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What if Saddam Hussein fully complies with the United Nations' resolution, avoids a war and retains power? His past behaviour, the Bush administration's eagerness to get rid of him and the huge room for accidents and provocations that can spark a war have persuaded many that this is an improbable outcome. Moreover, even those who think Mr Hussein may comply with the UN demands - he appeared to take a first on Wednesday - assume that the inspection process is bound to destabilise his regime and eventually lead to its demise.
What a difference a decade makes. During the first half of the 1990s, it seemed as if all economy ministers from emerging markets were using the same PowerPoint presentation. When they gave a talk, in Washington or London, they appeared to use the same slides with the same messages and, at times, the same graphs. The similarities were eerie, considering one minister might be from, say, Russia and the other from Ghana or Mexico.
What led American executives to think they could get away with hiding billions of dollars in corporate losses or invent staggering amounts of non-existent revenues? Greed, arrogance, dishonesty and other human frailties are obvious answers. But they are not the most interesting. After all, hubris and corruption among the powerful are as old as the Bible.
As soon as the results of Brazil's presidential election next month become known, George W. Bush should invite the winner to his ranch in Texas and propose a bilateral economic treaty that Brazil's new leader cannot refuse.
Lucio Garcia, a gardener in Merrifield, Virginia, speaks daily to his family in a remote town in Bolivia using a prepaid phonecard that costs him a few cents a minute. Edie Baron Levi, a Mexican congressman, commutes weekly from Mexico City to Los Angeles, where he and his constituents reside. Iqbal Farouqi, a Pakistani waiter working in Milan, has used the money he earns to purchase two small trucks in Karachi that he rents to relatives and manages via the internet.
In the past decade the world was regularly taken unawares by domestic financial accidents that spread to other countries at great speed, following surprising trajectories. Today, we are regularly startled by political incidents that also spread internationally at great speed, on trajectories that are equally surprising.
In January 2000, Ecuadoreans took to the streets and forced Jamil Mahuad, their democratically elected president, to resign. A few months later, Peruvians did the same to Alberto Fujimori. Last January popular protests in Argentina drove out President Fernando de la Rúa. Three countries, three differing sets of circumstances and three presidents with contrasting personalities; yet there is a telling common thread to events.
Current levels of world poverty are unacceptable. More money for development is needed. The approaches and institutions that guide foreign aid should be overhauled. It is hard to disagree with these conclusions. Certainly, the heads of state who met in Monterrey the other week did not. As a result, they will make more money available to fight world poverty and vigorously explore ideas for spending it more effectively.
What country, other than the US, allows an Enron-class company to go under? An Enron-class company is a dominant and innovative global player in a highly sensitive market and is funded by influential blue-chip banks and by thousands of small investors. More importantly, an Enron-class company is a political powerhouse whose influence runs deep and wide, with close allies in the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of government and a network of well fed supporters in the ranks of academia, journalism, interest groups, sports clubs and myriad charities.
What does al-Qaeda have in common with Amnesty International and Greenpeace? All three are loose networks of individuals united by a shared passion for a single cause, and, thanks to cheaper communication and transport, each can project its influence globally. Their funding comes from small contributions made by thousands of sympathisers and from large sums given by a few big donors. Their effectiveness derives from the single-minded devotion of their idealistic activists.
Recession, international instability, social inequality and terrorism: 2001 has been a difficult year. In the search for explanations, many have found a common root to the world's travails in the political and economic developments of the 1990s.
For all the post-September 11 focus on Islamic anti-Americanism, the world's reaction has in fact exposed the variety, complexity and ubiquity of antipathy towards the US. In Argentina, Hebe de Bonafini, an internationally known human rights activist and president of the Association of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (mothers of Argentines who "disappeared" during the dictatorships), has said: "When the attack happened I felt happiness." In France, the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique offered his summary of the world's reaction: "What's happening to [Americans] is too bad but they had it coming."
This week's terrorist attacks not only killed people; they also killed ideas. Many of the certainties and assumptions that guided position papers, policies and budgets will not survive the deliberate crash of jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some of the ideas that passed away last Tuesday had been with us for decades; others were as new as the Bush administration. The attacks have also brought about new ideas, some of which are likely to be as misguided as those discarded.
With all the feverish talk of anti-globalisation protesters, people seem to have lost sight of an important point: today's summits would achieve little even if the angry mob stayed at home.
Moisés Naím / Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas…. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil…." - John Maynard Keynes. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, London: 1936.
The entrepreneurs and technological visionaries that unleashed the digital revolution were not contemptuous of government - they just ignored it. During the heady, early years of the Internet boom, the dominant view in Silicon Valley was not only that cyberspace did not need government, but that it could be largely immune from its interference. The common wisdom was that all it took to avoid any governmental regulation was to move the servers to another, less intrusive jurisdiction. For the dotcom pioneers, being a libertarian was not even an ideological choice; it was the instinct bred by working with the Internet.
What will President-Elect George W. Bush do if Fidel Castro dies during his watch, unleashing a massive outflow of Cuban refugees desperately fleeing the Albanian-like chaos of the post-Castro era? If Argentina falls into major economic disarray, will a Bush Administration bail it out as forcefully as the Clinton government backed Mexico and Brazil in the 1990s? How will Bush respond if Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias recognizes the Colombian rebels as the legitimate government of Colombia and signs an economic- and military-cooperation treaty with them?
The 1990s began in Berlin and ended in Seattle. In Berlin, a crowd tore down a wall built to contain democracy and free markets. In Seattle, another crowd marched in protest against the World Trade Organization in an effort to rebuild the walls that might protect them against ills unleashed by globalization. Put another way, the bricks people collected as souvenirs from the Berlin Wall in 1989 were thrown through the windows of McDonald's in 1999. Thus a decade that began with great hopes about the global spread of capitalism ended with widespread apprehension toward it. What happened?
What changes more often, the fashion designs coming from Paris and Milan or the economic policy designs Washington and Wall Street prescribe to countries that are less developed or that are emerging from decades of communism? While this comparison may seem frivolous, a review of the ideas that have guided thinking and action about economic reforms in this decade shows that they are as faddish as skirt lengths and tie widths. The difference, of course, is that economic policy fashions affect the way millions of people live and define their children's chances for a better future.
Moisés Naím and Nancy Birdsall / South China Morning Post
The once-frantic debate about international financial architecture is ending in a whimper. The departure of Secretary Robert Rubin from the United States Treasury spells its death knell. This is too bad for Asian voters and for Asian democracies.