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Moisés Naím / World Energy & Oil
Despite the commitments made since the Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992, Emissions have increased by 60 percent. While climate stability is the ultimate collective good, ensuring the adequate availability of this public good worldwide is a perverse problem.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / The Wall Street Journal
In the first half of 2019, Venezuela began to suffer gasoline shortages. This, on its face, was preposterous. The nation had the world’s largest proven oil reserves—its refineries boasted the capacity to supply the country’s needs many times over. Yet drivers up and down the land found themselves waiting days on end in lines outside gas stations, bringing to mind the old joke about how if communists took over the Sahara it would run out of sand.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
“Friends of the Earth warn that we have lost precious time in the race to bring climate change under control.” “The UN secretary-general expresses disappointment with the inconclusive outcome of the climate change conference.” “The South criticizes the North for failing to keep its promises on climate change.” “The agreement was weak, even if we meet each goal, we will not get to where we need to be.”
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
The proliferation of autocrats who love to stage presidential elections is a surprising political phenomenon. Of course, we’re not talking about free and fair elections that a dictator might lose. Oh no. What they want is an exercise that gives off the illusion – or at least the passing aroma – of democracy, but where their victory is securely guaranteed. And the strange thing is that, even though people both inside and outside the country know it’s all a sham, autocrats near and far continue to put on these threadbare electoral shows.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
At the end of July, Wendy Sherman, the US deputy secretary of state, paid an official visit to Tianjin, in northwest China. There she met with her counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng. The purpose of the visit was to reduce tensions between the two countries.
It didn’t work.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
Having breakfast. In Lima, Peru.
Powell, who was the US secretary of state at the time, had accepted an invitation from Peru’s then-president, Alejandro Toledo, to a breakfast at the Presidential Palace. But Powell had not traveled to Lima just to meet Toledo. He was representing his country in what promised to be a historic meeting: on that particular September 11, 34 countries in the Americas were about to commit to strengthening and defending democracy. The document to be signed – the Inter-American Democratic Charter – enshrined the principle that “the peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend it.”
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
“The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.”
Read MoreMoisés Naím and Francisco Toro / Foreign Affairs
For a glimpse into Venezuela’s future, look at Arauquita, a remote Colombian border town of about 5,000 people. In May, thousands of bedraggled Venezuelan refugees from neighboring Apure State started arriving in Arauquita with grim stories of aerial bombings and house-to-house searches by Venezuelan soldiers. A tiny war had broken out in the region, pitting the army loyal to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro against the Tenth Front—a dissident faction of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), Colombia’s Marxist rebel group turned drug trafficking cartel, which years earlier had crossed the border and effectively taken over a section of Apure State.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
Dramatic international developments that affect us all are becoming more frequent. Some touch us directly and others reverberate around us. But the daily news leaves us with the feeling that we are in a time of great change.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
What was defeated in Afghanistan was not just the most expensive and technologically advanced army in the world, but also two ideas that had deeply influenced the Western world. The first is that democracy can be exported, and the second is that the US military is the best in the world.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / World Energy & Oil
Every four years, the talking heads on TV ritually remind us that the modern Olympics were launched in 1896 with the lofty goal of furthering world peace. There’s little evidence that they do that, or even that they lessen diplomatic tensions between countries in conflict. As the back-to-back boycotts by the United States and the Soviet Union showed in the 1980s, the Olympics can even do the opposite, becoming more grist to the mill of diplomatic tension.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
It’s easy to discount what Latin America may have to teach the world about running an economy. After all, what can a region perpetually embroiled in intractable problems possibly teach us? In this part of the world turmoil is the norm. In reality, though, the basic problem in Latin America is not its chronic economic instability, but the inability of its leaders to learn from experience, and their propensity to keep pushing policies that have already proven disastrous. I call it ideological necrophilia – the passionate commitment to dead ideas.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
Scientists never had any doubts that we would get a vaccine against Covid-19. And they were right. Very few, however, predicted that such a vaccine would be available so quickly. History suggested that the vaccine would take years to develop and produce in large quantities. Yet, scientists who began researching Covid-19 in January 2020 were soon ready to begin phase 3 clinical trials to evaluate its effectiveness. Typically, it takes years for any drug or treatment to be ready for phase 3 trials. In this case, it took six months.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / World Energy & Oil
Donald J. Trump wanted to make the United States an “energy superpower.” His vision was to lead the country not just towards energy self-sufficiency but also towards “global energy dominance.” This required the vigorous promotion of oil, natural gas and coal. Trump’s energy secretary, Rick Perry, said “An energy dominant America will export to markets around the world, increasing our global leadership and influence.” The implementation of this vision led to the opening of federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling, including pristine areas like the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. President Trump never hid his conviction that carbon dioxide emissions were not a primary contributor to climate change.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / The World Reacts to Biden’s First 100 Days at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ask anyone in President Joe Biden’s administration what their key goals are for global leadership and they’ll talk about rekindling U.S. alliances to fight the pandemic and climate change, champion human rights, contain China and Russia, and break with economic isolationism—an ambitious agenda and one that can greatly benefit from the active engagement of Washington’s hemispheric partners. Yet ask Biden’s team about their hemispheric agenda, and the answer you’ll get begins—and, too often, ends—on the United States’ southwestern border. That mismatch is telling.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
It was once jihadists, now it’s white supremacists. For years, Islamist terrorism was seen as the major threat to Europe and the United States. But not anymore. Now our worries have shifted to Covid-19 and to white extremist violence.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
Economists agree that the devastating economic aftermath of the pandemic calls for a substantial increase in government spending. An injection of public spending will help individuals, families, businesses and other organizations that suddenly lost their incomes. Even the most conservative economic institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and other central banks, as well as top economists, not only recommend increasing public spending, but doing it in a big way. “Act big” was US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s message to her fellow ministers from the world’s biggest economies. Furthermore, leading experts such as Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, say they are not concerned about the enormous fiscal deficit, the booming debt, the heightened risks of financial instability, or the inflation that could result from an excess in public spending and the printing of money. This is in stark contrast to the financial crisis of 2008, when experts called for spending cuts, “deleveraging” and restraint. Austerity was their mantra. Now, it’s to go big, spend what you have and what you don’t have too – deficits and debt don’t matter.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
“America is back,” declared an excited Joe Biden. He was speaking to a group of mostly European political leaders, via video link, at the Munich Security Conference. The new president emphasized that “the transatlantic alliance is back.” Naturally, the message was well received. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson all applauded America’s new stance. In his remarks, Biden also renewed America’s commitment to NATO’s Article V, which obliges the military alliance’s member nations to respond collectively to an attack against any one of its members. During Donald Trump’s presidency, he repeatedly refrained from publicly acknowledging that, as a member of NATO, his country would accept that obligation. Naturally, Trump’s reluctance produced a great deal of anxiety in the capitals of Europe... and glee from the Kremlin.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
Despite being home to the Galapagos Islands as well as 32 majestic volcanoes – several of them active – and being the world’s largest producer of bananas, Ecuador rarely attracts international media attention. It is not Brazil, Mexico, or Argentina, the giants of the region. Its political instability is not as problematic as that of neighboring Peru, nor has it been looted top to bottom like Venezuela. In short, it is a normal Latin American country: poor, unequal, unjust, corrupt, and full of decent and hard-working people. Its democracy is flawed but competitive, its institutions are weak, but they are there, and its economy – the eighth largest in the continent – depends on the export of oil, bananas, shrimp, and gold. And, of course, on the money that Ecuadorians abroad send back to their families.
Read MoreMoisés Naím / El País
Susan Bro embodies the dilemma that may very well define Joe Biden’s presidency: can there be peace without justice?
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