The problem of how to wean these countries off this addiction seems to be insurmountable.

First, China will begin to wean itself from the manufacturing model that has underpinned export and investment led growth.

They need transparency and accountability. They need to wean themselves from the poisonous rhetoric of ethnic nationalism substituting as patriotism.

We have also communicated our agreement to take up a pilot project on community development to wean farmers away from poppy cultivation.

And, as the rest of the world grapples with austerity measures, such countries should be considering restoration strategies and ways to permanently wean themselves off foreign aid.

There is good reason to believe that China s new leaders are now determined to wean the economy off ever mounting (and destabilizing) debt especially in its rapidly expanding shadow banking system.

But even these measures, which foreign observers have largely overlooked, have failed to boost consumer demand. So what more could the German government do to wean the Germans off their abstemious habits?

Moreover, continuing investment in real estate makes it all the more difficult to wean the economy off its real estate addiction, and the real estate market off its addiction to government support.

In the longer term, were shale gas and oil to satisfy US demand, Canadian oil could wean America s allies from their Middle East oil addiction, giving them new foreign policy options, too.

Just as it is next to impossible to take a critically ill patient off life support treatment, it is equally difficult to wean post bubble economies from their now steady dose of liquidity injections and deficit spending.

The rhetoric of energy independence in the oil consuming countries makes the situation even worse the oil producing countries are building energy intensive industries to guarantee a market for their oil once consuming nations wean themselves of imported oil.

Late in 2009, President Dmitri Medvedev issued a sweeping call for Russia to modernize its economy, wean itself from a humiliating dependence on natural resources, and do away with Soviet style attitudes that he said were hindering its effort to remain a world power.

So, too, are signs of newfound policy discipline such as a central bank that seems determined to wean China off excessive credit creation and fiscal authorities that have resisted the timeworn temptation of yet another massive round of spending initiatives to counter a slowdown.

Current steps that have been taken to reintegrate ex combatants in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process, for example, through the creation of job opportunities for the large population of restive youths, as part of strategies to wean them from conflicts, should be consolidated.

But we need to get the government to work with all of the fast food purveyors and the restaurant industry, and over a five, six, seven year period wean of us off the extreme amounts of fat, sugar, fat and all the other non food ingredients.