In The News

Summit Rhetoric Soars While Economy Sinks

Jeffrey E. Garten November 3, 2005
As the fourth annual Summit of the Americas get under way in Mar Del Plata, a pressing question lingers in the background: Are regional meetings truly worth the trouble? According to Jeffrey E. Garten, Juan Trippe professor in the practice of international trade and finance at The Yale School of Management, world leaders' efforts would be better spent at home, developing and implementing...

Why the Americas Have Drifted Apart

Howard LaFranchi November 3, 2005
When the Summit of the Americas first met, in 1994, it celebrated the spread of democracy in the Western Hemisphere and resolved to create a pan-American free trade zone by 2005. There will be no free trade pact and little celebration, however, when President Bush attends the fourth Summit of the Americas this week. Washington's vision for Latin America is in trouble, hurt by disagreements...

Defiant Turkish Writer Says "Genocide" Taboo an Obstacle to EU Entry

Ramsay Short October 19, 2005
In a development that recalls the Iranian theocracy's 1989 fatwa forcing author Salman Rushdie into exile, Turkish officials have criminally charged novelist Orhan Pamuk for his comments condemning the country's slaughter of Armenian residents at the beginning of the 20th century. Pamuk, a native Turk whose work has received numerous accolades, has made no bones about his stance on the...

Globalization Explained to the French

Philip H. Gordon October 18, 2005
Following France's decisive May 29 referendum against the proposed EU Constitution, many observers condemned this once great imperial power's rejection of the international system. Decrying the predations of "Anglo-Saxon capitalism," the "Non!" camp had clung to an alternate vision of polity, rooted in commitments to social development and market regulation. But an...

Il faut etre uni pour reconstruire

Ahmed Rashid October 6, 2005

It Takes Two Hands to Clap

Ahmed Rashid October 6, 2005
Two days after Afghanistan's parliamentary elections in September, President Hamid Karzai boasted that his country "now has a constitution, a president, a parliament, and a nation fully participating in its destiny." But as journalist Ahmed Rashid writes, that is not exactly the case. Despite Karzai's previous promises of reform and nation-building, conditions in Afghanistan...

The Barbarians Learn How to Lobby at the Gates of Industry

Scott Kennedy October 5, 2005
While critics accuse the West of thumping the bible of market liberalism with one hand and maintaining protectionist tariffs with the other, China seems to be embracing a more consistent approach to globalization. This approach, reports Scott Kennedy, might be attributed to the concurrent interests of local companies and foreign investors. Whereas American industries often seek protection from...