“We not only left our houses but our nation”
Mining represents a great opportunity for economic growth, especially for emerging economies. It is often seen as the path to prosperity. However, the mining industry is a double edged sword. Countries in Latin America are managing to attract significant foreign investment. In Chile, the extractive sector’s participation in the economy has tripled in the last 10 years, reaching 15% of GDP. In Colombia and Peru, it has doubled to 10% of GDP. The Santos administration in Colombia has made mining one of its top policy priorities.
However, there may be significant downsides to mining, as governments…
The absence of U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol comprises a major impediment to the development of an effective global climate regime. While conventional theories of international relations attribute American abstention to materialist determinants of climate politics, which depicts a static image of the United States as a self-interested, power-maximizing state, this study asserts the need for a more comprehensive, social constructivist analysis of American identity. By employing computer assisted methods of quantitative content analysis, this study delineates the dominant strands of U…
Mexico’s recent economic performance and its swift recovery from the financial crisis are seen by many analysts as near-miraculous. While the Brazilian economic growth has slowed, Mexico has begun to catch up to Latin America’s most-touted state. After experiencing average growth of barely 2% per year from 2000-2010, Mexico’s GDP has increased by 4 percent in the last year. Mexico boasts a skilled workforce, low costs and proximity to the United States. Investment has boomed despite the ongoing drug wars, corruption and a weak rule of law.
With the advent of online banking, financial crime has moved from the physical world to the virtual. Today’s villains carry out identity theft, credit card fraud, and siphoning schemes from the comfort of their computer chairs. The evolution of financial crime to the online platform has shifted the financial activities of transnational organized crime networks, which now take full advantage of the system to perform illicit internet transfers, hide funds, and engage in fraudulent schemes. Some law enforcement officials are uncovering new transnational organized crime networks, whose activities…
It has become a truism to describe transnational problems as interconnected. However, a recent joint report “Green Carbon, Black Trade: Illegal Logging, Tax Fraud and Laundering in the World’s Tropical Forests”by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL shows that illegal logging is a case that truly demonstrates the need for cooperation across sectors to reach efficient solutions. No single solution will be enough; action will be needed at each stage of the supply and demand chain at both local and international levels. Many of the proposed solutions have major shortcomings…
Conspicuously missing from the cacophony surrounding the debate on the U.S. confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program is any serious consideration of China’s perspective on the issue. Instead of ignoring China, any decision of continuing or escalating the confrontation with Iran should be framed with the following question: Does confrontation with Iran benefit China and undermine the central objective of the U.S. pivot to Asia? The uncomfortable answer is that China would benefit at the expense of the United States.