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In gesprek met Gerrit Zalm

zondag 14 september 2008 12:00 Ned 1
maandag 15 september 2008 10:20 Ned 2 (Herhaling)

Aanstaande zondag in Buitenhof. Een gesprek met oud-minister van Financiën Gerrit Zalm. En een discussie over kernenergie tussen Peter Vogtländer (voorzitter Energieraad), Femke Bartels (Greenpeace Nederland) en Kees Hummelen (hoogleraar chemie aan de RUG en mede-uitvinder van de plastic zonnecel).

> Gerrit Zalm

Aan de vooravond van Prinsjesdag een gesprek met oud-minister van Financiën Gerrit Zalm. De tegenwoordige CFO van de DSB bank werpt zijn licht op de financiële en economische politiek van het kabinet Balkenende. Is het beleid van zijn opvolger Wouter Bos om de koopkracht en de bestedingen op peil te houden niet een riskante koers? Is het niet veel verstandiger nu reserves op te bouwen om - als het volgende jaar nog zwaarder weer wordt - de economie beter in balans te houden?
Buitenhof werpt ook een blik op de rol van Zalm bij de DSB bank.

> Het nucleaire dilemma voorbij

Kernenergie: politiek is het onderwerp weer helemaal uit de taboesfeer. Maar leidt deze hernieuwde discussie niet de aandacht af van andere belangrijke vragen. Zetten we in ons energie- en klimaatbeleid wel voldoende in op besparingen en alternatieve brandstoffen? En hoe staat het eigenlijk met onze inspanningen om duurzame technologie te bevorderen?
In Buitenhof een discussie tussen Peter Vogtländer (voorzitter Energieraad), Femke Bartels (Greenpeace Nederland) en Kees Hummelen (hoogleraar chemie aan de RUG en mede-uitvinder van de plastic zonnecel).

Presentatie: Rob Trip
Columnist: Jos de Beus
Eindredactie: Corinne Hegeman

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Op zondag 14 september 2008 17:07 schreef Picchia het volgende:

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China and the 500 Years’ Peace

By Giovanni Arrighi | Thursday, August 14, 2008

One of the great myths of Western history is that nation states, and their organization in an interstate system, are European inventions. As Giovanni Arrighi argues, Asia's system of nation states, with China at the center, fostered a period of peace and economic growth previously unheard of in the West.

The Globalist

Except for a few states that were the creation of European colonial powers — most notably, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines — the most important states of East Asia were national states long before any of their European counterparts.

The list includes Japan, Korea and China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Kampuchea.

What is more, they had all been linked to one another, directly or through the Chinese center, by trade and diplomatic relations — and held together by a shared understanding of the principles, norms and rules that regulated their mutual interactions as a world among other worlds.

Peace and expansion

As Japanese scholars specializing in the China-centered tribute trade system have shown, this system presented sufficient similarities with the European interstate system to make comparisons analytically meaningful.

But once we compare their dynamics, two crucial differences emerge.

A first difference concerns the frequency of wars. Long periods of peace among European powers were the exception — rather than the rule. Thus, the “hundred years’ peace” (1815-1914) that followed the Napoleonic Wars was, in Karl Polanyi’s words, “a phenomenon unheard of in the annals of Western civilization.”

Stability and control

Moreover, even during this hundred years’ peace, European states were involved in countless wars of conquest in the non-European world — as well as in the escalating armament race that culminated in the industrialization of war.

While the initial result of these involvements was a new wave of geographical expansion which dampened conflicts within the European system, their eventual result was a new round of wars among European powers (1914-45) of unprecedented destructiveness.

The longest peace

In sharp contrast to this dynamic, the East Asian system of national states stood out for the near absence of military competition and geographical expansion.

Thus, with the exception of China’s frontier wars — the main purpose of which was the transformation of a hard-to-defend frontier into a buffer against raiders and conquerors from Inner Asia — the national states of the East Asian system were almost uninterruptedly at peace with one another, not for 100, but for 300 years.

This 300 years’ peace was bracketed by two Japanese invasions of Korea, both of which precipitated a war with China — the Sino-Japanese wars of 1592-98 and 1894-95.

Prioritizing peaceful relations

Between 1598 and 1894, there were only three brief wars that involved China — the 1659-60 and the 1767-71 wars with Burma, and the 1788-89 war with Vietnam, as well as two wars that did not involve China — the Siamese-Burmese wars of 1607-18 and of 1660-62.

Indeed, insofar as China is concerned, we should speak of a 500 years’ peace since, in the 200 years preceding the 1592 Japanese invasion of Korea, China was at war with other East Asian states only during the invasion of Vietnam in 1406-28 to restore the Tran dynasty.

Different systems

The infrequency of wars among East Asian states was associated with a second crucial difference between the East Asian and European systems — the absence of any tendency among East Asian states to build overseas empires in competition with one another and to engage in an armament race in any way comparable to the European.

The main reason of these differences was the extroversion of the European path of development and the introversion of the Chinese path.

European rulers fought endless wars to establish an exclusive control over sea lanes linking West to East and built overseas empires, because control over trade with the East was a critical resource in their pursuit of wealth and power.

For the rulers of China, in contrast, control over these trade routes and overseas empires were far less important than peaceful relations with neighboring states and the integration of their populous domains into an agriculturally based national economy.

Economic benefits

A result of this difference is that — as Adam Smith knew very well, but Western social science later forgot — through the 18th century the largest national market by far was to be found not in Europe, but in China.

Another result was the remarkable peace, prosperity and demographic growth which induced leading figures of the European Enlightenment to look to China for guidance in institutional development. They also looked for evidence supporting their advocacy of a benevolent absolutism, meritocracy and an agriculturally based national economy.

Where East meets West

And yet, neither the Chinese rulers nor their European admirers realized that the extroverted European developmental path was re-making the world through a process of creative destruction that would soon overshadow all these achievements. European ships, as William McNeill put it, had in effect turned Eurasia inside out.

The sea frontier had superseded the steppe frontier as the critical meeting point with strangers — and the autonomy of Asian states and peoples began to crumble.

Editor's Note: This feature is adapted from Adam Smith in Beijing, by Giovanni Arrighi. Copyright 2007 Giovanni Arrighi. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 10:41 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Maandag.

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Pakistan soldiers 'confront US'

Pakistani troops have fired shots into the air to stop US troops crossing into the South Waziristan region of Pakistan, local officials say.

Reports say seven US helicopters landed on the Afghan side of the border and US troops then tried to cross the border.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 13:00 schreef Rock_de_Braziliaan het volgende:
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuwsthema/kredietcrisis/


Interesting.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 14:55 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Interessant: de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen zijn al over zeven weken.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 15:44 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

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Dan kan Obama eindelijk de wereld veranderen.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 16:25 schreef Rock_de_Braziliaan het volgende:
Nog 35 minuten...

En nog voor 4 uur werk...

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 16:33 schreef Autodidact het volgende:

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De wereld redden. Maar eerst....tiet veur n saffie

[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 16:36 schreef Autodidact het volgende:
Altijd wat te zeiken hè. Rupsje nooitgenoeg.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 16:34 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Morgen is er weer een dag.