I'm worried about the elephant making deals with the mice.

LRD... and rightly so...Recent deals with Venezuela are a prime example.
Another problem with China that has been largley overlooked is the balance between Communism and Capitalism. Currently, their labor force works in austere conditions at best and is grossly underpaid. It is this very force which has enabled their astonishing growth and encouraged the export of American jobs. Communism and capitalism combined is the reason for China's success. In the event that one or the other prevails, they will cease to be able to maintain a stranglehold on the world economy.
Another product of Globalization is the exportation of human rights. The multiple trade agreements and a burgeoning economy will soon enough be tempered by the global opposition to human rights violations. That is the beauty of globalization.

Why?

I'm running out the door, but I'll answer this when I get back.

Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
Alexander The Great

A Threat to Latin Democracy

Monday, March 21, 2005; Page A18

ANOTHER LATIN American democracy is on the verge of crumbling under pressure from leftist populism. The trouble comes this time in Bolivia, where a democratic president and Congress face a paralyzing mix of strikes and road blockades by a radical movement opposed to foreign investment and free-market capitalism. The insurgents, who claim to represent the country's indigenous population, drove one democratically elected president from office 18 months ago; now they are working on his successor, Carlos Mesa, who has searched valiantly but unsuccessfully for compromise. The populists ride a leftist wave of momentum in Latin America and have the rhetorical, and possibly material, support of the region's self-styled "Bolivarian" revolutionary, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The democrats could use some outside help, from their neighbors and the United States.

Accounts of political crises in Andean countries such as Bolivia sometimes portray a poor and disenfranchised indigenous majority pitted against an ethnically European and mestizo elite. The facts tell a different story in Bolivia. Mr. Mesa, polls show, has the support of two-thirds of his compatriots, while the party leading the protests, the Movement Toward Socialism, has never received more than 21 percent of the vote in an election. Nor is it the case that Bolivia's experiment with free-market policies in the 1990s failed to help the poor. Per capita incomes rose by 20 percent in the second half of the decade. Thanks to private foreign investment, significantly more Bolivians gained access to water, sewage systems and electricity.

The populist minority, led by former coca farmer Evo Morales, is bent on using force to reverse that progress. Already it has effectively blocked natural gas exports to the United States. Its current strikes are aimed at stopping further foreign investment in that industry through confiscatory taxes and reversing the privatization of other industries. Mr. Mesa, swearing off the use of force to break up the road blockades, has countered with democratic political tactics: first a national referendum on a compromise gas policy, then an accord with Congress on political and economic reforms. Last week, in desperation, he proposed that his own term as president be cut short and new elections be held in August; Congress rejected the proposal, and Mr. Mesa later announced he would stay on. But the opposition still threatens to renew a blockade that is devastating one of the hemisphere's poorest economies and prompting talk of secession in Bolivia's relatively prosperous and pro-capitalist eastern provinces.

All of this is good news for Mr. Chavez, who along with Cuba's Fidel Castro dreams of a new bloc of Latin "socialist" (i.e., undemocratic) regimes that will join with like-minded states such as Iran, Libya and China to oppose the United States. Bolivia's neighbors, including Brazil, Argentina and Chile, ought to be alarmed by this trend; but though their own leftist governments have expressed support for Mr. Mesa they have refrained from more concerted action -- such as demanding that Mr. Chavez cease his meddling. The State Department issued a statement last week expressing "support for the people of Bolivia and a peaceful democratic process." If there is a deeper U.S. policy to head off the breakdown of democracy in Latin America, there isn't much sign of it.

Article

Two U.N. Peacekeepers Killed in Haiti
Sun Mar 20, 2005 9:09 PM ET

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Two U.N. peacekeepers were shot and killed in Haiti on Sunday in gunfights with rebel former soldiers who control parts of the Caribbean nation and led a revolt that ousted its president last year.

The soldiers, one from Sri Lanka and one from Nepal, were the first U.N. troops killed by violence since the international forces were sent in June to help stabilize Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile in February 2004.

The soldier from Nepal was killed in an attack by former soldiers occupying the Terre-Rouge area of Haiti's Central Plateau, Cardona said.

The Sri Lankan soldier was killed as U.N. troops and Haitian police evicted Haitian rebels from a police station they occupied for months and used as a base in the southern town of Petit-Goave, said the police director for the region, Renan Etienne.

"During the exchange of fire, one U.N. soldier from Sri Lanka and two among the police station occupiers were killed," Etienne told Reuters.

Eleven people wounded in the gunfight were taken to a hospital, including three Sri Lankan soldiers.

A spokesman for the U.N. civilian police, Jean-Francois Vezina, said police and U.N. troops had retaken control of the police station. U.N. troops detained 25 former soldiers and seized 13 weapons, he said.

Members of Haiti's defunct army, who helped lead the rebellion against Aristide, control several parts of the country.

Aristide disbanded Haiti's coup-prone army in 1995 during his first term as president. He was re-elected in 2001 for a five-year term but fled the country on Feb. 29, 2004, in the face of a month-long armed revolt and under U.S. and French pressure to quit. He is exiled in South-Africa.

Former soldiers demanded the reinstatement of the military and have clashed with Haiti's interim government over its refusal. Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said the decision on whether to reestablish the army should be made by the new government chosen in elections scheduled for November.

The U.N. special envoy to Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes, is the civilian chief of the 7,400-strong U.N. peacekeeping force made up of soldiers and civilian police from dozens of nations.

Gap states - both of them.

The Bolivia article makes an important point, doesn't it? Glad you posted it.

What point?

This one:

Yes, but what's the point?

Shows how globalization can be good for our security. Bolivia may not be the best example, but I submit that economic development in Mexico, for example, advances our national security interests.

Check this out:

Of the 118 countries listed by the World Bank as "low-income" or "low-middle-income" (below $2,936 per capita annual), 109 are located inside the Gap.

2/3 of Gap states have poverty levels above 10%, 1/3 above 30%. In several African states, the poverty level is 60-70%

According to Freedom House's 2003 survey of states surveyed around the world, 48 countries of a global total of 192 surveyed were rated as "not free". Of those 48 states, 45 are in the Gap. The three remaining are NK, China and Belarus.

Of the 50 states with the lowest life expectancy rates (37-57 years), all but one South Africa, is in the Gap.

All of the countries with a median age of less than 20 are in the Gap.

80-90% of "current conflicts" are in Gap states.

According to the US Refugee Committee's 2002 survey, GAP states account for 96% of refugees leaving their country and 93% of refugees displaced within their own country.

Of the sixteen current (2004) UN peacekeeping missions, all are inside the Gap.

19 of 23 states identified by US State Department as major drug producers are Gap states.

20 of 21 states classified as "reluctantly connected" to the internet are Gap states.

Source - Barnett.

I just looked - AL hasn't posted once on this thread. I find that...disturbing. :munchin