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1421. Balance Sheet Crises: Causes, Consequences, and Responses

Author:
Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Balance sheet crises, in which the prices of widely held and highly leveraged assets collapse, pose distinctive economic challenges. An understanding of their causes and consequences is only recently developing, and there is no agreement at all on effective policy responses. A preliminary purpose of this article is to examine in detail the events that led to and resulted from the recent U.S. housing bubble and collapse, as a case study in the formation and propagation of balance sheet crises. The primary objective of the article is to evaluate similar events around the world with a view toward assessing the economic performance of countries that have pursued varied alternative policies.
Political Geography:
United States

1422. The Case for Simple Rules and Limiting the Safety Net

Author:
Thomas Hoenig
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
For the last 100 years, government officials and bank CEOs have insisted that new policies, rules, and laws—combined with greater market discipline, resolution schemes, and enhanced supervision—would ensure that future financial crises, should they occur, would be more effectively handled. In the United States, the creation of the Federal Reserve System and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are examples where such assurances were given to the public. More recently, the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991 and other legislation were intended to end public bailouts of failing banks and, in particular, prevent the moral hazard problem inherent in “too big to fail.” Such assurances seem even more significant following a U.S. Treasury (1991) study that found that “too big to fail” resolution policies used for six of the largest banks cost taxpayers more than $5 billion (in current dollars). If only the cost of the six largest bailouts in this recent crisis were just $5 billion. Unfortunately, it was many times greater.
Political Geography:
United States

1423. Research Ethics in the Mobile Learning Environment (MoLE) m-Learning Project

Author:
Jacob Hodges and Geoff Stead
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
This research paper discusses the Mobile Learning Environment (MoLE) Project, a unique and ambitious effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense's Coalition Warfare Program (CWP) in partnership with over twenty nations. The mobile learning project explored the usefulness and effectiveness of using mobile technologies as a tool to support training activities in medical stability operations. This article discusses the importance of employing global research ethics and social responsibility practices in the testing and evaluating of science and technology projects. It provides an under- standing of research ethics requirements and looks at how the technical challenges were applied within a global framework. Finally, it showcases an integrated application of a mobile capability in accordance with a myriad of research ethics guidelines and concludes with the accomplishment of evaluating this global capability.
Political Geography:
United States

1424. The Role of Teaching History for a Nation-Building Process in a Post-Conflict Society: The Case of Macedonia

Author:
Biljana Popovska
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
The theoretical framework of this article is based on several published works whose content deals with history teaching as a key mechanism of justice in transitional societies. Then, it draws from the work of the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe and their project "Clio in the Balkans" and the Joint History Text- book Project. In addition, there are materials from interviews with Macedonian and Albanian history teachers, experts, and government representatives selected from the participants in the Macedonian project presented at a United States Institute of Peace conference in Washington, D.C. in November 2005.
Political Geography:
United States and Washington

1425. In the Eye of the Beholder: How Leaders and Intelligence Communities Assess the Intentions of Adversaries

Author:
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How do policymakers infer the long-term political intentions of their states' adversaries? This question has important theoretical, historical, and political significance. If British decisionmakers had understood the scope of Nazi Germany's intentions for Europe during the 1930s, the twentieth century might have looked very different. More recently, a Brookings report observes that “[t]he issue of mutual distrust of long-term intentions . . . has become a central concern in U.S.-China relations.” Statements by U.S. and Chinese officials confirm this suspicion. U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke noted “a concern, a question mark, by people all around the world and governments all around the world as to what China's intentions are.” Chinese officials, similarly, have indicated that Beijing regards recent U.S. policies as a “sophisticated ploy to frustrate China's growth.”
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Europe

1426. Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)

Author:
Daniel W. Dresner
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The 2008 financial crisis dramatically worsened the fiscal future of the United States. In the first five years of the Great Recession, the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of the United States more than doubled, and multiple bond-ratings agencies downgraded U.S. federal government debt. The inevitable debate in Washington is where and how much to cut federal spending. The national security budget is a natural target for fiscal conservatives. Their logic is clear-cut: defense and war expenditures are not the primary culprits for the parlous fiscal state of the United States, but they acted as accessories. For the 2013 fiscal year, the U.S. federal government has budgeted more than $685 billion in defense expenditures. Tacking on budgeting for intelligence and nuclear forces raises that figure to more than $725 billion. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down and al-Qaida's top leadership decimated, the security threats to the United States have also declined. At the same time, the country possesses an unparalleled lead in defense assets and expenditures. Given its unchallenged military supremacy, targeting cuts toward defense spending after a decade of dramatic budgetary increases is a natural ambition.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Washington

1427. Why States Won't Give Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists

Author:
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
For the last two decades, U.S. leaders have focused on the possibility of nuclear terrorism as a serious threat to the United States. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, those fears grew even more acute. In his State of the Union Address four months after the attacks, President George W. Bush warned a worried nation that rogue states “could provide [weapons of mass destruction] to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred.” Both Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice amplified the president's warning in order to justify the war against Iraq. According to Rice, “Terrorists might acquire such weapons from [Saddam Hussein's] regime, to mount a future attack far beyond the scale of 9/11. This terrible prospect could not be ignored or wished away.” Such fears continue to shape policy debates today: in particular, advocates of bombing Iran's nuclear facilities often justify a strike based on the idea that Iran might give nu-clear weapons to terrorist groups. Even President Barack Obama, who as a senator opposed the war against Iraq, declared, “The American people face no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.” For U.S. leaders, the sum of all fears is that an enemy might give nuclear weapons to terrorists. But are those fears well founded?
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, and Iran

1428. Nuclear Negotiations with Iran

Author:
Paul R. Pillar, James K. Sebenius, Michael K. Singh, and Robert Reardon
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
James Sebenius and Michael Singh are to be commended for advocating rigor in the analysis of international negotiations such as the one involving Iran's nuclear program. Although they describe their offering as a neutral framework for analyzing any negotiation, they are not at all neutral regarding the negotiations with Iran; and they present conclusions that derive directly from specific substantive assumptions, especially about Iranian objectives. The authors repeatedly describe their assumptions as “mainstream,” implying that they are uncontroversial and that any differing ones are too extreme to be worth considering. For an assumption to reside within the mainstream of popular and political discourse about Iran, however, does not make it correct. Sebenius and Singh do something similar with assumptions about U.S. interests, while sliding silently between the descriptive and the prescriptive in a way that fails to contrast actual policies with possible ones that would be consistent with those interests. Many readers' principal takeaway from their article will be that a zone of possible agreement probably did not exist as of the time of their writing and probably will not exist unless the United States takes steps toward going to war with Iran. That answer, however, given the questionable assumptions on which it is based, is very likely wrong.
Political Geography:
United States and Iran

1429. Drone Wars

Author:
Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
At the National Defense University (NDU) on May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama gave a major speech about terrorism-arguing that the time has come to redefine the kind of conflict that the United States has been engaged in since the 9/11 attacks. Obama asserted that ''[w]e must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.'' Thus, the President focused part of his speech on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress had passed days after 9/11 and which gave President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Few in Congress who voted for this authorization understood that they were voting for what has become the United States' longest war, one that has expanded in recent years to countries such as Pakistan and Yemen.
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, and Yemen

1430. Bringing Them All Back Home? Dollar Diminution and U.S. Power

Author:
Jonathan Kirshner
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
U.S. power is facing new macroeconomic constraints. They derive from a basic and generally underappreciated shift in U.S. engagement with the global macroeconomic order, which also complicates international politics. Since before WWII, the international monetary and financial system had served to enhance U.S. power and capabilities in its relations with other states. From the turn of the twenty-/first century, however, underlying economic problems threatened to turn this traditional (if implicit) source of strength into a chronic weakness. The 2007-08 global financial crisis has increased this risk. The United States will likely face new constraints on its power from the crisis and from new complications managing the dollar as a global currency. Moreover, the unfamiliarity of U.S. elites and citizens in facing such constraints will play a crucial role in determining how severe they will be in practice.
Political Geography:
United States