Throughout the twentieth century, the U.S. government willingly deployed power, hard and soft, to protect American investments all around the globe. Why did the United States get into the business of ...defending its citizens' property rights abroad?The Empire Traplooks at how modern U.S. involvement in the empire business began, how American foreign policy became increasingly tied to the sway of private financial interests, and how postwar administrations finally extricated the United States from economic interventionism, even though the government had the will and power to continue.
Noel Maurer examines the ways that American investors initially influenced their government to intercede to protect investments in locations such as Central America and the Caribbean. Costs were small--at least at the outset--but with each incremental step, American policy became increasingly entangled with the goals of those they were backing, making disengagement more difficult. Maurer discusses how, all the way through the 1970s, the United States not only failed to resist pressure to defend American investments, but also remained unsuccessful at altering internal institutions of other countries in order to make property rights secure in the absence of active American involvement. Foreign nations expropriated American investments, but in almost every case the U.S. government's employment of economic sanctions or covert action obtained market value or more in compensation--despite the growing strategic risks. The advent of institutions focusing on international arbitration finally gave the executive branch a credible political excuse not to act. Maurer cautions that these institutions are now under strain and that a collapse might open the empire trap once more.
With shrewd and timely analysis, this book considers American patterns of foreign intervention and the nation's changing role as an imperial power.
This book, first published in 2003, addresses a puzzle in political economy: why is it that political instability does not necessarily translate into economic stagnation or collapse? In order to ...address this puzzle, it advances a theory about property rights systems in many less developed countries. In this theory, governments do not have to enforce property rights as a public good. Instead, they may enforce property rights selectively (as a private good), and share the resulting rents with the group of asset holders who are integrated into the government. Focusing on Mexico, this book explains how the property rights system was constructed during the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship (1876–1911) and then explores how this property rights system either survived, or was reconstructed. The result is an analytic economic history of Mexico under both stability and instability, and a generalizable framework about the interaction of political and economic institutions.
The branch of international humanitarian law (IHL) pertaining to targeting is notoriously challenging for decision makers to apply in practice. The rules of distinction, precautions and ...proportionality in attack form the bedrock of targeting law, but compliance with these rules requires combatants to correctly understand what is happening in the battlespace. Those who decide upon, plan or execute an attack may not always have access to the right kind or amount of information needed to correctly set up an attack. Furthermore, they may not even know what information they need. Given the ambiguity posed by inadequate intelligence or information overload, how can combatants train themselves to successfully cut through the fog of war? In Japanese Zen (Chinese: Chan) Buddhism, adherents typically practice meditation methods featuring elements of open monitoring and focused attention. One style of focused attention, known as kōan practice, is often used by those in the Rinzai and (to a lesser extent) Sōtō schools of Zen. Kōans are short stories that Zen teachers use to communicate those Buddhist insights that cannot be expressed through direct communication, such as the experience of 'nonduality'. Although kōans are often described as riddles or puzzles, they are not intended to be solved logically. Rather, the practitioner focuses their attention upon the kōan and observes what happens when linguistic and logical means of 'solving' it fall away. By training the mind to recognise its attachments to particular concepts or habitual ways of problem-solving, those who take up this practice in its proper context may find themselves better prepared to make decisions based on ambiguous information, and to spot errors in their perception or thinking when considering such matters of grave importance.
The big ditch Maurer, Noel; Maurer, Noel
2010., 20101108, 2010, 2011-01-01
eBook
On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened for business, forever changing the face of global trade and military power, as well as the role of the United States on the world stage. The ...Canal's creation is often seen as an example of U.S. triumphalism, but Noel Maurer and Carlos Yu reveal a more complex story. Examining the Canal's influence on Panama, the United States, and the world,The Big Ditchdeftly chronicles the economic and political history of the Canal, from Spain's earliest proposals in 1529 through the final handover of the Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, to the present day.
The authors show that the Canal produced great economic dividends for the first quarter-century following its opening, despite massive cost overruns and delays. Relying on geographical advantage and military might, the United States captured most of these benefits. By the 1970s, however, when the Carter administration negotiated the eventual turnover of the Canal back to Panama, the strategic and economic value of the Canal had disappeared. And yet, contrary to skeptics who believed it was impossible for a fledgling nation plagued by corruption to manage the Canal, when the Panamanians finally had control, they switched the Canal from a public utility to a for-profit corporation, ultimately running it better than their northern patrons.
A remarkable tale,The Big Ditchoffers vital lessons about the impact of large-scale infrastructure projects, American overseas interventions on institutional development, and the ability of governments to run companies effectively.
In this paper, we will highlight the correspondences between the Socially Engaged Buddhism movement, especially as defined in the practice of the late Thich Nhat Hanh, and the core principles of ...humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence originally adopted by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. These principles also underpin the neutral, impartial and independent approach to humanitarian action, used by agencies working under the auspices of the United Nations' Inter-Agency Standing Committee and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, along with those who have signed the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations in Disaster Relief. We hope this paper is a modest but useful contribution to create better understanding and to generate dialogue among different stakeholders in the humanitarian field, particularly in the context of armed conflict.
This article stems from a project launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 2017 to examine the degree to which Buddhism might complement or enhance international ...humanitarian law (IHL), also known as 'the law of war' or 'the law of armed conflict'. Given that Buddhist teachings discourage violence, scholarship has critiqued Buddhists' involvement in armed conflict rather than considered how Buddhism might contribute to regulating the conduct of hostilities once war has broken out. Yet the Buddhist aim to reduce suffering is particularly relevant during armed conflict, and the empirical realism of early Buddhist texts shows that early Buddhist communities were very much aware of its grim reality. The article investigates the evidence for this empirical realism before exploring a range of concepts, doctrines and practices from within Buddhism that are pertinent to the recognition and implementation of IHL principles and the conduct of war. While IHL lays down explicit rules to follow during war, Buddhism emphasises broader ethical principles to be applied, so as not to dilute its ideal of non-violence. At a deeper level, it addresses the intention or motivation of parties to armed conflict, and possesses psychological insights and resources to help change their behaviour.
For most of human history, free wage labor was uncommon compared to various coercive institutions based on the threat of force. Latin America was no exception to this general rule. A number of ...scholars argue that past coercive labor institutions explain regional and national divergence within Latin America long after the institutions themselves have disappeared. A review of the literature, however, shows less agreement than is commonly recognized. There is evidence that forced labor on Spanish American mainland collapsed endogenously under its own weight, in which case it may have left few echoes in the present.
The Mexican expropriation of 1938 was the first large-scale non-Communist expropriation of foreign-owned natural resource assets. The literature makes three assertions: the United States did not ...fully back the companies, Mexico did not fully compensate them for the value of their assets, and the oil workers benefitted from the expropriation. This article finds that none of those assertions hold. The companies devised political strategies that maneuvered a reluctant President Roosevelt into supporting their interests, and the Mexican government more than fully compensated them as a result. Neither wages for oil workers nor Mexican government oil revenue rose after the expropriation.
Related lending, a widespread practice in LDCs, is widely held to encourage bankers to loot their banks at the expense of minority shareholders and depositors. We argue that neither looting nor ...credit misallocation are necessary outcomes of related lending. On the contrary, related lending often exists as a response to high information and contract-enforcement costs. Whether it encourages looting depends on other institutions, particularly those that create incentives to monitor directors. We examine Mexico's banking system, 1888–1913, in which there was widespread related lending. We find little evidence of credit misallocation, despite a financial crisis and government-organized rescue.
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