After a record-setting week, the price of rice dropped 3 percent following announcements yesterday that the United States had accelerated its rice planting and that, more importantly, major rice exporters Thailand and Brazil would not impose export bans.

The news may be a drop in the bucket compared to the world-wide "silent tsunami" of inflated food prices (last month saw a 57 percent increase), but as this week's Tuesday Map shows, Thailand's decision to stay in the game was very much needed:

Three of Asia's top rice exporters shown above (China, India, and Vietnam) have already cut their rice exports this year, leaving neighboring importers high and dry. And according to the U.N. World Food Program's executive director, who spoke with FP during her recent visit to Washington, the countries who have the greatest potential for massive unrest, suffering, or starvation are "import-dependent countries, because we're seeing a strain on their capabilities to obtain enough food to meet their needs."

But the global food crisis is unfortunately not limited to import-heavy countries. The WFP estimates that more than 100 million people around the world could soon be without food. The problem has already reached great enough proportions that 33 countries have already seen hunger-driven, social unrest.  

Today, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he would chair a U.N. task force to create and carry out a response action plan. Let's just hope his efforts don't prove too little, too late.

Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili; POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Georgia, whose bid to join NATO was put on hold earlier this month thanks to Russian pressure, is now getting back at its unfriendly neighbor to the north by blocking Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization. While it's not clear how much Russia's leaders really care about the WTO, this is sure to at least annoy them.

The two countries are locked in an increasingly tense dispute over the status of Georgia's separatist regions and Russia's alleged shootdown of a Georgian spy drone. Today, Russia announced it is increasing its peacekeeping force in the Abkhazia reigion and accused Georgia of preparing an attack. Watch this space.

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Fareed Zakaria rightly notes that while everyone has been beating up on Barack Obama for proposing talks with Chávez and Ahmadinejad, John McCain has quietly espoused some genuine crackpot ideas about foreign policy. Especially wrongheaded is his idea to create a "League of Democracies," which would only antagonize Russia and China, two great powers whose cooperation the United States needs on a host of regional and global issues. (Paul Saunders ably dispatched a similar plan mooted by McCain advisor Robert Kagan and Obama advisor Ivo Daalder last August, but some bad ideas just won't die.)

Still, it's hard to get too worked up about it, since it ain't going to happen. As Reason's Matt Welch put it:

After eight years of a cranky, go-it-alone White House that won re-election in part by bashing limp-wristed Euro-weenies, the chances of another interventionist Republican winning enough good faith among grumbly allies to create a brand spanking new America-defined Club of Winners are something approaching zero.

McCain's other big idea -- excluding Russia from the G8, while formally including India and Brazil but not China -- is more plausible but equally self-defeating.

I can think of many reasons why Russia doesn't really belong in the G8. Its economy is heavily dependent on energy and its political system is trending autocratic, to name just two. Including the Russians was a stretch in the first place. On the other hand, almost everything in the chair's summary from last year's G8 summit in Heiligendamm concerned things that the West wants from Russia (and especially China): "a smooth adjustment of global imbalances," "open and more favorable investment conditions," intellectual property protection, agreement to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, greater transparency, fighting corruption, responsible behavior in Africa, and so on. Excluding them seems so self-evidently silly that I sincerely doubt McCain would go through with it were he elected.

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Due to skyrocketing rice prices, Liberians are switching to pasta and learning how to twirl spaghetti on a fork. In India, the government has restricted rice exports, and moms are choosing between eating and paying for their children's schooling. Meanwhile in the United States, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club warehouse stores are limiting the sale of 20-pound (9 kg) bags of jasmine, basmati, and long-grain white rice to four per customer.

In the developed world, food shortages might be overhyped. The head of the California Rice Commission told Reuters, "Bottom line, there is no rice shortage in the United States. We have supplies." Plus, how many Americans buy 80 pounds of rice per shopping trip? (Apparently, it's restaurant owners and small-business owners who typically buy in bulk.)

But for people in developing countries, outrageous food prices and shortages are a serious reality. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, which provides food aid to the needy, told FP in this week's Seven Questions, "This is a silent tsunami." Video, audio, and prepared remarks from her recent talk on global food insecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is also available here.

By the way, if you want to help hungry people get rice, play the Free Rice vocabulary game.

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They've been criticized for their lack of transparency. Many politicians and commentators have raised fears about their potential to "buy up" important assets outside their home countries. And now, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) -- government-controlled funds that are investing in stocks, bonds, and commodities everywhere from Australia to the United States -- are being hailed as the next great hope for Africa.

Last week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick urged such funds to invest at least 1 percent of their proceeds in Africa -- a step that would immediately raise investment in Africa by $30 billion. The International Financial Corporation, the private-sector lending arm of the Bank, is considering creating a "fund of funds" designed to encourage SWFs to invest in African businesses.

Sounds great, right? Most people seem to think SWF investment in Africa is a positive idea and a smart move both financially and politically (in terms of bolstering the image of SWFs). But Zoellick's idea could end up doing more harm than good, for two main reasons.

First, SWFs are obligated to make the best investments for the citizens of their home countries. They are not in the business of aid or charity work; nor should they be. Norwegian or Kuwaiti pensioners would have every reason to rebel if their governments' surpluses went toward either speculative investments or aid projects. (This echoes Anders Åslund's argument that if anyone should fear SWFs, it's citizens of the countries that have them.) If African governments are not even willing to invest in their own continent, why should others do so?

Second, SWFs must pursue investments that deliver a strong bottom line, but many of the best opportunities in Africa are in the natural-resource sector. China has already invested heavily in Sudanese oil -- not exactly a great way to underwrite healthy development in the country.

More broadly, there are good reasons why many private companies are unwilling to invest and set up operations in Africa. Why else would Zoellick and others be pushing SWFs to fill the equity void in the first place? Corruption, lack of security, and failure to protect property rights are just a few of the reasons countries in Africa have failed to create a positive investment climate. If SWFs step in with billions of dollars, they may well undermine efforts to promote good governance. In the long run, it is those efforts -- not easy cash from Abu Dhabi or Beijing -- that will attract private investment and generate sustainable economic development. So, although an extra $30 billion for Africa should be welcomed, SWFs may not be the best way to deliver it.

THONY BELIZAIRE/AFP/Getty Images

It's good to see that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Group of Seven are finally calling for action on the global food crisis that is stirring up political and social turmoil in some 33 countries, per the World Bank's count. Haiti's riotous food crisis has already claimed its prime minister.

With the price of cereal crops like wheat and rice soaring and countries increasingly taking their exports off the market, the situation has become explosive in recent weeks. (On the positive side, food import tariffs are being slashed in the developing world and developed countries are automatically reducing their ag subsidies as prices rise.)

But food prices have been soaring since late 2006. Where have these leaders been for the past year and a half? And what about the U.S. press, which aside from the Financial Times has offered scant high-profile coverage of a crisis that is affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world?

The good news is that if governments act quickly to provide cash transfer payments to the poor, as the Bank recommends (pdf), a great deal of suffering can still be averted. Eventually, I suspect, the high prices will come down as farmers plant more crops and oil prices return to Earth. A couple years from now, we'll probably be talking about how to deal with a global food glut. But how about a little foresight, people?

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The former prime minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, was acquitted Friday on charges of murder, torture, rape, and the cruel treatment of prisoners during his years as a commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army. At the end of the war in Kosovo, Haradinaj turned his military following into a political party but was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia just a hundred days after becoming prime minister.

On Friday, a panel of judges found Haradinaj not guilty, but on the basis of insufficient evidence. Before announcing the final verdict, the panel noted:

The Chamber encountered significant difficulties in securing the testimony of a large number of witnesses. Many cited fear as a prominent reason for not wishing to appear before the Chamber to give evidence. In this regard, the Chamber gained a strong impression that the trial was being held in an atmosphere where witnesses felt unsafe, due to a number of factors.”

And by “a number of factors,” they mean death threats, the suspicious killing of the prosecution’s lead witness (and his son and nephew), and a general sense among Kosovars that the international community is more than happy to turn a blind eye to the grimmer actions of a man it sees as a key partner in regional peace.

The Haradinaj trial and verdict point to the precarious nature of any foray into international justice. Once again it seems politics has stood in the way of justice and has done so, per usual, at the expense of those whom the court should serve: the victims.

JIM WATSON

While NATO allies publicly debate their role in Afghanistan, attendees say a secret memo is circulating around the conference that plans for the alliance's exit from the conflict. Der Spiegel reports that Germany played a major role in drafting the "master plan" for the eventual removal of 47,000 NATO troops.

The document is actually less dramatic than it seems. In the short term it "calls for soldiers to gradually focus their attention more on training Afghan police forces and to hand over responsibility for actual conflict situations 'as soon as external circumstances and Afghan capabilities allow.'"

Wasn't equipping Afghan forces to eventually handle their own security always NATO's plan in Afghanistan? How is this a major change in policy? Der Spiegel hedges that the benchmarks layed out the memo might keep a NATO presence in Afghanistan until 2015, so it's possible that the document is just a fantasy meant to assuage the skeptical German public.

While the paper avoids a specific date for withdrawal, Germany Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung is optimistic about its implementation:

According to everything I've seen and to everything that other countries have added," Jung said of the paper, "I am very hopeful that it can be achieved in the forseeable future."

Mission accomplished?

ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/Getty Images

As expected, NATO has decided not to extend an invitation to the Republic of Macedonia -- excuse me, I mean "the Former Yugoslav Constitutional Republic of Upper Northwestern Macedonia, Skopje." That's right, Greece stuck to its nationalistic guns on the name issue today, carrying out its threat to block NATO membership if Macedonia didn't agree (and it didn't) to call itself the "Republic of Upper Macedonia," the "Republic of Macedonia, Skopje," or some comparably wordy derivative.

Macedonians didn't take the rejection well. After Greece blocked accession talks, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski and his delegation walked out of the meeting. Antonio Milososki, Foreign Minister, told reporters:

We are [in Bucharest] today to announce that we are leaving the summit. We feel it necessary to be with our people today.”

Not a bad idea. Their people needed all the comforting they could get. Back at home, Macedonian stocks suffered a record blow, with the Macedonian Bourse Index losing 10.4 percent of its total value after it became clear that the country would not get an invite.

Acceptance into NATO carries great weight for these small, former communist countries. Neighboring President Bamir Topi of Albania, whose country did receive a coveted NATO invitation, proclaimed, "This is the most important decision in the history of Albanian people… With this decision we are definitely separated from Yalta," referring to the 1945 conference of the "Big Three" at which Stalin claimed Albania for the communist bloc. 

But NATO membership is more than symbolic for Macedonia, which narrowly missed a Kosovo-style ethnic war in 2001 thanks to an EU/NATO-brokered peace agreement. The country may now decide to pull out of U.N.-led name negotiations entirely, in which case Greece will repeat its power play on the EU front. If Macedonia is knocked off its current EU accession path because of a Macedonian identity issue, the state's large, pro-EU Albanian minority will not be happy. And all we need in the Balkans is one more unhappy ethnic minority.

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

President Bush's bid to win NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia turned out to be a non-starter. Member states opposed admitting the countries to a "Membership Action Plan," choosing instead to merely issue a non-binding pledge to admit them some day and review their application again in December. (Albania and Croatia did get the green light, continuing the alliance's expansion into the Balkans.) Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rozogin, was quick to declare that the review would alter nothing:

I doubt very much that in less than a year Georgia can solve its territorial problems and Ukraine can change the current proportion of NATO sympathizers," he said.

While it's easy to attack the Russians' motives, he's actually quite right. Half of Ukrainians oppose joining NATO and Georgia is still grappling with decades-old territorial conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both countries believe that NATO membership can help them resolve their internal divisions. European governments were skeptical of this approach from the beginning. Estonian President Toomas Ilves had this advice, based on his own country's experience with NATO membership:

Don't be a Marxist" he said, "and by that I mean Groucho Marx-ist". He reminded the audience of the scene where Groucho Marx walks into a bank with a gun to his head claiming that he'll take his life unless they give him all their money.

But if Georgia and Ukraine's leaders' understandable desire to join NATO makes them Marx brothers, Bush comes out looking like a stooge. It's fairly clear that the primary U.S. goals in Bucharest were gaining support for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and cajoling the Europeans into a greater commitment in Afghanistan. Why Bush would want to distract from these goals with an initiative that was bound to fail from the start is beyond me.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the first formal working session on the second day of the NATO summit at the Parliament Palace in Bucharest on April 3, 2008. NATO leaders begin negotiations in earnest over Afghanistan after the opening day of their three-day summit saw a successful French offer of more troops, but a public disagreement over the alliance's enlargement.

Creative Commons photo via Flick user oceanhug

Kiev may have greeted U.S. President George W. Bush with several thousand "Net-NATO" (No to NATO) Ukrainian protesters, but NATO member Romania offered a far scarier welcome committee: thousands and thousands of feral dogs, running rampant in its capital city.

The NATO summit convened in Bucharest today, and while Bush was calling on transatlantic leaders to strengthen military resolve in Afghanistan inside the meeting, outside, his security detail was busy protecting nearby streets from roaming canines.

Bucharest's wild dog problem is no laughing matter, nor is it new. It began in the 1980s when Romania's brutal, inept dictator Nicolae CeauÅŸescu displaced thousands of city residents in his decision to flatten almost a fifth of the center city and build the People's House (picture the Pentagon being built on top of Georgetown). Today the monstrosity -- though an ideal spot for a NATO summit -- stands surrounded by desolate blocks, the perfect terrain for wild dogs.

In 2000, Bucharest's Mayor Traian Basescu (now Romania's president) launched a massive euthanasia campaign against what was then hundreds of thousands of wild, disease-carrying dogs. But aging French actress Brigitte Bardot staged an international hissy fit, forcing the city to turn to sterilization. Bad move. Today, the city still reports 9,000 dog bites a year. In 2006, a Japanese businessman actually died after taking one to the femoral artery.

But let's just hope security can keep the dogs in check for the summit –- President Bush has enough to worry about in the coming days as is.

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Secret Service agents perform a security sweep on Ukrainian cultural performers before Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko and U.S. President George W. Bush arrive at St. Sophia's Cathedral in Kiev, April 1, 2008. 

(Hat tip: On Deadline)

Already bored with Free Rice?

This week's Tuesday Map has the solution: the NATO Map Game. Test your knowledge of flags and capitals across NATO member states. And if you find the transatlantic a bit too easy, give the NATO partner countries a go -- picking out all those tiny Balkan states is no easy task. More of a North Africa buff? Try your hand at the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue countries. And if you're really up for a challenge, you can play the whole game in French.

Ireland's decision to send Dustin the Turkey -- a crass puppet who rides around in a shopping cart -- as its representative to the Eurovision Song Contest was met with mixed reviews by audience members last month. But the Irish aren't the only ones calling this turkey "fowl." Once again, because of the Macedonia name issue, the Greeks are up in arms.

At one point in the turkey's song "Irelande Douze Pointe" ("Ireland Twelve Points," in reference to the maximum points each country can give a contestant), Dustin sings, "Eastern Europe we love you, do you like Irish stew, or goulash as it is to you?" then proceeds to list countries in Eastern Europe one by one, including Macedonia (check here for clearer audio -- the lyrics are pretty great).

Ever since Macedonia's independence in 1991, Athens has argued that the name "Macedonia" is a part of Hellenic cultural heritage and that the former Yugoslav republic expresses territorial claims on northern Greece by using it. Now, thanks to Greek paranoia, rumor has it that Dustin the Turkey will have to join the U.N. in calling the country FRY Macedonia ("The Former Yugoslav Republic of...") in his lyrics.

But the name issue gets far more serious on the security front. Macedonia hopes to be invited to join NATO at the Bucharest Summit this coming Wednesday, but an invitation requires the unanimous support of existing NATO members, including Greece. Despite months of U.N.-supervised negotiations, neither Athens nor Skopje seem capable of coming to an agreement any time soon, spelling trouble for Macedonia's NATO aspirations.

Greece may have Macedonia in a NATO bind, but come May we'll see who gets the last Eurovision laugh. With acts like this as the winning standard, it's really anyone's game.

Richard Falk (Photo: CEM TURKEL/AFP/Getty Images)

I feel about human-rights violations the way U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart felt about porn. Forget all the moral parsing and conflict resolution jargon -- you just know them when you see them.

That's why it's always puzzled me that the United Nations Human Rights Council has such trouble when it comes to calling a spade a spade. For decades, the old U.N. Human Rights Commission was the laughing stock of the international community for packing its membership with notorious human-rights abusers. When the U.N. reorganized the body as the Human Rights Council in 2006, things were supposed to change. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared, "The Council's work must mark a clean break from the past."

But that's hardly been the case. First, the Council granted seats to such human-rights abusers as Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Then it passed eight resolutions condemning Israel and spoke out against the "defamation of religion" (read: cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed unfavorably), while dropping inquiries into the worsening human-rights conditions in places such as Iran and Uzbekistan.

Now comes news that the Human Rights Council has appointed Princeton University Professor Richard Falk to a six-year term as the special investigator into Israel's actions in the Palestinian Territories. I've got nothing against appointing an investigator to keep tabs on this issue per se. But Falk? This is a guy who defended disgraced University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill as "having made major contributions" to academia after Churchill called the innocent victims of the Twin Towers "little Eichemanns," arguing that they had deserved to die on 9/11. And how, by any reasonable standard, can Falk be considered an impartial observer on Israel-Palestine? This was Falk writing in an article entitled "Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust" last June:

Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

Surely there were better candidates out there.

In an enlightening debate this week on PBS's NewsHour, AEI scholar and "surge" advocate Frederick Kagan made a curious assertion about the U.S. troop presence in Iraq:

The American presence in Iraq is not an occupation. We are there by power of the U.N. Security Council.

I say "curious" for two reasons. One, Kagan may be right in legal terms, but let's not kid ourselves here. It's an occupation, and that's how most Iraqis see it. Two, since when do AEI scholars cite the "power of the U.N. Security Council" so readily?

As for the rest of the debate, I would urge Passport readers to check it out. Both Kagan and his interlocutor, journalist Nir Rosen, have some good points to make about the success of the surge. I would note that Gen. David Petraeus is a lot more cautious than Kagan is about the political progress the Iraqi government is making. Kagan thinks there's been "remarkable political progress." But  Petraeus told the Washington Post Thursday, "[N]o one [in the U.S. or Iraqi government]... feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation."

(Hat tip: Steve Clemons)

DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP/Getty Images

Thousands of Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade again Wednesday, but not to burn embassies or protest Kosovo's status change. Instead, they gathered in memory of Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's westward-looking prime minister who was assassinated five years ago to the day.

The commemorative gathering fell on the eve of Serbian President Boris Tadic's decision to dissolve parliament and call for new elections on May 11. The decision came after Serbia's ruling democratic coalition split irreconcilably over the Kosovo issue.

Local and international experts alike agree that the May election could well determine whether Serbia eventually joins the EU and prospers or remains isolated over Kosovo. While Serbia's election may be about its future, it is also a choice between legacies of the past –- between Djindjic's hope for a European Serbia, as embodied by the pro-European party of President Tadic, and Milosevic's nationalist scheme for a Greater Serbia, a banner carried on by former PM Vojislav Kostunica in coalition with the Serbian Radical Party.

Europe is hopeful that elections will produce a Serbia that leans westward. But with Kostunica's willingness to pander to the emotional loss of Kosovo, Europe might find itself short a key Balkan player, and Serbs might find themselves, yet again, poor and alone.

RAFA RIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

Since Kosovo declared independence last week, secessionist fever has gripped disgruntled regions from Somaliland to Scotland, and possibly even Montana. With all these pseudostates pushing to get their sovereignty on, who's to say when a place actually becomes a country? No less an international legal scholar than Frank Zappa once said, "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." It's a bit more complicated than that, but Frank was right that the criteria for independence are not always clear.

If you're planning on starting a state of your own, you'll want to check out FP's new online guide, "How to Start Your Own Country in Four Easy Steps." These easy-to-follow instructions will make declaring independence, getting international recognition, and applying for U.N. membership a breeze. Whether you're a freedom fighter or just an aspiring kleptocrat, it's a must read. Just follow my simple rules and you'll be sipping your national brew on the presidential jet in no time.

Via e-mail, John McCreary comments on the Kosovo precedent:

If self determination based on ethnic homogeneity becomes the basis of nationhood, every nation in Africa is at risk of civil war. Pakistan, India, Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, China and Russia all could splinter. Latin American countries will disintegrate. Self determination always is great in speeches, but lousy in practice. This is the issue that will stop the eastward march of NATO. Vlad Putin will try to use it to destroy NATO.

It's still an open question, though, as to what kind of control over Russia's foreign policy Putin will have once he steps down as president and becomes prime minister. His protégé and successor, Dmitry Medvedev, just might turn out to have some ideas of his own.