Foreign Policy

In most African elections, Big Men use coercion and bribes to stay in office. But since 2000, three major African nations have held real democratic presidential referendums. Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade ousted Abdou Diouf in March 2000. John Kufuor defeated Jerry Rawlings' party in Ghana nine months later. And in December 2002, Kenya's Mwai Kibaki triumphed over Daniel Arap Moi's handpicked successor. All three of these opposition leaders are elderly statesmen. Wade was 74 when he was elected, Kufuor was 63, and Kibaki 71.

When an anonymous Californian posted a MiG-21 fighter jet for sale on www.ebay.com last November, the prospect of the plane falling into terrorist hands apparently didn't rankle U.S. authorities too much. After all, a foreign buyer would need a hard-to-obtain export license to cart the prize away.

Mobolaji Aluko, a Nigerian who chairs the department of chemical engineering at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has a devil of a time convincing Americans to invest in his entrepreneurial business ventures back home. Nigeria's political and social instability don't help. But equally important, says Aluko, are the endless e-mail scams originating from Nigeria that are "always at the back of [investors'] minds."

Last year, Irish President Mary McAleese approved a law that makes trespassing a criminal, not civil, offense. The law's unspoken target: Ireland's 25,000 Travellers, nomadic people known derisively as "tinkers" or "white gypsies." Travellers typically live in ad-hoc trailer camps, pulling up stakes whenever seasonal work is available elsewhere. The criminal trespass law--the first in Europe--makes Travellers subject to arrest for erecting unauthorized camps.

We live in an era of unprecedented prosperity, but when the financial bubble bursts we'll plunge into a world depression. Nations no longer go to war, but civil wars are booming. Humanity has embraced the idea of environmental interdependence, but the global ecosystem is in terminal crisis. Depending on your perspective, we stand either on the verge of a golden age or at the brink of disaster.

After calling for a national debate on whether Japan should arm itself with nuclear weapons-in the racy weekly magazine Shukan Playboy, no less-Shingo Nishimura paid the price for his frankness. In an uncharacteristic display of hyperspeed, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi sacked his defense vice minister on October 20.