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1. China in Latin America: Major Impacts and Avenues for Constructive Engagement

Author:
Margaret Myers and Rebecca Ray
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
Over the past two years, U.S. officials have sought to highlight China’s negative effects on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region’s development and stability, whether to U.S. or Latin American audiences. As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a trip to Mexico City in October 2018, "China has invested in ways that have left other countries worse off." Pompeo and other U.S. officials have also taken this message elsewhere in the region, cautioning against the effects of Chinese engagement on LAC governance, security, regulatory capacity, and financial stability, and in a rage of other areas. For Latin Americans, though, relations with China aren’t so black and white. China may be an imperfect partner for LAC, as many in the region will attest, but it is an increasingly important one. After nearly two decades of enhanced Chinese economic engagement with the region, LAC governments and economic sectors rely heavily on China’s economic partnership and inputs. China is LAC’s second most important trading partner, second most important source of mergers and acquisitions foreign direct investment, and top source of development finance. For South America, China’s importance is even more pronounced: It became the top export destination for South American goods in 2010. China’s effects on regional development are also mixed, as we demonstrate below. China’s contributions to the region’s economic growth are well-documented, but Chinese demand for raw materials has also accentuated regional dependence on these commodities, in a process of “re- primarization” in South American economies, with troubling implications for the region’s long-term development prospects. Chinese investments have transformed the energy sectors in some countries, but the environmental effects of hydroelectric and other projects will be long-lasting in certain cases. To achieve a wide range of development objectives—economic, environmental, and social—LAC must depend on increasingly well-planned and coordinated engagement from all of its major economic partners and donor nations, including China. This is especially true in times of growing uncertainty, as the region grapples with humanitarian and migration crises, growing populist tendencies, relentless corruption, and climate change, among other factors.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Imperialism, International Cooperation, Governance, and Regulation
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, Latin America, and North America

2. Congress Should Lay Out the Welcome Mat for Whistleblowers

Author:
Johmn Milko and Mieke Eoyang
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Third Way
Abstract:
Like any large organization, the United States government is susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. In order to help combat these inefficiencies, Congress has instituted a series of whistleblower protection laws to encourage employees to report such instances. However, these laws do not offer blanket protection to any and all whistleblowers. Legal protections for intelligence community (IC) whistleblowers are limited. But broadly, Congress benefits when whistleblowers are protected. The Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), signed into law in 1989, protects government employees against retaliation for protected disclosures to specified entities. These disclosures include “the release of information that the employee reasonably believes demonstrates illegality, gross mismanagement, gross waste, abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.” The definition of specified entities depends on the nature of the information disclosed. While non-classified information can be disclosed to anyone, classified information must be disclosed only to the United States Office of Special Counsel or the appropriate agency’s Inspector General.
Topic:
Corruption, Intelligence, National Security, and Whistle Blowing
Political Geography:
United States and North America

3. Govern LIke Us: U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries

Author:
Thomas M. A.
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
In the poorest countries, such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Mali, the United States has struggled to work with governments whose corruption and lack of capacity are increasingly seen to be the cause of instability and poverty. The development and security communities call for "good governance" to improve the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the delivery of public goods and services. The United States and other rich liberal democracies insist that this is the only legitimate model of governance. Yet poor governments cannot afford to govern according to these ideals and instead are compelled to rely more heavily on older, cheaper strategies of holding power, such as patronage and repression. The unwillingness to admit that poor governments do and must govern differently has cost the United States and others inestimable blood and coin. Informed by years of fieldwork and drawing on practitioner work and academic scholarship in politics, economics, law, and history, this book explains the origins of poor governments in the formation of the modern state system and describes the way they govern. It argues that, surprisingly, the effort to stigmatize and criminalize the governance of the poor is both fruitless and destabilizing. The United States must pursue a more effective foreign policy to engage poor governments and acknowledge how they govern.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Corruption, Development, Poverty, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Haiti, and Mali
Publication Identifier:
9780231171205
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

4. Andrew Selee on the road ahead for Mexico and the U.S. and Saskia Sassen reviews Moisés Naím's redefinition of power relations.

Author:
Saskia Sassen, Andrew Selee, and Moses Naim
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead by Shannon O'Neil BY ANDREW SELEE Click here to view a video interview with Shannon O'Neil. No relationship in the Western Hemisphere is more critical for the United States than its relationship with Mexico. U.S. security is closely tied to Mexico's ability (and willingness) to strengthen its legal and judicial system, and to Mexico's economic potential. And conversely, an improving American economy will have an outsized impact on Mexico's future development. In Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead, Shannon K. O'Neil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, provides both a readable recent history of Mexico and a cogent argument for why U.S. policymakers, business leaders and citizens should care about the future of their southern neighbor. In one of her more compelling passages, she imagines what it would be like if Mexico's economy were to take off as Spain's did in the 1980s and 1990s.
Topic:
Corruption and Economics
Political Geography:
United States and Mexico

5. US Reconstruction Aid for Afghanistan: The Dollars and Sense

Author:
Catherine Lutz and Sujaya Desai
Publication Date:
11-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
The United States, and its allies, the UN, NGOs, and the World Bank, have injected billions of dollars into what is commonly termed the "reconstruction" of Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. This paper focuses on United States spending on aid in Afghanistan, describing the rationale government officials have given for the aid, what they have spent money on, who has profited from the contracts to provide aid, and what the consequences of that spending have been in terms of benefits to the people of Afghanistan or the United States. The central findings of this review of US government investigative reports and existing field-based scholarship are that reconstruction aid has been allocated primarily to re-arming and policing Afghanistan, with poor or even counterproductive outcomes in both security and other-than-security domains. Furthermore, US companies have been among the primary beneficiaries of this aid, despite widespread fraud, waste, and dysfunction. In contrast to a focus on human needs, and rather than rebuilding the basis of a modern state, reconstruction has been focused on furthering United States security interests. Reconstruction thus sets the foundation for continued violence and impoverishment in the years to come.
Topic:
Corruption, Foreign Aid, and World Bank
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and United States

6. Democratic Aspirations and Destabilizing Outcomes in Afghanistan

Author:
Norah Niland
Publication Date:
11-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
The United States and its allies, in control of Afghanistan since October 2001, failed to support the development of an inclusive, legitimate and accountable political system. This paper examines how the imposition of an inappropriate model of democracy, the prioritization of American interests over those of Afghans, and a pattern of expedient political decisions have contributed to the destabilization of the country. The democracy and state-building model imposed on Afghanistan was stymied from the outset by critical foundational flaws. These include the return to power of discredited warlords reviled by most Afghans, the marginalization of particular groups including the remnants of the Taliban movement, and the concentration of power in an executive Presidency at the expense of a weak parliamentary structure. In 2014, along with the drawdown of US and NATO troops, Afghanistan's disputed election saga ended in a no-victor deal that effectively discarded the (as yet unknown) results of the ballot box. Once again, Washington politics reinforced the grip of a warlord-dominated elite on the machinery of the state and exposed the hollowness of the US-led and UN-supported state building project.
Topic:
Political Violence, Corruption, Democratization, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and United States

7. Yemen's domestic and regional politics

Author:
Bernard Haykel
Publication Date:
05-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
Yemen is politically fragmented by three decades of misrule. Many political actors and constituencies oppose the Salih legacy and they need to be included in any future political framework if the country is to become stable. The main regional actor is Saudi Arabia, whereas the U.S. remains the principal hegemon in the region. Saudi Arabia's policy towards Yemen is in flux, whereas the U.S. is too narrowly focused on the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Unless the U.S. and the Saudis change their policies, Yemen will not develop a strong central government.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Corruption, Islam, Armed Struggle, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Saudi Arabia

8. The Dominican Republic: Becoming a One-Party State?

Author:
Carl Meacham
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Is democracy in danger in the Dominican Republic? Is the country headed toward sustained one-party rule? In an effort to understand the state of Dominican democracy and rule of law, CSIS Americas Program director Carl Meacham led a six-month initiative to answer these questions. This report, which details the project's findings, pays particular attention to alleged growing levels of corruption within the government and the independence—and effectiveness—of the country's judiciary, as well as implications for the Dominican Republic's relations with the United States.
Topic:
Corruption and Democratization
Political Geography:
United States and Caribbean

9. Give Corruption a Chance

Author:
Vivek S. Sharma
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
CORRUPTION, MORE often than not, seems to resemble a plague. Afghanistan, where the CIA and British intelligence (in competition with the Iranians) have quite literally been handing over duffel bags stuffed full with taxpayer money to Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and his associates, is perhaps the most prominent example of its invasiveness and hardiness. Nothing seems to be able to eradicate it. Immunization efforts fail. Mutations occur. The only course seems to be to attempt to adapt to it. For despite the efforts expended by several American presidents on behalf of Karzai's administration, the United States has no surer way of ensuring influence and access to Karzai and his advisers than through direct cash payments into a slush fund designed to purchase the loyalty of important and powerful personages within the Afghan government. The bankruptcy of the Western strategy in Afghanistan could hardly be expressed in more vivid terms. Such failures in Afghanistan, not to mention Iraq, have occurred while the broader (and noncoercive) dimensions of "state building" or more generally "development" have also paid less-than-stellar returns. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the project of implanting "good" institutions in non-Western societies, whether through conquest (as in Iraq and Afghanistan) or through consensual, noncoercive means (as in Cambodia), has turned out to be a thankless task.
Topic:
Corruption and Development
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Denmark

10. Governance Reforms in Pakistan's Tribal Areas: The Long Road to Nowhere?

Author:
Joshua T. White and Shuja Ali Malik
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) remain mired in an archaic century-old system of indirect governance that provides space in which militant movements have thrived. President Asif Ali Zardari recently announced the FATA Local Governance Regulation 2012, establishing a system of local councils in the troubled tribal region. Although the regulation is disappointingly vague, and retains the sweeping prerogatives of the central government, it appears to have been driven in part by the army's interest in building civilian governance capacity in conflict-torn areas. The governments of Pakistan and the United States, along with local and international stakeholders, should advocate for continuity of implementation, insist on party-based local council elections, encourage experimentation within the bounds of the regulation, link the new councils to existing development structures, press the government to articulate a longer-term political vision for the FATA, and be realistic about the necessity of the army's active involvement in shaping governance policy in the tribal areas.
Topic:
Political Violence, Corruption, Government, Islam, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, and South Asia