2005 has been a miserable year for the Ukrainian economy. This economic deterioration has been caused by domestic economic policy. The dominant concern has been a wide-ranging discussion about reprivatization. The government has operated like a profit-maximizing state holding company oblivious of the effects on the private sector.
In my travels to roughly fifty countries, I have been thrown out of only one—Uzbekistan—just a few months after its emergence as an independent state under its first and only president, Islam Karimov. My crime: meeting with human rights activists.
In terms of foreign policy, September 11 did represent a turning point, but one away from a potentially fruitful approach to the Middle East toward a strategy that was destined to fail.
The Saudi royal family acted quickly after King Fahd's death to appoint Crown Prince Abdullah his successor, and Defense Minister Prince Sultan the new crown prince. Although Abdullah had been the real ruler of the kingdom during recent years and no radical change in policy is expected, his enthronement comes amid serious challenges facing Saudi Arabia.
China's economy will be bigger than America's within a few decades. In the meantime, rather than trying to block China's access to U.S. assets and markets, the task at hand is to craft, with China, an international system inclusive enough and flexible enough to enable China to grow and for the rest of the world to share the potential gains its economy has to offer.
