Sarkozy suggested that world leaders should stop myopically focusing on GDP and consider a new index, what some French are calling a joie de vivre index.

It goes back a century, to President Woodrow Wilson s inability in 1919 to persuade a myopically isolationist Congress to approve the League of Nations. Since then, Congress has rejected the International Trade Organization (1948), the SALT II nuclear agreement (1979), and the Kyoto Protocol (1997), among others.

Aside from control of the region s energy supplies, water has become a potential source of conflict, given China s serious shortages. Yet, while the Chinese clearly understand these contingencies and are preparing themselves to deal with them diplomatically and militarily, the Kremlin remains myopically obsessed with the phantom threat of America.

Just three days ago, three days ago here at TED, we had a simulcast of David Cameron, potentially the next prime minister of the UK, quoting one of my favorite speeches of all time, Robert Kennedy's poetic speech from 1968 when he suggested that we're myopically focused on the wrong thing and that GDP is a misplaced metric.