{"id":1436,"date":"2014-09-16T23:35:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T22:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2014-11-24T11:14:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T10:14:09","slug":"american-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2014\/09\/16\/american-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"American Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"isispoptop_0\"<\/a>A couple of months ago I posted a blog<\/a>\u00a0about Iraq<\/strong> which talked about the advances of ISIL<\/strong> and the increasing autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan<\/strong> whose army, the Peshmerga, has been the only effective force in slowing down ISIL, at least until the recent american airstrikes. Last week, Barak Obama<\/strong>\u00a0spoke about ISIL in his weekly television address<\/a> and committed the United States and its friends and allies to “degrade and destroy” Isil<\/strong> which he said is not islamic, as it condones the killing of innocents and is certainly not a state. The speech is worth watching partly because Obama always gives a great speech but more importantly because he spoke about the idea of American Leadership<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Al Gore’s Future<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Al<\/a>
Al Gore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his latest book, The Future<\/a><\/em>, former Vice President Al Gore<\/strong> talks at great length about American Leadership<\/strong> or his perception that it is lacking in the world today. \u00a0Gore’s book is definitely worth reading even for those who do not agree with his views or are uncomfortable with the double role\u00a0he has chosen to play as outspoken commentator and private businessman. The basic theme of the book is that there are six megatrends that we need to think about<\/strong> and that civil society needs to take control of its destiny back from corporate interests who have hijacked the body politic. The six trends are:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0The increasing globalization of large companies<\/strong> who relentlessly pursue outsourcing and automation\u00a0which is he believes is the\u00a0direct cause of rising inequality in the world with the rich getting richer\u00a0and the middle class disappearing. Gore calls this Earth Inc.<\/strong> and thinks we are heading for the world that the prescient science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut described in Player Piano<\/em><\/a> back in 1952.<\/p>\n

\"Noam<\/a>
Noam Chomsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

1. The emergence of global networks for the dissemination of images and ideas<\/strong> which Gore calls the Global Mind<\/strong> and sees as a two sided sword. On the one hand Gore sounds much like MIT’s Noam Chomsky<\/a> in maintaining that Democracy in the US has been hijacked by corporations and special interests because the of the costs involved in advertising on television and the idea that people believe what they see on television networks which are owned and supported by the same corporate interests. On the other hand, he recognizes the role that facebook and Twitter have played in the Arab Spring and other movements and feels that social platforms may offer the best hope of restoring democracy in the world.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0The enormous increase in human population over the last 50 years<\/strong> (3.4 to 7.4 billion) is placing stress on the earth’s\u00a0supply of top soil, water, and commodities of all kinds and Gore asks if we are approaching or perhaps have already past the planet’s\u00a0carrying capacity. He calls this trend Outgrowth<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0The amazing advances in bio science<\/strong> which are unlocking some of the basic building blocks of life also worries the former Vice President. His main concern about what he calls The Reinvention of Life and Death<\/strong> is that our technological capacity is increasing faster than the development of our ethical framework and that we may be crossing some important line in the next few\u00a0years.<\/p>\n

5. The increasing levels of carbon and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere<\/strong> have placed the earth’s climate on The Edge and here Gore echoes one of his earlier books, An Inconvenient Truth<\/em>, and\u00a0says it is now or never to start to deal with\u00a0climate change.<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0Although it is actually the third trend in Gore’s book, the last one is what he calls Power in The Balance <\/strong>and for me, this is the most interesting. At issue is that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Unites States no longer enjoys the leadership position it had in the years immediately after World War II. Despite its overwhelming military superiority, the Unites States has proven that it can not fight everywhere at once and is facing increasing economic and political rivalry from China and a resurgent Russia.<\/p>\n

States themselves are starting to fall apart and being challenged by non state powers from global corporations to terrorist outfits to social networks. American Leadership<\/strong>, according to Gore, has been compromised by the democratic deficit in the United States and the failure of the political process to hold reasoned debate about the most pressing issues. This, was in fact the theme of Gores last book, The Assault on Reason<\/em><\/a>, which I think was his best. At fault is the dominance of money in politics and the manipulation of television.<\/p>\n

Friedman’s view<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Tom<\/a>
Tom Friedman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Going back to Isil and President Obama’s new strategy to build an international coalition to destroy the group an interesting point of view was expressed by Tom Friedman<\/strong> in his colum in the New York Times<\/em>. Friedman feels\u00a0that the President appeared a bit ambivalent about the whole thing and while I am not sure I agree, I found his comment very sharp and to the point. About the plan, Friedman said\u00a0“Our staying power is ambiguous, our enemy is barbarous, our regional allies are duplicitous, our European allies are feckless and the Iraqis and Syrians we\u2019re trying to help are fractious”.<\/p>\n

At the end of his speech, The President said “A broad American Leadership<\/strong> is one constant in an uncertain world” and he called on the American people who have been blessed with so much to take up the burden of leadership.<\/p>\n

For me the interesting questions are if the world really does need this kind of leadership from the United States and if so, is there any chance of overcoming the country’s internal divisions in order to provide it on geopolitical issues but also on environmental ones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama has announced a strategy to “degrade and destroy” ISIL and calls it an example of American Leadership, while Al Gore maintains that the lack of such Leadership is making it difficult for the world to deal with critical problems …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":1444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82402,26749],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-regulations","category-geopolitics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}