Few sectors of the economy have provided more benefits to consumers than the pharmaceutical industry. Drugmakers have been vilified by patients and politicians alike, however, because of what they see as unreasonably high drug costs.
Topic:
Human Welfare, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
The U.S. alliance with the Republic of Korea has been America's most consistently dangerous commitment since the end of World War II. Yet South Korea is beginning to look away from the United States for its defense. Newly elected President Roh Moo-hyun campaigned on a plat-form of revisiting the security relationship, and he has attempted to adopt the role of mediator between America and North Korea.
Topic:
Security and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
United States, America, Israel, East Asia, and Korea
Global telecommunications markets have traditionally been closed to foreign trade and investment. Recent World Trade Organization negotiations resulted in a Basic Telecommunications agreement that sought to construct a multilateral framework to reverse that trend and begin opening telecom markets worldwide. Regrettably, this new WTO framework is quite ambiguous and open to pro-regulatory interpretations by member states.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Science and Technology, and Treaties and Agreements
North Korea's recent actions in violation of the clear intent of the agreement it signed in 1994 to freeze its nuclear program have ignited a crisis in northeast Asia. Unfortunately, all of the frequently discussed options for dealing with this crisis have major drawbacks.
Topic:
International Political Economy, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Changing demographics are forcing countries around the world to reexamine their public pension systems. The member states of the European Union are no exception. Indeed, the EU nations are among those facing the greatest social, budgetary, and economic challenges as a result of their aging populations. Therefore, EU members will be forced to rethink their public pension programs and move away from traditional pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) pension models to new systems based on savings and investment.
For months the Bush administration has been preparing the country for war with Iraq. The administration has argued that only a forcible regime change can neutralize the threat that Saddam Hussein is said to pose. But the assumptions that underlie the administration's policy range from cautiously pessimistic to outright fallacious. First, there is a prevalent belief that if Iraq is able to obtain nuclear weapons it will inevitably use them. Second, there is a notion that Hussein is totally irrational and cannot be trusted to act in a predictable manner; and, because of that, his leadership creates a substantial risk of instability in the Middle East. Finally, many people in the United States have come to believe that war in Iraq may be the only means of nullifying the threat posed by Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs.
Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, several commentators have advanced the idea of security through empire. They claim that the best way to protect the United States in the 21st century is to emulate the British, Roman, and other empires of the past. The logic behind the idea is that if the United States can consolidate the international system under its enlightened hegemony, America will be both safer and more prosperous. Although the word “empire” is not used, the Bush administration's ambitious new National Security Strategy seems to embrace the notion of neoimperialism.
The United States has made common cause with an assortment of dubious regimes around the world to wage the war on drugs. Perhaps the most shocking example was Washington's decision in May 2001 to financially reward Afghanistan's infamous Taliban government for its edict ordering a halt to the cultivation of opium poppies.
Topic:
International Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Latin America, Central America, and Caribbean
Argentina's currency crisis and economic depression have been caused by the bad policies of its government—not by banks, speculators, the International Monetary Fund (despite the bad advice it has given), or other scapegoats. The De la Rúa and Duhalde governments have made several gigantic blunders, namely, increasing tax rates, freezing bank deposits, devaluing the peso, and forcibly converting dollar bank deposits and contracts into pesos (“pesofication”).
The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) was created in 1934 as an independent federal agency operating under a renewable congressional charter. That charter most recently expired on September 30, 2001. Since then, the Ex-Im Bank has been operating under a series of continuing resolutions set to expire on March 31, 2002.