In The News

Patriot Qualms

Paula R. Newberg October 6, 2004
The repercussions of the 2001 US Patriot Act are especially damaging to foreign aid and humanitarian relief. Provisions aiming to undercut terrorist funding have contributed to greater woes for organizations seeking financial backing. Washington-mandated bureaucratic gymnastics have rendered humanitarianism "a logistics nightmare," according to Brookings Institution scholar Paula R....

Making Globalization Work for All

Jeffrey D. Sachs October 2, 2004
When world leaders met at the UN’s Millennium Assembly four years ago, they laid out ambitious proposals to alleviate global poverty, hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Yet in spite of a rhetorical commitment to development, says economist Jeffrey Sachs, rich nations like the US have been unwilling to commit the necessary aid. Much of the developing world is experiencing rising poverty and needs...

The Price of Free Trade - Part I

Mustafizur Rahman September 29, 2004
Instituted some 30 years ago, the international Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) set export quotas on all textile manufacturing nations. Some poorer countries, like Bangladesh and Cambodia, received larger quotas, which enabled them to attract foreign investment and sharply boost their earnings. Artificially protected from competition, they built their developing economies around the textiles...

The Metrosexual Superpower

Parag Khanna August 16, 2004
Europe is a “metrosexual” superpower, writes Parag Khanna, a fellow in global governance at the Brookings Institution; just as modern metrosexual men mix traditional masculine traits such as strength with an eye for style, Europe wields influence around the globe through soft power and finesse. Instead of overt displays of military strength, Europe has racked up diplomatic success through doling...

German Firms Applaud Libya Deal

Aaron Kirchfeld August 13, 2004
Though Germany and Libya already enjoyed “consistently good to very good economic relations,” the door to increased bilateral trade opened wider recently when Tripoli agreed to pay $35 million to the non-American victims of a 1985 Berlin discotheque bombing. Germany has responded by guaranteeing credits for German exports to Libya. The prospect of increased trade has piqued the interest of...

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Paul Kennedy August 6, 2004
One of the worst blows to the fragile system of international law happened recently, writes Yale professor and international security expert Paul Kennedy, and it made no headlines. On June 2, Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan murdered five members of the Nobel Prize winning organization, Doctors Without Borders. The atrocity prompted the withdrawal of remaining volunteers, ending 24 years of aid...

Louder than Words

Matthew Tempest August 5, 2004
Mark Curtis, head of the London-based World Development Movement (WDM) objects to Britain’s making economic liberalization a pre-condition to receiving aid monies. He argues that the US, the UK, and even the Asian Tigers achieved economic ascendancy through protection of infant industries, not open markets. To ask developing countries to liberalize their economies or get no aid is unfair....