My new best friend

Hey look! Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt has a blog!

I am going to link to his blog, so that people will think we are friends and stuff. And then maybe he will see that loads of people are coming to his blog from mine, and he will then come to Ireland and hang out with me, and we'll be able to talk about the timeless wisdom of political realism and suchlike.

Return to the International Monetary Fund

I sometimes scove at my pals on Helicopterview, but one fellow's reply to my post on the IMF hit paydirt... basically he pointed out the interesting fact that prior to the 1970s, the IMF worked as an institution lending large sums of money in short term loans more or less to whoever wanted them. After that, however, the IMF started imposing heavy-duty conditions on the loans, and basically only lending to countries if they would reorganise their economies on lines dictated by the organisation.

Yet more Mearsheimer & Walt action

I appreciate that I have been neglecting Hunting Monsters. By way of amends, I will now write again about that article about the pro-Israel lobby by John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt. I am largely doing this because it's a surefire way to grab a few hits.

Anyway, if you are interested in all that stuff, may I refer you to this article in Ha'aretz by one Ned Lazarus? the great thing about it is that it is written by someone who understands what Realism is, and appreciates the irony of Realists ciriticising US policy towards Israel, given that Israel's actions seem largely to be dominated by Realist ideas. In some ways this reminds me of one of the central problems with Realism - is it meant to be descriptive of the world, or does it say what leaders of countries ought to do to advance their nation's interests?

Ha'aretz tend to start wanting you to pay for articles in old issues fairly quickly, so if you want to read that piece you'd better hop to it.