Friday, November 10, 2006

The Effect of Midterm Elections on Foreign Policy (11/16)

We intend to consider the ramifications of the changes in leadership throughout the Congress and at the Defense Department with respect to the making of US foreign policy - Rumsfeld, Pelosi, the Iraq war, committees... What is the perception in Europe, China and elsewhere?

posted by IIF BlogMeister @ 7:16 AM   3 comments

Friday, November 03, 2006

The Stern Review: Climate Change Economics (11/9)

Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist at the World Bank, has headed a 700 page British study on climate change. How much is it going to cost to mitigate and adapt to climate change over the next hundred years?

Climate warning is a bit too stern, op/ed, The Times, Nov06
Stern warning prompts search for cheapest way to go green, The Times, Nov06
UK issues warming warning, hires Gore, MSNBC, Oct06
Budgets falling in race to fight global warming, International Herald Tribune, Oct06
Stern by Name, Stern by Nature, The Guardian, Oct06
A Global Warming Fund Could Succeed Where Kyoto Failed, by Jagdish Bhagwati, Aug06
What to Do About Climate Change, Foreign Affairs, May/Jun06
Agenda for Climate Action, Pew Center Report, Feb06
Global Warming 101: 2005 Vies for Hottest Year on Record, Union for Concerned Scientists, Jan06

posted by IIF BlogMeister @ 8:43 AM   1 comments

Iran (11/2)

Our IIF discussion this Thursday will be about Iran, and our moderator will be a relative newcomer to our group, Wayne Gross. Although there have been a number of recent developments, the issues have changed little since early this year; so I am forwarding the e-mail I sent out when we talked about Iran as a part of the Great Decisions 2006 discussion series (see below). I am also sending along some additional background information:
From The Economist, here are a Backgrounder and a link to recent articles on Iran:
Here is a recent report on Iran from the Congressional Research Service:
From The NewsHour on PBS, here is an interview in which Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations defends his country's right to a civilian nuclear program:
Here is an op/ed piece that appeared last spring in The Wall Street Journal:
Here is a link to articles dealing with Iran from the Council on Foreign Relations:
From the Foreign Policy Association web site, here are a link to several useful items and a quiz about Iran:
Finally, I am including a link to something I think many of you will find useful or interesting: the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons:
Since this is a pdf file, to read it you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded for free; here is the link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Just click on the arrow beside "Choose A Platform" in step one, select your operating system from the drop-down menu, then click on "Download" in step two.
Relations with Iran remain an important and difficult aspect of U.S. foreign policy. I hope you will join us at Villa this Thursday evening as we discuss a subject that should be of interest to us all.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 7:27 PM
Subject: Great Decisions 2006; Articles on Iran

Our topic for the second discussion in this Great Decisions series will be "Dealing with Iran." Issues will include: Iran's nuclear program; its links to a number of international terrorist groups, most noticeably Hezbollah; its involvement in post-war Iraq; political reform in the country; and the possibility of the resumption of diplomatic relations with the U.S. I am sending along some background material.
To begin with, here are some items that attempt to explain Iran's two-tiered political system:
Here are a couple of timelines of events in Iran's nuclear program:
Here is a speech given last November at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies by R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. Under-Secretary for Political Affairs:
Here is President Bush's statement on the Iranian election:
Here is a link to an article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which was referred to in the Great Decisions Briefing Book:
Here are links to a few of the articles listed at the end of this section of the Briefing Book:
Here are two items that were sent to me by Jason DeJoannis, who moderates the Tuesday Great Decisions group at Evening at Emory:
Terry Gross interview with Joseph Cirincione, the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on NPR's Fresh Air: The New Brinksmanship: Iran's Nuclear Threat
Article by Laura Secor from the November 21 issue of The New Yorker: FUGITIVES: Young Iranians Confront the Collapse of the Reform Movement
From The Economist, here are a Backgrounder and a link to recent articles on Iran:
Here are a few recent items from several newspapers and magazines:
And finally, if you still haven't got enough, here are three sites with links to numerous articles on Iran:

posted by IIF BlogMeister @ 8:36 AM   0 comments

Venezuela (10/26)

Hugo Chavez's remarks at the United Nations, comparing George W. Bush to Satan, have once again placed the tempestuous Venezuelan president back in the international spotlight, where he has been quite a bit of late. From his plans for a "Bolivarian revolution" to benefit his country's poor, to his adoption of authoritarian measures to consolidate his control; from his ouster and reinstatement in 2002, to his survival of the recall election in 2004; from his criticism of the United States, to his friendships with leaders such as Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chavez has been stirring up controversy both at home and abroad ever since his election in 1998. Although Venezuela's current bid for a seat on the U.N. Security Council appears to have failed, and although candidates he has supported in other Latin American countries recently have fared poorly, his re-election in Venezuela's Presidential election this coming December is a near certainty, and he will surely remain a major player in South American politics, indeed in world politics, for the foreseeable future.
These are just some of the reasons that Hugo Chavez and Venezuela have been chosen as the topic for this Thursday's IIF discussion. Curt Coulombe will serve as our moderator.
As usual, I am sending along some background information:
From The Economist, here are the Country Briefing and a Backgrounder on Venezuela:
Here is an article from the Foreign Policy Association:
Here is a biography of Chavez from the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia:
Here is an interview that appeared in Time last month, in which Chavez discusses his tirade against George W. Bush at the United Nations:
Jennifer McCoy of the Carter Center wrote an article about Chavez that appeared in Current History a few years ago. Here is the link:
Here is a Deborah Sontag interview with Chavez that appeared in The New York Times Magazine shortly after the coup and counter-coup in 2002:
Foreign Affairs has published several articles on Venezuela this year. Here are links to four of them:
Here is an article that appeared earlier this year in Smithsonian Magazine:
Finally, here is a site from Venezuela where you can find mostly pro-Chavez news and analysis:
I hope you will make plans to join us at Villa this Thursday evening to discuss this colorful, complex, and controversial leader, and the country he governs.

posted by IIF BlogMeister @ 8:33 AM   0 comments