In the coming days you will no doubt be hearing that our pensions are no longer sustainable and that our national health system needs looking into.

What government “gurus” might be interested in finding out is that according to The Global Competitiveness Report 2004-2005, three Nordic countries happen to be in the top five of competitiveness worldwide – showing that good welfare provisions and high social protection do not exclude growth and prosperity.

On the contrary, they support it. Admittedly there is more than one way to reach high competitiveness and economic growth, but one cannot deny or ignore the fact that within Europe, the Nordic model has managed to combine economic competitiveness with a strong social welfare and high environmental standards. Hardly anybody disagrees with this successful alternative.

This has been achievement mainly through:

• a reform of the labour market,

• committing public money to an active labour market policy,

• prioritising education and life-long learning,

• cutting time spent between jobs to a minimum,

• action on gender equality and non-discrimination,

• a strategy of high-quality jobs

• and the EU’s highest spending on research and development, with a particular emphasis on environmentally-friendly technologies.

If we are truly looking for policies for excellence, we must ensure that economic progress must be the servant of social progress. The Lisbon objective must be a stronger economy and a better society, for the simple reason that we cannot make things better by making them worse.

Reform should not be – as many are hinting and suggesting – a euphemism for a lowering of standards.

It is no accident that the Scandinavian countries which have most aggressively pursued the Lisbon Strategy of social excellence are now also among the EU’s highest economic achievers. Scandinavian governments have invested heavily in active labour market and social policies and the skills needed for the knowledge economy, including a transfer of skills to older and female workers who might otherwise be excluded from the labour market.

That way, labour markets can evolve, as long as there is healthy social dialogue, systems for vocational training and job-matching and a social security system that does not leave anybody behind.

Raising Europe’s employment rate is one of the most urgent tasks of the Lisbon Strategy. Social protection must not be looked upon as part of the problem, but as part of the solution.

According to data from Northern Europe, where there are adequate services, it can be seen that the level of activity of women is much higher than in other European countries.

This means that the Lisbon Strategy certainly cannot be disassociated from social protection policies and that, on the contrary, these policies are an integral part of it.

This link must be made more explicit.

Some time back, when I was taking part in a discussion on Super One TV with Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech, he had seemed reluctant to endorse the EU’s Wim Kok recommendation that one should favour the introduction of naming and shaming those member states which do not meet their Lisbon commitments, whether in regard to their economic, social, environmental or knowledge economy aspects.

I totally disagree, since I feel that if we truly believe in achieving a Europe of excellence through the Lisbon Strategy, we need to meet the necessary benchmarks.

Otherwise we shall not move to that second most important stage of shifting from mere declarations to results.

The Pentagon’s new map

I cannot think of a better way to speculate about the strategic direction that the Bush II administration might, could or should take in the coming months and years, than to recommend the best read since Friedman’s The Lexus And The Olive Tree which has just surfaced under the name of The Pentagon’s New Map: War And Peace In The Twenty-First Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett.

All those expecting a lot of technical and militaristic jargon from this senior strategic researcher and professor at the US Naval War College will be sorely disappointed.

Instead we have an extensive study written in layman’s language that argues that the US had spent so much energy during the Cold War years trying to prevent the horror of global war that it forgot the dream of global peace. The author’s biggest amazement is that the US is still searching for a vision to replace the decades-long containment strategy that America pursued to counter the Soviet threat.

Although many tend to associate the US with the globalisation process, the author argues that America drifted through the roaring nineties, blissfully unaware that globalisation was speeding ahead with no one at the wheel.

Somewhat pretentiously, the author claims to have found the answers to some of the most ticklish questions that one could come up with. Primarily:

• How do Americans describe the threat to the environment?

• How did they fail to heed all the warning signs leading up to 9/11?

• How do they prepare for future war?

• Where will those wars be?

• How might they be prevented?

• What should America’s role be in both war and peace?

Although the author worked primarily for the military, he found himself instinctively exploring the seam between war and peace, locating it first in US military crisis responses, then America’s foreign aid and finally focusing on its leading edge – the spread of the global economy itself.

Perceived as ‘the vision guy’ once he had written a strategic brief on the issue, he found himself fielding requests from the National Security Council, Congress, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security. No wonder that, two years ago, Esquire magazine named him one of their “best and brightest” thinkers. In fact the book itself started off as an article in the March 2003 issue of Esquire under the same title as the book. It is not usual for somebody with a security-related background to write about where and why conflicts will arise, but also how the US can actually prevent them. For once here is a book that, rather than relying on cliché-ridden, doom-laden scenarios, speaks a language of promise and hope, rather than danger and fear.

When asked whether such an approach can be interpreted as naiveté or else as unbridled ambition, Barnett stated that he chose to see it as a moral responsibility – a duty to leave his and others’ children a better world.

Barnett describes his book as the ultimate expression of American optimism, which right now is “undoubtedly the rarest and most valuable commodity on earth.”

He feels that individuals, communities and nations should take it upon themselves not only to imagine a future worth creating but to actually try to build it.

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Leo Brincat is the main Opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and IT.