Research Library

The BRICS clearly want something tangible to demonstrate their global prominence and the power of non-Western values. Russell Green examines the critical issues that must be resolved before the BRICS bank can open its doors.

Neal Lane, senior fellow in science and technology policy, testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on July 17, 2014. Lane is co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Science's project on New Models for U.S. Science and Technology Policy, and his testimony addressed the project's objective of sustaining a long-term, nonpartisan, national focus on science and technology policy issues of vital importance to the country.

This issue brief proposes a framework for awarding bids in a public tender for exploration blocks. The context for the proposal is Mexico’s energy reform of 2013-2014.

Peter Hotez, fellow in disease and poverty, proposes ways for countries around the world to increase their reliance on vaccine diplomacy in their foreign policy approaches.

This issue brief identifies the four main reforms that the new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government must undertake to revive the manufacturing industry in India.

Speaking from the historic steps of Old North on the Georgetown University campus on June 25, 2013, President Obama unveiled a detailed plan to address the causes and impacts of climate change. In his words, the president promised, “I’m directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants, and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants.” Not quite a year later on June 6, 2014, Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, responded by proposing “state-specific rate-based goals for carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector, as well as guidelines for states to follow in developing plans to achieve the state-specific goals.”

President Obama’s commencement address at West Point on Wednesday was clearly aimed at deflecting rising criticism of his administration’s foreign policy. In particular, the speech was designed to address complaints that U.S. foreign policy under Obama has lacked strategic coherence and signaled a U.S. retreat from the international arena. The administration promoted the address as a platform for the president to describe his “vision” for U.S. foreign policy during the remainder of his term. To the extent that the speech did present a vision, it was not a particularly new one.

Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s new prime minister on Monday, a little over a week after a landslide victory at the polls. The resounding win gives Modi much greater freedom to implement his agenda than any Indian leader in recent years, says international economics fellow Russell Green. What will Modi’s India look like, and how will it affect the U.S.? Green, who spent four years in India as the U.S. Treasury Department’s first financial attaché to that country, explains.

Talk of a “pivot to Asia” that supposedly would mark President Obama’s second term is “misplaced and even simplistic,” writes fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. In a globalized world, “key U.S. relationships with strategic and commercial partners … cannot be addressed in isolation from one another. The convergence of U.S. ties and Asian ties with the Middle East is a case in point highlights how regions and issues are interconnected as never before.”

The violent struggle between rival Mexican drug cartels and other criminal groups has left tens of thousands dead and towns across Mexico paralyzed with fear. With overwhelmed police forces relatively powerless to control drug-related murders and kidnappings, a growing number of vigilante organizations, or self-defense groups, aim to restore order — but now even they are fighting, and killing, among themselves.