The World Today: March 2001: March 2001

Syria, under Bashar al-Asad, has embarked on a profound transformation. It is too early to say how far it will go, but the young President’s will to reform, to open up – to clean up – almost every aspect of life is now abundantly clear. His ambition is to create a modern state and society. But the backlog is heavy and vested interests well-entrenched. It is not easy to change the mentality and ingrained habits of a whole nation. He cannot work miracles, but he has made a promising start.

Organised crime, it seems, knows no boundaries. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Crime, now open for signature, poses a difficult set of challenges to governments seeking to combat organised networks of an increasingly global nature. One such challenge is to the European Union’s Mediterranean security policy, currently in flux. If illegal activities which begin in China end up in Casablanca, Gibraltar or New York, does it still make sense to try and contain them within the Mediterranean basin alone? Can Europe ignore the corruption, poverty and violence in which global crime thrives?

The troubled island of Cyprus still figures on the list of unresolved conflicts. But letting the problems rest in the Mediterranean sun may soon cease to be an option. The European Union may decide to admit the Republic of Cyprus which governs the south of the island. This could have serious implications way beyond the tourist resorts.

A Special Relationship by John Dumbrell. Published by Macmillan Press Ltd

America’s support for military anti-narcotics activity in Colombia is controversial in both countries. As President Andrés Pastrana draws the guerillas into dialogue, there are worries too in neighbouring states.

Between the two world wars, an Atlantic elite of economists, financiers and policy-makers, working in study groups at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, anticipated many of the themes and institutional mechanisms which contributed to international financial stability from 1950 to 1973. In the special atmosphere of Chatham House, ideas were freely expressed, exchanged and developed. Later events, especially the design of a new international financial system at Bretton Woods in 1944, were influenced by some of those ideas. The spirit and goals of the study groups, reflected in the hitherto unexamined documentary records, also have important lessons for the current debate on the international monetary system.