Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
The persistence of al Qaeda underscores how hard it is for governments to stamp out stateless, decentralized networks that move freely, quickly, and stealthily across national borders to engage in terror. The intense media coverage devoted to the war on terrorism, however, obscures five other similar global wars that pit governments against agile, well-financed networks of highly dedicated individuals. These are the fights against the illegal international trade in drugs, arms, intellectual property, people, and money. Religious zeal or political goals drive terrorists, but the promise of enormous financial gain motivates those who battle governments in these five wars. Tragically, profit is no less a motivator for murder, mayhem, and global insecurity than religious fanaticism.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
At a recent gathering attended by various Latin American heads of state, new Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva commented that his supporters, the workers of Brazil, had waited for decades to influence Brazilian politics. The following speaker, Alejandro Toledo, the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent, trumped Lula by noting triumphantly that his own people had "waited for 500 [years]!" The wait for indigenous people now seems to be over, not just in Peru but all over the world. Their political empowerment has become a global trend.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
The Economist calls him a "crass buffoon" and "a man of very questionable integrity." He embodies "nepotism, corruption, and dishonesty," says the Danish newspaper Information. The Swedish daily Aftonbladet dismisses him as "an arrogant clown." The German newspaper Berliner Zeitung writes that he is "a shady deal maker," France’s Libération concludes that he is a "threat to liberal democracy," and the Financial Times argues that "he lives in a media bubble where his public gaffes and gratuitous insults go largely unreported at home — at least until he goes abroad." The man in question is not Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Belarus’s President Aleksandr Lukashenko, or some other Third World strong man. He is Silvio Berlusconi, the twice democratically elected prime minister of Italy.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
Russia’s future will be defined as much by the geology of its subsoil as by the ideology of its leaders. Unfortunately, whereas policymakers can choose their ideology, they don’t have much leeway when it comes to geology. Russia has a lot of oil, and this inescapable geological fact will determine many of the policy choices available to its leaders. Oil and gas now account for roughly 20 percent of Russia’s economy, 55 percent of its export earnings, and 40 percent of its total tax revenues. Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, and its subsoil contains 33 percent of the world’s gas reserves. It already supplies 30 percent of Europe’s gas needs. In the future, Russia’s oil and gas industry will become even more important, as no other sector can be as internationally competitive, grow as rapidly, or be as profitable. Thus, Russia risks becoming, and in many respects may already be, a "petro-state." The arrest of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky sparked a debate over what kind of country Russia will be. In this discussion, Russia’s characteristics as a petro-state deserve as much attention as its factional struggles.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
In 2003, Latin America had another normal year: Growth was meager, instability high, poverty widespread, inequality deep, and politics nasty. In other words, there was nothing new. Indeed, for the 44 percent of the region’s population (some 227 million people) living in poverty, "nothing new" means dreadful. For decades, political and economic elites in Latin America have grown accustomed to this tragic normalcy, and even those suffering the most took their dire conditions for granted. Recently, however, this acceptance has been disrupted throughout the region. Unnoticed by an international community that remains preoccupied with other emergencies and other latitudes, new political actors are emerging throughout Latin America to challenge the region’s peaceful coexistence with
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
North Korea likes Senator John Kerry. Radio Pyongyang broadcasts the Democratic presidential candidate’s speeches along with the regime’s predictable denunciations of U.S. President George W. Bush. And the North Koreans are hardly alone. Opinion polls across the globe reflect deep discontent with the current White House occupant. After all, statements such as "working with other countries in the War on Terror is something we do for our sake — not theirs" are bound to irritate citizens and leaders of other nations. By contrast, non-Americans are likely more at ease with a U.S. leader who says "I believe in the international institutions and alliances that America helped to form and helps to lead."
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
President George W. Bush is responsible for the ongoing misadventure in Iraq, and likely nothing could have stopped his administration from pursuing its long-standing plans against now deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But placing the responsibility solely on Bush’s shoulders is too simple and even potentially dangerous. Too simple, because it blurs the responsibilities of those outside the administration who contributed to an environment where bad new ideas were embraced just as quickly as good proven ones were shed. The promise that a tsunami of democracy would spread from Iraq to its neighbors, for example, was as poorly scrutinized as the notion that the Geneva Conventions need not "apply precisely" in Iraq. Blaming Bush alone is also dangerous, because without a clearer understanding of how this permissive intellectual environment emerged, a future U.S. administration could again exploit the public fear instilled by terrorism to let unfounded assumptions guide ill-fated interventions abroad.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
While the world was consumed with the election of its most powerful leader, the termites that gnaw at his power went on gnawing. As the U.S. presidential campaign was raging, for example, the strongest army humanity has ever known — and an important source of U.S. presidential power — had to watch an elderly ayatollah negotiate on its behalf for control of the Iraqi city of Najaf with a previously unknown Islamic cleric, Moktada al-Sadr.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
About a decade ago, the world witnessed a corruption eruption. As democratic winds swept the world, the dirty deals of once unaccountable dictators and bureaucrats came out into the open. During the Cold War, kleptocratic dictatorships often traded their allegiance to one of the two superpowers in exchange for its countenance of their thievery. With the superpower contest over, such corrupt bargains dried up. And, thanks to the information revolution, the slightest hint of corruption at the highest levels quickly became global news.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
That Confucian ideas persist in the minds of Chinese politicians should not surprise us. Confucianism began as a means of bringing social order out of [political] chaos…. It has been a philosophy of status and consequently a ready tool for autocracy and bureaucracy whenever they have flourished.” John King Fairbank, the noted China scholar, wrote these words in 1948. Half a century later, many hope that he is still right. After all, China’s current leaders may need to tap whatever Confucian instincts remain in the population to contain the social upheaval that is coming with the country’s rapid modernization. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, 58,000 major incidents of social unrest took place in China in 2003 — an average of roughly 160 a day and 15 percent more than the year before. The same article reported that “as police battled to suppress deadly ethnic clashes in Central China, tens of thousands of rice farmers fighting a dam project staged a huge protest in the western part of the country. The same day, authorities crushed a strike involving 7,000 textile workers… The Communist Party has indicated it is worried that these outbursts of discontent might coalesce into large-scale, organized opposition to its rule.”
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
Will John Bolton, the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Robert Mugabe, the long-standing tyrant of Zimbabwe, do for global governance what Enron’s Ken Lay and WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers did for corporate governance? It took high-profile scandals at Enron and WorldCom to shock public opinion and politicians out of their complacency with the abusive practices of corporate chieftains. New laws and a heightened public awareness have created a corporate environment where the abuses and the impunity common in the past are less tolerated. Lay and Ebbers are now symbols of greed, and their conduct sparked major reforms in the way private corporations are governed. Will Bolton’s and Mugabe’s roles in the United Nations mobilize the needed political energy to change the way it and other international organizations function?
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
I recently asked a Swiss banker, "How much harder is it for you to move $50 million and keep it hidden from authorities today than 10 years ago?" He smiled and replied: "The main difference is that now I charge more."
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
People of Arab descent living in the United States are doing far better than the average American. That is the surprising conclusion drawn from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000 and released last March. The census found that U.S. residents who report having Arab ancestors are better educated and wealthier than average Americans.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
You are not normal. If you are reading these pages, you probably belong to the minority of the world’s population that has a steady job, adequate access to social security, and enjoys substantial political freedoms. Moreover, you live on more than $2 a day, and, unlike 860 million others, you can read. The percentage of humanity that combines all of these attributes is minuscule.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
In 1849, the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle labeled economics the "dismal science." Two centuries later, contemporary practitioners still study dismal choices: Higher prices or fewer jobs? Spend or save? They have also become a smug lot.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
Royal Dutch Shell is one of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations. Bolivia is one of the planet’s poorest countries; its economy is a mere 3 percent of Shell’s annual revenues. Recently, Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer noted, somewhat meekly, that his company was resigned to accept Bolivia’s decision to break the contracts it had signed.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
In 1970, the world recorded 78 major natural disasters, which affected about 80 million people and inflicted roughly $10 billion in economic damage. By 2004, the number of major disasters worldwide had climbed to 384, claiming 200 million victims. The economic cost jumped five-fold, to $50 billion. The final numbers for 2005 will be even worse.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
What should be a higher priority: reducing inequality or alleviating poverty? It is, of course, tempting to answer that they are equally important. Or, that the question is moot because reducing poverty will automatically shrink income disparities; or that policies that lower inequality will inevitably reduce poverty.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
Latin America has grown used to living in the backyard of the United States. For decades, it has been a region where the U.S. government meddled in local politics, fought communists, and promoted its business interests. Even if the rest of the world wasn’t paying attention to Latin America, the United States occasionally was. Then came September 11, and even the United States seemed to tune out. Naturally, the world’s attention centered almost exclusively on terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, and on the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran. Latin America became Atlantis — the lost continent. Almost overnight, it disappeared from the maps of investors, generals, diplomats, and journalists.
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Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
My friend was visibly shaken. He had just learned that he had lost one of his clients to Chinese competitors. "It’s amazing," he told me. "The Chinese have completely priced us out of the market. We can’t compete with what they are able to offer."
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