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362. Blood Barrels
- Author:
- Michael L. Ross
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The world has grown much more peaceful over the past 15 years -- except for oil-rich countries. Oil wealth often wreaks havoc on a country's economy and politics, helps fund insurgents, and aggravates ethnic grievances. And with oil ever more in demand, the problems it spawns are likely to spread further.
- Topic:
- Economics
363. After Guantánamo
- Author:
- Kenneth Roth
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become a stain on the United States' reputation. Shutting it down will cause new problems. Rather than hold terrorism suspects in preventive detention, the United States should turn them over to its criminal justice system.
- Political Geography:
- United States
364. The Future of American Power
- Author:
- Fareed Zakaria
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Despite some eerie parallels between the position of the United States today and that of the British Empire a century ago, there are key differences. Britain's decline was driven by bad economics. The United States, in contrast, has the strength and dynamism to continue shaping the world -- but only if it can overcome its political dysfunction and reorient U.S. policy for a world defined by the rise of other powers.
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United States, and America
365. The Age of Nonpolarity
- Author:
- Richard N. Haass
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The United States' unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity. Power will be diffuse rather than concentrated, and the influence of nation-states will decline as that of nonstate actors increases. But this is not all bad news for the United States; Washington can still manage the transition and make the world a safer place.
- Political Geography:
- United States and Washington
366. The Price of the Surge
- Author:
- Steven Simon
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The Bush administration's new strategy in Iraq has helped reduce violence. But the surge is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state and may even have made such an outcome less likely -- by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni tribes and pitting them against the central government. The recent short-term gains have thus come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.
- Political Geography:
- Iraq
367. Beyond Darfur
- Author:
- Andrew S. Natsios
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- While the crisis in Darfur simmers, the larger problem of Sudan's survival as a state is becoming increasingly urgent. Old tensions between the Arabs of the Nile River valley, who have held power for a century, and marginalized groups on the country's periphery are turning into a national crisis. Engagement with Khartoum may be the only way to avert another civil war in Sudan, and even that may not be enough.
- Political Geography:
- Sudan and Arabia
368. The Trouble With Congo
- Author:
- Séverine Autesserre
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Although the war in Congo officially ended in 2003, two million people have died since. One of the reasons is that the international community's peacekeeping efforts there have not focused on the local grievances in eastern Congo, especially those over land, that are fueling much of the broader tensions. Until they do, the nation's security and that of the wider Great Lakes region will remain uncertain.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
369. The Case Against the West
- Author:
- Kishore Mahbubani
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and its short-term interests in preserving its privileged position in various global institutions are trumping its long-term interests in creating a more just and stable world order. The West has gone from being the world's problem solver to being its single biggest liability.
- Political Geography:
- Asia
370. The Distant Horizon
- Author:
- Paul Kennedy
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange, Strobe Talbott's The Great Experiment, and Amy Chua's Day of Empire take up the challenge of 'Big History' -- and in the process shed light on the real choices policymakers face.
371. The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism
- Author:
- Bruce Hoffman
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Marc Sageman claims that al Qaeda's leadership is finished and today's terrorist threat comes primarily from below. But the terrorist elites are alive and well, and ignoring the threat they pose will have disastrous consequences.
372. Putin's Russia
- Author:
- Padma Desai
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To the Editor: Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss ("The Myth of the Authoritarian Model," January/February 2008) make several erroneous judgments regarding the current Russian scene. The Russian economy has grown in the last seven years at an annual rate of 6.5 percent. The ongoing debate among economists and other informed observers of Russia is over whether this is a result of exceptionally high (and rising) oil prices, and hence a reversible phenomenon if the price of oil collapses, or the result of substantive changes in the last decade that made high growth rates sustainable. At a major World Leaders Forum and a scientific conference attended by distinguished Russia scholars at Columbia University last April, participants shared the view that Russia's economic performance was not a flash in the pan caused by oil; rather, the consensus was that important policy changes had taken place. Still, no responsible Western scholar of Russia (nor even a supporter of former Russian President Vladimir Putin) has suggested that the high growth rates in Russia are a product of Putin's authoritarian ways. The claim by McFaul and Stoner-Weiss that this argument is made is simply creating a straw man.
- Political Geography:
- Russia
373. CIA Chronicles
- Author:
- Amy Zegart
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To the Editor: Paul Pillar ("Intelligent Design?" March/April 2008) spent most of the 1990s doing counterterrorism analysis at the CIA and rose to be the deputy director of its Counterterrorism Center. My book Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 is highly critical of that center and finds that its weaknesses contributed to 11 operational failures prior to 9/11. How can an individual who served at the heart of the organization being criticized render an unbiased view of that organization's performance?
374. Chinese Ways
- Author:
- Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To the Editor: In "The Rise of China and the Future of the West" (January/February 2008), G. John Ikenberry offers a compelling series of arguments for why China will not attempt to overturn the liberal order. But he is wrong to assume that the absence of confrontation implies gradual integration. It does not. China is pursuing a different strategy: forging a route around the West by constructing an alternative international system in the developing world. The norms of China's parallel political order are alien to those Ikenberry wishes to see preserved.
- Political Geography:
- China
375. Market Blues
- Author:
- Terrence Keeley
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To the Editor: Robert Kimmitt ("Public Footprints in Private Markets," January/February 2008) provides an overview of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in the global economy that is helpful but incomplete. His proposed principles for a policy response are well intended but neither workable nor adequate. Kimmitt delineates four kinds of sovereign investment. In fact, there are six. His category of SWFs should be divided into three parts, stabilization funds, state-holding corporations, and future generation, or future welfare, funds. Each of these has different investment horizons, different investment benchmarks, different risk-management frameworks, and different oversight requirements.
376. Congress at War
- Author:
- Louis Fisher, Ryan Hendrickson, and Stephen R. Weissman
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To the Editor: William Howell and Jon Pevehouse ("When Congress Stops Wars," September/October 2007) suggest that Congress has been far more influential in shaping U.S. military action abroad than previously thought. We disagree. Such a view does not reflect the overwhelming historical evidence since World War II. Moreover, their argument undervalues Congress' constitutional responsibility to independently check the president prior to war. In most cases, Congress has chosen the politically expedient route of deferring to the president. The principal reason for this support has been not partisan calculations, as Howell and Pevehouse argue, but rather lawmakers' unwillingness to exercise their constitutional powers and understand the need for legislative checks.
- Political Geography:
- United States
377. The Road to the Arctic
- Author:
- Coalter G. Lathrop and Scott Borgerson
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To the Editor: Scott Borgerson's article "Arctic Meltdown" (March/April 2008) is an addition to the recent wave of Arctic journalism rife with Wild West imagery of chaos and lawlessness -- a reporting trend spurred by Russia's August 2007 flag-planting stunt on the North Pole. Arctic frontier jargon that included "land grab" and "ungainly scramble" is now augmented by Borgerson's "gold rush" and "legal no man's land." While Borgerson correctly identifies the many sources of tension in the region, he is wrong when he writes that "the Arctic region is not currently governed by any comprehensive multilateral norms." The Arctic is not the "legal vacuum" invoked in his piece; it is a region governed by international law and, for the maritime issues that are the main subject of the article, specifically by the international law of the sea. With one exception ("growing talk of Greenland petitioning Denmark for political independence"), all of the Arctic problems that Borgerson raises -- offshore hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, overlapping maritime claims, wide-margin continental shelves, the dumping of nuclear reactors, indigenous whaling, and a variety of shipping issues, including contested shipping routes, the use of flags of convenience, vessel-source pollution, and ship-based tourism -- are quintessential law-of-the-sea problems, around which a robust and widely adopted body of international law has grown.
- Political Geography:
- Russia
378. Rethinking the National Interest
- Author:
- Condoleezza Rice
- Publication Date:
- 07-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The Secretary of State reflects on the lessons of the past eight years.
379. The New Israel and the Old
- Author:
- Walter Russell Mead
- Publication Date:
- 07-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The real key to Washington's pro-Israel policy is long-lasting and broad-based support for the Jewish state among the American public at large.
- Political Geography:
- America, Washington, and Israel
380. China's Olympic Nightmare
- Author:
- Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal
- Publication Date:
- 07-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Failure to plan for predictable problems has turned China's coming-out party into an embarrassment.
- Political Geography:
- China