MADRID – “How difficult it is to die!” Francisco Franco is reputed to have exclaimed on his deathbed. Death, it seems, is always particularly difficult for autocrats to manage, even when they succeed in dying of natural causes. A dictator’s death throes are always a form of theater, featuring ecstatic masses, would-be successors fighting for [...]

PRINCETON – The United States is rising; Europe is stabilizing; and both are moving closer together. That was the principal message earlier this month at the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC), a high-powered gathering of defense ministers, foreign ministers, senior military officials, parliamentarians, journalists, and national-security experts of every variety. The participants come primarily from Europe [...]

The daily bloodshed on the United States’ doorstep is the clearest sign that something is rotten in the neighborhood. Headless torsos swinging from lampposts in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico contrast all too sharply with the clean streets of El Paso just across the border, ranked one of the safest city’s in the United States. But [...]

The coca plant is native to the Andes. Its bush has been cultivated and traditionally consumed by local people for centuries. Many products and the leaves themselves can be legally purchased in Peru and Bolivia. However, coca leaves are also the raw material for the production of cocaine. As a result, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia [...]

In the last decade the balance of power has changed in South America. The US hegemony exerted in the second part of the 20th century has been challenged, primarily by the solid emergence of Brazil but also by political initiatives led by left-wing governments like Bolivia. Despite its relatively small size the landlocked country at [...]