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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.
NATO's new war on drugs in Afghanistan will put troops in greater danger for a venture that may not even work. It just might be the straw that breaks the alliance's back.
A key factor in Sunday’s national Russian elections was that parties lacking State Duma representation were denied registration. This is part of the current Kremlin strategy to purge the political field. But the grim economic situation makes this effort, and the election of deputies doing little more than passing along instructions from the top, morally obsolete.
Governments across Europe have failed to engage public opinion and win voters’ support for their military involvement in Afghanistan. They need to adopt plans for review commissions that would redress the situation.
Although no one can yet predict the full implications of the financial crisis, it may have a silver lining for the U.S. if it is able to maintain its position of power while learning valuable lessons in humility. In the future, the U.S. may be more cautious about taking on massive debt, less reckless with its military spending, and more willing to cooperate on global problems.
As the economic crisis unfolds, the drama of impending calamity has spurred politicians to take action without fully understanding the crisis. Nobody knows if the bailout will work, and moreover, it fails to address any of the underlying economic problems that we face. Moving forward, our leaders must exercise much more thought and caution in addressing this wide array of economic challenges.
While the attacks of September 11, 2001 scarred the U.S. deeply, the current financial crisis may prove to have more lasting ramifications than 9/11. Historians are more likely to see the economic crisis as a true global watershed: as the era of pure neoliberal economics abruptly ends, the U.S. must now decide whether to embrace a new American capitalism and accept greater government involvement.
In the first presidential debate, the candidates discussed the way forward on numerous foreign policy challenges, but they left out the one country who must be engaged to solve many of these issues – China.
The financial crisis in the US provide a strong indication of how Wall Street has become the "near abroad" of Arab investors and how tightly the Arab world is weaved into global financial markets. How it navigates the financial turmoil is going to make a huge impact on its reputation and standing among other global investors.
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.
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