Growth of the metros

ALAN BERUBE and PHILIPP RODE examine economic and employment data in 150 of the world’s largest metropolitan economies located in 53 countries for their analysis "Global MetroMonitor: The Path to Economic Recovery". The Brookings Institution analysis shows that these metropolitan areas function as locations for high-value economic activity in their respective nations and world regions, accounting for 46% of world GDP with only 12% of the population.
They state that the the past two decades had seen a shift in the metro map with the emerging market metros closing their gap with higher-income metros due to increased mobility of capital, market reforms and offshoring, with this shift accelerated by the global financial crisis of 2007-09. They forecast a rise in demand from emerging middle-classes for consumer goods and services, improved public services such as infrastructure, environmental quality, and educational opportunities this could provide further opportunities for both low-income and high-income metropolitan economies.

Nuclear energy in a box!!

Heritage Foundation nuclear policy experts, JACK SPENCER and NICHOLAS LORIS tout the potential of small, modular nuclear reactors (SMR) in the generation of abundant emissions-free power. They argue in their opinion piece, "Small Nuclear Reactors, Big Energy Pay-Offs", that this nascent technology could significantly transform the nuclear industry due to its numerous advantages such as lower up-front capital costs, mobility, scalability and multi-functionality. They state that the current U.S. regulatory environment was dominated by inefficient licensing and rule-making, failed nuclear waste management policy leading to barriers to new nuclear technologies and call for a market-based approach that provided a stable regulatory environment, promoted competition, relied on private investment and sustainable economics.

Analyzing China Inc's M&A trends and future scenarios

DEREK SCISSORS of the Heritage Foundation analyzes China Inc.'s  global investments since 2005 across countries, sectors and investors quantifying it at $224 bn in successful investments and $140 bn in unsuccessful investments. In his analysis, "China Global Investment Tracker: 2011", Australia, U.S., Brazil, Canada and Iran, were the most popular destinations and energy, metals and finance accounted for over 80% of all investments. CNPC, Sinopec, CIC, Chalco and CNOOC were the top firms investing $120 bn or over 50% of Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions. 

CHARLES WOLF of the Hoover Institution states that China's appetite for acquisitions of foreign companies could quadruple from current levels of 6.6% share of global cross-border M & A by 2020 on the back of its growing trade surplus, diversification away from US debt and its appetite for natural resources, emerging technologies, and financial know-how.

In his Wall Street journal op-ed, "China's Next Buying Spree: Foreign Companies", he states that this would make China a more active and influential player in global mergers and acquisitions markets enhancing its integration into the world economy and could also lead to an improvement in China's domestic corporate governance practices. He states that there could also be a rise in tensions both within host countries and China on differential barriers to cross-border investments.

Asian geopolitics - in charts

WALTER LOHMAN, JOHN FLEMING and NICHOLAS HAMIESEVICZ of the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation state that the global financial crisis had impacted perceptions of American power and its relationships in Asia while these perceptions were not grounded on fact. In their report, "Key Asian Indicators: A Book of Charts", they provide a visual representation of factoids across the spectrum of economics, politics and defence to support their argument of American predominance across all areas in Asia and an absence of American power could lead to a decline of peace and prosperity in Asia.

Online networks as a trigger for regime change

MARKO PRPIC and SEAN NOONAN examine the benefits and vulnerabilities of using social media tools to organize protests and revolutions using examples of various protests organized over the recent past that achieved varying degrees of success and failure.

In a Stratfor analysis, "Social Media as a Tool for Protest", they state that while social media undoubtedly offered advantages in disseminating messages quickly and broadly, a revolution required much more including organization, funding, mass appeal well beyond the internet-savvy youth and an ability to inspire and motivate individuals to get away from the comfort of their homes and face off against the government on the streets.

They caution that an over-reliance on social-media tools was no substitute to effective real-world leadership and ingenuity to tackle government counter-protest tactics while they could also be detrimental to the evolution of the leadership beyond cyberspace and potential isolation from alternate political movements with whome they may have shared goals.

EU's Strategic Partnerships

ANNE SCHMIDT of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) reviews the debate on 'strategic partnerships' within the EU in the wake of the guiding principles drawn up for the strategic partnership format. In a working paper for SWP, "Strategic Partnerships – a contested policy concept", she reviews recent publications within the EU to recommends that the EU itself had to develop into a strategic actor and achieve  the stated goal of effective multilateralism as well as reconciling the EU’s broad normative concerns with its narrower interests.

Centralized vs Distributed Water Management

NIRVIKAR SINGH of University of California, Santa Cruz states that rapid economic growth, low per capita availability of water and underdeveloped physical and institutional infrastructure could lead to a potential 50% water supply shortfall in India making it one of the most severely affected countries as reported in the McKinsey-Water Resources Group study on the economic aspects of water supply.

In an East Asia forum commentary, "India’s water management challenge", he advocates an approach that focused on improving water usage efficiency in agriculture which accounted for 80% of India's water utilization and a shift away from large-scale infrastructure projects, municipal dams and river interlinking towards local water management practices to promote greater efficiency of water use while state governments could focus on promoting innovation in agricultural practices and productivity.

He states that although the National Water Mission offered a comprehensive approach including conservation, efficiency and government co-ordination, there were vital shortcomings related to lack of an economics-based prioritization, adequate co-ordination vertically down to the local level and horizontally across government departments and calls for an inclusion of local water-management bodies to fill the current gaps.

Raising the game in Lagos

PARVATHI VASUDEVAN of the Centre for International, Strategic and Development Studies in India traces the evolution of Indo-Nigerian ties over the past 50 years from a foundation of historical & political links to one based on economic links. While India's major oil players evinced a keen interest in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, which contributes 20% of India's oil imports, their moves had not yielded the expected benefits. In a report for the Chatham House, "The Changing Nature of Nigeria–India Relations", she calls for a rehaul of New Delhi's Africa policy with Nigeria as a template, with the key focus areas as follows:

• Enhanced commercial transparency and adherence to international legal best practices
• Increasing frequency of government-government contacts and expansion of India's diplomatic presence
• Expansion of India's Trade and Economic relations committee's mandate beyond hydrocarbons into all sectors
• Enhanced Indian media presence on the ground in Africa
• Expansion of the educational scholarships program to support Nigerian students

She concludes that New Delhi had to raise its game to compete both effectively and transparently in Africa's economy.

Securing the Indo-Pacific region

Michael Auslin, AEI's director of Japan Studies states that the Indo-Pacific's unique geography makes the balance of regional security most vulnerable in its "commons": the open seas, air lanes, and cyber networks that link the region together and to the world and the US and its partners goals would be to ensure access, contain conflicts, deter threats and evolve liberal norms in the commons. In an op-ed for the AEI, "Security in the Indo-Pacific Commons", he states that the regional politico-military strategy should have a muscular US forward military component augmented by a close security partnership among nations that shared common concerns and promotion of a liberal agenda in the region.

On "Cyber"War

PAUL CORNISH, DAVID LIVINGSTONE, DAVE CLEMENTE and CLAIRE YORKE of the Chatham House assess the evolving challenges in cyberspace and describe it as terra nullius, beyond the reach of mature political discourse providing actors opportunities to achieve strategic objectives without armed conflict, conferring disproportionate power, anonymity, a blurring of military-civilian boundaries and that cyberspace could be considered a fifth battlespace after land, water, air and space. In a Chatham House report, "On Cyber warfare", they argue that cyber warfare should be constrained and validated by politics, ethics, norms and values, to resolve its challenges while extending its complexities back into the world of politics would question deeply embedded assumptions about the primacy of the state, the authority of government and the role of government agencies and the armed forces as providers of national security.

GAP - Index to assess preparedness on global aging

RICHARD JACKSON, NEIL HOWE, KEISUKE NAKASHIMA, fellows at the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) state that the global economic crisis has left many elders vulnerable while reducing the room for governments to accommodate rising old-age dependency costs. In a CSIS analysis, "The Global Aging Preparedness Index", they analyze the progress that twenty countries worldwide are making in preparing for global aging, and particularly the old-age dependency dimension of the challenge and state that extending work lives and increasing funded retirement savings represented the easiest solutions to implement that balanced the needs of the elderly and the younger workforce.

Channeling foreign capital inflows

ESWAR PRASAD, fellow at Brookings Institution and Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University analyzes India’s record current account deficit and asserts that policymakers must look for more ways to channel capital inflows into productive investments, which would help the country attain the potential benefits of foreign capital with less exposure to the risks of volatile short-term flow. In an op-ed for the Wall Street journal, "How India Can Cope With Plenty", he recommends multiple measures that policymakers could implement such as: opening up FDI to various sectors, reforming corporate bond markets, tackling corruption and red-tape, reining in government expenditure, and switching from inefficient subsidies to direct cash transfers, arguing that the current period of high growth and large capital inflows could be the best ever opportunity for India to implement those reforms.

Dealing with Chinese mercantilism

ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN of the Peterson Institute draws lessons from history of Chinese mercantilism of the early 1800s to state that dealing with Beijing effectively required a greater sensitivity to its history that meant greater use of carrots rather than sticks and a multilateral rules-based approach rather than a unilateral approach related to specific outcomes. In an op-ed in Business Standard, "Chinese Mercantilism: The Long View", he calls for a long view on China that relied on nudging Beijing away from the path of mercantilism rather than a confrontational approach in spite of a range of unhelpful Chinese actions across a gamut of political and economic issues, stating that a dominant China may no longer be amenable to force

Countering Jihad

THOMAS HEGGHAMMER, of Oslo's Norwegian Defence Research Establishment analyzes the phenomenon of the Muslim foreign fighter to explain what drove Muslims to fight in transnational wars for each other, mostly after 1980 and posits that the phenomenon was a violent offshoot of the pan-Islamist identity movement that arose in 1970s through a process of elite competition. In an article for International Security, "The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad", he states that the transnational Muslim fighter and the al-Qaeda operative were different in their political preferences although they hailed from the same pan-Islamist ideology, with the Muslim fighter having a stronger popular support base, and concludes that undermining pan-Islamism and promotion of state nationalism or other local forms of identification were key to an effective counter-strategy.

Stand up and be counted

In the wake of India's election to the chair of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee and the impending elevation to the rotating Presidency in August the exceptional composition of the current UN Security Council, SHASHI THAROOR states that New Delhi had to significantly raise its game and take positions on matters that it had previously preferred to duck such as Sudan, Iran, Middle-East and North Korea. In an op-ed commentary for the Project Syndicate, "India at the UN High Table", he states that New Delhi had to augment its resources and expertise on diverse issues and New Delhi had an extraordinary opportunity to showcase its credentials as a major global player and aspirant to a permanent seat at the table.

China's long march to nuclear leadership

Scholars at the Institute of Energy Research analyze the expansion of Chinese nuclear power to state that minimal red tape, cheap financing, low-cost labor and access to western technology are helping propel China's push into the global nuclear marketplace. In an IER article, "China’s Nuclear Program: Fast and Relatively Inexpensive", they state that recent advances such as self-sufficiency in reactor design and mastery over new reprocessing technologies such as irradiating spent fuel could provide Beijing an edge in its quest of becoming a world leader in nuclear power.

Tibetan natural resources

ROGER HOWARD states that relations between Beijing and Lhasa would be defined by the region's natural resources and 'development' of the region would either strengthen or dissolve these political ties in the backdrop of ambitious Chinese plans to make Tibet an important 'strategic resources reserve base'. In an article for the Chatham House publication, The World Today, "Tibet's Natural Resources: Tension Over Treasure", he states that the extraction of Tibet's resources could not only shape the political relationship between Tibet and China but also have global repercussions giving China political leverage over countries importing those resources.

Geo-economics redux

Mark Thirlwell, director at the Lowy Institute avers that the current international environment marked by an increasingly dense entanglement of issues related to international economics, national security and foreign policy lends itself to a return to the idea of geo-economics with key issues around multi-polarity, pax mercatoria, globalisation, state capitalism, resource scarcity, risks arising from the global financial crisis. In a Lowy Institute Perspectives article, "The return to geo-economics: Globalisation and national security", he concludes that this could lead to two potential consequences: an improved quality of analysis with inputs from economics, foreign policy and security while these would be tempered by underlying assumption of zero-sum outcomes.

Analysis of online jihadism

MOHAMMED ALI MUSAWI of the Quilliam Foundation states that counter-extremism initiatives needed to make a clear distinction between attempting to de-radicalise existing extremists and preventing new generations from adopting such ideologies in the first place and calls for greater efforts to challenge the ideology, rhetoric and worldview of pro-Jihadists forums in both the ‘cyber’ and the ‘real’ worlds, with special focus on countering wahhabism, publicizing refutation of jihadism by reputed Islamic scholars as well as former jihadists.

In a Quilliam Foundation report, "Cheering for Osama: How Jihadis Use Discussion Forums",based on an he provides fresh insights into the workings of Arabic-language pro-jihadist web forums, shedding new light on the ideologies, recruitment strategies and social dynamics of these forums and illuminating the role that these forums play in distributing and popularising Jihadist texts, videos and statements.

Dìyuán zhèngzhì

FRANCOIS GODEMENT, director at Asia Centre, Sciences Po, analyzes content in Chinese language publications in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to state that Beijing's defensive and cautious approach based on conflict avoidance was a temporary strategy intended to be applied while it rose and it would run its writ unconstrained once its ascent was complete. In a China Analysis article for the European Council for Foreign Relations, "Geopolitics on Chinese terms", he states that the concept of Beijing as a responsive stakeholder was getting outdated since it was not interested in norm-setting beyond the principle of non-interference and that the Chinese strategic community itself was in a state of flux with its focus to partnership driven more as a tactic to prevent its own strategic encirclement.