CIRSD Recommends
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Clouds Over 2022
Although major economies and markets fared well in 2021 despite all of the uncertainties surrounding new variants of the coronavirus, 2022 will bring new challenges. In addition to central banks shifting toward policy normalization, geopolitical and systemic risks are multiplying
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Russian Foreign Policy: Shifting Gears
Right now, fears of a war in Ukraine are widespread. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned the Kremlin not to try to repeat what it did in 2014, lest it regret it. Will President Putin make the fateful decision? Is Ukraine that “unfinished business” that he will seek to complete before the end of his reign? Or is Putin just bluffing?
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Time to Overhaul the Global Financial System
For low- and lower-middle-income countries to pursue their development goals and do their part in tackling problems like climate change, they need to be able to borrow reliably on decent market terms. Yet the current two-tiered global financial system extends this privilege almost exclusively to rich countries.
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Why Italy's Presidential Election Matters
With its poor track record of managing EU funds, Italy’s recovery plan will be a major test for the future of EU policymaking more generally. While it is widely agreed that Prime Minister Mario Draghi must remain on the scene to oversee the plan’s implementation, in what capacity would he be most useful?
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World faces hunger dilemma in Afghanistan
The fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban has presented the world with some stark choices. In recent weeks, the international community has raised alarm about the rapidly escalating humanitarian emergency in the country, calling for an influx of aid to reach millions of Afghans ahead of the winter.
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The Taiwan Triangle
The goal of US policy toward the island should be to reduce uncertainty about America’s intentions and its ability to make good on them, while underscoring to Chinese leaders the economic and military costs of aggression
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Vaccine Producers Must Step Up
Governments of countries where vaccines are being produced – the United States, European Union members, the United Kingdom, India, Russia, and China – need to cooperate under United Nations leadership to ensure that a sufficient supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses reaches the poorest countries. Five steps are especially urgent.
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Sept. 11 and the Future of American History
Twenty years after the horrific attacks on New York and Washington, it’s clear that the biggest changes of our time were not ideological or geopolitical, but technological. They were also the hardest to foresee.
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The impact of September 11 on US-Russian relations
On September 9, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin called his American counterpart George W. Bush with an urgent message: Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the anti-Taliban and Moscow-supported Northern Alliance, had been assassinated in Afghanistan by two suicide bombers posing as journalists. Putin warned Bush of “a foreboding that something was about to happen, something long in preparation.” Two days later al-Qaida struck the United States.
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Will a ‘Digital Military’ Change War?
According to General Jay Raymond, the head of the U.S. Space Force, America’s newest military branch is also on its way to becoming the world’s first fully digital armed service. Rather than a Tron-esque idea of soldiers fighting virtually in a purely digital battlefield, what Raymond was referring to — previously laid out in a Space Force vision statement — is somewhat more prosaic, emphasizing the need for the new service to be interconnected and innovative. In other words, the actual ambition is more or less to have a military service that works within the frameworks created by the current state of digital technology rather than adopting them piecemeal.
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The Stagflation Threat Is Real
There is a growing consensus that the US economy’s inflationary pressures and growth challenges are attributable largely to temporary supply bottlenecks that will be alleviated in due course. But there are plenty of reasons to think the optimists will be disappointed.
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The darkest day of Joe Biden’s presidency
An already perilous withdrawal of U.S. personnel and allies from Afghanistan turned into something much darker on Thursday as the kind of catastrophe President Joe Biden had been warning about took place outside Kabul’s main airport.
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Afghan takeover reminds Europe: It has no unified refugee plan
Six years ago, the European Union descended into in-fighting as it struggled to process asylum seekers fleeing war-torn Syria. Over 1 million refugees and migrants crossed the sea to reach Europe in 2015.
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America's New Great-Power Strategy
During the Cold War, US grand strategy focused on containing the power of the Soviet Union. China’s rise now requires America and its allies to develop a strategy that seeks not total victory over an existential threat, but rather managed competition that allows for both cooperation and rivalry within a rules-based system.
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Reforming global fossil fuel subsidies: How the United States can restart international cooperation
The United States now has a unique opportunity to lead this global effort. President Joe Biden’s executive order for government agencies to stop fossil fuel subsidies and the United States’ renewed commitment to the Paris Agreement serve as strong commitments to domestic reform.
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In Bitcoin We Trust?
Coordinated cross-border policies are needed to ensure that cryptocurrencies don’t do more harm than good in developing countries. Unless both the public and private sectors embrace critical reforms, people and governments will increasingly be attracted by low-cost, high-risk, and murky alternatives to traditional banking.
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Congo’s latest killer is the climate crisis. Inaction is unthinkable
For thousands of years, Lake Tanganyika was an exquisite sight that soothed and supported generations of Congolese people. Those living by its shores in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have snoozed in hammocks under the tropical sun, watching their children splash in Africa’s oldest, deepest and longest lake. In the evenings, when boats head out for fishing trips, local people would light campfires on the beaches to fry their catch and dance to rumba. But in the past two months, storms, torrential rain and flooding have killed at least 13 people and destroyed 4,240 homes and 112 schools along the DRC’s Lake Tanganyika coast. In less than a generation, the stretch from Uvira to Moba, 250 miles long, has become a place of catastrophe for the local people, who are dependent on the lake for food, trade, transport and their livelihood.
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Biden Can Keep the Two-State Solution Alive
President Joe Biden and his team came into office understandably hoping to deprioritize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They saw Washington-led negotiations as a trap that had ensnared previous U.S. administrations, and the prospects for progress looked bleaker than ever. But some issues can’t be ignored. As last month’s escalation between Israel and Hamas underscored, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires regular U.S. engagement to avoid spasms of violence that sap Washington’s ability to deal with other priorities. The Biden administration isn’t wrong to eschew yet another round of high-profile negotiations. The conflict isn’t ripe for resolution. But Biden does need a concerted strategy to improve the trajectory of the conflict—and to prevent periodic flare-ups—while still preserving the possibility of a two-state solution. The surprise ouster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, and the inauguration of a new Israeli government led by the conservative Naftali Bennett and the centrist Yair Lapid, offers Biden a unique opportunity to do just that.
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Macron and Le Pen lose out as French voters shun local elections
Abstention rate estimated at 68%, and exit polls suggest Le Pen’s National Rally failed to get expected support
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The Logic of Effective Climate Action
The starting point for addressing climate change, economists agree, is a tax on carbon. But while the resulting reduction in emissions would benefit virtually everyone on the planet, those who bear a disproportionate share of the costs will mobilize in opposition – that is, unless they are given a reason not to.
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We Don’t Need the G7
The group’s recent summit in Cornwall should be its last. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them.
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Europe’s Digital Future
In recent years, the European Union has unveiled a series of ambitious legislative and regulatory packages to rein in problems endemic to the new digital economy. Can leading the world in tech governance help to establish Europe's place in the twenty-first century?
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Producing a Vaccine Requires More Than a Patent
Intellectual Property Is Just One Piece of an Elaborate Process
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India's COVID-19 Crisis Is Spiraling Out of Control. It Didn't Have to Be This Way
Dusk is falling in the Indian capital, and the acrid smell of burning bodies fills the air. It’s the evening of April 26, and at a tiny crematorium in a Delhi suburb, seven funeral pyres are still burning. “I have lived here all my life and pass through this area twice a day,” says local resident Gaurav Singh. “I have never seen so many bodies burning together.”
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The Geopolitics of Climate Change
By tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, everyone will be better off, thanks to better jobs, cleaner air and water, fewer pandemics, and improved health and well-being.
