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441. Iraq: The Day After- Chairs' Update

Author:
Thomas Pickering and James Schlesinger
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
This memorandum focuses on key challenges in the postwar period in Iraq. It supplements the March 12, 2003, report, Iraq: The Day After, prepared by the Independent Task Force on Post-Conflict Iraq and sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. That report contained some 30 recommendations for U.S. postwar policy in Iraq. While some of the Task Force's recommendations addressed contingencies that did not occur (such as the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraqi forces or large-scale refugee flight), the bulk of the recommendations remain applicable some three months after the release of the initial report. This supplement highlights a few key areas of continuing concern that we believe require attention by the administration.
Topic:
Development and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Middle East

442. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Sea Basing

Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Sea basing is a critical capability for the United States in a world where flexible, quick-response military action will be required in areas far from fixed bases available or suitable for American military use. The seabase replaces or augments the fixed, in-theater airports and seaports, on which past military operations have focused and depended, with a maneuverability facility at sea - a mobile base of operations, command center, logistics node and transportation hub. A commander can place a seabase where and when he chooses to exploit enemy weaknesses and employ the element of surprise, confusing enemy defensive preparations. A seabase can be a center for reconstitution and redeployment of forces in succeeding stages of complex operations.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

443. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Enabliing Joint Force Capabilities

Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
U.S. national security leaders face a complex, dynamic set of demands in protecting the interests of the United States and its allies. Three key trends shape the nature and capability of the military forces required to meet these demands: 1. The limited ability to predict when, where, and under what conditions we will need to commit U.S. military forces, particularly for smaller-scale contingencies; 2. The need for forces that enjoy dominant superiority over potential adversaries, not simply an incremental advantage over an aggregate set of threats; and 3. The rapid development and global availability of information technology (IT). Taken together, these trends underscore the need for enhanced joint capabilities.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

444. Training for Future Conflicts

Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This is the second 21st century Defense Science Board report on military training. The report itself has a training goal: instruct and convince the acquisition and personnel communities to recognize instinctively that (1) military proficiency is as dependent on the warriors who operate weapon systems as it is on the weapon system technology, and (2) a superb way to waste personnel or system acquisition money is to ignore training, or to tacitly allow training to pay the bills for acquisition or personnel system flaws in those more measurable arenas.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

445. Net Foreign Assets and Imperfect Pass-through: The Consumption Real Exchange Rate Anomaly

Author:
Jorge D. Selaive and Vicente Tuesta
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
An unresolved issue in international macroeconomics is the apparent lack of risk-sharing across countries, which contradicts the prediction of models based on the assumption of complete markets. We assess the importance of financial frictions in this issue by constructing an incomplete market model with stationary net foreign assets (NFA) and imperfect pass-through (IPT). In this paper, there is a cost of bond holdings that allows us to incorporate the dynamics of NFA into the risk-sharing condition. On theoretical grounds, our results suggest that the dynamics of NFA may account for the lack of risk-sharing across countries. In addition, the IPT mechanism, by closing the current account channel, does not help to explain this feature of the data. On empirical grounds, we test the risk-sharing condition derived in the paper, and we find that growth factors of consumption and real exchange rates behave in a manner that may be consistent with a significant role for the net foreign asset position.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

446. An Empirical Analysis of Inflation in OECD Countries

Author:
Jaime Marquez and Jane Ihrig
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
One of the most remarkable macroeconomic developments of the past decade has been the widespread decline in inflation despite declines in unemployment rates. For the United States, these seemingly contradictory developments have been reconciled in terms of three factors: (1) an acceleration in productivity, (2) structural changes in labor markets that lowered the natural unemployment rate (NAIRU), and (3) improved credibility of monetary policy. Here we ask whether comparable factors were at work in foreign industrial countries. To address this question, we empirically characterize the relationship between inflation, the unemployment rate, and structural factors using an extended Phillips curve model with quarterly data through 1994. By undertaking counterfactual simulations from 1995 to 2001, we quantify the separate contributions of unemployment-rate movements, labor-market reforms (that affected the NAIRU), and productivity developments on inflation. In line with previous work on the United States, we find that productivity advancements were the main structural factor reducing inflation in the United States. For foreign countries, persistent labor-market slack was the main factor exerting downward pressure on inflation. This persistence stemmed, in part, from structural reforms that lowered the NAIRU while the unemployment rate was declining.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

447. Modernizing China's Military: A High-Stakes Gamble?

Author:
Howard M. Krawitz
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
China's accelerated push to modernize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) raises two important questions: What impact will such change have upon the PLA image, status, and role in Chinese society? And how will Chinese military modernization affect the strategic interests and security concerns of the United States and China's neighbors in the region? Making the PLA into a more professional, technologically proficient force would certainly strengthen its capability to perform national defense, regional security, and other externally oriented missions more effectively. But modernization could also significantly change internal PLA demographics, resulting in a drastic alteration of the social contract that has traditionally existed between China's military and civilian society.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and China

448. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Joint Experimentation, Phase 1

Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
The Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on Joint Experimentation was established to examine the joint experimentation programs and activities at the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and to recommend ways to enhance the contributions of joint experimentation to transformation. The Task Force assessed the goals, process, and substance of JFCOM's experimentation program. The Task Force also provided an external review of the Millennium Challenge 02 (MC02) experiment.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Development
Political Geography:
United States

449. CERI: Developing Border Cooperation between China and Russia

Author:
Sébastien Colin
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Since the resumption of talks between China and Russia – still the Soviet Union when this occurred in the mid-1980s, relations between the two countries have been particularly dynamic. On the international level, the two countries in fact share the same viewpoint on a number of issues. These mutual concerns led to the signing of a strategic partnership in 1997, then a new treaty of friendship in 2001. The complementarity between the two countries in the energy and arms sectors also stimulates cooperation. However, this alliance is not without its limits. The United States, its primary target, can easily short-circuit it, as it did just after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the field of cooperation, the intensity and structure of trade between the two countries are both inadequate. The rise in trade during the 1990s was very uneven and marked by a drop between 1994 and 1996. The main causes of this are situated at the local echelon along the Chinese-Russian border. After the dynamism characteristic of the 1988-1993 period, the opening of the border triggered new problems, such as illegal Chinese immigration in the little-inhabited border zones of Russia. Although this trend caused friction among the local Russian population, it was mainly the retrocession of certain Russian territories to China when the border was demarcated between 1993 and 1997 that radicalized the inhabitants, paralyzing border cooperation. The Russian and Chinese government played an active role in attempting to resolve most of these disputes, as the Tumen program illustrated. Since then, the various authorities in the two countries have tried to revitalize border cooperation, but a number of problems remain that are mainly economic in nature and vary depending on the border region.
Topic:
Development and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, and Asia

450. CERI: Latino Power? Political Access for Latinos in the United States

Author:
Emmanuelle Le Texier
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Since the early nineteen-eighties, the new political visibility of Latinos has been referred to as the awakening of a "sleeping giant." Their increased political expression, be it in the form of protest action during civil rights movements or electoral participation, marks a turning point in the integration of Hispanics in the American public sphere. With a growing number of voters, candidates and elected officials, Latinos have emerged on the political scene. The increasingly influential role of pan-ethnic interest groups and new opportunities for political participation created by the development of transnational networks have contributed to the elaboration of this new participative framework. Yet their electoral and political influence remains below the demographic, economic, social and cultural importance of these some 35 million individuals who make up over 12 percent of the U.S. population. Most of the minority groups still encounter major obstacles to political access. These are partly structural, but also internal to the group: not only is it divided over domestic or foreign issues, it is fragmented by national origin, status and generation. The singular nature of immigration from Latin America, the continuity of migratory flows and their diversity, all constantly rekindle divergences over what strategy Latinos should adopt for participating in the public debate. They also highlight the fictional, both functional and dysfunction, nature of ethnic categorization in the United States. The ethnic card may be an instrument of participation, but it can also prove to seriously fetter minorities' entry into politics.
Topic:
Civil Society, Demographics, Development, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and America