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Two years ago, I wrote, “Inequality will be the central theme of 2012. It has always existed and is not going away, but this year it will top the global agenda of voters, protesters and politicians…. In 2012, peaceful coexistence with inequality will end and demands and promises to fight it will become fiercer and more widespread than they have been since the end of the Cold War.”
First postcard: “On March 5, when the restaurant where he worked on the outskirts of Caracas closed due to nearby protests, Moisés Guánchez, 19, left to go home. But he found himself trapped in an enclosed parking lot near the restaurant with around 40 other people, as members of the National Guard fired teargas canisters and rubber bullets in their direction. When Guánchez attempted to flee the lot, a guardsman blocked his way and shot toward his head with rubber bullets. The shot hit Guánchez’s arm, which he had raised to protect his face, and he was knocked to the ground. Though Guánchez offered no resistance, two guardsmen picked him up and took turns punching him, until a third approached and shot him point blank with rubber bullets in his groin. He would need three blood transfusions and operations on his arm, leg, and one of his testicles.”
Venezuela’s lack of democracy and economic failure can only be solved by Venezuelans. But in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Moisés Naím says Washington can take steps to highlight the grave situation in the country, expand targeted sanctions, and be a powerful supporter of human rights.
People blame Goldman Sachs for many things. I blame the investment bank mainly for popularizing the acronym BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — in a 2001 report by economist Jim O’Neill arguing that long-term growth in these emerging markets would surpass that of the world’s richer nations.
Hardly a day goes by without an article predicting, lamenting, or celebrating America's decline. The turmoil in Crimea and Syria, the polarized and frequently gridlocked U.S. political system, the deepening income and wealth inequalities in the United States, and the growing clout of rivals like China and Russia are all offered as proof of waning American power.
The enormous influence that Cuba has gained in Venezuela is one of the most underreported geopolitical developments of recent times. It is also one of the most improbable. Venezuela is nine times bigger than Cuba, three times more populous, and its economy four times larger. The country boasts the world’s largest oil reserves. Yet critical functions of the Venezuelan state are either overseen or directly controlled by Cuban officials.
Street protests are in. From Bangkok to Caracas, and Madrid to Moscow, these days not a week goes by without news that a massive crowd has amassed in the streets of another of the world’s big cities. The reasons for the protests vary (bad and too-costly public transport or education, the plan to raze a park, police abuse, etc.). Often, the grievance quickly expands to include a repudiation of the government, or its head, or more general denunciations of corruption and economic inequality.
Over the next ten years, the energy market will undergo profound transformations, driven by revolutionary technologies that will significantly shift the balance between importing and exporting countries.
Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro agree: There is a vast international conspiracy underway to destabilize their governments and eventually oust them from power.
“Even in tragedy, Latin America can’t compete,” a cynical friend told me. He was referring to the fact that the region’s poverty is not as grim as Africa’s, armed conflicts not as threatening as Asia’s, and terrorists not as suicidal as the Middle East’s. The problems in Latin America are often overshadowed by those in the rest of the world. Elsewhere, tragedies are more serious and more likely to spill over into other countries.
In Venezuela, students have been killed while protesting against the government of Nicolás Maduro, who is jailing opposition leaders and just closed a television station that dared broadcast the demonstrations. Argentina is irresponsibly racing toward a dangerous economic cliff. The Brazilian economy is in recession and 2014 will mark its fourth consecutive year of subpar growth, as the country reels from its largest capital flight in more than 10 years.
Emerging markets can be a lot like teenagers: prone to accidents. They fall, get pushed by others, take reckless risks, and experience mood swings that make them hard to read and unpredictable. This doesn’t mean that mature nations always behave maturely—they too have accidents that, while less frequent, are deeply damaging to them and everyone else. The world is still suffering the consequences of the irresponsible behavior by banks, governments, and consumers in developed countries that triggered the great recession beginning in 2008. But while most advanced economies are now either recovering or no longer in recession, emerging markets are in turmoil. The value of their currencies is plummeting, inflation is up, economic growth is slowing down, and fiscal and trade deficits are soaring. Investors are taking their money and running.
It was easy to miss the miracle that occurred in New York in the fall of 2000. The miracle was one of the reasons why, over the ensuing decade, humanity experienced the fastest decline in poverty in history.
Silvio Berlusconi is out and Angela Merkel was reelected. Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chavez passed away. Fidel Castro didn’t. People took to the streets in Kiev and Bangkok, Cairo and Khartoum. The president of Syria ignored Barack Obama’s red line and used chemical weapons, while Iran was willing to engage in negotiations with the United States for the first time in 34 years. China elected a new leader and jailed another. North Korea’s tyrant-in-training executed his uncle.
Rising instability in some oil-producing countries could mean unprecedented challenges for Washington. The future may see conflict over shale gas’s environmental impact or disruption of the existing political order.
Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, has more cabinet members with Ph.D. degrees from U.S. universities than Barack Obama does. In fact, Iran has more holders of American Ph.D.s in its presidential cabinet than France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, or Spain—combined.
The collective mood of a nation mired in a prolonged economic recession shows many of the symptoms of clinical depression: despair, fatalism, an inability to make decisions, lack of motivation, and irritability. This is one of the impressions I got from a recent trip to Spain and Italy, two nations I know well and visit often. While both countries have recently made small strides on the path to recovery, I nevertheless came away with the strong sense that their economies are in recession and their societies are in depression. In the course of my travels, I also felt more than ever before that Europeans have fallen out of love with Europe—or, more precisely, with the idea of building a Europe-wide union.
As you shop for Thanksgiving dinner this year, you may long for the good old days when food was cheaper. This isn’t just your nostalgia speaking. Over the past decade, food prices have increased at a very fast clip. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the global food price index has increased by 125 percent since 2000. To understand why, consider the seemingly intractable prices of global commodities markets—your standard agricultural goods like coffee, sugar, and wheat, or resources like crude oil and coal that are used to produce or transport those goods. Not only do these complex commodities markets determine the cost of what we eat, but their high prices can fuel the kind of social unrest that in some countries has toppled governments.
Let’s pretend you are the head of a government—a president, a prime minister, a chancellor. The director of your intelligence agency is seeking authorization on some potentially problematic operations. Here are two scenarios (as far as I know, they’re just the fictitious musings of one journalist, and have never actually happened). You be the decider.