As the lockdown has been relaxed (in Romania, the homeland of TMFI), yet social distancing is still a sacrosanct recommendation, we release the second episode from our collection of editorial products, this time from our in-house harvest. We hope that the variety and the quality of these “corona-readings” to function as a cure equally for unjustified anxieties and for mind hibernation. More
It has been three years since our project – The Market for Ideas – took shape. We have tried to present our readers with interesting ideas from a wide variety of fields and penned by a wide variety of others. To the best of our abilities, we have tried not to turn this journal into a publication by Romanians for Romanians, only in English, which would be snobbery, but a shared space in which Romanian issues could be presented alongside more general considerations for the edification of a diverse and educated, but non-expert audience. The figures back us up, both on Facebook and on the website, where Romanians are still a plurality, but no longer the majority of our readers. Hopefully, we have not driven any of them away; instead, we rather managed to interest some people in our corner of the Internet, which is a difficult thing to do in a world given to shallow and homogenizing diversity. Facts and figures: TMFI is being read in 188 jurisdictions all over the world and its writers come from more than 50 countries. More
The Three Seas Initiative is a recent formula describing an older concept. Romania is a reflexive supporter of regional cooperation initiatives, but it is paying special attention to this initiative, as it encompasses a geopolitically significant area with relevance to long-term Romanian interests. This paper argues that this valuable initiative has a latent geopolitical subtext with regards to the two powers flanking the region which is perceived as such, if not commonly articulated, by the countries of the initiative. At the same time, the Black Sea will be a main deciding factor for the success and failure of the Initiatives, owing to several underlying conditions, as well as potential complicating factors. Any sort of Three Seas Initiative development will have to keep this in mind or else risk a concentration of vulnerabilities in the middle portion of the Initiative’s geographical space. The Three Seas Initiative must also be regarded from the perspective of synergies with Chinese initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the 16+1 cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries. More
Cybersecurity is mentioned so often that it has become a cliché like climate change, with the other thing they have in common being a disagreement on what solutions are required, who is responsible for them and whether there is a responsibility in changing behaviour so as to minimize these risks. All of these difficult questions are left unanswered not just by the conceptual breadth and diversity of the issue at hand, but also by the ease with which dilettantes and people with agendas can spot facile solutions that obviate the need for difficult questions and answers. More
News of the ongoing purge of numerous high-level officials and Saudi Royal Family members by the Saudi government has rattled global markets and raised further doubts regarding the stability of the Kingdom. What some are calling a counter-coup is presented as an anti-corruption move that saw over 1,200 bank accounts frozen and numerous assets being seized. Two Saudi princes have also died, one in an as yet unexplained helicopter crash near the Yemeni border and the other, the youngest son of King Fahd who ruled Saudi Arabia until 2005, died in a shoot-out between his security detail and government forces. More
The current woes of the European Union are intentionally treated superficially or obtusely in public discourse, as it also emanates from the prestige media which generally co-opts European elites to its worldview, even when they nominally disagree with specific policy prescriptions. Beyond the crisis of the moment and the tendency to transform everything into a morality play involving good and noble Europeanists and regressive nationalists, there are specific factors of its own making which hinder the EU’s adaptive processes and make it increasingly likely that the project may founder. Whether it does so under the blows of an unknown or unremarked crisis or threat (as most empires do), or whether it will simply strain under the accumulated errors and stresses of a thousand bad policy compromises, one should dismiss the “illusion of inevitability” that accompanies public discourse on globalization in general and EU regionalism in particular. More
The “hermit kingdom” of North Korea is back in the news, at the center of a new round of exchanges of bellicose declarations, underpinned by failed tests for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that, nevertheless, show the impressive progress of the country’s indigenous program. The missile capabilities are meant to provide a delivery device for the country’s nuclear weapons, the other great program beset by a string of failures and shoestring successes. Western observers are now attempting to “read the tea leaves” in order to predict when the country will have achieved the ability to threaten the continental United States, while the threat to its immediate neighbors, South Korea and Japan, remains real but uncertain. The weapon systems involved are complex and, as has been suggested of the recent failed test, prone to cyber-attacks and sabotage through the component supply chain. Rather, the immediate threat to a country like South Korea is all of the conventional artillery pointed at its capital, which would make flattening Seoul in a matter of hours a foregone proposition. With Donald Trump at the helm of the US and sending carrier groups in the vicinity, a man given to grand gestures as negotiating bids, the latest tensions with North Korea seem momentous, as if some form of denouement to the regime in Pyongyang is looming. The form it would take is critical to its neighbors, who fear both the ways in which the country can lash out violently, as well as the consequences of a collapse of power, such as millions of refugees trying to cross land borders or internecine warfare. More
The recent launch of the English version of the seminal study “Some Microeconomic Landmarks of the Transition Process in Romania” by Prof. Cezar Mereuță is an important step in the process of exposing the notable work of Romanian scholars to their peers abroad.The initial Romanian edition appeared in 2015 and crowned 17 years of research into the structure of 1,009 markets between 1995 and 2012. His work is not only a peerless assessment of the developmental history of the Romanian economy post-transition, but a valuable work of microeconomics in its own right. More
On July 20th 2019, the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first manned mission to touch down and explore the Moon’s surface. At the time, this was generously presented by the Americans as an achievement for all mankind, but it was, in fact, a near knock-out punch in the Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union. This race was, among other things, a competition for prestige in the eyes of the world and a validation of each country’s individual development model. It was also what Jerry Pournelle and Stefan Possony termed “technological war” in their landmark book “The Strategy of Technology”. Conquering and developing space or “the high frontier” became a priority for the rapid advancement of the military applications of the new space technologies – reconnaissance, early warning, command, control and coordination of conventional and strategic military assets etc. More
With the developed world in transition towards a short and medium-term economic self-flagellation as a means of reducing the impact of the SARS-COV-2 virus spread, there is little room for economic news that is not related to markets tumbling and toilet paper becoming contraband. While it started with the shutdown in Hubei province in China and the associated tough (but successful) quarantine and social distancing measures, the economic crisis has moved onto Western nations, where the collective impact of the virus has already exceeded that in China. The measures which the experts (and, reluctantly, and too late for comfort, the politicians) are calling for are throwing prodigious amounts of sand in the gears of a system that developed organically to thrive on mobility, access, just-in-time logistics and a global division of labor. Regardless of the terrifying human costs of the crisis, the economic consequences will be the making of the leadership and will unravel carefully synchronized supply and production chains, as well as industries on which the (precarious) livelihood of millions depends, such as tourism. More
The negotiations for the Paris Agreement were concluded at the 21st Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2015, and it entered into force in October 2016. It has been signed by 195 countries and ratified by 144. President Trump has repeatedly spoken out against the Paris Agreement and the “climate change industry” and made it a campaign plank to exit the Agreement. For all of its apparent randomness, there is one obvious trend in his Cabinet appointments, past and present, which is to appoint people who exhibit an ideological break from the policies of the past Administration or who are skeptical of the worldview of their respective agencies. Naming a “climate change skeptic” and pro-business advocate, Scott Pruitt, to the Environmental Protection Agency was one such move. Naming a China and free trade skeptic, Robert Lighthizer, to be US Trade Representative (a Cabinet level appointment) was another. And there are still more examples, such as the failed nomination of fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor. More
With the conclusion of the two ceremonial national conventions of the two US parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, one may say that the presidential race has begun in earnest. The current election will be unique in modern American history for its overlap with a pandemic which may not be the deadliest in recent times, but it is certainly the most mediatized and has elicited the strongest public policy reactions ever. At the same time, much like 2016 but also other important American elections, the Presidential campaign takes place against the backdrop of rioting, looting and general social strife which has become inextricably linked to the political race. The issues are more complicated than breathless media analyses make them out to be and there is a great deal of unknowns for an event that is scrutinized by the entire world in unison as a determining factor of the next four years in the still-extant Pax Americana. Ultimately, trying to predict the result of the November election can be as mystical or as wonkish as we want – some may try polls and statistical models and others the tea leaves. Both options are equally valid in the current climate. More
