This response is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The original essay by Martin S. Edwards is here, and the original essay by Soren Ambrose is here. Edwards’ response is here.
Response to Edwards
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Labor, Trade, & Finance
The IMF’s New Toolkit: New Opportunities, Old Challenges
This essay is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The response by Soren Ambrose is here; Ambrose’s essay is here, followed by Edwards’ response.
Response to Ambrose
This response is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The original essay by Martin S. Edwards is here, and the original essay by Soren Ambrose is here. Ambrose’s response is here.
IMF Reforms: Mere Tinkering or Change We Can Live With?
This essay is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The accompanying essay by Martin S. Edwards is here and his response to Ambrose is here. Martin Edwards’ response is here.
The Virtues of Deglobalization
The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse.
Multilateral Money
While U.S. investors are debating whether the financial crisis is ending, the damage is still spreading in developing countries. Countries more remote from the meltdown’s epicenter, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, did not feel the pinch immediately, but are now facing big drops in foreign investment, crashes export income due to falling commodity prices, and decreased remittances from citizens working abroad, where their jobs are the most vulnerable to the crisis. The fragility of low-income countries’ economies means that the crisis is likely to last longer and hit them harder.
Review: ‘The Future of Global Relations’
The end of the Cold War ushered in a new period of unipolar American power. In this country, liberals and conservatives alike celebrated the triumph of market democracies under the leadership of the United States. The Clinton administration attempted to consolidate America’s geoeconomic power. The Bush administration attempted to consolidate America’s military and geopolitical power. And today, the Obama administration surveys the wreckage of these efforts to preserve a unipolar world. The global economy is in deep recession, and the United States is drowning under the costs of maintaining its post-Cold War empire. The chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan stands testament to the failures of our military pretensions.
Lack of North American Leadership
Times of crisis require bold leadership and innovative solutions. Crises demand the casting aside of old, failed paradigms and the mobilization of people to create new ones.
The Pursuit of True Security
For years the United States has used military force as a Band-Aid for a wide-range of global problems ranging from the removal of dictators to ensuring access to global trade partners. Yet it’s clear that this has not been successful. For all of the money, time, and lives we have spent to maintain a colossal international force, we are no safer. It’s time to reexamine our military involvements and change our force distributions to reflect our goal: true security.
Against the Lisbon Treaty
There is an idea abroad in North America that the European Union (EU) represents a progressive alternative to U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism. You can find this argument in books such as Jeremy Rifkin’s The European Dream and in numerous articles in left-leaning journals. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.