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1. Iraq’s Political Factions: The Last Chance to Build a Governing Coalition?

Author:
Barry R. Posen
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
President Bush is renewing his efforts to create an Iraq that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and is throwing more resources at the project. The first priority must be governance, however, as administration and defense cannot happen without a functioning government. And government cannot function without a legitimate, broad-based, political consensus. Such a consensus has eluded Iraqis since March 2003, and the President’s new strategy includes no political program to create such a consensus. Instead, he counts on creating a coalition of existing “moderates,” which do not exist, as the intense violence within Iraq clearly demonstrates. Thus, the President’s troop increases, economic assistance, and intensified train- ing will likely prove futile.
Topic:
Imperialism, Democracy, State Building, and Iraq War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and North America

2. Troop Levels in Stability Operations: What We Don’t Know

Author:
Peter Krause
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
Troop levels in Iraq have been one of the most hotly contested issues om American foreign policy over the past three years, from debates over the initial deployment in 2003 to those surrounding the troop surge in 2007. The Bush administration has faced significant criticism for ignoring the conventional wisdom regarding the number of soldiers required to secure Iraq, and recent attempts to change course in this area are seen by some as too little, too late. Specifically, the Pentagon’s deployment of only 120,000 American troops for the invasion and the decision by Paul Bremer, U.S. Administrator in Iraq, to disband the Iraqi army and police has kept the ratio of security forces to Iraqi civilians well below the 20 per 1,000 seen as the basic ante required to play the high stakes stabilization game. Many supporters of higher troop levels blame these missteps for the emergence of the robust insurgency and the coalition’s failure to defeat it. But where exactly does the 20 per 1,000 figure come from, how strong is the evidence sup- porting it, and what steps are being taken to assess and improve the conventional wisdom in this area? While the answer to the first part of the question is relatively accessible, the latter are more difficult. They address a daunting problem, but unveil a disconnect between the objectives and methods of policy and social science.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Military Strategy, Iraq War, and Troop Deployment
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and North America

3. North Korea: Negotiations Work

Author:
Leon V. Sigal
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
In a laudable about-face, President Bush has decided at last to accept North Korea's longstanding offer to suspend production of plutonium by shutting down and sealing its reactor and reprocess- ing plant at Yongbyon, halting construction of a larger reactor and not restarting a newly refurbished fuel fabrication plant. In so doing, he is rejecting the counsel of American hardliners who have kept the United States from making and living up to earlier agreements while managing to convince much of America that it is North Korea that has been the one at fault. By negotiating in earnest, Bush has achieved an important goal for U.S. and Asian security.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

4. China’s Premature Rise to Great Power

Author:
Liselotte Odgaard
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
China's so-called rise to great power status is usually taken for granted. Still, a convicning argument can be made that Beijing's post-Cold War grand strategy is based on fear of failure rather than management of success. China only qualifies as a great power by the skin of its teeth, if the lower limit of such status is defined as the ability to decide how to do things in either the economic, military or political sectors of the international system.1 China’s position as a political great power is largely determined by the implosion of the Soviet Union. Its ascendancy to this rank has been based on psychology in that a successor challenging U.S. pre-eminence was expected and pronounced before the fact. While Beijing has convinced the surroundings that China is a great power, it is struggling to catch up both economically and militarily with the United States. Contemporary China faces three major challenges: economically and militarily it con- tinues to lag far behind the United States, U.S. grand strategy threatens its rise, and a Chinese alternative to the liberal model of state-society relations has not been developed. Beijing’s foreign policy is therefore based on the premise of how to avoid China’s descent into the ranks of secondary powers.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Power Politics, Military Affairs, and Economic growth
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and North America

5. Paying for Homeland Security: Show Me the Money

Author:
Cindy Williams
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
In January 2003, the Bush administration drew 22 dis- parate agencies and some 170,000 employees into a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Proponents of the reorganization hoped a single department under a single cabi- net secretary would foster unity of effort across a substantial portion of the federal activities related to domestic security. A key tool would be the department’s budget. With all the agencies beholden to him for their money, the secretary could promote and reward much-needed integration across the department. He could wield the budget tool to expand high priority activities, eliminate or defer the less important or redundant ones, and reallocate the workforce to fill gaps in high-risk areas. A look at budgets since the department was established reflects little in the way of realignment, however. Department funding rose by more than 40 percent between 2003 and 2007, but there has been only minimal reallocation of bud- gets from areas of lower risk or priority to functions the department says are more important. With the exception of added spending to support the Secure Border Initiative announced by President Bush in November 2005, the depart- ment’s main operating components each enjoy about the same share of the DHS budget today as they did when the department was created.1 The result is that— despite the heavy cost in both dollars and institutional disruption—the United States is not getting what it should out of the reorganization.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Affairs, Budget, and Homeland Security
Political Geography:
United States

6. Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline: Is it a peace pipeline?

Author:
Abbas Maleki
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
A major natural gas pipeline that would stretch from the fields of southern Iran to Pakistan and India—itself a remarkable prospect—is being planned. But it faces serious hurdles, not least the fierce opposition of the U.S. government.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Energy Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Gas
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, India, and Asia

7. Immigration and Insecurity: Post-9/11 Fear in the United States

Author:
John Tirman
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
The attacks of September 11, 2001, transformed the landscape of global security, none more than borders and immigration. The topography of citizenship, belonging, and suspicion instantly changed for Arab and Muslim communities in the United States. They drew the sharp attention of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence services, and that continues. But the public's focus has swung south to scrutinize the U.S.-Mexican border as a source of insecurity. For the most part, the alarms about immigrants as threats are exaggerated. And the policy choices driven by these concerns—much larger border security measures in particular—are costly in a globalized economy and unnecessary for security in any case.
Topic:
Security, Migration, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Arab Countries, North America, and Mexico

8. The War on Terror and the Cold War: They're Not the Same

Author:
John Tirman
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
Since the autumn of 2001, following the shocking attacks of September 11th, President Bush and his advisers have repeatedly likened the war against terrorism to the confrontation with Nazi Germany in the Second World War and the long struggle with Soviet communism in the Cold War. But the current anti-terrorist campaign and the related war in Iraq are significantly different from those earlier contests. Where resemblances occur, they are not comforting to our political values. And the comparative lessons that the U.S. Government is proffering are not the ones that are relevant to dealing with terrorism.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Politics, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States

9. A Double Standard on Nuclear Weapons?

Author:
Hugh Gusterson
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
There has long been a widespread perception among U.S. defense intellectuals, politicians and pundits that, while we can live with the nuclear weapons of the five official nuclear nations for the indefinite future, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to nuclear-threshold states in the Third World, especially the Islamic world, would be enormously dangerous. This orthodoxy is so much a part of our collective common sense that, like all common sense, it can usually be stated as simple fact without fear of contradiction. It is widely found in the media and in learned journals, and it is shared by liberals as well as conservatives.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Politics, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States

10. Remittances: Latin America's Faulty Lifeline

Author:
Catherine Elton
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
In recent years, the money that migrants send back to their native countries has become a hot topic in international development circles. Multilateral banks, the governments of migrant-sending nations, the U.S. Government, and international development organizations laud the potential that remittances have to reduce poverty and promote development. Remittances are being exalted as “the new development finance,” and a ticket to “high human development,” while the migrants who send them are hailed as heroes back home. But the current remittance euphoria is both overblown and troubling when considered in a larger context of international development.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and South America