Domestic and International (Dis)Order: A Strategic Response, the latest edition of the Aspen Strategy Group’s series of annual publications that address the most pressing foreign policy challenges facing the United States, is out now. 

Belfer Center Executive Director Aditi Kumar interviews Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals Syra Madad about New York City's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Economic Diplomacy Initiative is launching a weekly tracker featuring major developments in the global economic response to the COVID-19 crisis. This week: The U.S. withdraws from the WHO. What’s next for asset purchases at the world’s central banks? European fiscal policy emerges. And poverty and hunger crises join financial turbulence on the list of emerging market risks.

China piloted a national digital currency in April 2020. The European Central Bank has convened a working group of major economies to coordinate digital currency research and development. The U.S. Federal Reserve said it was in the early stages of researching the digital dollar. Spurred by the potential to modernize domestic payments systems, or take a leading role in updating the global payments infrastructure that supports cross-border trade and remittances, nations around the globe are exploring the merits and risks of issuing a digital currency. While many are in the early stages of research, central banks representing one-fifth of the world's population say they will issue a digital currency very soon.

The Belfer Center’s Economic Diplomacy Initiative, in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program, is tracking the latest developments in central bank issued digital currencies.

While much of the world is consumed by the COVID-19 crisis, the Chinese government is quietly unleashing a financial innovation that will reshape its economy and improve its strategic standing for decades to come. In April, China’s central bank introduced the “digital yuan” in a pilot program across four cities, becoming the world’s first major economy to issue a national digital currency.

The Fed’s response is directed toward achieving three goals: preventing financial markets from breaking down and magnifying the crisis; supporting domestic businesses through economic turbulence which could result in wide-spread bankruptcies; and ensuring that foreign central banks in major economies have access to dollar liquidity.

As European nations react to the spread of the novel coronavirus, leaders across Europe, from the European Central Bank, European Commission, and national governments, are deploying a host of policy tools to contain the economic fallout. 

Digital currencies are on the rise. More than a decade after bitcoin made cryptocurrency mainstream, countries and central banks are evaluating whether to issue their own digital cash. The Belfer Center’s Economic Diplomacy Initiative (EDI) is exploring how policymakers should manage economic policy and the national security implications of this disruptive trend.

To illustrate the challenges posed by digital currency, EDI conducted a national security crisis simulation in Harvard Kennedy School’s JFK Jr. Forum. The simulation featured Harvard and MIT faculty and former government officials portraying National Security Council (NSC) members.

Trump must balance the critical military and economic ties the United States is building with India against the repudiation by the Modi government of the very principles that are at the foundation of the friendship itself.

On November 19, 2019, the Belfer Center’s Economic Diplomacy Initiative hosted a national security crisis simulation in the JFK Jr. Forum to a packed audience from the Harvard and MIT communities. 

Drawing on the experience of Belfer Center members who have served in the highest levels of the U.S. government, the event explored the nexus of U.S. economic power and its national security interests.