Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

World Policy Journal hosted a group of top CEOs from leading Pakistani companies, as well as American companies with large Pakistani subsidiaries, and several members of the United States embassy in Islamabad, including the dynamic new ambassador, Anne W. Patterson. The goal of the delegation was to persuade American investors and the media they read, that there is a continuing story of progress in Pakistan beyond the daily unrest that seems to make that country, the world’s sixth most-populous nation, a somewhat questionable destination for major investment initiatives. Their case was a persuasive one. A representative of Proctor & Gamble described a $100 million investment that was being made there, in part to develop a factory to produce disposal diapers—for a nation that is adding some 11 million new babies a year and promises to continue doing so for the next century or more. Another noted a project to build new gas-fired power generating facilities, then there was a furniture manufacturer (Pearl Furniture based in Peshawar, the heart of the Northwest Frontier Province) and several conglomerates, each with their own compelling story.

No doubt about it, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, stole the spotlight at this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

Pictures of the two men smiling and shaking hands made front pages of newspapers throughout the hemisphere, and Chávez's gift of “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano to Obama propelled the book to best seller status at Amazon.com.

Both men professed to want closer relations, ending nearly a decade of mutual suspicion and distrust during which Chávez once made headlines by calling former U.S. President George W. Bush "the devil" at the United Nations and accusing Washington of plotting his overthrow and assassination. Likewise, the Bush administration repeatedly charged Chávez with destabilizing the region through his populist actions.

As late as last month, Chávez, who has built his populist presidency on opposition to U.S. policies, called Obama an "ignoramus" and said he was no different than Bush. Hours after the summit, Chávez changed tack, saying he welcomed the possibility of the two countries exchanging ambassadors again—although both countries expelled senior diplomats in September.

The honeymoon may be short-lived as the new bonhomie coincides with Chávez's increasingly aggressive attacks against his opponents and his country's press following his electoral victory in February that paved the way for him to serve indefinitely as the country's president.

These days, throughout northern Wayne County, PA, farmers are talking less about livestock and dairy prices and more about Norwegian oil policy, Devonian geology, market capitalization, and seismic thumper trucks. Wayne County sits atop part of the enormous Marcellus Shale gas field, and each farmer is looking at a small fortune in future leasing royalties and bonuses. They are also in the process of solving a problem that has stumped the World Bank, the United Nations, and governments around the world. The problem is the so-called resource curse. Usually, when countries discover oil, gas, or minerals, most nationalistic governments in the developing world seek to keep all the wealth that comes from such extraction by claiming exclusive rights to everything below the topsoil. Instead of economic development, what they get is corruption, environmental destruction, violent conflict, a worsening economy, and hoards of angry local people. The resource curse’s current poster child is Nigeria, where corrupt government officials—on all levels—stole hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands died from ethnic conflict and environmental devastation in the oil-producing zones, and the majority of people throughout the country live on less than $1 a day. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Map of the Marcellus Shale"][/caption] In Wayne County (as elsewhere in the United States), it’s the locals who will decide the terms of how the gas is extracted from the ground. Here, the farmers who have farmed the land for generations formed a collective bargaining group, hired lawyers and environmental consultants, and are negotiating with several gas companies on the financial details and the local environmental risks. Drilling for oil or gas has a long, ugly record of contaminating land and water—a potential catastrophe since this area is an aquifer for New York City and Philadelphia. So, many newly arrived former city dwellers in Wayne County are, at best, doubtful and are demanding that regulatory commissions provide even broader environmental protections. They point to people in central Pennsylvania and in the West who signed bad leases and found themselves with environmental nightmares like noise pollution, ruined land, contaminated water supplies, and leaky holding pools full of toxic chemicals.