Is the Bush Administration incompetent in international affairs?

[KrazyHorse]

It doesn't matter, because Nigerians aren't going to be buying high-priced stuff internationally anyway, given that their income is so low (by any measure).

It gives a pretty good approximation of what the country's production means to people living in the country, as opposed to the striaght GDP numbers which often don't mean anything. Even first world currencies often go up or down 10 or 15% in a year without a significant effect on inflation in that country. That means that the country's GDP will spike or dip by that much without any real consequences on the populace, which makes GDP a rather haphazard way of judging the country's production.

[GePap]

I must agree with TheStinger about PPP:

Lets take China: Could China actually purchase 5 trillion dollars worth of goods on the world market? Does China even create enough goods worth 5 trillion?

If how one lives in their contry is a valid part of how one measures wealth, then what about less tangible things? What's the economic worth, to an individual, of the many weeks of vacation Europeans have? Or what about the fact that many of them don't have to buy cars (a huge part of the Us economy) sinc ethings are either close enough, or connected by a transportation net that makes owning a car irrelevant to some extent? And don't savings and more rigid types of wealth matter? Why not add up all the value of real estate and add that to the mix, and then add savings as well.Would that not gie us an even better means of judging were the world's wealth resides?

Olod fashioned GDP might not be the best way to guage people's lives, but it is free of the subjectiveness that other means have, and that by itself makes it a better means of comparison.

[Drake Tungsten]

"We have the largest economy in the world by a large margin." is now a false argument (the margin is small or tiny), but you still brag about it, and don't question it.

First of all, I wasn't bragging. Someone asked how long I thought America would be looked to for money and said that I thought it would last for some time. You might have noticed that if you hadn't been so busy thinking of ways to tag me with the "arrogant American" stereotype. If you look for the bad in them, you shall surely find it...

Second, comparing the GDP of the EU and the US is stupid. The EU is far from being a united entity, so it is pointless to compare its GDP to the United States. The US is able to use its economic might in ways that a still-divided EU can't.

Not to mention that others have shown you that the gap between the EU and US is still pretty large...

[darcy]

Agathon, excellent post.

I'm confident that under Clinton, the US could be where they are now (i.e. on Iraq's doorstep) without being regarded the bad guy by everyone.

Too many people here reduce international relations to power play, ignoring both public relations and international law. Contrary to the US, Europe still believes that international law is possible and must be strengthened.

It's often forgotten that not Schröder but Bush started the premature declarations. The first thing his administration declared was that Saddam must be killed. Of course nobody believes him anymore when he now comes with innumberable ulterior motives like weapons or al-Qaeda or other stuff. If he had hidden his true motives, as a smart diplomat would have, the majority of the international community could now support him in "disarming Iraq". Instead they are now forced to defend international law against the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes if they don't want to lose their faces.

It was incredibly foolish to use adjectives like "evil" to characterize nations. Such kindergarden rhetorics achieve nothing but offending the people in the adressed countries and make listeners wonder how simplistic Bush's moral categories must be.

Putting Iran in the same category as North Korea was also very ignorant. How damn arrogant must he be to judge from thousand miles away whether Khatami has a chance to reform the country? He's the first president with real support from this people. Women were slowly starting to show more hair. And Bush ruins everything by spitting out his "evil" accusations.

Yes, he is as incompetent diplomatically as everybody expected an oil trader to be. Clinton was a lawyer, and it showed.

[DanS]

Once you add all of the candidate countries, the EU and US economies are roughly on par. But as Drake says, the EU can't bring that economy to bear in some areas, because some functoins aren't unified.

I didn't notice a hint of arrogance in Drake's post. You guys are stretching.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Don't they always?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
First of all, I wasn't bragging. Someone asked how long I thought America would be looked to for money and said that I thought it would last for some time. You might have noticed that if you hadn't been so busy thinking of ways to tag me with the "arrogant American" stereotype. If you look for the bad in them, you shall surely find it...

Fair enough, I mistook this for bragging. The US will undoubtedly remain an economic powerhouse for a long time, and you're right it will be looked to for money, like the EU or Japan will still be looked to for money.

Second, comparing the GDP of the EU and the US is stupid. The EU is far from being a united entity, so it is pointless to compare its GDP to the United States. The US is able to use its economic might in ways that a still-divided EU can't.

I didn't only compared the EU's GNP, but the strength of the EU in economic negociations. EU and US are of similar power in this arena, since the EU now speaks with one voice on all things commercial (there is no more national sovereignity on these matters, everything gets decided in Brussels).

Not to mention that others have shown you that the gap between the EU and US is still pretty large...

There is still a gap, and the US economy remains slightly superior to EU's, but the US is not dominating the capitalist economy without rivalry anymore.

Btw, different ways to calculate GNP can do wonders : check this table (OECD), and one of the calculations actually places EU's GNP higher than the US', and Japan has only twice has less GNP than the 2 bigs. I'm not saying is table is more true or false than the other figures.

[GePap]

There are some obviously huge differences:

The US goes from 10 trillion to 9.9 trillion. Very much the same.

Germany from 2.2 trillion to 2.8 trillion
France from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion
Japan from 3.45 trillion to 5.5 trillion
The UK from 1.47 trillion to 1.3 trillion
Italy from 1.4 trillion to 1.2 trillion

Can one of the econ guys, whomever, give the class an explination of how Japan gets back 2 trillion, Germany 600 billion, the French 300 billion, but the Brits lose 200 billion and so do the Italians?

[Spiffor]

My guess would be a very low inflation rate in France and Germany since 1995 (because of ECB's fundamentalistic policy), while Brit's and US' central Banks have been slightly more tolerant.

[Agathon]

Their motto seems to be if you see a bridge burn it.

How true. I can't think of any American president who has been humiliated at the UN like Bush was on Friday. He and his mob are now an international laughingstock.

I loved the way De Villepin (the representative of "Old Europe") undercut Powell in such a witty and urbane fashion. There's the difference for you - one side has as its representatives cultured and intelligent individuals, the other has Neanderthal cowboys and assorted barbarians.

Drake - the US are screwed economically if the EU becomes more integrated. It is more populous, more respected, has a better educated population and a more desirable social model. The US is to a large part a third world nation.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Agathon
The US is to a large part a third world nation.

Yeah. This thread is turning out about as well as I expected.

PS New Zealand is a nations of sheep ****gers.

[Gatekeeper]

The US is largely a third world nation, eh? I guess that means the EU is nothing more than a bunch of lazy, welfare-dependent suckups who go on strike if they don't get two months vacation every year.

Yeah, this thread is de-evolving.

Gatekeeper

[Agathon]

The people of my country would be ashamed if we had the rate of poverty that the US has. We spend our money on people, not bombs.

Anyway, still haven't disproved my first post.

[DinoDoc]

Since you've ignored the questions I asked, I don't feel the need to put any effort into it.

[Dinner]

This thread has begun its spiral of death.