President Carlos Mesa won a stunning political victory last month when Bolivian voters overwhelmingly approved a five-point referendum, endorsing his plans to develop Bolivia’s gas reserves. Surrounded by energy-hungry neighbors, Bolivia’s reserves are estimated at more than 50 trillion cubic feet, about as much as Kuwait and second only to Venezuela on the continent. They are valued at approximately $70 billion.
The new year brought a whisper of good news. In the first week of January, Sudanese rebels and the Khartoum government signed a pact ending one of Africa’s longest wars. Since 1983, more than two million people have died, and another four million have fled their homes in fighting that pitched North against South.
He wasn’t in the room when President George W. Bush announced it on Wednesday, but somewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney must have been smiling–well, smirking–when the commander-in-chief’s voice coupled the improbable name Paul Wolfowitz with the title “President of the World Bank.”
en Espanol: El Legado de Iglesias y el Futuro del BID
While widespread ransacking was happening in Iraq after Baghdad fell, the U.S. moved swiftly to secure the country’s oil facilities. But in the months since the official end of the war, general looting and sabotage have impeded even the oil industry, frustrating efforts to quickly return oil production to prewar levels.
In the wake of the September 11th attack and the Iraq war, Nigeria’s geopolitical significance to the U.S. has come into sharper relief. In March and April 2003, militancy across the Niger Delta radically disrupted oil production in this major oil supplier nation. News of these actions, following conflict-ridden national elections, has reinforced the notion that Nigeria and the new West African “gulf states” in general are matters of U.S. national security.
U.S. President George W. Bush’s new doctrine of preventive war and pre-emptive strikes is turning the UN’s nuclear watchdog into a lapdog.
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It now seems clear, some would say abundantly clear, that the Bush administration is intent on terminating the Saddam Hussein regime, and it is frankly difficult to see how war will be prevented. All of the political signals coming out of Washington indicate a conflict within the next three months, and there are numerous indications that the final phase of the build-up of military forces is imminent.