Analyses
-
On June 1st 2011 the Organization of American States (OAS) - the most important regional institution which with the exception of Cuba gathers all countries of the Americas – revoked the suspension of Honduras’ membership. The exclusion had taken place only two years earlier, after President Mel Zelaya was ousted from power by a tight alliance of the military and most internal political institutions, including Congress, the Supreme Court and most political parties. ...
-
Franz-Stefan Gady argues that cyberspace is the newest space in which nations can wage war against each other. Because the notion of cyberwar is such a new development, countries need to begin international dialogue in order to prevent future misunderstandings. There is much talk about the militarization of cyberspace with Russians, Chinese, and Americans accusing each other of triggering a cyber “arms race”. At the same time, policymakers in many countries are calling for “rules of the road” to regulate cyber conflict. However, due to the novelty of the threat and policymakers’ inexperience with this rapidly changing new field, cyber diplomacy is rife with...
-
By ChanakyaChanakya writes that the Indian government is ambivalent about its attitude towards NGOs in the country, which are alternately viewed as either doers of good or as frauds. Either way, they are now indispensable in serving India’s poor. Are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India angels or foes in the nation’s struggle to achieve prosperity? Are microfinance NGOs saviours to the unbanked and credit-starved, or are they simply capitalists exploiting the financially illiterate and vulnerable? What is clear is that the Indian government has historically viewed NGOs with a certain disdain and even downright suspicion. A hostile political environment has restricted the scale,...
-
Jesse Jenkins and Harry Saunders explain why energy demand will not decrease even if we find ways to use it more efficiently. In energy planning circles, efficiency is often viewed as an inexpensive way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases. Governments and NGOs prominently adopt efficiency policies, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) estimate that efficiency measures can greatly reduce emissions, therefore helping to stabilize our global climate. This focus on efficiency is particularly prominent in the world’s emerging economies, where getting more out of less energy is seen as a key path to both...
-
Tulin Daloglu analyses the results of the Turkish election and the strategies that Prime Minister Erdogan might use in order to keep his position intact. It came as no surprise: On June 12th, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan won a third consecutive term in the election. While Erdogan has argued in the past that secularists in the military, judiciary and other state bureaucracies denied him full power to govern the country, he can no longer make that claim. After AKP’s two term in office – today - there is no military that would attempt a coup, or a judiciary that would challenge him. Erdogan’s victory is the most decisive in his nine years in power. With Erdogan...
-
By S.AgarwalSachin Agarwal provides context for the reasons NGOs are necessary. They fill in the gap by providing services that neither the government nor the private sector undertake. In a utopian world, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) would not exist. NGOs provide services that fill gaps left by the private and public sectors. To better understand why this gap exists we have to understand the incentives of the different stakeholders of society. Elected politicians are driven by short-term interests that do not always align with long-term social goals. With policymakers thinking about the next election, democracies produce public policies that are often shortsighted at the national level and...
-
Siddharth Ramalingam states that increasing liquidity remains the key concern of the Fed as it tries to bring the US economy to a recovery. QE 2 is under way, but the economy’s unresponsive nature may make QE 2.5 and a possible QE 3 a necessity. Minding the gap between QE2 and QE3 Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve (Fed) recently announced that the Fed has no intentions of putting in place another round of quantitative easing (QE) once Quantitative Easing 2 (QE2) ends. However, a closer reading of the chairman’s statement makes it all too clear that the Fed isn’t, and cannot afford to be, unequivocal about the possibility of there not being another round of...
-
On Thursday, the UN's Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), a Security Council backed investigation of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, delivered its first round of indictments against four suspects. Some had predicted that after six years of anticipation, followed by a year of leaked disclosures on suspects, followed by months of awaiting "imminent" indictments, the actual moment of truth may be - well - anti-climatic. Nobody could have predicted quite how non-momentous an event this would be. Four Hezbollah Members Charged As expected, the accused four are allegedly affiliated with Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah,...
-
In retrospect, India's foreign policy trajectory since the 1980s has been a series of leaps and bounds towards reconciliation with the United States. The two democracies were separated by the Cold War, near-adversaries in the 1970s after India broke off Bangladesh from Pakistan, and wrenched farther apart by the US sanctions and condemnation that followed India's nuclear tests in 1998. A seminal visit from President Clinton in 2000 did much to repair ties, but it wasn't until the Bush administration, focused on the China threat and the possibility of India as a rising Asian counterweight, that relations really flourished. In 2005, India and the US signed a far-reaching...