the next president should, shortly after coming into office, affirm full adherence to the Geneva and UN torture conventions, restore the right of habeas corpus for US-held detainees, and “re-sign” the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, which the Bush administration “un-signed” in 2002..
To make up for lost time, the next administration should undertake an array of initiatives, starting with one directed to Moscow. Drastic reductions in the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles are important as an example to other countries....The US should also resume negotiations with Russia on anti-missile missiles.
....The US should work with all the current nuclear-weapon states to impose a moratorium on the production of fissile material, pending a formal, verifiable, universal and permanent ban. To attain that goal, America should join its principal allies and partners in direct, sustained negotiations with Iran and North Korea to bring them back into the NPT as fully compliant non-nuclear weapons states.
...Kyoto will expire in 2012. That means the next US president will have fewer than four years to play a decisive role in the design of an effective successor to the treaty. The US must do this through diplomacy and by example. Only if it passes legislation imposing stringent limits on itself, while offering other countries – especially developing ones – substantial incentives to be part of a global effort, will Kyoto be replaced by an accord mandating universal reductions.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Priorities for the next US president
Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of state in the time of Bill Clinton, spells out the priorities for the next US president in FT. It's reassuring to see that sane voices are not absent from US political discourse. But I have serious doubts as to whether the agenda that Talbott outlines has any chance of being implemented in full- the Conservative strangehold on policy-making is far too strong to permit it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
On the issue of "Global Warming" and "CO2" and "Kyoto" ... it is incredible as to watch the lemming like behavior of supposedly objective scientists deliberately ignoring fundamental tenets of science and scientific reasoning. I personally know John Christy, a member of the IPCC that was awarded the "Nobel Prize" (2007) (one half of that to Al -the big mansion carbon burning rich venture capitalist money grubbing- Gore).
According to Christy (and many others on that IPCC) the data supports a change in the average temperature over certain time periods (initially NASA had concluded 1998 or some such year to be the hottest year on record - that made news - and later changed their numbers to show that it was not 1998 but 1934 - way before the CO2 uptick/whatever) - but the alarmist predictions of multiple feet change in sea levels are irresponsible and flat out scientific charlatanism. We cannot predict the weather a few days out, so predicting what the weather/temperatures/sea levels/ will be years down is impossible. Worse, the words coming out of alarmists indicate a level of certainty that science cannot and does not support. It has nothing to do with politics - I am watching the deliberate distortion of science and the scientific process and the world seems to be saying it is OK. Absolutely dangerous indeed.
I cannot speak, directly, about the models used for such prediction - but John Christy can and has. He actually does the calculations - many of our students have worked in his laboratory - with him or with other scientists at the center that he heads. Yet, he and several scientists like him are mostly being ignored - much to our peril. There is, simply put, NO EMERGENCY and we need to do NOTHING - but spend rare resources on problems that are far more important to deal with.
Miles O'Brien interviewed John Christy on CNN recently - the usual nonsense emerging out of Miles O'Brien. John Christy ended the short interview by pointing this out -
For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum
In an OpEd piece in the Wall Street Journal (am sure "loved" by Strobe Talbott) John Christy concluded
Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming." Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me
But not many are paying attention to Christy and like minded scientists who remain true to data and the scientific process. The world seems to have gone mad and many seem to want us to go down the path of sure-fire destruction all the while yelling that the "Debate is Over".
Well, the DEBATE IS NOT OVER. Al Gore and the likes like him are charlatans and opportunists and it is terrible to watch all this.
National Security and the ability to let markets work as they should - should be the responsibilities of ANY US President (or other world leader).
Dear Prof RamMohan,
My question is out of curiosity: having taken a few courses under you (2002 -2004) and an avid reader of your Blog : Who is your favorite for the US Presidency and Why?
Thanks & Regards,
jai
2jaipm@gmail.com
Post a Comment