Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Many key aspects of the recent Brazilian-Argentine nuclear cooperation agreement remain unresolved. This article reviews its main obstacles and future prospects.
Given Venezuela's close collaboration with Iran, those states and companies that would contemplate nuclear cooperation with the Chávez government should consider whether they might help recreate the alarming history of Iran's nuclear program and subsequent international crises.
Mainstream economic policies in Mexico managed to generate growth that proved neither pro-poor nor sustained. The Mexican experience shows the need to leave behind the blind faith in market forces and embrace employment-based policies.
Russia and Venezuela commence joint naval exercises this week, coming on the heels of Russian President Medvedev’s four-nation tour of South America. Though Russia’s recent closeness with U.S. neighbors may be an attempt to challenge U.S. regional primacy, the United States should avoid over-reacting.
As world leaders prepare for next month’s international financial summit, critics remain skeptical about how quickly the IMF and the World Bank can actually adapt to the 21st century. Yet the mere fact that the upcoming summit will include leaders from the G20—rather than just the G7, as tradition would have it—suggests that the world is moving toward an unprecedented new financial order.
In this phase of the financial crisis, struggling countries are looking to rising powers for help, rather than turning to the conditional aid traditionally offered by the IMF. This trend highlights the shifting global financial order and indicates that emerging powers will undoubtedly play a larger role as the international community attempts to define a new global financial system.
As globalization spread dramatically over the last twenty years, migration expanded less rapidly than either trade or foreign investment. Still, migration remains contentious even as some economists praise it as the fastest route to raising world incomes. The promise of migration, however, is more limited and nuanced.
As the U.S. government steps in to rescue the financial system, Latin American leaders are using the crisis to justify their own leftist policies, claiming the United States' free-market approach has collapsed. But some U.S. scholars see a middle ground; future regulation may help guide markets on the national and even the global stage, without completely departing from the free market system.
2007 witnessed a "notable setback for global freedom." Some of this is the fault of the Bush administration, whose policies have given democratization a bad name. At the same time, new democracies have not figured out how to secure their new political systems beyond their first elections. Some democratization advocates wonder whether democracy has reached its global limits.
The authors of a new policy report from the Working Group on Development and the Environment discussed the impacts of agricultural trade liberalization on sustainable development in Latin America.