Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Commentaries

The Risk of Military Keynesianism

by | Feb 9, 2009

With government budgets shrinking and the economic crisis putting greater pressure on social welfare programs, a shift of money from military budgets to human needs would appear to be a no-brainer. But don’t expect a large-scale beating of swords into ploughshares. In fact, if early signs are any indication, governments will largely shelter their military budgets from the current economic crisis. Call it the new military Keynesianism: the use of military spending to stimulate the economy and pull the country out of recession.

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Postcard From…Beijing

Postcard From…Beijing

by , | Feb 6, 2009

Beijing is a sprawling metropolis. Avenues up to 12 lanes wide connect high-rise centers of commerce. But with size comes pollution. The air in Beijing in winter is opaque, and after a week of breathing it left me with the miserable Beijing cough. Global warming analysts point out that China is building a new coal […]

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Obama: Cut Arms Exports

by , | Feb 6, 2009

On the same day as President Barack Obama’s inauguration, China issued a white paper outlining its national defense strategy on Tuesday. In that paper, China pointed to a security situation that was "improving steadily" overall. At the same time, the paper explicitly referred to the growing threat from increased U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Over Beijing’s protest, the Pentagon announced last October a deal for the sale of $6.5 billion in arms to Taiwan, including 30 Apache attack helicopters, 330 Patriot missiles, and 32 Harpoon missiles. Beijing referred to the deal as a "violation" of established principles that would cause "serious harm to the China-U.S. relations as well as to peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits."

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What Saudi Arabia Should Do

by , | Feb 5, 2009

All eyes are focused on what the governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan are doing to combat terrorism. Some attention, however, should be paid to Saudi Arabia and what it could do to douse the theological firestorms it helped unleash in the region. This Western ally has the material and intellectual resources to make a difference now, just as it did in the war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

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Un-Gagging Women’s Human Rights

by , | Feb 5, 2009

Of the many crises President Barack Obama faces, few are more urgent than preventing the needless deaths of half a million people this year. This is the number of women who die annually from a lack of basic reproductive health services. Unlike the global recession, climate change, and other disasters compounded by George W. Bush, the crisis of maternal mortality is easily resolved. Last week, Obama took an important first step by rescinding the "global gag rule."

Formally known as the Mexico City Policy for the place where it was first announced, the gag rule cut U.S. funding to foreign healthcare organizations that provide abortions or abortion counseling, or advocate legalizing abortion in their own countries (though in true Bush-era fashion, anti-abortion advocacy was permitted).

The policy was nicknamed the “global gag rule” because it stifles free speech and public debate, violating healthcare workers’ right to press to change the laws that lead to nearly 70,000 abortion-related deaths each year. The gag rule was thus an attack on women’s health, democratic process, and free speech. Rescinding it is a fitting farewell to the Bush era, but it’s only the first step in a needed overhaul of U.S. reproductive health policy.

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Gaza: Laboratory for the Power-Hungry

by , | Jan 29, 2009

Unfortunately for the people of Gaza, all the bloodshed there wasn’t really about Gaza. Despite the tenuous ceasefire, the issue of Gaza remains unresolved not because the sides disagree but because all sorts of external actors find the dispute useful. The larger reality is that Gaza serves as a cold-hearted laboratory for these external actors for testing dangerous hypotheses about far greater global political issues.

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What’s Next for Somalia

by , | Jan 28, 2009

Somalia poses a grave danger to the United States and the Horn of Africa today. Despite the U.S. “Global War on Terror,” piracy in the Gulf of Aden threatens the supply of oil and commercial trade to the West. Islamic extremists threaten the stability of this region more than ever. Islamists in Somalia continue to welcome ideologies from Saudi Arabia that fuel large numbers of angry and unrepresented young men, who turn to Osama bin Laden’s call of resistance and terror in the face of Somalia’s disparities.

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