You missed a spot.
After a year of humiliating setbacks, United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and about 60 of his top lieutenants — the top brass of the entire U.N. system — spent their Labor Day weekend at a remote Austrian Alpine retreat, discussing ways to put their sprawling organization in charge of the world’s agenda.
[…]
As one underlying theme of the sessions, the top U.N. bosses seemed to be grappling often with how to cope with the pesky issue of national sovereignty, which — according to the position papers, anyway — continued to thwart many of their most ambitious schemes, especially when it comes to many different kinds of “global governance.”
Not coincidentally, the conclave of bureaucrats also saw in “global governance” a greater role for themselves.
As a position paper intended for their first group session put it, in the customary glutinous prose of the organization’s internal documents: “the U.N. should be able to take the lead in setting the global agenda, engage effectively with other multinational and regional organizations as well as civil society and non-state stakeholders, and transform itself into a tool to help implement the globally agreed objectives.”
And for that to happen, the paper continues, “it will be necessary to deeply reflect on the substance of sovereignty, and accept that changes in our perceptions are a good indication of the direction we are going.”
Drained Brain:
I laughed when I read that story too. (For those who didn’t follow the link, at the UN retreat, the senior Chinese delegate got plastered, told the SecGen “I don’t like you”, and then said “I don’t like Americans either!”.) While it’s funny for a minute, the deeper lesson – institutional Chinese xenophobia – should not be ignored.
China has a long history of turning inside and ignoring foreigners (they build a 1,000 mile long wall to keep out Mongols, and it’s a wonder of the world; the Yanks want to build a 50 mile one, and they’re racist xenophobes). I once asked my wife if her Chinese dialect had words like “nigger” – she said they referred to all non-Chinese as “foreign devils”, and their specifics for disparate races were “black devils” and “white devils”. This diplomat’s (!) outburst is probably, like that German banker’s, indicative of a large portion of Chinese opinion.
Even amongst Chinese, they have a saying “Never trust one Chinese businessman; never be afraid of two” which means (approximately) that one guy will be out to screw you, but that if there are two guys competing against you, they will be so busy trying to screw each other, you’ll do OK.
This is one reason why I don’t want to see the Chinese controlling Potash (or the oil sands). Sell the products to them, sure, but don’t cede ownership or control.