Summary
Geske Dijkstra
Schuldverplichting, schuldverlichting en economische ontwikkeling in Latijns-Amerika
Geske Dijkstra addresses the question why countries time and again experience unsustainable debts that hamper development, despite the many efforts at relieving debts in the past. She shows that past debt relief efforts have not been effective; debt relief has been too limited and been extended in the wrong modalities. More importantly, these efforts were accompanied by too many new loans. For offcial creditors supplying loans to the poorest countries, moral hazard plays a role since the international financial institutions are preferred creditors. Private creditors supplying loans to middle-income countries are driven by market factors, in particular high interest rates. Continuous debt problems in the latter group of countries appear to be related to the implemented neoliberal reforms: trade liberalization in combination with financial liberalization creates a vicious circle of high domestic interest rates, high capital inflows, high imports, and low domestic production. Carl Bildt offers his views on international security cooperation in an age of terrorism. The Western world has only a couple of decades before the rise of the giants of Asia will shift the baton of leadership to them. The way in which Europe in particular may master the challenges in its near abroad in the coming years might determine the possibilities of shaping the wider world. Military power in itself is of little use. In the past we were threatened by strong states and strong armies. We are now far more endangered by the weak states and the shadowy structures that seek their home in them. Our security will depend on our ability to repair weak states and even to build new ones. Implementation of peace agreements requires a long-term political and economic effort, and interventions should be built on as wide a local, regional and international consensus as possible. All this applies especially to the area referred to as the post-Ottoman Empire, or the Greater Balkans, or the Fertile Crescent. The message of Europe is that peace comes with the construction of structures of integration that allow peoples to live peacefully together or at least side by side.