Location, Location, Location: Situating the European External Action Service
Whilst the European media is full of stories about the new President of the European Council and the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, the third development of an EU Ministry of Foreign Affairs appears to have fallen off the radar, despite fierce turf wars erupting across Brussels as to its proper role.
Brazil
Will a new climate agreement require developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (ghgs)? Will developing states agree to make reductions? In this post, let’s consider the prospects for Brazil agreeing to such reductions.
When and Why did Opinion Shift Decisively from Favoring the Bretton Woods System to Floating Exchange Rates?
Shifts in opinion from favoring the fixed regime to favoring the floating regime illustrated that something fundamental changed in the 1960s and early 1970s. The fundamental change was that the international post-war economic system was on the verge of collapse.
Interim Deal?
The Copenhagen climate summit is now less than one month away and observers are not optimistic that states will agree to a deal cementing either specific greenhouse gas emission reductions or increased environmental assistance to the developing world so they can meet the standards without threatening growth vital to fighting poverty.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Elephants in the Room
Cutting through the friendly appearance and conciliatory rhetoric of the Obama administration does not detract from the reality that regarding the Middle East, nothing of substance has changed as the Iranian President asserts.
Sustainability and Water Resources in the Middle East
The Middle East is one of the most water-short regions in the world: almost all countries in the region (with the arguable exceptions of Iran and Turkey) have less (in most cases, significantly less) water available – through rainfall and other sources – than the 1,000 cubic metres per person, per year, which is traditionally taken to be a minimum human requirement.
What Middle East Policy to Expect from the New German Government? When promising ideas threaten to be buried in transatlantic waters
However big the political odds are, a rational-pragmatic input by the FDP could constructively impact the foreign policy discourse in Europe’s largest country
Afghanistan: Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose
The war in Afghanistan is a war in which whatever the United States does now, or that President Obama does now, both the United States and Obama will lose. The country and its president are in a situation of perfect lockjaw.
Hidden costs of the status quo
In late October, the United States National Academy of Sciences released an interesting on-line “prepublication” edition of a report called Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use.
IR and the Global South: final confessions of a schizophrenic teacher
As I’ve hacked my way through the thicket of the Great Debates these thirty-odd years past, I’ve increasingly wondered what my students must have made of my passion for ideas which appear at odds with the lives they lead – even, indeed, the countries they have come to know.
