Word: self-interest
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...emotional argument that the Kurds are using, but it's also grounded in regional self-interest - which is the Prime Minister's case against those who oppose him. Maliki has lambasted the Kurdish regional government for unilaterally signing oil deals with international companies and cutting Baghdad out of the loop, as well as opening representative offices overseas. He has also pushed back against the Kurds' attempts to extend their military presence into territory south of their regional border. "The central government thinks the Kurdish regional government behaves like a state, and the Kurds think Maliki wants to flex his muscles...
...even those who reject these arguments, and insist foreign policy be dictated by self-interest, find themselves swayed by a third argument. If weather starts wars, and wars incite terrorists and violent opponents to the West, then it is in the West's self-interest to try to manage the weather. Darfur is a test case of whether our leaders are able to embrace this kind of broad, long-term view over short-term gains. If they can, they may be able to prevent the pattern repeating...
...Lowdown: When confronted with massive challenges - and forming a "hemispheric partnership" certainly qualifies - it helps to frame prescribed policy changes in terms of sheer self-interest. This report does so deftly, mostly eschewing wonkiness in favor of stressing common bonds. Its series of "modest, pragmatic recommendations" are couched to show that the U.S. and Latin America are natural bedfellows. It's not that we have a moral obligation to turn the other cheek when Hugo Chavez dubs George Bush a "devil," or when pockets of America inaccurately assign blame for U.S. unemployment levels on Latin migrants. It's that doing...
Still, more needs to be done. Europe is not an island, and even judged by the narrowest tests of self-interest, it has an abiding need to ensure that its neighbors can savor the same peace and prosperity that Europeans now enjoy. From that logic of geography should flow two pressing priorities of European strategic policy: closer engagement with Russia and with Turkey. Both nations feel aggrieved at their treatment by Europe, Russia because (in breach of promises made in the early 1990s) NATO was extended not just to the borders of the old Soviet Union but actually inside them...
...general, I consider myself an optimist. Really, I do. But this Dartmouth team, in all its absurd awfulness, has rocked my faith in humanity and in the Hobbesian principle that the first law of human nature is self-interest...