Freedom in the World in 2016 by Fredom House

                                                                                                         by Arch Puddington and Tyler Roylance

      The world was battered in 2015 by overlapping crises that fueled xenophobic sentiment in democratic countries, undermined the economies of states dependent on the sale of natural resources, and led authoritarian regimes to crack down harder on dissent. These unsettling developments contributed to the 10th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The democracies of Europe and the United States struggled to cope with the Syrian civil war and other unresolved regional conflicts. In addition to compounding the misery and driving up the death toll of civilians in the affected territories, the fighting generated unprecedented numbers of refugees and incubated terrorist groups that inspired or organized attacks on targets abroad. In democratic countries, these stresses led to populist, often bigoted reactions as well as new security measures, both of which threaten the core values of an open society.

        The year also featured the slowdown of China’s economy and a related plunge in commodity prices, which hit profligate, export-dependent authoritarian regimes especially hard. Anticipating popular unrest, dictators redoubled political repression at home and lashed out at perceived foreign enemies. However, in several important countries, elections offered a peaceful way out of failed policies and mismanagement. Voters in places including Nigeria, Venezuela, and Myanmar rejected incumbents and gave new leaders or parliaments an opportunity to tackle corruption, economic decay, and corrosive security problems. These fresh starts suggest that democratic systems may ultimately prove more resilient than their brittle authoritarian counterparts.

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American Foreign Policy in the 20s

The Senate's repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I is often seen as ushering in a period of isolationism in American foreign policy. It was impossible for the United States to withdraw completely from world affairs, however, because American possessions stretched from the Caribbean to the Pacific and because the First World War had transformed the country into the world's leading creditor nation. As the threat of war grew in the 1930s — with the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Japanese aggression in China — Congress tried to insulate the United States from potential hostilities through neutrality legislation. While public sentiment remained strongly in favor of staying out of a European conflict, isolationism became increasingly difficult after war broke out in Europe in September 1939.   
            Although the United States did not join the League of Nations, it did cooperate with international agencies throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s on such matters as trade and drug trafficking. The United States also headed efforts to advance diplomatic talks on limited disarmament, to resolve the tangled questions of war debts and reparations, and to maintain international peace, all while remaining deeply involved in Western Hemisphere affairs, particularly in Central America. American foreign policy was far from isolationist in the '20s.

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