The Asian financial crisis has eased, but its reverberations have enmeshed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a major legitimacy crisis over its recently assumed mission and its ability to implement it.

With the downsizing of the U.S. military and an expansion of overseas training programs, the Pentagon has increasingly hired the services of private military firms.

The G8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture, focuses world attention on the huge U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia.

The signing of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on Their Destruction in Ottawa, Canada, in December 1997, represents a great arms control and human rights triumph.

At the center of the current debate of global governance is the G8/G7, a self-constituted forum of the major free-market democracies, whose deliberations and declarations have come to shape key decisions in the management of global political and economic affairs.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. still treats Vietnam with a double standard; the July 2000 signing of a bilateral trade agreement is one step toward a balanced policy.

The U.S., alone among its major allies, is planning substantial increases in military spending, despite its overwhelming worldwide military dominance.

Ruled by a series of harsh military regimes since 1962, Burma serves as a test case for U.S. policy on several fronts: human rights; a growing worldwide heroin epidemic; the role of U.S. state and local governments in relation to international trade policy and practice; forced labor, international labor standards, and the new prominence of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in the era of globalization; and the role of multinational corporations in supporting dictatorships.

United Nations peacekeeping is yet again at a crossroads: it may finally succeed in establishing itself as the preeminent force for conflict prevention and peace, or it could continue operating with a severe mismatch of mandates and resources.