Introduction : power versus powerlessness -- Asia : a bifurcated empowerment -- Latin America : from "backwater" of the US to an emerging Bolivarian counterforce -- Powerlessness and slavocracy -- Realism, liberalism, and the intractable case of western farm subsidies -- The improbable banana conflict of the 1990s between the US and the EU, its repercussions for weak countries, and the WTO's role in it.