With Iraqi oil proving to be insufficient to finance the occupation of post-war Iraq and with U.S. taxpayers recoiling at covering the shortfall, the result of a donors’ conference in Madrid will decide whether the United States can stay on in Iraq. The donors’ decision, in turn, depends on whether the occupation turns from a unilateral to a multilateral form of corporate invasion.
Forget the spin you have been reading about the “failure” of the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun. It was one of the most successful international meetings in years because it redefined how trade can benefit the poor and how the developing world can be real players in these negotiations. In fact, if policymakers and global trade negotiators were paying attention, Cancun could lead to trade talks that actually bring about fair trade, and the benefits to both the developing and the developed world that have long been promised.
In the four months since U.S. President George W. Bush triumphantly declared the end of “major hostilities” in Iraq, the occupation has become ever more untenable and no less illegal by the day. Where are the members of the global antiwar movement?
The decision by the Bush administration to sue the European Union (EU) over its five-year moratorium on genetically modified (GM) foods has all the earmarks of a “shock and awe” campaign targeted at prying open a major potential market. But the suit before the World Trade Organization (WTO) may be aimed less at the EU than at developing nations, which are far more vulnerable to strong-arm tactics.
U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration is using the issue of nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a political and economic football, fabricating non-existent threats while turning a blind eye to real ones. That could have severe negative consequences for the longstanding global effort to promote non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
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.
As a Liberian living in Zimbabwe, I, like many of my expatriates, have been tying up Africa’s phone lines trying to reach my relatives in Monrovia. The reports of violence in the mainstream press have deep meaning for me, as I worry about the fate of my family, especially my mother, who was just released from the hospital. My sister told me that rocket-propelled grenades fired by Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel forces had landed on the house where she lived. My mother’s house also suffered such an attack. Thankfully, their lives were spared, but immediately after the explosions destroyed the houses, desperate vandals looted them, and my sister and mother are now among the 1 million Liberians who are displaced. They were able to seek refuge at the Faith Healing Temple in Logan Town, about a mile from their homes. As I spoke to them, the voices of others, especially crying babies, were audible in the background.
This year’s meeting of the Group of 8 (G-8) leaders is being held from June 1-3 in Evian (France). But the preparatory work leading up to the G-8 meeting had already shown that very little would emerge on three key crises that affect global development today–the Third World debt crisis, the African crisis, and the crisis of legitimacy of the global arrangements that drive the globalization process, including the G-8 itself.
Responding to the U.S. request to send troops to occupied, post-war Iraq, India’s army is going full steam ahead with preparations for possible deployment. Meanwhile, Indian policymakers are grasping for justifications that the mobilization would be under a UN umbrella and would serve the national interest, neither of which is plausible.