Reports & Papers

3 Items

A woman walks with her child in a refugee camp in the western Darfur region of Sudan. This photograph was taken sometime in October of 2004.

Mercy Corps

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Implementing the Global Fragility Act

| July 2020

The Global Fragility Act (GFA), passed in December 2019, commits the U.S. Government to focus on conflict prevention in its foreign aid strategy. The following policy analysis provides background and context, a country and region selection approach, analysis of Ethiopia and Guatemala as potential priority countries, and recommendations for country and region selection, principles for delivery, principles for monitoring and evaluation, multi-level coordination, and overall strategy formation.

Tractors on Westminster bridge

AP/Matt Dunham

Paper - Institut für Sicherheitspolitik

The Global Order After COVID-19

| 2020

Despite the far-reaching effects of the current pandemic,  the essential nature of world politics will not be transformed. The territorial state will remain the basic building-block of international affairs, nationalism will remain a powerful political force, and the major powers will continue to compete for influence in myriad ways. Global institutions, transnational networks, and assorted non-state actors will still play important roles, of course, but the present crisis will not produce a dramatic and enduring increase in global governance or significantly higher levels of international cooperation. In short, the post-COVID-19 world will be less open, less free, less prosperous, and more competitive than the world many people expected to emerge only a few years ago.

U.S. General David Petraeus, Commander designate, U.S. Central Command, leaves 10 Downing Street in London after a meeting with the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sept. 29, 2008.

AP Photo

Paper - International Security Program, Belfer Center

U.S. Interagency Regional Foreign Policy Implementation: A Survey of Current Practice and an Analysis of Options for Improvement

| April 2010

The United States has a complex, multi-agency structure to plan, synchronize, and execute foreign policy and national security. By statute, the State Department is the lead agency for foreign policy. However, in practice, the much larger and better-funded Department of Defense conducts much of America's foreign policy activity, often with little coordination with the State Department or other relevant agencies. Over the past two decades, the military's Geographic Combatant Commands have taken an increasing lead in planning and executing foreign policy activities around the world. This has often effectively put a military face and voice on America's foreign policy, sometimes to the detriment of broader U.S. goals and relationships. More effective U.S. foreign policy requires greater interagency coordination at all levels and a greater role for the State Department as America's lead agency for foreign policy.