In The News

Controlling Carrots and Sticks

Michael M. Phillips July 5, 2006
By creating the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in 2002, the Bush administration attempted to reshape how the US distributes foreign aid. The MCC allocates aid based on more than a dozen criteria, such as control of corruption and civil liberties. Thus far, the MCC has not had any qualms about denying or suspending aid to countries that do not meet its guidelines. This strict adherence...

A Nuclear Hand of Friendship

Vinod Khosla July 4, 2006
India is not a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; its first nuclear tests were conducted after the treaty’s 1967 deadline, and it is not formally recognized as a nuclear power. Because India will unlikely submit its reactors to the NPT guidelines without such recognition, Vinod Khosla sees the agreement between that country and the US as a positive way to draw India into the...

Democracy in the Arab World: Not Yet, Thanks

July 4, 2006
When internal and external forces both pressured for political liberalization in the Middle East, many of the region’s autocratic rulers at least paid lip service to democracy. Recently, though, the trend has reversed as more citizens expect their governments to strive for stability and preserve the status quo. With soaring oil prices, entrenched leaders have plenty of cash to eliminate dissent...

Somalia: Why the International Contact Group Should Support the Islamic Courts Union

Abukar Arman July 1, 2006
The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) currently controls Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, and has managed to bring a level of security to the city that had been unimaginable for the last decade. The ICU’s ability to bring a modicum of peace to the country means that the movement has, writes Abukar Arman, been embraced by Somalis as a “spontaneously formed populist uprising against the abuses and...

Surveillance Disclosure Denounced

Peter Baker June 29, 2006
US President George Bush denounces “The New York Times” for publishing an article concerning the president’s secret anti-terrorism program that involves access, unapproved by US Congress or the courts, to bank records from nearly 8,000 banks in more than 20 countries. The paper also broke news earlier this year about a government telephone-surveillance program. Supporters of such surveillance...

Globalization: When Cure Is Worse Than Malady

Richard Hornik June 27, 2006
The global economic transition to a post-industrial economy has increased pace since the end of the Cold War, but the dislocations caused by rapid globalization rage on. As a consequence, electorates have become deeply divided between those who benefit and those who do not. Politicians find themselves pandering to narrow constituencies with petty, irrelevant legislation to build coalitions, often...

Young People's Protests Are Easy to Mock – But Ignore Them at Your Peril

Gary Younge June 19, 2006
Young political protesters mobilize around the globe, with successful protests conducted by younger, poorer and darker-skinned activists. Gary Younge, columnist for The Guardian, rejects nostalgia over May 1968, noting that the generation grew older and quickly embraced policies of fear and insecurity. Instead, he welcomes young achievements burgeoning in new ways: Chilean student walk-outs,...