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Begin New Search Political Geography Global Focus Publication Year within 25 Years

2301. The Geopolitics of Food Security: Barriers to the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger

Author:
Jiayi Zhou, Lisa Marie Dellmuth, Kevin M. Adams, Tina-Simone Neset, and Nina von Uexkull
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
Abstract:
Assessing the prospects for Zero Hunger—Sustainable Development Goal 2—requires an understanding of food security that goes beyond developmental or humanitarian issues, to include linkages with geopolitics. Geopolitical challenges cut across areas such as natural resources, trade, armed conflict and climate change where unilateralism and zero-sum approaches to security directly hamper efforts to eradicate hunger and undermine the frameworks that govern those efforts. The report provides an overview of how geopolitics interacts with these areas. Competition for agricultural resources can be both a cause and a consequence of geopolitical rivalry. International trade, while essential for food security, also creates vulnerabilities through supply disruptions—sometimes politically motivated. Armed conflict is a driver of food insecurity, which can itself feed into social unrest and violence. Climate change interacts with all three phenomena, reshaping both the physical landscape and political calculus. These overlapping linkages require further integrated policy engagement and analysis.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, International Trade and Finance, Governance, Food Security, Geopolitics, and Peace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2302. Pathways of Climate Insecurity: Guidance for Policymakers

Author:
Malin Mobjörk, Florian Krampe, and Kheira Tarif
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
Abstract:
Policymakers are increasingly concerned with the climate-related security risks—the adverse effects of climate change on peace and security. This SIPRI Policy Brief outlines four interrelated pathways between climate change and conflict: (a) livelihoods, (b) migration and mobility, (c) armed group tactics, and (d) elite exploitation. These illustrate the relationship between short- and long-term environmental changes linked to climate change; their impact on the root causes and dynamics of violent conflict; and the critical role of human action, reaction and inaction in mediating violent outcomes. As a policymaking tool, pathways help to identify and navigate the political space for mitigating violent conflict. They can support decision makers in navigating these complex relationships in conflict-affected and climate-exposed regions by integrating local context into analyses of the security and conflict risks of climate change. Pathways also help to facilitate policy planning in areas such as livelihoods, mobility, resource management and governance.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Development, and Peace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2303. A Legal Analysis of Making Copyrighted Works Available Online During the Coronavirus Crisis

Author:
Steven Tepp
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The Internet Archive (“IA”) began operation in 1996, at first making archival copies of websites, but soon offering those to the public and then expanding to other copyrighted works including books, sound recordings, audiovisual works, graphic arts (still images), and software, without regard to their copyright status and generally without licenses. It positions itself as an online version of a library and has offered free access to the materials it copies, albeit limiting users to one-for-one use of its copies: one copy may only be used by one account at a time.2 At the time of this writing, efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus have resulted in “stay at home” orders in over forty states, covering more than ninety percent of the U.S. population.3 Similarly, educational institutions at all levels have closed their physical spaces and are trying to carry on via distance education. For many, including this author, the current situation was unimaginable only a couple of months ago. By any measure, this is an extreme set of circumstances.
Topic:
Intellectual Property/Copyright, Internet, Criminal Justice, and Coronavirus
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2304. The Executive’s Guide to Quantum Cryptography: Security in a Post-Quantum World

Author:
Arthur Herman
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
This guidebook answers key questions about how quantum technology itself, in the form of quantum random-number generators (QRNG) and quantum-key distribution (QKD), can provide secure solutions for addressing the quantum computer threat. After explaining how QRNG and QKD work, the guidebook recommends that executives combine these quantum cryptographic solutions with other software-based, quantum-resistant applications that can deter future quantum computer attacks. Finally, the guide shows how quantum science will determine the future of communication technology by making it safe, secure, and ready for the twenty-first century.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, Business, and Quantum Computers
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2305. Consumer Sovereignty and the Role of Government Intervention

Author:
Harold Furchtgott-Roth and Kirk R. Arner
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
American businesses and consumers have an unequal relationship. Consumers generally are and should be sovereign because a consumer—not a seller, nor a third party, nor even the government—usually decides what to purchase. Consumers must like a business to buy its product or service. If a business has poor service, sales will suffer. And if a business is tainted by scandal, customers will flee. As courtiers of purchasing power, businesses go on bended knee to pay homage to the consumer. Typically, a business need not like a consumer to sell products or services. In most lines of business, a seller must sell to anyone willing to pay. And although there are types of businesses where a seller can legally refuse a sale, most rational sellers seek as many customers as possible.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Sovereignty, and Regulation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2306. Coronavirus and Power: The Impact on International Politics

Author:
Sven Biscop
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
This will change everything. It is an understandable feeling. When people pass through an ordeal, they want to believe that when all is over there will be some compensation. Things may indeed change, but perhaps not as radically as may seem likely today in the midst of the crisis – and not all change will be for the better. What change could the corona crisis bring to international politics?
Topic:
International Cooperation, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2307. Catalyzing Consensus around Global Commitments

Author:
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
An international consensus to meet contemporary challenges will develop primarily around defending against shared threats. If the United States is to turn this consensus into collaboration to strengthen security, it must stake out a clear vision of its primary threats and missions. As has become evident over the last few years, doing so will necessarily require adaptations to ally dynamics and disruptions to some international organizations, treaties, and agreements. These changes should not reflexively cause concern that the United States is “withdrawing from the world stage” or has “abandoned its leadership role”; rather, these disruptions are necessary to recalibrate international efforts to rise to contemporary challenges. As part of the US initiative to build consensus, Washington should be especially sensitive to and supportive of those allied and partner efforts already underway that align with US security priorities. It should seek to maximize their effectiveness, in turn providing an incentive for other nations to do the same.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, International Organization, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

2308. Hypocritical Inhospitality: The Global Refugee Crisis in the Light of History

Author:
Luke Glanville
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Political authorities often claim that states have an absolute right to decide for themselves who enters their territory and the conditions on which they enter by mere virtue of their sovereignty. In 2018, for example, the then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, responded to the UN’s criticism of the Donald Trump administration’s practice of separating children from parents entering the United States without documentation, including those claiming asylum, with a typical appeal to sovereign prerogative: “We will remain a generous country, but we are also a sovereign country, with laws that decide how to best control our borders and protect our people. Neither the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”1 A brief glance at the history of sovereignty, however, reminds us of two crucial things. First, sovereignty is socially constructed, and its meaning and implications have changed and continue to change over time. Sovereignty need not entail, and historically has not entailed, an absolute right to regulate the movement of people in and out of one’s territory.2 Second, we are reminded of the deep and problematic ties between the history of sovereignty’s construction and the history of the European colonial project.3 Sovereignty was for a long time considered a privilege enjoyed only by Europeans and those non-Europeans whom Europeans deigned to acknowledge as civilized members of the “family of nations.” It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Europe’s widespread empires were finally dismantled, self-government was granted to formerly colonized peoples, and the institution of the territorially bounded sovereign state spread across the globe. More than that, for centuries, the wealth of Europe’s sovereign powers was augmented, and the territories of their soon-to-be-sovereign settler colonies beyond Europe were acquired by means of violent conquest, subjection, enslavement, displacement, and, often, slaughter of nonsovereign indigenous peoples. The powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable. They now deny it to them. That much is well known. What is less well known is that one justification that European imperial powers offered for the violent subjection of nonsovereign non-Europeans, at least for a time, was indigenous peoples’ violation of a supposedly natural and enforceable duty of hospitality. Today, many of these same powers—including European Union member states and former settler colonies, such as the United States and Australia—work tirelessly and expend billions of dollars to resist granting hospitality to forcibly displaced people seeking asylum at their borders or waiting in refugee camps and urban centers in developing regions of the world. The powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable. They now deny it to them. This essay examines the hypocritical inhospitality of these wealthy and powerful states in four stages. I first outline how the notion of a duty of hospitality was deployed as a justification for European colonialism. Second, I contrast this historical demand for hospitality with the denial of hospitality by former colonial powers today, noting that they legitimate this denial by again imposing an expectation of hospitality on others. Third, I consider the justified limits to the duty of hospitality, explaining how Immanuel Kant and others usefully sought a formulation of the duty that would protect the vulnerable from the predations of powerful intruders while still requiring the powerful to provide relief to the displaced vulnerable. And fourth, I argue, given that certain states accrued vast wealth and territory from the European colonial project, which they justified in part by appeals to a duty of hospitality, these states are bound now to extend hospitality to vulnerable outsiders not simply as a matter of charity or even reciprocity, but as justice and restitution for grave historical wrongs.
Topic:
Refugee Crisis, Colonialism, Humanitarian Crisis, and Hospitality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2309. From poverty reduction to global challenges, a new horizon for international development cooperation?

Author:
Philippe Andre Orliange
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (IBRI)
Abstract:
The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, The Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda laid the foundations of a new system of international development cooperation in which middle income countries are playing an increasingly important role, National Development Banks are becoming key players although broadly consensual regulatory framework are still insufficient.
Topic:
Climate Change, Poverty, Finance, Sustainable Development Goals, International Development, and Banks
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2310. The changing nature and architecture of U.S. democracy assistance

Author:
Luiza Rodrigues Mateo
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (IBRI)
Abstract:
Democracy assistance is an important tool of United States foreign policy, serving strategic interests in association with several agendas, from human rights to national security. The objective of this article is to make a historical reconstruction of the definitions and practices of American democracy assistance, describing its institutional architecture, budgetary levels and political priorities. Special attention is given to U.S. foreign aid rationale and contemporary trends, recapturing the last thirty years of growth in democracy assistance since the end of the Cold War.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Foreign Aid, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America