One of the three basic themes slated for discussion at the 1994 Summit of the Americas (9-10 December) is “Making Democracy Work.” Under this heading are topics related to combatting official corruption, dealing with narcotics trafficking, encouraging and expanding the roles played in civil society by the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and enhancing the capacity of the Organization of American States (OAS) to strengthen democracy (Summit, 1994: 4-5). The other two major areas of consideration-Hemispheric economic integration and sustainable development - are also related to the need to stimulate and support the movement towards more democratic governments and societies.

Since the conclusion of the Earth Summit - or, more formally, the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) - in 1992, the world's political leaders have had to deal with an ambitious environmental agenda whose mission is nothing short of saving the biosphere, a spectacular quest that carries an equally impressive price tag. The acceleration of a global environmental agenda over the first part of the 1990s, combined with the accumulated commitments of earlier years - of which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES), the Ivory Ban, and the Montreal Protocol, are among the most prominent - and the high profile assigned to the environment by the Clinton administration, mean that the December 1994 Hemispheric Summit in Miami will have the opportunity (and the challenge) to set a new environmental agenda.

The free-lance writer Claire Sterling has done what academics have so far failed to do: document the fact that corruption and the violence which so often accompanies it, represent a real security threat to the nations of this world (see Sterling, 1984, 1990, 1994). In three data-packed books, Sterling has exposed the ugly, dark side of the waves of money which flow through many major financial systems and, quite literally, flood some of the small states. Even the most jaded student of the Caribbean, for instance, has to take seriously some of her most recent revelations, not the least of which is the following startling assertion:

While Sterling errs in calling Aruba a sovereign state - its defense and foreign policy are still under control of The Netherlands - her account of how the Caracas-based Cuntrera brothers had managed to penetrate Aruba and buy everything “from hotels . . . to the prime minister . . . ” found partial corroboration in the massive investigation of the Sicilian Mafia launched in Italy in the early 1990s.

The Western Hemisphere summit, which has been called by President Bill Clinton and is scheduled to be held in Miami (FL) in December 1994, will no doubt prove to be yet another major milestone along the evolving path of inter-American relations. Nevertheless, the significance of this meeting has been muted by the scanty information and limited signals given out by the host country regarding the meeting's purpose and agenda. In some ways, the upcoming summit projects a double image: of an event that is both transcendental and superficial at one and the same time. At least two elements point in this direction. On the one hand, much like similar previous conferences in history, not all members of the Hemisphere will attend, since some nations - like Cuba - have not been invited, an aspect that will affect the nature, spirit, and scope of this long-awaited assemblage of the Americas.

As a frequent concern both of governments and of the public at large in Western Hemisphere nations, international migration is now more prominent than at any time since 1980. The episodic flow of seaborne refugees from Haiti since 1991 has been a key factor in spurring the inter-American community to oppose Haiti's military rulers. The flotilla of rafts leaving Cuba since early August 1994 has engendered high-profile negotiations on migration between Washington and Havana. The stream of undocumented labor migrants from Mexico to the United States has regained momentum since the late 1980s and is encountering increased public criticism, especially in the western United States.

Underlying these instances of political tension is a strong, and only partially-met, demand for migration to the United States from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean on the one hand, and a growing anxiety in the US to “control the nation's borders” on the other.

The circumstances of the diverse nations of the Western Hemisphere have been dramatically transformed over the course of the past few years - as has the relationship among them. During the 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of democracy swept over most of Latin America and the Caribbean, placing almost all of the societies in the region under the rule of elected civilian governments. At the same time, the nationalist-statist development models of the past have been virtually abandoned and much more open, market-oriented lines of economic policy have been adopted. Moreover, many previously contentious issues that troubled relationships among the countries of the region and separated them from the United States appear to be in abeyance.

It should come as no surprise that the environmentalist community in the Americas, whose expectations were raised by the bold, global “Agenda 21” of the 1992 Earth Summit, the informal title accorded the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), would be concerned that the forces of free market capitalism and the urgency for economic development have proven to be more powerful than the regional movement towards sustainable development. By virtue of the region's large share of the planet's environmental resources, the global environmental agenda, which includes, inter alia, such complex and daunting problems as biodiversity, global warming, and ozone depletion, should logically place the Western Hemisphere in the center of policy action. On the eve of the December 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, however, the general principles outlined in the “Agenda 21” and related initiatives, have not been translated into concrete or coherent intergovernmental policy actions.

Trade policy throughout the Western Hemisphere is in a state of flux, more so now than at any other time in the postwar period. Among policy officials in Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America, there is general agreement on many trade policy issues but uncertainty about others. Although this paper starts with areas of agreement, it focuses upon those issues for which there is no consensus.