Photo: Apr. 26, 2012: Secretary Clinton delivers keynote speech on U.S. Diplomacy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Gala and receives the Public Service Award, at the Four Seasons Hotel, in Washington, DC.

Foreign Policy

Scoring Obama's Foreign Policy. Martin Indyk, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Michael E. O'Hanlon. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012, var. pages. "The Obama administration’s foreign policy has tried to reconcile the president’s lofty vision with his innate realism and political caution. And given the domestic and global situations Obama has faced, pragmatism has dominated. Judged by the standard of protecting U.S. interests, things have worked out quite well; judged by the standard of midwifing a new global order, they remain a work in progress." READ MORE

The Global Power Shift from West to East. Christopher Layne, The National Interest, May-June 2012, var. pp. When great powers begin to experience erosion in their global standing, their leaders inevitably strike a pose of denial. At the dawn of the twentieth century, as British leaders dimly discerned such an erosion in their country’s global dominance, the great diplomat Lord Salisbury issued a gloomy rumination that captured at once both the inevitability of decline and the denial of it. “Whatever happens will be for the worse,” he declared. “Therefore it is our interest that as little should happen as possible.” Of course, one element of decline was the country’s diminishing ability to influence how much or how little actually happened. We are seeing a similar phenomenon today in America, where the topic of decline stirs discomfort in national leaders. In September 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed a “new American Moment” that would “lay the foundations for lasting American leadership for decades to come.” A year and a half later, President Obama declared in his State of the Union speech: “Anyone who tells you that America is in decline . . . doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” A position paper from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stated flatly that he “rejects the philosophy of decline in all of its variants.” And former U.S. ambassador to China and one-time GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman pronounced decline to be simply “un-American.”  READ MORE

A Still-Strong Alliance. Charles A Kupchan, Policy Review, Apr/May 2012, var. pp. [...]of the American Era, I foresaw a European Union whose deepening mtegration would gradually give it the wherewithal to chart its own course, fostering an independence that would come at the expense of Atlantic solidarity. [...]leaders across the West should rally behind an agenda of progressive populism - one intended to channel electoral discontent toward constructive ends and enable centrist voters to prevail against special interests and the political extremes. READ MORE

NATO Goes Realistic. Bernard E. Brown, American Foreign Policy Interests, pp. 80-85. The two pillars of the Atlantic Alliance are the United States and the European Union (EU). In 2011, France and the United Kingdom went to war in Libya entirely outside the defense structures of the EU. It was also the first time a major military operation was carried out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that was not under the leadership of the United States. This article presents reasons why the EU was totally absent in Libya and why it does not necessarily portend “Europeanization” of the Alliance. The fundamental problem in organizing transatlantic relations is the asymmetrical relationship between the United States and Europe.  READ MORE

EU Issues

Europe's Zero-Sum Dilemma. Gideon Rachman, The National Interest, May-June 2012, var. pp. The debt crisis within the European Union is a lot more than a transient economic difficulty. In fact, it directly threatens the underlying logic of the European project. In good times, building Europe was all about creating a win-win dynamic based on sharing the fruits of prosperity. But in bad economic times, this positive logic has gone into reverse. Rather than sharing the gains of prosperity, Europeans are now arguing about who should bear the losses associated with recession and the debt crisis. Win-win logic has been replaced by zero-sum logic in which one country’s gain is another’s loss.  READ MORE

Europe After the Crisis Andrew Moravcsik. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012, var. pp. As Europe emerges from economic crisis, a larger challenge remains: finally turning the eurozone into an optimal currency area, with economies similar enough to sustain a single monetary policy. Getting there will be difficult and expensive, but the future of European integration hangs in the balance. READ MORE

Democracy

Obama and Sustainable Democracy Promotion. Eric Patterson, International Studies Perspectives, February 2012, pp. 26-42. "Barack Obama consistently has called upon the US to support what he calls 'sustainable democracy.' Such a commitment to promoting democracy abroad is a common theme among postwar American presidents, but often there are disconnects between America's ideals and interests as well as between the rhetoric and actual concrete action. This paper introduces democracy promotion activities in recent US history, then turns to the words and deeds of candidate and now, President Obama and his administration. In short, the Obama administration's first year in office has been marked by grand rhetoric, general continuity with the previous administration in democracy funding, but a lack of policy coherence and leadership on these issues. The paper concludes with a series of lessons and recommendations for the Obama administration on sustaining democracy worldwide gleaned from the shortcomings of the Bush administration." READ MORE

Democratization and Multilateral Security. Isabella Alcañiz. World Politics, April 2012, pp. 306-340. "Does democratization increase commitment to multilateral security? In this article, the author argues that democratic transitions increase the incentives of states to cooperate in multilateral security and that this is observable in the rate at which new democracies ratify international treaties of arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, and disarmament. New democrats, she asserts, seek a positive international reputation as an insurance mechanism against future regime reversals. By becoming "good citizens" of the global system, newly elected democratic leaders seek to expose potential conspirators to the possibility of diplomatic and economic sanctions if they were to attempt to reverse the transition. First, using original data on the ratification rates of 201 states for twenty major arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, the present study shows conclusively that new democracies outpace older democracies and all autocracies in committing to multilateral security. Second, the study empirically tests whether the swift ratification of security treaties works as a consolidation strategy and finds that, indeed, it does. That is, new democracies that commit to nonproliferation and arms control treaties are less likely to experience a regime reversal. READ MORE
 
Africa

The Regionalization of African Security. William Reno, Current History, May 2012, pp. 175-180. "From the perspective of officials in Africa, participating in regional conflict management is now one of the best ways for governments . . . to get international resources to strengthen their own authority.” READ MORE

Lions, Tigers, and Emerging Markets: Africa’s Development Dilemmas. Anne Pitcher, Current History, May 2012, pp. 163-168. "Much of Africa’s wealth is unevenly spread across the continent and tends to be concentrated in resource-rich countries with large populations." READ MORE

Between Democracy and Militancy: Islam in Africa. Leonardo A. Villalón, Current History, May 2012, pp. 187-193. "The effort to try to distinguish between good and bad Muslim ideologies may be much less important than the need to support functional political institutions." READ MORE

Perspective: US Africa Policy: Rhetoric Versus Reality. Jessica Piombo, Current History, May 2012, pp. 194-197. "Supporting shady regimes for security reasons can overshadow the actions America takes across the continent to aid democracy, human rights, development, and public health." READ MORE
 
Energy & Climate

The Climate Threat We Can Beat. David G. Victor, Charles F. Kennel, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012, var. pages. "For too long, climate diplomacy has focused on carbon dioxide. But at least 40 percent of global warming can be blamed on shorter-lived pollutants, which also cause disease and damage crops in developing states. Reining in pollution would thus accomplish two goals, while finally getting countries such as China and India into the climate-change business. READ MORE

Tough Love for Renewable Energy. Jeffrey Ball, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012, var. pages. "Proponents of renewable energy have had a hard time lately, thanks to the recession, competition from natural gas, and embarrassments such as Solyndra. But it’s too early to give up, since recent advances have made wind and solar power more competitive than ever. Still, governments must redesign their policies and help renewables slash costs." READ MORE

National Policies to Promote Renewable Energy. Mohamed T. El-Ashry, Daedalus, Spring 2012. var. pages. "The world is entering a new energy era marked by concerns over energy security, climate change, and access by the poor to modern energy services. Yet the current energy path is not compatible with sustainable development objectives. Global demand for energy will continue to grow; so will CO2 emissions. Achieving a low-carbon energy world will require an unprecedented technological transformation in the way energy is produced and used. That transformation has begun, as renewables capacity continues to grow, prices continue to fall, and shares of global energy from renewables continue to increase. Government policies are the main driver behind renewable energy’s meteoric growth. Still, the world is tapping only a small amount of the vast supply of renewable energy resources. There is broad consensus that the role of these resources should be expanded signi½cantly in order to meaningfully address energy security, energy access, and climate change.  READ MORE

Economics

U.S. Debt Culture and the Dollar's Fate. Christopher Whalen, The National Interest, May-June 2012, var. pages. "In our common narrative, the modern era of global finance—what we call the Old Order—begins with the Great Depression and New Deal of the 1930s. The economic model put in place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and others at the end of World War II is seen as a political as well as economic break point. But arbitrarily selected demarcation points in any human timeline can be misleading. The purpose of narrative, after all, is to simplify the complex and, over time, to remake the past in today’s terms. As we approach any discussion of the Old Order, we must acknowledge that the image of intelligent design in public policy is largely an illusion. There is no question that the world after 1950 was a reflection of the wants and needs of the United States, the victor in war and thus the designer of the peacetime system of commerce and finance that followed. Just as the Roman, Mongol and British empires did centuries earlier, America made the post–World War II peace in its own image. The U.S.-centric model enjoyed enormous success due to factors such as relatively low inflation, financial transactions that respect anonymity, an open court system and a relatively enlightened foreign policy—all unique attributes of the American system. But the framework of the global financial system in the twentieth century and its U.S.-centric design were the end results of a series of terrible wars—starting, in the case of America, with the Civil War. The roots of the U.S.-centric financial order that arose at the end of World War II extend back into the nineteenth century and reflect the political response of a very young nation to acute problems of employment and economic growth—problems that remain unresolved today."  READ MORE

The President, Congress, and the Financial Crisis: Ideology and Moral Hazard in Economic Governance. Jack H. Knott, Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2012, pp. 81–100. "This article examines how the democratic political institutions of the president and the Congress interacted with private firms and regulatory agencies to contribute to the financial meltdown in 2008-09. This economic governance system failed to counteract the excessive optimism in the financial markets but rather contributed to and reinforced this development. Political moral hazard weakened institutional checks and balances in economic regulation and contributed to a convergence of political ideology and policy preferences of the president, Congress, political parties, and professional experts. These developments occurred during significant financial innovation, making it difficult to foresee the risk building in the system." READ MORE

The eurozone crisis: how banks and sovereigns came to be joined at the hip. Ashoka Mody, Damiano Sandri, Economic Policy, April 2012, pp. 199-230. "The eurozone sovereign and banking crisis evolved in three phases. Following the onset of the subprime tremors in July 2007, the risk premia (spreads) on bonds issued by eurozone sovereigns rose from historically low levels; but they rose largely in tandem across the eurozone membership along with global banking stresses. The rescue of the US investment bank, Bear Stearns, in March 2008, oddly enough, marked the start of a distinctively European banking crisis accompanied by increased differentiation of countries within the eurozone. With the greater expectation of public support for distressed banks, the spreads that a sovereign paid tended to rise following evidence of stress in its domestic financial sector. This was especially so in countries with lower growth prospects and higher debt burdens. But there was as yet no feedback from banks to sovereigns. Finally, as the limits of fiscal support for domestic banks became clearer, and coinciding with the nationalization of Anglo Irish in January 2009 but gathering steam with evidence of the Greek sovereign’s distress in May 2010, sovereign weaknesses also came to be quickly transmitted to a more pessimistic assessment of the financial sector’s prospects, creating the potential of mutual destabilization." READ MORE
 
Women's Rights

Baby Gap. Steven Philip Kramer, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012, var. pages. "Populations throughout the developed world are aging and shrinking, with dire consequences. Yet decline is not inevitable. Even in the industrialized world, governments can encourage childbearing through policies that let women reconcile work and family." READ MORE

Why Women Are a Foreign Policy Issue. Melanne Verveer, Foreign Policy, May/June 2012, var. pages. "On a trip to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, not long after my appointment as the U.S. State Department's ambassador at large for global women's issues, I stopped for dinner with a group of Afghan women activists in Kabul. One woman opened our conversation with a plea: "Please don't see us as victims, but look to us as the leaders we are. Those words have stuck with me as President Barack Obama's administration has endeavored to put women at the heart of its foreign policy. For generations, the United States too often viewed the world's women as victims of poverty and illiteracy, of violence and seemingly unbreakable cultural traditions -- essentially, as beneficiaries of aid. Women's issues existed on the margins, segregated from the more "strategic" issues of war, peace, and economic stability. Now, in a time of transformative change -- from the rise of new economic powers to a growing chorus of voices against repressive regimes in the Arab world -- promoting the status of women is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one; it's essential to economic prosperity and to global peace and security. It is, in other words, a strategy for a smarter foreign policy." READ MORE

Why Do They Hate Us? Mona Eltahawy. Foreign Policy, May/June 2012, var. pages. "The real war on women is in the Middle East. Some may ask why I'm bringing this up now, at a time when the region has risen up, fueled not by the usual hatred of America and Israel but by a common demand for freedom. After all, shouldn't everyone get basic rights first, before women demand special treatment? And what does gender, or for that matter, sex, have to do with the Arab Spring? But I'm not talking about sex hidden away in dark corners and closed bedrooms. An entire political and economic system -- one that treats half of humanity like animals -- must be destroyed along with the other more obvious tyrannies choking off the region from its future. Until the rage shifts from the oppressors in our presidential palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our homes, our revolution has not even begun." READ MORE

Women's Rights: Is equality under threat in some Arab countries? Sarah Glazer, CQ Global Researcher, April 3, 2012, pp. 153-180. "The women's rights movement has made enormous strides globally in the last 15 years, with most countries signing treaties to end gender discrimination. But with conservative Muslim parties gaining power in some post-Arab Spring governments, feminists fear women's rights in the Middle East — already lagging by world standards — may be further threatened. Although women were at the forefront in last year's protests, female candidates have been scarce in recent elections. One solution being considered: electoral gender quotas, already used in about 100 countries. In developed nations, women comprise the majority of recent university graduates, but females receive smaller paychecks than their male counterparts and rarely reach top management positions. Some experts attribute this to women's tendency to work part-time or take time off for parenting. Nordic countries are encouraging fathers to share parenting duties, while some countries are boosting the number of female business leaders through mandatory gender quotas for corporate boards." READ MORE

U.S. Issues

Workers of the World Divide. Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld. Foreign Affairs, May-June 2012, var. pages. "Unions underwrote the affluence of U.S. workers in the last century. They ensured that manual work paid white-collar wages and gave laborers a voice in politics. But now, unions are declining, and the working and middle classes are paying the price. Reviving labor won’t be easy -- but doing so is critical to preserving America’s economic and social health." READ MORE

Get Rich U. Ken Auletta, New Yorker, April 30, 2012, var. pages. "Ken Auletta writes that there are no walls between Stanford and Silicon Valley. Should there be? Stanford University is so startlingly paradisial, so fragrant and sunny, it’s as if you could eat from the trees and live happily forever. Students ride their bikes through manicured quads, past blooming flowers and statues by Rodin, to buildings named for benefactors like Gates, Hewlett, and Packard. Everyone seems happy, though there is a well-known phenomenon called the “Stanford duck syndrome”: students seem cheerful, but all the while they are furiously paddling their legs to stay afloat. What they are generally paddling toward are careers of the sort that could get their names on those buildings. The campus has its jocks, stoners, and poets, but what it is famous for are budding entrepreneurs, engineers, and computer aces hoping to make their fortune in one crevasse or another of Silicon Valley." READ MORE

How Americans Lost Trust in Our Greatest Institutions. Ron Fournier and Sophie Quinton, The Atlantic, April 20, 2012, var. pages. "It's not just Washington; across the country, citizens' faith in their city halls, newspapers, and churches is fading, write Ron Fournier and Sophie Quinton at the Atlantic." READ MORE
 
Campaign Tips From Cicero. Quintus Tullius Cicero and James Carville. Foreign Affairs, May-June 2012, var. pages. "In 64 BC, the great Roman lawyer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero ran for consul. His younger brother, Quintus, thought Marcus had a chance -- as long as he ran a good campaign. So Quintus wrote a detailed strategy memo laying out just what Marcus needed to do to win. It’s the best guide to electioneering you’ll ever read, presented here with a commentary by the legendary political consultant James Carville." READ MORE

5 Reasons Obama Will Win in November. Aaron David Miller, Foreign Affairs, April 25, 2012, var. pages. "The election is six months away, but here's why the president already has this one in the bag. Worrying about getting reelected is part of a president's job description, but this president really shouldn't be all that concerned. The election is bound to be closer than in 2008, but when it's over, the presidential gods will likely have smiled kindly on Barack Obama. Here are the top five reasons why." READ MORE