The recent agreement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is about far more than trade. It’s about creating a new international regime in the Pacific that will reinforce trade rules, smooth inter-state relations and promote international harmony with China.
In a press release, Representative Eliot Engel applauded the Inter American Development Bank Board members for its recent discussion on LGBT rights, and incorporating awareness of LGBT communities into its development programs. Representative Engel is the ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
As the tragicomedy of the 2015-2016 election season plays out, falsehoods, hyperbole and mean-spirited attacks among contenders will proliferate. The issue of trade (along with illegal immigration) will be the proverbial whipping boy in this contest. While the contenders choose not to be fully informed of the facts, there is no excuse for individual citizens not to be.
How tolerant are citizens across the Americas of LGBT political rights and marriage equality? While support for political rights is higher than support for the rights of LGBT couples to legally wed, the results track largely with levels of economic development in the region, with two notable exceptions.
Those who stoke fear every time an extra-hemispheric rival to the U.S. gains influence in the Western Hemisphere are missing the real challenges. While these “BackYardistas” exercise their Cold War reflexes over growing Chinese, Russian and Iranian influence in Latin America, the broader challenge is how those powers are remaking the global liberal order.
Across the hemisphere a majority of citizens support a greater role for the armed forces in domestic security—with over 80 percent of citizens in El Salvador, Honduras and Ecuador supporting the militarization of police duties. The policy, though, comes with huge risks. It also has not worked.
In a series of posts—this our first—we will assess whether it is not only desirable but also possible that the two divergent trade blocs of Pacific Alliance and MERCOSUR in Latin America can converge as Chile is now pushing. Or is this just another exercise in empty political posturing?
Using a number of justifications, including that of regional security or defending state sovereignty, authoritarian regimes are pursuing new antidemocratic norms. To shield themselves from international scrutiny, resurgent authoritarians are seeking to reshape global institutional frameworks that have been integral to the liberal post-Cold War order.
Has the U.S. been asleep at the switch as other countries assert their power in the region? Here are five things the U.S. should do to re-engage with Latin America.
In the final stages of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, the U.S. is still pushing for the elimination of safeguards to regulate capital inflows and capital flight. Those controls have mitigated past crises and prevent others in economies that for decades have been buffeted by financial instability.
