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51. The Global Fund's China Legacy

Author:
Yanzhong Huang
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (hereafter "the Global Fund" or "the Fund") is the world's main multilateral funder in global health and the largest financier of anti-AIDS, anti-tuberculosis (TB), and anti-malaria programs. Since its inception in 2002, the Global Fund has disbursed $23.2 billion to more than 140 countries; today, it accounts for 21 percent of the international funding for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, 82 percent of that for TB, and 50 per cent of that for malaria. Until recently, it awarded grants based on the need of individual countries and the quality of each proposal. As a performance-based initiative, it closely tracks the results flowing from each grant disbursement. As a value-oriented organization, it requires recipients to have transparent, accountable, and inclusive governance mechanisms. Indeed, in terms of multisectoralism and civil society participation, the Fund is considered the most progressive global health institution. But unlike many other health-related multilateral organizations, it is not an implementing agency and lacks in-country presence. Instead, as a funding mechanism, it has grant applications and project/program implementation in each country overseen by a "country coordinating mechanism" (CCM), which draws representatives from government, UN and donor agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, and people living with the diseases.
Topic:
Civil Society, Economics, Health, and Governance
Political Geography:
China and East Asia

52. Egypt's Solvency Crisis

Author:
Steven A. Cook
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Egypt is experiencing a deep economic crisis. The country's foreign currency r e serves are less than half of what they were before the January 2011 uprising, threatening Egypt's ability to pay for food and fuel. Egypt's budget deficit is 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and its overall debt, which is the result of accumulated deficits, is more than the country's economic output. In this difficult economic climate, roughly 4 5 percent of Egyptians live on less than two dollars per day. Inflation, which reached as high as 12.97 percent after the July 2013 military coup, is currently at 11.4 percent. Tourism revenue—traditionally a primary source of foreign currency along with Suez Canal tolls and remittances from Egyptians working abroad—is less than half of what it was in the last full year before the uprising. Foreign direct investment has dried up outside the energy sector. Unemployment remains high at 13.4 percent. Among the unemployed, 71 percent are between fifteen and twenty-nine years old. This economic weakness makes it politically difficult to address the problems that contribute to a potential solvency crisis because the necessary reforms will impose hardship on a population that is already experiencing economic pain.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, Regime Change, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Arabia, North Africa, and Egypt

53. Dangerous Space Incidents

Author:
Micah Zenko
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As space systems increasingly perform and support critical operations, a variety of plausible nearterm incidents in outer space could precipitate or exacerbate an international crisis. The most grave space contingencies—viewed from the perspective of U.S. interests and international stability—are likely to result from either intentional interference with space systems or the inadvertent effects of irresponsible state behavior in outer space. The threats to U.S. space assets are significant and growing, as potential adversaries continue to pursue and could soon acquire counterspace capabilities. The United States has strategic interests in preventing and mitigating dangerous space incidents, given its high reliance on satellites for a variety of national security missions and unparalleled global security commitments and responsibilities. Like other technology-driven global governance challenges, the longer the United States delays preventive and mitigating efforts, the less dominant its position will be in shaping rules of the road for space.
Topic:
Science and Technology and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and North America

54. Curtailing the Subsidy War Within the United States

Author:
Edward Alden and Rebecca Strauss
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Each year, U.S. state and local governments spend tens of billions of dollars to lure or retain business investment. The subsidies waste scarce taxpayer dollars that could better be used to strengthen public services such as education and infrastructure, or to lower overall tax burdens to create a more favorable investment climate. No state wants to dole out such subsidies, but most fear losing jobs to competing states if they refuse. States should take steps to curb subsidies, beginning with greater disclosure and cost-benefit analyses, and building up to a multistate agreement that creates strong disincentives for continuing subsidies. Existing international arrangements provide models and tools for achieving this.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Governance, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States and North America

55. North America Time for a New Focus

Author:
Shannon K. O'Neil
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
North America was once called the New World. The people, their ideas, and the resources of the continent shaped the histories of the Old World—East and West. Today, North America is home to almost five hundred million people living in three vibrant democracies. If the three North American countries deepen their integration and cooperation, they have the potential to again shape world affairs for gen-erations to come.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Energy Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and America

56. U.S. Policy to Counter Nigeria's Boko Haram

Author:
John Campbell
Publication Date:
11-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The April 2014 kidnapping of more than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram—and the lethargic response of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's government— provoked outrage. But the kidnapping is only one of many challenges Nigeria faces. The splintering of political elites, Boko Haram's revolt in the north, persistent ethnic and religious conflict in the country's Middle Belt, the deterioration of the Nigerian army, a weak federal government, unprecedented corruption, and likely divisive national elections in February 2015 with a potential resumption of an insurrection in the oil patch together test Nigeria in ways unprecedented since the 1966–70 civil war.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Islam, Terrorism, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and Nigeria

57. Limiting Armed Drone Proliferation

Author:
Micah Zenko and Sarah Kreps
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The use of unmanned aerial systems—commonly referred to as drones—over the past decade has revolutionized how the United States uses military force. As the technology has evolved from surveillance aircraft to an armed platform, drones have been used for a wide range of military missions: the United States has successfully and legitimately used armed drones to conduct hundreds of counterterrorism operations in battlefield zones, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. It has also used armed drones in non-battlefield settings, specifically in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines. Collectively, these strikes have eliminated a number of suspected terrorists and militants from Asia to Africa at no cost in terms of U.S. casualties, an advantage of drones over manned platforms that has made them attractive to many other states. However, non-battlefield strikes have drawn criticism, particularly those conducted under the assertion that they are acts of self-defense.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Asia

58. Making Sense of the "International Community"

Author:
Tod Lindberg
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Discourse on global affairs often refers to the international community. Statesmen sometimes exhort it, as in "the international community must act"; they sometimes lament its passivity, as in "the international community has done nothing"; and sometimes they speak in its name, as in "the international community condemns this outrage."
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Globalization, International Cooperation, International Organization, and Governance

59. High Stakes for Young Lives: Examining Strategies to Stop Child Marriage

Author:
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
An estimated one-third of girls around the globe become brides before the age of eighteen and one in nine do so before the age of fifteen. In recent decades, the issue of child marriage has grown in profile and priority for many policymakers. The Elders, a group of global leaders including former United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Anna n and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, have taken on the issue and opted to use their platform to speak out against the practice, as have other prominent international organizations. The UN estimated that in 2011, nearly seventy million women ages twenty to twenty-four had married before they turned eighteen. If current trends continue without pause, in the next ten years, more than 140 million girls will be married before their eighteenth birthdays. In order to design interventions that can scale to match the level of the challenge, it is critical to understand the drivers of child marriage and the factors that can curb it.
Topic:
Globalization, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States

60. Southeast Asia's Regression From Democracy and Its Implications

Author:
Joshua Kurlantzick
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Between the late 1980s and the late 2000s, many countries in Southeast Asia were viewed, by global democracy analysts and Southeast Asians themselves, as leading examples of democratization in the developing world. By the late 2000s, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore all were ranked as "free" or "partly free" by the monitoring organization Freedom House, while Cambodia and, perhaps most surprisingly, Myanmar had both taken sizable steps toward democracy as well. Yet since the late 2000s, Southeast Asia's democratization has stalled and, in some of the region's most economically and strategically important nations, gone into reverse. Over the past ten years, Thailand has undergone a rapid and severe regression from democracy and is now ruled by a junta. Malaysia's democratic institutions and culture have regressed as well, with the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition cracking down on dissent and trying to destroy what had been an emerging, and increasingly stable, two-party system. Singapore's transition toward contested politics has stalled. In Cambodia and Myanmar, hopes for dramatic democratic change have fizzled. Only the Philippines and Indonesia have stayed on track, but even in these two countries democratic consolidation is threatened by the persistence of graft, public distrust of democratic institutions, and continued meddling in politics by militaries.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Asia and Southeast Asia