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Topics in this
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February 1, 2008
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The
Kenyan people must work out a way forward from the
current period of post-election violence, U.S.
officials say. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
says that people in Kenya, which is an important
friend of the United States, should remain calm
while a political resolution to the crisis is found.
(© AP Images) |
GLOBAL FORECAST
Global Forecast. The Top Security Challenges of 2008.
Carola McGiffert, Craig Cohen. CSIS,
December 2007. pp.1-60. This volume of essays showcases
CSIS’s collective wisdom on the top American decision moments of
2008—the major political, military, and economic challenges likely
to have strategic implications for the United States.
READ MORE
GLOBAL PROGRESS REPORT, 2008. Anonymous,
Current History,
January 2008, pp. 3-12. "As the world enters a new year, economic growth has slowed, and so
has the pace of democratization. Climate change looms as a complex
challenge, and US leadership is wanting. Even so, norms favoring
political rights, free markets, and international cooperation
continue quietly to spread."
READ MORE
Financial turmoil
Public Footprints in Private Markets. Sovereign Wealth Funds and the
World Economy. Robert M.
Kimmitt. Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008. pp. 119-130.
The massive growth of sovereign wealth funds -- pools of
capital controlled by governments and invested in private markets
abroad -- should not cause alarm. But it does raise legitimate
questions for the United States, pointing to the need for new policy
principles for both the funds and the countries in which they
invest.
READ MORE
Disruptions and Potential in the Global Economy. Jeffrey
Sachs. Current History, January 2008. pp. 19-24. When
the crisis in us subprime mortgages developed in the summer of 2007,
and for a time banks were unable to roll over their short-term
credit, what emerged was a panic and credit squeeze much like the
Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. In any case, the tightening
conditions on foreign capital inflows are likely to be both
inflationary (due to the dollar's weakness) and recessionary (due to
rising interest rates).
READ MORE
EU-US: DIFFERENT IDENTITIES
Europe’s Philosophy of Failure. Stefan Theil. Foreign
Policy, January/February 2008. n.p. In France and
Germany, students are being forced to undergo a dangerous
indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism,
free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and
immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias.
Rooting it out may determine whether Europe’s economies prosper or
continue to be left behind.
READ MORE
Religion and National Identity in America and Europe.
James Kurth. Society, September/October 2007. pp.
120-125.
America and Europe have had very different religious
experiences, and these differences have continuing consequences. In
America, the preponderance of Reform Protestantism gave rise to
religious and political pluralism, a religious marketplace, and the
continuing vitality of the churches. In Europe, the dominance of
state churches gave rise to the eventual rejection of these churches
and religions when the traditional political and social authorities
were rejected, particularly by the Generation of 1968. However,
Europe's extreme secularization has rendered it confused and
ineffective in dealing with the new religious challenge posed by
Muslim immigrant communities.
READ MORE
ENVIRONMENT 2.0
A CHANGING CLIMATE: THE ROAD AHEAD FOR
THE UNITED STATES. Todd Stern and William Antholis, The
Washington Quarterly, Winter 2007-08, pp. 175-188. The next U.S. president has a pivotal opportunity to take bold,
broad action on climate change. While implementing a serious program
at home, the president should pursue a layered diplomacy centered on
a core group of major emitters, especially China, and in the UN.
READ
MORE
A NEW MARKET PARADIGM FOR ZERO-ENERGY
HOMES. A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY. Barbara Farhar, Timothy Coburn,
Environment, Jan/Feb 2008, pp. 18-30. "In 2001, a luxury home builder launched a San Diego development
with highly efficient houses. Results of this de facto market and
engineering laboratory suggest a new paradigm for energy efficient
homes that seems to stand conventional wisdom on its head.
READ MORE
FUTURE OF RECYCLING: IS A ZERO-WASTE SOCIETY ACHIEVABLE? Jennifer
Weeks, The CQ Researcher, Dec. 14, 2007, pp. 1033-1060.
"Three-quarters of all Americans recycle at home, making recycling
one of the nation's most popular environmental activities. Skeptics
argue that recycling does little to help the environment and often
costs more than burying waste in landfills, but rising energy prices
and concerns about climate change are strengthening the supporters'
case. Making new goods from scrap metal, glass or paper uses less
energy and generates fewer greenhouse gases than extracting and
processing virgin materials. Today the U.S. recycles more than 30
percent of its municipal solid waste, and advocates say that figure
could be much higher."
READ MORE
WAR AND THE ENVIRONMENT. Sarah DeWeerdt,
World Watch, Jan/Feb 2008, pp. 14-21. Several recent wars in
varied environments and different parts of the world reveal that the
ecological consequences of war often remain written in the landscape
for many years. Of course, wars are not the only events that leave
their signature on the land. "This is essentially true of all
impacts on ecosystems," says John Hart, a conservation scientist
based in the Democratic Republic of me Congo-floods and hurricanes,
for example. "So it really puts conflict into the context of natural
history." Still, warfare is not the same as other disturbances that
buffet natural ecosystems, and there are reasons to be concerned
about the long term ecological effects of war, particularly of the
modern variety.
READ MORE
PROMOTING DEMOCRACY
DEMOCRACY BAROMETERS (PART II): ATTITUDES IN THE ARAB WORLD.
Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler, Journal of Democracy,
January 2008. pp. 97-110. "Findings from the Arab Barometer say little about whether there are
likely to be transitions to democracy in the Arab world in the years
ahead, but they do offer evidence that citizens' attitudes and
values are not the reason that authoritarianism has persisted."
READ MORE
‘‘THE CIVILIZATION OF CLASHES’’: MISAPPLYING
THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Piki Ish-Shalom.
Political Science Quarterly, Winter 2007-08, pp. 533-554.
The author "traces the process by which leading neoconservatives
endorsed the structural theories of democratic peace, generating a
grand strategy of forceful democracy promotion. He analyses the
reasons for this endorsement and its impact on American foreign
policy. He then goes on to explore some internal incoherencies in
this neoconservative grand strategy."
READ MORE
SHOULD DEMOCRACY BE PROMOTED OR DEMOTED?
Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul, The Washington Quarterly,
Winter 2007-2008, pp. 23-45. "The tragic result of the gap
between declared objectives and strategies on democracy promotion is
that many Americans are starting to view this goal as no longer
desirable or attainable. A more effective strategy for promoting
democracy and human rights is both needed and available."
READ MORE
WHAT ABOUT U.S.
FOREIGN POLICY?
AMERICA'S LIBERAL ILLIBERALISM: THE
IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF OVERREACTIONS IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. Michael C. Desch,
International Security, Winter 2007/2008, pp.7-43. "Why has the United States, with its long-standing Liberal tradition,
come to embrace the illiberal policies it has in recent years? The
conventional wisdom is that al-Qaida's attacks on the United
States on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terrorism
have made America less Liberal. The logic of this argument is
straightforward: interstate war has historically undermined domestic
liberties, and the war on terrorism is causing the United States to
follow this well-worn path. This explanation confronts a puzzle,
however: illiberal U.S. policies—including the pursuit of global
hegemony, launching of a preventive war, imposition of restrictions
on civil liberties in the name of national security, and support for
torture under certain circumstances—manifested themselves even
before the September 11 terrorist attacks and were embraced across
the political spectrum. Indeed, it is precisely American Liberalism
that makes the United States so illiberal today."
READ MORE
CONSTRUCTING FOREIGN POLICY CRISES:
INTERPRETIVE LEADERSHIP IN THE COLD WAR AND WAR ON TERRORISM. Wesley W.
Widmaier, International Studies Quarterly,
December 2007, pp. 779-794. "Over the past century,
crises have often driven shifts in U.S. foreign policy, as a liberal
tradition has been permissive of varying tendencies to isolationism,
pragmatism, or a crusading internationalism. While materialist
analyses emphasize the impacts of crises on the capabilities of
state and societal agents, they obscure the role of agents in
interpreting crises. In this paper, I therefore offer a
constructivist analysis, stressing the role of presidential rhetoric
in the construction of crises as events which legitimate shifts
between variants of the American liberal tradition and definitions
of the national interest."
READ MORE
VIRTUE, INTEREST, AND WORKS IN AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY. Harvey Sicherman, Society, October, 2007,
pp. 113-119. "Three questions shape American foreign policy: Is it right?
Is it in the national interest? And does it work? 'Right' is defined
by the American ethos, sometimes called the civil religion.
Self-interest and pragmatism characterize the other two elements.
The interplay among these factors may be found most clearly in
presidential rhetoric. After examining Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow
Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan, the article finds that while
effective presidents have invoked a religiously based virtue, U.S.
foreign policy itself tended to avoid religious issues. In contrast,
President George W. Bush has relied on the American civil religion
to combat Islamism. But his rhetoric 'stretches too far' on
democratic virtue at the expense of national interest and
pragmatism. The article concludes that the U.S. civil religion,
although based on theological ideas, does not travel well."
READ MORE
WHAT AMERICA MUST DO. Kenneth Rogoff, Reza Aslan, Philip Stephens, Jessica T Mathews, et
al. Foreign Policy, Jan/Feb 2008, pp. 63-74. "America’s relationship with the world is in disrepair. Anger,
resentment, and fear have replaced the respect the United States
once enjoyed. So, we asked a group of the world’s leading thinkers
to answer one question: What single policy or gesture can the next
president of the United States make to improve America’s standing in
the world?"
READ MORE
2008 Presidential Election
IN DEFENSE OF FRONTLOADING. Alarkon,
Walter. Campaigns & Elections, December 2007, pp. 14-15. The
author notes that there has been plenty of coverage regarding
Americans’ concerns with the early primaries schedule. Among the
criticisms are that the schedule does not provide enough time for a
candidate to recover from an early loss and results in an
excruciatingly long general election. But, as Alarkon argues, there
are some benefits to moving the primaries earlier. For instance, the
new schedule allows more states and more voters to weigh in on the
process before the nomination is locked up. It also allows for a
diverse set of voters to have their opinion heard. For example, in
the past, most attention was given to Iowa and New Hampshire, but
Nevada’s early primary allows for a greater number of Hispanic
voters to influence the process. Alarkon also outlines some of the
proposals suggested for setting future primary calendars. They
include letting the smallest states vote first, rotating the order
of primaries or picking the first primaries by lottery.
READ MORE
WHEN THERE'S BAD BLOOD. Kirk
Victor. National Journal, January 12, 2008, pp. 20-4. When
relations between rival presidential candidates within a party are
strained, the result can be lethal in the general election.
That's the lesson both parties may want to remember as the wide-open
presidential campaign plays out in the coming weeks.
NATO Cooperation
New operational horizons: NATO and maritime security.
Diego A. Ruiz Palmer, NATO Review, Winter 2008, online article.
The forthcoming NATO Bucharest Summit will take stock of
progress in developing an Alliance maritime situational awareness
capability. This is a necessary step in establishing a baseline for
a better structured NATO role in enhancing maritime security --
including maritime aspects of energy security – which draws on the
Alliance’s well-established operational record and capabilities.
Other steps beyond Bucharest should follow, reflecting a growing
consensus that maritime security is one of the defining security
challenges of this century.
READ MORE
Stabilization and Democratization: Renewing the Transatlantic
Alliance. Zachary Selden, Parameters, Winter 2007-08,
pp.85-98. For too long Americans have complained, with some
justification, that their European allies have not shouldered a fair
share of the burden regarding mutual security. In the past the main
measurement of contributions to security was based on defense
spending and the numbers of deployable forces, but the threat has
changed and so have the appropriate responses. A better measurement
of a partner’s contributions to transatlantic security might include
a range of deployable assets encompassing both military and
civilian. In the long-term it is this mix of assets that will permit
the United States and Europe to address the underlying causes of the
security threats they face today and in the future. Europe has
latent civilian capabilities that—if developed and included in
future missions—would make NATO more balanced.
READ MORE
The Military and Reconstruction Operations. Mick Ryan.
Parameters, Winter 2007-08, pp.58-70. The military’s
involvement in reconstruction operations, and the manner in which
they are conducted, provide a highly capable, complementary function
to the array of kinetic means currently employed in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and other areas. The mix of construction and internal security
is a powerful combination capable of supporting the conduct of
kinetic activities in a counterinsurgency environment. Every
insurgency is unique; however, military-led reconstruction
operations do provide the counterinsurgent with a powerful tool to
shift support of the populace away from insurgents. Possessing the
ability to destroy the enemy and make them irrelevant to the
population through reconstruction operations is a powerful tool in
any synchronized counterinsurgency strategy.
READ MORE
Society and Values
THE COMING AMERICAN MATRIARCHY.
Jonathan Rauch. National Journal, January 12, 2008, pp. 12-13.
Feminism, family planning (in the form of birth
control, especially the Pill), and a meritocratic labor market
opened not just jobs but careers to women, who streamed into the
workforce and formed two-earner families. (The election of a female
president is a question of when, not whether.) Women's superior
education will increase their earning power relative to men's, and
on average they will be marrying down, educationally speaking.
Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko note, "Almost all countries in the
OECD"-the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a
group of advanced industrial countries-"now have more women than men
in college and have had a growing gender gap among undergraduates
that favors women."
READ MORE
NEW AGE THINKING. Shoven, John B.
Foreign Policy, January-February 2008, pp. 82-83. Will
the worldwide tidal wave of aging baby boomers create a fiscal
burden that will devastate the global economy? No, says Shoven,
director of the Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford
University. Our conception of “old” has itself become old-fashioned,
he writes. He recommends using modern mortality risk measurements --
or the chance a person has of dying within the next year -- to
measure age. The higher the mortality risk, the “older” a person is.
Today’s 65-year-old man can expect to live another 17 years and has
the same mortality risk a 59-year-old man did in 1970 or a
56-year-old man did in 1940. (Women, on average, live longer than
men.) So, if one looks at the fraction of the U.S. population with a
mortality risk higher than 1.5 percent, the growth of the “elderly”
population is not that dramatic. By 2050, Shoven says, only 62.5
million Americans, or about 1.5 percent of the population, will have
a mortality risk greater than 1.5 percent. Nonetheless, the average
length of retirement for today’s 65-year-old man has stretched to
more than 19 years. To keep the costs of ever-lengthening
retirements under control, Shoven recommends altering retirement
ages and pensions to reflect current mortality risks.
READ MORE
MELINDA GATES GOES PUBLIC.
Sellers, Patricia Fortune, January 21, 2008, pp. 44//56. In
this interview, Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill
Gates, talks about her husband, working in partnership with Warren
Buffett, and her role in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and
its new approach to philanthropy. In 2005, the foundation increased
its giving for global health, including more than $436 million in
grants through its Grand Challenges in Global Health, a
public-private partnership to develop health technology for the
developing world that is easy to transport and use, and effective.
The Gates Foundation has adopted a practical, get-it-done approach;
where government-based one-size-fits-all efforts fail, the
foundation instead assembles the right partners and the specific
expertise required to solve a given problem. Depending on the issue,
the foundation might work with governments, nonprofit organizations,
businesses, or individuals. These efforts have created new
incentives for corporate involvement and redefined traditional
public-private boundaries, all in the name of having “the greatest
impact for the most people.”
READ MORE
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