Financial Times News - Gideon Rachman Column

Europe does not need a big shot

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:30:28 GMT

Poor Tony Blair - sabotaged by his own countryman. Just weeks ago,Mr Blair looked like the frontrunner to be president of the European Union. But now William Hague, Britain's shadow foreign secretary, has let the rest of Europe know that the opposition Conservative party would regard his appointment as a "hostile gesture". Since the Tories and Mr Hague are likely to be in government by the middle of next year, after a British general election, their views have real weight. Charles Grant, head of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, says: "On my travels around Europe I have found that Hague's comments have made a huge impact." Mr Blair's candidacy has been badly damaged.

How small nations were cut adrift

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:15:23 GMT

Almost two years ago, I wrote a column hailing "the age of the small state". I pointed out that the number of independent nations had grown sharply over the past 40 years and that small countries topped many of the international league tables, on everything from gross domestic product-per-capita to peacefulness and "human development".

Obama must start punching harder

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:15:23 GMT

Just five years ago, Barack Obama was still a local politician in Illinois, preparing for a run for the US Senate. His office wall in Chicago at the time was decorated with the famous picture of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston, after knocking him out in a heavyweight title fight. Ali famously boasted that he could "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." But now that Mr Obama is president, he seems to float like a butterfly - and sting like one as well.

A triumph of hope over achievement

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:05:28 GMT

Senior advisers to Barack Obama were said to be "stunned" by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the US president. So they should be. The award is wildly premature.

Lunch with the FT: Dalia Grybauskaite

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:00:28 GMT

Midway through my lunch with Dalia Grybauskaite, I feel a strange urge to launch myself at her. It is not that I am attracted to the president of Lithuania. It is just that she is the only head of state that I know of who is also a karate black belt. The first half of our lunch has been devoted to a staid discussion of economics. Perhaps it is time to liven things up a bit, and test President Grybauskaite's martial arts skills?

Iran tests the world's collective will

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:30:32 GMT

Barack Obama normally likes to talk about hope. Last week at the United Nations he had the audacity to fear. The US president conjured up a vision of a dystopian world: "Extremists sowing terror...Protracted conflicts that grind on and on. Genocide and mass atrocities. More and more nations with nuclear weapons. Melting ice caps and ravaged populations." That is our collective future, according to Mr Obama, unless the world's leaders co-operate to find "global solutions to global problems".

Too many chairs: Politicians scramble to get seat at top table

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:40:23 GMT

The G20 is the party that every political leader wants to get into. This has had predictably embarrassing consequences. When the leaders assemble in Pittsburgh, there will be a lot of semi-gatecrashers, who have secured their invitations by begging or throwing tantrums. Alongside the original 20 will be the leaders of Spain and the Netherlands, the holder of the European Union's rotating presidency, the heads of the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, the head of the Financial Stability Forum and the current chairmen of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) and of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). All told there are likely to be 29 states and organisations represented.

Germany retreats to old certainties

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:00:23 GMT

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, might have been excused had she decided to skip the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this week. The German general election takes place on Sunday - just 48 hours after the summit. Ms Merkel's decision to go to Pittsburgh is both cool and calculated. It sends a signal to the German electorate that she is relaxed, above the fray, an international leader more concerned with representing her country to the world than with mud-wrestling domestic opponents in the last days of a campaign.

China makes gains in its bid to be top dog

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:50:30 GMT

Last week a Tibetan mastiff was flown into Xian airport in central China, where it received a welcome fit for an emperor. The dog was swept into town by a convoy of 30 Mercedes-Benz cars. Tibetan mastiffs are a rare and noble breed - and the pampered pooch had cost his new owners Rmb4m ($586,000, €402,000, £351,000). Reporting the story, the China Daily newspaper commented nervously that such an extravagant display of wealth might "heighten tension between rich and poor".

Oiling the wheels of diplomacy

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:35:17 GMT

"Follow the money" is the advice routinely offered to detectives in low-budget thrillers. For anyone attempting to understand the ebbs and flows of international politics, I offer a variant of that old line: "Follow the oil".

Japan's continuity we can believe in

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:35:29 GMT

When the great recession began last year, the fate of Japan was often held up as an awful warning to the west. If the US and the European Union failed to adopt the right policies, it was said, they too might suffer a Japanese-style "lost decade", followed by years of feeble growth.

Europe braces for a Baltic blast

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:25:17 GMT

A writer who projects emotions on to the weather is guilty of the "pathetic fallacy". But, at the risk of sounding both pathetic and fallacious, it was entirely appropriate that the sky darkened and the thunder cracked as I approached the office of the Latvian prime minister in Riga last week. The gloomy atmosphere reflected the dark mood in a small, embattled country of 2.2m people. While business headlines in the rest of the world speak of clearing skies and rays of sunshine, the Baltic states are still in the midst of a howling economic gale.

Climate activists are also in denial

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:30:17 GMT

The phrase "climate change denier" has a nasty ring to it. It links those who dispute mainstream science on global warming with "Holocaust deniers". They are not just wrong, it implies, they are evil.

Why the world need a United Nations army

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:15:19 GMT

Ronald Reagan once asked Mikhail Gorbachev to imagine that there was "suddenly a threat to this world from some other species, from another planet". The late American president speculated that this would ensure "we would forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries".

Drive time

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:40:20 GMT

The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global NationBy Strobe TalbottSimon & Schuster $18, 496 pages

China is now an empire in denial

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:10:22 GMT

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it suddenly became obvious that the USSR had never been a proper country. It was a multinational empire held together by force. Might we one day say the same of China?

Obama must be firm on foreign policy

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:35:19 GMT

A categorical imperative to twitter

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:20:21 GMT

A categorical imperative to twitter

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:05:22 GMT

Check-list for an Iranian revolution

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:30:22 GMT

Democracy could still win in Iran

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:00:41 GMT

Thirty years after the Iranian revolution, could we be witnessing an Iranian counter-revolution? In the short term, events in Iran are depressing and alarming - a stolen election, violence in the streets, repression. In the long term, the weekend has provided heartening evidence that Iran, and the Middle East in general, need not be immune to the great wave of democratisation that has swept the world since the late 1970s.

Ugly but interesting in Strasbourg

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:55:19 GMT

Obama and the limits of soft power

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:20:25 GMT

Barack Obama is a soft power president. But the world keeps asking him hard power questions.

When austerity does not come easily

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:15:17 GMT

Indian democracy has an ugly side

Mon, 18 May 2009 18:35:24 GMT