After years of negotiations, stalling tactics, and domestic political debate, the U.S. Congress is considering ratification of bilateral trade agreements (BTAs) with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) this summer.

The G8/G7, a self-constituted forum of the major free-market democracies, has situated itself at the center of global governance.

The Bush administration’s Andean Regional Initiative (ARI)—largely an expansion of U.S. support for Plan Colombia—passed the House of Representatives in late July, largely intact.

Over the past 30 years, study after study by academics, development practitioners, and international agencies has demonstrated the seemingly self-evident fact that women are equal to men, and sometimes surpass men, in contributing to social and economic development.

Poverty, social disruption and destruction stemming from these wars, and the proliferation of small arms and light weapons are major factors in expanding the use of child soldiers.

The explosion of U.S. military interest and funding for Plan Colombia, occurring in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from military bases in Panama in December 1999, has given rise to a proliferation of new U.S. bases and military access agreements in the region.

The devastating terrorist attack that struck the U.S. on September 11, 2001, shattered New York’s massive World Trade Center, a piece of the Pentagon, thousands of innocent lives, and the illusion that sophisticated technology and powerful weapons could keep America safe.

The international financial institutions (IFIs), particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but also including the regional development banks such as the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, have come under unprecedented criticism in the United States.

After a post-cold war decline, global military spending rose in 2000 to $800 billion.

The U.S. has long considered Syria the most intractable of Israel’s front-line neighbors due to its autocratic government, links to terrorists, and virulent anti-Israel posture.

The violence of the past year and a half between Israelis and Palestinians has left more than 2,000 people dead, torpedoed the peace process, and turned the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into battlefields.