Author: / Publishing Institution: Council on Foreign Relations

101. Accepting Austerity

Author:: Cindy Williams
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: On March 1, 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense lost $37 billion overnight to sequestration. The cut marked the first wave of a series of planned cutbacks that will shrink future budgets across the federal government by about $1 trillion over nine years. The reductions had been set in motion back in 2011, when a special “super committee” established by the Budget Control Act (BCA) failed to reach a deficit-reduction agreement, triggering automatic cuts designed to punish both parties. Unlike other budget cuts, sequestration is implemented across the board, taking the same percentage bite out of every account. Except for the decision to spare the military personnel account that provides the pay for the United States' men and women in uniform, defense leaders had no choice about where to take the 2013 cuts. And so, with just seven months left in the fiscal year, sequestration abruptly erased about eight percent of the the Pentagon's budget for the year.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: United States

102. Defense on a Diet

Author:: Melvyn P. Leffler
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The United States is now in a period of austerity, and after years of huge increases, the defense budget is set to be scaled back. Even those supporting the cuts stress the need to avoid the supposedly awful consequences of past retrenchments. “We have to remember the lessons of history,” President Barack Obama said in January 2012. “We can't afford to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the past -- after World War II, after Vietnam -- when our military policy was left ill prepared for the future. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again.” Similarly, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress in October 2011, “After every major conflict -- World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union -- what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force. Whatever we do in confronting the challenges we face now on the fiscal side, we must not make that mistake.”
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States, Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Korea

103. Cyberwar and Peace

Author:: Thomas Rid
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Cyberwar Is Coming!” declared the title of a seminal 1993 article by the RAND Corporation analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, who argued that the nascent Internet would fundamentally transform warfare. The idea seemed fanciful at the time, and it took more than a decade for members of the U.S. national security establishment to catch on. But once they did, a chorus of voices resounded in the mass media, proclaiming the dawn of the era of cyberwar and warning of its terrifying potential. In February 2011, then CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Congress that “the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyberattack.” And in late 2012, Mike McConnell, who had served as director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, warned darkly that the United States could not “wait for the cyber equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Centers.”
Topic:: Security and War
Political Geography:: United States

104. Never Saw It Coming

Author:: Alan Greenspan
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: It was a call I never expected to receive. I had just returned home from playing indoor tennis on the chilly, windy Sunday afternoon of March 16, 2008. A senior official of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors was on the phone to discuss the board's recent invocation, for the first time in decades, of the obscure but explosive Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. Broadly interpreted, that section empowered the Federal Reserve to lend nearly unlimited cash to virtually anybody: in this case, the Fed planned to loan nearly $29 billion to J.P. Morgan to facilitate the bank's acquisition of the investment firm Bear Stearns, which was on the edge of bankruptcy, having run through nearly $20 billion of cash in the previous week.
Political Geography:: United States

105. Why Banking Systems Succeed -- And Fail

Author:: Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: People routinely blame politics for outcomes they don't like, often with good reason: when the dolt in the cubicle down the hall gets a promotion because he plays golf with the boss, when a powerful senator delivers pork-barrel spending to his home state, when a well-connected entrepreneur obtains millions of dollars in government subsidies to build factories that will probably never become competitive enterprises. Yet conventional wisdom holds that politics is not at fault when it comes to banking crises and that such crises instead result from unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances.
Topic:: Government and Politics

106. Bridge to Somewhere

Author:: Jose W. Fernandez
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: International development has moved beyond charity. Gone are the days when the United States would just spend its seemingly bottomless largess to help less fortunate or vanquished countries, as it did after World War II. International development has reached a new, globally competitive stage, bringing with it enormous strategic and economic implications for the United States in the years ahead.
Topic:: Development and War
Political Geography:: United States

107. The Devolution of the Seas

Author:: Alan B. Sielen
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Of all the threats looming over the planet today, one of the most alarming is the seemingly inexorable descent of the world's oceans into ecological perdition. Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago. A visitor to the oceans at the dawn of time would have found an underwater world that was mostly lifeless. Eventually, around 3.5 billion years ago, basic organisms began to emerge from the primordial ooze. This microbial soup of algae and bacteria needed little oxygen to survive. Worms, jellyfish, and toxic fireweed ruled the deep. In time, these simple organisms began to evolve into higher life forms, resulting in the wondrously rich diversity of fish, corals, whales, and other sea life one associates with the oceans today.

108. Google's Original X-Man

Author:: Sebastian Thrun
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Sebastian Thrun is one of the world's leading experts on robotics and artificial intelligence. Born in Solingen, Germany, in 1967, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Hildesheim and his graduate education at the University of Bonn. He joined the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University in 1995 and moved to Stanford University in 2003. Thrun led the team that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a driverless car competition sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department, and in 2007, he joined the staff of Google, eventually becoming the first head of Google X, the company's secretive big-think research lab. He co-founded the online-education start-up Udacity in 2012. In late August, he spoke to Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose in the Udacity offices.
Political Geography:: United States and Germany

109. The Spoils of War

Author:: Max Hastings
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: For decades, World War II suffused the hearts and minds of the American generation that experienced it as “the good war,” in which Allied virtue eventually triumphed over fascist evil. Today, Western societies are mature enough to adopt a more nuanced perspective. There remains no doubt that “our side” deserved to win; terrible consequences would have befallen the world following an Axis victory. But the Allied cause was morally compromised by the need to enlist the services of Joseph Stalin's tyranny in order to defeat the forces of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America

110. India and Ideology

Author:: Pankaj Mishra
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: According to Perry Anderson's new book, The Indian Ideology, India's democracy -- routinely celebrated as the world's largest -- is actually a sham. It is fatally compromised by its origins in an anticolonial struggle led by the “monolithically Hindu” Congress party, which Anderson holds largely responsible for the bloodiness of the partition of the British-ruled subcontinent in 1947. Anderson describes India's most famous leader, Mahatma (“Great Soul”) Gandhi, as a crank and a “stranger” to “real intellectual exchange.” Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's political disciple and India's first prime minister, was a mediocrity. And both of these upper-caste maladroits were considerably inferior to their sharpest critic, B. R. Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalits (low-caste Hindus) and the main framer of India's constitution.
Political Geography:: India

111. In Search of the Real China

Author:: John Pomfret
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on Their First Encounters With China.  Edited by Kin-Ming Liu. East Slope Publishing, 2012, 316 pp. $28.00. Over the last decade or so, historians and journalists have chipped away -- some with sledgehammers, others with mallets -- at several long-standing myths about China's past. China wasn't all darkness and pain before the communist revolution of 1949, and Western efforts to change the country, long portrayed by historians as a tragic dead end, have been far more successful than anyone could have ever dreamed -- to cite just two. The weight of these and other revelations should demand a fundamental reassessment of China's position in the world, both in the past and going forward. But don't hold your breath. China scholars and average citizens alike still cling to their own personal notions of the “authentic” China, deeply rooted in the soil of their imaginations.
Political Geography:: China

112. Border Battle

Author:: Enrique Krauze
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. By Amy S. Greenberg. Knopf, 2012, 344 pp. $30.00 (paper, $16.95). Every country sooner or later confronts the sins of its past, though rarely all at once. In recent decades, historians of the United States have revealed and explored the sins of American imperialism, recounting in detail Washington's interventions in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Yet they have largely overlooked American meddling in Mexico. Consequently, few in the United States recognize that the Mexican-American War (1846–48) was Washington's first major imperialist venture. Fewer still would understand why future U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in Mexico as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, would come to see it as the country's most “wicked war.”
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States, Washington, Middle East, Latin America, Mexico, and Southeast Asia

113. The Case for International Law

Author:: Harold Hongju Koh and Michael Doyle
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In “The War of Law” (July/August 2013), Jon Kyl, Douglas Feith, and John Fonte purport to explain the state of international law and how it “undermines democratic sovereignty.” Their portrayal, however, hardly rises above caricature. Their legal prescriptions ignore constitutional history and, if followed, would drastically weaken U.S. foreign policy. The authors may not like the contemporary practice of international law, but their own ideas are painfully antiquated, better suited to an insular nineteenth-century nation than the great power the United States has become.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, International Law, and Law
Political Geography:: United States

114. How to Copy Right

Author:: Kal Raustiala, Steven Tepp, and Chritopher Springman
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In their essay “Fake It Till You Make It” (July/August 2013), Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman urged the United States to “relax” when it comes to the flagrant disregard for intellectual property laws in China. The authors make two essential arguments: first, that the United States in its early days, like China today, was a “pirate nation,” and second, that copying drove the United States' economic growth. As China's economy develops, they say, so, too, will its “balance of interests.” Like the United States before it, China will rely less on copying and “adopt a less permissive approach” to copyright infringement -- not in response to U.S. prodding but on its own initiative.
Political Geography:: United States and China

115. A Far Cry From Failure

Author:: Michael O'Hanlon
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Stephen Biddle and Karl Eikenberry are outstanding public servants and scholars, but their respective articles on Afghanistan (“Ending the War in Afghanistan” and “The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan,” September/October 2013) convey excessively negative assessments of how the war is going and of Afghanistan's prospects. Their arguments could reinforce the current American malaise about the ongoing effort and thereby reduce the odds that the United States will continue to play a role in Afghanistan after the current NATO-led security mission there ends in December 2014. That would be regrettable; the United States should lock in and solidify its gains in Afghanistan, not cut its losses.
Topic:: NATO and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and United States

116. The Real Drone Debate

Author:: Anish Goel
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In their respective articles “Why Drones Work” and “Why Drones Fail” (July/August 2013), Daniel Byman and Audrey Kurth Cronin make arguments that are not mutually exclusive. Byman emphasizes that U.S. drone strikes have decimated al Qaeda's senior leadership; Cronin, that they have galvanized extremist recruiting and soured foreign public opinion of the United States. Both points are undoubtedly true, and to argue otherwise in either case would be to deny the basic realities of U.S. drone warfare. Both authors neglect to mention, however, that the use of drone strikes needs to be tempered by the domestic political realities in the countries where they are carried out. Only then can drone warfare achieve the benefits outlined by Byman while minimizing the drawbacks explained by Cronin.
Political Geography:: United States

117. Arctic Bungle

Author:: Mike Wenstrup
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Scott Borgerson (“The Coming Arctic Boom,” July/August 2013) is right to argue that “Alaska should invest its considerable wealth in its underdeveloped university system, finance ambitious infrastructure projects, and create policies that attract talented immigrants and encourage them to start new businesses, such as renewable energy ventures.” Unfortunately, the recently passed Alaskan Senate Bill 21 reduces the income Alaskans receive from oil produced on public lands. Alaska has already begun to run deficits, is unable to finance university investments, and, for the fourth straight year, has frozen funding for basic classroom instruction. Oil companies have high profit margins yet pay less for extracting oil in Alaska than in Norway or countless other countries. Alaskan Governor Sean Parnell is squandering an opportunity to convert oil wealth into human and physical capital. Alaska's oil resources are finite, and the state should invest the profits now in capital development and economic diversification.
Topic:: Development, Economics, and Oil
Political Geography:: Norway and Alaska

118. Banking on Growth: U.S. Support for Small and Medium Enterprises in Least-Developed Countries

Author:: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Publication Date:: 12-2013
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The United States has made economic development a central tenet of its national security policy, alongside defense and diplomacy. One of the best and most cost-effective avenues for furthering economic development is investing in locally owned businesses, and yet the United States currently has no means for effectively and efficiently doing so. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have shown great potential in spurring economies, but their owners—especially women—are often unable to acquire the skills, resources, and support necessary to grow and sustain their businesses. Promoting local programs and global initiatives that encourage investments in SMEs and women entrepreneurs in lower-income countries will strengthen growth engines, diversify economies, improve communal well-being, stabilize societies, and accelerate progress toward international development goals. All of these results are in the interest of the United States, and could be achieved more quickly with the creation of an American development bank that aims to invest in and direct technical assistance to entrepreneurs in lower-income nations—the next-generation emerging markets. This can be done by expanding on the work already under way at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Though several multilateral organizations have tackled pieces of this work, the United States has a unique role to play: investing in entrepreneurialism that creates jobs, bolsters the middle class, and spurs economic growth.
Topic:: Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Economics, Treaties and Agreements, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, and Central Asia

119. Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet

Author:: Adam Segal, John D. Negroponte, and Samuel J. Palmisano
Publication Date:: 06-2013
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Since the idea of a worldwide network was introduced in the early 1980s, the Internet has grown into a massive global system that connects over a third of the world's population, roughly 2.5 billion people. The Internet facilitates communication, commerce, trade, culture, research, and social and family connections and is now an integral part of modern life. Another 2.5 billion individuals are expected to get online by the end of this decade, mainly in the developing world, and further billions of devices and machines will be used. This enlargement to the rest of the globe could bring enormous economic, social, and political benefits to the United States and the world. New technologies could reshape approaches to disaster relief, diplomacy, conflict prevention, education, science, and cultural production.
Topic:: Security, Crime, Industrial Policy, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Communications
Political Geography:: China

120. Freeing the Global Market: How to Boost the Economy by Curbing Regulatory Distortions

Author:: Shanker A. Singham
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The U.S. economy faces major challenges competing internationally. One of the most worrisome is the growing use in China and other advanced developing countries of anticompetitive market distortions (ACMDs)—including regulatory protection that privileges specific companies—which put foreign competitors at a disadvantage. ACMDs are government actions that give certain business interests artificial competitive advantages over their rivals, be they foreign or domestic, to the detriment of consumer welfare. These market distortions are especially damaging to the industries in which the United States enjoys the greatest comparative advantages, but they are also harmful to the long-term prosperity of developing economies and cost the global economy trillions of dollars. To combat ACMDs, the conventional trade policy approach of focusing on the The U.S. economy faces major challenges competing internationally. One of the most worrisome is the growing use in China and other advanced developing countries of anticompetitive market distortions (ACMDs)—including regulatory protection that privileges specific companies—which put foreign competitors at a disadvantage.1 ACMDs are government actions that give certain business interests artificial competitive advantages over their rivals, be they foreign or domestic, to the detriment of consumer welfare. These market distortions are especially damaging to the industries in which the United States enjoys the greatest comparative advantages, but they are also harmful to the long-term prosperity of developing economies and cost the global economy trillions of dollars.
Topic:: Economics, Emerging Markets, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, China, India, and Brazil

121. The Crisis of Europe

Author:: Timothy Garton Ash
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: After World War II, Europe began a process of peaceful political unification unprecedented there and unmatched anywhere else. But the project began to go wrong in the early 1990s, when western European leaders started moving too quickly toward a flawed monetary union. Now, as Europe faces a still-unresolved debt crisis, its drive toward unification has stalled -- and unless fear or foresight gets it going again, the union could slide toward irrelevance.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Europe

122. Why the Euro Will Survive

Author:: C. Fred Bergsten
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The euro's naysayers have it all wrong. True, the continent's powerhouses have yet to agree on a clear plan to save the common currency, as each one is seeking to secure the best deal for itself. But they all also know that the collapse of the eurozone would be a political and economic disaster, so they will ultimately pay whatever price is necessary to keep it together.
Topic:: Economics

123. Germany's Unsustainable Growth

Author:: Adam Tooze
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: With the euro in crisis, Germany has come to seem like a lone island of fiscal stability in Europe. Its debt levels are modest, its government bonds are safe havens for investors around the world, and it has avoided the kinds of private credit booms and housing bubbles that have destabilized the rest of the continent. The German economy, fueled by record exports, has grown steadily, expanding by a quarter over the last decade. But beneath the glowing headlines lies a darker story: Germany's economic position is simply unsustainable. For starters, much of its trade surplus has been earned at the expense of the corresponding current account deficits of the European countries in crisis. At the same time, this outsized surplus goes hand in hand with major imbalances within Germany's domestic economy. German businesses have invested their profits abroad, helping finance foreign imports. Meanwhile, as German money has flowed out of the country, domestic investment has languished at unprecedentedly low levels. Germany, like other rich, polluting, and aging countries, faces enormous long-term challenges. Its work force is shrinking, its energy sector needs to be remade, and its public infrastructure has gone too long without improvement. For all the talk of its financial strength, Germany has so far squandered the opportunity to secure long-term economic growth by addressing these challenges through badly needed domestic investments.
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: Europe and Germany

124. Bucking Beijing

Author:: Aaron L. Friedberg
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: United States worries about China's rise, but Washington rarely considers how the world looks through Beijing's eyes. Even when U.S. officials speak sweetly and softly, their Chinese counterparts hear sugarcoated threats and focus on the big stick in the background. America should not shrink from setting out its expectations of Asia's rising superpower -- but it should do so calmly, coolly, and professionally.
Political Geography:: United States, China, America, Washington, and Asia

125. The Other Russia

Author:: Daniel Treisman and Mikhail Dmitriev
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Moscow's anti-Putin protesters have captured the world's attention. But does their message resonate outside the big cities? New research shows that although Russians in the provinces have no taste for revolution, noisy street protests, or abstract slogans, they are deeply unhappy with the current political system and may soon demand change themselves.
Political Geography:: Russia and Moscow

126. The Rise of Settler Terrorism

Author:: Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Israeli authorities in the West Bank have long worried about stopping Palestinian terrorism. Now, they need to add a new item to the agenda: stopping radical Jewish settlers who have begun attacking innocent Palestinians and Israeli soldiers alike. Jerusalem has to the stop the violence, and Washington should help.
Topic:: Terrorism
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

127. Obamacare and the Court

Author:: Barry Friedman
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Pundits predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act would make history. In fact, by upholding the individual mandate as a tax, the justices took themselves largely out of the picture, ensuring that the debate over health care will play out in the political sphere, where it belongs.
Political Geography:: United States

128. America the Undertaxed

Author:: Andrea Louise Campbell
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Compared with other developed countries, the United States has very low taxes, little income redistribution, and an extraordinarily complex tax code. If it wanted to, the government could raise taxes without crippling growth or productivity. Tax reform is ultimately a political choice, not an economic one -- a statement about what sort of society Americans want.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: United States and America

129. The Scottish Play

Author:: Charles King
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: As a referendum on Scotland's independence looms, the question of the region's place in the United Kingdom has become the most pressing issue in British politics. Its experience shows how a smart secessionist party can dismantle a functioning country, and how central governments eager to buy off regions can end up making matters worse.
Political Geography:: United Kingdom

130. Arms Away

Author:: Ethan B. Kapstein and Jonathan Caverley
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: For two decades, the United States has dominated the global arms trade, reaping a broad range of economic and geopolitical benefits in the process. But shortsighted decisions to produce expensive, cutting-edge weapons systems, rather than cheaper, more practical ones, are squandering this monopoly and letting other countries get into the market.
Topic:: Markets
Political Geography:: United States

131. Latin Lessons

Author:: Ray Suarez
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Discussions of Hispanic Americans in the media and on the campaign trail are warped by ignorance about who they really are and what they really want. A new book seeks to fill the gap with a data-rich portrait of this complex community.
Political Geography:: America

132. Government, Geography, and Growth

Author:: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: According to Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson's Why Nations Fail, economic development hinges on a country's political institutions. But their monocausal analysis ignores other important factors (such as geography) that can also affect growth.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: Europe

133. Johnson the Power Broker

Author:: H.W. Brands
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In the latest installment of his epic biography of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro reveals a man who obsessively sought power to assuage a misplaced sense of his own suffering -- but also to help those whose struggles were less abstract.
Political Geography:: United States

134. Iran and the Bomb

Author:: Colin H. Kahl and Kenneth N. Waltz
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: U.S. and Israeli officials have declared that a nuclear-armed Iran is a uniquely terrifying prospect, even an existential threat. In fact, by creating a more durable balance of military power in the Middle East, a nuclear Iran would yield.
Political Geography:: United States, Iran, and Middle East

135. Is Growth Good?

Author:: Frances Beinecke, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, John Harte, Mary Ellen Harte, and Bjørn Lomborg
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: ENVIRONMENTALISTS DO NOT OPPOSE GROWTH Frances Beinecke In 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act into law, launching one of the most successful public health and environmental programs in history. In the first decade that followed, in Los Angeles, the amount of pollution from ozone -- the main component of smog -- exceeded government health standards on 200 days each year. By 2004, that number had dropped to 28 days. In the 1970s, also as a result of polluted air, nearly 90 percent of American children had lead in their blood at levels higher than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed safe, and parents were alarmed by studies showing that lead interfered with cognitive development. Today, only two percent of children have such high levels of lead in their bodies. By controlling hazardous emissions, the Clean Air Act delivered these and many other health benefits. And it did so without curbing economic growth. The United States' GDP has risen by 207 percent since the law was passed over four decades ago. And because the law sparked innovation -- from catalytic converters, which convert toxic exhaust fumes from automobiles into less dangerous substances, to smokestack scrubbers -- pollution reductions have proved relatively inexpensive. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for every dollar the United States has spent on cutting pollution through the Clean Air Act, it has gained more than $40 in benefits.
Political Geography:: United States and America

136. Stimulus or Reform?

Author:: Menzie D. Chinn, Raghuram G. Rajan, and Karl Smith
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Since weak demand is at the heart of the recession, governments need to enact not just structural reforms but also stimulus programs, argues Menzie Chinn. Such reforms, moreover, don't always work out, writes Karl Smith. Raghuram Rajan demurs.

137. Democratic Internationalism: An American Grand Strategy for a Post-exceptionalist Era

Author:: G. John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney
Publication Date:: 11-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Over the past half-century—what is often called the “American century”—the United States enjoyed extraordinary success, growth, and influence. It was not only the pivotal “arsenal” in the defense of democracy but also the principal exemplar of democratic capitalism that held enormous appeal around the world. During this era, the United States was simultaneously locked in a geopolitical and ideological bipolar struggle with the Soviet Union and, within the free world community, acknowledged as the leader and defender of a broad community of democratic capitalist countries. Not surprisingly, therefore, the United States pursued a multifaceted grand strategy. It played the role of Cold War leader of a coalition in global great power rivalry. It was also the indispensable leader in building order and cooperation within the free world camp. At the same time, the United States often employed its immense influence to advance a universalistic program of human betterment centered on political democracy, market capitalism, free trade, human rights, national self-determination, and international law and organization.
Topic:: International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Diplomacy
Political Geography:: United States and Soviet Union

138. The Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked

Author:: Daniel W. Drezner
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The 2008 financial crisis posed the biggest challenge to the global economy since the Great Depression and provided a severe “stress test” for global economic governance. A review of economic outcomes, policy outputs, and institutional resilience reveals that these regimes performed well during the acute phase of the crisis, ensuring the continuation of an open global economy. Even though some policy outcomes have been less than optimal, international institutions and frameworks performed contrary to expectations. Simply put, the system worked.
Topic:: Economics, Globalization, International Political Economy, Markets, Global Recession, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis

139. Lessons Learned From the 2011 Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release

Author:: Blake Clayton
Publication Date:: 09-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: On June 23, 2011, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced plans to coordinate the release of emergency oil stockpiles in an attempt to offset an ongoing loss of crude oil production in Libya. In the six months prior, oil prices had jumped more than 20 percent, as political upheaval in Libya had prevented an estimated 132 million barrels of oil from reaching the market. IEA member country policymakers feared that high oil prices risked undermining a nascent global economic recovery. To combat that threat, twelve IEA member countries made roughly sixty million barrels of crude oil and refined oil products, such as diesel and gasoline, available to the market. The release, which the IEA referred to as the “Libya collective action,” lasted from July 23, 2011, until September 15, 2011. It was only the third time in its nearly thirty-year history that the IEA, which was founded after the 1973 oil crisis, has undertaken a coordinated release, though the United States has unilaterally released strategic stocks on several occasions for reasons that include raising revenue and countering rising heating oil prices.
Topic:: Climate Change, Energy Policy, International Cooperation, International Organization, Oil, and Natural Resources
Political Geography:: Libya

140. Latino Immigrant Entrepreneurs: How to Capitalize on Their Economic Potential

Author:: Alexandra Starr
Publication Date:: 07-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Latino immigrant entrepreneurs are making important contributions to the U.S. economy. They have founded highly successful companies in the frozen food, construction, financial services, and high-tech industries. Many of these companies owe their success to cultural connections with Latin American markets abroad and U.S. Latino consumers at home—markets that are set to grow rapidly in the coming years. Small-scale Latino immigrant entrepreneurs, meanwhile, have helped revitalize city commercial strips and small-town Main Streets across the country.
Topic:: Economics, Government, Markets, and Immigration
Political Geography:: Latin America

141. A Global Trust for Rule of Law

Author:: Mark P. Lagon
Publication Date:: 10-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The rule of law is critical for people to have a meaningful opportunity to thrive. Still, for billions of people around the world today, the rule of law exists on paper but not in practice. Even though a theme for the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Panel in fall 2012 is rule of law, various UN programs devoted to rule of law have not had a transformative impact. Traditional intergovernmental institutions will never offer enough to achieve systemic change. To supplement them and achieve what they alone cannot, the United States should take the lead to forge a more nimble partnership with public, private, and nonprofit sectors and establish a Global Trust for Rule of Law (“Global Trust”). Similar to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (“Global Fund”), a diverse board of donor states, philanthropists, rule of law experts, and civil society representatives would run this Global Trust. Its purpose would be to build developing nations' capacity to implement rule of law and unleash the potential of marginalized groups worldwide, promoting not only human dignity but, crucially, global economic growth.
Topic:: Development, Economics, Human Rights, International Cooperation, International Law, Non-Governmental Organization, and United Nations
Political Geography:: United States

142. ASEAN's Future and Asian Integration

Author:: Joshua Kurlantzick
Publication Date:: 11-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In a region largely bereft of regional organizations and long divided by the Cold War, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the most significant multilateral group for the past forty-five years. Since the end of the Cold War, ASEAN has grown increasingly influential. While much of the West and most emerging markets continue to suffer because of the 2008 global recession, the leading ASEAN economies have recovered and are thriving. Perhaps most important, ASEAN has helped prevent interstate conflicts in Southeast Asia, despite several brewing territorial disputes in the region.
Topic:: Cold War, Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:: United States and Asia

143. Renewed Violence in Iraq

Author:: Douglas A. Ollivant
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Iraq remains a fragile state deeply traumatized and riven by thirty years of war, sanctions, occupation, and civil strife. Although there are numerous positive signs of progress in Iraq—violence has fallen to its lowest level since 2003, its economy is growing modestly, oil production recently surpassed that of Iran, and foreign investment is beginning to restore infrastructure decayed by years of war and sanctions—the risk of acute instability and renewed conflict remains. Already, in the wake of the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011, Iraq has seen a fierce political struggle between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and many of his rivals in the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya parliamentary coalition, plus increasing tension with at least some segments of the Kurdish minority. For the positive trends to continue, Iraq will need to contain various threats to internal stability and weather regional turmoil that could worsen significantly in the coming months. The United States has a significant stake in helping Iraq overcome these challenges; Iraq is a critical state within a critical region.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Development, Oil, Fragile/Failed State, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:: United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia

144. Political Unrest in Venezuela

Author:: Patrick D. Duddy
Publication Date:: 09-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In the coming months, Venezuela could experience significant political unrest and violence that lead to the further curtailment of democracy in the country. Presidential elections are scheduled to take place on October 7, 2012. President Hugo Chavez is in the midst of a tough reelection campaign against Henrique Capriles Radonski—the young and energetic governor of the state of Miranda–– who enjoys multiparty support and appears to have a better chance of defeating the incumbent than earlier challengers.
Topic:: Political Violence, Democratization, Development, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:: Latin America and Venezuela

145. Zimbabwe: An Opportunity for Closer U.S.-South Africa Relations

Author:: John Campbell
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: As Zimbabwe moves closer to elections, the prospect for political violence, even civil war, grows. President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are wrangling over a new constitution and the timing of upcoming elections. The eighty-eight-year-old Mugabe is suffering from cancer and wants elections soon to ensure his "liberation" legacy. At the same time, Mugabe-allied military factions, flush with off-the-books cash from Marange diamonds mined in the eastern part of the country, are mobilizing to stay in power when Mugabe dies. Political murder is on the upswing and Zimbabwe is as tense and divided now as it was during the run-up to the violent 2008 elections.
Topic:: Political Violence, Corruption, Democratization, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:: Africa, United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe

146. NATO's Victory in Libya

Author:: Ivo Daalder and James Stavridis
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: NATO's operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention. The alliance responded rapidly to a deteriorating situation that threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians rebelling against an oppressive regime. It succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi. And it did so by involving partners in the region and sharing the burden among the alliance's members. NATO's involvement in Libya demonstrated that the alliance remains an essential source of stability. But to preserve that role, NATO must solidify the political cohesion and shared capabilities that made the operation in Libya possible -- particularly as its leaders prepare for the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago this May.
Topic:: NATO
Political Geography:: Europe, Libya, and Kosovo

147. Rethinking Latin America

Author:: Christopher Sabatini
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Running down the list of the U.S. State Department's Latin America policy objectives in El País in September 2010, the economist Moisés Naím noted that they focused almost exclusively on domestic concerns: building democratic institutions, promoting local social and economic opportunity, and so forth. These issues were not only given a higher priority in policy toward Latin America than they were for other regions, but they were also issues largely beyond Washington's ability to control. Naím was correct, but the point can be taken further. The focus on politics within Latin American states rather than on relations between them is characteristic not simply of the State Department but also of the Latin American regional studies community in the United States more generally, from where the U.S. policy and advocacy community absorbs much of its personnel and intellectual orientation. Such attitudes have harmed U.S. policy by focusing excessive attention on small countries with little geostrategic influence and fostering the facile notion that political and economic liberalization are the necessary and sufficient criteria for the advancement of all major U.S. interests. This approach has distorted Washington's calculations of regional politics and hampered its ability to counter outside influences and deal sensibly with rising regional powers. U.S. scholars and policymakers need a reminder that development does not mean the end of politics and that twenty-first-century Latin America has its own, autonomous power dynamics. A little realism would go a long way. THAT '80S SHOW When it comes to Latin America, for decades U.S. universities and regional studies centers have focused almost exclusively on matters of comparative politics and political and economic development. In the 1970s and 1980s, the last time scholars paid much attention to the region's international relations, their chief concern was the workings and implications of U.S. hegemony. The issue facing both scholars and policymakers today, however, is what happens as U.S. power declines and new forces in the region emerge, and unfortunately, when it comes to these questions, there is little intellectual capital on which to draw.
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: United States and Latin America

148. Chinese Computer Games

Author:: Adam Segal
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In March 2011, the U.S. computer security company RSA announced that hackers had gained access to security tokens it produces that let millions of government and private-sector employees, including those of defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, connect remotely to their office computers. Just five months later, the antivirus software company McAfee issued a report claiming that a group of hackers had broken into the networks of 71 governments, companies, and international organizations. These attacks and the many others like them have robbed companies and governments of priceless intellectual property and crucial military secrets. And although officials have until recently been reluctant to name the culprit, most experts agree that the majority of the attacks originated in China. In response, analysts and policymakers have suggested that Washington and Beijing work toward some form of détente, a broad-based agreement about how countries should behave in cyberspace that might eventually turn into a more formal code of conduct. Proponents argue that the two sides' long-term interests are aligned, that one day China will be as dependent on digital infrastructure for economic and military power as the United States is today. As Major General Jonathan Shaw, the head of the British military's Defence Cyber Operations Group, has said, China's “dependence on cyber is increasing, the amount of cybercrime taking place inside that society is huge, and the impact on their economic growth and their internal stability is also going to be huge. . . . There's more common ground than people might suggest.”
Political Geography:: United States, China, Washington, and Beijing

149. The Case for Space

Author:: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama articulated his vision for the future of American space exploration, which included an eventual manned mission to Mars. Such an endeavor would surely cost hundreds of billions of dollars -- maybe even $1 trillion. Whatever the amount, it would be an expensive undertaking. In the past, only three motivations have led societies to spend that kind of capital on ambitious, speculative projects: the celebration of a divine or royal power, the search for profit, and war. Examples of praising power at great expense include the pyramids in Egypt, the vast terra-cotta army buried along with the first emperor of China, and the Taj Mahal in India. Seeking riches in the New World, the monarchs of Iberia funded the great voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. And military incentives spurred the building of the Great Wall of China, which helped keep the Mongols at bay, and the Manhattan Project, whose scientists conceived, designed, and built the first atomic bomb.
Political Geography:: China, America, India, and Egypt

150. God and Caesar in America

Author:: David Campbell and Robert Putnam
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: A Feb. 29 update to the print story from the March/April issue: In the wake of the Great Recession it would seem natural that the 2012 election would be fought over economic issues. Yet so far in the Republican primaries, we have seen social issues, and religion especially, move to the forefront. Rick Santorum is only the latest in a series of Republicans who have infused their campaigns with talk about God. Even Mitt Romney, a Mormon who has generally tried to avoid discussing religion, has recently pledged to defend "religious liberty" against the Obama administration. Increasingly, the rhetoric of the leading Republican contenders echoes the Republican fringe of twenty years ago. Then, we heard Pat Buchanan -- the quintessential protest candidate -- bombastically declare that America was in the midst of a culture war. Today, the frontrunners all play to the Republican base by describing the White House's "war on religion."
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America

151. The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations

Author:: Henry Kissinger
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: On January 19, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement at the end of Hu's visit to Washington. It proclaimed their shared commitment to a “positive, cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship.” Each party reassured the other regarding his principal concern, announcing, “The United States reiterated that it welcomes a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a greater role in world affairs. China welcomes the United States as an Asia-Pacific nation that contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in the region.” Since then, the two governments have set about implementing the stated objectives. Top American and Chinese officials have exchanged visits and institutionalized their exchanges on major strategic and economic issues. Military-to-military contacts have been restarted, opening an important channel of communication. And at the unofficial level, so-called track-two groups have explored possible evolutions of the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Yet as cooperation has increased, so has controversy. Significant groups in both countries claim that a contest for supremacy between China and the United States is inevitable and perhaps already under way. In this perspective, appeals for U.S.-Chinese cooperation appear outmoded and even naive.
Political Geography:: United States, China, America, and Washington

152. The Arab Spring at One

Author:: Fouad Ajami
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Throughout 2011, a rhythmic chant echoed across the Arab lands: "The people want to topple the regime." It skipped borders with ease, carried in newspapers and magazines, on Twitter and Facebook, on the airwaves of al Jazeera and al Arabiya. Arab nationalism had been written off, but here, in full bloom, was what certainly looked like a pan-Arab awakening. Young people in search of political freedom and economic opportunity, weary of waking up to the same tedium day after day, rose up against their sclerotic masters.
Topic:: Economics and Oil
Political Geography:: America, Europe, and Arabia

153. Why We Still Need the World Bank

Author:: Robert Zoellick
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In 2007, the World Bank was in crisis. Some saw conflicts over its leadership. Others blamed the institution itself. When the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the cornerstone of what became the World Bank Group, was founded in 1944, poor and war-torn countries had little access to private capital. Sixty years later, however, private-sector financial flows dwarfed public development assistance. “The time when middle-income countries depended on official assistance is thus past,” Jessica Einhorn, a former managing director of the World Bank wrote in these pages in 2006, “and the IBRD seems to be a dying institution.” In roundtable discussions and op-ed pages, the question was the same: Do we still need the World Bank?
Topic:: War and World Bank
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, Japan, and Europe

154. Clear and Present Safety

Author:: Michael Cohen and Micah Zenko
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Last August, the Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney performed what has become a quadrennial rite of passage in American presidential politics: he delivered a speech to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. His message was rooted in another grand American tradition: hyping foreign threats to the United States. It is “wishful thinking,” Romney declared, “that the world is becoming a safer place. The opposite is true. Consider simply the jihadists, a near-nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, an unstable Pakistan, a delusional North Korea, an assertive Russia, and an emerging global power called China. No, the world is not becoming safer.” Not long after, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta echoed Romney's statement. In a lecture last October, Panetta warned of threats arising “from terrorism to nuclear proliferation; from rogue states to cyber attacks; from revolutions in the Middle East, to economic crisis in Europe, to the rise of new powers such as China and India. All of these changes represent security, geopolitical, economic, and demographic shifts in the international order that make the world more unpredictable, more volatile and, yes, more dangerous.” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurred in a recent speech, arguing that “the number and kinds of threats we face have increased significantly.” And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reinforced the point by claiming that America resides today in a “very complex, dangerous world.”
Topic:: Terrorism
Political Geography:: United States, China, America, Middle East, and India

155. The Iraq We Left Behind

Author:: Ned Parker
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presides over a system rife with corruption and brutality, in which political leaders use security forces and militias to repress enemies and intimidate the general population. The law exists as a weapon to be wielded against rivals and to hide the misdeeds of allies. The dream of an Iraq governed by elected leaders answerable to the people is rapidly fading away.
Topic:: Government and United Nations
Political Geography:: United States, Iraq, and Washington

156. War Downsized

Author:: Carter Malkasian and J. Kael Weston
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The United States, facing deepening economic and fiscal woes at home, is preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan. More and more policymakers, congressional representatives, and members of the public are calling for the majority of U.S. forces to pull out as quickly as possible and for Washington to shift from an expensive counterinsurgency strategy, in which tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops protect the Afghan population, to a cheaper counterterrorism strategy, in which special operations forces strike at terrorist leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Afghans are left largely on their own. The counterinsurgency strategy began in earnest in 2009, when the United States raised its total number of troops in Afghanistan to nearly 100,000. This Afghan surge led to tactical success: Kandahar and Helmand were largely secured, and the number of Afghan police and army soldiers nearly doubled. But it was expensive. In 2011, the U.S. Congress authorized nearly $114 billion for the effort, roughly a fourth of the entire cost of the Afghan war since 2001. Given the current economic climate, such high annual outlays are no longer sustainable. Last June, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that 33,000 American troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2012 and that Afghan forces will take the lead in the country's security by the end of 2014. Although it remains undecided exactly how fast the withdrawal will proceed after 2012 and what sort of U.S. presence will remain after 2014, Washington is facing strong domestic pressure to bring its troops home and to focus on rebuilding the economy. At first glance, shifting to counterterrorism would seem the best way to meet this goal. A counterterrorism approach would cut costs by pulling out most U.S. ground troops. Special operations forces would remain in the larger bases, with responsibility for launching missions to kill or capture al Qaeda members, high-level Taliban figures, and leaders of the Haqqani network. What is more, the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May seemed to give this approach credibility by suggesting that knocking out al Qaeda -- the primary reason why the United States entered Afghanistan in the first place -- does not require tens of thousands of U.S. troops.
Topic:: NATO
Political Geography:: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and United States

157. The Globalization of Animal Welfare

Author:: Peter Singer and Miyun Parker
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, articulates the idea that it is wrong to exclude any member of the human species from the circle of moral concern. This enlightened vision was a tremendous advance over earlier, more restricted views about who matters morally; yet it still excludes a far larger number of beings who can both enjoy life and suffer: nonhuman animals. They, or at least those capable of feeling pain, which at a minimum includes all vertebrates, are also entitled to concern. Pain is pain, irrespective of the species of the being that experiences it. Concern for the welfare of animals is not a new idea. In the fourth century BC, the Chinese Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi said that compassion should permeate relations not only between humans but also between all sentient beings. Buddhist teachings consider caring for all sentient beings a central ethical precept. The Indian emperor Ashoka, who ruled in the third century BC, issued edicts against the unnecessary killing and mutilation of animals, including hunting for sport. He also established animal hospitals and promoted, but did not require, a vegetarian diet. In seventeenth-century Japan, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, the so-called Dog Shogun, enacted various rules protecting animals, especially dogs. The Hebrew Bible requires that the Sabbath be a day of rest for oxen, as well as for humans, and other texts command Jews to relieve the suffering of animals, even if they belong to an enemy. The Koran, too, encourages Muslims to treat animals with kindness; the Prophet Muhammad is said to have cut off the sleeve of his shirt rather than disturb a cat who was sleeping on it.
Topic:: Globalization and Human Rights

158. A Farewell to Fossil Fuels

Author:: Amory Lovins
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Nearly 90 percent of the world's economy is fueled every year by digging up and burning about four cubic miles of the rotted remains of primeval swamp goo. With extraordinary skill, the world's most powerful industries have turned that oil, gas, and coal into affordable and convenient fuels and electricity that have created wealth, helped build modern civilization, and enriched the lives of billions. Yet today, the rising costs and risks of these fossil fuels are undercutting the security and prosperity they have enabled. Each day, the United States spends about $2 billion buying oil and loses another $4 billion indirectly to the macroeconomic costs of oil dependence, the microeconomic costs of oil price volatility, and the cost of keeping military forces ready for intervention in the Persian Gulf. In all, the United States spends one-sixth of its GDP on oil, not counting any damage to foreign policy, global stability, public health, and the environment. The hidden costs are also massive for coal and are significant for natural gas, too. Even if oil and coal prices were not high, volatile, and rising, risks such as fuel insecurity and dependence, pollution-caused illnesses, energy-driven conflicts over water and food, climate change, and geopolitical tensions would make oil and coal unattractive. Weaning the United States from those fossil fuels would require two big shifts: in oil and electricity. These are distinct -- nearly half of electricity is made from coal, and almost none is made from oil -- but power plants and oil burning each account for over two-fifths of the carbon that is emitted by fossil-fuel use. In the United States, three-fourths of electricity powers buildings, three-fourths of oil fuels transportation, and the remaining oil and electricity run factories. So saving oil and electricity is chiefly about making buildings, vehicles, and factories far more efficient -- no small task.
Topic:: Environment and Oil
Political Geography:: United States

159. The Missing Middle in American Politics

Author:: Reihan Salam
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: After Lyndon Johnson's victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential election, the once-mighty Republican Party was reduced to a regional rump. The Democrats won overwhelming majorities in the House and the Senate, which they used to pass Johnson's Great Society legislation. Republicans, meanwhile, were at one another's throats, having endured the most divisive campaign in modern political history. Goldwater had managed to win the Republican presidential nomination over the impassioned opposition of moderate and progressive Republicans, who at the time may well have constituted a majority of the party's members. Moderates blamed Goldwater's right-wing views for the defection of millions of Republican voters.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: United States, China, and America

160. Poker Lessons From Richelieu

Author:: David Bell
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Armand-Jean du Plessis, better known to history as Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), spent most of his career contending for and then exercising control over a deeply divided, indebted, and dysfunctional superpower. His country's politics were vicious, and its government paralyzingly complex. In short, if he were dropped into Washington today, he might feel right at home.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: Europe and Washington

161. Freedom's Secret Recipe

Author:: Michael Mann
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Francis Fukuyama shot to fame with a 1989 essay called "The End of History?" which he expanded into a 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. His thesis was a reworking of the "end of ideology" argument propounded in the 1950s by Daniel Bell and others, with an even more emphatic twist. "What we may be witnessing," Fukuyama declared, "is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." The argument seemed hubristic, a product of the era's American triumphalism.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: America

162. Not Time to Attack Iran

Author:: Colin Kahl
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In "Time to Attack Iran" (January/February 2012), Matthew Kroenig takes a page out of the decade-old playbook used by advocates of the Iraq war. He portrays the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as both grave and imminent, arguing that the United States has little choice but to attack Iran now before it is too late. Then, after offering the caveat that "attacking Iran is hardly an attractive prospect," he goes on to portray military action as preferable to other available alternatives and concludes that the United States can manage all the associated risks. Preventive war, according to Kroenig, is "the least bad option."
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: United States, Iraq, America, and Iran

163. Cough It Up

Author:: Jack Chow, Shenglan Tang, and Enis Baris
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Yanzhong Huang (“The Sick Man of Asia,” November/December 2011) paints a troubling picture of a China that has rapidly industrialized yet lags in modernizing its health-care system. Yet in his cogent history of China's health policy, much of which centers on self-reliance, Huang puzzlingly omits China's success in winning nearly $1 billion in recent years from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. That the country's health officials have had to resort to tapping a fund ostensibly dedicated to helping the world's poorest countries speaks to their inability to persuade the government to pay for public health with its national coªers. Only when the incongruity of a financial giant getting grants at the expense of impoverished African countries was illuminated did China choose to stop taking Global Fund awards.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: Africa, China, and Asia

164. True Peace Is Hard To Find

Author:: David Harris
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: After reading the compelling case made by Yosef Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner in “The Problem Is Palestinian Rejectionism” (November/December 2011), it was quite jarring to read the companion piece, “Israel's Bunker Mentality,” by Ronald Krebs. Krebs' argument boils down to this: Israel was doing quite nicely as a liberal, secular state until 1967, when a war mysteriously descended on it, and since then an illiberal, ethnocentric nationalism has taken over and redefined the country. In the process, Krebs contends, Israel became enamored with the occupation of territories acquired during the Six-Day War, helped along by a growing ultra-Orthodox community and large-scale Russian immigration.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, Israel, and Palestine

165. Reports Of The Bear's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Author:: Mark Adomanis
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Nicholas Eberstadt (“The Dying Bear,” November/December 2011) is surely correct that a rapidly depopulating Russia would be confronted with a number of essentially irresolvable economic, military, and political problems. However, data from Russia's Federal State Statistics Service suggest that over the last decade, Russia's demographic indicators have in fact been getting better. Moreover, this improvement has intensified since the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis, confounding a number of Western experts who predicted that the downturn would have a similar eªect within Russia to that of the country's debt default in 1998, when fertility plummeted and mortality skyrocketed.
Topic:: Political Economy
Political Geography:: Russia and Ukraine

166. Debating Europe

Author:: Norman Davies
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Andrew Moravcsik's review of David Marquand's book The End of the West (“Recent Books on International Relations,” September/October 2011) characterized Marquand as both a political turncoat and a weak-kneed, inconsistent thinker who has reversed his position on European integration. These are damaging accusations, and both are manifestly untrue. Marquand has always been a pillar of the United Kingdom's democratic left; he stuck with the Social Democratic Party from start to finish, and he has never wavered in his advocacy of European integration.
Topic:: International Relations
Political Geography:: United Kingdom and Europe

167. U.S. Education Reform and National Security

Author:: Joel I. Klein, Condoleezza Rice, and Julia Levy
Publication Date:: 03-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Mission Statement. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. Founded in 1921, the Council takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. The Council carries out its mission by: Maintaining a diverse membership, including special programs to promote interest and develop expertise in the next generation of foreign policy leaders; Convening meetings at its headquarters in New York and in Washington, DC, and other cities where senior government officials, members of Congress, global leaders, and prominent thinkers come together with Council members to discuss and debate major international issues; Supporting a Studies Program that fosters independent research, enabling Council scholars to produce articles, reports, and books and hold roundtables that analyze foreign policy issues and make concrete policy recommendations; Publishing Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal of international affairs and U.S. foreign policy; Sponsoring Independent Task Forces that produce reports with both findings and policy prescriptions on the most important foreign policy topics; and Providing up-to-date information and analysis about world events and American foreign policy on its website, CFR.org.
Topic:: Economics, Education, Globalization, and National Security
Political Geography:: United States, New York, America, and Washington

168. Countering Criminal Violence in Central America

Author:: Michael Shifter
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Central America is increasingly beset by spreading criminal violence. In the northern triangle—Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala—insecurity is particularly severe and widespread. In 2010, these countries ranked among the highest homicide rates (per one hundred thousand people) in the world: Honduras with eighty-two, El Salvador with sixty- six, and Guatemala with forty-one; in comparison, the homicide rate in the United States was less than five. The toll has been considerable, tallying nearly seventeen thousand murders in the northern triangle in 2011 and showing no signs of abating. The other four Central American states have also witnessed both heightened domestic insecurity and rising rates of crime and violence.
Topic:: Political Violence, Corruption, Crime, War on Drugs, and Narcotics Trafficking
Political Geography:: Latin America and Central America

169. U.S.-Turkey Relations: A New Partnership

Author:: Stephen J. Hadley, Steven A. Cook, and Madeleine Albright
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Among the most important developments in international affairs of the past decade is the emergence of Turkey as a rising regional and global power. Turkey has long been an important country as a stalwart member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an aspirant to European Union (EU) membership, and an important link between the West and the East. Yet the changes in Turkey over the past decade have been so dramatic—with far-reaching political and economic reforms, significant social reforms, and an active foreign policy—that the country is virtually unrecognizable to longtime Turkey watchers. Today Turkey is more democratic, prosperous, and politically influential than it was five, ten, and fifteen years ago.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Political Violence, Democratization, Economics, Human Rights, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, Central Asia, Turkey, and Middle East

170. The New Global Health Agenda: Universal Health Coverage

Author:: Laurie Garrett, Yanzhong Huang, Oren Ahoobim, Daniel Altman, and Vicky Hausman
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: It might seem hard to believe, but just as the world is recovering from the most serious financial shock since World War II, governments around the world are engaging in serious discussions about how to expand health coverage.
Topic:: Development, Emerging Markets, Health, Human Welfare, and Law
Political Geography:: South Africa

171. Incentives for Life: Cash-on-Delivery Aid for Tobacco Control in Developing Countries

Author:: Amanda Glassman and Thomas J. Bollyky
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Fewer people are smoking in the United States, Europe, and most of the developing world. Excise taxes, bans on smoking in public places, and graphic health warnings are achieving such dramatic reductions in tobacco use in developed countries that a recent Citigroup Bank investment analysis speculated that smoking could virtually disappear in wealthy countries over the next thirty to fifty years.
Topic:: Health and Human Welfare
Political Geography:: United States and Europe

172. Entrepreneurship in Postconflict Zones

Author:: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Economic development is a critical component of promoting stability and U.S. security interests, particularly in conflict and postconflict zones. Reviving institutions and rebuilding an economic base are among the first priorities after fighting ends and reconstruction begins. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), negative economic shocks of just 5 percent can increase the risk of a civil war by as much as 50 percent in fragile environments. Additionally, donor assistance, which can account for 20 percent to as much as 97 percent of a country's GDP, is unsustainable in the long term. Building local business capacity and supporting homegrown entrepreneurs can help curb this risk. Research from Iraq has found that labor-generating reconstruction programs can reduce violence during insurgencies, with a 10 percent increase in labor-related spending associated with a 10 percent decrease in violence. And as Shari Berenbach, director of the Office of Microenterprise Development at USAID, argues, the development of “private enterprise is an important stabilizing force,” particularly for countries suffering from the political uncertainty and civil unrest that often characterizes the postconflict period.
Topic:: Security, Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:: United States

173. Advancing Human Rights in the UN System

Author:: Suzanne Nossel
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The 2011–2012 crisis in Syria offers a painful reminder of the international community's limited ability to prevent and halt large-scale human rights violations. As the number of casualties in the country continued to rise, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the main international body responsible for maintaining peace and security, struggled to appropriately react. For over a year and despite more than nine thousand documented deaths, the UNSC remained deadlocked, and it eventually managed to issue only weak presidential statements and, in April 2012, dispatch a small team of monitors to bolster a faltering ceasefire. During the same period, however, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) showed significant signs of revival and effectiveness. Intended to be the centerpiece of the UN's human rights machinery, the UNHRC had—since its founding in 2006—been dubbed by diplomats a “leper of the UN system.” It was known for passivity in the face of human rights crises and for the polarized dynamic between countries of the global North and South.
Topic:: Security, Political Violence, Diplomacy, Human Rights, Human Welfare, United Nations, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:: Syria

174. What It Will Take to Secure Afghanistan

Author:: Max Boot
Publication Date:: 06-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Afghanistan is approaching a major inflection point in its long and turbulent history. In 2014 most of the foreign military forces are due to pull out. With them will go the bulk of foreign financing that has accounted for almost all of the state's budget. Twenty fourteen is also the year that Afghanistan is due to hold presidential elections. Hamid Karzai, the only president the country has known since the fall of the Taliban, has said he will not seek another term in office. Thus Afghanistan is likely to have a new president to lead it into a new era. This era will be shaped by many factors, principally decisions made by Afghans themselves, but the United States has the ability to affect the outcome if it makes a sustained commitment to maintain security, improve the political process, and reduce Pakistani interference so as to build on the tenuous gains achieved by the U.S. troop surge since 2010.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, Democratization, Islam, Terrorism, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:: Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban

175. Armed Clash in the South China Sea

Author:: Bonnie S. Glaser
Publication Date:: 04-2012
Content Type:: Policy Brief
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The risk of conflict in the South China Sea is significant. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines have competing territorial and jurisdictional claims, particularly over rights to exploit the region's possibly extensive reserves of oil and gas. Freedom of navigation in the region is also a contentious issue, especially between the United States and China over the right of U.S. military vessels to operate in China's two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). These tensions are shaping—and being shaped by—rising apprehensions about the growth of China's military power and its regional intentions. China has embarked on a substantial modernization of its maritime paramilitary forces as well as naval capabilities to enforce its sovereignty and jurisdiction claims by force if necessary. At the same time, it is developing capabilities that would put U.S. forces in the region at risk in a conflict, thus potentially denying access to the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific.
Topic:: Conflict Prevention, Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Oil, Natural Resources, and Territorial Disputes
Political Geography:: United States, China, Malaysia, Israel, Taiwan, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and Brunei

176. U.S. Trade and Investment Policy

Author:: Matthew J. Slaughter, Edward Alden, Andrew H. Card, and Thomas A. Daschle
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The growth of global trade and investment has brought significant benefits to the United States and to the rest of the world. Freer trade and investment, facilitated by rules the United States led in negotiating and implementing, have alleviated poverty, raised average standards of living, and discouraged conflict.
Topic:: Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Labor Issues, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:: United States

177. Partners in Preventive Action: The United States and International Institutions

Author:: Paul B. Stares and Micah Zenko
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: With the U.S. military overstretched after a decade of continuous combat operations and Washington facing acute fiscal pressures, the strategic logic of preventive action to reduce the number of foreign crises and conflicts that could embroil the United States in burdensome new commitments has never been more compelling.
Topic:: Globalization, International Organization, International Trade and Finance, Peace Studies, and United Nations
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, Washington, and Southeast Asia

178. Managing Instability on China's Periphery

Author:: Daniel Markey, Paul B. Stares, Evan A. Feigenbaum, Scott A. Snyder, John W. Vessey, and Joshua Kurlantzick
Publication Date:: 08-2011
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: If past experience is any guide, the United States and China will find themselves embroiled in a serious crisis at some point in the future. Such crises have occurred with some regularity in recent years, and often with little or no warning. Relatively recent examples include the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996, the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the EP-3 reconnaissance plane incident in 2001, as well as several minor naval skirmishes since then. The ensuing tension has typically dissipated without major or lasting harm to U.S.-China relations. With China's rise as a global power, however, the next major crisis is likely to be freighted with greater significance for the relationship than in previous instances. Policymakers in both Washington and Beijing, not to mention their respective publics, have become more sensitive to each other's moves and intentions as the balance of power has shifted in recent years. As anxieties and uncertainties have grown, the level of mutual trust has inevitably diminished. How the two countries manage a future crisis or string of crises, therefore, could have profound and prolonged consequences for the U.S.-China relationship. Given the importance of this relationship to not only the future evolution of the Asia-Pacific region but also to the management of a host of international challenges, the stakes could not be higher.
Topic:: Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:: United States, China, Israel, and Asia

179. Will Oil Drown the Arab Spring?

Author:: Michael L. Ross
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Summary: No state with serious oil wealth has ever transformed into a democracy. Oil lets dictators buy off citizens, keep their finances secret, and spend wildly on arms. To prevent the “resource curse” from dashing the hopes of the Arab Spring, Washington should push for more transparent oil markets -- and curb its own oil addiction. MICHAEL L. ROSS is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of the forthcoming book The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations. Even before this year's Arab uprisings, the Middle East was not an undifferentiated block of authoritarianism. The citizens of countries with little or no oil, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia, generally had more freedom than those of countries with lots of it, such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. And once the tumult started, the oil-rich regimes were more effective at fending off attempts to unseat them. Indeed, the Arab Spring has seriously threatened just one oil-funded ruler -- Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi -- and only because NATO's intervention prevented the rebels' certain defeat. Worldwide, democracy has made impressive strides over the last three decades: just 30 percent of the world's governments were democratic in 1980; about 60 percent are today. Yet almost all the democratic governments that emerged during that period were in countries with little or no oil; in fact, countries that produced less than $100 per capita of oil per year (about what Ukraine and Vietnam produce) were three times as likely to democratize as countries that produced more than that. No country with more than a fraction of the per capita oil wealth of Bahrain, Iraq, or Libya has ever successfully gone from dictatorship to democracy. Scholars have called this the oil curse, arguing that oil wealth leads to authoritarianism, economic instability, corruption, and violent conflict. Skeptics claim that the correlation between oil and repression is a coincidence. As Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Haliburton, remarked at a 1996 energy conference, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments." But divine intervention did not cause repression in the Middle East: hydrocarbons did. There is no getting around the fact that countries in the region are less free because they produce and sell oil.
Topic:: NATO, Government, and Oil
Political Geography:: Iraq, Ukraine, Middle East, Kuwait, Libya, Vietnam, California, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Tunisia

180. Europe's Palestine Problem

Author:: Rory Miller
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In the middle of a stalled peace process, one of the few things Israeli and Palestinian officials agree on is that U.S. President Barack Obama deserves much of the blame for the impasse. Israeli policymakers are furious with the demand that Obama made early in his term that Israel freeze settlement construction in the West Bank and with his declaration in May that Israel's 1967 borders should serve as the starting point for peace discussions. Palestinian leaders, for their part, believe that Obama has failed to fulfill the promise he made in his June 2009 Cairo speech to back their legitimate aspirations for statehood, and they are irritated that he has not forced the Israelis to continue the settlement freeze. The recent decisions by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to strike a unity deal with Hamas and press for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood is a sign of how frustrated with Washington he has become. In the face of this impasse, a variety of international figures are now asking Europe to step in. Arab leaders such as former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa have called on Europe to take charge of the peace process. In a May meeting with EU officials, for example, King Abdullah of Jordan urged Europe "to intensify efforts with a view to removing the obstacles that impede the resumption of the peace process." The EU's current political and diplomatic leaders need no encouragement. They already seem to feel that they have both a right and a duty to help solve the conflict. Last year, then French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Miguel Ángel Moratinos, his Spanish counterpart, said in a joint statement that the EU "must play a role because it is a friend of Israel and of the Palestinian Authority [PA] and above all because its own long-term security is at stake."
Topic:: Security and United Nations
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, and Palestine

181. A New Kind of Korea

Author:: Park Geun-hye
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: On August 15, 1974, South Korea's Independence Day, I lost my mother, then the country's first lady, to an assassin acting under orders from North Korea. That day was a tragedy not only for me but also for all Koreans. Despite the unbearable pain of that event, I have wished and worked for enduring peace on the Korean Peninsula ever since. But 37 years later, the conflict on the peninsula persists. The long-simmering tensions between North and South Korea resulted in an acute crisis in November 2010. For the first time since the Korean War, North Korea shelled South Korean territory, killing soldiers and civilians on the island of Yeonpyeong. Only two weeks earlier, South Korea had become the first country outside the G-8 to chair and host a G-20 summit, welcoming world leaders to its capital, Seoul. These events starkly illustrated the dual reality of the Korean Peninsula and of East Asia more broadly. On the one hand, the Korean Peninsula remains volatile. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea, the modernization of conventional forces across the region, and nascent great-power rivalries highlight the endemic security dilemmas that plague this part of Asia. On the other hand, South Korea's extraordinary development, sometimes called the Miracle on the Han River, has, alongside China's rise, become a major driver of the global economy over the past decade. These two contrasting trends exist side by side in Asia, the information revolution, globalization, and democratization clashing with the competitive instincts of the region's major powers. To ensure that the first set of forces triumphs, policymakers in Asia and in the international community must not only take advantage of existing initiatives but also adopt a bolder and more creative approach to achieving security. Without such an effort, military brinkmanship may only increase -- with repercussions well beyond Asia. For this reason, forging trust and sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula represents one of the most urgent and crucial tasks on Asia's list of outstanding security challenges.
Topic:: Security and Globalization
Political Geography:: Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

182. Al Qaeda's Challenge

Author:: William McCants
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: On 9/11, the global jihadist movement burst into the world's consciousness, but a decade later, thanks in part to the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden, it is in crisis. With Western-backed dictators falling, al Qaeda might seem closer than ever to its goal of building Islamic states. But the revolutions have empowered the group's chief rivals instead: Islamist parliamentarians, who are willing to use ballots, not bombs.
Topic:: Cold War and Islam
Political Geography:: United States, Soviet Union, Arabia, and Egypt

183. September 11 in Retrospect

Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: It's tempting to see the 9/11 attacks as having fundamentally changed U.S. foreign policy. It's also wrong. The Bush administration may have gone over the top in responding, but its course was less novel than generally believed. A quest for primacy and military supremacy, a readiness to act proactively and unilaterally, and a focus on democracy and free markets -- all are long-standing features of U.S. policy.
Topic:: Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, China, and Middle East

184. Leaving Afghanistan to the Afghans

Author:: David M. Rodriguez
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In the summer of 2011, I visited the Afghan army's Regional Military Training Center in Helmand Province. The recruits had been there for two weeks, and they looked as strong as any group of U.S. soldiers in basic training. The Afghan drill instructors were as competent, and had the same cocky swagger, as American ones. "Sir, look at all of our volunteers," one drill sergeant proudly said to me. "They're great. We have already won. . . . We just don't know it yet." To comprehend the United States' progress in Afghanistan, it is important to understand how and where we have focused our resources and what work lies ahead. To be sure, the United States and its coalition partners still have plenty of challenges left to tackle in Afghanistan. However, there are indisputable gains everywhere we have focused our efforts. In 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops, with the help of David Petraeus, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command, worked hard to design a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign for Afghanistan that would "get the inputs right," as Petraues often said. The upshot was more resources, troops, and civilian support and better command coherence. There are now more Afghan and coalition soldiers in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces alone than there were in all of Regional Command East, the formation responsible for security in Afghanistan's 14 eastern provinces, when I commanded the latter from 2007 to 2008. As 33,000 U.S. troops begin the drawdown, returning to the United States by next summer, 352,000 Afghan soldiers and police will be in place to continue their work. There are clear signs of progress in Afghanistan, and coalition forces have regained the initiative. The strategy has worked because it sought to match the coalition's goals with available resources. It involved four major concepts. First, use a bottom-up approach founded on good governance, capable security forces, and engagement with local communities. If towns had good leaders and security providers, populations would find local solutions to their local problems, with just a little help from Kabul. Insurgents could no longer exploit popular grievances about security, justice, and a lack of basic services.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, and America

185. Afghanistan's Ethnic Puzzle

Author:: Thomas Barfield
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: In late 2001,when U.S. forces expelled the Taliban from Afghanistan, the country appeared headed for a breakup. The United States and the rest of the international community feared that Afghanistan's rival ethnic groups would use their regional power bases to pull apart any unitary state, forming in its place independent ministates or aligning with their ethnic brethren across Afghanistan's borders. At the time, such fears seemed credible: NATO troops were still dealing with the fallout from the violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The Afghans themselves, however, were less concerned about their country dividing. After all, Afghanistan has been a single state for more than 250 years. If the country were going to split, it would have done so in the 1990s, during its protracted civil war. Yet it did not. No Afghan leader of any political stripe or ethnicity endorsed secession at any time during the last century. Nor did any at the start of this one. Although Afghanistan's various ethnic factions disagreed about how the country's new government should be organized and who would wield power within it, they all proclaimed their support for a unitary state. A decade later, the anxiety of Washington and its allies has reversed itself. If in 2001 the West was afraid that the absence of a strong centralized government in Kabul would prompt Afghanistan's dissolution, by 2011 the West has come to fear that a dysfunctional centralized government could cause this same outcome. Such a turn of events was caused by several factors, perhaps most of all by many Afghans' dissatisfaction with a centralized national administrative structure that cannot cope with the country's regional diversity or with expectations for local self-rule. The government in Kabul has been further undermined by the country's fraudulent 2009 presidential election, the absence of political parties, poor security, and general corruption.
Topic:: NATO and Corruption
Political Geography:: Afghanistan and United States

186. The Inevitable Superpower

Author:: Arvind Subramanian
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Is China poised to take over from the United States as the world's leading economy? Yes, judging by its GDP, trade flows, and ability to act as a creditor to the rest of the world. In fact, China's economic dominance will be far greater and come about far sooner than most observers realize.
Topic:: Financial Crisis
Political Geography:: United States and China

187. The Middling Kingdom

Author:: Salvatore Babones
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: By any measure, China's economic growth has been unprecedented, even miraculous. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Chinese economy grew by an average of 9.6 percent per year between 1990 and 2010. At the beginning of the recent global financial crisis, many feared that the Chinese growth engine would grind to a halt. In late 2008, Chinese exports collapsed, triggering fears of political instability and popular revolt in the country. In the end, however, the global economic crisis turned out to be little more than a pothole on the road of China's economic growth. Inflationary pressures may now be building up in China, and China's property bubble may be threatening to burst, but most economists continue to predict rapid growth for the country well into the future. Although their forecasts vary widely, they seem to share the view that China's growth will be fast -- if not as fast as it has been -- and that this rate of growth will continue for decades. These predictions are at once cautious about the near future (China's performance will not be as extraordinary as it has been) and optimistic about the distant future (they see no end to China's upward trajectory). By coincidence or design, they are moderated extrapolations of current trends. For example, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel believes that China will grow at an average annual rate of eight percent until 2040, by which time it will be twice as rich as Europe (in per capita terms) and its share of global GDP will be 40 percent (compared with 14 percent for the United States and five percent for the European Union). Other economists are slightly more cautious: Uri Dadush and Bennett Stancil of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predict that China will grow by 5.6 percent per year through 2050.
Topic:: Financial Crisis
Political Geography:: China

188. Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars

Author:: Mark A.R Kleiman
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Neither intensifying the drug war nor legalizing all drugs offers much hope of reducing drug abuse in the United States or lessening violence in Mexico. The key to changing outcomes on both sides of the border is changing the incentives facing dealers and users.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States and Mexico

189. Palestine Goes to the UN

Author:: Khaled Elgindy
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), plans to call on the United Nations in September to recognize a Palestinian state and admit it as a full member of the organization. This strategy marks a dramatic shift in the Palestinians' approach to the conflict with Israel: they are not seeking to revive the moribund peace process; they are seeking to bypass it altogether. Following the collapse of direct negotiations last fall, Abbas and his Fatah-dominated leadership launched an aggressive diplomatic campaign to secure broad international recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders as a prelude to applying for formal UN membership this fall. If the Palestinian bid to get full UN membership in September is defeated in the UN Security Council -- a U.S. veto is all but assured -- the PA says it is prepared to take the matter to the General Assembly. Initially, the plan was to seek a two-thirds majority vote there to obtain a nonbinding resolution under the "Uniting for Peace" procedure, which allows the General Assembly to act when a lack of unanimity on the Security Council prevents it from fulfilling its "primary responsibility" of maintaining "international peace and security." The PA has since backed away from this option and is now planning to seek a simple majority in the General Assembly, which would allow Palestine to be recognized as a "nonmember state" of the UN, alongside Kosovo, Taiwan, and Vatican City.
Topic:: United Nations
Political Geography:: United States, Taiwan, Palestine, Kosovo, and Vatican city

190. The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood

Author:: Eric Trager
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The protesters who led Egypt's revolt last January were young, liberal, and linked-in. They were the bloggers who first proposed the demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak on Twitter; the Facebook-based activists who invited their "friends" to protest; and Wael Ghonim, the 30-year-old Google executive who, after Egypt's state security agency detained him for 12 days, rallied the crowds to hold Tahrir Square. Far from emulating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, they channeled Thomas Paine, calling for civil liberties, religious equality, and an end to Mubarak's dictatorship. Their determination, punctuated by the speed of their triumph, fueled optimism that the long-awaited Arab Spring had finally sprung -- that the Middle East would no longer be an autocratic exception in an increasingly democratic world. The political transition following their revolt, however, has dulled this optimism. The iconic youths of Tahrir Square are now deeply divided among nearly a dozen, often indistinguishable political parties, almost all of which are either too new to be known or too discredited by their cooperation with the previous regime. Concentrated within the small percentage of Internet-using, politically literate Egyptians, their numbers are surprisingly small. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood, which largely avoided the limelight during the revolt, is seizing the political momentum. The Brotherhood is Egypt's most cohesive political movement, with an unparalleled ability to mobilize its followers, who will serve it extremely well in a country still unaccustomed to voting. To understand the sources of the Brotherhood's political strength, and the reasons why it is unlikely to temper its ideology, it helps to take a close look at its organizational structure and the nature of its membership. From January through March of this year, I interviewed nearly 30 current and former Muslim Brothers in an attempt to do just that. Whereas Egypt's liberal and leftist political parties are nearly as easy to join as parties in the West, becoming a full-fledged Muslim Brother is a five- to eight-year process, during which aspiring members are closely watched for their loyalty to the cause and are indoctrinated in the Brotherhood's curriculum. This intricate system for recruitment and internal promotion produces members who are strongly committed to the organization's purpose, enabling its leaders it to mobilize its followers as they see fit.
Political Geography:: Middle East and Egypt

191. Commanding Democracy in Egypt

Author:: Jeff Martini and Julie Taylor
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Many of the iconic images from Egypt's revolution depict the Egyptian military supporting the uprising in Tahrir Square. As soldiers joined demonstrators and allowed them to scrawl "Mubarak Leave" on the sides of their tanks, the protesters became convinced that the military would protect the revolution and move Egypt toward democracy. The Egyptian army's top commanders pledged to do just that. The day after Hosni Mubarak fell, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the military body now governing the country, vowed to "ensure a peaceful transition of authority within a free and democratic system that allows an elected civilian authority to take charge of governing the country." Yet the SCAF's attempts to curtail dissent and the democratic process have fueled doubts about its true intentions. Will the military fulfill its promise to support democracy? Or will it seek to replace Mubarak's rule with its own or that of a friendly autocrat? Thus far, the evidence suggests that the SCAF does not want to continue ruling the country after Egypt's parliamentary elections this fall, nor does it want to return the country to a single-party system. But that should provide little comfort to those hoping to see Egypt become a full democracy, in which the military is subordinate to civilian rule. Above all, the generals are determined to preserve stability and protect their privileged position. They recognize that ruling the country directly threatens their position by potentially provoking instability, exposing them to public criticism, and dividing their ranks. And they want to avoid being blamed for Egypt's growing economic and social problems, such as double-digit inflation and unemployment, continued labor unrest, and a rise in crime. As a result, the SCAF is eager to hand power over to an elected government -- but only to preserve its power and perks, not out of some deep-seated belief in democracy.
Topic:: Crime
Political Geography:: Egypt

192. Tokyo's Transformation

Author:: Richard J. Samuels, Ely Ratner, and Eric Heginbotham
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, caused almost unimaginable damage and misery. In a surge of floodwater that lasted just two minutes, Japan lost nearly as many people as a proportion of its population as the United States did during the entire Vietnam War. The subsequent meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors deepened the crisis. But some see a silver lining to these dark tragedies. After 20 years of economic stagnation, the crisis could bring the Japanese together, catalyze much-needed reforms, and reverse decades of malaise. Many in the United States predict that the disaster will give a welcome boost to the U.S.-Japanese alliance. In an interview with Japan's national public television network on March 22, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed, "Our alliance, which was already strong and enduring, has become even more so." Indeed, the U.S. response to the disaster showcased its lasting commitment to Japan, as well as the unique logistical and material capabilities that the U.S. military forces stationed in the Pacific can provide. In what was dubbed Operation Tomodachi (Operation Friendship), the United States mobilized some 20,000 service members to assist with relief activities. It was the largest joint operation in the history of the alliance, and it generated widespread public support in both countries. Despite the warmth of that the moment, however, deeper trends portend a far less certain future for the U.S.-Japanese relationship. Japan is undergoing profound changes aimed at empowering the political leadership at the expense of its historically preeminent bureaucracy. But rather than bringing about a clean transfer of institutional authority, the reforms have triggered battles among politicians and between politicians and bureaucrats, creating a power vacuum and undermining the government's ability to make policy. Complicating matters further are Japan's piecemeal policymaking institutions, a hypercompetitive media environment, and an increasingly dire fiscal outlook. The result has been uncertainty and gridlock, which are affecting alliance policymaking and are unlikely to disappear in the years ahead.
Topic:: Politics
Political Geography:: United States, Japan, and Tokyo

193. Haiti's Rise From the Rubble

Author:: Paul Collier
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: After a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, outside organizations flocked to the country to help it recover. Paul Farmer's passionate account of the effort criticizes some of these groups for bypassing the Haitian government. But given how corrupt the government has proved to be, outsiders are right to be wary.
Topic:: Corruption
Political Geography:: Haiti

194. Invading Afghanistan, Then and Now

Author:: Jonah Blank
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Every invasion of Afghanistan has eventually come to naught, either because the invaders paid insufficient attention to local culture or because they sought to impose centralized control. If the United States is interested in leaving behind a better Afghanistan than the one it found, it needs to take those experiences to heart.
Topic:: Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:: Afghanistan

195. Groundhog War

Author:: Bing West
Publication Date:: 09-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Two documentaries on the Afghan war, Restrepo and Armadillo, show how a combination of overwhelming military resources and aggressive counterinsurgency ultimately leads to frustration on the battlefield.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Japan

196. The Problem Is Palestinian Rejectionism: Why the PA Must Recognize a Jewish State

Author:: Yosef Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner
Publication Date:: 11-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have failed miserably. The reason, write two senior Israeli government officials, is not disagreement over specific issues, such as settlements or Jerusalem, but something much more fundamental: the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

197. Israel's Bunker Mentality: How the Occupation Is Destroying the Nation

Author:: Ronald R. Krebs
Publication Date:: 11-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The greatest danger to Israel comes not from without -- in the form of Palestinian intransigence -- but from within. The ongoing occupation of the territories is destroying Israel's values and viability. It breeds an aggressive, intolerant ethnic nationalism and causes political gridlock, empowering an ultrareligious underclass that refuses to contribute and lives off the state.
Topic:: Politics
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

198. The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline

Author:: George Packer
Publication Date:: 11-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Like an odorless gas, economic inequality pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of its democracy. Over the past three decades, Washington has consistently favored the rich -- and the more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the rich acquire, making it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price.
Topic:: Economics and Education
Political Geography:: United States, Iraq, Washington, and Baghdad

199. The Wisdom of Retrenchment: America Must Cut Back to Move Forward

Author:: Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent
Publication Date:: 11-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: The United States can no longer afford a world-spanning foreign policy. Retrenchment -- cutting military spending, redefining foreign priorities, and shifting more of the defense burden to allies -- is the only sensible course. Luckily, that does not have to spell instability abroad. History shows that pausing to recharge national batteries can renew a dominant power's international legitimacy.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, NATO, and Cold War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Washington

200. Can Europe's Divided House Stand?

Author:: Hugo Nixon
Publication Date:: 11-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Conventional wisdom has it that the eurozone cannot have a monetary union without also having a fiscal union. Euro-enthusiasts see the single currency as the first steppingstone toward a broader economic union, which is their dream. Euroskeptics do, too, but they see that endgame as hell -- and would prefer the single currency to be dismantled. The euro crisis has, for many observers, validated these notions. Both camps argue that the eurozone countries' lopsided efforts to construct a monetary union without a fiscal counterpart explain why the union has become such a mess. Many of the enthusiasts say that the way forward is for the 17 eurozone countries to issue euro bonds, which they would all guarantee (one of several variations on the fiscal-union theme). Even the German government, which is reluctant to bail out economies weaker than its own, thinks that some sort of pooling of budgets may be needed once the current debt problems have been solved. A fiscal union would not come anytime soon, and certainly not soon enough to solve the current crisis. It would require a new treaty, and that would require unanimous approval. It is difficult to imagine how such an agreement could be reached quickly given the fierce opposition from politicians and the public in the eurozone's relatively healthy economies (led by Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands) to repeated bailouts of their weaker brethren (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). Moreover, once the crisis is solved, the enthusiasm for a fiscal union may wane. Even if Germany is still prepared to pool some budgetary functions, it will insist on imposing strict discipline on what other countries can spend and borrow. The weaker countries, meanwhile, may not wish to submit to a Teutonic straitjacket once the immediate fear of going bust has passed.
Topic:: Economics and Government
Political Geography:: Europe, Finland, Greece, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Ireland

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS