Kevin Rudd believes he’s superman

Kevin Rudd is trying to seriously organize a pan-Asian free trade/security agreement (the word EU is bandied around quite a bit in the article), which would include such assorted groups as ASEAN, Japan, India, Indonesia, China, and… the US??? The organization look like it would be more focused on security than the economy, and in that way is a lovely counter to John Howard and Shinzo Abe’s “encirclement” plan, which was seriously idiotic. But in my opinion the chance of having serious co-governmental cooperation between these countries is lower than the chance of Obama having tea with the KKK (it’s hard to think of a good kooky metaphor for international political situations).

Nevertheless, its a call to move in the right direction, and it backs up my general feeling that Kevin Rudd is rather visionary towards Asian issues. I’ve heard bad things about his domestic economic policies, but I’m not Australian so I really couldn’t give a damn about that.

BG