Jan 22, 2020

The fourth consecutive month of Lebanon's unprecedented political and economic crisis kicked off this week with three dramatic developments that will interplay in the coming months to define the country's direction for years to come: Escalating protests on the streets, heightened security measures by an increasingly militarising state, and now, a new cabinet of controversial so-called "independent technocrats" led by Prime Minister-designate Hassan Diab.

Seeking to increase pressure on the political elite to act responsibly amid inaction vis-a-vis the slow collapse of the economy, the protesters had launched the fourth month of their protest movement, which had begun on 17 October last year, with a 'Week of Anger', stepping up their tactics and targeting banks and government institutions.

Jan 29, 2020

Rami Khouri's on Euronews TV discussing the Trump-Netanyahu Middle East initiative.

Feb 6, 2020

Armed rebel groups push for funding and recognition, and often get it.

Feb 14, 2020

Emily Whalen reviews Anatomies of Revolution by George Lawson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Mar 2, 2020

The U.S. Democratic primary has exposed an obsession with morality when it comes to foreign policy that is harmful to strategic and moral objectives alike, Stephen M. Walt writes.

Mar 2, 2020

How do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later refused General MacArthur's request to use them in China during the Korean War. What is contextual intelligence, and how does it explain why Bush 41 is ranked first in foreign policy, but Bush 43 is found wanting? Is it possible for a president to lie in the service of the public interest? In this episode, Professor Joseph S. Nye considers these questions as he explores the role of morality in presidential decision-making from FDR to Trump.

Mar 3, 2020

February 7, 2020: With the advent of the digital age and the rise of Russia and China as global powers, the EU must do more to defend itself and its relationship with the United States, according to Janne Kuusela, Director General Janne Kuusela. In an event moderated by  Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship he explained why Finland could be a potential paradigm for the EU’s defense strategy. 

Mar 3, 2020

Could China and the US be stumbling down the path Germany and the United Kingdom took at the beginning of the last century? The possibility will strike many readers as inconceivable. But we should remember that when we say something is “inconceivable,” this is a claim not about what is possible in the world, but rather about what our limited minds can imagine.

My answer to the question of whether we are sleepwalking toward war is “yes.” 

Mar 24, 2020

Amy Austin Holmes is the Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar with the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative. An Associate Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo, she has lived and taught in the Middle East since 2008 and is an expert on minority groups such as Kurds, Syriac-Assyrian Christians, and Nubians. She is the author of the 2019 book Coups and Revolutions: Mass Mobilization, the Egyptian Military, and the United States from Mubarak to Sisi.

In the Q&A section of this newsletter, we asked Amy Austin Holmes about her work.

Apr 12, 2020

Is indiscriminate loyalty what allies want? The First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954–55) case suggests that allies do not desire U.S. loyalty in all situations. Instead, they want the United States to be a reliable ally, posing no risk of abandonment or entrapment.

Bruno Senna is not sure where he will end up in 2012 but is confident he will be in a better position at the start of next season than he was at the start of this year

Kimi Raikkonen has escaped with just a sore wrist after an accident in a snowmobile race in Austria on Saturday

Former grand prix winner John Watson says that Kimi Raikkonen will need time to familiarise himself with the new technicalities of the sport when he returns to drive for Lotus Renault for the 2012 season

Renault says it is open to the idea of taking over an existing team on the grid, though no firm decisions have been made over its future in Formula One

Robert Kubica said he was happy to be seventh on the grid for the German Grand Prix as he did not expect to be any higher

German Grand Prix winner Fernando Alonso has played down the furore surrounding the possibility of Ferrari using team orders to rig Sunday's race result

Lewis Hamilton admitted that his McLaren team must work 'very quickly' to turn things around after finishing well off the pace of the Ferrari duo and Sebastian Vettel on Sunday

Mark Webber vowed to continue his fight for a first drivers' title after a disappointing German Grand Prix saw him finish an unaccustomed sixth

The FIA's Jo Bauer on Sunday eased a burgeoning controversy about flexible front wings

Force India is ready to "draw a line" under its disastrous German Grand Prix after a pit stop mix up saw its drivers finish 16th and 17th

Michael Schumacher has sympathised with Ferrari's decision to implement team orders at the German Grand Prix

Apr 8, 2020

China’s autocratic system has performed better in some aspects than America’s democracy so far in responding to the coronavirus pandemic, but it is too early to write off the United States despite its many early missteps, analysts at a China Institute event said.

Apr 8, 2020

The coronavirus has exposed even deeper fault lines in the increasingly acrimonious U.S.-China relationship. The U.S. is now taking appropriate measures to mitigate the risk to our national security of relying on China for critical technology, precious metals and medical supplies.

Apr 13, 2020

Since President Trump moved into the White House, he has been eager for a dramatic initiative with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he may finally have found one in Sunday’s announcement of a joint American-Russian-Saudi effort to stabilize world oil prices.

Apr 16, 2020

Joseph Nye advises skepticism toward claims that the pandemic changes everything. China won't benefit, and the United States will remain preeminent.

Apr 24, 2020

Nathaniel L. Moir recounts the events of 1968: The war in Vietnam and extensive civil unrest in the United States — and yet another big problem that made life harder. In 1968, the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the United States than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

Apr 26, 2020

Joseph Nye suggests that a new U.S. administration might take a leaf from the success of the post-1945 American presidents that are described in Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump. The United States could launch a massive COVID-19 aid program like the Marshall Plan.

Apr 28, 2020

Stephen Walt writes that even though Bernie Sanders is out of the presidential race, the time has come for many of the policies that he promoted: Universal Healthcare; Democratic Socialism; Income Redistribution; and Foreign Policy.

Apr 30, 2020

As the divergent experiences of the US and South Korea show, testing can be the difference between disease containment and catastrophe. Rather than relying on national governments to ensure the rapid development, production, and deployment of diagnostics during outbreaks, the world needs a global coordinating platform.

May 3, 2020

Rachel Esplin Odell argues for a wiser and more conservative strategy that resists the temptation to exaggerate the challenge posed by China.

May 5, 2020

Stephen Walt writes that arguments against U.S. offshore balancing misunderstand history. The strategy that worked against the Soviet Union can work against China.

May 6, 2020

Nathaniel Moir reviews Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam by Ingo Trauschweizer.

May 8, 2020

Sue Biniaz, former lead climate negotiator for the United States, shared her thoughts on the postponement of COP-26, and on the possible re-engagement of the U.S. in the international effort to address climate change in the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

The European Union unveils its new Africa strategy On Monday, March 9, the European Union unveiled its new Africa engagement strategy, which the EU hopes will shift the relationship to one of more equal partnership. The new “Strategy with Africa” will focus on six areas of partnership: energy (especially green energy) access; digital transformation; sustainable…

Uganda and the European Union strengthen trade and business relationship Earlier this month, Uganda hosted a delegation from the European Union (EU) for the first-ever Uganda-Europe Business Forum. The forum is a part of a larger effort to “facilitate collaboration between private and public actors and partnership between Ugandan and European companies, in the framework…

Debt relief in Somalia and other African countries On Wednesday, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) jointly announced that Somalia is now eligible for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Successfully completing the HIPC program will reduce Somalia’s external debt from $5.2 billion currently to $557 million in about…

African governments begin borrowing from IMF, World Bank to soften hit from COVID-19 This week, several countries and multilateral organizations announced additional measures to combat the economic fallout from COVID-19 in Africa. Among the actions taken by countries, Uganda’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by 1 percentage point to 8 percent and directed…

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Boko Haram — which translates literally to “Western education is forbidden” — has, since 2009, killed tens of thousands of people in Nigeria, and has displaced more than two million others. This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine the relationship between education and Boko Haram. It consists of i) a quantitative analysis…

Africa’s extreme vulnerability to the disruption of international supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to reduce the continent’s dependence on non-African trading partners and unlock Africa’s business potential. While African countries are right to focus their energy on managing the immediate health crisis, they must not lose sight of finalizing the Africa…

African governments take varying approaches to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 As of this writing, Africa has registered over 39,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,600 deaths, with most cases concentrated in the north of the continent as well as in South Africa. African countries have enacted various forms of lockdowns, external and internal border closures,…

On April 2, as Nigeria’s megacity Lagos and its capital Abuja locked down to control the spread of the coronavirus, the country’s military announced a massive operation — joining forces with neighboring Chad and Niger — against the terrorist group Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province. This spring offensive was…

Although jihadist groups have gripped the world’s attention for more than 20 years, today they are no longer in the spotlight. However, ISIS, al-Qaida, and al-Shabab remain active, and new groups have emerged. The movement as a whole is evolving, as is the threat it poses. On May 29, the Center for Middle East Policy…

Nov 8, 2019

An exclusive interview with Lord Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change.

Nov 13, 2019

The authors investigate how the executives of the two largest research institutes for photovoltaic technologies — the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, USA and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) in Freiburg, Germany — have made use of public framing to secure funding and shape the technological development of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The article shows that the executives used four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession), and that the choice of dimensions and tactics is tightly coupled to the characteristics of the specific technologies pursued by the research institutes.

Dec 4, 2019

The authors explain why the Trump administration's reiteration of its intent to finalize U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is a tragic mistake that will weaken us as a nation.

Dec 10, 2019

In this report, the authors conduct a benchmarking analysis for energy and CO2 emissions intensity of the steel industry among the largest steel-producing countries.

Feb 19, 2020

This study group will explore the role of the private sector in evolving energy systems, and how corporations might change in a climate constrained world. 

Mar 4, 2020

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems and sectors must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, renewable hydrogen is drawing increased attention today as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier with the potential to play an important piece in the carbon-free energy puzzle. Countries around the world are piloting new projects and policies, yet adopting hydrogen at scale will require innovating along the value chains; scaling technologies while significantly reducing costs; deploying enabling infrastructure; and defining appropriate national and international policies and market structures.

What are the general principles of how renewable hydrogen may reshape the structure of global energy markets? What are the likely geopolitical consequences such changes would cause? A deeper understanding of these nascent dynamics will allow policy makers and corporate investors to better navigate the challenges and maximize the opportunities that decarbonization will bring, without falling into the inefficient behaviors of the past.

Mar 13, 2020

Gulf countries have hailed their investments in renewable energy, but some basic questions remain about the extent to which it makes sense for GCC states to invest aggressively in renewables. The sheer magnitude of such investments will require these countries to mobilize significant public resources.  Therefore, such an assessment requires these countries to focus on national interests, not just a desire to be perceived as constructive participants in the global transition away from carbon energy. 

This report starts by identifying four common strategic justifications for investing in renewable energy in GCC countries. Each of these rationales highlights a different aspect of renewable energy investments. In addition, each rationale is based on different assumptions about the underlying drivers of such investments, and each rationale is based on different assumptions about the future of energy. 
 

Mar 19, 2020

This paper examines a recent, rapid, and ongoing transition of India's lighting market to light emitting diode (LED) technology, from a negligible market share to LEDs becoming the dominant lighting products within five years, despite the country's otherwise limited visibility in the global solid-state lighting industry.