Asia & the Pacific

This report assesses the relationship between Europe and Russia as the sum of great power reactions to the Ukrainian crisis and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Despite agreement on a no business-as-usual principle, important national nuances have arisen stemming from different historical bonds to eastern Europe and Russia (Germany, Poland, United States) or different interests in the region (France, United Kingdom).

The last seven decades without war among the great powers – what historians describe as “the long peace” – is a remarkable achievement. “This is a rare and unusual fact if you look at the last few thousand years of history,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center and moderator of the IDEASpHERE panel “Winning the Peace.” “Furthermore, it is no accident. Wise choices by statesmen have contributed to ‘the long peace,’ which has allowed many generations to live their lives.”

This paper studies under what conditions the U.S. can coerce its allies to forgo nuclear weapons. Specifically, why did Taiwan and South Korea give up their nuclear pursuits under American duress, while Israel and Pakistan attained a nuclear capability?

Researchers from the United States and Russia have issued a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences. The first joint threat assessment by experts from the world’s two major nuclear powers concludes: “If current approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the question will become not if but when, and on what scale, the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs.”

"A rigorous assessment should consider the strengths and weaknesses of the United States' putative competitors on the global scene as well as the enduring strengths and sources of resilience that have enabled America to extend its primacy and maintain a stabilizing, global hegemonic role against all expectations. There is a need for a framework to inform how US policymakers might think about the problem of developing strategies and policies to extend that role yet again, since it is at least an arguable proposition that rather than a multipolar world, the global system, after the current Great Recession passes, will continue to be unipolar but with some additional challenges for US leadership."

With the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the "War on Terror" that followed, development aid was shoved back into the spotlight. Many ideas and institutions that had lain dormant in international affairs, insinuated their return into U.S. strategy and the agenda of the international community. "Nation building" in Afghanistan and Iraq along with a hope that development would stifle the appeal of extremist ideologies and the movements that they stirred has returned development to a prominent place in U.S. grand strategy.

The purpose of this volume is to present possible scenarios for the biofuels industry. Each chapter describes how the sector could evolve depending on the policy and strategies that individual countries may select. However, the assumption is that individual choices may have global impacts. Each scenario therefore tries to provide insights on the global economic, energetic, environmental and trade repercussions of specific policy developments.

"Chapter III analysed the commercial viability of second generation biofuels. This chapter focuses on related intellectual property rights (IPRs) aspects. Three hypothetical scenarios in the context of the intellectual property protection of second generation biofuels are developed, with each scenario representing a different level of strictness of protection. Therefore, each scenario translates into a different level of potential access to advanced biofuel technologies by developing countries."