Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. (René Descartes, mathematician and philosopher,1599-1650)

Saturday 27 November 2010

Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else

By Cleo Paskal, Associate Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs

A reader writes: "This is a first class analysis. She says 'In these changing times, if one weakens one's allies one weakens oneself.'  Oh yes. How absolutely insightful. One of the most succinct and best pieces of analysis to come up concerning the plight of the Pacific Island Nations caused in large part by foreign policy postures towards them. Why is this so late in coming from Western allies and partners? Is it because the Pacific is once again a front line".  Yes, it is. Cannot be plainer than that. And it is there to be lost because too many were looking the other way. Now the just and reasonable concerns of the Pacific Island Nations are cultivating attention. Not before time. 'The more attention, the betterer' as we say in our patois."

Click here for Cleo's full article.

5 comments:

Ahead of the rest said...

It is tempting to unchivalrously make a comparison between this incisive piece of analysis with the Lowy Think Team so often quoted. There IS no comparison. How may one Assistant Fellow of the RIIA - so far away - be so far ahead of the rest?

how predictable said...

Is this the same Cleo that is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, India? Now what a coincidence and so predictable?
Cleo - let's have a little less 'descriptive comment' and a little more critical analysis - this may assist you to rise up the academic food chain?

Thanksgiving turkey said...

"How predictable", what an appalling snob you are. Indian is an emerging global superpower yet in your eyes, its universities are standing jokes to be flung as insults when you read something you don't like. It only takes a Google search to discover that, yes, this is the woman you refer to. But what about the rest of her CV?
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Cleo Paskal is also an award-winning journalist who has contributed to, among others, The Economist, The Independent, and the Sunday Times. She has hosted BBC radio shows and wrote an Emmy-winning TV series. She has had columns with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Post and, currently, the Toronto Star. Having attended McGill University, she co-founded that school's satire magazine, The Red Herring. She also wrote the Primetime Emmy Award winning tv series Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within.
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Have you done any of that, you pompous git? Kindly tell us what university you went to/ work for? USP. ANU? What's so great about those? Doubtless an intellectual snob with a massive chip on your shoulder. More "Critical analysis"? What, more 24 carat bull*** like yours?

Red Dragon said...

@ how predictable said....

Well, 'how predictable'...you predictably shot yourself in the foot. What matters is the analysis and the quality of analysis: not some racist diatribe dressd up as something quite else. Cleo Paskal is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. May one suggest that is what counts and they seem to know whom matters in the general scheme of things. Good for them!

Unwarranted smear said...

Croz, Canadian Cleo Paskal is a graduate of McGill University, Montreal. McGill ranks number 19 in this year's QS World University Rankings - the accepted benchmark of global academic performance. This is ahead of all universities in Australia and NZ. The foremost of these, the ANU, came in at 20.

So the suggestion by "How Predictable" that Ms Paskal is some kind of intellectual charlatan is laughable, especially given the long list of academic papers she's published since and her journalism for some of the world's foremost media outlets.

Manipal University is also one of India's foremost private universities, with top rankings for its medical and dental schools in particular. The attempt to smear Ms Paskal by suggesting that Manipal is somehow shonky is especially contemptible. It smacks of racism and in the Fiji context, is frankly offensive.

Ms Paskal's argument in this timely treatise is spot on and I fully concur with the first comment by "Ahead of the Rest". It's a great shame that places like the Lowy Institute are so fixated with Frank Bainimarama's "illegality" that they've failed to heed the geopolitical shift taking place in the region and especially the challenges posed by that new elephant in the room, China. They will live to rue the day that they did so.