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2. No Exceptions: The Decision to Open All Military Positions to Women
- Author:
- Ash Carter
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- As Secretary of Defense, I devoted a large amount of my time to visiting our troops at bases around the world. These were my favorite trips because they gave me the opportunity to spend time with the most important, dynamic, and inspiring part of the United States Armed Forces: our people In June 2016, I visited Fort Knox on one of these trips, where I met with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets and observed their training. These were college students training to be commissioned officers. Meeting with them, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride. Any American who had the chance to look these young women and men in the eye would be proud to observe how dedicated, disciplined, talented, and principled they are. And to know what they are doing for all Americans—to protect us and make a better world for our children—makes you even prouder.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Governance of Highly Decentralized Nonstate Actors: the Case of Solar Geoengineering
- Author:
- Jesse Reynolds and Gernot Wagner
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- New technologies, such as social media and do-it-yourself biotechnology, alter the capacities and incentives of both state and nonstate actors. This can include enabling direct decentralized interventions, in turn altering actors’ power relations. The provision of global public goods, widely regarded as states’ domain, so far has eluded such powerful technological disruptions. We here introduce the idea of highly decentralized solar geoengineering, plausibly done in form of small high-altitude balloons. While solar geoengineering has the potential to greatly reduce climate change, it has generally been conceived as centralized and state deployed. Potential highly decentralized deployment moves the activity from the already contested arena of state action to that of environmentally motivated nongovernmental organizations and individuals, which could disrupt international relations and pose novel challenges for technology and environmental policy. We explore its feasibility, political implications, and governance.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. U.S. Policy Responses to Zimbabwe’s Illusory Reforms
- Author:
- Todd Moss
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- After nearly thirty years of working on and in Zimbabwe, I was hopeful, after the long nightmare of misrule by Robert Mugabe, that the July 2018 election was an opportunity to put the country on a positive track. I had the good fortune of visiting Zimbabwe with a delegation of former US diplomats prior to the election to assess conditions. I came away from that trip deeply pessimistic about the prospects for a free, fair, and credible election, unconvinced that economic reforms were real, and skeptical of the intentions of Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling ZANU-PF. It all appeared little more than a poorly-disguised charade.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. A Tool to Implement the Global Compact for Migration: Ten Key Steps for Building Global Skill Partnerships
- Author:
- Michael Clemens and Kate Gough
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The world needs better ways to manage international migration for this century. Those better ways finally have a roadmap: the Global Compact for Migration. Now begins the journey. National governments must lead in order to implement that Compact, and they need tools. One promising tool is Global Skill Partnerships. This brief explains what Global Skill Partnerships are and how to build them, based on related experiences around the world.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. Stories of Change better Business By Preventing Corruption
- Author:
- Transparency International
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Transparency International
- Abstract:
- Companies increasingly recognise that integrity is good for business. Yet bribery and corruption persist. Large-scale corporate scandals show that much remains to be done to tackle corruption in the business sector. Based on four case studies, this paper shows how Transparency International
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. Inside the ADF Rebellion A Glimpse into the Life and Operations of a Secretive Jihadi Armed Group
- Author:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Beni territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered from some of the most brutal violence in the country’s recent history. However, the massacres around Beni, which began in October 2014 and have killed more than 1,000 people, have been shrouded in mystery. No group has officially claimed responsibility for the killings; research by Congo Research Group (CRG) and the UN Group of Experts suggests that many actors, including the Congolese government, have been involved.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
8. The Western Balkans at the End of the the 2010s – Beyond the Security Dilemma?
- Author:
- Mira Kaneva
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
- Abstract:
- Christopher Nolan’s film Inception creates a mesmerizing maze where each action of the protagonists has a ripple effect down through the whole fabric of the story. Making one’s way through the maze, though only in one’s own imagination, leaves the viewer disoriented. The film is all about process, about fighting one’s way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. There is no time or place synchronization; architecture has a way of disregarding gravity where buildings tilt, streets coil and characters are adrift in what is more an emotional than a rational ‘ball of thread’ of experience. In a similar fashion, a complex network of events envelops the Western Balkans since the neologism’s ambiguous inception in the early 1990-s. For nearly three decades the region has been misperceived as stuck-in-the mud, criticized for being entangled in a desynchronized microcosm, involved in a set of flashbacks to archetypal conflicts on identity grounds and doomed to stagnated Europeanization. Both material facts such as cost-benefit calculations and ideational categories such as perceptions, beliefs, values, narratives are at play here. Almost like a Wiki-article, this paper attempts a disambiguation of several key assumptions about the Western Balkans so that it advances the argument that the Western Balkans region is inevitably on its way out of the shoals not least due to the European and Atlantic perspective for its future as offered by the European Union and NATO. It tackles three highly contentious statements: first, it refutes the proposition that the Western Balkans are entrapped in a specific ethnic security dilemma that offers no exit; second, it contends that at the moment the region is caught in a vicious circle of hard security threats (territorial conflicts) and soft security threats (radicalization, populism, corruption and organized crime); third, it holds a moderate optimistic view that the region is likely to be involved in a process of socialization within a vaster security community. The course of reasoning follows the case study of Serbia’s political and social development in the last decade; the theoretical framework is influenced by the security dilemma debate in International Relations literature.
- Topic:
- Security and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Balkans and Global Focus
9. Low-Cost Access to Space: Military Opportunities and Challenges
- Author:
- Philip Stockdale, Scott Aughenbaugh, and Nickolas J. Boensch
- Publication Date:
- 02-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Abstract:
- In support of the Air University “Fast Space” study, the National Defense University collaborated with Johns Hopkins University, eight think tanks, and subject matter experts to analyze the utility of ultra-low-cost access to space (ULCATS) for the U.S. military. Contributors identified disruptors that could achieve ULCATS and Fast Space as well as space architectures and capabilities that could reduce the cost of access to space. They also offered recommendations for legal, policy, regulatory, authority, and oversight adjustments that could facilitate reductions. The combination of a greater number of innovative commercial space actors, industry advocacy for licensing reform, and optimism regarding reusable launch vehicles will eventually change the ways the United States operates in space. As the economic landscape of space activities evolves, some missions in low earth orbit may be turned over to commercial sector operation, but the next 3 to 5 years might not be revolutionary for government use of space capabilities.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. Closing Sweden’s Military Security Defi cit: the National Debate on NATO Membership
- Author:
- Ian Anthony and Carrie Weintraub
- Publication Date:
- 03-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Th e National Security Strategy published by the Swedish government in January 2017 underlines that the security challenges facing the country are complex and subject to rapid change. One current challenge is the re-emergence of traditional forms of power politics, including in the Baltic Sea region, which is described as one of the main areas of friction between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).2
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
11. Russian Forward Military Basing in Armenia and Moscow’s Infl uence in the South Caucasus
- Author:
- Can Kasapoglu
- Publication Date:
- 11-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- In military history, bastions were defensive strongholds, mostly with a pentagonal outline, which off ered perfect combat emplacements for crossfi re. Th ereby, they off ered excellent advantages to defenders and enabled counter-balancing capabilities against besiegers’ artilleries. Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a famous French military engineer, Marshal of France (mid-17th to early 18th centuries), and a master of the bastion system along with other fortifi cations, even designed ‘bastioned towers’ to protect main walls by fl anking enemy fi re.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
12. The Western Balkans and the Revenge of History
- Author:
- Ian Hope
- Publication Date:
- 11-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Th e Warsaw Summit affi rmed Alliance interest in and commitment to many geographic regions and nations, without stating priorities. Th e Western Balkans drew attention, with Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro receiving specifi c mention in the Summit Communiqué.2 However, the Summit promoted a continuance of current NATO activity in this region, not a shift or amelioration. Implicit in this is that the status quo, a small NATO force in Kosovo to enhance security and several liaison offi ces to monitor partnership activity and the application of the Membership Action Plan in the other Western Balkans states, is suffi cient. Th is paper will argue that such eff orts are too small and disjointed to meet the growing challenges in the region, especially given NATO’s obligation to confl ict prevention in the wake of its signifi cant and successful interventions there in 1996 and 1999.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
13. NATO in the Black Sea: What to Expect Next?
- Author:
- Zviad Adzinbaia
- Publication Date:
- 11-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Black Sea security directly impacts the economic development, peace and stability of the Euro-Atlantic theater. NATO and the EU, as well as their members and partners, have immense interests in ensuring a secure and prosperous environment in the Black Sea, advancing trade relations through the East-West corridor, and further promoting the notion of a Europe “whole, free and at peace.”
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
14. Trust (in) NATO Th e future of intelligence sharing within the Alliance
- Author:
- Jan Ballast
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- On 21 October 2016, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) appointed its fi rst Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security (ASG-I&S), Dr. Arndt Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven.2 His appointment was the result of a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) on 8-9 July 2016 in Warsaw, where the Heads of State and Government stated the requirement to strengthen intelligence within NATO.3 In doing so, the Alliance underlined that improved cooperation on intelligence would increase early warning, force protection and general resilience.4
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
15. The Evolution of the Hybrid Threat, and Resilience as a Countermeasure
- Author:
- Uwe Hartmann
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- The year 2014 marks a strategic ‘inflection point’ in world history. To make sense of the new security challenges, NATO offi cials and member states’ governments have used the term ‘hybrid warfare,’2 although some scholars have criticized it as a buzzword lacking a clear defi nition. However, since hybrid warfare is rather more about exploiting the vulnerabilities of statecraft than about destroying armed forces, states have slightly diff erent understandings of it consistent with their own specifi c security challenges. Consequently, for scientifi c research, as well as for security organizations such as NATO, finding a common definition is not easy and probably not useful.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
16. Winning Peace and Exporting Stability: Colombia as NATO’s next Global Partner?
- Author:
- Robert Helbig and Guillaume Lasconjarias
- Publication Date:
- 05-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Is Colombia going to be NATO’s next global partner? In June 2013, the question was alreaady worthy of attention, when Colombia and NATO entered into an “Agreement on the Security of Information” that was signed between then-NATO Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Alexander Vershbow and Colombia’s Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón. While the deal encompassed not much more than sharing intelligence in areas of common concern, the agreement surely was “a fi rst step for future cooperation in the security fi eld” and Ambassador Vershbow remarked that “Colombia’s expertise in enhancing integrity in the military is precisely the kind of substantive contribution that exemplifi es the added value of cooperation.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
17. The future of NATO and R2P Ten lessons in norm formation
- Author:
- Brooke Smith-Windsor
- Publication Date:
- 03-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- To this day, a visit to NATO’s offi cial website paints a glowing account of its 2011 military intervention in Libya under United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973:2 Following the Gaddafi regime’s targeting of civilians in February 2011, NATO answered the United Nation’s (UN) call to the international community to protect the Libyan people … a coalition of NATO Allies and partners began enforcing an arms embargo, maintaining a no-fl y zone and protecting civilians and civilian populated areas from attack or the threat of attack under Operation Unifi ed Protector (OUP). OUP successfully concluded on 31 October 2011.3 While immediate operational goals may have been achieved, and urgent threats to lives in Benghazi and elsewhere averted, more than half a decade hence the post-intervention legacy is far from rosy. What followed the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in October 2011 is a Libya and neighbourhood still rife with instability and violence facing the spectre of widespread civil strife and even collapse
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
18. The Long March: Contentious Mobilization and Deep Democracy
- Author:
- Mohammad Ali Kadivar, Adaner Usmani, and Benjamin Bradlow
- Publication Date:
- 07-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem)
- Abstract:
- Over the last several decades, dozens of authoritarian regimes have fallen and been replaced by formal democracies. These new democracies are not all of identical quality -- some have made substantially greater progress than others towards deepening democratic institutions. We make use of a new dataset which identifies five distinct dimensions of democratization in order to study this variation. We argue that prolonged unarmed contentious mobilization prior to transition drives democratic progress in each of these five dimensions. Mobilization matters because it generates a new, democratically-oriented political elite and because it furnishes non-elites with the capacity for autonomous collective action. In panel regressions spanning the 1950 to 2010 period and using original data, we show that the duration of antecedent anti-authoritarian mobilization is a significant and consistent predictor of subsequent democratic deepening. To illustrate the mechanisms, we present a historical analysis of democratic transition in Brazil. This case study shows how both formal political actors and non-elite collective actors, emboldened by prolonged mobilization, drove deepening of democracy post-transition.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
19. Linking Heterogeneous Climate Policies (Consistent with the Paris Agreement)
- Author:
- Michael A Mehling, Gilbert E. Metcalf, and Robert Stavins
- Publication Date:
- 10-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The Paris Agreement has achieved one of two key necessary conditions for ultimate success—a broad base of participation among the countries of the world. But another key necessary condition has yet to be achieved—adequate collective ambition of the individual nationally determined contributions. How can climate negotiators provide a structure that will include incentives to increase ambition over time? An important part of the answer can be international linkage of regional, national, and sub-national policies—that is, formal recognition of emission reductions undertaken in another jurisdiction for the purpose of meeting a Party’s own mitigation objectives. A central challenge is how to facilitate such linkage in the context of the very great heterogeneity that characterizes climate policies along five dimensions: type of policy instrument; level of government jurisdiction; status of that jurisdiction under the Paris Agreement; nature of the policy instrument’s target; and the nature, along several dimensions, of each Party’s Nationally Determined Contribution. We consider such heterogeneity among policies, and identify which linkages of various combinations of characteristics are feasible; of these, which are most promising; and what accounting mechanisms would make the operation of respective linkages consistent with the Paris Agreement.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
20. Does Citizenship Abate Class? Evidence and Reflections from Bangalore, India
- Author:
- Ebony Bertorelli, Patrick Heller, Siddharth Swaminathan, and Ashutosh Varshney
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- Drawing on data from a large household survey in Bangalore, this paper explores the quality of urban citizenship. Addressing theories that have tied the depth of democracy to the quality and effectiveness of citizenship, we develop an index of citizenship that includes various measures and then explore the extent to which citizenship determines the quality of services and infrastructure that households enjoy. Our findings show that citizenship and access to services in Bangalore are highly differentiated, that much of what drives these differences has to do with class, but we also find clear evidence that the urban poor are somewhat better in terms of the services they receive that they would be without citizenship. Citizenship, in other words, abates the effects of class.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
21. When Courts Plan: The Greening of Delhi's Autorickshaws
- Author:
- Atul Pokharel
- Publication Date:
- 08-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- Implementing municipal-scale policies is challenging in megacities. Despite this, between 1986 and 2006, Delhi converted its entire public transportation network of nearly 100,000 vehicles to use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) instead of diesel and petrol. The use of CNG is widely assumed to have been ordered by the Supreme Court of India. But this overlooks how autorickshaws, privately owned and making up three-fourths of these vehicles, came to use CNG even though the court did not order it. Using two new sources of data, I show that the conversion of autos was jointly led by the largest private manufacturer together with the city government. The court facilitated coordination between several other actors, allowed them to experiment, and monitored progress over two decades leading up to the auto conversion. After capping the total number of autos, it ultimately refrained from passing judgment on two consequential aspects of greening them: vehicle ownership and fuel type. As a result, auto owners were buffeted by decades of incremental policy experimentation. Eventually, these experiments reconfigured auto ownership as some sold their operating permits to become renters, while state institutions remained indifferent to this shadow conversion underfoot.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
22. Cabal City: Regime Theory and Indian Urbanization
- Author:
- Patrick Heller
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- This paper explores the interaction of politics and business through the lens of the city. The power of business to influence politics in India would lead to a prediction that Indian cities are, in the classic sense of the term, growth machines. Yet we argue in this paper that fundamental problems of governance in India’s megacities have precluded the possibility of business coalitions exerting cohesive influence over investments policies in cities. The result has been the predominance of what we call cabals, that are expert at extracting rents from the city, but in the end fail to promote development in the sense of an institutionalized process of economic and social improvement in the city. Where there has been high growth, it has not been accompanied by the expansion of the cities’ infrastructure and overall coordination capacities. In the end, what is good for business and politicians had neither been good for capitalism in terms of dynamic accumulation nor for inclusion of middle and poorer social groups.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
23. Flexible Governance and Perceived Fairness: Evidence from Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems in Nepal
- Author:
- Atul Pokharel
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- What is the relationship between flexible governance and fairness? I examine this question in a new longitudinal dataset of irrigation canals in Nepal that were celebrated as paradigmatic cases of successful local governance. The prevalent explanation is that users have avoided knotty collective action problems by committing to rules and mutually monitoring compliance. These rules are understood to have been iteratively crafted over decades so as to render cooperative behavior reasonable. Embedded in a local context that is assumed to be common knowledge for users but ultimately impenetrable to outsiders, it is critical that locals discursively devise the rules and uniformly enforce them. Revisiting these cases three decades later, I first illustrate a distinction between two aspects of flexible governance: flexible rules and flexible enforcement. The former refers to changing rules over time, the latter to variations in enforcement. I document the predicted flexibility of the rules in these cases. I then show that a significant number of successes are associated with flexible enforcement. Whether flexible enforcement helps or hinders sustained collective action appears to depend on how fair users perceive the rules to be. Thus, discretionary enforcement may be related to the possibilities and limits of local governance in achieving fair outcomes, and not just for merely solving collective action problems.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
24. The Political Foundations of State Effectiveness
- Author:
- et al Miguel Centeno
- Publication Date:
- 08-2015
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- Starting from the assumption that the aim of development is to increase human flourishing, this paper develops an analytical perspective on how effective states are built. Modern theories of development see the state as the key agent for delivering the most critical forms of productive investment – investment in capability expanding collective goods. Accomplishing this requires bureaucratic capacity, as earlier analyses of state effectiveness have argued, but state-society relations are equally crucial. We focus on the “Sen-Ostrom” model – deliberative mechanisms to specify goals plus engagement of communities as “co-producers” of services – as the key elements of effective state society relations. Our effort to identify institutions and strategies that might lead to the efficacious engagement of the broadest possible cross-section of the populace led us to a re-engagement with left social democracy. But, resuscitating traditional models of left social democracy is not sufficient; different contexts require new conceptualizations. Patrick Heller’s “state-civil society model” and Cheol-sung Lee’s “embedded cohesiveness/political network model” gave us tools for revising, deepening and extending the basic party-union dynamics of the traditional left social democratic model. Putting the Huber-Stephens analysis of left social democracy together with the Heller and Lee models offers a promising platform for future debate on the general political logic of state-society relations
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
25. American Views of the United Nations
- Author:
- Dina Smeltz
- Publication Date:
- 09-2014
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Chicago Council on Global Affairs
- Abstract:
- The 69th session of UN General Assembly is being held against the backdrop of international crises that include the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, ISIS military gains in Iraq and Syria, and continuing negotiations with Iran. According to the recently released 2014 Chicago Council Survey of American opinion on foreign policy, majorities are confident in the UN’s ability to carry out humanitarian efforts and peacekeeping. They are more skeptical, however, of the UN’s effectiveness when it comes to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, resolving international conflicts, and sanctioning countries that violate international law.
- Topic:
- International Relations and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
26. Bulgaria in NATO and the EU: Implications for the Regional Foreign and Security Policy of the Country
- Author:
- Plamen Pantev
- Publication Date:
- 01-2005
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
- Abstract:
- The study includes three main interrelated issues, reflecting Bulgaria’s approaches and interests in preserving and developing a particular set of partnerships in South East Europe with the purpose of continuing the trend of the region’s modernisation in the fields of economy, infrastructure, technology, society and politics: first, the balancing between the special pragmatic relations of the United States with Bulgaria, and the EU integration of the country and the region; second, reaching a higher quality of NATO and EU memberships as a vehicle of pushing ahead the processes of regional emancipation, and, third, the specific regional consequences of the country’s membership in NATO and soon – in the EU
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus