Transatlantic transactions, part 1

[CHIMO]

The London-New York conference, What Now? Europe and North America in a Disordered World, held at University College London over the weekend of 21-22 November, was the second in the UK sponsored in part by the New York Review of Books (with the Guardian as media partner), and so was a sequel to the conference held in Oxford in May 2007 on The New Face of American Capitalism and its Impact on the World. Little did we know then that this new face of capitalism was soon to undergo violent contortions whose consequences we are still learning to live with.

Now, though, we also seem to be living in a world of multiple disorders, which are no longer linked in a single architecture of crisis, as in the cold war era. So there is the melting of the Arctic icecap and the barbarism of the Burmese generals; the presence of al-Qaida in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas; and the reliance of the US government on Mao's successors for the financing of its public debt.

There was a presumption in our conference title that the two great regions of the world committed to liberal, humanist values – Europe and North America – have a special responsibility to work towards remedying these disorders, and to collaborate in doing so. But will they, and is it within their power? By coincidence, the appointment of Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton as, respectively, first permanent chairman of the European Council, and high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy, was announced on the eve of the conference – demonstrating that these are not debating points remote from current events, and bringing into sharp focus just how relevant they are.

It is fair to say that two of the three panellists in the conference's opening session – Chris Patten, former EU commissioner for external relations, and Bill Bradley, former US senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1999-2000 – viewed these appointments as evidence of the unwillingness of the European nation states, and especially of Germany, France and the UK, to cede significant responsibility to the EU in international security and defence. Both also warned that unless the European states were prepared to take this step, the US would increasingly look to China, and not the EU, as its chief global interlocutor. Sir Brian Urquhart, former undersecretary-general of the United Nations, reflected on what, in this disordered world, were the prospects and potentiality for that other great but flawed multilateral institution, the UN.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/30/new-york-review-of-books-conference

Scrolling down you can listen to some interesting opinions. The total presentations take about one hour.