|
|
|
|
The World Today
November 1998
The new Great Depression is arriving. At least, the risk is greater than at any time in the past twenty years. An alarming indication of the new economic world is the outbreak of financial panic in a wide variety of geographic and economic settings. Financial analysts have simply lumped them together in the category ‘emerging market’, and blithely assumed that they all have the same problem. From the hubris of the first half of the 1990s, with all the talk about an ‘Asian miracle’, there is a dramatic swing back to gloom and despair. So it is Asia first, then South Africa, then Russia, Venezuela, then perhaps Brazil or another large Latin American economy — and then where? How many dominoes are there then left to fall? And what happens to our ring of roses after we all fall down?
Harold James is Professor of History at Princeton University, and currently Fellow at the Historisches Kolleg, Müncen. He is the author of International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (OUT and IMF, 1996).
Over the past two decades the operation of international financial markets can be aptly described by three unhappy words — volatility, contagion, and inefficiency. These woes have deepened throughout the 1990s. It is time to do something about them. Our recent report, based on a long-term study of the markets, recommends the establishment of a World Financial Authority as a step in the right direction. To see why such an authority is needed, what it should do, and how it can be established, it is necessary to examine how international finance arrived at this sorry state.
Lord Eatwell is President of Queens’ College Cambridge and Chairman of the Institute for Public Policy Research, London.
Professor Lance Taylor is Director of the Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research, New York.
At the annual meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions, in Hong Kong in September 1997, troubling macroeconomic numbers from the fast growing Asian economies did little to dampen the euphoric mood of the assembled bankers, government officials and international civil servants. I was among the crowd. The prospects were for a new era of economic prosperity led by unfettered global market forces. How much has changed since then.
Rubens Ricupero is Secretary General of UNCTAD. He was previously a Brazilian diplomat and politician.
President Clinton is to visit Malaysia for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. He arrives amidst growing disquiet over the detention of Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. There are also worrying signs that the economic malaise is reopening splits in the social and political fabric, putting at risk cooperation with the region’s Chinese minorities.
David Martin Jones of the Department of Government, University of Tasmania, is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London. He is the author of Political Development in Pacific Asia (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
It was hard to imagine that while Australians were so focussed on such weighty issues as whether or not a sales tax should apply to food, Asia was going through its worst ever financial crisis. The drama was invisible during the campaign for the federal election.
Keith Suter is Director of Studies for the International Law Association (Australian Branch).
European Economic and Monetary Union is a momentous historical enterprise, if only because it has been discussed for over four decades and planned in detail for six years. Last May the decision was taken and on 1 January 1999 eleven countries will introduce the euro and conduct a single monetary policy.
Dr Willem F. Duisenberg is President of the European Central Bank.
There is great relief that the 11th hour settlement in Belgrade has seemingly averted the necessity for NATO air strikes against Serbia. However the solution reached between US envoy Richard Holbrooke and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic contains the seeds of its own undoing. Agreement has been reached with Milosevic, but his good faith in honouring commitments can hardly be assumed. And Kosovo’s majority Albanian population is far from reconciled to the prospect of ‘autonomy’ within Serbia.
Dana H. Allin is a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.
John Roper is Associate Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs.
To End a War by Richard Holbrooke, reviewed by James Pettifer. This important book by the chief Balkan negotiator of the Dayton Accords, has been rejected by sixteen British publishers so far. It will be compared to David Owen’s Balkan Odyssey but To End a War is fanfare for the triumph of Holbrooke’s personal diplomacy.
James Pettifer is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Balkan Studies, University of Thessalonika, and writes for The Times, London.
In August, Iraq ended cooperation with UN weapons inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction. The senior US inspector, Scott Ritter subsequently resigned amidst accusations of a lack of support for the task from the UN and Washington. Strategies for dealing with Saddam Hussein are once again in the spotlight. Could techniques like information warfare and psychological operations offer success where conventional warfare has not?
Dr Rathmell is Deputy Director, International Centre for Security Analysis, King’s College, London.
In so many of the conflicts which are brought daily into every living-room by the television news, armed and uniformed men are the problem, and this presents a huge challenge to those who seek to resolve such crises. Are soldiers prepared for all out war the appropriate response, or should armies be refocused and retrained as peace support gendarmeries? When is it right to intervene? And if a country does intervene what rules should soldiers follow, and how are they to be motivated?
Colonel Sebastian Roberts is head of the British Army’s Doctrine Branch.
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has sparked a bush fire of conflict and hatred stretching the length of the continent. Although Africans may continue to live within the same theoretical boundaries at least five states occupy parts of other countries. Borders have become a moot issue. So what does the future hold and is the map of Africa about to change?
David Shearer is a Research Associate with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and has recently completed an analysis of the Democratic Republic of Congo for the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs.