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56632. Southeast Asian-Pacific Frameworks: What Do They Frame and What Work Do They Do?
- Author:
- Donald Emmerson
- Publication Date:
- 10-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Although these pages feature Southeast Asia, our topic is spatially far-flung. Pictured as sets of participating countries highlighted on a map of the world, regional and interregional frameworks that include some or all of Southeast Asia run a vast and complex gamut of partly concentric and partly overlapping yet distinctive and sometimes changing memberships or attendances. MALSINDO spans three contiguous Southeast Asian states. ASEAN encompasses all ten. ASEM is inter-regional. FPDA offers a fourth pattern, linking as it does two adjacent Southeast Asian countries with three distant partners—two in the far-southern Pacific, one in far-western Europe. The hub-and-spoke dialogue arrangements known collectively as ASEAN Plus One illustrate a fifth schema.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- Asia, Australia/Pacific, and Southeast Asia
56633. Food Security in North Korea: Designing Realistic Possibilities
- Author:
- Randall Ireson
- Publication Date:
- 02-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Between about 1990 and 1996, North Korea experienced what can only be described as a catastrophic economic collapse, which included a 70 percent reduction in food production compared to the late 1980s. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) initially insisted that the agriculture collapse was a consequence of natural disasters. However, it is clear that the seeds of this catastrophe had been planted decades earlier, the result of ill-advised and ultimately unsustainable national agricultural policies. Yet difficult as the situation is, it is not without options for significant improvement. This paper outlines a strategy for agricultural revitalization in North Korea, which could, in the foreseeable future, enable the DPRK to produce—domestically and in a sustainable manner—nearly all the food needed to supply a basic balanced diet for its population. Whether this strategy can be implemented, or indeed whether it is the best strategy for the DPRK in the longer term, depends on many factors outside the farm sector, including world and regional international political issues, and DPRK policy choices regarding participation in world trade and commerce.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Government, Health, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- Asia, North Korea, and Korea
56634. The New Energy Security: 2005 Global Oil and Gas Forum
- Author:
- John A. Riggs
- Publication Date:
- 01-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Energy security means different things to different countries. Importing countries primarily focus on supply. Since the oil price shocks of the 1970s, the focus of energy security has been on achieving adequate supplies at reasonable prices, without incurring serious disruptions. Recent high prices have intensified this concern and renewed interest in policies to bring prices down.
- Topic:
- Security, Energy Policy, and Oil
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Europe, Middle East, India, Asia, and Saudi Arabia
56635. Soft Power, Hard Issues: Reports of the 2005 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Public Diplomacy and the Middle East and the Forum on Communications and Society
- Author:
- Shanthi Kalathil
- Publication Date:
- 04-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Having lapsed in importance following the end of the Cold War, public diplomacy has reemerged as a focal point for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners. Particularly following the attacks of September 11, 2001, American public diplomacy in the Middle East has rocketed to a place of prominence in the U.S. foreign policy toolkit. Yet even as resources and attention are trained on refining the U.S. public diplomacy strategy, there is little consensus on core problems, effective solutions, and what success might tangibly look like.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- United States, China, Middle East, Asia, and Arabia
56636. Savings in America: Building Opportunities for All
- Author:
- Suzanne Nora Johnson, Lisa Mensah, and C. Eugene Steuerle
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Savings policy in the United States is at a critical juncture. The U.S. personal saving rate has declined from 10.8 percent in 1984 to zero in 2005.The national saving rate, which includes government and business savings, is the lowest among the G-20 countries and has decreased significantly in recent decades. These low levels of saving generally suggest lower growth rates of income and standards of living in the future.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States and America
56637. Mapping the Jihadist Threat: The War on Terror Since 9/11
- Author:
- Kurt M. Campbell and Willow Darsie
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously bemoaned the challenges of measuring success in a long twilight struggle with Islamic fundamentalists. There are the “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” that confront the United States in the most unfamiliar set of foreign policy challenges in the country's history. In addition to the difficulties of establishing “metrics” – as Rumsfeld would put it – in our war on terror, there is also the intrinsically related and perhaps more vexing question of how the global ideological virus of Islamic fundamentalism is morphing and evolving. An influential and well-funded cohort of radicalized Islamists, seizing upon an unyielding interpretation of religious text (a kind of Koranic original intent), has been at war with the West for nearly a generation, and the pace of operations globally is accelerating. According to recently released U.S. government reports, there has been a sharp surge in the number of global terrorist attacks in recent years, a tally substantially comprised of incidents initiated by Islamist instigators. Taken in its totality with all its many manifestations, the jihadist challenge stretches from the Taliban strongholds in the rugged Afghan mountains and the dense jungle hideouts of the Philippines, to the ornate mosques of Saudi Arabia, from a quiet neighborhood in Leeds, England to, just possibly, a place near you.
- Topic:
- Islam, Terrorism, and War
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, and Middle East
56638. Energy: The New Normal?
- Author:
- John A. Riggs
- Publication Date:
- 10-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- The title of the 2006 Energy Policy Forum—Energy: The New Normal? — raises two primary questions: has the world crossed a threshold into a qualitatively different energy environment in which the era of cheap and plentiful energy is over, and does the interaction of energy issues with other considerations, such as national security, foreign affairs, and global climate change, require fundamentally new ways of thinking about U.S. energy policies?
- Topic:
- Energy Policy, Environment, and Oil
- Political Geography:
- United States and Middle East
56639. Unmassing America: Ethnic Media and the New Advertising Marketplace
- Author:
- Amy Korzick Garmer
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Fundamental changes are taking place in the advertising marketplace. Audiences are moving away from big media and adopting niche media, with indisputable trends toward fragmentation, disintermediation and greater consumer control affecting the media sector. Consumers have expressed preferences for more personalized, relevant forms of media that speak directly to their needs and interests. Advertisers are experimenting with new ways of communicating with customers and searching for new ways of reaggregating audiences. In this new environment, new media expert Jeff Jarvis has observed, “the economies of scale must compete with the economies of small.”
- Topic:
- Civil Society and Communications
- Political Geography:
- United States and America
56640. Living with Hugo: U.S. Policy Toward Hugo Chávez's Venezuela
- Author:
- Richard Lapper
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The popularity of the new political and economic model being developed in Venezuela has been a consistent source of aggravation for the U.S. government. Since first winning the presidency in December 1998, Hugo Chávez has been able through repeated electoral victories and radical constitutional reform to dominate Venezuela's government and public institutions. Undaunted by stiff U.S. opposition, President Chávez has launched what he calls a Bolivarian revolution, named after Simón Bolívar, a nineteenth-century leader of Latin America's independence wars. Chávez has reasserted the role of the state in the Venezuelan economy and developed extensive social programs to advance an anti- U.S., anti-capitalist crusade. New or newly reinvigorated alliances with established U.S. adversaries have helped internationalize Chávez's aims. Most alarming to those concerned with the health of Venezuelan democracy, Chávez and his allies have concentrated political power in the hands of the executive, curtailed the independence of the judiciary, shown limited tolerance for domestic critics, and openly intervened in the electoral politics of neighboring states.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Development, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States, South America, and Latin America