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122. Towards a green, competitive and resilient EU economy: How can digitalisation help?
- Author:
- Annika Hedberg and Stefan Sipka
- Publication Date:
- 07-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Policy Centre
- Abstract:
- EU leaders stress the importance of the green transition and digital transformation and consider it crucial to the EU's recovery from the coronavirus crisis. Rightly so. Aligning the EU's green and digital transition policies carries enormous potential and should become central to the Union's efforts to create a competitive and sustainable climate-neutral economy. The European Commission's Green Deal proposal – supported by, for example, the Industrial Strategy, the Circular Economy Action Plan and Digital Strategy – already recognises that the two transitions are closely linked. But the EU should go a step further. It should lead the way and ensure that digitalisation enhances environmental protection and climate action and that the digital sector becomes greener. The findings in this paper are the result of a year-long EPC research project commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, European Union, Economy, Green Technology, and Sustainability
- Political Geography:
- Europe
123. America’s Use of Coercive Economic Statecraft
- Author:
- Elizabeth Rosenberg, Peter Harrell, Paula J. Dobriansky, and Adam Szubin
- Publication Date:
- 12-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security
- Abstract:
- U.S. policymakers will continue to intensively use a growing array of coercive economic tools, including tariffs, sanctions, trade controls, and investment restrictions. The growing use reflects a desire by policymakers to use coercive economic tools in support of a growing range of policy objectives. Diplomacy around these tools has long been challenging and can require hard choices. To use these tools effectively, policymakers should focus on articulating clear objectives and measuring effectiveness and costs. U.S.-China competition raises the stakes for getting the use of coercive economic statecraft right. Policymakers in the next presidential administration and Congress would be well-served to spend at least as much effort focusing on the positive tools of statecraft. These include domestic economic renewal, international finance and development incentives, and positive trade measures, among others.
- Topic:
- Development, Diplomacy, Sanctions, and Economy
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
124. Sanctions by the Numbers: Spotlight on Iran
- Author:
- Abigail Eineman
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security
- Abstract:
- The June edition of “Sanctions by the Numbers” illustrated a decade of U.S. sanctions policy by using heat maps to show the countries with the largest number of designations. Across both the Trump and Obama administrations, Iran was always at the top of the list. This edition of Sanctions by the Numbers explores Iran sanctions further, tracking how designations and delistings have evolved over time, the dozens of countries affected by Iran-related sanctions programs, and the top types of U.S. designations. The data add to the existing consensus that sanctions have an inverse relationship with Iran’s economic health, and designations have far outpaced delistings in the last three years as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Sanctions, and Economy
- Political Geography:
- Iran, Middle East, North America, and United States of America
125. A New Arsenal for Competition: Coercive Economic Measures in the U.S.-China Relationship
- Author:
- Elizabeth Rosenberg, Peter Harrell, and Ashley Feng
- Publication Date:
- 04-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security
- Abstract:
- The United States and China have long used coercive economic measures to advance both economic and foreign policy objectives. In recent years, however, both countries have turned to coercive economic measures as mainstream instruments of foreign policy and national security policy, and increasingly have deployed coercive economic measures against each other. For the United States, China’s economic scale and global interconnections make it a fundamentally different type of target for coercive economic measures than the comparatively smaller and less sophisticated economies that have been primary targets of U.S. economic coercion in the past. The United States cannot simply isolate China from the global economy. Instead, it must adopt a more strategic focus on limiting Chinese actions in areas significant to U.S. national security and shoring up economic and technology arenas where the United States maintains lasting leverage. Over the past several years, the United States has deployed an array of coercive economic measures against China. The most prominent of these have been the tariffs on approximately two-thirds of U.S. imports from China. The tariffs remain largely in place despite implementation of the Phase One trade deal that the United States and China signed in January 2020. But the United States also has developed and deployed an increasingly sophisticated set of other coercive economic tools that will play a prominent role in U.S.-China relations over the years ahead, regardless of whether the United States and China fully implement the Phase One deal and reach a broader Phase Two trade agreement. Those other coercive economic tools include export controls, restrictions on U.S. imports to secure U.S. supply chains, heightened scrutiny of Chinese investment in the United States, sanctions, and stepped-up law enforcement measures against Chinese intellectual property (IP) theft and other Chinese activities in the United States. This expanding set of measures serves a broadening array of U.S. policy goals, including economic objectives, foreign policy goals, and the maintenance of America’s technological edge. The U.S. record of success in the use of these coercive economic measures has been mixed. While tariffs and other measures have succeeded in putting some macroeconomic pressure on China, they have not extracted fundamental concessions from Beijing. Targeted sanctions and law enforcement measures similarly have had economic impacts on some Chinese companies, but other Chinese companies have demonstrated an ability to weather U.S. economic coercion. To be effective in translating economic coercion into policy change by China, the United States needs to better integrate its coercive measures with each other and with other policies, better signal intentions and escalation, more rigorously assess impacts and costs, and galvanize allied support and coordinated action. For its part, China appears to recognize a balancing act between limiting economic ties with foreign partners in some domains and maintaining them in others. China has sought to distance certain Chinese economic sectors, particularly high-tech manufacturing, from the United States in some areas, investing heavily in domestic capacity development. In other areas where China must rely on foreign partners for technology, IP, or manufacturing, or where China does not appear to see a clear interest in severing trade, Beijing has sought to keep trade and investment flows moving in an unencumbered fashion. As for the United States, this is a dynamic policy environment.
- Topic:
- Security, Bilateral Relations, Economy, and Strategic Competition
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
126. Forging an Alliance Innovation Base
- Author:
- Daniel Kliman, Ben Fitzgerald, Kristine Lee, and Joshua Fitt
- Publication Date:
- 03-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security
- Abstract:
- This report presents a blueprint for a community of technology innovation and protection anchored by America and its allies. Unless the United States builds this community—an “alliance innovation base”—it will steadily lose ground in the contest with China to ascend the commanding technological heights of the 21st century. Given that technology will increasingly determine future military advantage, underpin economic prosperity, and function as a tool for promoting liberal and illiberal visions of domestic governance, the stakes could not be higher. To compete, China is leveraging its formidable scale—whether measured in terms of research and development (R&D) expenditures, data sets, scientists and engineers, venture capital, or the reach of its leading technology companies. The only way for the United States to tip the scale back in its favor is to deepen cooperation with allies. The global diffusion of innovation also places a premium on aligning U.S. and ally efforts to protect technology. Unless coordinated with allies, tougher U.S. investment screening and export control policies, for example, will feature major seams that Beijing can exploit. America’s current approach to allies on technology innovation and protection remains a work in progress. In recent years, animated by concerns about China, the United States has made a concerted effort to step up engagement with allies in both areas. Existing mechanisms for deepening innovation with allies include technology scouting programs, multilateral cooperative frameworks, rapid innovation initiatives, and bilateral projects. However, these mechanisms at times lack sufficient resourcing, move too slowly, or feature rigid constraints on participation. U.S. instruments for working with allies on technology protection also contain major points of weakness. Multilateral export control regimes, though inclusive, are ponderous. The extraterritorial reach of U.S. export control laws can generate unintended obstacles to technology collaboration with allies. Bilateral and minilateral consultations on protection lack positive incentives to motivate allies to incur immediate costs such as forgoing technology sector investments from China.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Governance, Economy, and Alliance
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
127. Total Competition: China’s Challenge in the South China Sea
- Author:
- Patrick M. Cronin and Ryan Neuhard
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security
- Abstract:
- China’s bid for ascendancy remains anchored in the South China Sea and surrounding Southeast Asian countries. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deems it economically and militarily vital to dominate the resources and sea lines of communication of a body of water twice the size of Alaska. Achieving this goal requires tethering neighboring countries into Beijing’s ambit while making the existing ruleset more favorable to China and displacing the dominant power behind the existing regional order. Some may find comfort in describing the scenario underway as a return to a “China-centered” rather than “Sino-centric” region.1 However, an authoritarian China’s coercive attempts to wield hegemonic control of the South China Sea threatens the sovereignty of Southeast Asian states and international freedom of the seas, both of which are of fundamental national interest to the United States. Yet the South China Sea and Southeast remain the least defended and most bountiful region susceptible to Chinese predations and inducements. The CCP leadership is obsessed with the idea that outside forces intend to contain China’s development, foment internal unrest, and prevent it from retaking what it considers to be its rightful place center stage in regional and global affairs. In partial response to deep-seated insecurities and renewed great-power ambitions, Xi Jinping and the CCP are in the process of attempting to exercise control over the entire nine-dash line claim covering the vast majority of the South China Sea and to turn Southeast Asia into a latter-day tributary system. CCP propaganda casts China’s quest for control over maritime Asia as an inexorable outcome of China’s rise and America’s decline. Curiously, the only government speaking seriously about “stopping” China is Beijing, suggesting that its policies are influenced more by subjective internal fears than by objective external realities. China wants nothing to stop it from consolidating its maximalist historic claims, from denying the United States the ability to intervene in regional conflicts, and from dismantling America’s postwar alliance system.
- Topic:
- Leadership, Economy, and Strategic Competition
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and South China Sea
128. Socio-Spatial and Ethnic-Racial Segregation in Megacities, Large Cities and Global Cities in Africa
- Author:
- Fabio Macedo Velame and Thiago Augusto Ferreira da Costa
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Institution:
- Brazilian Journal of African Studies
- Abstract:
- The estimated world population for 2030 is 8.6 billion people, one billion more than the current 7.6 billion (UN 2017). The same study points out that nine countries will account for more than half of this population growth, with five African nations among them (Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Egypt), in addition to three Asian countries (India, Pakistan and Indonesia) and one country in the Americas (The United States). In this work, we present an overview of the megacities, large cities and global cities of seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which, according to the UN, is the continent’s fastest growing region in population terms. These countries, with the cities that stand out on the international scene, according to the analyzed authors. Still in 2030, two thirds of the world population will live in cities, which will produce 80% of the planet’s GDP, with megacities appearing again in Asia, Latin America and Africa (UN 2017). The increase in the cost of living in these superclusters is certain, as well as in small and medium- -sized cities. However, it is in the global and millionaire cities where cutting- -edge urbanization occurs, although they are not the fastest growing cities in population terms, according to the UN (2017). Therefore, we bring here examples of these cities that become increasingly segregated.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Urbanization, Economy, Urban, Cities, and Segregation
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and Africa
129. The Evaluation of Russia's Foreign Policy Towards Georgia Following the ‘Rose Revolution’
- Author:
- Ekaterine Lomia
- Publication Date:
- 08-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
- Institution:
- Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
- Abstract:
- For more than twenty-eight years, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian-Georgian relations have been a substantial ground for mutual confrontation, sharp dispute, and a lack of trust. Continuous tensions and disagreements have adversely affected efforts to achieve a proper balance in bilateral relations between the neighboring countries and resulted in a number of direct and indirect confrontations. Whilst the Russian president seeks to restore Russia’s great power status, regain its past glory and control strategically important regions of the former Soviet space, Georgia, from the very first day of independence, tries to maintain its sovereignty and territorial integrity, develop modern state institutions, strengthen democratic values and integrate into the Euro-Atlantic structures. The paper aims to study Moscow’s current foreign policy strategy towards Georgia following the ‘Rose revolution’ and argues that Russia’s military intervention in Georgia, in August 2008, was a clear illustration of classical realism used by a great power in the XXI century. Russia actively uses hybrid warfare and regularly employs economic leverage on Georgia to eventually achieve its political ends in the Caucasus region.
- Topic:
- Bilateral Relations, Geopolitics, Economy, and Annexation
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Eurasia, and Georgia
130. Brexit and the consequences for fisheries management in the North Sea
- Author:
- Gordon Munro
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- UK in a Changing Europe, King's College London
- Abstract:
- The North Sea is a very productive fishing area of great importance to surrounding coastal states Norway, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark and Belgium, with an average total harvest in recent years of slightly more than 1.8 million tonnes. This report explains why the cooperative management of the six shared North Sea fish stocks has been so stable to date and considers what lessons this success holds for the world at large. The report also speculates on the post Brexit management of these resources. The lessons learned from cooperative management over 40 years may well have an impact also on future cooperation between Norway, the UK and the EU27.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, European Union, Economy, Brexit, Oceans and Seas, and Fishing
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom, Europe, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and Netherlands