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12. NATO's 2012 Chicago summit: a chance to ignore the issues once again?
- Author:
- Andrew M. Dorman
- Publication Date:
- 03-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Chatham House
- Abstract:
- The NATO organization and its members are beginning to gear themselves up for the forthcoming summit in Chicago in May 2012. Such summits are always important, especially when they are held in the United States. For example, the 1999 Washington summit held to mark the alliance's 50th anniversary occurred against the background of an apparently failing war in Kosovo and a US President fearing impeachment as a result of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Moreover, this summit is happening in a US presidential election year and in a location particularly symbolic for the current incumbent President Obama. It will also follow on from the French presidential elections, thus presenting the first opportunity for either the new French president or a re-elected Nicolas Sarkozy to make a mark on the international scene.
- Political Geography:
- United States, Washington, and Chicago
13. Building Capabilities in an Age of Austerity: NATO's Agenda for Chicago
- Author:
- Ravic Huso and Alexandre Escorcia
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Council of American Ambassadors
- Abstract:
- As the United States prepares to host the first NATO Summit on American soil since 1999, the transatlantic Alliance faces an unfamiliar strategic challenge: how to retain and acquire the capabilities it needs for the future during an unprecedented period of fiscal austerity. NATO's original purpose has remained constant through the decades, and the 2010 Strategic Concept formulates it in language that could have come from the 1949 Treaty: “to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means.” What has evolved is the range of security challenges that threaten NATO nations, but also, crucially, the public's perception of these threats and the resources needed to confront them.
- Political Geography:
- United States and Chicago
14. Paying for Afghanistan's Security Forces During Transition: Issues for Chicago and Beyond
- Author:
- William Byrd
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- This report reflects the author's research interests and several publications on security sector reform from a financial and development perspective. It is intended to lay out key issues and trade-offs in this area, and brings in concepts and tools of public financial management which are applicable to the security sector. The views expressed in this brief do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which does not take policy positions.
- Topic:
- Security, Terrorism, War, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, United States, and Chicago
15. Looking Beyond the Chicago Summit: Nuclear Weapons in Europe and the Future of NATO
- Author:
- George Perkovich, Steven Pifer, Malcolm Chalmers, Paul Schulte, and Jaclyn Tandler
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will meet for a summit in Chicago this May to conclude their Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR), which was intended to be a vehicle for resolving key questions about the future role of nuclear weapons in NATO policy. However, NATO is unlikely to resolve the question of what to do about its forward deployed nuclear weapons before the summit.
- Topic:
- Security, NATO, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Chicago
16. Accomplished and Embattled: Understanding Obama's Presidency
- Author:
- Theda Skocpol and Lawrence R. Jacobs
- Publication Date:
- 05-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- Hope soared as Barack Obama and his beaming family strode onto the stage in Chicago's Grant Park on 5 November 2008. The election night mood was accentuated by tears of affirmation streaming down the face of longtime civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and lifted by graciousness from defeated GOP candidate John McCain, who congratulated the nation's first African American president-elect for having “achieved a great thing for himself and for his country.” Only a day after a bruising election, two thirds of Americans described themselves as optimistic and proud after Obama's victory. Most Americans yearned for a reduction in partisan bitterness and for united efforts to cope with a deepening economic crisis and ensure opportunity for all.
- Political Geography:
- Africa, America, and Chicago
17. Steve Simpson on Continuing Threats to Corporate Free Speech
- Author:
- Ari Armstrong
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Simpson, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice. Among Mr. Simpson's many accomplishments, he authored a friend-of-the-court brief in the landmark case Citizens United v. FEC, served as lead counsel in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, helped overturn aspects of Colorado's campaign finance laws that restricted people's ability to fund political speech, and helped overturn New York's ban on direct shipping of wine. Simpson has contributed articles to Legal Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Times, among other outlets. He is also the author of “Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech in America,” which was published in the Spring 2010 edition of The Objective Standard. —Ari Armstrong
- Political Geography:
- New York, America, Washington, and Chicago
18. The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation
- Author:
- Anita L. Allen
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- In this new volume, two distinguished University of Chicago law professors have joined forces to edit a provocatively titled collection of essays about the Internet. As they observe in their coauthored introduction, the Internet “has succeeded in remaking us as inhabitants of a small village”. However, there is little romance in this cozy trope that Levmore and Nussbaum deploy to frame their project. We are indeed close-knit now. The Internet has stitched together geographically, politically, and culturally distant men, women, and children into an intensively interactive community. But it is a Hobbesean village, bereft of decorum and solidarity. Moreover, when one calls to mind the extraordinary stories of Amy Boyer and Tyler Clementi, whose murder and suicide, respectively, were closely tied to commercial and social abuses of the Internet, one quickly understands that Internet communication can be not only offensive but also flat-out dangerous.
- Political Geography:
- Chicago
19. The Americas Go Glocal
- Author:
- Saskia Sassen
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- There is little doubt that the North-South axis remains dominant for Latin America's geopolitical positioning. But new relations are emerging and deepening at subnational levels, in turn creating new intercity geographies and challenging that geopolitical notion. These relations are a direct product of economic and cultural globalization. Some examples are the shift of migration from Ecuador and Colombia toward Spain rather than the U.S., the growing economic relations between Chinese businesses and organizations and São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and the emergent relations between these cities and Johannesburg, South Africa. The Internet has allowed a rapidly growing number of people to become a part of diverse networks that crisscross the world. And nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from various parts of the world are establishing active connections over social struggles in Latin America. In other words, beneath the still-dominant North-South geopolitics, transversal geographies are growing in bits and pieces. One trend is the formation of intercity geographies as the number of global cities has expanded since the 1990s. These subnational circuits cut across the world in many directions. A second trend is the growth of civil society organizations and individuals who are connecting around the world in ways that, again, often do not follow the patterns of traditional geopolitics. The New, Multiple Circuits There is no such entity as the global economy. It is more correct to say there are global formations, such as electronic financial markets and firms that operate globally. But what defines the current era is the creation of numerous, highly particular, global circuits—some specialized and some not—interlacing across the world and connecting specific areas, most of which are cities. While many of these global circuits have long existed, they began to proliferate and establish increasingly complex organizational and financial foundations in the 1980s. These emergent intercity geographies function as an infrastructure for globalization, and have led to the increased urbanization of global networks. Different circuits contain different groups of countries and cities. For instance, Mumbai today is part of a global circuit for real estate development that includes investors from cities as diverse as London and Bogotá. Coffee is mostly produced in Brazil, Kenya and Indonesia, but the main place for trading its future is on Wall Street. The specialized circuits in gold, coffee, oil and other commodities each involve particular countries and cities, which will vary depending on whether they are production, trading or financial circuits. If, for example, we track the global circuits of gold as a financial instrument, it is London, New York, Chicago, and Zurich that dominate. But the wholesale trade in the metal brings São Paulo, Johannesburg and Sydney into the circuit, while trade in the commodity, much of it aimed at the retail level, adds Mumbai and Dubai. And then there are the types of circuits a firm such as Wal-Mart needs to outsource the production of vast amounts of goods—circuits that include manufacturing, trading, and financial and insurance services. The 250,000 multinationals in the world, together with their over 1 million affiliates and partnership arrangements worldwide, have created a new pattern of relations that combine global dispersal with the spatial concentration of certain functions often while retaining headquarters in their home countries. The same is true of the 100 top global advanced-services firms that together have operations in 350 cities outside their home base. While financial services can be bought everywhere electronically, the headquarters of leading global financial services firms tend to be concentrated in a limited number of cities. Each of these financial centers specializes in specific segments of global finance, even as they engage in routine types of transactions executed by all financial centers. It's not just global economic forces that feed this proliferation of circuits. Forces such as migration and cultural exchange, along with civil society struggles to protect human rights, preserve the environment and promote social justice, which also contribute to circuit formation and development. NGOs fighting for the protection of the rainforest function in circuits that include Brazil and Indonesia as homes of the major rainforests, the global media centers of New York and London, and the places where the key forestry companies selling and buying wood are headquartered—notably Oslo, London and Tokyo. There are even music circuits that connect specific areas of India with London, New York, Chicago, and Johannesburg. Adopting the perspective of one of these cities reveals the diversity and specificity of its location on some or many of these circuits, which is determined by its unique capabilities. Ultimately, being a global firm or market means entering the specificities and particularities of national economies. This explains why global firms and markets need more and more global cities as they expand their operations across the world. While there is competition among cities, there is far less of it than is usually assumed. A global firm does not want one global city, but many. Moreover, given the variable level of specialization of globalized firms, their preferred cities will vary. Firms thrive on the specialized differences of cities, and it is those differences that give a city its particular advantage in the global economy. Thus, the economic history of a place matters for the type of knowledge economy that a city or city-region ends up developing. This goes against the common view that globalization homogenizes economies. Globalization homogenizes standards—for managing, accounting, building state-of-the-art office districts, and so on. But it needs diverse specialized economic capabilities. Latin America on the Circuit This allows many of Latin America's cities to become part of global circuits. Some, such as São Paulo and Buenos Aires, are located on hundreds of such circuits, others just on a few. Regardless of the case, these cities are not necessarily competing with one other. The growing number of global cities, each specialized, signals a shift to a multipolar world. Clearly, the major Latin American cities have circuits that connect them directly to destinations across the world. What is perhaps most surprising is the intensity of connections with Asia and Europe. Traditional geopolitics would lead one to think that Latin America connects, above all, with North America. There is a strong tendency for global money flows to generate partial geographies. This becomes clear, for example, when we consider foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America, a disproportionate share of which goes to a handful of countries. In 2008, for example (a relative peak of FDI), FDI flows into Latin America were topped by Brazil at $45.1 billion, followed at a distance by Mexico at $23.7 billion, Chile at $15.2 billion, and Argentina with $9.7 billion. On average, between 1991–1996 and 2003–2008, FDI in Brazil increased more than five-fold while tripling in Chile and Mexico. Among the countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region receiving the lowest levels of foreign investment in 2008 were Haiti, at $30 million; Guyana, at $178 million; and Paraguay, at $109 million. Globalization and the new information and communication technologies have enabled a variety of local activists and organizations to enter international arenas that were once the exclusive domain of national states. Going global has also been partly facilitated and conditioned by the infrastructure of the global economy…
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and Non-Governmental Organization
- Political Geography:
- United States, New York, America, South Africa, London, Colombia, Latin America, Mumbai, Sydney, Ecuador, Dubai, and Chicago
20. Milton Friedman's 1971 Feasibility Paper
- Author:
- Leo Melamed
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- The story is fairly well known. In 1971, as chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, I had an idea: a futures market in foreign currency. It may sound so obvious today, but at the time the idea was revolutionary. I was acutely aware that futures markets until then were primarily the province of agriculture and—as many claimed—might not be applicable to instruments of finance. Not being an economist, the idea was in need of validation. There was only one person in the world that could satisfy this requisite for me. We went to Milton Friedman. We met for breakfast at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. By then he was already a living legend and I was quite nervous. I asked the great man not to laugh and to tell me whether the idea was “off the wall.” Upon hearing him emphatically respond that the idea was “wonderful,” I had the temerity to ask that he put his answer in writing. He agreed to write a feasibility paper on “The Need for Futures Markets in Currencies,” for the modest stipend of $7,500. It turned out to be a helluva trade.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- New York and Chicago