In the rush to pass tough spending cuts, Congress and the Clinton administration are avoiding making an obvious choice: welfare over warfare.

In the immigration debate, free marketers square off against cultural conservatives on the right side of the political spectrum; while on the left, civil rights and ethnic advocacy groups oppose environmentalists and job protectionists.

U.S.-Nicaraguan relations have been rocky ever since the end of the U.S.-sponsored war against the Sandinista government.

Expansion of the NATO military alliance is proceeding rapidly despite an overwhelming lack of public or congressional debate.

For the cold war generation, U.S. foreign policy toward the Asia/Pacific region was simple, straightforward, and secure.

The absence of a coherent U.S. foreign policy agenda—except in the expansion of exports and investments to promising new markets—leaves U.S. policy decisions at the mercy of old and new prejudices, while ad hoc response to crises becomes more the norm than the exception.

After the cold war, Albania became a country of strategic importance to the United States.

Washington’s increasing focus on promoting international investment and trade is evident in the smorgasbord of assistance offered to U.S. exporters.

In June 1993 Nigeria’s military, led by General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled election results, thereby blocking the inauguration of the country’s first civilian president in a decade.

As the country in the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) that leads the effort to seek rapid tariffs reductions, Indonesia is the darling of U.S. export industries.

The Asia/Pacific region is the geopolitical center of the struggle for world power.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) sets guidelines for the elimination of most trade and investment barriers between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico over a 15-year period.

The U.S. military did not foresee an end of the cold war and was caught without a new strategy when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Central America’s modern history is marked by widespread poverty, stark inequalities, political instability, and violent repression.

Since the early 1980s Washington has sought to break down all barriers to U.S. trade and investment in Mexico.

The last fifteen years have seen an unprecedented decline in the standard of living of the world’s rural poor, and a related upsurge in both internal and international migration as people search for options.

Since 1994 U.S. statements regarding a newly democratic South Africa, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) have frequently been cast in the language of a love fest.

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a wholly owned government corporation established in 1971, provides taxpayer-backed and taxpayer-funded loans, loan guarantees, and insurance to businesses for investments in “politically risky” countries.