CIRSD Recommends
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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.
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Biden announces US will aim to cut carbon emissions by as much as 52% by 2030 at virtual climate summit
President Joe Biden on Thursday kicked off a virtual climate summit attended by 40 other world leaders by announcing an ambitious cut in greenhouse gas emissions as he looks to put the US back at the center of the global effort to address the climate crisis and curb carbon emissions.
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Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens
A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform
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Europe's Complacency Trap
Members of the EU establishment should not read too much into failures of “populist” governance. Until the bloc can devise institutional arrangements that allow for consistent, equitable growth, crises will keep coming – and so will anti-establishment challengers.
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The Shadow of a New Cold War Hangs Over Europe
The Ukraine question is at the crux of European security
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The Liberal Order Begins at Home
How Democratic Revival Can Reboot the International System
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Pandemic threatens lost decade for development, UN report reveals
“The global economy has experienced “the worst recession in 90 years, with the most vulnerable segments of societies disproportionately affected”, said the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing in their Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2021, pointing out that some 114 million jobs have been lost, and about 120 million people have been plunged back into extreme poverty.
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Biden's most important stimulus measure
The US federal government should spend more money, and fast, to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, rescue hard-hit families and help states, cities and small businesses. But it should also strive for a relief package built on some degree of bipartisan consensus.
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The Ethno-Territorial Separation of Bosnia Was the Key to Ending the War and Keeping Peace
The Dayton system has kept the peace for twenty-five years. Why destabilize Sarajevo now?
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Russia and US National Interests: Maintaining a Balance of Power in Europe and Asia
While Russia is not a superpower, it remains one of the few countries that both defines its interests in global rather than regional terms and retains limited but real global power-projection capabilities. Meanwhile, U.S. national security continues to be guided by the premise that the United States cannot allow another state to become the preponderant power in either Europe or Asia, the two continents Russia famously spans. This primer attempts to assess Russia’s impact on a vital U.S. interest: maintaining a balance of power in Europe and Asia that promotes peace and stability with a continuing U.S. leadership role. Its main conclusion: As the United States endeavors to retain favorable balances of power in both these key regions, its interests are best served by having Russia remain an independent pole within the international system rather than grow even closer with China and forge a formalized, strategic Sino-Russian entente.
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Joe Biden's Ronald Reagan Problem
President-elect Joe Biden is inheriting a national crisis that has built up over 40 years. On January 20, 1981, former President Ronald Reagan took the US on a radical course when he declared in his inaugural address, "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He set out to weaken the federal government by slashing taxes on the rich, dismantling regulations, cutting back on public programs and turning many of the nation's problems back to the states.
