In The News

A Helping Hand from Bush to Africans?

Abdallah Abu-Younis July 8, 2003
US President Bush’s agenda for his upcoming trip to Africa is packed with high stakes issues. AIDS, poverty, corruption, and state failure run rampant across the continent, threatening US interests by providing the shroud of chaos for terrorist groups. However, as this editorial in The Arab News points out, Bush must be careful not to generalize about Africa’s problems and solutions. African...

African Pundits Heckle Bush for ‘Safari’

Jefferson Morley July 8, 2003
Africa’s online media has been attacking US President Bush’s agenda even before his five-day trip around the continent got under way.. Journalists in each of the countries he is visiting – as well as in some that he’s not – doubt Bush’s sincerity and motivations vocally or tacitly. Concern over American hegemony figured prominently in the South African and Zambian press, which maintained Bush...

Closing Doors to Growth

July 8, 2003
Having the most closed markets in the world is nothing to be proud of, this editorial in an influential Indian business daily maintains. According to a recent World Trade Organization report, less globalized countries saw per capita income growth just 0.9 percent per annum, while those that were highly globalized saw annual incomes grow by 4.3 percent. Therefore, the editorial argues, if India...

Where Have All the Chinese Gone?

Sunil Jain July 7, 2003
Multinational corporations aggressively courted China, the world’s most populous nation, in the hope of tapping into what they hoped would be the largest consumer market. However, as an Indian journalist notes, increasingly MNCs are discovering that China’s population does not necessarily translate into a consumer market. For one thing, rural Chinese – a substantial percentage of the population...

Non-Globalized States Pose a Threat

Banning N. Garrett July 7, 2003
Liberia's raging civil war is bringing the issue of failing states in Africa dramatically to the fore as US President Bush begins his first ever trip to the continent. Amidst domestic bloodbath, the threat posed to the interconnected world by failing states like Liberia or other rogue or weak states may not be immediately apparent. However, as this article points out, the weakness of such...

The EU's First-Ever Security Doctrine

Shada Islam July 4, 2003
For the European Union - a body recently divided over the pre-emptive use of military force in Iraq - adoption of a muscular foreign policy doctrine marks a new departure. The strategy represents a more self-confident Europe, determined to match the United States, if not yet in military force, then at least in global influence. The EU doctrine echoes some of Washington's concerns by...

Foreign Influence Growing in Telecom Sector

Yang Sung-jin July 3, 2003
In South Korea, foreign investment firms are putting pressure on the government to allow greater foreign ownership of telecommunication companies. South Korea is one of the leading East Asian countries in deregulation, allowing foreign investment and market forces to have a considerable degree of influence. While the telecommunications sector is currently in much need of capital, some of the...