The 10th Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference is underway in New York, against the background of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in itself a gross violation of the treaty; Putin’s threat to resort to nuclear weapons; the deadlock in negotiations with Iran; and more. In these difficult circumstances, the participants will hopefully be able at the very least to issue a joint statement affirming the norms underlying the NPT
Topic:
Security, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, and Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
Congestion on the roads, traffic accidents, and rising levels of air pollution – transportation affects the health, economy, and well-being of the residents of Israeli Therefore, discussions of national security must include deliberations on improving transportation in Israel
Topic:
Security, Infrastructure, Public Policy, and Transportation
“Within a year we will operate a laser interception system” – Thus the Prime Minister Bennett declared at the yearly conference of the INSS. What are the differences between the various laser systems and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these types of air defense systems?
Topic:
Science and Technology, Military Strategy, Innovation, and Laser Technology
The Chief Prosecutor at The Hague has already begun to investigate actions taken by Russia in the Ukrainian arena, while accelerating judicial proceedings and bureaucracy. This reflects a change of approach, which includes the prioritization of recent events, as part of an effort to strengthen the status of the Court. How will this affect the investigation of the war in Eastern Europe – and the investigation concerning Israel?
Topic:
Military Strategy, Conflict, International Crime, and Russia-Ukraine War
Inequality is like a slippery eel: it is easy to see but very hard to grasp. It
has endured for centuries and has worsened recently.1
As a result of climate
change, it is likely to become more of a problem in the future, bringing the risk
of widespread instability.
Although inequality has been a problem for a very long time, economists,
social scientists, and political thinkers have failed to devise any lasting solutions.
This is because the responses so far have been tepid-hearted, torn between three
competing ideas.
Ambassador Derek Mitchell is the president of the National Democratic In-
stitute. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar from 2012 –2016,
following a long and distinuguished career in and outside the government.
Topic:
International Affairs, Democracy, Strategic Competition, and Autocracy
Dr. Togzhan Kassenova is a Washington, DC-based senior fellow with the Project on
International Security, Commerce, and Economic Statecraft (PISCES) at the Center
for Policy Research, SUNY-Albany and a nonresident fellow in the Nuclear Policy
Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is an expert on
nuclear politics, WMD nonproliferation, strategic trade controls, sanctions imple-
mentation, and financial crime prevention. She currently works on issues related to
proliferation financing controls, exploring ways to minimize access of proliferators
to the global financial system. Kassenova holds a Ph.D. in Politics from the Univer-
sity of Leeds and is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS). From
2011 to 2015 Kassenova served on the UN secretary general’s Advisory Board on
Disarmament Matters. Kassenova is the author of Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan
Gave Up the Bomb (forthcoming, Stanford University Press, 2022).
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Politics, Nonproliferation, and Interview
In the years preceding the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early
2020, many observers were cheerily optimistic about the decline of coups d’état
in the twenty-first century. As late as early 2019, for example, Axios declared
confidently that coups—or illegal seizures of power by military or government
actors—“are becoming a thing of the past.”1
In early 2022, the same journalist
and outlet reported that “coups are making a comeback.”2
Between those three
years (January 2019–January 2022), 13 coup attempts occurred, 10 of which
succeeded. By contrast, in the three years beforehand (January 2016–January
2019), there had only been five coup attempts, two of which were successful. In
other words, the number of coup attempts more than doubled, and the number
of successful coups quintupled, according to my updated Colpus dataset of coup
types.3
What accounts for the apparent coup comeback? Is the pandemic itself
to blame? In this article, I draw on my newly updated Colpus dataset of coup
types, documenting all coups through February 2022, to survey the history of
recent coups. I first show that after several decades in decline, coups started to
make their comeback before the pandemic. I then survey the potential causes of “covid coups” and the factors for why recent coups have been overwhelmingly
concentrated in Africa. I conclude by reflecting on the legacy of “covid coups.”
Development professionals follow a few overriding admonitions. Two
important ones are “do no harm” and “understand the local context.” A third
traditional injunction has recently gained even more relevance: “Think globally
and act locally.” Yet today, there is a growing need to “think globally and act
globally.”
Bilateral and multilateral donor agencies like USAID and the World Bank
have appropriately focused their work at the national and subnational levels.
Local ownership is still a valid principle of development. However, transna-
tional issues and the global economic outlook are now overwhelming local
development progress. Particularly in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs),
climate-related disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequences of
the war in Ukraine are quickly erasing development gains and exposing global
inequality even more dramatically.
Topic:
Development, Foreign Aid, Inequality, Economy, and USAID