The United Nations is a way for countries, including the United States, to burden-share global challenges—be they related to diplomacy, development, or security—that are too big for a single country to handle alone. As a leading world power, the United States must contribute a significant financial share, but it also receives benefits from distributing the …
Category: Articles
Covid-19 Has Consequences for U.S. Foreign Aid and Global Leadership
The United States is undergoing an unprecedented domestic crisis in confronting and controlling the spread of the coronavirus. Faced with both a public health crisis and significant economic disruptions, Congress has now passed three supplemental spending bills meant to provide emergency support. The last supplemental contained nearly $2 trillion worth of support; Congress has indicated …
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Taking the Higher Road: U.S. Global Infrastructure Strategy One Year Later
One year ago this month, CSIS released The Higher Road: Forging a U.S. Strategy for the Global Infrastructure Challenge, the product of a bipartisan taskforce co-chaired by Charlene Barshefsky and Stephen Hadley. Major developments since then, including the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s acceleration of its digital infrastructure push, have heightened the stakes of the global infrastructure challenge …
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Defending the ‘Global Spoils System’ of Leadership Jobs in Multilaterals Is in the U.S. Interest
THE ISSUE The “global spoils system,” or the way in which top posts at multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), regional development banks, and UN agencies are divvied up among countries, has played a crucial role in maintaining an international liberal order that promotes the rule of law, individual liberty, …
Fighting Corruption for U.S. Economic and National Security Interests
Corruption plagues governments, economies, and societies around the world. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the amount of money lost to corruption globally is $2 trillion a year. This money could go a long way toward filling the financing gap for the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and preparing countries for global pandemics …
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The DFC’s New Equity Authority
Introduction On October 5, 2018, the United States passed an important piece of foreign policy legislation—the Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development ( BUILD) Act. The BUILD Act modernizes the United States’ development finance institution—the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)—and transforms it into a new agency called the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The …
Will Many Developing Countries Get Old Before They Get Rich?
In the next 20 years , much of the developing world is going to experience aging, with profound implications for the future of those countries and for the future of the world. For much of the last 60 years, the entire focus of global development has been on population growth as a result of more births than …
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Competition or Coordination: Coronavirus in the Developing World
How will the United States respond as the coronavirus spreads through the developing world, and what role will China play? In times of crisis, the United States has always taken a global leadership role. In light of the spreading coronavirus, it should again lead a global coalition to address the crisis in the developing world. …
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Empowering Women through Skills and Workforce Development
Under normal circumstances, the heavily guarded Naval Support Facility Thurmont (or Camp David as it is more commonly known) would have had the opportunity to host the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) powers this summer. And among their priorities would have been the opportunity to strengthen their collective commitments to tackle the pressing …
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Connecting the Blue Dots
quality global infrastructure: the Blue Dot Network (BDN). The initiative holds promise and should be encouraged, but it also raises nearly as many questions as the cosmos. The BDN was announced by the United States, Japan, and Australia in November 2019 at the Indo-Pacific Business Forum in Thailand. Together, the three allies aim to certify infrastructure projects …
Daniel Runde 