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18761. Al Qaeda's Operating Environments: A New Approach to The War on Terror

Author:
Charlie Szrom and Chris Harnisch
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The environment in which an al Qaeda affiliate operates is one of the most important factors in assessing the threat it poses to US interests. Defeating the militant Islamist network led by al Qaeda requires a nuanced strategy that supports the appropriate combination and prioritization of policies and approaches for each environment in which an al Qaeda affiliate or franchise operates. The US government has not articulated such a strategy, a deficiency that acquires urgency because terrorist groups based abroad have been linked to three attacks against the American homeland in the past year. Building a strategy to oppose the al Qaeda network requires detailed understanding of its different operating environments, the ties between its various parts, and how territory affects its vitality. A comprehensive strategy should deny the al Qaeda network access to operating environments from which it can pose a major threat to the United States and the West.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Islam, Terrorism, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States and America

18762. China's Military Build-up: Implications for U.S. Defense Spending

Author:
Gary J. Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Over the past year, actions by the People‘s Republic of China (PRC) have called into question its previous assertions that its rise to great-power status would be peaceful. Whether it was scolding countries around the world about the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiabo, declaring that its ?core interests? now included some 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, dismissing complaints of neighbors as failing to recognize that "China is a big country," ignoring North Korean acts of terror, challenging U.S. naval ships on the high seas, creating new confrontations with Japan over disputed islands, slashing its export of rare earth elements, continuing cyber attacks on American defense and commercial entities, or testing a new stealth fighter during the visit of the American secretary of defense, the picture that emerges is of a China that believes it can now throw its considerable economic and military weight around. It‘s a challenge that the U.S. has been slow to meet and, as a result, led to considerable uncertainty among friends and allies about whether the U.S. is up to that challenge—uncertainty fed in no small measure by prospects of a declining American defense budget.
Topic:
Defense Policy and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
China and America

18763. Are Drugs Made in Emerging Markets Good Quality? A Preliminary Assessment of Product Consistency by Use of Raman Spectra

Author:
Roger Bate
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Increasing competition generally decreases product prices. But in the case of pharmaceuticals, this is only beneficial if competitor products are therapeutically equivalent (bioequivalent). One measure of quality control is a consistently made product, examined in detail in this paper. A comprehensive study of drug samples in African and Asian countries--assessed for variability by spectrometer--suggests that registered products perform notably better than unregistered products. As all of the sampled drugs are used to treat potentially lethal infections, this product variability (particularly of unregistered drugs) could prove detrimental to public health. Future analysis will assess how significant these spectral differences are in terms of drug quality and hence how important changes in policy should be to limit quality variability.
Topic:
Emerging Markets, Health, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa, China, and Asia

18764. Defining Success in Afghanistan

Author:
Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Success in Afghanistan is the establishment of a political order, security situation, and indigenous security force that is stable, viable, enduring, and able—with greatly reduced international support—to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorists. The current American and Coalition strategy is making progress and should be continued. Since President Obama, NATO allies, and the Afghans have agreed that troops will be present in Afghanistan through 2014, the policy does not require substantial modifications at this point. This paper is thus primarily a report on the current situation in Afghanistan and a consideration of some of the prospects and challenges ahead. Our principal recommendation is that the U.S. and its allies should continue to resource and sustain the strategy now being executed, which is the only approach that can secure their vital national security interests in Afghanistan.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, and War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and America

18765. Putting the "Kerala Model" to Rest: Lessons for a New Era of Development in India

Author:
Apoorva Shah
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
In a country where two out of five citizens, about 450 million people, live in poverty, it is no exaggeration to say that the development experience of Kerala – a coastal state on the southwestern tip of India – stands out as extraordinary. Despite a history of anemic economic growth, this state of 32 million boasts effectively universal literacy rates and life expectancy levels close to many Western societies. Because of this, the “Kerala model” has been hailed by NGOs, development experts, and Western academics as an alternative path for human development in which a robust welfare system rather than economic growth drives social progress.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, and Poverty
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Kerala

18766. Abolish the Department of Homeland Security

Author:
David Rittgers
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an umbrella organization that would oversee 22 preexisting federal agencies. The idea was to improve the coordination of the federal government's counterterrorism effort, but the result has been an ever-expanding bureaucracy.
Topic:
Intelligence, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States

18767. Private School Chains in Chile: Do Better Schools Scale Up?

Author:
Gregory Elacqua, Humberto Santos, Dante Contreras, and Felipe Salazar
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
There is a persistent debate over the role of scale of operations in education. Some argue that school franchises offer educational services more effectively than do small independent schools. Skeptics counter that large, centralized operations create hard-to-manage bureaucracies and foster diseconomies of scale and that small schools are more effective at promoting higher-quality education. The answer to this question has profound implications for U.S. education policy, because reliably scaling up the best schools has proven to be a particularly difficult problem. If there are policies that would make it easier to replicate the most effective schools, systemwide educational quality could be improved substantially.
Topic:
Development, Education, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, and Chile

18768. Capital Inadequacies: The Dismal Failure of the Basel Regime of Bank Capital Regulation

Author:
Kevin Dowd, Martin Hutchinson, Jimi Hinchliffe, and Simon Ashby
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Basel regime is an international system of capital adequacy regulation designed to strengthen banks' financial health and the safety and soundness of the financial system as a whole. It originated with the 1988 Basel Accord, now known as Basel I, and was then overhauled. Basel II had still not been implemented in the United States when the financial crisis struck, and in the wake of the banking system collapse, regulators rushed out Basel III.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Monetary Policy, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States

18769. Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode

Author:
Randal O'Toole
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The debate over President Obama's fantastically expensive high-speed rail program has obscured the resurgence of a directly competing mode of transportation: intercity buses. Entrepreneurial immigrants from China and recently privatized British transportation companies have developed a new model for intercity bus operations that provides travelers with faster service at dramatically reduced fares.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Infrastructure, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and China

18770. The Subprime Lending Debacle: Competitive Private Markets Are the Solution, Not the Problem

Author:
Patric H. Hendershott and Kevin Villani
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The United States' market-government hybrid mortgage system is unique in the world. No other nation has such heavy government intervention in housing finance. This hybrid system nurtured the excessively risky loans, financed with too much leverage, that fueled the U.S. housing bubble of the last decade and resulted in the systemic collapse of the global financial system.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States