good.

By this logic, America's current tax system is as wrong-headed as it is backward: it discourages… more

Time and again, human beings have learned to build buffers into complex systems. We design compartments into our ships, circuit breakers into our electrical networks and minimum reserve requirements for our banks. Yet since the cold war era, we have done the exact opposite with our industrial system. Rather than conceive market-friendly methods to distribute risk and dampen shocks, we devoted ourselves to eliminating the bulkheads that have traditionally existed between nations and between companies. To evoke a more raw… more

The next few months in the US may indicate the answer to a central question of American life today: whether the present system is capable of serious reform. If the recent combination of natural and man-made disasters does not stimulate debate on such reform, then the future looks bleak indeed.

The issue is not whether such reform can take place quickly, but whether American society is capable of talking seriously about it. The actual implementation of radical change, in… more