Europe has an enormous task to try to reconsolidate itself. This is of course what obviously complicates the question of Turkish membership in Europe. I mean there is just so much on the European plate at this point that you know, that the kind of reaction. On the other hand it seems to me that when Europe finally begins to see itself as a major power in the world Europe’s interest essential geopolitical interest lie in having good relations with its near neighbors and they are essentially Russia and essentially the whole Islamic world in the Middle East and the United States in many ways is the problem in both these regions rather than the solution and coming back to the Turkish question once Europe begins to think seriously above we cannot leave the Middle East to the Americans in this way because they don’t have a solution and hopefully we will have a solution but if we don’t it won’t come as a great surprise. Then I think to my way of thinking then Turkey suddenly becomes much more important from an European point of view because it is the key to European influence in this part of the world. So in a certain sense Europe has to mature itself before it is mature enough to take out a strong power like Turkey and in the meantime Europe has these bouts of weakness.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: Hi David Blum. I am just curious what are your thoughts on if we were to risk the unipolar world to what will affect your [???] such as Israel or Georgia or the affect it will actually have on the [???] security what goes in Somalia and other places where the American military does provide a structural security where no other nation or regions would like to take that responsibility for.
Speaker 2: Well they are all different these cases, I mean I guess pirates are an old problem in the world and you know, countries can pull themselves together to deal with it as I think they are doing. We are playing a very important role in this, but by no means an exclusive one. The question of Israel is obviously extremely difficult. If Israel is really abandoning the two state solution and the two state solution is difficult enough to sell all around as we obviously have learned over the course of a half a century, but if they have abandoned that then it is difficult to see any kind of peaceful resolution and this then opens up a vista of the United States by its own brute force maintaining a situation which the rest of the region will not willingly accept. That is very expensive as a geopolitical burden. So if you think of the real interest of Israel, you might say this turning of Israeli policy toward no accommodation of the Palestinians is not in Israel’s interest and if somehow the beliefs that the Americans will subsidize this indefinitely is not in Israel’s interest because it is enticing Israel and the policies, which are not really sustainable. And even if they are *resolved in the country which is progressively militarized then this is a rather sad evolution for what was at its inception a wonderfully idealist construction. I don’t know enough about Georgia except to say that the idea that Georgia can act as a great power defying Russia on the basis that there will be American help, this is again one of those interventions, which isn’t very useful from the point of view the Georgia themselves.
Speaker 5: Suleyman Schwartz, Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism. You certainly fulfill your description as a person who states provocative views and I had three questions I was going to ask you, but I guess I will limit it maybe to one and a half or maybe two. Twice you said, you described the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as being one where the US intervention in Afghanistan had spilled over in Pakistan. My organization has a very large representation in Pakistan and we have been reporting on and discussing the Jihad as a fancy of bloodshed in Pakistan, which I described in 2003 as ignored by the world, but in fact the second most bloodiest situation in the world after Iraq that was several years ago and we carefully follow this and we don’t see the United States spilling over at all until maybe a year and a half ago. What we see is the Talibanization of Pakistan. So I would have to say that I think if you describe the United States – the situation there as US intervention in Afghanistan spilling over into Pakistan, you are just wrong. It is a Taliban invasion of Pakistan and it really is an invasion.