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1. Japan's New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance

Author:
Sheila A. Smith
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Electoral reform in the early 1990s ended single-party dominance in Japan and promised an era of new politics in which political parties would alternate control of the government. In the two decades that followed, Japan's foreign and domestic policy priorities were subjected to greater scrutiny and debate as Japan, like so many other nations around the globe, sought to reorient itself in a new post-Cold War world. The U.S.-Japan alliance that anchored Japan's postwar foreign policy was not immune to these domestic political reforms. For half a century, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) prided itself on managing the relationship with Washington. But its ouster in 2009 by the reformist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) led many to expect that even Japan's alliance with the United States would be subject to serious review.
Topic:
Government and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Asia

2. A Kinder, Gentler Immigration Policy

Author:
Jagdish Bhagwati and Francisco Rivera-Batiz
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Ever since Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, in 1986, attempts at a similar comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policies have failed. Yet today, as the Republican Party smarts from its poor performance among Hispanic voters in 2012 and such influential Republicans as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush have come out in favor of a new approach, the day for comprehensive immigration reform may seem close at hand. President Barack Obama was so confident about its prospects that he asked for it in his State of the Union address in February 2013. Now, the U.S. Senate looks poised to offer illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.
Topic:
Government, Immigration, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States and Syria

3. Left Out

Author:
Henning Meyer
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, social democrats in Europe believed that their moment had finally arrived. After a decade in which European politics had drifted toward the market-friendly policies of the right, the crisis represented an opportunity for the political center left's champions of more effective government regulation and greater social justice to reassert themselves.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, France, Denmark, and Slovakia

4. The End of Hypocrisy

Author:
Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The U.S. government seems outraged that people are leaking classified materials about its less attractive behavior. It certainly acts that way: three years ago, after Chelsea Manning, an army private then known as Bradley Manning, turned over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, U.S. authorities imprisoned the soldier under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed cruel and inhumane. The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, appearing on Meet the Press shortly thereafter, called WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, “a high-tech terrorist.”
Topic:
Security, Government, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and India

5. Accepting Austerity

Author:
Cindy Williams
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
On March 1, 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense lost $37 billion overnight to sequestration. The cut marked the first wave of a series of planned cutbacks that will shrink future budgets across the federal government by about $1 trillion over nine years. The reductions had been set in motion back in 2011, when a special “super committee” established by the Budget Control Act (BCA) failed to reach a deficit-reduction agreement, triggering automatic cuts designed to punish both parties. Unlike other budget cuts, sequestration is implemented across the board, taking the same percentage bite out of every account. Except for the decision to spare the military personnel account that provides the pay for the United States' men and women in uniform, defense leaders had no choice about where to take the 2013 cuts. And so, with just seven months left in the fiscal year, sequestration abruptly erased about eight percent of the the Pentagon's budget for the year.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

6. America the Undertaxed

Author:
Andrea Louise Campbell
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Compared with other developed countries, the United States has very low taxes, little income redistribution, and an extraordinarily complex tax code. If it wanted to, the government could raise taxes without crippling growth or productivity. Tax reform is ultimately a political choice, not an economic one -- a statement about what sort of society Americans want.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States and America

7. The Iraq We Left Behind

Author:
Ned Parker
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presides over a system rife with corruption and brutality, in which political leaders use security forces and militias to repress enemies and intimidate the general population. The law exists as a weapon to be wielded against rivals and to hide the misdeeds of allies. The dream of an Iraq governed by elected leaders answerable to the people is rapidly fading away.
Topic:
Government and United Nations
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Washington

8. The Missing Middle in American Politics

Author:
Reihan Salam
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
After Lyndon Johnson's victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential election, the once-mighty Republican Party was reduced to a regional rump. The Democrats won overwhelming majorities in the House and the Senate, which they used to pass Johnson's Great Society legislation. Republicans, meanwhile, were at one another's throats, having endured the most divisive campaign in modern political history. Goldwater had managed to win the Republican presidential nomination over the impassioned opposition of moderate and progressive Republicans, who at the time may well have constituted a majority of the party's members. Moderates blamed Goldwater's right-wing views for the defection of millions of Republican voters.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, China, and America

9. Not Time to Attack Iran

Author:
Colin Kahl
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In "Time to Attack Iran" (January/February 2012), Matthew Kroenig takes a page out of the decade-old playbook used by advocates of the Iraq war. He portrays the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as both grave and imminent, arguing that the United States has little choice but to attack Iran now before it is too late. Then, after offering the caveat that "attacking Iran is hardly an attractive prospect," he goes on to portray military action as preferable to other available alternatives and concludes that the United States can manage all the associated risks. Preventive war, according to Kroenig, is "the least bad option."
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, and Iran

10. Demystifying the Arab Spring

Author:
Lisa Anderson
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In Tunisia, protesters escalated calls for the restoration of the country's suspended constitution. Meanwhile, Egyptians rose in revolt as strikes across the country brought daily life to a halt and toppled the government. In Libya, provincial leaders worked feverishly to strengthen their newly independent republic. It was 1919. That year's events demonstrate that the global diffusion of information and expectations -- so vividly on display in Tahrir Square this past winter -- is not a result of the Internet and social media. The inspirational rhetoric of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech, which helped spark the 1919 upheavals, made its way around the world by telegraph. The uprisings of 1919 also suggest that the calculated spread of popular movements, seen across the Arab world last winter, is not a new phenomenon. The Egyptian Facebook campaigners are the modern incarnation of Arab nationalist networks whose broadsheets disseminated strategies for civil disobedience throughout the region in the years after World War I. The important story about the 2011 Arab revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya is not how the globalization of the norms of civic engagement shaped the protesters' aspirations. Nor is it about how activists used technology to share ideas and tactics. Instead, the critical issue is how and why these ambitions and techniques resonated in their various local contexts. The patterns and demographics of the protests varied widely. The demonstrations in Tunisia spiraled toward the capital from the neglected rural areas, finding common cause with a once powerful but much repressed labor movement. In Egypt, by contrast, urbane and cosmopolitan young people in the major cities organized the uprisings. Meanwhile, in Libya, ragtag bands of armed rebels in the eastern provinces ignited the protests, revealing the tribal and regional cleavages that have beset the country for decades. Although they shared a common call for personal dignity and responsive government, the revolutions across these three countries reflected divergent economic grievances and social dynamics -- legacies of their diverse encounters with modern Europe and decades under unique regimes.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Libya, Arabia, Egypt, and Tunisia

11. Getting the Military Out of Pakistani Politics

Author:
Aqil Shah
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States has a major stake in Pakistan's stability, given the country's central role in the U.S.-led effort to, in U.S. President Barack Obama's words, "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" al Qaeda; its war-prone rivalry with India over Kashmir; and its nuclear arsenal. As a result, U.S. policy toward Pakistan has been dominated by concerns for its stability -- providing the reasoning for Washington's backing of the Pakistani military's frequent interventions in domestic politics -- at the expense of its democratic institutions. But as the recent eruption of protests in the Middle East against U.S.-backed tyrants has shown, authoritarian stability is not always a winning bet. Despite U.S. efforts to promote it, stability is hardly Pakistan's distinguishing feature. Indeed, many observers fear that Pakistan could become the world's first nuclear-armed failed state. Their worry is not without reason. More than 63 years after independence, Pakistan is faced with a crumbling economy and a pernicious Taliban insurgency radiating from its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the semiautonomous seven districts and six smaller regions along its border with Afghanistan. It is still struggling to meet its population's basic needs. More than half its population faces severe poverty, which fuels resentment against the government and feeds political instability. According to the World Bank, the Pakistani state's effectiveness has actually been in steady decline for the last two decades. In 2010, Foreign Policy even ranked Pakistan as number ten on its Failed States Index, placing it in the "critical" category with such other failed or failing states as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. The consequences of its failure would no doubt be catastrophic, if for no other reason than al Qaeda and its affiliates could possibly get control of the country's atomic weapons. The Pakistani Taliban's dramatic incursions into Pakistan's northwestern Buner District (just 65 miles from the capital) in 2009 raised the specter of such a takeover.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, Washington, Middle East, India, and Kashmir

12. The Impending Squeeze

Author:
Tim W. Ferguson, Charles B. Heck, and Mitchell W. Hedstrom
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
ESSAY American Profligacy and American Power Roger C. Altman and Richard N. Haass The U.S. government is incurring debt at an unprecedented rate. If U.S. leaders do not act to curb their debt addiction, then the global capital markets will do so for them, forcing a sharp and punitive adjustment in fiscal policy. The result will be an age of American austerity. Would you like to leave a comment? 1CommentsJoin To the Editor: Roger Altman and Richard Haass ("American Profligacy and American Power," November/December 2010) persuasively argue that continued American profligacy promises to undermine American power. But the situation is even more urgent than they suggest. Although Altman and Haass expect markets to remain calm "possibly for two or three years," the rising price of gold suggests otherwise. Gold has risen from $460 per ounce to $1,400 per ounce in the last five years -- representing a 67 percent devaluation of the U.S. dollar per unit of gold. As former U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan has said, gold is "the ultimate means of payment." Moreover, on top of new government debt over the next several years, maturing existing debt will need to be refinanced. At 4.6 years, the average maturity of the U.S. federal debt held by the public (debt that now totals $9.1 trillion) is tight relative to, for instance, the average maturity of 13.5 years for British government debt. According to the International Monetary Fund, the maturing debt of the U.S. government will equal 18.1 percent of U.S. GDP during 2011 alone. Altman and Haass rightly note that the U.S. government's annual interest expense will rise dramatically as its stock of debt increases and interest rates inevitably rise. Further debt increases would substantially darken the fiscal outlook for the federal government. And even a relatively small rise in interest rates would have a significant impact. TIM W. FERGUSON Editor, Forbes Asia CHARLES B. HECK Former North American Director, Trilateral Commission MITCHELL W. HEDSTROM Managing Director, TIAA-CREF
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Asia

13. Why We Still Need Nuclear Power

Author:
Ernest Moniz
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In the years following the major accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, nuclear power fell out of favor, and some countries applied the brakes to their nuclear programs. In the last decade, however, it began experiencing something of a renaissance. Concerns about climate change and air pollution, as well as growing demand for electricity, led many governments to reconsider their aversion to nuclear power, which emits little carbon dioxide and had built up an impressive safety and reliability record. Some countries reversed their phaseouts of nuclear power, some extended the lifetimes of existing reactors, and many developed plans for new ones. Today, roughly 60 nuclear plants are under construction worldwide, which will add about 60,000 megawatts of generating capacity -- equivalent to a sixth of the world's current nuclear power capacity. But the movement lost momentum in March, when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the massive tsunami it triggered devastated Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. Three reactors were severely damaged, suffering at least partial fuel meltdowns and releasing radiation at a level only a few times less than Chernobyl. The event caused widespread public doubts about the safety of nuclear power to resurface. Germany announced an accelerated shutdown of its nuclear reactors, with broad public support, and Japan made a similar declaration, perhaps with less conviction. Their decisions were made easier thanks to the fact that electricity demand has flagged during the worldwide economic slowdown and the fact that global regulation to limit climate change seems less imminent now than it did a decade ago. In the United States, an already slow approach to new nuclear plants slowed even further in the face of an unanticipated abundance of natural gas.
Topic:
Government and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Germany

14. Africa Unleashed

Author:
Edward Miguel
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Steven Radelet's accessible new book argues that much of the credit for Africa's recent economic boom goes to its increasingly open political systems. But Radelet fails to answer the deeper question: why some countries have managed to develop successful democracies while others have tried but failed.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Asia, and Liberia

15. How Central is Land for Peace?

Author:
Elliott Abrams, Oded Naaman, and Mikhael Manekin
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
A HEALTHY OBSESSION Oded Naaman and Mikhael Manekin In "The Settlement Obsession" (July/ August 2011), Elliott Abrams argues:  In the end, Israel will withdraw from most of the West Bank and remain only in the major blocs where hundreds of thousands of Israelis now live. Israelis will live in a democratic state where Jews are the majority, and Palestinians will live in a state -- democratic, one hopes -- with an Arab Muslim majority. The remaining questions are how quickly or slowly that end will be reached and how to get there with minimal violence. For Abrams, there can be no other end; all that politics can do is postpone this end or bring it about. Although it would be preferable to end the conflict as soon as possible, there is no immediate need to do so. Any sense of immediacy, Abrams writes, is overblown: he claims that nongovernmental organizations and some in the international community unjustly point to a humanitarian crisis to create unwarranted urgency. In reviewing our book, Occupation of the Territories, Abrams attempts to assuage worries about the need for urgent action, going so far as to compare Israel's military behavior during its 45-year occupation of the West Bank -- in which Israel has expropriated land, seized natural resources, and settled its own population there -- to the United States' behavior during in its ten-year occupation and massive reconstruction of Germany after World War II. Abrams then implies that Breaking the Silence does not provide reliable or sufficient evidence for the claim that, in his words, "the presence of Israeli settlers and IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers in the West Bank is laying waste to the area, reducing it to misery."
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, Palestine, Arabia, and Germany

16. The Political Power of Social Media

Author:
Clay Shirky
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Discussion of the political impact of social media has focused on the power of mass protests to topple governments. In fact, social media's real potential lies in supporting civil society and the public sphere -- which will produce change over years and decades, not weeks or months
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

17. Letter to the Editor: Legalize It

Author:
Terry Nelson
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Robert Bonner writes that "destroying the drug cartels is not an impossible task" ("The New Cocaine Cowboys," July/ August 2010). But he really should have written, "Destroying some drug cartels is not an impossible task."
Topic:
Security, Government, and War on Drugs
Political Geography:
United States

18. India's Rise, America's Interest: The Fate of the U.S.-Indian Partnership

Author:
Evan A. Feigenbaum
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Until the late 1990s, the United States often ignored India, treating it as a regional power in South Asia with little global weight. India's weak and protected economy gave it little influence in global markets, and its nonaligned foreign policy caused periodic tension with Washington. When the United States did concentrate on India, it too often fixated on India's military rivalry with Pakistan. Today, however, India is dynamic and transforming. Starting in 1991, leaders in New Delhi -- including Manmohan Singh, then India's finance minister and now its prime minister -- pursued policies of economic liberalization that opened the country to foreign investment and yielded rapid growth. India is now an important economic power, on track (according to Goldman Sachs and others) to become a top-five global economy by 2030. It is a player in global economic decisions as part of both the G-20 and the G-8 + 5 (the G-8 plus the five leading emerging economies) and may ultimately attain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. India's trajectory has diverged sharply from that of Pakistan. With economic growth, India acquired the capacity to act on issues of primary strategic and economic concern to the United States. The United States, in turn, has developed a growing stake in continued Indian reform and success -- especially as they contribute to global growth, promote market-based economic policies, help secure the global commons, and maintain a mutually favorable balance of power in Asia. For its part, New Delhi seeks a United States that will help facilitate India's rise as a major power. Two successive Indian governments have pursued a strategic partnership with the United States that would have been unthinkable in the era of the Cold War and nonalignment. This turnaround in relations culminated in 2008, when the two countries signed a civil nuclear agreement. That deal helped end India's nuclear isolation by permitting the conduct of civil nuclear trade with New Delhi, even though India is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Important as the agreement was, however, the U.S.-Indian relationship remains constrained. For example, although U.S. officials hold standing dialogues about nearly every region of the world with their counterparts from Beijing, Brussels, and Tokyo, no such arrangements exist with New Delhi.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, India, and New Delhi

19. Helping Others Defend Themselves

Author:
Robert M. Gates
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In the decades to come, the most lethal threats to the United States' safety and security -- a city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack -- are likely to emanate from states that cannot adequately govern themselves or secure their own territory. Dealing with such fractured or failing states is, in many ways, the main security challenge of our time.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq

20. Getting Deradicalization Right

Author:
Jessica Stern and Marisa L. Porges
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Government, Islam, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia

21. State of the Union Address, 2010

Author:
Barack Obama
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
THE PRESIDENT: Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For 220 years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They've done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they've done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Government, War, Labor Issues, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States

22. Promise, Peril for Iraq's New Government: Interview with Joost Hiltermann

Author:
Bernard Gwertzman (interviewer)
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
After nine months of political wrangling, Iraq's parliament confirmed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new coalition government December 21. Though the government is "a good basis for setting out," says Iraq expert Joost Hiltermann, there's much uncertainty about how cohesive it will be and whether the inclusive government formed can govern. Hiltermann says there are questions about who will head the three major security ministries, whether a new National Council for Strategic Policy--designed as a "real check" against Maliki's power--will be approved by parliament, and whether Ayad Allawi, who headed the Iraqiya bloc that won the most seats in the election, will want to head that council. The United States pushed a power-sharing agreement "that went beyond the sharing of ministerial positions," says Hiltermann, but it remains to be seen whether various factions, including the prime minister and his allies, will allow that to happen.
Topic:
Political Violence, Democratization, Government, Politics, Governance, and Sectarianism
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia

23. Tomorrow's Institution Today

Author:
Amitai Etzioni
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Old international institutions must be updated to tackle transnational challenges. The most promising model for doing so is the Proliferation Security Initiative, a recent cooperative effort to interdict weapons of mass destruction.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and North Korea

24. Deng Undone: The Costs of Halting Market Reform in China

Author:
Derek Scissors
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Driven by a near obsession with economic growth, Beijing has extended the state's reach into the economy. Instead of urging the Chinese government to resume extensive market reforms, Washington should encourage it to focus on a narrow range of feasible measures.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Beijing

25. State Capitalism Comes of Age: The End of the Free Market?

Author:
Ian Bremmer
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Across the world, the free market is being overtaken by state capitalism, a system in which the state is the leading economic actor. How should the United States respond?
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Reform
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Europe

26. Diplomacy, Inc.: The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy

Author:
John Newhouse
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Lobbies representing foreign interests have an increasingly powerful -- and often harmful -- impact on how the United States formulates its foreign policy, and ultimately hurt U.S. credibility around the world.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, and Armenia

27. The Real War in Mexico

Author:
Shannon O'Neil
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Summary -- Hysteria over bloodshed in Mexico clouds the real challenge: the rising violence is a product of democratization -- and the only real solution is to continue strengthening Mexican democracy.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Mexico

28. Pirates, Then and Now

Author:
Max Boot
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Summary -- To defeat piracy in centuries past, governments pursued a more active defense at sea and a political solution on land. The current piracy epidemic off the coast of East Africa requires many of the same tactics.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Ukraine, and East Africa

29. Can the Right War Be Won?

Author:
Steven Simon
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Two new books offer insightful analyses of how to succeed in Afghanistan. But the sheer difficulty of the task points to the need for an alternative strategy -- one that defends U.S. interests without trying to rebuild a shattered country.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and United States

30. India's Fortune

Author:
Edward Luce
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Nandan Nilekani has produced one of the best and most thought-provoking books on India in years.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
United States and India

31. Which Way Is History Marching?

Author:
G. John Ikenberry, Daniel Deudney, Ronald Inglehart, zar Gat, and Christian Welzel
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Two recent articles in these pages -- "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival [1]" (January/February 2009) and "How Development Leads to Democracy [2]" (March/April 2009) -- have taken issue with my July/August 2007 essay, "The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers [3]." In the first, Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry dispute my argument that the authoritarian capitalist great powers Germany and Japan were defeated in both world wars largely because of contingent factors rather than structural inefficiencies. As I have argued, these countries were too small in comparison to the United States. With respect to the challenge posed by China and Russia, Deudney and Ikenberry insist that developed nondemocratic capitalist societies will not be viable in the long run.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Germany

32. Copenhagen's Inconvenient Truth

Author:
Michael Levi
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
This December, diplomats from nearly 200 countries will gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which for the first time bound wealthy countries to specific cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Most of these emissions come from burning fossil fuels -- coal, oil, and natural gas -- for energy, from deforestation, and from the agricultural sector. They must be cut deeply in the coming decades if the world is to control the risks of dangerous climate change. Most of those devoted to slashing the world's greenhouse gas emissions have placed enormous weight on the Copenhagen conference. Speaking earlier this year about the conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was emphatic: "We must harness the necessary political will to seal the deal on an ambitious new climate agreement in December here in Copenhagen. . . . If we get it wrong we face catastrophic damage to people, to the planet." Hopes are higher than ever for a breakthrough climate deal. For the past eight years, many argued that developing nations reluctant to commit to a new global climate-change deal -- particularly China and India -- were simply hiding behind the United States, whose enthusiastic engagement was all that was needed for a breakthrough. Now the long-awaited shift in U.S. policy has arrived. The Obama administration is taking ambitious steps to limit carbon dioxide emissions at home, and Congress is considering important cap-and-trade and clean-energy legislation. The road to a global treaty that contains the climate problem now appears to be clear. But it is not so simple. The odds of signing a comprehensive treaty in December are vanishingly small. And even reaching such a deal the following year would be an extraordinary challenge, given the domestic political constraints in Washington and in other capitals that make such an agreement difficult to negotiate and ratify. The many government officials and activists seeking to solve the climate problem therefore need to fundamentally rethink their strategy and expectations for the Copenhagen conference.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States and Washington

33. In the Quicksands of Somalia

Author:
Bronwyn Bruton
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Washington's repeated attempts to bring peace to Somalia with state-building initiatives have failed, even backfired. It should renounce political intervention and encourage local development without trying to improve governance.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, Middle East, and Somalia

34. Sovereign Wealth and Sovereign Power: The Strategic Consequences of American Indebtedness

Author:
Brad W. Setser
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In the 1870s, the scope of Great Britain's financial empire exceeded the scope of its political empire. Dependence on British investors sometimes was a precursor, though, to informal—or even formal— political control. When Egypt's khedive needed to raise cash to cover his personal debt to private British banks, he sold his large personal stake in the Suez Canal to the British state. Egypt's ruler did little better managing Egypt's public debt: difficulties making payments led Britain and France to assume control over Egypt's treasury and, by 1882, to full British political control.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, America, and Egypt

35. Fragility, Instability, and the Failure of States: Assessing Sources of Systemic Risk

Author:
Monty G. Marshall
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
A public debate over the threat posed by weak, fragile, failing, and failed states and what can or should be done about them has become increasing visible and vocal since the attacks of September 11, 2001. As President George W. Bush declared in his 2002 National Security Strategy report: “America is now threatened less by conquering states than ... by failing ones.” This debate has grown particularly acute as the United States' prolonged military response to the war on global terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq has revealed the difficulties of controlling militancy and extremism by direct military intervention and enforced democratic change. The challenges associated with weak or failing states have garnered increase d attention by the policy community, but major differences about how to assess the level of risk in any given case remain.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Foreign Policy, Political Violence, Development, Diplomacy, Government, and International Security
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and America

36. The Case for Wage Insurance

Author:
Robert LaLonde
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
An important component of U.S. productivity growth and economic competitiveness is a flexible labor market that shifts workers quickly into the jobs where they are most needed. Much of the time, this job shifting is fairly painless: Workers quickly find new positions that pay at least as much as their previous ones, often without an intervening spell of unemployment. But prime-aged and older workers can sometimes suffer large, long-term income losses. Such workers' well-founded fears about job displacement lead them and their advocates to resist policies such as free trade that are sometimes blamed for the job shifting. This resistance harms the majority of households because trade helps to lower prices, raise real incomes and promote economic growth. It also has foreign policy consequences since it threatens the United States' ability to play its traditional post–World War II role as the bulwark of a relatively open international trading system. And by reducing the dynamism of the U.S. economy, resistance to trade and other pro-growth policies can weaken the nation's long-term ability to exert global leadership.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States

37. Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared

Author:
Warren B. Rudman, Richard A. Clarke, and Jamie F. Metzl
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
If we knew that there was going to be a terrorist attack sometime in the next five years but did not know what type of attack it would be, who would carry it out, or where in the United States it would occur, what actions would we take to prepare and how would we allocate our human and financial resources to do so? The tragic events of September 11, 2001 brought home to the American people the magnitude of the danger posed by terrorism on U.S. soil. Now, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States must assume that terrorists will strike again, possibly using chemical, biological, radiological, or even nuclear materials. The unthinkable has become thinkable.
Topic:
Defense Policy and Government
Political Geography:
United States

38. Enhancing U.S. Leadership at the United Nations

Author:
Lee Feinstein, David Dreier, Lee Hamilton, and Adrian Karatnycky
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Enhanced American leadership at the United Nations is beneficial for U.S. interests and can help strengthen the UN and the international system. For many years, however, the United States has not been nearly as effective at the UN as it can or should be.
Topic:
Government, International Cooperation, and United Nations
Political Geography:
United States and America

39. How Shareholder Reforms Can Pay Foreign Policy Dividends

Author:
James J. Shinn and Peter Gourevitch
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Corporate governance—the rules that govern the relationship between managers and shareholders—belongs on the foreign policy agenda of American decision-makers. The vigorous debates underway about corporate governance, both at home and abroad, present an opportunity for the United States to advance its foreign policy goals of enhancing free trade and financial stability.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

40. Democratizing U.S. Trade Policy

Author:
Pat Choate and Bruce Stokes
Publication Date:
11-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Storm clouds signaling trouble with American trade policy have been gathering for some time. In the early 1990s, Congress barely approved creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and only strenuous efforts by the Clinton administration and the business community ensured passage of legislation creating the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the late 1990s, President Clinton twice failed to obtain congressional renewal of his trade-negotiating authority. The massive demonstrations during the meeting of the world's trade ministers in Seattle in 1999 reflected a widespread public unease with the impact of trade policy on a range of issues, from clear-cutting practices in the forests of Indonesia to the price of AIDS drugs in southern Africa. Today, public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that, although the American public supports freer trade in theory, it often has profound reservations about trade liberalization in practice. And the current global economic slowdown may only further polarize public opinion on trade issues.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Indonesia, South America, and North America

41. A Financial Architecture for Middle-Class-Oriented Development

Author:
Walter Russell Mead and Sherle R. Schwenninger
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The Case For Middle-Class-Oriented Development International financial architecture works best when it serves social goals that command widespread support and legitimacy. Without neglecting the more conventional goal of allowing the greatest possible global flow of capital with the least risk of financial crisis, the primary goal of international financial reform, for both economic and political reasons, ought to be to promote middle-class-oriented development around the world.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States