In November 1983 NATO conducted a military exercise, codenamed “Able Archer”, which the Soviet leadership interpreted as a prelude to an American nuclear attack. Americans were told that the exercise was nothing more than that. But in the context of President Reagan’s aggressive Cold War rhetoric, the Soviet Union believed that the exercise was a feint. In 1990, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board issued a report, which was classified, that indicated how close the world came to a nuclear war. That report has now been made available and it makes for chilling reading. We will see how the American public reacts to this new information, if at all.
Today is a big day for elections. Elections are being held in Argentina, Poland, Tanzania, Guatemala, Haiti and Ivory Coast. Except for Poland, all of these states are somewhat fragile politically, so we;ll have a good test of how deeply democratic sentiments are held across the planet. Argentina will have to choose a new candidate since the current President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, cannot run again. She and her husband have dominated Argentine politics for many years. Poland will also be closely watched to see if the movement in Europe toward more nationalist, anti-immigrant parties, will be captured by the Law and Justice Party.
We tend to think about poverty in the developed and the developing world as being fundamentally different. In many respects, there are very important differences. There is, however, one aspect of poverty–agricultural poverty–which is remarkably similar in both the rich and the poor worlds. Indeed, in many respects, the poor in rich and poor states have more in common with each other than they do with their national rich counterparts.
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