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112. No Exceptions: The Decision to Open All Military Positions to Women
- Author:
- Ash Carter
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- As Secretary of Defense, I devoted a large amount of my time to visiting our troops at bases around the world. These were my favorite trips because they gave me the opportunity to spend time with the most important, dynamic, and inspiring part of the United States Armed Forces: our people In June 2016, I visited Fort Knox on one of these trips, where I met with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets and observed their training. These were college students training to be commissioned officers. Meeting with them, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride. Any American who had the chance to look these young women and men in the eye would be proud to observe how dedicated, disciplined, talented, and principled they are. And to know what they are doing for all Americans—to protect us and make a better world for our children—makes you even prouder.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
113. Governance of Highly Decentralized Nonstate Actors: the Case of Solar Geoengineering
- Author:
- Jesse Reynolds and Gernot Wagner
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- New technologies, such as social media and do-it-yourself biotechnology, alter the capacities and incentives of both state and nonstate actors. This can include enabling direct decentralized interventions, in turn altering actors’ power relations. The provision of global public goods, widely regarded as states’ domain, so far has eluded such powerful technological disruptions. We here introduce the idea of highly decentralized solar geoengineering, plausibly done in form of small high-altitude balloons. While solar geoengineering has the potential to greatly reduce climate change, it has generally been conceived as centralized and state deployed. Potential highly decentralized deployment moves the activity from the already contested arena of state action to that of environmentally motivated nongovernmental organizations and individuals, which could disrupt international relations and pose novel challenges for technology and environmental policy. We explore its feasibility, political implications, and governance.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
114. Governing Cooperative Approaches under the Paris Agreement
- Author:
- Michael A Mehling
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Parties to the Paris Agreement can engage in voluntary cooperation and use internationally transferred mitigation outcomes towards their national climate pledges. Doing so promises to lower the cost of achieving agreed climate objectives, which can, in turn, allow Parties to increase their mitigation efforts with given resources. Lower costs do not automatically translate into greater climate ambition, however. Transfers that involve questionable mitigation outcomes can effectively increase overall emissions, affirming the need for a sound regulatory framework. As Parties negotiate guidance on the implementation of cooperative approaches under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, they are therefore considering governance options to secure environmental integrity and address the question of overall climate ambition. Drawing on an analytical framework that incorporates economic theory and deliberative jurisprudence, practical case studies, and treaty interpretation, this Working Paper maps central positions of actors in the negotiations and evaluates relevant options included in the latest textual proposal.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Organization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
115. U.S. Policy Responses to Zimbabwe’s Illusory Reforms
- Author:
- Todd Moss
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- After nearly thirty years of working on and in Zimbabwe, I was hopeful, after the long nightmare of misrule by Robert Mugabe, that the July 2018 election was an opportunity to put the country on a positive track. I had the good fortune of visiting Zimbabwe with a delegation of former US diplomats prior to the election to assess conditions. I came away from that trip deeply pessimistic about the prospects for a free, fair, and credible election, unconvinced that economic reforms were real, and skeptical of the intentions of Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling ZANU-PF. It all appeared little more than a poorly-disguised charade.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
116. A Tool to Implement the Global Compact for Migration: Ten Key Steps for Building Global Skill Partnerships
- Author:
- Michael Clemens and Kate Gough
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The world needs better ways to manage international migration for this century. Those better ways finally have a roadmap: the Global Compact for Migration. Now begins the journey. National governments must lead in order to implement that Compact, and they need tools. One promising tool is Global Skill Partnerships. This brief explains what Global Skill Partnerships are and how to build them, based on related experiences around the world.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
117. Coming to Terms with China at the World Bank and in Development Finance
- Author:
- Scott Morris
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- First, we should recognize that much of the value of the IFIs for the United States derives from their multilateral character. It greatly oversimplifies things to suggest they are strictly a US tool, available to do our bidding no matter what the issue. The reality is that when we want to get something done in these multilateral institutions, we need to work with other countries. In turn, these institutions are most effective when they have the buy-in of the largest number of their member countries. And when the United States is seeking something from them that doesn’t have broad-based support, it can be a tough road.
- Topic:
- Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
118. Stories of Change better Business By Preventing Corruption
- Author:
- Transparency International
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Transparency International
- Abstract:
- Companies increasingly recognise that integrity is good for business. Yet bribery and corruption persist. Large-scale corporate scandals show that much remains to be done to tackle corruption in the business sector. Based on four case studies, this paper shows how Transparency International
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
119. Inside the ADF Rebellion A Glimpse into the Life and Operations of a Secretive Jihadi Armed Group
- Author:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Beni territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered from some of the most brutal violence in the country’s recent history. However, the massacres around Beni, which began in October 2014 and have killed more than 1,000 people, have been shrouded in mystery. No group has officially claimed responsibility for the killings; research by Congo Research Group (CRG) and the UN Group of Experts suggests that many actors, including the Congolese government, have been involved.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
120. The Western Balkans at the End of the the 2010s – Beyond the Security Dilemma?
- Author:
- Mira Kaneva
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
- Abstract:
- Christopher Nolan’s film Inception creates a mesmerizing maze where each action of the protagonists has a ripple effect down through the whole fabric of the story. Making one’s way through the maze, though only in one’s own imagination, leaves the viewer disoriented. The film is all about process, about fighting one’s way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. There is no time or place synchronization; architecture has a way of disregarding gravity where buildings tilt, streets coil and characters are adrift in what is more an emotional than a rational ‘ball of thread’ of experience. In a similar fashion, a complex network of events envelops the Western Balkans since the neologism’s ambiguous inception in the early 1990-s. For nearly three decades the region has been misperceived as stuck-in-the mud, criticized for being entangled in a desynchronized microcosm, involved in a set of flashbacks to archetypal conflicts on identity grounds and doomed to stagnated Europeanization. Both material facts such as cost-benefit calculations and ideational categories such as perceptions, beliefs, values, narratives are at play here. Almost like a Wiki-article, this paper attempts a disambiguation of several key assumptions about the Western Balkans so that it advances the argument that the Western Balkans region is inevitably on its way out of the shoals not least due to the European and Atlantic perspective for its future as offered by the European Union and NATO. It tackles three highly contentious statements: first, it refutes the proposition that the Western Balkans are entrapped in a specific ethnic security dilemma that offers no exit; second, it contends that at the moment the region is caught in a vicious circle of hard security threats (territorial conflicts) and soft security threats (radicalization, populism, corruption and organized crime); third, it holds a moderate optimistic view that the region is likely to be involved in a process of socialization within a vaster security community. The course of reasoning follows the case study of Serbia’s political and social development in the last decade; the theoretical framework is influenced by the security dilemma debate in International Relations literature.
- Topic:
- Security and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Balkans and Global Focus