Governance

As climate change and economic activity in the region accelerate in the Bering Strait region, the United States and Russia have a common interest in mitigating these shared environmental risks. A November workshop hosted by Harvard Kennedy School’s Arctic Initiative, the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) brought together seventeen experts to explore potential actions that the United States and Russia could pursue, jointly or independently, to protect the Bering Strait’s sensitive marine ecosystem and coastal communities. 

International Security Program Fellow Megan M. Turnbull, an international affairs professor at the University of Georgia, discussed the conditions leading to election violence in Nigeria during a virtual seminar hosted by the International Security Program on November 10, 2022.

Sheila Olmstead, professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, shared her thoughts on U.S. water policy and environmental justice in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights.”

Joel Clement describes the influence of U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Joe Manchin over the Department of the Interior and advises that a forward-looking legislator in a fossil-fuel state would be wise to fight aggressively for financial commitments to make the people in their state part of the vanguard of the new clean energy economy, rather than set back the U.S. economy by fighting the inevitable energy transition itself.

White Southerners opposed to Reconstruction used violence to undermine Black political power and force uncommitted white Southerners to their side. Although structural factors made it harder for the U.S. government to suppress this violence, a series of policy failures prompted Reconstruction’s failure and generations of injustice.

At one point in human history, water’s importance in war went beyond bearing convoys, hiding submarines, and slaking soldiers’ thirst. Water was often itself a weapon. In areas where it was scarce, armies took action to make it scarcer to force besieged enemy cities to capitulate, and in areas where it was abundant, combatants destroyed dams and watched the resulting floods carry their adversaries away. Today, however, most combatants recoil at the use of water as a weapon, and only the most depraved deploy it.

In the face of advancing impacts of climate change — fires, smoke, floods, droughts, storms, and heat— Lara Hansen and Joel Clement argue for changing the way the country does business in every facet of the economy, with an eye toward reducing risk, increasing resilience, and ensuring equity and justice.

As the United States emerges from the era of so-called forever wars, it should abandon the regime change business for good. Then, Washington must understand why it failed, writes Stephen Walt.

Since the end of World War II, nation-states in international conflict have made concerted efforts to restrain the weaponization of water. Distinct from realist and rationalist explanations, the historical record reveals the rise of an international normative inhibition—a “water taboo”—on using water as a weapon.

Joel Clement outlines how the Interior Department can become a forceful catalyst for a just transition to clean energy.