In Bosnia, the vaunted ideal—a multivariegated state of Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats living in a tolerant civil society—has virtually been extinguished by a torrent of blood and tears. In Belgium, itself a less than two-hundred-year-old product of Catholic rebellion against Orange-Protestant Holland, the Flemish Catholics of Flanders have all but parted ways with the French Catholics of Walloonia, leaving an ethnically stressed Brussels paradoxically ensconced as capital of a “United Europe.” What is going on here, or in Somalia, Slovakia, Quebec and Kazakhstan?

There is enough freshwater in the world to meet the existing and future needs of the world’s population. Water, however, is poorly distributed: there are regions that suffer severe drought, while others are heavily flooded; regions that have ample water in winter, but not enough in summer; and regions that abound in water during certain years, but are threatened by droughts in others. Thus, the management of freshwater is largely a question of redistribution of a natural resource, given certain physical, economic, environmental and social constraints. Such management inevitably brings into play the competing priorities of different uses and users; and, since most water resources traverse political boundaries, these competing priorities often become regional conflicts between riparian states.

On March 12, 1996, President Clinton signed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996, generally known by the names of its principal sponsors as the Helms-Burton Act. The Act is a mixture of codification of existing economic sanctions previously imposed pursuant to executive orders; inducements and promises related to restoration of democracy in Cuba; threats against persons from third countries that do business with Cuba; a new, unprecedented remedy for expropriation; and restrictions on entry into the United States by persons who “traffic in confiscated property” or who are affiliated with such persons by ownership, employment or family. The President had indicated that he would veto the Helms-Burton bill if it reached his desk, and quite possibly it would never have done so, but for the events in the Florida Strait on Saturday, February 24, 1996. On that day, at about 3:15 in the afternoon, two Cessna 337 light planes flown by a Cuban-American organization based in Florida were blown up by missiles launched by MIG–23 and MIG–29 planes of the Cuban Air Force, apparently on standing orders of President Fidel Castro. President Clinton immediately condemned the attack, and by the following Wednesday, he announced that he now would sign the Helms-Burton bill, subject to one compromise to be discussed hereafter.

The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996, otherwise known as the Helms-Burton Act, became law on March 12, 1996. Title III of the legislation creates a federal cause of action, on behalf of U.S. citizens whose property was confiscated without compensation by Cuba, against those who “traffic” in that property. Several governments—notably Canada, Mexico and those of the European Union, whose corporate citizens are the principal “traffickers”—have denounced the legislation as an exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction that violates customary international law. These governments apparently see nothing wrong with permitting—even encouraging—their nationals to use and profit from property that rightfully belongs to others. The United States not only commands the moral high ground on this issue; it also has the better of the legal argument.