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The World Today
December, 1997
Disagreements between Iraq and the United Nations over weapons inspections under the Gulf war ceasefire have a habit of recurring. This time, despite reports that Baghdad is still hiding materials for weapons programmes, some are asking what incentive there is for President Saddam Hussein to comply anyway.
Walid Khadduri is the Executive Editor of the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES).
The world is experiencing what some call the climate event of the century. This is an El Niño, or more accurately an El Niño Southern Oscillation event. It is one of the most important known causes of large-scale climate variability and is associated with disrupted weather patterns worldwide. Newspaper headlines talk of famines and floods and the current phenomenon has been blamed for Indonesian forest fires and resulting smog, for drought in Papua New Guinea and for hurricane devastation in Mexico. The months ahead could see further extremes of weather with both famines and plenty predicted for different regions.
Louise Bohn and Mike Hulme are members of the Climatic Research Unit, at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.
In January Britain takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union for the first time since 1992. It is a crucial moment: key decisions are needed on Union enlargement, the single currency and keeping the peace in Bosnia. What sort of leadership can London offer?
Jane M.O. Sharp is Director of the Defence and Security Programme at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College, London.
On December 18 South Korea's voters will elect a new president. For the first time in Korea's young democracy power could pass to the opposition, in the shape of the veteran dissident Kim Dae-jung; although his enemies may yet unite to try to stop him. Whoever he is, the new president will face major challenges: in cleaning up the economy, and above all with North Korea.
Aidan Foster-Carter was until recently Director of the Korea Project at Leeds University. A frequent visitor to and writer and broadcaster on South and North Korea, his publications include North Korea After Kim Il-sung: Controlled Collapse? (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1994).
Money politics is now a hot issue in East Asian democracies. In Japan after 1993 it provoked the most radical reforms in the electoral system since the rise to power of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. It is one of the most contentious areas in the presidential campaign in South Korea. And in Taiwan, which faces legislative elections at the end of next year, popular support for the ruling Kuomintang continues to decline in the face of repeated allegations of corruption.
Peter Ferdinand is Director of the Centre for Studies in Democratisation, University of Warwick, and former Head of the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House.
Dissatisfaction at the pace or direction of the Israeli-Arab peace process is not a new phenomenon. Nor it is linked solely to the deadlock of recent months. Ever since the Madrid Conference convened in 1991, Arabs and Israelis have been as much divided among themselves as between each other about whether the process was moving along the right course and whether it was moving too quickly or too slowly. In the absence of any better idea, the two state solution -- Israel and Palestine -- remains the best and most likely outcome.
Mark A. Heller is Senior Research Associate at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel-Aviv University.
The Chatham House Forum was established in 1995 by The Royal Institute of International Affairs to provide analysts and planners from business and government with a multi-disciplinary approach to strategic foresight. Its work is intended to stimulate thinking and develop a shared understanding of the forces that will shape the future. Its first report, Unsettled Times: Three Stony Paths to 20151 has sold more than 1,400 copies, and Dr. Oliver Sparrow, the Forum Director, has presented the work to thousands of decision makers throughout the UK.
The second report will be launched on December 11th to an invited audience of leading UK private and public sector executives.This will follow the highly successful format initiated last year, with Dr. Sparrow presenting a summary of the findings with colourful animated graphics. The presentation will be repeated for RIIA members in the John Power Hall on December 16th at 5:30 p.m.
Natalie Kirschberg-Back is the Manager of the Chatham House Forum.
Book Reviews
Christopher Cviic, an Associate Fellow of the European Programme at Chatham House, and a former Editor of The World Today, reviews Triumph of the Lack of Will, by James Gow.
Paul Hirst, Professor of Social Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London, reviews The Global Trap, by Haus-Peter Martin and Harald Schuman.