Weak leadership, economic crises and political polarization: What the International Community can learn from Latin American Regime Crises

Introduction The volatility of the stock markets, the worry about Greece that flew over to the USA, Italy, Belgium and Spain are no coincidence, they are part of a broader trending, of economic mayhem and international uncertainty. The USA, Belgium, Italy and to a lesser extent Spain devote a disproportionate time on meandering through the [...]

A governance vision for the nations of the Arab Spring

Recent events in North Africa and the Middle East have brought to the forefront the fragility of government institutions and have questioned the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes in a number of developing nations. The right form of governance for the right society has never been easy to identify. A lot of times, societies have adopted [...]

G8 Agenda – Trade Promotion for the ‘Arab Spring’!

This week the members of the G8 will hold their annual meeting in Deauville France, to discuss issues ranging from non-proliferation and counter-terrorism to the internet and transatlantic cocaine trafficking. Although these are all very important issues, the only agenda topic that matters is the ‘Arab Spring’ and how some of the eight wealthier nations [...]

Gaddafi’s arms suppliers & UN-ICC justice

On 23 March 2011, NATO imposed an arms embargo on Libya, as a precursor to the air strikes that unfolded in the weeks to follow. The action was based on UN Resolution 1973, and according to NATO’s web sites it was intended to ‘This is part of NATO’s contribution to the broad international effort to [...]

Rich leaders, poor people

When the North African-Middle East social uprisings started at the beginning of the year, I conducted a very brief research to find out who are the richest leaders in the world – not all, just some – and to compare them invariably under authoritarian regimes with wealthy politicians in the West – and not just [...]

Self-Determination and Modernization, A Utopian-Dystopian Discourse

Introduction In the early 1950s, two buzz-words determined the vocabulary of the international community: * Self-determination * Modernization Self-determination of self-rule attenuated to other more lofty principles such as sovereignty, and brought on a wave of decolonization, stretching from Africa, to Asia, back to the Caribbean and Latin America. In the wave of self-determination trailed [...]