Catastrophes - Acts of God

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Description:

It is evident that man-made catastrophes or natural "Acts of Gods" have always been instrumental in charting the roadmap of life on earth. Negotiations too are affected by catastrophes. Acts of God could either motivate mutual cooperation in negotiations and sometimes even strain the relationships between members.

On 11 September 2001, by 1000AM New York time there were two huge mounds of rubble and the world had changed forever. Within one month "Operation Enduring Freedom" was initiated in Afghanistan by US and the attention of the world was entirely on the "Global War on Terror". This war still continues! In the year 2003, Iraq was invaded to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. The recent pull out of the Dutch troops from NATO's Iraq operation was potent enough to cause the collapse of Dutch government and add some strain to Dutch ties with USA.

The recent sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008 again changed the world by challenging the inherent structure and operations of global financial institutions. The more recent 2010 European sovereign debt crisis threatened the disintegration of the European Union. As the Greece economy sunk further into recession, the EU economic forum remained undecided on the aid package. On one hand German and French government faced wrath of local public for sharing wealth in times of recession and on the other hand they risked isolation within the EU block.

All the aforesaid catastrophes changed the power balance in the world and thus would certainly affect the climate change negotiation.

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Web Resources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/21/dutch-troops-to-pull-out_n_470708.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_attack_on_Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11
http://across.co.nz/WorldsWorstDisasters.html