2008 Woodie Awards
International issues trump domestic U.S. politics
Jonathan Gair
Issue date: 8/21/07 Section: OpEd Page
While election primary season may be heating up, while the Bush Administration's power grab political tactics seems to be failing, and while my good friend Paul Wolfowitz has been forced to depart from the World Bank, international events over this summer have created a slightly more important situation than the outcome of the Information Age's YouTube presidential candidate debate. This summer of international politics has culminated in radically shifting power arrangements, institutional and leadership transformations and dangerously misunderstood power positioning.
 Since the beginning of the summer, there has been the issue of a United States-initiated missile defense shield in Europe-virtually the perfect representation of the "old versus new" divide between European countries, as well as an illustration of the tensions between Europe, the United States and a Russia that has been growing in strength since the turn of the century. While many have misrepresented these tensions as a return to Cold War rhetoric and posturing, the Group of 8 (G8) Summit in June showed the wider embrace of closer government cooperation and dialogue, epitomized by Russia's Vladimir Putin offering to host portions of the same defensive system that he had been fighting so hard against.
The world may be warming to the idea of an economically stronger and quasi-cooperative Russia (as proven by the extension of invitations for Russia to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Trade Organization) but Western leaders have also had an extremely difficult time with a Russia willing to use its political weight regionally. This summer has also seen diplomatic skirmishes over the future of Kosovo come to a head because of Russian opposition within the United Nations Security Council. The summer European Union summits, internal dialogue and emerging foreign policies have shown an unprecedented level of cautiousness and passivity in the union's external interactions-this union has only in June of this year begun to reverse institutional, structural and larger cohesion problems initiated by the 2004 Constitutional Treaty failure.
 Since the beginning of the summer, there has been the issue of a United States-initiated missile defense shield in Europe-virtually the perfect representation of the "old versus new" divide between European countries, as well as an illustration of the tensions between Europe, the United States and a Russia that has been growing in strength since the turn of the century. While many have misrepresented these tensions as a return to Cold War rhetoric and posturing, the Group of 8 (G8) Summit in June showed the wider embrace of closer government cooperation and dialogue, epitomized by Russia's Vladimir Putin offering to host portions of the same defensive system that he had been fighting so hard against.
The world may be warming to the idea of an economically stronger and quasi-cooperative Russia (as proven by the extension of invitations for Russia to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Trade Organization) but Western leaders have also had an extremely difficult time with a Russia willing to use its political weight regionally. This summer has also seen diplomatic skirmishes over the future of Kosovo come to a head because of Russian opposition within the United Nations Security Council. The summer European Union summits, internal dialogue and emerging foreign policies have shown an unprecedented level of cautiousness and passivity in the union's external interactions-this union has only in June of this year begun to reverse institutional, structural and larger cohesion problems initiated by the 2004 Constitutional Treaty failure.
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