The World Today

For the third time in less than two years, Beirut has been turned into a battleground, with Hizbollah and the opposition taking over the city. The government and its allies did not engage militarily, managing to avoid civil war and becoming a regional battlefield. The Arab League is now trying to sort things out, highlighting the regional and international dimensions.

Dmitri Medvedev’s appearance at the G8 Summit in Hokkaido will be his first step on the wide international stage that Vladimir Putin occupied with such a swagger. Expectations of change will be high, but they are likely to be unrealistic at such an early stage in Medvedev’s presidency. Putin’s foreign policy legacy is a heavy one and he has made it clear that Medvedev will be no soft touch, but will his approach ultimately be more productive?

There is a Japanese proverb which says: ‘vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare’. Promises on Africa provide the feel-good factor at G8 summits. However, many would argue that for Africa what comes out of the summits amounts, for the most-part, to daydreams.

After almost three decades of civil war, post-conflict reconstruction is progressing quickly in Angola. The country has become a huge construction site. China in particular has played an important role in stimulating this building boom. Its private and state-owned firms are constructing schools, hospitals, low-cost housing and basic infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and railway networks. Development through infrastructure has worked in China, but will the boom have the desired effect in Angola where human and institutional capacity is so weak? Schools without teachers, or hospitals unable to operate, would not answer the public need.

Seven interest rate cuts in the United States since September have seen rates more than halved in the attempt to avoid recession. British rates have fallen more slowly, with just three cuts in five months. The Bank of England has warned that the economic crisis could get worse. But is the Bank’s own interest rate policy intensifying a storm ahead?

Less than three years ago, the United Nations World Summit in New York noted the need to help developing countries cope with the effects of weak commodity prices. Now, the World Food Programme is seeking three quarters of a billion dollars to allow them to cope with the opposite: rocketing food prices, which have risen more than eighty percent over the same period. With global population forecast to reach nearly ten billion by 2050, can we feed everyone?