Section: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA)
Avoiding past mistakes
After putting the intelligence budget through three years of sequestration-level funding—and the likely return to sequestration levels this year, the United States is in serious jeopardy of repeating the fatal mistakes of the early 1990s when it drastically slashed its intelligence budget and exposed the nation to serious risks. In a post 9/11...
Riga’s missed opportunity
“I think this is going to be a good day for the European Union and for each of the six partners,” said Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs, at the opening of her meeting today with leaders of countries in the EU’s Eastern neighborhood at the just-concluded EU Summit in Riga,...
Back to the drawing board on Ukraine?
John Maynard Keynes famously remarked that “When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” One has to wonder whether the same might not be asked of the International Monetary Fun (IMF) in relation to its Ukrainian lending program. For as each day passes, it appears that the basic economic and political assumptions underlying that...
Three ways China and the United States could go to war
After years of being a focus of interest for specialists, the South China Sea is now getting major attention from the media. The latest is a CNN report that a US Navy P-8 surveillance plane was warned away from some of China’s manmade islands in the Spratly Island chain by the Chinese Navy. Beijing has not yet declared a formal air defense...
Time for US diplomatic leadership in the South China Sea
A “must watch” for foreign and national security types is this CNN footage of a P8-A Poseidon surveillance flight over Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef, both part of the Spratly islands in the South China Sea (SCS). The remarkable video enables viewers to get a much better sense of the intensifying competition in these critical waters.The South...
Low inflation and slow recovery test ECB policy
Sir,Your editorial (“Draghi perches nicely on both sides of the fence”, May 16) urging the European Central Bank to keep open its monetary spigot, might have been stronger had it recognised two important considerations.The first is that, beyond monetary policy, an important factor contributing to the green shoots now appearing in the European...
Kerry’s pointless diplomacy in Russia
From the moment John Kerry’s trip to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summer residence in Sochi on the Black Sea was announced, it was hard to see what the U.S. secretary of state hoped to achieve. Indeed, of the three objectives on Kerry’s official agenda — seeking Russian assistance in ending the Syrian civil war, bringing...
Putin’s Russia: How it rose, how it is maintained, and how it might end
Long before the war in Ukraine and associated international sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime faced potential crises in its political and economic systems. To date, however, the Kremlin has failed to address them. Instead, Putin has unleashed a massive propaganda campaign, increased repression at home, and pursued...
Civil society in ‘Putin’s Russia’: A Q&A with Boris Makarenko
AEI’s director of Russian studies, Leon Aron, has edited a new volume— to be released at a conference on May 14— on the dynamics of Russian domestic politics titled “Putin’s Russia: How it rose, how it is maintained, and how it might end.” This work looks beyond international sanctions and the war in Ukraine to examine underlying...
Political values in ‘Putin’s Russia’: A Q&A with Mikhail Dmitriev
AEI’s director of Russian studies, Leon Aron, has edited a new volume— to be released at a conference on May 14— on the dynamics of Russian domestic politics titled “Putin’s Russia: How it rose, how it is maintained, and how it might end.” This work looks beyond international sanctions and the war in Ukraine to examine underlying...
