Word: globality
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...problem is that the E.U. was not set up to be a global hammer-throwing political power. The member states did all that 200 to 300 years ago, and history has moved on. The Lisbon Treaty was not designed to colour chunks of the planet blue with yellow stars. Its job is to get the national economies of 27 extremely diverse nation-states working together more smoothly than before, and getting the politics united is just part of that economic lubrication. Better by far to be underwhelming and effective rather than overbearing and running a democracy where agreed national reform...
...China's seemingly silent role on the world stage: rather than seeing it as beneath them, China's leaders have avoided interfering in other countries' affairs for the simple reason that they don't want anyone having reason to interfere with their own. An empowered interventionist movement at a global level would no doubt focus on Xin?jiang, Tibet and other topics that Beijing sees as entirely domestic - and it doesn't want to give additional credence to U.S.-led efforts in this space. Rather than looking down on a historical pecking order of nations, China is simply leaving well...
...other ways. While much of the region is still hurtling along the path of development - a blinding whirl of frenetic construction and perpetual change - Japan is a vision of stability, a nation that has everything others in Asia want, and has already had it all for decades. Money. Technology. Global brands. A seat at the table with the powerful countries of the industrialized world. Those of us old enough will also recall that Japan used to scare the pants off Americans and just about everyone else. Back in the 1980s, Japan was the first of Asia's rising powers...
...idea of the damage it can do. Unwilling to make hard choices, the government simply threw taxpayer money around, attempting to keep people employed without fundamentally changing the economy. The result is government debt approaching 200% of GDP. Overly protected at home, Japan Inc. has missed out on the globalization game; its companies, unable to adapt to a changing world, are losing global market share to more nimble competitors. The nation that once led the way toward prosperity in Asia is sitting by while its influence is being usurped by China. (See pictures of Japan and the world...
...belongs to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the 10-nation bloc that was founded, with American prodding, as a bulwark against communism in the 1960s. China's economic resilience (8.7% GDP growth in 2009) helped the U.S. and other developed nations avoid even worse pain from the global financial crisis. The only other major economies that posted decent growth in an otherwise dismal year? India and Indonesia. Asia, in other words, thinks it is shoring up the global economy - and it wants its efforts appreciated...