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20 Brookings Foreign Policy books for 2021

As 2021 draws to a close — the first year of the Biden administration, and second year of the COVID-19 pandemic — there are no shortage of questions about the future of international order, foreign policy, and American democracy. But a slew of insightful.

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By Ted Reinert, McCall Mintzer

As 2021 draws to a close — the first year of the Biden administration, and second year of the COVID-19 pandemic — there are no shortage of questions about the future of international order, foreign policy, and American democracy. But a slew of insightful books from Brookings Foreign Policy experts published this year can help us better understand where we stand and where we may be headed.

China, the United States, and Asia’s future

A number of those books focus on China’s rise and evolution as a global actor, the increasingly fraught relationship between China and the United States, and the implications of both. “Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World,” edited by Tarun Chhabra, Rush Doshi, Ryan Hass, and Emilie Kimball, features the analysis of dozens of scholars from Brookings and beyond on how China is shaping great power relations, critical technologies, Asian security, key regions beyond Asia, and global governance and norms. In “Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence,” Hass writes that while competition will define the U.S.-China relationship, coordination on common challenges will remain vital. He urges that Washington will have greater success competing economically and on governance if it focuses more on improving conditions at home than on trying to impede Beijing’s initiatives. In “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” Doshi — who, along with Chhabra, is now serving on the staff of the National Security Council — draws on Chinese Communist Party documents to argue that China has pursued strategies to displace American order and replace it with Chinese order regionally and now globally.

Meanwhile, Cheng Li’s “Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement” makes the case that the U.S. should not lose sight of the dynamism and diversity inside modern China, and that the  rising middle class and cosmopolitan culture exemplified by Li’s native city of Shanghai could provide an avenue for engagement and exchanges. In “China’s Youth: Increasing Diversity amid Persistent Inequality,” from the John L. Thornton China Center’s Chinese Thinker Series and with an introduction from Cheng Li, Chinese sociologist Li Chunling provides a native perspective on the values, behaviors, and lifestyles of the diverse generation born between the 1980s and mid-1990s, who at some point will assume leadership of the country.

Brookings experts also narrow in on other parts of Asia, shedding light on pertinent issues set to shape the future of the region. “Rivalry and Response: Assessing Great Power Dynamics in Southeast Asia,” edited by Jonathan Stromseth, explores competition between the U.S. and China in the strategic landscape of Southeast Asia. A key finding of the volume is that U.S. policy has become too concentrated on defense and security, neglecting many countries’ immediate economic development priorities. In “Difficult Choices: Taiwan’s Quest for Security and the Good Life,” Richard C. Bush details the growing internal and external pressures Taiwan faces and offers suggestions for what Taiwan can do to help itself and what the U.S. should do to improve Taiwan’s chances of success. And in “State, Society and Markets in North Korea,” Andrew Yeo evaluates changes in North Korea’s society and economy, revealing how the country manages to teeter forward within the deeply authoritarian context of Kim Jong Un’s rule and what may lie ahead.

Geopolitical currents and grand strategy

A display of books published by Brookings Foreign Policy in 2021 on geopolitical currents and grand strategy.

Competition between China and the United States is also an important part of the story of the COVID-19 pandemic and its global consequences, as Thomas Wright and Colin Kahl relate in “Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order.” In their first draft of history, Wright and Kahl — who is now serving as U.S. under secretary of defense for policy — detail the breakdown of international cooperation and examine the responses to and fallout from the pandemic across a wide range of countries. They conclude with recommendations on how to reinvigorate the international order and prepare for the next pandemic. Bruce Jones’s “To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers” focuses on the critical role of the seas in globalization, information and energy flows, and national power, taking the reader from gigantic containerized cargo vessels to vast ports and vital naval bases. Jones argues that the oceans are rapidly becoming the most important zone of contestation between the world’s great military actors. “The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence,” edited by Daniel W. Drezner, Henry Farrell, and Abraham L. Newman, examines the vulnerabilities of 21st century great power interdependence to challenge scholars and practitioners to think differently about foreign economic policy, national security, and statecraft.

America’s national security strategy and its military are the focus of several books by Brookings experts this year. In “The Art of War: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint,” Michael E. O’Hanlon highlights the lack of a U.S. grand strategy since the Cold War and lays out a vision for a new one. He proposes that the Pentagon complement its “4+1” set of threats — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and terrorism — with an additional “4+1” — biological, nuclear, digital, climatic, and internal dangers. O’Hanlon also published “Defense 101: Understanding the Military of Today and Tomorrow,” a concise primer on the U.S. military focused on four critical areas: defense budgeting and resource allocation, gaming and modeling combat, technological change and military innovation, and the science of war. In “The Inheritance: America’s Military After Two Decades of War,” Mara Karlin — now serving at the Pentagon, performing the duties of deputy under secretary of defense for policy — dissects how two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have influenced the U.S. military, those who serve in it, and civil-military relations.

American democracy, memoirs, and the Middle East

A display of books published by Brookings Foreign Policy in 2021 on American democracy, memoirs, and the Middle East..

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidency and the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol during the count of Electoral College ballots that formalized Joe Biden’s victory, two Brookings experts offer personal accounts highlighting the perilous state of American society and democracy. Fiona Hill’s “There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century,” is a memoir of the author’s journey from growing up in poverty in the deindustrialized North East of England to her experience serving on the Trump administration’s National Security Council and testifying as a fact witness in Trump’s first impeachment trial. Hill draws parallels between lack of opportunity and populist politics in her native U.K., Russia – the country she has focused on professionally – and in the U.S., her adopted home. Hill warns that the America is on the brink of a socioeconomic collapse and authoritarian swing that could rival that of Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

In “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury,” Evan Osnos returns to the U.S. after a decade abroad in China and the Middle East as a foreign correspondent to find rule of law, the power of truth, and the right of equal opportunity for all under assault at home. Focusing on three communities in which he has lived — Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois — Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution through the lives of ordinary individuals.

While Osnos comes home and finds a vital story in today’s United States, in “Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War,” the second volume of Marvin Kalb’s memoirs, Kalb is chosen by Edward R. Murrow to be CBS News’s man in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, returning to where he’d served as a young diplomatic attaché at the U.S. Embassy. Kalb provides a thrilling eyewitness account of tensions between Eisenhower’s U.S. and Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, and looks back on the beginning of a legendary career in journalism at the dawn of broadcast news.

Finally, in “Jordan and America: A Enduring Friendship,” Bruce Riedel tells the story of one of the most important bilateral relationships in the Middle East. He describes how leaders from Jordan and the United States have navigated multiple crises in one of the most volatile regions in the world, from his unique vantage point as a former Central Intelligence Agency, White House, and Pentagon official who played an important role in building that relationship. In “Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf: State-Building and National Identity in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE,” Courtney Freer and Alanoud al-Sharekh examine the political role of tribes in those Gulf societies and the degree to which tribes hinder or advance popular participation in government. And in “The European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council: Towards a New Path,” co-editors Adel Abdel Ghafar and Silvia Colombo and other scholars assess the relationship between the two important regional blocs and their member states.

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Government

Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials in…

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Health Officials: Man Dies From Bubonic Plague In New Mexico

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials in New Mexico confirmed that a resident died from the plague in the United States’ first fatal case in several years.

A bubonic plague smear, prepared from a lymph removed from an adenopathic lymph node, or bubo, of a plague patient, demonstrates the presence of the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the plague in this undated photo. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Getty Images)

The New Mexico Department of Health, in a statement, said that a man in Lincoln County “succumbed to the plague.” The man, who was not identified, was hospitalized before his death, officials said.

They further noted that it is the first human case of plague in New Mexico since 2021 and also the first death since 2020, according to the statement. No other details were provided, including how the disease spread to the man.

The agency is now doing outreach in Lincoln County, while “an environmental assessment will also be conducted in the community to look for ongoing risk,” the statement continued.

This tragic incident serves as a clear reminder of the threat posed by this ancient disease and emphasizes the need for heightened community awareness and proactive measures to prevent its spread,” the agency said.

A bacterial disease that spreads via rodents, it is generally spread to people through the bites of infected fleas. The plague, known as the black death or the bubonic plague, can spread by contact with infected animals such as rodents, pets, or wildlife.

The New Mexico Health Department statement said that pets such as dogs and cats that roam and hunt can bring infected fleas back into homes and put residents at risk.

Officials warned people in the area to “avoid sick or dead rodents and rabbits, and their nests and burrows” and to “prevent pets from roaming and hunting.”

“Talk to your veterinarian about using an appropriate flea control product on your pets as not all products are safe for cats, dogs or your children” and “have sick pets examined promptly by a veterinarian,” it added.

“See your doctor about any unexplained illness involving a sudden and severe fever, the statement continued, adding that locals should clean areas around their home that could house rodents like wood piles, junk piles, old vehicles, and brush piles.

The plague, which is spread by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, famously caused the deaths of an estimated hundreds of millions of Europeans in the 14th and 15th centuries following the Mongol invasions. In that pandemic, the bacteria spread via fleas on black rats, which historians say was not known by the people at the time.

Other outbreaks of the plague, such as the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, are also believed to have killed about one-fifth of the population of the Byzantine Empire, according to historical records and accounts. In 2013, researchers said the Justinian plague was also caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria.

But in the United States, it is considered a rare disease and usually occurs only in several countries worldwide. Generally, according to the Mayo Clinic, the bacteria affects only a few people in U.S. rural areas in Western states.

Recent cases have occurred mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Countries with frequent plague cases include Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Peru, the clinic says. There were multiple cases of plague reported in Inner Mongolia, China, in recent years, too.

Symptoms

Symptoms of a bubonic plague infection include headache, chills, fever, and weakness. Health officials say it can usually cause a painful swelling of lymph nodes in the groin, armpit, or neck areas. The swelling usually occurs within about two to eight days.

The disease can generally be treated with antibiotics, but it is usually deadly when not treated, the Mayo Clinic website says.

“Plague is considered a potential bioweapon. The U.S. government has plans and treatments in place if the disease is used as a weapon,” the website also says.

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the last time that plague deaths were reported in the United States was in 2020 when two people died.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 21:40

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International

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and…

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women's Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and bewildering tunnel of social justice cultism?  Global events have been so frenetic that many people might not remember, but only a couple years ago Big Tech companies and numerous governments were openly aligned in favor of mass censorship.  Not just to prevent the public from investigating the facts surrounding the pandemic farce, but to silence anyone questioning the validity of woke concepts like trans ideology. 

From 2020-2022 was the closest the west has come in a long time to a complete erasure of freedom of speech.  Even today there are still countries and Europe and places like Canada or Australia that are charging forward with draconian speech laws.  The phrase "radical speech" is starting to circulate within pro-censorship circles in reference to any platform where people are allowed to talk critically.  What is radical speech?  Basically, it's any discussion that runs contrary to the beliefs of the political left.

Open hatred of moderate or conservative ideals is perfectly acceptable, but don't ever shine a negative light on woke activism, or you might be a terrorist.

Riley Gaines has experienced this double standard first hand.  She was even assaulted and taken hostage at an event in 2023 at San Francisco State University when leftists protester tried to trap her in a room and demanded she "pay them to let her go."  Campus police allegedly witnessed the incident but charges were never filed and surveillance footage from the college was never released.  

It's probably the last thing a champion female swimmer ever expects, but her head-on collision with the trans movement and the institutional conspiracy to push it on the public forced her to become a counter-culture voice of reason rather than just an athlete.

For years the independent media argued that no matter how much we expose the insanity of men posing as women to compete and dominate women's sports, nothing will really change until the real female athletes speak up and fight back.  Riley Gaines and those like her represent that necessary rebellion and a desperately needed return to common sense and reason.

In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Gaines related some interesting information on the inner workings of the NCAA and the subversive schemes surrounding trans athletes.  Not only were women participants essentially strong-armed by colleges and officials into quietly going along with the program, there was also a concerted propaganda effort.  Competition ceremonies were rigged as vehicles for promoting trans athletes over everyone else. 

The bottom line?  The competitions didn't matter.  The real women and their achievements didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered to officials were the photo ops; dudes pretending to be chicks posing with awards for the gushing corporate media.  The agenda took precedence.

Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, was more than an activist invading female sports, he was also apparently a science project fostered and protected by the athletic establishment.  It's important to understand that the political left does not care about female athletes.  They do not care about women's sports.  They don't care about the integrity of the environments they co-opt.  Their only goal is to identify viable platforms with social impact and take control of them.  Women's sports are seen as a vehicle for public indoctrination, nothing more.

The reasons why they covet women's sports are varied, but a primary motive is the desire to assert the fallacy that men and women are "the same" psychologically as well as physically.  They want the deconstruction of biological sex and identity as nothing more than "social constructs" subject to personal preference.  If they can destroy what it means to be a man or a woman, they can destroy the very foundations of relationships, families and even procreation.  

For now it seems as though the trans agenda is hitting a wall with much of the public aware of it and less afraid to criticize it.  Social media companies might be able to silence some people, but they can't silence everyone.  However, there is still a significant threat as the movement continues to target children through the public education system and women's sports are not out of the woods yet.   

The ultimate solution is for women athletes around the world to organize and widely refuse to participate in any competitions in which biological men are allowed.  The only way to save women's sports is for women to be willing to end them, at least until institutions that put doctrine ahead of logic are made irrelevant.          

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:20

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Government

Congress’ failure so far to deliver on promise of tens of billions in new research spending threatens America’s long-term economic competitiveness

A deal that avoided a shutdown also slashed spending for the National Science Foundation, putting it billions below a congressional target intended to…

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Science is again on the chopping block on Capitol Hill. AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz

Federal spending on fundamental scientific research is pivotal to America’s long-term economic competitiveness and growth. But less than two years after agreeing the U.S. needed to invest tens of billions of dollars more in basic research than it had been, Congress is already seriously scaling back its plans.

A package of funding bills recently passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden on March 9, 2024, cuts the current fiscal year budget for the National Science Foundation, America’s premier basic science research agency, by over 8% relative to last year. That puts the NSF’s current allocation US$6.6 billion below targets Congress set in 2022.

And the president’s budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, released on March 11, doesn’t look much better. Even assuming his request for the NSF is fully funded, it would still, based on my calculations, leave the agency a total of $15 billion behind the plan Congress laid out to help the U.S. keep up with countries such as China that are rapidly increasing their science budgets.

I am a sociologist who studies how research universities contribute to the public good. I’m also the executive director of the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, a national university consortium whose members share data that helps us understand, explain and work to amplify those benefits.

Our data shows how underfunding basic research, especially in high-priority areas, poses a real threat to the United States’ role as a leader in critical technology areas, forestalls innovation and makes it harder to recruit the skilled workers that high-tech companies need to succeed.

A promised investment

Less than two years ago, in August 2022, university researchers like me had reason to celebrate.

Congress had just passed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. The science part of the law promised one of the biggest federal investments in the National Science Foundation in its 74-year history.

The CHIPS act authorized US$81 billion for the agency, promised to double its budget by 2027 and directed it to “address societal, national, and geostrategic challenges for the benefit of all Americans” by investing in research.

But there was one very big snag. The money still has to be appropriated by Congress every year. Lawmakers haven’t been good at doing that recently. As lawmakers struggle to keep the lights on, fundamental research is quickly becoming a casualty of political dysfunction.

Research’s critical impact

That’s bad because fundamental research matters in more ways than you might expect.

For instance, the basic discoveries that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible stretch back to the early 1960s. Such research investments contribute to the health, wealth and well-being of society, support jobs and regional economies and are vital to the U.S. economy and national security.

Lagging research investment will hurt U.S. leadership in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced communications, clean energy and biotechnology. Less support means less new research work gets done, fewer new researchers are trained and important new discoveries are made elsewhere.

But disrupting federal research funding also directly affects people’s jobs, lives and the economy.

Businesses nationwide thrive by selling the goods and services – everything from pipettes and biological specimens to notebooks and plane tickets – that are necessary for research. Those vendors include high-tech startups, manufacturers, contractors and even Main Street businesses like your local hardware store. They employ your neighbors and friends and contribute to the economic health of your hometown and the nation.

Nearly a third of the $10 billion in federal research funds that 26 of the universities in our consortium used in 2022 directly supported U.S. employers, including:

  • A Detroit welding shop that sells gases many labs use in experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and Department of Energy.

  • A Dallas-based construction company that is building an advanced vaccine and drug development facility paid for by the Department of Health and Human Services.

  • More than a dozen Utah businesses, including surveyors, engineers and construction and trucking companies, working on a Department of Energy project to develop breakthroughs in geothermal energy.

When Congress shortchanges basic research, it also damages businesses like these and people you might not usually associate with academic science and engineering. Construction and manufacturing companies earn more than $2 billion each year from federally funded research done by our consortium’s members.

A lag or cut in federal research funding would harm U.S. competitiveness in critical advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Hispanolistic/E+ via Getty Images

Jobs and innovation

Disrupting or decreasing research funding also slows the flow of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – talent from universities to American businesses. Highly trained people are essential to corporate innovation and to U.S. leadership in key fields, such as AI, where companies depend on hiring to secure research expertise.

In 2022, federal research grants paid wages for about 122,500 people at universities that shared data with my institute. More than half of them were students or trainees. Our data shows that they go on to many types of jobs but are particularly important for leading tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Intel.

That same data lets me estimate that over 300,000 people who worked at U.S. universities in 2022 were paid by federal research funds. Threats to federal research investments put academic jobs at risk. They also hurt private sector innovation because even the most successful companies need to hire people with expert research skills. Most people learn those skills by working on university research projects, and most of those projects are federally funded.

High stakes

If Congress doesn’t move to fund fundamental science research to meet CHIPS and Science Act targets – and make up for the $11.6 billion it’s already behind schedule – the long-term consequences for American competitiveness could be serious.

Over time, companies would see fewer skilled job candidates, and academic and corporate researchers would produce fewer discoveries. Fewer high-tech startups would mean slower economic growth. America would become less competitive in the age of AI. This would turn one of the fears that led lawmakers to pass the CHIPS and Science Act into a reality.

Ultimately, it’s up to lawmakers to decide whether to fulfill their promise to invest more in the research that supports jobs across the economy and in American innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. So far, that promise is looking pretty fragile.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 16, 2024.

Jason Owen-Smith receives research support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Wellcome Leap.

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