Al Qaeda in Africa: The Creeping Menace to Sub-Sahara's 500 Million Muslims
ABSTRACT Since 2005, Al Qaeda has co-opted as franchises three armed and violent African Islamist movements that had established footholds in both East and West Africa. These movements have been able to exploit anarchy, instability, hopeless poverty, corruption, and ethnic exclusion to impose medieval Islamic governance that sub-Saharan Africans reject but cannot defeat without outside help. The countries currently directly affected are Somalia, Mali, and Nigeria. African governments understand the dangers to their sovereignty presented by Al Qaeda affiliates and have demonstrated determination to do whatever is necessary to stamp them out. All African governments welcome American assistance in their resistance to Islamist extremism, but the United States needs to be careful about keeping its military footprint in Africa as small as possible.
The African Economic Miracle: Myth or Reality
ABSTRACT The majority of African nations have been enjoying a boom in earnings from the export of both agricultural and mineral commodities since the turn of the twenty-first century. This revenue stream, along with macro-economic reforms encouraged by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, have resulted in the growth of a middle class to about 150 million persons, about 15 percent of sub-Saharan Africa. With disposable income, this middle class is attracting investors, especially in retail, consumer goods, and banking. The financial community is understandably enthusiastic about the potential for high yields on short-term investments. Nevertheless, major deficits exist in governance, agriculture, intraregional trade, and the business climate that are inhibiting true sustainable development. With growing urbanization and a growing class of still unemployable youth, African governments need to introduce reforms expeditiously if they are to fulfill the continent's great potential and avoid the disasters of crime, terrorism, and drugs—all of which are already creeping in.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1