As the Doha Development Round trade negotiations have stalled, bilateral and regional free trade agreements have become an important alternative. These agreements have proliferated in recent years, and now all of the major trading countries are engaging in serious bilateral trade negotiations with multiple trading partners. This book provides a comprehensive study of recent bilateral and regional trade agreements. There are two main aspects. First, it surveys the most important recent agreements in relation to each substantive topic covered (e.g. intellectual property, investment, services and social policy) and provides an overview of the law being created in these areas. Second, the bilateral and regional trade agreements are explained in the context of economics, international law and international relations.

Nearly 18 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing restoration of Ukraine’s independence, the country has yet to make a clear, committed choice about its geopolitical future. Having established itself as a sovereign state in the 1990s, Ukraine’s foreign policy sought to balance its drive to build links to Europe and the United States with its need to maintain stable relations with Russia.

Many believed the 2004 Orange Revolution and Viktor Yushchenko’s subsequent election as president would lead to a concerted Ukrainian push to integrate fully into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community. But political infighting within Kyiv and other problems have stymied the country’s efforts to take advantage of its new opportunities. The upcoming presidential election hopefully will result in an executive branch that can execute more coherent policies than has been the case in the past four years.

The United States and European countries that would like to see Ukraine more closely linked to the West will have to decide the best way to pursue engagement with Ukraine after Ukrainians choose their next president. It is possible, for example, that the new president will adopt a more modest pace to efforts to integrate into institutions such as NATO, while showing greater sensitivity to Russian concerns. In such a case, the United States and Ukraine’s supporters in Europe should maintain robust relations with Kyiv and press the country’s government to implement needed constitutional and economic reforms, while keeping doors open and working with Ukraine to integrate it into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community at a pace that Kyiv will choose.

After North Korea’s nuclear test on 9 October 2006, the fate of South Korea’s engagement policy with North Korea seemed to hang in the balance. To many, the nuclear test stood as a clear indictment of the Sunshine Policy and its successor, President Roh Moo-hyun’s Peace and Prosperity Policy. After years of investment and aid to the North under these policies, South Korea appeared to have received little in return. Conservative lawmakers charged that the nuclear test amounted to the “death penalty” for the Sunshine Policy, and former president Kim Young-sam proclaimed that the policy “should be thrown into a trash can.” Roh’s unification minister apologized to the National Assembly.

But others did not see the nuclear test as a verdict on South Korean engagement of the North. To more progressive forces, including the Roh administration, this is not a story of inter-Korean cause and effect; engagement represents a much larger inter- Korean effort, while the nuclear issue is rooted in problematic U.S.-DPRK relations. In their view, the nuclear test occurred because the Bush administration has taken a hard line with North Korea, creating an environment—featuring “regime change” rhetoric and the preemptive-strike doctrine—that spurred the North to pursue weapons considered the ultimate guarantee of security. The Sunshine Policy cannot be held to account for ruinous U.S.-DPRK relations, though such a circumstance can hinder inter-Korean engagement. While Roh offered a careful, politically calibrated suggestion to the public in the wake of the nuclear test, saying he “would like to suggest that we take time to figure out the causal relationship between the engagement policy and the nuclear test,” former president Kim Dae-jung pressed the progressive perspective in no uncertain terms, offering a direct, clamant answer: “North Korea has never said it would develop nuclear weapons because of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy. It said that it was developing nuclear weapons as a last resort to survive, because the United States was hard on the country.”

As the Bush administration comes to a close, U.S.-Russian relations have fallen to their lowest level since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Unresolved and problematic issues dominate the agenda, little confidence exists between Washington and Moscow, and the shrill tone of official rhetoric approaches that of the Cold War.

This state of affairs is a far cry from what Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin envisaged in 2002, when they defined a framework for a qualitatively different U.S.-Russian relationship. Both sides bear responsibility for the failure to realize that vision.

As President Barack Obama takes charge of the Oval Office, he confronts a wary and assertive Russia among the many foreign policy challenges in his inbox. Moscow desires to reclaim “great power” status, an ambition fueled over the past five years by hundreds of billions of dollars in energy revenues. Its desires are colored by a bitter perception that the West took advantage of Russian weakness in the 1990s and that Washington has failed to take serious account of Moscow’s interests. Building a more sustainable relationship with Russia will not prove easy.

Ukraine and Ukrainians will be tested over the course of 2009. The global financial and economic crisis already has provoked a deep recession and falling living standards. Kyiv will need to make a real effort to strike a balance between integration into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community and maintaining stable relations with Russia. Doing so will not be easy, as Russia regards Ukraine’s pro-Western policy as inimical to Russian interests, and Ukraine’s politics are subject to influence from Moscow. In particular, Ukraine must address its energy security situation, where it remains vulnerable to Russian pressure.

A new moral, ethical, and legal framework is needed for international human rights law. Never in human history has there been such an elaborate international system for human rights, yet from massive disasters, such as the Darfur genocide, to everyday tragedies, such as female genital mutilation, human rights abuses continue at an alarming rate. As the world population increases and global trade brings new wealth as well as new problems, international law can and should respond better to those who live in fear of violence, neglect, or harm.

Modern critiques global human rights fall into three categories: sovereignty, culture, and civil society. These are not new problems, but have long been debated as part of the legal philosophical tradition. Taking lessons from tradition and recasting them in contemporary light, Helen Stacy proposes new approaches to fill the gaps in current approaches: relational sovereignty, reciprocal adjudication, and regional human rights. She forcefully argues that law and courts must play a vital role in forging a better human rights vision in the future.