Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy
I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it, said President George W. Bush the day after he won a second term. But what does spending political capital mean to a reelected George W. Bush? How will he spend it? With what consequences for the United States and the world? The changes that Bush and the world experienced in the last four years provide the clues. And these clues point to the strong possibility that in his second term Bush will not try, as he did in his first four years, to radically change the world. Instead, he will try to radically change the United States.
Read More
Moisés Naím / NewsWeek
I grew up in Venezuela and, although I now live in Washington, D.C., returned to Caracas for the referendum to recall President Hugo Chavez. Last Monday—the day after the poll—I went to Plaza Altamira, a square in Caracas, where a small crowd of people were protesting against the results of the referendum, claiming it was rigged in favor of Chavez. It was a peaceful and rather small assembly.
Read More
Moisés Naím / Financial Times
Pre-emptive wars, unilateralism, regime-change. Only recently, senior US officials and influential columnists claimed that these were not just good ideas but were also the only viable options for US foreign policy. Today, with more than 900 American soldiers dead, 10,000 coalition troops wounded, $90bn spent and the justification for war dismissed as a massive intelligence failure, these ideas lie buried in Iraq. They will not be missed. America's foreign policy will be better off without them. But there is a danger that, in their haste to distance themselves from these discredited notions, policymakers will also jettison some far more valuable ideas.
Read More
Moisés Naím / Financial Times
Nothing, it would seem, could have stopped the Bush administration from pursuing its long-standing plans against Saddam Hussein. But placing responsibility for the Iraq debacle solely on George W. Bush's shoulders is too simple and even potentially dangerous - too simple because it blurs the responsibilities of others who contributed to an environment in which bad new ideas were embraced just as easily as good, proved ones were shed. It is also dangerous because the conditions that facilitated this environment, namely terrorism, will not disappear. Therefore it is important to learn that whatever the threat, no government should be afforded the latitude enjoyed by the Bush administration. The media - both reporters and commentators - are prime culprits here. The promise that democracy would spread from a liberated Iraq, for example, was as poorly scrutinised as the notion advanced by the administration that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the war on terror.
Read More
Moisés Naím / Financial Times
News that Horst Köhler, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is poised to become Germany's next president marks the end of a murky process that, according to insiders, would have led to his reappointment for another five-year term at the IMF. Mr Köhler's term was to expire in May 2005 and news of his imminent departure has triggered intense speculation about his likely successor. This should be the perfect opportunity to end the entrenched and opaque way that succession is managed at the IMF - and the World Bank.
Read More
Moisés Naím / Financial Times
It seems neither realistic nor fashionable these days to expect summits of heads of state to yield concrete results. Thus, few expect important consequences from the current summit of western hemisphere leaders in Monterrey, Mexico. In this sense, the meeting has been a normal presidential summit. Unfortunately for Latin America, this normalcy is tragic.
Read More