Mr. Obama once dubbed himself the “Pacific president”, and rightly so. Less than two years ago, the newly-incumbent Obama Administration began to evaluate its overarching national security strategy for the U.S.. Newly appointed policymakers felt that the strategic focus of the U.S., at the time, was overly biased on the Middle East. When analyzed over […]
I went to an interesting talk last night by Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Foreign Policy Association initiated a new series with his talk: the Dame Jillian Sackler Distinguished Lecture. (She was married to Arthur Sackler, the research psychiatrist and art patron.) Dr. […]
All eyes have once again found there focus on Haiti and the sate of the country’s children, as a Cholera outbreak is gripping the country and as another hurricane looms in the distance. The country has already been met with fears of housing shortages, adoption issues, an almost completely decimated education system, and surmount it […]
The current situation in Afghanistan demonstrates something that may seem surprising: counterinsurgency would probably work. The problem is, the United States has been reluctant to actually attempt it. The policy brief, The Trust Deficit, published last month by Open Society Foundations, demonstrates this pretty clearly. The document, created after interviewing over 250 Afghans in focus […]
The Future of the U.S.-Turkey Relationship November 10, 2010, 12:00pm – 1:30pm Admission is free. RSVP to attend this event Panelists: Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations Soner Cagaptay, Director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy […]
What does the status of women have to do with health outcomes? Karen Grepin posted an interesting set of statistics a few days ago in her article, Men are Dogs. Aren’t they? Most people intuitively believe that serodiscordancy (when one partner in a steady relationship is HIV-positive and the other is not) is a result of the […]
A rising chorus of central bank policy-makers in emerging market nations criticized the Federal Reserve on Thursday for its decision to pump more money into the U.S. economy – a monetary policy known as Quantitative Easing – a measure that they fear could escalate the worrisome influx of cash into fast-growing economies around the world.
Sex workers internationally face incredible stigma, dehumanization and criminalization from politicians, health workers, police officers, the media and the general population. In fact most people seem uncomfortable with the idea of sex work, and struggle to understand how anyone could “do such a thing”. The language regularly used to describe sex work manifests this disregard […]
Earlier this week I reported on the devastating cholera epidemic currently racing through the Haitian countryside for The Atlantic. The numbers have now climbed to 442 registered deaths and 6,742 hospitalizations, but my reporting from the Artibonite and Central plateau regions is still timely. “Cholera arrived in Haiti this month with a vengeance. Since the […]
China’s military expenditure in 2010 was officially reported at 162 Billion USD, roughly 30% of the current U.S. defense budget. That budget is expected to grow a whopping 85% to 300 Billion USD by 2018. With China surging ahead to achieve parity with U.S. defense spending, other Asian nations are making significant increasing to their […]
Global Markets were shorting US futures after the results of US national elections, where the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, and made gains in the Senate – though Democrats are still in control. The Markets are looking ahead to Fed QE policy and the G-20 meeting in South Korea later this week.
Further to my post immediately below, Californians yesterday showed the world that they, living in the most-populous US state, and the eighth largest economy in the world, care enough about their public health, environment, jobs and the state of the world’s climate system to categorically reject the attempt to roll back their GHG regulations. With […]
Today (Tuesday, November 2) is Election Day in the United States. While it is an off-year for presidential elections, in my home state of New York the entire state legislature is up for election, governor, attorney general, comptroller, both US Senators (rare as they are usually staggered , but one is running for Hillary Clinton’s […]
I’m now responding somewhat belatedly to the contentious debate that occurred a couple Saturdays ago between Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare and Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame law school. In the debate, O’Connell argues that most of the Obama administration’s drone strikes in Pakistan have been unlawful while Wittes argues the opposite. Wittes posted […]
I’ve been sitting in yesterday afternoon and this morning on some fascinating discussions on the state of play of GHG regulation, how US politics is influencing our work on climate and energy, and what the world is going to look like tomorrow after the mid-term elections here. (More on that later.) For the moment, the […]