HIR Articles

RUCHIR SHARMA, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley, deals a blow to many oft-hyped emerging markets in his new book, Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economics Miracles, published this year. Sharma says the BRIC countries are not where investors should be looking for opportunity. Only a few select countries meet his criteria as having the potential to be the next rising stars—Indonesia among them.

You described the past decade as “freaky,” as all countries grew. Can you place the progress of the BRIC countries into global perspective?

Famed seventeenth-century jurist Hugo Grotius warned that in warfare belligerents must “not believe that either nothing is allowable, or that everything is.” The latter belief holds that any and all tactics are allowed in warfare, while the former, a largely Christian theological view, holds that warfare is immoral and any resultant actions are therefore prohibited. Grotius understood that unilateral adherence to either of these notions would lead directly to an unworkable paradigm. Rejecting each belief’s most extreme position while simultaneously adopting their reconcilable characteristics, Grotius began to develop a feasible legal framework for conducting warfare. Ultimately, as Oxford University’s Karma Nabulsi describes in her outstanding work Traditions of Justice and War, by seeking the “middle ground” between these two seemingly incompatible views Grotius successfully shaped a conciliatory, realistic model for regulating warfare. The resultant middle ground, which recognized the necessity and legality of “just” wars while proscribing certain aspects of military conduct, solidified Grotius’s legacy and, more importantly, set the stage for the profound legal developments—particularly in the 20^th century—that would circumscribe subsequent conflicts, including those in which the United States finds itself today.

The forces of trade protection in the United States are on the rise—yet again. The presidential campaign has provided a new opportunity for some to take a more isolationist position on issues of international commerce. However, these interest groups overlook the many ways in which a global marketplace generates, directly and indirectly, very positive long-term effects on American consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, and on the nation in general.

The Cold War is long over, yet the world still feels many of its repercussions. Two states in Asia remain divided: China and Korea. While both North Korea and South Korea still evince some intention of reunification, the cross-strait relationship between China and Taiwan is drastically different. Rather than unification, the alternative of remaining separate has become the dominant policy in Taiwan.