Strategic Studies in Geneva

The blogosphere is a pretty amazing place. I’ve been at the annual (or actually not-quite-annual) conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, here in Geneva. The IISS is a venerable organization, headquartered in London, that is not nearly as “international” as it sounds– it’s overwhelmingly made up of people who are white and male…
Anyway, I was going to write up some of my notes from today’s sessions. The first plenary had former US Ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter and the former conservative Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt. I wanted to check up on Bildt’s resume. So I Googled him. And wouldn’t you know he’s been writing his own blog since February!
It looks as though there’s some pretty interesting stuff there. It’s interesting to find someone who’s such a high-level mover and shaker as Bildt writing a blog. You can find there this comment about Paul Volcker’s recent report into the UN Oil-for-food scandal:

    You can not avoid the conclusion that what the massive Volcker Report investigation has found does not amount to much. In one case, Mr Savan clearly violated UN ethics rule, bu whether anything illegal was done remains to be clarified.
    It is worth nothing, [I think he means ‘noting’?] that the Volcker Report fails to mention the very large amount of Oil-for-Food money that was transferred to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and for which there has been no accounting whatsover.

Then, if you go over to Bildt’s website, you can find a photo of him looking fairly dapper and also a link to the text of the address he gave here in Geneva this morning…
So I didn’t actually have to take notes during his speech at all!
He spoke of,

    rather a substantial and undoubtedly worrying decline in both the hard powers of the United States and the soft powers of the European Union.
    American military power is seriously bogged down in the marshes, back alleys and deserts of Mesopotamia. And it is likely to remain so for some considerable time to come. No one will say it openly, but everyone knows that the world

5 thoughts on “Strategic Studies in Geneva”

  2. IISS, Switzerland, Sweden?
    Stalin would have asked: How many battalions do they have? (As in “How many battalions has the Pope?”)
    Perhaps that’s too rough. Like the Orson Wells remark in “The Third Man”. (“What have they produced? The cuckoo-clock!”)
    How much can a smart Swede do, even if he has a blog? Thabo Mbeki is still in power and he posts a weekly letter. Chavez has his own TV show. And they are both still in power.
    It’s hard to make Geneva sound interesting.

  3. And the $64,0000 question is:
    Does Dominic know the difference between Scandanavia and the Alps? Between a fjord and lake Cuomo? Between a Swede and Rutabaga?

  4. Actually, there is a connection, in the form of the Swiss Guard, who are the Pope’s actually-existing battalions.

  5. Actually Dominic, I wasn’t commenting on the perported remarks of Djukashvili. My posting related more to your apparent confusion in European geography. (Or is that the Swedish Guard that works for the pope?)
    Well, perhaps Christiane can straighten you out on the difference between cukoo clocks and Volvos.

Comments are closed.