Not so long ago, the pundits and the investors saw the “emerging markets” – a euphemism for China, India, Brazil, and some others – as the rescuers of the world-economy. They were the ones that would sustain growth, and therefore capital accumulation, when the United States, the European Union, and Japan were all faltering in their previous and traditional role as the mainstays of the world capitalist system.
There was a time when all, or almost all, actors in the Middle East had clear positions. Other actors were able to anticipate, with a high degree of success, how this or that actor would react to any new important development. That time is gone.
South Africa is now on its own, for better or worse – without the special grace afforded by a living icon. What are its present internal conflicts and its present geopolitical position? And what can we expect it to be in the coming decade or two?
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is not taken very seriously in the United States – not by the government, the media, or the general public. One good piece of evidence is a recent interview he gave to Le Monde.
What is permitting France's return to aggressiveness in foreign policy is precisely the decline of United States’ effective power on the world scene. Suddenly, France can seem more hardline against the enemy, now defined as the Islamic enemy, than the United States.
There has been civil war in Colombia more or less continuously since 1948. It seems it may finally be coming to an end. It is ending the way most other long-lasting civil wars end. A changed geopolitical context combined with a deep sense of exhaustion on both sides is permitting an uncertain and imperfect compromise arrangement to prevail.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019