The reinvention of the U.S. industrial sector promises far-reaching global consequences Pushing back against the deluge of punditry about America’s strategic eclipse, my last post argued that the U.S. global position is being bolstered greatly by a revolution in domestic energy production that began to take shape in the past few years. Although it has not […]
The International AIDS Conference was held last week in Washington, D.C. This was the first time the conference was hosted by an American city in more than 20 years, a nod to President Obama’s 2009 lifting of the ban on people living with HIV from entering the United States. Although there is way too much […]
So often the news, and commentary on it, focuses on when things go wrong. Things going wrong usually involve drama and confrontation, which makes for interesting stories. I am have been guilty of contributing to this trend myself in commenting on when democracy goes wrong, i.e., election fraud and impeachments. But recently I was reminded […]
The opening of the 2012 Olympics in London on Friday were definitely a spectacle to behold. Perhaps the show was enough to divert attention from the gaffes and muddles reported by the media, such as the South Korean flag being displayed as the North Korean women’s football team were about to take to the field.
Mitt Romney, Republican hopeful for the 2012 American Presidential election, arrived on Wednesday in London. This will open his European and Middle East tour for the next several days. Mr. Romney is scheduled to spend several days in London, for the opening of the Olympic games, then fly to Poland, and conclude his foreign trip […]
Since its inception, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia (and Eritrea) has been rolling over controversies, mainly in its reporting, sourcing, and unsubstantiated claims. I just got through reading its latest report made of truths, half-truths, and a whole lot of innuendoes that implicate at least four present/past officials and presidential candidates with certain […]
Posted by contributor Andres Santamaria. A recent Washington Post article by Sudarsan Raghavan reports about the abundance of teenage girls getting married as a result of food shortages in Niger. Nearly one of two girls gets married before the age of 15 in hopes of exchanging dowries to provide much needed food and financial support […]
One of my primary interests regarding government is how countries transition to democracy from another form of rule, and why some places seem to have more success with this than others. For countries formerly under the influence of the Soviet Union, some have seen democracy establish a strong foothold, whereas others face a constant struggle […]
“We talk about smart defence as if we’d done stupid defense before. I’d like to believe we had smart defense all the time,” said one of our guest speakers during the Young Atlanticists Summit in Chicago couple of months ago. We were giggling awhile as for the first time we, as Young Atlanticists, received a direct answer to […]
The International AIDS Conference is underway this week in Washington, DC. It is a historic occasion as this is the first time in 22 years the conference has taken place in the United States. Protests dominated the last U.S.-based conference in San Francisco in 1990 because a law enacted in 1987 by Republican Senator Jesse Helms […]
The energy boom upends arguments about the inevitability of U.S. strategic decline A previous post peered into the crystal ball to argue that America’s strategic prospects are dramatically brightening due to an unexpectedly improving energy outlook and the looming revitalization of its manufacturing base. This thesis cuts against the reigning anxiety about the nation’s economic course […]
While this blog often posts about many of the current issues in food security, there are also opportunities to present ideas about the future of food. The Atlantic’s “The Future of X” channel recently looked at “The Future of Food” through an interview with Nicola Twilley, writer of the Edible Geography blog. Watch the video […]
The roster of countries agreeing to forgo enrichment and reprocessing technologies has risen to two. As the time ticks down to expiration of its bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S., the government of Taiwan has announced that it is prepared to renounce any right to enrich or reprocess nuclear fuel. Despite the fact that […]
Currently, a key question for U.S. policymakers is how to engage with and/or support new governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. For those of you interested in the topic of U.S. foreign assistance to the Middle East, I strongly recommend a new Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) paper, The Federal Budget and Appropriations for […]
One of the greatest problems in the post-Cold War era has been what to do with the leftover highly enriched uranium [HEU], also known as weapons-grade uranium. When the US and USSR were engaged in the nuclear arms race, tons of the stuff was produced in the hopes it would never be used. The 1993 […]