Law Commons^™

Oil Operations In Latin America: The Future Of Private Enterprise, Ewell E. Murphy, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

We live in tumultuous times. Whether measured on a scale of millennia, of centuries, or of generations, our lifetime's segment of the graph of world history is marking giddy ascents, harrowing declines, and abrupt, unbridgeable discontinuities.

On a millennial scale we are entering the twilight of those five astounding centuries of Western leadership that began with the Renaissance. The flags of empire, long banished from the Americas, have now been struck in Asia and Africa as well, and flutter quaintly over only a dwindling handful of enclaves and outposts. Islam has awakened from her sleep of seven hundred years and …