For its part, Nigeria was a British colony for a century before gaining its independence in 1960. The country’s subsequent history can only be described as deeply troubled; its initial decades were marked by civil war, secessionist challenges, and military rule. Its politics seem to have stabilized, in that civilian leaders have sidelined the military from politics. But the challenges confronting the country are significant, in no small part because of its religious, tribal, geographic, and linguistic divisions and also because of the country’s poor infrastructure. The burden of disease, above all HIV/AIDS, is great.
Nigeria’s population of close to 200 million is the continent’s largest. Its economy is also Africa’s largest, although a good deal of its annual economic output reflects oil production rather than employment-intensive manufacturing, services, or agriculture. Corruption has been and remains extensive. Terrorism is a large and growing problem, as Boko Haram, a violent Islamist organization, seeks to overthrow the current democratic, secular system and replace it with strict Islamic (Sharia) law, something supported by a portion—but far from a plurality—of its Muslim population and opposed intensely by its sizable Christian population. An even bigger problem might be the lack of allegiance many Nigerians feel toward the government in Abuja and the federal state.
REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Regional institutions have played only a modest role in Africa. The most famous, the Organization of African Unity, was created in 1963 in the immediate aftermath of decolonization but accomplished little. It was succeeded four decades later by the African Union, or AU. On paper the AU appears to be an improvement, in that among other things it sets terms (for example, in the instance of genocide) under which its members can intervene in the affairs of another member. It is far from clear, however, whether in practice the AU will prove to be significantly better than its mostly ineffectual predecessor because it often lacks the necessary resources and capabilities to take on demanding missions, particularly peacekeeping.
LOOKING AHEAD
The bottom line is that Africa’s future, like its recent past, is likely to be uneven. There will be countries characterized by good governance and broadly shared economic growth, and those plagued by illegitimate autocrats, corruption, and violence. The biggest common challenge will come from an expanding population that will place extraordinary pressures on economies to provide adequate schooling, health care, housing, and food along with jobs for millions of young people every year. How well this challenge is met will determine, as much as anything, the continent’s trajectory in the twenty-first century.
The Americas
The Americas—more specifically, North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean—constitute the Western Hemisphere. The region includes thirty-eight countries (along with several territories mostly associated with the United Kingdom and France) in which just over one billion people live. It is home to Canada and the United States, which are the second- and third-largest countries in the world as measured by landmass. Both are slightly larger than China but each is roughly half the size of Russia, which spans eleven time zones and is by far the world’s largest country.
The United States, with a GDP just over $20 trillion—accounting for one-fourth of global output—has the world’s largest economy and is the dominant country in the Americas. It represents nearly a third of the region’s population and approximately three-quarters of its economic output and possesses power and influence on a different scale from the other countries in the region. The United States enjoys many advantages, such as a rich variety of natural resources combined with soil and weather conducive to agriculture, a degree of protection provided by two oceans, and friendly neighbors to its north and south. Other U.S. advantages are man-made, including its political stability, its rule of law, its ability to adapt, its great universities, and a tradition (at times violated) of being open to immigrants, which has provided great talent and allowed the country to avoid demographic imbalances (too many elderly compared with those of working age) that would be difficult to sustain.
But the story of the Americas is much more than just the story of the United States. Brazil has more than 200 million people and Mexico more than 100 million, and both have significant, growing economies. The region is home to vast energy resources. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves; three of the top ten countries in terms of oil reserves (Venezuela, the United States, and Canada) are in the Americas. Even when the United States is removed from the picture, the region is deeply meaningful to the world economy given its size as an export market and its abundance of commodities.
The Americas is critical strategically to the United States, in that the region’s relative stability and the overall positive relationship between the United States and other regional countries enhance its ability to be a great power. The United States has the rare luxury of being able to focus its attention and energies beyond its hemisphere. For instance, the United States is the region’s only nuclear power, while China must contend with four nuclear powers on its borders. The United States also does not need to deploy the bulk of its military forces to deterring or dealing with threats in the Americas and can instead send its military to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, if it so chooses.
One attribute worth highlighting about the region at the outset is its relative lack of geopolitics, or politically motivated interactions between countries. Territorial disputes are few, wars between countries rare, armies small. Prospects for nuclear proliferation appear remote. Unlike Europe or Asia, the Americas is, for the most part, not a region with a tradition of great-power rivalry and conflict, although there were such moments during the Cold War and China appears intent on developing its economic presence in the Americas now. Unlike the Middle East, the Americas is not a source of terrorism that threatens the world.
But stability between countries is not the same as stability within them. A good many countries of the region are racked by violence, from gangs and criminal cartels to homicide and domestic abuse. Military and police forces are often unable to contend successfully with these domestic challenges. Legal and prison systems are likewise inadequate. Mexico, as well as many of the countries of Central America, suffer from the problem of state weakness, which in this part of the world is more of a challenge to security and stability than countries with disproportionate strength.
THE AMERICAS LEADS THE WORLD IN HOMICIDES
Homicide rate per 100,000, 2017
Note: A homicide is defined as an “unlawful death inflicted upon a person with the intent to cause death or serious injury.” War-related deaths are not included.
Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
There has been a recurring tension in the Americas between democratic and authoritarian systems. Right now the balance favors democracy, because countries such as Chile, Brazil, and Argentina have all successfully put into place some of the features of strong democracies, including an independent judiciary, a free press, and fair elections. But this was not always the case and cannot be assumed going forward. Indeed, until the late twentieth century, the balance was overwhelmingly in favor of top-heavy, authoritarian governments, whether civilian or military led. Mexico was characterized by one-party rule for decades. And even now, democracies face a daunting array of challenges, including corruption, drug- and gang-related violence, high inequality, poor education, inadequate checks and balances against ruling parties, and in many instances prolonged low economic growth and public expectations for government support that cannot be met or sustained. Backsliding into populist (where personal power and considerations take precedence over rules and institutions) or illiberal (near-authoritarian) governments is a real danger.
HISTORY
To understand the Americas, it helps to go back to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, known as the age of exploration. Spain and Portugal divided much of the New World between themselves. Bu
t if this colonial period began earlier than was the case in much of the Middle East and Africa, it also ended earlier, because both Spain and Portugal were too weak and distracted to maintain colonies owing to the Napoleonic Wars that ravaged Europe in the early nineteenth century. The result was that many of the countries that make up the Americas today trace their modern origins to this period some two hundred years ago.
The United States gradually became more involved in the region around this time, mostly in an effort to limit European involvement in ways that might threaten U.S. interests. The principal expression of this U.S. approach was the Monroe Doctrine, articulated by President James Monroe in 1823, which made clear American opposition to any new effort by Europeans (no longer constrained by having to deal with Napoleon) to colonize the Americas. In 1898, as one part of its own experiment with colonialism, the United States fought a war with Spain, a short conflict that ended with Cuba gaining its independence from Spain and the United States taking control of Puerto Rico as well as the Philippines and Guam. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt initiated the construction of the Panama Canal. Completed in 1914, the Canal dramatically reduced the time and cost for shipping goods crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s impact on the Americas and U.S. foreign policy went beyond the Canal. In 1904, he effectively amended the Monroe Doctrine with what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary, which stated a U.S. right to intervene in the Americas if it deemed it necessary. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, walked back this “right” thirty years later, although the United States intervened in the region both before and after these declarations.
The region was an important venue of the Cold War and the host to several of the period’s signature crises. Fidel Castro led a Communist guerrilla movement that succeeded in 1959 in overthrowing a corrupt, authoritarian government in Cuba. Castro then proceeded to install an anti-democratic, Communist government with close ties to the Soviet Union. A covert U.S. effort, led by the CIA, to overthrow Castro’s pro-Soviet and anti-American government two years later failed dismally. A modest invading force of Cuban exiles was trapped at the Bay of Pigs, and a hoped-for public uprising in support of the “liberators” never materialized. President John F. Kennedy, who had just taken office, held back promised U.S. military assistance that even if authorized would not have altered the fate of the misconceived and poorly executed undertaking.
A year later, in the fall of 1962, U.S. intelligence (in this case, using aerial reconnaissance) discovered preparations by the Soviet Union to place ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Cuba. Less clear to intelligence analysts was what motivated the Soviets. It could have been a bargaining chip: the Soviets might have hoped that they could make an agreement not to place nuclear warheads in Cuba in exchange for the Americans giving up their commitment to West Berlin, their missiles in Turkey, or any new plan to invade Cuba. The Soviet move might also have been an attempt to shift the nuclear balance or a bid to get the best of President Kennedy, who was still relatively new and untested and was widely judged to have mishandled the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
But whatever the motive or motives, the Soviets miscalculated. Although the United States was already in range of and vulnerable to Soviet missiles based in the Soviet Union, President Kennedy and his advisers judged that having Soviet missiles so close to American territory posed an unacceptable political and military challenge, in part because of the reduced warning time that would be associated with any missile attack and in part because U.S. acceptance of the Soviet deployment might have been seen as a sign of weakness.
The United States held off any armed attack, fearing it could escalate into a nuclear exchange in which both societies would be decimated. Instead, the United States put into place a selective naval quarantine (effectively a blockade) that was intended to prevent any Soviet missiles from reaching Cuba. In the end, the Soviets backed down rather than risk a direct confrontation. In return, the United States pledged publicly not to invade Cuba and privately promised that it would remove medium-range nuclear missiles of its own that were based in Turkey and that could reach the Soviet Union. More than half a century later, decades after the Cold War came to an end, Cuba remains a nondemocratic, Communist country with an active foreign policy that often places it at odds with the United States and many of its neighbors.
Central America also became a major venue of Cold War competition in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one that absorbed a good deal of my energies when I worked in the State Department at the time. It was a typical proxy struggle, with the Soviet Union backing leftist guerrilla movements and governments, and the United States doing what it could to strengthen anti-Communist (although not necessarily democratic) governments or backing groups that sought to weaken Communist governments. El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras were the principal battlegrounds. By the mid-1980s, peace had largely come to a region dominated by non-Communist governments.
One additional episode worth highlighting, one that turned into a full-fledged conflict that lasted several months, involved a group of small islands off the coast of Argentina. To Great Britain, which had controlled them for well over one hundred years, the islands were known as the Falklands; for Argentina, which claimed them as its own, they were the Malvinas. In 1982, Argentina’s military-led government, most likely in a bid to rally public opinion, invaded and quickly occupied the defenseless islands. The British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, however, judged this unacceptable and mounted a military expedition that quickly reasserted British control. This conflict contributed to the fall of the military government in Argentina, which made the outcome of the Falklands War a gain for both the rule of law and democracy.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
The relative lack of geopolitical jockeying for advantage between regional states or the major powers does not mean the Americas is without its share of challenges. Already discussed is the widespread lack of state capacity and the fragility of democracy. Venezuela is the most acute problem, a failing country and a near dictatorship. Oil production is down significantly. Food supplies are inadequate, as is the health-care system. Hyperinflation rages. Tens of thousands of people are leaving every month, in the process emptying the country of significant human talent and placing a great strain on its neighbors, especially Colombia. And even if political change comes to the country and a legitimate government replaces the current one, the task of rebuilding the country will be immense, requiring massive resources and decades of effort by Venezuelans and outsiders.
Brazil is dealing with endemic corruption (although its courts thus far appear, for the most part, to be stepping up to the challenge) and a large public sector and benefits for citizens that the economy cannot sustain. Argentina has struggled to find leaders who could simultaneously be democratic, effective, and popular. Mexico faces an epidemic of drug- and organized-crime-related violence, as do the countries of the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). Murder rates in these countries are among the world’s highest. Such violence undermines the local economy and causes people to flee, thereby increasing immigration pressures on the United States and other neighbors. These pressures cannot be dealt with effectively at the U.S. border; instead, what is needed is a policy that “goes to the source” and creates local conditions in which people are less motivated to leave for reasons of physical and economic security.
Canada is also part of the Americas, although like the United States much of its focus lies elsewhere. Canada boasts the world’s eleventh-largest economy and is in the top fifteen when it comes to GDP per capita. It is a robust democracy of nearly forty million people. Along with China and Mexico, it is one of the three largest trading partners of the United States; it is also a member of NATO, the Group of Seven (G7), and the Group of Twenty (G20). It is thus a frequent partner of the United States in the world and in dealing wit
h threats to North America. Again, having such a friend as a neighbor is one reason the United States has been able to focus its energies elsewhere, an advantage unknown to most great powers throughout history.
Regional institutions have a mixed record. The Organization of American States lacks the ability to get much done given its requirement for consensus and the lack of military and economic resources at its disposal. The Lima Group, formed by a dozen countries in the region to promote a peaceful outcome in Venezuela, has yet to demonstrate it has much heft. More significant are the various trade groups, above all NAFTA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade pact that entered into force in 1994 and did so much to increase trade volume among the three countries and in particular spur Mexico’s development and growth, in the process reducing the desire of many Mexicans to emigrate. Some argued that NAFTA disadvantaged American workers and led to job loss in the United States. This was true in certain specific circumstances but not overall. In any event, the Trump administration renegotiated NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, resulting in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 2020 and subsequently signed into law. Rhetoric and politics aside, the new agreement resembled the old one in many ways.
NAFTA SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED TRADE WITHIN NORTH AMERICA
Exports as of 2018.
Source: International Monetary Fund.
More broadly, the challenges facing the region include the need by governments to build the capacity to deal with internal security challenges, to improve the quality of public education so the workforce has the skills needed to compete globally, to promote civil society and thereby make their democracies more robust, to reduce public debt, corruption, and the role of the state in economies to a sustainable level, to do more to increase trade between countries of the region, and to see that geopolitics does not enter the region in a meaningful way. There is as well the question of whether Brazil will act responsibly in protecting the Amazon rainforest, the preservation of which is critical to global efforts to combat climate change. Finally, there is the enormous challenge posed by forced migration, where every day thousands of people are fleeing Venezuela and to a lesser extent the Northern Triangle countries, in the process all but overwhelming their neighbors. It is a demanding agenda.
The World: A Brief Introduction Page 14