Turkey s Quagmire

SYDNEY Burma, once the richest country in Southeast Asia, today is mired in deep poverty.

Many others talk of being drawn inexorably into an Afghanistan style quagmire.

Yes, it is swamp. We live in the swamp in a tent, but I must tell you, every day is exhilarating.

Russia found itself in a quagmire almost instantly.

Maybe it was swamp gas, but I know what I saw.

The Nakivubo Swamp is an excellent example of the need for careful valuation of the environment.

Every society, under certain conditions, is vulnerable to a descent into barbarism.

There seem to be two common characteristics of the descent into barbarism.

That absence of self criticism is what led America into the Iraq quagmire.

First, the US and global economies remain mired in recession.

China s statistical agency is still mired in communist input output accounting.

The Afghan quagmire and America s image are not the only problems facing NATO.

Unless the economies of developing countries grow, they will remain mired in poverty.

The descent into barbarism generally occurs in the midst of economic crisis or when localized violence has already flared.

In the bloody, hostile miasma of the Middle East, being a winner in any sense of the word is fallacious.

While the American economy gets dragged down further in a swamp of bad property debts, China will continue to boom.

But it won't be easy for him, either, because America is caught in a quagmire.

Europe s other natural interventionist, Great Britain, has its hands more than full in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Germany remains reluctant to intervene in general, and in a conflict that so directly involves Israel in particular, leaving only France to act.

That means paying down debt and rebuilding savings, leaving consumer demand mired in protracted weakness.

Even the constitutional treaty, which should have been a clarion call for all Europeans, was allowed to become bogged down in minutia.

We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, he warned, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.

But the US cannot withdraw without sending the entire region into chaos.

Instead, it has resurfaced to drag governments and economies down the sinkhole of austerity.

But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.

Unless something is done, the crisis will throw as many as 200 million additional people into poverty.

Global imbalances and currency misalignments could well wreck the global recovery and push the world into the protectionist mire.

After its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade, the US can hardly afford a Syrian quagmire.

And, because their poverty was only relative and house prices were racing ahead, creditors were happy to let them sink deeper and deeper into debt.

And, with America bogged down in Iraq, Russian President Vladimir Putin has resurrected Soviet style bullying tactics.

Before the green revolution, Nobel Prize winning economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted a bleak future for an Asia mired in poverty.

Before Afghanistan becomes a Vietnam style quagmire, Obama must rethink his plan for another troop surge.

It can choose to lead the Middle East into vibrant multi sectarian democracy or slump back into corrupt local politics under foreign tutelage.

There is also the steady drumbeat of terrorist violence in Iraq violence that risks pushing the country into full scale civil war.

The threat of irrelevance is understood by leading statesmen, who have committed themselves to putting their shoulders to the wheel.

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