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Sep. 1, 2009
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President Barack Obama delivers a speech in front of
solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May
27, 2009. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)
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Climate and Energy
A BRIDGE TO THE RENEWABLE ENERGY
FUTURE. Robert U. Ayres and Ed Ayres,
Worldwatch
Magazine, September/October 2009, pp. 22-29. "Renewables
are coming fast. In the meantime, here's a largely overlooked but
potent way to minimize fossil fuel use and the damage it causes.
Historically, Americans have been strong on big ideas, but not
always so strong on the devil in the detail. So, for example, public
officials looking for alternatives to imported oil have widely
embraced corn ethanol, even though a range of studies assessed by
the Natural Resources Defense Council and others show that corn
ethanol has a nearly zero net gain in energy output, while taking a
heavy toll on human food-producing capacity. Or, many of those
looking for "energy independence" still embrace the John McCain
mantra to "drill, baby, drill," perhaps because the notion of
increased domestic oil output comes across as a manly defiance of
the Middle-Eastern chokehold on our gas pumps. More domestic oil
might be an attractive concept, except that the numbers say it would
add nothing to our energy supply in the next 10 years and would
never come close to replacing imports. (The U.S. Department of
Energy estimates that U.S. territories, including coastal waters,
have 3 percent of the known remaining global oil reserves.) That
latter fact has provided Al Gore and others an opening for their
claim that renewables, in contrast to more oil drilling, could bring
America to full energy independence in a decade. But that claim,
too, betrays an embrace of broad concept that isn't completely
realistic about numbers."
READ
MORE
COPENHAGEN'S INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HOW TO SALVAGE THE CLIMATE
CONFERENCE. Michael
A. Levi, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2009,
var. pp.
"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."
READ MORE
TAKING UP THE SECURITY CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE
CHANGE. Rymn J. Parsons,
Strategic
Studies Institute, August 2009, var. pp. "Climate
change, in which man-made global warming is a major factor, will
likely have dramatic and long lasting consequences with profound
security implications, making it a challenge the United States must
urgently take up. The security implications will be most pronounced
in places where the effects of climate change are greatest,
particularly affecting weak states already especially vulnerable to
environmental destabilization. Two things are vitally important:
stemming the tide of climate change and adapting to its far-reaching
consequences. This project examines the destabilizing effects of
climate change and how the military could be used to mitigate global
warming and to assist at-risk peoples and states to adapt to climate
change, thereby promoting stability and sustainable security.
Recommendations are made on the importance of U.S. leadership on the
critical issue of global warming, on defining and dealing with the
strategic dimensions of climate change, and, as a case in point, on
how Sino-American cooperation in Africa would not only benefit areas
where climate change effects are already pronounced, but also
strengthen a crucial bilateral relationship."
READ MORE
LOCAL FOOD: THE ECONOMICS. Sarah
DeWeerdt, World Watch Magazine, July/August, pp.
20-24. "One drizzly Sunday last March, I went to the weekly
farmers market in my favorite Seattle neighborhood and bought a bag
of potatoes. I stopped at a stall where a farmer, his hands caked
with dirt, was filling mesh bags with small, just-dug potatoes and
singing a silly made-up ditty as he twirled each bag shut. "That one
looks good," I said, pointing to the bag in his hands. "Can I have
that one?" "Yeah," he agreed with me, "it has a nice mix of spuds."
I held out a few crumpled dollar bills and he passed me the bag.
Eating local has economic benefits for communities, say proponents
of local food, and after such a quintessential farmers market moment
that conclusion seems obvious, the logic inescapable. After all, I'd
handed my money directly to the farmer who grew my food-rather than
passing it along a chain of faceless and distant middlemen-and
what's more, he honestly seemed to be having a good time. That's
different from the economic logic of the mainstream food system,
which de-emphasizes place and sees trade as a disembodied, win-win
endeavor. Different communities can specialize in growing different
foods-or in activities other than growing food altogether-thereby
developing production efficiencies that enable them to offer their
products at a lower price. Money flows freely among communities, and
everyone gets a more varied diet for less money."
READ MORE
STIMULATING A REVOLUTION IN
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY. Charles Weiss and William B.
Bonvillian, Environment, July/August 2009, pp.
10-20. "A consensus is growing that the environmental,
economic, and geopolitical costs of the world's addiction to fossil
fuels justify a major U.S. federal program to stimulate
technological innovation in energy. President Obama and Congress
made a down payment on such a program in the February 2009 stimulus
bill, advancing some $39 billion toward energy technologies,
including $5 billion in research, although the administration's
follow-on technology program in the climate bill is now in jeopardy.
Given the pervasive role of energy throughout the economy and the
international character of the climate crisis, many urge the
creation of a program the size of the Manhattan or the Apollo
projects. Beyond the growing consensus for policy action, how should
such a program be organized? "
READ MORE
IT'S STILL THE ONE.
Daniel Yergin, Foreign Policy,
August 24, 2009, var. pp. "[...] The cast of
characters in the oil business has also grown and changed. Some oil
companies have become "supermajors," such as ExxonMobil and Chevron,
while others, such as Amoco and ARCO, have just disappeared. "Big
oil" no longer means the traditional international oil companies,
their logos instantly recognizable from corner gas stations, but
rather much larger state-owned companies, which, along with
governments, today control more than 80 percent of the world's oil
reserves. Fifteen of the world's 20 largest oil companies are now
state-owned. The cast of oil traders has also much expanded. Today's
global oil game now includes pension funds, institutional money
managers, endowments, and hedge funds, as well as individual
investors and day traders. The managers at the pension funds and the
university endowments see themselves as engaged in "asset
allocation," hedging risks and diversifying to protect retirees'
incomes and faculty salaries. But, technically, they too are part of
the massive growth in the ranks of the new oil speculators. With all
these changes, the very future of this most vital commodity is now
being seriously questioned, debated, and challenged, even as the
world will need more of it than ever before. Both the U.S.
Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency project
that, even accounting for gains in efficiency, global energy use
will increase almost 50 percent from 2006 to 2030 -- and that oil
will continue to provide 30 percent or more of the world's energy in
2030. But will it? From the beginning, oil has been a global
industry, going back to 1861 when the first cargo of kerosene was
sent from Pennsylvania -- the Saudi Arabia of 19th-century oil -- to
Britain. (The potential crew was so fearful that the kerosene would
catch fire that they had to be gotten drunk to shanghai them on
board.) But that is globalization of supply, a familiar story. What
is decisively new is the globalization of demand."
READ MORE
Afghanistan Dilemma
AFGHANISTAN DILEMMA: IS PRESIDENT OBAMA
PURSUING THE RIGHT COURSE?Thomas J. Billitteri, The CQ
Researcher, August 7, 2009, pp. 669-692. "Nearly eight years ago, U.S. forces first entered Afghanistan to
pursue the al Qaeda terrorists who plotted the Sept. 11 terror
attacks. American troops are still there today, along with thousands
of NATO forces. Under a new strategy crafted by the Obama
administration, military leaders are trying to deny terrorists a
permanent foothold in the impoverished Central Asian country and in
neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan, whose western border region has
become a sanctuary for Taliban and al Qaeda forces. The
Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict — 'Af-Pak' in diplomatic parlance —
poses huge challenges ranging from rampant corruption within
Afghanistan's police forces to a multibillion-dollar opium economy
that funds the insurgency. But those problems pale in comparison
with the ultimate nightmare scenario: Pakistan's nuclear weapons
falling into the hands of terrorists, which foreign-policy experts
say has become a real possibility."
READ MORE
PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN: BEYOND THE TALIBAN. Juan Cole,
Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2009, pp. 221-249. The
author "analyzes political and economic developments in contemporary
Pakistan and Afghanistan. He argues that Western preoccupation with
'crisis' and 'radicalism' in Pakistan has caused observers to miss
the success of an expanding white-collar middle class in demanding a
rule of law and a return to civilian rule after nearly a decade of
military dictatorship. He questions the idea that there is a purely
military, and especially Western military, solution to the problem
of Talibanism in northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan,
analyzing the insurgency as several distinct groups driven in part
by religious nationalism and anti-imperialism."
READ MORE
THE COST OF PEACE. Joel Hafvenstein,
Commonweal, Aug 14, 2009, pp. 16-19.
"The Obama administration
is clearly determined to reverse Afghanistan's slide into chaos.
Since January 2009 we have seen a new military commander and
ambassador in Afghanistan, a re-examination of strategy, and the
beginnings of a 'surge' in American troops and civilian development
workers. America's Afghanistan campaign, however, needs a
more fundamental shift in priorities."
READ MORE
Middle East Situation
ISLAMISTS AND THE GRAVE BELL. F Gregory Gause III,
The National Interest, Sep/Oct 2009. pp. 44-55. "Americans
have short memories, at least when it comes to the Middle East. Once
again pundits and opinion makers are jumping aboard the democracy
promotion train. There seems to be a renewed longing for the heady
days of the Bush administration when the Washington conventional
wisdom held that democracy promotion was the best antidote to
regional anti-Americanism and terrorism."
READ MORE
ALL (MUSLIM) POLITICS IS LOCAL. Charles Tripp, Foreign
Affairs, Sep/Oct 2009, var. pages. "Gilles Kepel and Ali A.
Allawi explore the troubled relationship between power and Islam and
conclude, each in his own way, that Muslims who seek to shape the
world according to their religious values often confront an obdurate
reality."
READ
MORE
FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND ZEALOTS: AL QAEDA IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE.
Christopher J. Fettweis,
Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2009, pp. 269-296. The
author "argues that too many post-September 11 analyses of
terrorism seem to regard the phenomenon as brand new. Terrorism has
existed throughout history, and its groups come in two forms:
nationalist and ideological. This simple binary typology illuminates
a number of important characteristics of terrorism, from group
strategy and tactics to overall life expectancy. Perhaps most
important, counter-terrorism measures that prove effective against
groups in one category will often fail against those in the other."
READ MORE
NATO
AN AGENDA FOR NATO.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2009, pp.
2-20. "In the course of its 60 years, NATO has united the
West, secured Europe, and ended the Cold War. These successes,
however, give rise to a legitimate question: What next? What are the
implications and lessons to be drawn from the past 60 years? NATO's
new secretary-general has been tasked to 'develop a new Strategic
Concept and submit proposals for its implementation for approval at
[NATO'S] next summit.' Given the current and likely future security
dilemmas confronting the alliance, that new concept will have to
deal with at least four fundamental challenges: first, how to attain
a politically acceptable outcome for NATO'S deepening engagement in
the overlapping Afghan and Pakistani conflicts; second, how to
update the meaning and obligations of 'collective security' as
embodied in Article 5 of the alliance's treaty; third, how to engage
Russia in a binding and mutually beneficial relationship with Europe
and the wider North Atlantic community; and fourth, how to respond
to novel global security dilemmas."
READ MORE
TOWARDS A NEW STRATEGY FOR NATO. Karl-Heinz Kamp, Survival, August 2009,
pp. 21-27. "This article is derived
from the most recent NDC study, 'The Way to NATO's New Strategic
Concept'. A new strategy is long overdue. The new Strategic Concept
will be drafted in the coming months by a group of external experts
– referred to as the 'Eminent Persons' – and is scheduled to be
presented for the approval of NATO’s heads of state and government
at their next summit in late Given the changes in the
international political landscape, the new Strategic Concept has to
meet at least five requirements."
READ MORE
THE LIMITS OF COERCIVE AIRPOWER: NATO'S "VICTORY" IN KOSOVO
REVISITED.
Daniel R. Lake, International Security, Summer 2009, pp. 83–112.
"Many studies of the 1999 Kosovo crisis argue that although airpower
played an important role in forcing President Slobodan Milošević's
capitulation, NATO's threat of a ground invasion was critical. Other
studies claim that no such threat existed or that it was irrelevant
to ending the crisis. Instead, they attribute NATO's success solely
to the strategic use of coercive airpower. There is, however,
another explanation: the rising dissatisfaction with Milošević's
rule among his supporters as the crisis dragged on. Despite NATO's
overwhelming strategic superiority, Milošević was able to reject his
adversary's terms of surrender until his political position became
untenable. This suggests that airpower may have greater limitations
as a tool of statecraft than its supporters maintain."
READ MORE
North
Korea
STOPPING NUCLEAR NORTH
KOREA.
Mark Fitzpatrick,
Survival,
August-September 2009, pp. 5-12.
"Following North
Korean missile and nuclear tests and a series of other belligerent
actions and threats, tensions on the peninsula have entered a
dangerous phase. There is a heightened potential for regional
conflict and global repercussions if the wrong precedents are set
by, for example, acquiescing to the North’s nuclear rule-breaking.
Demanding to be recognised as nuclear-armed and focused on
leadership succession, Pyongyang seems no longer to be using
brinksmanship for negotiation leverage. In response, the United
States and its Asian allies have signalled that North Korea cannot
expect business as usual. Even China’s posture has begun to shift,
although not nearly enough. For the past two decades, the United
States and its allies have sought to
test the proposition that North Korea would be willing to trade its
nuclear programme for the right economic and political concessions.
In 1994 and again in 2007, North Korea did pledge to give up its
weapons capabilities, although implementation of the agreements
never went beyond the preliminary steps. Regardless of whether North
Korea was ever serious about denuclearisation, Pyongyang has now
staked out, in word and deed, the position that it will never let go
of its nuclear arsenal. In doing so, it may well have hastened its
own demise."
READ MORE
SANCTIONING NORTH
KOREA: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DENUCLEARIZATION AND PROLIFERATION.
Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Peterson Institute
for International Economics, July 2009, var. pp. "As a
small country dependent on foreign trade and investment, North Korea
should be highly vulnerable to external economic pressure. In June
2009, following North Korea’s second nuclear test, the UN Security
Council passed Resolution 1874, broadening existing economic
sanctions and tightening their enforcement. However, an unintended
consequence of the nuclear crisis has been to push North Korea into
closer economic relations with China and other trading partners that
show little interest in cooperating with international efforts to
pressure North Korea, let alone in supporting sanctions. North Korea
appears to have rearranged its external economic relations to reduce
any impact that traditional sanctions could have. Given the
extremely high priority the North Korean regime places on its
military capacity, it is unlikely that the pressure the world can
bring to bear on North Korea will be sufficient to induce the
country to surrender its nuclear weapons. The promise of lifting
existing sanctions may provide one incentive for a successor
government to reassess the country’s military and diplomatic
positions, but sanctions alone are unlikely to have a strong effect
in the short run. Yet the United States and other countries can
still exercise some leverage if they aggressively pursue North
Korea’s international financial
intermediaries as they have done at times in the past."
READ MORE
Financial Markets in Crisis
LESSONS OF
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. Ben Steil,
Council on Foreign Relations, July
2009, var. pages. "A new report from
the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
Lessons of the Financial Crisis, calls for
major economic reforms, both to avoid
fueling excessive corporate and individual
borrowing in the future and to make the
financial system much more resilient in the
face of falling asset prices. "The crisis
offers a sobering lesson about the dangers
of policies that fuel the rapid buildup of
debt across the economy," says the report.
"Excessive leverage in the economy needs to
be prevented because credit does not return
to normal once asset prices stop rising and
start falling. It becomes dangerously
scarce." Although many are arguing that the
crisis is a direct result of lax regulation,
"U.S. monetary policy, taxation policy, and
home ownership promotion policy were so
conducive to credit expansion that the idea,
understandably popular in Washington and
Brussels, that preventing future such crises
can be accomplished simply by waking up
regulators ‘asleep at the switch' is
dangerously simplistic," says Benn Steil,
senior fellow and director of international
economics at CFR. "The United States in
particular, given that it effectively sets
monetary and credit conditions for a
significant portion of the global economy,
needs to put in place policies that can
better discourage, recognize, and curtail a
credit boom, and ensure that systemically
important financial institutions can
withstand its unwinding." Steil lays out
specific recommendations for reforming the
international financial architecture, bank
capital standards, borrower screening and
monitoring, corporate and individual
taxation regimes, over-the-counter (OTC)
derivatives markets infrastructure,
corporate governance, and monetary policy."
READ MORE
THE FINAL
DAYS OF MERRIL LYNCH. William D. Cohan,
The Atlantic, September 2009, var.
pp. "Last September, as Wall Street
turned to rubble and panic threatened to
come unleashed, Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank
of America, agreed to swallow one of the
country’s most toxic investment houses. The
deal was not altogether voluntary; as
details have slowly emerged, the coercive
role of the Fed and Treasury has loomed
larger. What exactly happened in the weeks
leading up to the merger? Did the deal save
us all from economic apocalypse? And what
does the government’s unprecedented role in
it portend for the future of our economy?"
READ MORE
U.S. Power
THE DEFAULT POWER. Josef Joffe, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2009, var. pages. "Since the United States first became a global superpower, it has been fashionable to speak of its decline. But in today's world, the United States' economic and military strength, along with the attractiveness of its ideals, will ensure its power for a long time to come." READ MORE
THE WANING OF U.S. HEGEMONY - MYTH OR REALITY? A REVIEW ESSAY. Christopher Layne, International Security, Summer 2009, pp. 147-172. "Over the next two decades, international politics will be shaped by whether the international system remains unipolar or is transformed into a multipolar system. Can the United States sustain its primacy? Or will the emergence of new great powers reorder the distribution of power in the international system? If U.S. power is waning, will power transition dynamics result in security competitions and an increased possibility of war? In particular, what are the implications of China's rapid ascent to great power status? If the United States is unable to preserve its hegemonic role, what will happen to the security and economic frameworks that it took the lead in creating after the end of World War II and that have provided the foundation for the international order ever since? In a world no longer defined by U.S. hegemony, what would become of globalization and the open international economic system that the United established after World War II and expanded after the Cold War ended? This essay reviews five publications that grapple with these questions." READ MORE
Health care reform
HEALTH-CARE REFORM: IS UNIVERSAL COVERAGE TOO EXPENSIVE? Marcia Clemmitt,
The CQ Researcher, Aug. 28, 2009, pp. 693-713. "For
the first time in 15 years, health-care reform has moved to the top
of Washington's agenda. A new Democratic president and Democratic
majorities in the House and Senate have declared two major goals:
increase coverage to near-universal levels and stop the huge, annual
cost increases that are gradually putting health care out of reach
for small businesses and low-income families. Most proposals would
subsidize insurance for low-income Americans and create new,
government-regulated insurance markets for those without
employer-provided coverage. One controversial scheme would create a
publicly run insurance plan and require individuals to buy coverage.
Congressional Republicans and some Democrats argue, however, that
the plan would be too expensive and would allow government to meddle
too much in health care. And at angry town hall meetings in August,
some even charged, incorrectly, that the arrangement would establish
'death panels' that would deny treatment to elderly and disabled
patients."
READ MORE
STRAINING THE SAFETY NET: IS JOBLESSNESS OVERWHELMING AID
PROGRAMS? Peter Katel, The CQ Researcher, July 31, 2009,
pp. 645-668. "As unemployment keeps mounting, millions more Americans are being
forced to rely on a network of federal and state programs to meet
their basic needs. The added pressure on the so-called safety net
has prompted increases in unemployment insurance payments and
expanded food-stamp and welfare caseloads, authorized under this
year's $787 billion stimulus package. Budget crises, however, are
forcing some states to cut back on safety-net programs, including
health care and meals for disadvantaged children. At the same time
critics say welfare reforms enacted in 1996 requiring aid recipients
to work don't mesh with the reality of today's job shortage. But
supporters of the reforms say the extra spending on benefits shows
the system is working. With employment growth unlikely any time
soon, a renewed debate on government responsibility to the
disadvantaged is gathering force."
READ MORE
HOW AMERICAN HEALTH CARE KILLED MY FATHER.
David Goldhill,
The Atlantic,
September 2009, var. pages. "The incentives that drive our
health care system have perverse (and sometimes fatal) consequences.
It's time for a radical change. After the needless death of his
father, the author, a business executive, began a personal
exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered
poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is
a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like
its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated
will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem."
READ MORE
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