Moisés Naím / TIME
A presidential election too close to call. Aggrieved voters in the streets. Partisans exchanging accusations of fraud and demanding manual recounts. Lawyers drooling in expectation of weeks of court fights.
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Moisés Naím / TIME (Latin America)
What will President-Elect George W. Bush do if Fidel Castro dies during his watch, unleashing a massive outflow of Cuban refugees desperately fleeing the Albanian-like chaos of the post-Castro era? If Argentina falls into major economic disarray, will a Bush Administration bail it out as forcefully as the Clinton government backed Mexico and Brazil in the 1990s? How will Bush respond if Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias recognizes the Colombian rebels as the legitimate government of Colombia and signs an economic- and military-cooperation treaty with them?
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Moisés Naím / TIME (Canada)
The 1990s began in Berlin and ended in Seattle. In Berlin, a crowd tore down a wall built to contain democracy and free markets. In Seattle, another crowd marched in protest against the World Trade Organization in an effort to rebuild the walls that might protect them against ills unleashed by globalization. Put another way, the bricks people collected as souvenirs from the Berlin Wall in 1989 were thrown through the windows of McDonald's in 1999. Thus a decade that began with great hopes about the global spread of capitalism ended with widespread apprehension toward it. What happened?
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