National wealth creation is a combination of intricate social and economic processes. There are many arguments as to what determines why some cities, regions, and nations are rich and some poor. Ramon Myers has reviewed 18 nations, for example, and their attempts to create wealth....
Port cities that have successfully established freight container systems are key components in national and regional wealth creation. What became large ports either were secondary ports at the time or did not even exist. In the 1960s, for example, Felixstowe—a port ninety miles from London—began to...
In his 2005 work Collapse, Jarred Diamond analyzed how societies make decisions that determine their ultimate success or failure. He wrote that these decisions were frequently misguided. The needed solutions, for example, might be beyond their capacities, or exceptionally expensive, or too belated. Misguided decisions...
The ideological doctrines of realism and liberalism provide different approaches to how our strategic and economic systems operate and what principles they manifest. For realists, the sovereign state is the supreme actor in an otherwise lawless international landscape. Liberalists, on the other hand, see the...
Economic liberalism is synonymous with free- market trade and is the dominant economic doctrine today. In principle, economic liberalism accomplishes a number of things at once. It consists of many actors that interact in established ways and seek to influence one another. In other words,...
“Realism” offers a competing account to liberalism with regard to how the world’s strategic and economic systems work and how they should work. John Mearsheimer’s “Offensive Realism Theory” epitomizes the “realist” position. It argues that the international system encourages states to look for “opportunities” to...
Contemporary state capitalism is more complex than the protectionist models of yesteryear. It entails a more sophisticated generation of managers who have learned about commerce in the world’s best business schools and who embrace globalization. As such, state capitalists use free-market tools to kick-start growth....
To monitor the bourgeoning number of “illicit” actors and the container’s winding path through the maze of transport networks—both sea and air—is an enormous challenge. To make sure “illicit” actors and the container do not unite and unduly threaten the maritime and container shipping industry...