Russia has proposed building a major new pipeline intended to carry gas to customers in both Turkey and the European Union. The project, dubbed Turkish Stream, is controversial for two interconnected reasons. Firstly, it is intended to help Gazprom fulfil its stated intention of terminating gas exports to Europe via Ukraine by the end of 2019. Secondly, it is far from clear that customers in the European Union would accept delivery of gas at Turkey's border with Greece in place of current deliveries to locations in Central Europe.
Securing the Middle East after an Iran nuclear deal is the next big challenge for both the region and the international community. The United States and its allies have engaged in tireless diplomacy with Iran over the past few years to produce an agreement that would limit Tehran's nuclear program for the next decade and a half. However, the hard work does not stop here; in fact, it may have just begun. To protect the deal (assuming one is finalized) and take full advantage of its potential benefits, which include the drastic reduction of the risk of nuclear weapons proliferating in the region, the United States needs a comprehensive strategy for regional security in the Middle East. A potential nuclear deal with Iran—as strategically significant as it is—is only one piece of the Middle East security puzzle
It is impossible to predict what the accelerating pace of change in technology will lead to in the next twenty years. However, one can already foresee some potential geopolitical and societal impacts building on current technological developments, such as faster computers, wider and more advanced use of 3D and 4D printing, ubiquitous robotics, enhanced mobile computing with the individual at the center, widespread use of virtual and augmented reality, and creation of new designer organisms with biological building blocks. In this report, writer and independent consultant Banning Garrett lays out how these technologies are combining to create new, disruptive breakthroughs with potentially unforeseen second- and third-order effects that will alter the way we live forever.
A national debate is heating up about the rise of China and what it means for US national interests. The assumptions guiding US policy toward China under eight presidents, from Nixon to Obama, are being called into question. Is China seeking to overturn the existing order and displace the United States in the Asia-Pacific? Shaping the Asia-Pacific Future: Strengthening the Institutional Architecture for an Open, Rules-Based Economic Order, the first report by the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security's Project on Shaping the Asia-Pacific Future, addresses these questions. The authors—Olin Wethington, former Assistant Secretary of Treasury and Nonresident Fellow at the Scowcroft Center and Robert A. Manning, a Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Center—assess financial, monetary, and trade trends in the region, and new challenges to the current order (such as China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). The report outlines a set of recommendations for US policy that can help bring about the creation of an open, rules-based, and inclusive Asia-Pacific economic structure to foster prosperity for the United States, China, and all economies of the region.
A new report by the Atlantic Council, the City of London Corporation, Standard Chartered and Thomson Reuters launched today in Hong Kong, Asia, continues the highly respected Danger of Divergence series of publications examining transatlantic cooperation and takes us a crucial step closer to understanding the impact RMB internationalization will have on the global financial system and explains how different parts of the evolving Chinese financial infrastructure interact in a changing geostrategic context.
A new Atlantic Council report launched today calls on the two Presidents to move beyond the usual working groups and outline an ambitious path forward. The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center's report, titled US-Brazil Relations: A New Beginning? How to Strengthen the Bilateral Agenda, offers five recommendations:
Support investment competiveness by implementing a double taxation agreement.
Eliminate trade barriers starting with facilitating trade in services and opening the doors to greater collaborating on clean energy and technology trade.
Prioritize collaboration on technology and innovation by incentivizing dual-use technologies and scientific cooperation.
Bolster technology cooperation and new investments in education
Define a cornerstone political agreement that serves as the bedrock of the relationship.
The European Commission's "Energy Union" Communication, published on February 25, 2015, purports to provide the European Union (EU) with a comprehensive energy strategy. The Communication aims to simultaneously push forward the climate change agenda by deploying more renewables, while improving the level of energy efficiency, launching a major infrastructure program, and completing the energy single market. All of these objectives are necessary to establish a functioning, dynamic, liquid, and modern European energy market. The danger, however, is that the European Union's key energy security risk—the supply threat from the Russian Federation and in particular the risk related to the dominant natural gas supplier, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom—is not prioritized amid the Communication's broader objectives. Currently, the significant supply risk falls upon a group of states in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and Finland.
Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US-German relationship faces new challenges. While official cooperation and interaction between Berlin and Washington continue to be robust on a wide range of issues, the German and American publics have grown less familiar with each other. Diminishing personal ties between the two peoples threaten to do lasting damage to bilateral relations and the transatlantic relationship, and younger Germans in particular are raising questions.
On May 20-21, 2015, European leaders will gather for the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga, Latvia, to discuss the future of Europe's East. Given the extreme challenges faced by the countries of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) since the last summit, in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2013, and the cooling of EU relations with several of the Eastern Partners, the upcoming meeting will surely pose tough questions for the future of the entire eastern framework.
The solutions for socioeconomic development are no longer only in the public sector. Latin America has changed dramatically over the last decade, and the private sector can play an increasingly important role in the region's progress. That's where social impact investing comes in—a way that investors can make money while doing social good.
The White House has appointed a social innovation czar and the Inter-American Development Bank is doing work every day in this expanding arena. Is social impact investing one of the keys that will finally unlock the region's intractable inequality?