CFR

General Meeting: The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation

Speakers: Richard Berner, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley Mickey Levy, Chief Economist, Bank of America Securities Laurence Meyer, Vice Chairman, Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC; Distinguished Scholar, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Former Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Presider: Daniel K. Tarullo, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Kosovo, one of the smallest territories in Europe, is casting a large shadow on the diplomatic landscape as the deadline nears for determining its international status. "My sense is that the clock is running out on the issue," says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. National Security Council director for European Affairs. The United Nations set a deadline of today for resolving the political status of the Serbian province, which has been internationally administered since NATO ousted the forces of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 to halt an attack on Kosovo's mainly ethnic Albanian population.

There are many today that have become accustomed to living in servitude. The systems of control are layers upon layers, so much so that the average Joe would rather succumb to it than to fight it. I have taken a hard look at these control mechanisms; we are living in a matrix of constant manipulation. We need to deeply examine it and ourselves if we are ever going to free ourselves from it. Let us go now into the rabbit hole.

A non-binding resolution that sailed through the U.S. Senate in September 2007 reignited debate over Iraq’s political future. Introduced by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-DE) and Sam Brownback, (R-KS), the measure calls for a decentralized Iraqi government “based upon the principles of federalism” and advocates for a relatively weak central government with strong Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish regional administrations.

Leslie H. Gelb, former writer for The New York Times, and a senior Defense and State Department official before becoming president of CFR, says the plan to persuade Iraqis to accept a federal form of government is the best way to “maintain harmony” among Iraqi groups. The plan, which he has co-authored with Senator Joseph R. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was approved with seventy-five votes in favor in a recent nonbinding resolution. But Gelb says it is still not popular among many Arabs who, he says, are used to strong central government.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox confirmed the existence of a plan conceived with President Bush to create a new regional currency in the Americas, in an interview last night on CNN's "Larry King Live."

A group of European politicians and intellectuals have started a new think tank aimed at pushing EU capitals to creating a "more coherent and vigorous" foreign affairs policy in an attempt to make Europe a stronger player on the global stage.

The US Senate has passed a bill, suggesting Iraq's partition into a federation of ethnically divided regions, urging Iraqi officials to agree.

Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today's instability.