Research Library

This October the U.S. and Mexico agreed on a new bilateral security program, but "unless the United States and Mexico pursue domestic structural reforms ... both nations risk backsliding to the failures of the drug wars," writes MGA student and Drug Policy guest contributor Sidney Phillips.

Paris and Washington are past the immediate AUKUS crisis, but two major, related issues will remain high on Biden’s foreign policy agenda for the balance of his term, writes fellow Joe Barnes: China’s military expansion in the Pacific and the EU’s role in great power politics. Read more at the Baker Institute Blog.

U.S. producers have sustained oil supply by feathering their beds with “DUCs down” — their large inventory of drilled-but-uncompleted wells. Could they exhaust the DUCs? What then? Energy fellow Mark Finley explains on the Baker Institute Blog.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which became law in mid-March, left out the mandate to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, but it did lead to an open policy discussion about current minimum wage standards. In a post for the Baker Institute Blog, public finance fellow Joyce Beebe considers some of the pros and cons of increasing the minimum wage and possible future developments.

Scenes of insurrectionists rummaging through offices and computers in the Capitol highlight the urgent need for Congress to up its IT security game. The authors recommend steps to adopt modern IT management and cybersecurity processes that are already used throughout the federal government.

When President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January, he will be compelled to deal with the most important and ferociously complicated geopolitical question the United States faces today: how to manage its relations with China. Fellow Joe Barnes explains how the U.S.-China situation differs from the Cold War dynamic, and how the U.S. will best be served in the years ahead. Read more at the Baker Institute Blog.

While foreign policy has rarely been the predominant issue in U.S. presidential campaigns, the November election will provide voters a clear choice when it comes to U.S. relations with other nations, writes fellow Joe Barnes.

The death of George Floyd has accelerated calls for police reform. Although decriminalizing drugs and the people who use them will not end police violence, it is part of the structural change needed to fix the problem, writes fellow Katharine Neill Harris.

The United States' exit from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty appears more like a gesture than part of a well-considered long-term plan. There are few signs that the Trump administration has given substantial thought to how the U.S. can best protect its interests in a new and challenging international environment.

"With the U.S. and Iran staggering toward war, it bears asking: How would U.S. interests be served by war with Iran?" writes fellow Jim Krane. Read his argument for why U.S. interests would be deeply undermined by any such war on the Baker Institute Blog.  This post originally appeared in the Forbes Blog on June 17, 2019.