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GLOBAL AFFAIRS
What are today’s international issues? Relations with China, the proposed National Missile Defense system, Congo, crises in South Asia, future of the IMF and World Bank, Taiwan, and Colombia are among the top foreign policy issues of the day—and Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) is on top of them all. That may explain why the visitors to the project’s website is booming—up to an average of some 1,200 visitors daily. Similarly, the project’s ezine, Progressive Response, is attracting subscribers from around the world—at a rate exceeding all our hopes. But FPIF has more than a virtual presence. Hard copies of our policy briefs are being distributed at conferences around the world, in the halls of Congress, and in churches. If you were in Washington, DC (as the IRC’s Tim McGivern was) the week of the protests against the World Bank and the IMF, you would have seen our briefs everywhere. “Everybody loves them,” commented Njoki Njehu, head of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, when she was visiting our table at the International Forum on Globalization meeting. Jubilee 2000 was distributing our Multilateral Debt Burden brief at its meetings and Chains of Debt rallies; the anti-sweatshop coalition was handing out our Child Labor brief; and our briefs on the World Bank, IMF, and financial architecture were among the main sources of information about the international financial institutions the tens of thousands had come to protest. Our Star Wars Revisited policy brief critiquing the revival of a missile defense system was distributed at a Peace Action meeting the same week, and the United Church of Christ is distributing 850 copies to its members. Upon returning from Washington, McGivern spoke at the Albuquerque Earth Day celebration to combat global warming and then participated in an IMF/World Bank panel discussion sponsored by the University of New Mexico Law School. He will be a featured speaker at the New Mexico Green Party forum on globalization. As part of the IRC’s new commitment to foster a South-North dialog on international issues, Tom Barry attended the tenth quadrennial meeting of the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Bangkok. Our South-North dialog project will foster discussion among analysts across the great economic divide. On the environmental front, Population Reference Bureau and and La Union Mundial para la Naturaleza (World Conservation Union based in Latin America) presented the FPIF brief Population and the Environment to a group of Latin American researchers and health and environment advocates gathered in San Jose, Costa Rica in early May. Jessica Vallette Revere, Friends of the Earth’s atmosphere campaign director and author of IF brief Global Warming and Ozone Depletion attended the April meetings of the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol in Montreal, where she distributed the briefs. Along with The Nation and the World Policy Institute, FPIF hosted a forum in New York City on May 2 at which an array of speakers, some of them essayists in FPIF’s new book Global Focus: Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Millennium, addressed the topic: “What you need to know about U.S. foreign policy that the candidates aren’t telling you.”
THINKING GLOBALLY
Our foreign policy program continues its mission of reaching out to a diverse group of community activists, scholars, and policymakers. “From Seattle to San Diego: Why the WTO Matters,” was a daylong public forum held in La Mesa, California, on January 28th. Our analysis entitled “Child Labor in the Global Economy” and our series of briefs on the World Trade Organization were featured at the grassroots event sponsored by local activists and labor unions from the San Diego area. This semester our special report on U.S. policy in Africa was adopted by the African Studies programs at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Keene College. The In Focus brief “International Tobacco Sales” is part of the curriculum this semester at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and our brief “Global Environmental Facility” is being used at Maryland Law School. Another policy brief, “U.S.-EU Trade Relations,” was circulated to participants at the “Critical World Issues” conference organized by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, held from March 8-11. Carlos Salinas and Colletta Youngers, In Focus contributors for Latin American issues, appeared at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by Senator Paul Wellstone and Rep. John Conyers on February 2nd. Foreign Policy in Focus provided briefs related to the discussion on U.S. military aid to Colombia to congressional staff, NGOs and the media.
U.S.-MEXICO BORDERLANDS
With the new century comes a change in leadership in both the U.S. and Mexico. South of the border, new leaders are stepping forward to challenge traditional power brokers. This year’s election is the most competitive in the country’s history; current polls indicate that the chances that a non-PRIista might be the next occupant of Los Pinos are getting better every day. Economic integration between the two countries, meanwhile, proceeds apace. Cross-border trade is booming, U.S. companies continue to out-source work to Mexico’s burgeoning maquiladora sector, and each year Mexican immigrants working north of the line send an estimated $6 billion back home—Mexico’s third-leading source of foreign exchange after petroleum and tourism. The U.S.-Mexico relationship is rapidly becoming a key U.S. foreign policy issue, yet in the post-NAFTA, post-bailout lull, U.S. policymaking toward its southern neighbor has gone noticeably limp. The drug issue continues to dominate the binational agenda, but that is changing. The border region, for both countries, has become a motor for economic growth, and issues related to resource use, the environment, binational water rights, and sustainable development in the borderlands have become hot topics in policy debates—primarily at the regional level, but also in the DF and DC. These issues will dominate the U.S.-Mexico relationship in the new century, a trend that will be reflected world-wide in international relations as globalization proceeds apace. As during the NAFTA debate, today the U.S.-Mexico border region is a case study in the dangers of globalization and a microcosm of the larger North-South dynamic. At the same time, however, seven years after NAFTA the border has moved beyond being simply a case study in what can go wrong with free trade, but has also become a laboratory for experiments in transboundary governance and binational cooperation aimed at correcting the free market’s deficiencies. Recent events in Seattle and elsewhere indicate that awareness of globalization’s pitfalls is at an all-time high. Border issues have global significance, and can speak to that larger debate. The BIOS team is excited by this unique and particular coyuntura. As both the U.S. and Mexico gear up for presidential elections, BIOS is gearing up to widen its analysis to include broader issues related to the binational relationship and to take the lessons of the border to a wider audience. BIOS Goings On In April BIOS Program Associate Julie Schneider gave a presentation at the Transboundary Library Forum on Internet information resources related to the U.S.-Mexico border, and BIOS Program Associate Debra Rose attended the annual meeting of the Association for Borderlands Studies. On May 26th George Kourous will participate in a meeting co-sponsored by the State of New Mexico Environment Department and the North American Institute with the Mexican State of Chihuahua on the development of the new border crossing at Santa Teresa, New Mexico. New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, cabinet secretaries from both New Mexico and Chihuahua, local NGOs, private sector interests, and Dona Ana County officials will all be attending. George has also been named to the planning committee for the Third Annual Conference on the Border Environment, an annual event sponsored by the Ford and Mott Foundations bringing together environmentalists and officials from across the greater borderlands to debate and discuss issues. BIOS informational materials like borderlines and the borderlines UPDATERs continue to be tapped by a wide range of actors in the greater borderlands for their educational and advocacy work. The Environmental Law Institute used articles from borderlines in a transboundary environmental enforcement workshop held in early May in San Diego for Mexican and U.S. government officials and NGO representatives. Environmental Exchange’s JUNTOS Program recently started using both Spanish and English borderlines as part of its curriculum. JUNTOS is a Sonoron desert-based environmental studies semester-long curriculum for high school classes in the Arizona-Sonora border region. BorderLinks and Global Exchange continue to use borderlines and other BIOS publications in connection with their border reality tours.
Office Contact Information
Albuquerque Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196-4506 Voice: (505) 842-8288 Fax: (505) 246-1601	Silver City Box 2178 Silver City, NM 88062-2178 Voice: (505) 388-0208 Fax: (505) 388-0619 Email: irc@irc-online.org
Published by the International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org). Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved. Web location: http://www.irc-online.org/content/inside/65 Production Information: Author(s): IRC Staff - Silver City, NM Production: