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On the heels of their landslide victory in the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will face major challenges, particularly in the Middle East, which will test the President-elect’s ability to bypass his predecessor’s disastrous policies, the worst the region has ever seen.
By whatever means necessary, China needs to reduce its global trade surplus dramatically -- ideally to zero and below by sometime in 2010. China's exports will most probably continue to grow, even if modestly. Hence, China must put its late-phase World Trade Organisation mechanisms into high gear and open import channels wide, especially for consumer goods.
Just as Guantánamo's legal and geographic isolation from the United States denies its prisoners recourse to the American judicial system, it also denies its military administrators the benefits of the most current research on how to de-radicalize prisoners and reintegrate them into society.
Following the Pakistani terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the international community should respond by declaring that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty will begin to show the world that states that harbor terrorists cannot take their sovereign rights for granted — these rights need to be earned.
The path back from the brink of conflict will be a difficult one for Russia and the West. It will require an ambivalent Russia to choose love over hatred, to purge its old demons and to rethink its global role. It will also require the self-absorbed West to adopt a long term strategy for promoting peace and prosperity in Eurasia.
Mainstream economic policies in Mexico managed to generate growth that proved neither pro-poor nor sustained. The Mexican experience shows the need to leave behind the blind faith in market forces and embrace employment-based policies.
One of President-elect Barack Obama's top priorities will be to rethink the "war on terror" from the ground up. That means following through on his campaign promises to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo, which would be a major symbolic achievement. Transparency, due process, and legality are some of the strongest weapons in the struggle against violent extremism.
Africa is now paralyzed by the rise of failed democracies—countries that hold elections but do not develop institutions to support civil society—sparking conflict rather than easing it. The result across broad swaths of the continent has been the concentration of power with the people who make the continent's conflicts worse.
Barack Obama announced today that the chair of his Council of Economic Advisors will be Christina Romer, an expert on government fiscal and monetary policy. Obama has appointed someone whose views place her well to the right of mainstream Democratic economic opinion, consistently focusing on monetary rather than fiscal policy and calling for deficit reduction when we need fiscal expansion.
In the wake of the Russia-Georgia conflict commentators often ask whether the U.S. and Russia can cooperate. The urgency of nuclear threats around the world, including Iran's ambitions, requires both countries to “wall off” their nuclear discussion from other issues that might hinder progress on finding solutions to common security challenges.
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