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Parsing Iran's 'Momentous' Internal Drama

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Bernard Gwertzman - Jun. 19 (Interview) - The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei’s people have privately sent signals to him that they’re ready for a bloodbath; they’re prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this; and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

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Crisis Guide: The Korean Peninsula

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - May. 26 (Special Report) - The Korean crisis has drawn the region into ongoing multilateral discussions—Six-Party Talks—and tensions over how to handle the Kim Jong-Il regime. In 2003, the nations represented here began holding the Six-Party Talks with the goal of controlling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. But abrupt policy shifts by the United States, disagreements among the six countries involved, and most of all North Korea's provocative conduct have made progress toward an agreement difficult to sustain.

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“We hate you guys … but there is nothing much we can do”

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Brad Setser - May. 17 (News Analysis) - Private Chinese savers presumably wouldn’t want to buy Treasuries at current rates. But China’s current exchange rate regime compels China to buy dollars when private Chinese investors don’t want them.*** The result: a strange world where China’s government ends up buying an asset that China’s people currently do not want …

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Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton's Trip To Asia

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Paul B. Stares - Feb. 18 (Interview) - he Japanese are clearly very happy that Secretary Clinton is beginning with her Asia trip with Japan. And they clearly are reassured that Japan still counts in Washington's calculus. Tell us what are the leading sort of issues that she's going to be bringing up with the Japanese and what she's looking to hear from them.

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The U.S. Economic Stimulus Plan

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Lee Hudson Teslik - Feb. 10 (Special Report) - Economists disagree on the wisdom of extensive stimulus spending, as well as the particulars of the current U.S. plan. Given the current economic climate, most mainstream economists now say that the potential downsides of collapse are sufficiently grave that large stimulatory expenditures may be necessary. As the global financial and economic crisis has worsened, this viewpoint has gained international popularity. In a December 2008 paper released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, leading UN economists call for coordinated stimulus packages across the world's leading economies, above and beyond the money already spent to boost credit market liquidity. Two scholars from the conservative Heritage Foundation argue in a December 2008 paper that the best medicine for the U.S. economy would be to reduce overall government spending. CFR Senior Fellow Amity Shlaes adds that governments can throw good money after bad if they seek to stimulate unsustainable businesses. "It can be perverse because you stimulate something [i.e. an industry] that's really pretty weak and should maybe fade," Shlaes told CFR.org. In a December 2008 op-ed, Shlaes also argued that huge public works projects often fail to revive national economies, as evidenced by Japan's experience during the 1990s.

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Mitchell's Prospects for Lasting Israeli-Palestinian Accord 'Slim to None'

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Bernard Gwertzman - Feb. 02 (Interview) - ... it's clear to me that they've substituted at this stage process for substance. They have no intention of making major changes in America's approach to the Arab-Israeli issue, because right now, the prospects of any sort of conflict-ending agreement between Israelis and Palenstinians are slim to none.

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A Smarter Intelligence Policy

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Frank Procida - Jan. 05 (News Analysis) - The President-elect must recognize that he alone, by virtue of his position as the final reader and primary consumer of the Intelligence Community's analysis, already has the ability to institute the process necessary to get the most out of his intelligence bureaucracy.

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A Pakistan Connection?

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Jayshree Bajoria - Dec. 02 (Special Report) - Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari told the Financial Times that even if the militants are linked to the LeT, "who do you think we are fighting?" Some experts say India's allegations fail to take into account the drastically changed relationship between the Pakistani military and some Kashmiri militant groups since Pakistan itself has increasingly become the target of extremist violence. Shuja Nawaz, author of the book "Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within," told CFR.org earlier this year the ISI has "lost control" of Kashmiri militant groups. However, Ashley Tellis, an expert on South Asia at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told CNN's Fareed Zakaria he's not sure whether the Pakistan army can bring itself "to enforce the writ of the Pakistani state" over groups which they might have supported in the past.

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Crisis Guide: Climate Change

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - [Interactive Content] There is almost no question that temperatures are rising on average globally. Over the last half century the rate of warming has been about double the rate of warming that we've seen over the last century as a whole. Eleven of the last twelve years have been in the twelve warmest years on record. There is a possibility that we'll discover some flaws in the temperature record, but it's extremely unlikely that people will find that warming is not occurring at the kinds of rates that we are seeing now.

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A Changed Prognosis for Climate Change Policy

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - By Michael A. Levi - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - The financial crisis, and more fundamentally, the global economic downturn, will have a big impact on our near-term efforts to deal with energy security and climate change.

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Turning Japanese?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Jayshree Bajoria - Oct. 22 (News Analysis) - ... the United States, the world's largest economy can still learns lessons from historical financial troubles of Japan, the world's second-largest economy. Japan experienced almost a decade of economic stagnation, coupled with crippling deflation, in which a general decline in prices discourages investment and spending, slowing down economic growth and resulting in higher unemployment. David M. Rubenstein, the cofounder and managing director of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, tells CFR.org that Washington now faces its own deflationary pressures. Moreover, Rubenstein says, Washington has limited policy options to deal with deflation, given that it has already cut interest rates sharply to promote economic growth. "We have tools in our economic kit to deal with inflation," he says. "We don't have as many tools to deal with deflation."

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International Press Assess U.S. Presidential Race

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Eben Kaplan - Aug. 29 (Interview) - The 2008 U.S. presidential race pitting Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) against presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has sparked intense international interest. For instance, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center showed 83 percent of Japanese citizens expressing interest in the campaign, compared to 80 percent of U.S. citizens. Of course, different issues pique the interests of different nations. CFR.org surveyed some representatives of the international press corps at the Democratic National Convention in Denver to find out which countries are interested in which issues.

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Politics and the Olympics

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Jayshree Bajoria, Jeremy Sherlick, Frank Deford - Aug. 08 (Special Report) - An interactive slideshow looking at how the Olympics have served as political showcases for nations, individuals, and ideologies.

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China's Environmental Crisis

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - Aug. 05 (Special Report) - China's heady economic growth continued to blossom in 2007, with the country's gross domestic product (GDP) hitting 11.4 percent. This booming economy, however, has come alongside an environmental crisis. Sixteen of the world's twenty most polluted cities are in China. To many, Beijing's pledge to host a "Green Olympics" in the summer of 2008 signaled the country's willingness to address its environmental problems. Experts say the Chinese government has made serious efforts to clean up and achieved many of the bid commitments. However, an environmentally sustainable growth rate remains a serious challenge for the country.

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Motor City Looks To Rev Up Operations Abroad

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Lee Hudson Teslik - Aug. 01 (Special Report) - The outlook is especially grim for sales within the United States, where market share has fallen dramatically (WSJ-chart) for nearly all U.S. automakers. With average summer gasoline prices in the United States over $4 a gallon, buyers are increasingly keen on fuel efficiency, while U.S. automakers have for years focused on trucks and larger vehicles. The expense of overhauling U.S. production facilities is high, and while U.S. automakers have set up plants to produce smaller cars abroad, shipping costs make it uneconomical for them to bring these vehicles back to the United States.

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Food Prices

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Lee Hudson Teslik - Jul. 07 (Special Report) - Global agricultural markets, in economics lingo, are "thin," meaning that most of the food produced on Earth does not cross national boundaries. Only about 5 percent to 7 percent of all rice, for instance, is traded internationally. Other food types are traded more heavily, but very few see international trade rates higher than 20 percent of what is grown globally. This means the number of transactions is not high enough to guarantee consistent pricing throughout the world, because some countries are overwhelmingly dependent upon specific other countries for particular imports. For instance, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 2007 price for a ton of rice in the United States and the price in Thailand differed by $133--or more than 10 percent--with U.S. consumers paying more. The effects of this dynamic are exacerbated by government policies blocking trade where it might otherwise exist, in order to safeguard supplies at home.

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The National Security Debate

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Robert McMahon - Jun. 03 (Special Report) - some foreign policy analysts assert there is unlikely to be a dramatic shift in Washington's national security positions regardless of which major candidate wins. Timothy Lynch and Robert Singh of the University of London write that none of the lead candidates have disavowed the "war on terror." They also assert Obama's "opposition to the Iraq war is empirical--'it didn't work'--rather than ideological."

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Where Farm Policy Meets the Food Crisis

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Lee Hudson Teslik - Jun. 03 (News Analysis) - Farmers in the United States and European Union will be watching more than the weather this summer. New legislation pending on both sides of the Atlantic holds significant implications for the future of agriculture markets, international trade policy, and the food crisis that continues to grip large swaths of the developing world.

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Should the U.S. Support the UN's Responsibility to Protect Doctrine?

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Stewart M. Patrick, Steven Groves - May. 23 (Interview) - The refusal of the military regime in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) to accept large-scale international aid in response to a devastating cyclone has spurred new interest in the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. That doctrine was incorporated into an outcome document at the 2005 UN summit, where the United States joined 150 other states in calling for the consideration of collective UN Security Council action should national authorities fail "to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." There is a debate within policy circles whether the situation in Myanmar qualifies. The Bush administration has faced calls from some human rights groups to invoke the doctrine and intervene in Sudan's Darfur region, where the administration says genocide has occurred.

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'Prolonged Crisis' in Lebanon Reflects 'Cold War' in Region

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Bernard Gwertzman, Michael Young - May. 13 (Interview) - Hezbollah's latest efforts to show off its military power may spawn genuine hatred between Shiites and Sunnis in Lebanon. "Things could get a lot worse before they get better," Young says.

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Foreign Policy Brain Trusts: McCain Advisers

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Robert McMahon, Deputy Editor - May. 12 (Special Report) - McCain's advisers include a wide range of veteran party strategists and former top policymakers. Media reports have pointed to a tug-of-war for influence in the campaign between policy pragmatists and a mixture of so-called neoconservatives and experts regarded as hard-liners over the projection of U.S. power globally

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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Eben Kaplan, Jeremy Sherlick - May. 11 (Special Report) - An in-depth, multimedia look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its geopolitical repercussions. This interactive, graphical overview covers this crisis from a variety of angles, with a detailed timeline of events and extensive documentation.

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Should Hamas be Included in the Mideast Peace Process?

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Mohamad Bazzi, Robert B. Satloff - May. 01 (Opinion) - Two Mideast experts debate the merits of isolating or engaging the terrorist group.

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South Africa's 'Crucial Role' in Zimbabwe Crisis

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Stephanie Hanson - Apr. 11 (Opinion) - After years of economic crisis and repressive leadership under President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe looks poised for change. The opposition party contends Mugabe lost March 28 presidential elections, and delays in announcing poll results have fueled intense speculation about what is next for the beleaguered country. Andrew Meldrum, a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and former Zimbabwe correspondent for the Guardian, says the inner circle of Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, is looking at its options.

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McCain's Speech on Foreign Policy, March 2008

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By John McCain - Mar. 27 (Speech) - But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.

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