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The change in U.S. policy towards Cuba is neither the most surprising nor the most important outcome of the fifth Summit of the Americas that was recently held in Trinidad. The softening of the U.S. embargo on Cuba would have happened without the summit; reforming U.S. Cuba policy is a process that has been underway for a while and is driven by changes in the international context, changes on the island (notably Fidel Castro’s succession by his brother Raul), and by the emergence of a new political landscape in Washington and especially in south Florida.
The same weekend that Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez celebrated Mauricio Funes’s election as El Salvador’s new president, his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. The election in El Salvador and the meeting at the White House are manifestations one of the most important trends that will shape Latin American politics in coming years.
Is Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez the latest casualty of the global financial crisis? Is the Venezuelan opposition a corrupt, coup-plotting lot that represents the interests of the old regime? Is Venezuela a democracy?
The answers to these questions are as important to the future of Venezuela as the results of the Feb. 15 referendum, in which 54 percent of Venezuelan voters approved a constitutional amendment to eliminate term limits for the president.
Pope Benedict XVI revoked the excommunication of an Holocaust-denying Bishop; Barack Obama nominated cabinet members that could not be confirmed or, like Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, had fundamental policy disagreements; and people who invested with Bernard Madoff’s lost their money to a scam.
It is not easy to have such a popular guy in the White House. For too many governments — those of Cuba and Iran, for example — having an easy-to-bash figure in the Oval Office is indispensable. And we all know people for whom anti-Americanism is almost a basic instinct and an automatic inspiration for their political views. Thus, the high approval ratings that Barack Obama enjoys almost everywhere are a very problematic trend for those in need of a U.S. president who can be easily portrayed as one more executor of the deeds of the devilish American empire.
At first sight, the scandals that brought down Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, and Klaus Zumwinkel, the former president of Deutsche Post (the German corporate behemoth), didn't seem to have much in common. Spitzer fell two weeks ago for hiring prostitutes; Zumwinkel, two weeks before that, for tax evasion. Yet there's a thread that binds them together: money laundering. Both men were brought down by a new system for tracking money that was created in reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks—but that has since spread its net far beyond jihadists.
About a year ago Fidel Castro started blogging. Every week or so he posted his “Reflections of the Commander in Chief”. While not strictly a blog, in his internet musings “El Comandante” does what bloggers do: he comments on the news, chastises enemies (Bush, Aznar), extols friends (Hugo!) or rambles on subjects he cares about (sport and politics).
For the next several years, world politics will be reshaped by a strong yearning for American leadership. This trend will be as unexpected as it is inevitable: unexpected given the powerful anti-American sentiments around the globe, and inevitable given the vacuums that only the United States can fill.
Under the anti-globalization president, Venezuela has become a haven for global crime.
While President Hugo Chavez has been molding Venezuela into his personal socialist vision, other transformations -- less visible but equally profound -- have taken hold in the country.
You can always count on the Olympic Games to provide drama. Next year’s games in Beijing will be no different; they too will produce powerful stories and riveting television. But this time the images will not just be athletes overcoming the odds or breaking records. They will also focus on the clashes between the Chinese police and the activists who will arrive from all around the world. The causes that motivate their activism range from human rights to global warming, from Darfur to Tibet, from Christianity to Falun Gong. The clashes outside the stadiums are likely to be more intense and spectacular than the sports competitions taking place inside. And the showdown will be captured as much by the videocameras in the cell phones of protesters and spectators as any news agencies’ camera crews. In fact, the Beijing Olympics will not just offer another opportunity to test the limits of human athletic performance; it will also test the limits of a centralized police state’s ability to confront a nebulous swarm of foreign activists armed with BlackBerries. A governmental bureaucracy organized according to 20th-century principles will meet 21st-century global politics. Lenin meets YouTube.
For more than 60 years, Mexico's most important political practice was known as the dedazo. It was a moment near the end of the president's term when he would metaphorically point his finger (dedo) at a crony, thereby anointing his successor. An election campaign would ensue, but everyone knew who the winner would be.
The Myanmar Women's Affairs Federation is a gongo. So is Nashi, a Russian youth group, and the Sudanese Human Rights Organization. Kyrgyzstan's Association of Non-commercial and Nongovernmental Organizations is also a gongo, as is Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan. Gongos are sprouting everywhere; they're in China, Cuba, France, Tunisia and even the United States.
Moisés Naím / House Subcommittee on Security and International Trade and Finance
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Committee,
My name is Moises Naim and I am the Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine. I am also the author of a recent book entitled Illicit: How Smugglers. Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy. In this book, I summarize the findings of more than a decade of research into the inner workings and the consequences of illicit trafficking. I have studied the smuggling of everything from people and weapons to narcotics and human organs; and from endangered species to laundered money. I have also researched the trade in pirated products of all kinds, including medicines, automobiles, industrial parts, luxury goods, and a host of other commodities.
The United States government is suffering from a curious learning disability when it comes to Iraq. As it begins the painful process of disengaging from Iraq, the U.S. is at risk of repeating the mistakes it made going into the war.
My friend was visibly shaken. He had just learned that he had lost one of his clients to Chinese competitors. “It’s amazing,” he told me. “The Chinese have completely priced us out of the market. We can’t compete with what they’re able to offer.”
There’s nothing surprising about that, of course; manufacturing jobs are lost to China every day. But my friend is not in manufacturing. He works in foreign aid.
A presidential election too close to call. Aggrieved voters in the streets. Partisans exchanging accusations of fraud and demanding manual recounts. Lawyers drooling in expectation of weeks of court fights.
Royal Dutch Shell is one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies. Bolivia is one of the planet’s poorest countries; its gross domestic product is a mere 3 per cent of Shell’s annual revenues. Recently, Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer noted, somewhat meekly, that his company was resigned to accepting Bolivia’s decision to break the contracts it had signed. He said it was no longer a good idea for oil companies to put up a legal fight against the nationalistic policies of countries such as Bolivia. Once upon a time, giant multinationals did not bend to the will of tiny governments. The behemoths of industry did not just stand by as their oil, gas or mining fields were seized under a national banner. They fought back and not just rhetorically.
A country's borders should not be confused with those familiar dotted lines drawn on some musty old map of nation-states. In an era of mass migration, globalization and instant communication, a map reflecting the world's true boundaries would be a crosscutting, high-tech and multidimensional affair.