South America

Ban Ki-moon, the 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations (2007–2016), takes a moment to talk with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) about Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, how to become UN Secretary-General, and his favorite meals in New England.

Professor Nicholas Burns appeared on CNN to speak about the week's chaos in the White House, as well as recent events in North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. 

U.S counterinsurgency doctrine assumes that states must make liberalizing reforms that will defeat insurgencies by winning the “hearts and minds” of the population.

Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the Nobel laureate novelist most famous for One Hundred Years of Solitude, was native to Colombia. Nonetheless, as a master of magical realism, Garcia Márquez would have appreciated the Republic of Argentina’s recent combination of fact and fantasy. In mid-June, the finance ministry sold $2.75 billion worth of US dollar-denominated bonds that mature in one hundred years.

In this Project on Managing the Atom Discussion Paper, Philipp C. Bleek chronicles nuclear weapons proliferation choices throughout the nuclear age. Since the late 1930s and early 1940s, some thirty-one countries are known to have at least explored the possibility of establishing a nuclear weapons program. Seventeen of those countries launched weapons programs, and ten acquired deliverable nuclear weapons.

In contrast to the fireworks at some recent OPEC meetings, this week’s gathering in Vienna looks comparatively dull.

What kinds of peace agreements are most likely to prevent civil conflicts from recurring? Does holding elections after a civil war make enduring peace more likely? Agreements mandating that rebels be allowed to participate in post-conflict elections alongside the government are more likely to succeed, because such elections attract the engagement of international organizations that can reward compliance with the agreement and punish noncompliance.

David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, discusses the drivers behind the displacement of over 65 million people and the changes that must be made to existing political and humanitarian systems in order to address the crisis on a global scale.

Former Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, a lead negotiator of the P5+1 Iran Nuclear deal and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center, talks with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) about her place in history as the first female Undersecretary of State, Vladimir Putin’s sense of humor, and how many snacks it takes to fuel a negotiating team.

While the future of oil prices is uncertain, the fate of countries that have treated adverse shocks as temporary and reversible, and were then proven wrong, has seldom been encouraging.