The Baines Report
“Never again” came sooner than expected. Kidnapped by their oppressive government, religious minorities are carted from their homes and held inside political prisons, where they are indoctrinated, tortured, raped, and experimented on. This is not Nazi Germany. This is Communist China, where up to 2 million Muslims currently reside inside concentration camps, the largest mass […]
Photo: Reuters/Henry Romero In my class with the Strauss Center’s Mexico Security Initiative[1], my classmates and I are fine-tuning our policy report for the upcoming 2018 Mexican elections. Set against the backdrop of brutal crime and cartel violence, our project focuses on strategies for the next Mexican administration regarding several key policy arenas—economic, security, civil society, […]
As efforts to reinvigorate the American economy continue, one of the administration’s highest priorities should be collaborating with Congress on current proposals – including the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act – aimed at restoring a fair and balanced trade relationship with China. Doing so will protect existing jobs, create new ones and help secure a […]
History cannot help us see the future, but it can help us avoid the mistakes of the past. The Senate passed, and the majority of the House would support, legislation that will penalize China for keeping its currency undervalued and enable trade tariffs, but risks ill will and a trade war with China. This […]
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was fond of saying that the Department of Defense has “more people in military bands than (the State Department has) in the Foreign Service.” His observation reveals a discomfiting inequality in national priorities which has been thrown into sharp relief by battles over the upcoming budget. Far from […]
How is it possible that in 2011 the world failed prevent famine in the Horn of Africa? The signs of disaster were present: two years of drought, no food storage, political instability, civil war and banned foreign assistance, but no one acted until it was too late. Now, three months later, thousands of people […]
Ten years ago George W. Bush was sitting in a Florida classroom with a 51 percent approval rating. When the dust had cleared at the end of the day, three buildings had collapsed into rubble and 3,000 Americans were dead. American foreign policy would never be the same. America needed a leader, and Bush was it. […]
For the last week and a half, I have been in Ethiopia, conducting research on climate change and adaptation. Rambling around Addis Ababa and the Central Rift Valley has been an exercise in patience and flexibility, but also enormously informative and enjoyable. Ethiopia is a country that has been particularly hard-hit by climate-related disasters, […]
Members of both chambers of the U.S. Congress are pushing bills that will dramatically slash what little funding the U.S. spends on climate change research and action. This includes major funding cuts for the EPA and other environmental initiatives across the States, as discussed in last week’s Baines Report. To this I say… So […]