The 1980s have become and are likely to remain a new “time of troubles” for the Soviet Union. Principal among these troubles is a faltering economy. The average rate of annual growth for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981-86) is likely to be just over 2 per cent, half the rate achieved a decade ago; and die productivity of both labor and capital in industry during the first three years of the present Plan actually declined. Although investment in machinery production has increased by more than 20 per cent—a key element of a strategy designed to accelerate the modernization of an aged industrial plant—the growth in production of new machinery remains at a postwar low. Increased investment in agriculture has also produced disappointing results, and food shortages in cities are likely to recur in '85. The Soviet leadership must be equally troubled by the fact that, despite rising consumer expectations, growth in per capita consumption during the first three years of the present Plan has averaged a mere 1 per cent—a sharp contrast to the 4-5 per cent realized during the 1970s.

Little noticed by the press. United States trade policy is undergoing significant changes aimed at promoting the rights of workers in foreign countries—changes achieved through the use of both a carrot and a stick. The carrot, now being offered to the less-developed world, is dutyfree access to the U.S. market for qualifying products exported by countries that meet certain new criteria on bbor. The stick is a ban on imports made by forced labor— something the Reagan administration is under increasing pressure to invoke against the Soviet Union. While it is too early to gauge the success of such attempts at exercising economic leverage, they may yet become a milestone in the march of human rights.

Prodded by flickering images on the evening news—images of human wastage and suffering on a scale difficult to conceive—the world's attention has finally been drawn to the tragic famine that has been plaguing Africa for the past two years. Meanwhile, another disaster is brewing in Africa, one the world may fail to recognize until it is too late to remedy. Unnoticed because of the more compelling nature of famine, and also because most of the world has had its own problems with recession and sluggish economic growth, Africa's economy has been deteriorating at an alarming rate for most of the last ten years.

At a time when countries in the Southern Cone of Latin America are returning to constitutional democracy (Argentina in 1983, Uruguay in 1984, and gradually Brazil, where indirect presidential elections are scheduled for January 15), the trend is being reversed in Chile. After eighteen months of protests by trade unions and opposition parties, Chile's military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, has imposed a state of siege, exiled hundreds of Chileans to remote areas of the country, heavily censored the press and radio, conducted police roundups and security checks of lower-class areas of Santiago, and, to repress a protest demonstration, called out the Army at the end of November. His interior minister has also taken action against a leading churchman, incurring the wrath of the newly appointed moderate archbishop of Santiago, Juan Francisco Fresno.