J. Brian Atwood, M. Peter McPherson, and Andrew Natsios
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
USAID has become ineffective because it is underfunded, understaffed, and losing influence. The next president should revive it by either making it autonomous or elevating it to a cabinet-level department.
The golden age of globalization is over due to slower, costlier, and less certain transportation. In retrospect, Americans may lament too little globalization, not too much.
Pathological hubris is a disease that can plague leaders and threaten international security. Doctors must put transparency ahead of confidentiality and disclose leaders' sicknesses to the public.
On 20 January 2009, either Barack Obama or John McCain will place his hand on a bible, swear to uphold and defend the Constitution, and become the forty-fourth president of the United States. The new president will immediately become responsible for the issues on which he campaigned, those that he ignored but for which he will nonetheless be held accountable, and all those unanticipated issues for which he will also be expected to devise solutions.
OMAR G. ENCARNACIÓN examines Spain's ongoing effort to reconcile the legacy of its dark past, including the mass killings of the Spanish Civil War and the repression of the Franco dictatorship, three decades after its celebrated transition to democracy. Key among his findings is that contrary to the widespread conventional wisdom promoted by the influential ''transitional justice'' movement, reconciliation is not a pre-condition for effective democratization.
MARK A. WOLFGRAM discusses the costs of early failures in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations mission in Kosovo after June 1999. The failure of NATO and the UN to secure basic human rights for Kosovo's non-Albanian minorities raises serious questions about the future of similar militarized humanitarian interventions.