The End of Power by Naim Moises

Author:Naim, Moises [Naím, Moisés]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465037810
Publisher: Basic Books

THE NEW RULES OF GEOPOLITICS

One of the best examples of smaller countries that have used coalitions of the willing, economic diplomacy (i.e., a lot of money), and soft power to advance their interests must surely be Qatar. It led the way in toppling Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi by supplying rebels with money, training, and more than twenty thousand tons of weapons, and called early for the arming of rebels in Syria.38 It has attempted mediation in Yemen, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Palestine and—importantly—in Lebanon. Through an $85 billion investment fund, Qatar has bought into businesses from Volkswagen to the Paris St. Germain Football Club. And it is not only behind what is perhaps the most influential new news organization, the network Al Jazeera, but has been building up its reputation as a cultural center with top-rated museums of Islamic and Middle Eastern art as well as high-profile purchases of pieces by the likes of Warhol, Rothko, Cezanne, Koons, and Lichtenstein.39

But you don’t have to be sitting on top of a small fortune in hydrocarbon resources to play with the big boys. A small group of countries that are not necessarily neighbors or bound by a common history can achieve results more quickly by simply choosing to work together than by going through cumbersome international organizations. And a more geographically ambitious foreign policy, one focused only on immediate neighbors, is within reach of a larger number of countries now; countries that lag in grasping this opportunity stand to lose their competitive edge.

None of these principles denies the value of a large military or a commanding resource base. But all of them flow logically from the decay of power, and they form the basis for a new kind of international politics.

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