Showing papers in "Foreign Affairs in 2010"

The Political Power of Social Media

Abstract: On January 17, 2001, during the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to set aside key evidence against him. Less than two hours after the decision was announced, thousands of Filipinos, angry that their corrupt president might be let off the hook, converged on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major crossroads in Manila. The protest was arranged, in part, by forwarded text messages reading, "Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk." The crowd quickly swelled, and in the next few days, over a million people arrived, choking traffic in downtown Manila.

Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy

Abstract: : In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense suffered a significant compromise of its classified military computer networks. It began when an infected flash drive was inserted into a U.S. military laptop at a base in the Middle East. The flash drive's malicious computer code, placed there by a foreign intelligence agency, uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. Central Command. That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control. It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary. This previously classified incident was the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever, and it served as an important wakeup call. The Pentagon's operation to counter the attack, known as Operation Buckshot Yankee, marked a turning point in U.S. cyber-defense strategy. Over the past 10 years, the frequency and sophistication of intrusions into U.S. military networks have increased exponentially. Every day, U.S. military and civilian networks are probed thousands of times and scanned millions of times. And the 2008 intrusion that led to Operation Buckshot Yankee was not the only successful penetration. Adversaries have acquired thousands of files from U.S. networks and from the networks of U.S. allies and industry partners, including weapons blueprints, operational plans, and surveillance data. As the scale of cyberwarfare's threat to U.S. national security and the U.S. economy has come into view, the Pentagon has built layered and robust defenses around military networks and inaugurated the new U.S. Cyber Command to integrate cyber-defense operations across the military.

The new population bomb: The four megatrends that will change the world

Abstract: Forty-two years ago, the biologist Paul Ehrlich warned in The Population Bomb that mass starvation would strike in the 1970s and 1980s, with the world's population growth outpacing the production of food and other critical resources. Thanks to innovations and efforts such as the "green revolution" in farming and the widespread adoption of family planning, Ehrlich's worst fears did not come to pass. In fact, since the 1970s, global economic output has increased and fertility has fallen dramatically, especially in developing countries. The United Nations Population Division now projects that global population growth will nearly halt by 2050. By that date, the world's population will have stabilized at 9.15 billion people, according to the "medium growth" variant of the UN's authoritative population database World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision. (Today's global population is 6.83 billion.) Barring a cataclysmic climate crisis or a complete failure to recover from the current economic malaise, global economic output is expected to increase by two to three percent per year, meaning that global income will increase far more than population over the next four decades.

Defending a New Domain

Abstract: In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense suaered a significant compromise of its classified military computer networks. It began when an infected flash drive was inserted into a U.S. military laptop at a base in the Middle East. The flash drive’s malicious computer code, placed there by a foreign intelligence agency, uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. Central Command.That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control. It was a network administrator’s worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary. This previously classified incident was the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever, and it served as an important wakeup call. The Pentagon’s operation to counter the attack, known as Operation Buckshot Yankee, marked a turning point in U.S. cyberdefense strategy. Over the past ten years, the frequency and sophistication of intrusions into U.S. military networks have increased exponentially. Every day, U.S. military and civilian networks are probed thousands of times and scanned millions of times. And the 2008 intrusion that led to Operation Buckshot Yankee was not the only successful penetration. Adversaries have acquired thousands of files from U.S. networks and

Helping Others Defend Themselves: The Future of U.S. Security Assistance

Abstract: quately govern themselves or secure their own territory. Dealing with such frac tured or failing states is, in many ways, the main security challenge of our time. For the Defense Department and the entire U.S. government, it is also a com plex institutional challenge. The United States is unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Afghanistan or Iraq anytime soon?that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire. But as the Pentagons Quadrennial Defense Review recently concluded, the United States is still likely to face scenarios requiring a familiar tool kit of capabilities, albeit on a smaller scale. In these situations, the effectiveness and credibility of the United States will only be as good as the effectiveness, credibility, and sustain ability of its local partners. This strategic reality demands that the U.S. government get better at what is called "building partner capacity": helping other countries defend themselves or, if necessary, fight alongside U.S. forces by providing them with equipment, training, or other forms of security assistance. This is some thing that the United States has been doing in various ways for nearly three-quarters of a century. It dates back to the period before the United States entered World War II, when Winston Churchill famously said, "Give us the tools, and we will finish the job." Through the Lend-Lease program, the United States sent some $31 billion worth of supplies (in 1940s dollars) to the United Kingdom over the course of the war. U.S. aid to the Soviet Union during those years exceeded $11 billion, including hundreds of thousands of trucks and thou

The New Population Bomb

Abstract: Forty-two years ago, the biologist Paul Ehrlich warned in The Population Bomb that mass starvation would strike in the 1970s and 1980s, with the world's population growth outpacing the production of food and other critical resources. Thanks to innovations and efforts such as the "green revolution" in farming and the widespread adoption of family planning, Ehrlich's worst fears did not come to pass.

A globalized God: Religion's growing influence in international politics

Abstract: It is now more widely recognized than ever before that religion is on the rise around the world, from the southern United States to the Middle East. What does this mean for the West, and especially for US foreign policy? How is the global resurgence of religion to be interpreted? The religious resurgence religion is accompanying ‘the rise of the rest’ (the global South), and it is sometimes argued that the spread of Christianity in the global South is good for US foreign policy. However, Christianity is increasingly a non-Western religion dominated by the cultures, peoples, and languages of the developing world. Contrary to both its advocates, and the fears of its critics, who foresee the US culture wars going global, there is no necessary links between US foreign policy and global evangelicalism (which may be more supportive of international law and organizations than most American evangelicals). At the same time, the politics of religious demography, and Christian, as well as Muslim, immigration from the global South means that there will be a return to religious practice in Europe by mid-century, and this means debates about religion, secularism, immigration, and European identity will not be going away any time soon. This is why ‘postsecular society’ is such a concern of European scholars and policy makers. For US foreign policy, the religious resurgence offers a tremendous opportunity. If the United States recognizes and utilizes the worldwide religious resurgence, it can harness its power to improve international security and better the lives of millions. But if it does not, the potential for religiously motivated violence may increase dramatically.

India's Rise, America's Interest

Abstract: Until the late 1990s, the United States often ignored India, treating it as a regional power in South Asia with little global weight. India's weak and protected economy gave it little influence in global markets, and its nonaligned foreign policy caused periodic tension with Washington. When the United States did concentrate on India, it too often fixated on India's military rivalry with Pakistan.

Complexity and Collapse

Abstract: There is no better illustration of the life cycle of a great power than The Course of Empire, a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the New-York Historical Society. Cole was a founder of the Hudson River School and one of the pioneers of nineteenth-century American landscape painting; in The Course of Empire, he beautifully captured a theory of imperial rise and fall to which most people remain in thrall to this day.

The Future of American Power

Abstract: The twenty-first century began with a very unequal distribution of power resources. With five percent of the world's population, the United States accounted for about a quarter of the world's economic output, was responsible for nearly half of global military expenditures, and had the most extensive cultural and educational soft-power resources. All this is still true, but the future of U.S. power is hotly debated. Many observers have interpreted the 2008 global financial crisis as the beginning of American decline. The National Intelligence Council, for example, has projected that in 2025, \"the U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished.\

The End of the Beijing Consensus

Abstract: Since China began undertaking economic reforms in 1978, its economy has grown at a rate of nearly ten percent a year, and its per-capita GDP is now twelve times greater than it was three decades ago. Many analysts attribute the country's economic success to its unconventional approach to economic policy -a combination of mixed ownership, basic property rights, and heavy government intervention. Time magazine's former foreign editor, Joshua Cooper Ramo, has even given it a name: the Beijing consensus.

The New Energy Order: Managing Insecurities in the 21st Century.

Abstract: The last decade has seen an extraordinary shift in expectations for the world energy system. After a long era of excess capacity, since 2001, prices for oil and most energy commodities have risen sharply and become more volatile. Easy-to-tap local fuel supplies have run short, forcing major energy consumers to depend on longer and seemingly more fragile supply chains. Prices have yo-yoed over the last 18 months: first reaching all-time highs, then dropping by two-thirds, and after that rising back up to surprisingly high levels given the continuing weakness of the global economy. The troubles extend far beyond oil. Governments in regions such as Europe worry about insecure supplies of natural gas. India, among others, is poised to depend heavily on coal imports in the coming decades. For these reasons, governments in nearly all the large consuming nations are now besieged by doubts about their energy security like at no time since the oil crises of the 1970s. Meanwhile, the biggest energy suppliers are questioning whether demand is certain enough to justify the big investments needed to develop new capacity. Producers and consumers, each group unsure of the other, cannot agree on how best to finance and manage a more secure energy system.

American Profligacy and American Power

Abstract: The U.S. government is incurring debt at a historically unprecedented and ultimately unsustainable rate. The Congressional Budget Office projects that within ten years, federal debt could reach 90 percent of GDP, and even this estimate is probably too optimistic given the low rates of economic growth that the United States is experiencing and likely to see for years to come. The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff paper comes closer to the mark by projecting that federal debt could equal total GDP as soon as 2015. These levels approximate the relative indebtedness of Greece and Italy today. Leaving aside the period during and immediately after World War II, the United States has not been so indebted since recordkeeping began, in 1792.

Democracy in Cyberspace

Abstract: Information technology has demolished time and dis tance," Walter Wriston, the former CEO of what is n ow Citigroup wrote in 1997. "Instead of validating Orw ell's vision of Big Brother watching the citizen, [ it] enables the citizen to watch Big Brother. And so the virus of f reedom, for which there is no antidote, is spread b y electronic networks to the four corners of the earth." Former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have articulated a similar vision, and with similarly gr andiose rhetoric. All have argued that the long-ter m survival of authoritarian states depends on their ability to co ntrol the flow of ideas and information within and across their borders. As advances in communications technology cellular telephones, text messaging, the Internet , social networking -allow an ever-widening circle of peop le to easily and inexpensively share ideas and aspi rations, technology will break down barriers between peoples and nations. In this view, the spread of the "free dom virus" makes it harder and costlier for autocrats to isola te their people from the rest of the world and give s ordinary citizens tools to build alternative sources of power. The de mocratization of communications, the theory goes, w ill bring about the democratization of the world.

Defining Success in Afghanistan

Abstract: The original plan for a post-Taliban Afghanistan called for rapid, transformational nation building. But such a vision no longer appears feasible, if it ever was. Many Americans are now skeptical that even a stable and acceptable outcome in Afghanistan is possible. They believe that Afghanistan has never been administered effectively and is simply ungovernable. Much of today's public opposition to the war centers on the widespread fear that whatever the military outcome, there is no Afghan political end state that is both acceptable and achievable at a reasonable cost.