The Inconvenient Truth about Foreign Aid

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This article was published by Transformation at openDemocracy on 6 February 2017.

For recipients aid has been a very mixed blessing, but for donors it’s been a bonanza.

It’s astonishing when you think about it. Why should an old and poorly-performing industry carry on, burdened with even more tasks, and provided with yet more money? I’m talking about foreign aid, whose mixed results have been reconfirmed countless times in the last 70 years.

For aid’s backers, such skepticism is unfair or at best premature. Successes, from combating diseases to promoting the ‘green revolution,’ are held as self-evident. With new, smarter policy formulas and management focused on results, failure is soon going to be minimized. Across most of the Left-Right spectrum, aid still enjoys political backing. Western spending continues largely upward. New aid donors from Turkey to Thailand are joining in. And tasks are expanding.To achieve the 169 targets of the world’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030, global leaders concur that foreign aid is vital.

The Road Ahead: What the Death of Islam Karimov Means for Uzbekistan and Central Asia

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This article was originally published by Harvard International Review on 7 February 2017.

On August 29, 2016, the president of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Four days later, the country lost its first and only president. Karimov had been exerting his influence in Uzbek politics since 1989 as the last secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, which later became the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP). It may not come as a surprise that his rule was often mired by reports of human rights violations and declarations of autocratic powers to squash any political opposition.

Though the transition of power to the new provisional government may be relatively smooth, Uzbekistan remains fraught with challenges. For now, the Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoev has assumed temporary control until elections are held later this year. The new leadership of Uzbekistan must address the late Karimov’s legacy grappling with a fragile economy, the separatist movement in Karakalpastan, increasing interest of foreign powers in exerting influence over Central Asia, increasingly complex water allocation amongst Central Asian states, and backlash from the previous government’s repressive stance towards Islam.

Living Off the Land: Food and the Logic of Violence in Civil War

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This article was originally published by Political Violence @ a Glance on 6 February 2017.

Does food security increase the frequency of civilian killings in some developing countries? Or can it make such atrocities less likely? The answer to these questions depends on how troops and civilians view the prospects of long-term cooperation, and the strategies they employ.

Current theories on violence during civil war frequently associate it with previous enmities and discriminate violence. Yet, even within countries that are experiencing civil war, violence varies over space and time. Some villages might suffer many civilian killings by armed troops while others do not. These villages might go through years of relative peace followed by years of intense violence. New research shows that, in the developing world, food availability and farmland density can help explain violence against civilians.

How the Exclusion of Muslims Could Help Extremists

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This article was originally published by IPI Global Observatory on 3 February 2017.

Within two weeks of taking power, new United States President Donald Trump has signed a number of executive orders that have caused alarm around the world. Perhaps the most controversial of these was an immigration ban that indefinitely suspended the entry and resettlement of Syrian refugees to the US and enacted a 90-day ban on travelers from six Muslim majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. While fears about Muslim immigration are widespread in the US and elsewhere, a significant body of research has failed to find justification for such policies. Indeed, there is strong evidence to suggest that they might make the targeted problem of Islamic extremism much worse.

The Trump administration has justified the move as “preventive” and designed to reduce terror threats facing the US, yet the Cato Institute finds that not a single person (including refugees) from any of the Muslim-majority countries included has been involved in a terrorist attack in the US in the past 40 years. Data provided by the New America Foundation (since 9/11) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2005-2014) has, meanwhile, found that on a 10-year average, 11,737 Americans are likely to be killed from gun violence per year, compared with just two by Muslim jihadi immigrants.

Donald Trump and the Emergent Dominant Narrative in US Foreign Policy

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This article was originally published by E-International Relations on 4 February 2017.

It is difficult to find experts that approve of President Donald Trump’s emergent foreign policy. Neoconservatives and internationalists complain that, by abandoning the leading role the United States has taken in world affairs since the end of World War Two, he is contributing to the collapse of the liberal world order and the emergence of a more dangerous, Hobbesian alternative. Libertarians and economists worry that he risking a global depression with his protectionist policies. National security hawks argue that his anti-Muslim rhetoric could bolster ISIS; and regional specialists warn that he is wrecking relationships with key partners such as Europe, China, and Mexico.

To a considerable extent, Trump’s detractors are correct. His assessment of the prevailing state of affairs—that a corrupt, globalist political establishment has allowed other countries to take advantage of the US and that the best way to remedy this is to put ‘America First’ by reducing imports and extracting substantial concessions from allies and international institutions—is as simplistic as it is delusional. Whatever one thinks of US foreign policy, a belligerent, neomercantilist, unilateralist approach would be destabilizing overseas and would only exacerbate the problems confronting the country at home.