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1. Can the Honduran military solve the nation’s crime problem?
2. Is the AU’s mission in Somalia failing?
3. Should Laos dam the Mekong?
4. Does the EU need to establish a single market for services?
5. Is the world winning the fight against child labor?
6. Should German politicians ignore Pegida?
7. Does Nicaragua need a canal?
8. Should Pakistan re-impose a moratorium on the death penalty?
9. Does Jordan’s fight against ISIS threaten King Abdullah’s rule?
10. Will the euro zone crisis return in 2015?
Since 1960, the United States has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba, an island nation just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. The embargo was an instrument of Cold War policymaking, as Cuba became a communist nation under Fidel Castro and seized American economic assets without compensation. Even after the Cold War ended, the United States maintained the embargo as a political instrument in hopes of weakening the Castro regime. However, in the 1990s and 2000s, the embargo came to be seen by other Latin American nations as an unjust extension of American imperialism and some pundits allege that the embargo came to isolate the United States from the rest of the Western Hemisphere just as much as the embargo isolated Cuba from the American mainland. Last week, President Obama announced that he was taking executive action to weaken the long standing Cuban embargo and that he would move to normalize relations with Cuba. The President’s action received bipartisan support from those who believe that the embargo harms America’s relations with other Latin American nations, yet also received bipartisan criticism for rewarding a dictatorial regime that abuses the rights of its citizens. The President’s actions have forced 2016 presidential contenders such as Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio to weigh in on the issue and depending on how well the President’s normalization push goes, it could become a significant issue in the Republican presidential primaries and the 2016 general election.
Since June, the price of oil has plunged 40% on the international market in response to economic slowdowns in Europe and Asia and a glut of supply from the Middle East and North America. The falling price of oil, near $60 a barrel at the time of the writing of this brief, has been a boon for nations that import fossil fuels. It also provides much needed stimulus for consumer-driven economies such as the United States as people are able to take the money they would normally spend on high gas prices and direct it to other economic activities. However, the falling oil price has worked against some economies that rely largely on the proceeds from oil exports. Countries such as Venezuela, Russia, and Nigeria, among others, are now left wondering how they will react to the sudden fall of global oil prices and the decisions that they make could determine whether their current governments survive.
After existing for twenty months Israel’s coalition government has collapsed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference last week to announce the firing of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid on the grounds that they were insubordinate and plotting behind his back. Livni and Lapid were the two moderate members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet and their dismissal removes their political support for his coalition, thereby necessitating that new elections be held. Israeli voters went to the polls to create Netanyahu’s existing coalition in January 2013 and now, in the Israeli tradition, they will head back to decide whether Netanyahu deserves a fourth term, which is the one defining issue of the race thus far. The elections are tentatively scheduled for March, with March 17 looking like the probable election date.
When he assumed office in December 2012 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged a radical course of action to deal with Japan’s economic downturn. Since 1990 the world’s third-largest economy has been plagued by deflation and sagging consumer confidence creating what Japanese policymakers call the “Lost Two Decades.” Abe’s program, dubbed “Abenomics,” called for a combination of expansionary monetary and fiscal policy and structural reform. Throughout 2013 the Japanese economy showed signs of recovery and inflation was moving upwards, but Abe’s decision to increase the country’s consumption tax from 5% to 8% in April has produced the country’s fourth recession since 2008. In response to disappointing economic numbers, Abe announced last week that he is postponing a future increase in the consumption tax until 2017 and he called for new parliamentary elections next month. He justified his call for new elections by saying that he needed a mandate from voters to continue his economic program and pledged to resign if his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition did not win. Although the LDP is expected to triumph in next month’s vote, analysts question whether Abe has the stomach to continue major economic reforms in light of Japan’s recent recession and some criticize the upcoming election as a useless exercise.
Last Sunday, Brazilian voters went to the polls and re-elected Dilma Rousseff by the slimmest margin since the country reverted back to democracy in the 1980s. Rousseff, aligned with the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) defeated center-right candidate Aecio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in the runoff election by a three point margin, 51.64% to 48.36%. The results show that the country is divided between its poorer, more dependent northern regions and its more prosperous, middle-class southern regions. Rousseff has promised to do more to clean up corruption, enact political reform, and rejuvenate Brazil’s ailing economy, but her campaign pledge to maintain generous social benefits and the nastiness of the general election campaign may hinder her ability to do any of these things. Since Brazil has the seventh-largest economy in the world and is part of the BRICS nations extempers should be prepared to discuss the country’s economic problems and the outcome of the presidential election at future tournaments.