Just after the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the subsequent visit of President Kennedy (JFK) to Ireland, it is time to re-evaluate the mythology around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Continue reading
Just after the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the subsequent visit of President Kennedy (JFK) to Ireland, it is time to re-evaluate the mythology around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Continue reading
A threat to democracy frequently follows major shocks in international relations. The period between the two World Wars saw Germany, the USSR, Spain and Italy sacrifice democracy at the altar of populist dictators. Unfortunately some of the slouching beasts from history that led to that collapse of democracy have now awakened from their slumber in Europe.
Greece, long associated with the very concept of democracy, is but an extreme example of this growing threat. Many of the issues that threaten the future of democracy in Greece are present in a number of other countries in Europe, including in Ireland, though obviously with different emphasis and to a different degree. The future of democracy in Europe is being ever more closely linked – through a ghastly financial domino theory which says that if Greece falls, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal cannot be far behind.
Endgame the End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything, John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey, $27.95, 2011, 318 pages.
American Gridlock Why the Right and Left Are Both Wrong, H. Woody Brock, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey, $27.95, 2012, 273 pages.
In Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber identifies an essential difference between happiness and misery.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
Two recent books consider the muddle politicians, bankers and economists have made of the world’s finances, during which the Micawber doctrine sadly got forgotten. They focus on the debt burden we have strapped on to the backs of coming generations and tackle the inability of current political systems to confront the ensuing mess.
The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,
Public Affairs Books, New York, 310 pp, €21.40
The Return of History and the End of Dreams
By Robert Kagan
Atlantic Books London
£12.99
116 pages