February 7, 2008 

Trade
India’s Trade Policy Choices: Managing Diverse Challenges
A major new report from a team led by the Carnegie Endowment reveals both the promise and peril that increased engagement with the global economy holds for India’s farmers, firms, and workers. Continued trade liberalization–including a multilateral deal in the WTO’s Doha Round and possible bilateral agreements with the EU, U.S., or China–could contribute modestly to India’s growth and development. However, if India binds agricultural tariffs at rates which prevent it from offsetting global price shocks, the country could lose more than it gains if prices of key commodities such as rice and wheat continue to swing sharply in the future as they have in the past.

Russia
Russia: More Stick, Less Carrot
In the Hoover Digest, Carnegie's Michael McFaul comments on the Kremlin's new realpolitik in light of recent Russian demonstrations of military might. "The Cold War is not back and has no prospect of returning," he writes. "Those who invoke this historical analogy forget that a central drama in that era was the ideological struggle between communism and capitalism."

New Europe, Old Russia
In a Washington Post op-ed, Carnegie's Robert Kagan analyzes the emerging era of geopolitics with an emphasis on the new Euro-Russian relationship. "A 21st-century European Union, with its noble ambition to transcend power politics and build an order based on laws and institutions, confronts a Russia that behaves like a traditional 19th-century power," he writes. "So what happens when a 21st-century entity faces the challenge of a 19th-century power? The contours of the conflict are already emerging."

U.S. Elections 2008
Phantom Menace: The Psychology Behind America's Immigration Hysteria
In the New Republic, Carnegie’s John Judis analyzes the frenzy over illegal immigration in areas of the U.S. without large immigrant populations. "If you look around the country, there are many places where there are relatively few illegal immigrants, but where Americans are nevertheless apoplectic about illegal immigration," he writes. "These people in rural Kansas or northwest Ohio, who feel left behind by capitalism, are susceptible to the darker side of populist appeal — to blaming those less well off than themselves for their plight."

Race Matters: Hillary Clinton's Potentially Fatal Error in South Carolina
Carnegie's John Judis writes in the New Republic about the Clinton campaign's racial politics and attempts to stir up white voters against Barack Obama following the South Carolina primary. "By painting Obama as the black candidate, Hillary Clinton might have lost the African-American vote but won the nomination." However, Judis continues, "Even if playing the race card gets Clinton the nomination, it could still cost her the presidency."

Related:
The Democrats
Carnegie Visiting Scholar John Judis appeared on WBUR's show, Here and Now, with Julian Zlizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School to discuss where the Democratic Party is headed. Click here to listen to the broadcast.

Middle East
Political Reform in the Arab World
On January 29, editors Marina Ottaway and Julia Choucair-Vizoso discussed their new book. Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World, analyzes the reform process in ten countries—Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Yemen. Ottaway and Choucair-Vizoso presented the sources of and obstacles to political change in the Arab world. Samer Shehata, assistant professor of Arab Politics at Georgetown University participated in the discussion. The Washington Post's Robin Wright moderated.

Arab Reform Bulletin
The February edition of the Arab Reform Bulletin features:

• jockeying for power among Iraq's Shi'i groups
• developments in Libya-EU relations
• women and protest movements in Egypt
• Syria's opposition and relations with the U.S.
• results of our readers' survey

Plus news from across the Arab region, views from the Arab media, and new publications on Iraq, Palestine, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, the Gulf states, economic reform, anti-corruption efforts, Islamist politics, and much more.

Lebanon’s Sunni Islamists: A Growing Force
The growing influence of Sunni Islamists in Lebanon is fueled by rising anti-ِAmerican and sectarian sentiments resulting from the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, Lebanon's ongoing political stalemate, the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, and the summer 2006 war in which Israel devastated large parts of Lebanon. In a new paper, the Carnegie Middle East Center's Omayma Abdel-Latif identifies leading traditional Islamist and Salafist movements in Lebanon, key leaders, and their relationships with each other and external actors, including the United States, Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran.

Avert a New Failed Mediterranean Scheme
In the context of a new French initiative in the Maghreb to create a "Mediterranean Union," Riad al-Khouri writes about the relationship between the EU and the Arab world in a Daily Star article. "A more coherent EU working closely with a better-integrated Arab world could become a catalyst for progress in the region by liberalizing European agricultural imports, thus helping the economies of rural areas in places like Morocco," he writes.

Pakistan’s Iranian Shadow
Carnegie's Karim Sadjadpour compares the turmoil in Pakistan to conditions that led to the 1979 fall of the Shah and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, in a Project Syndicate article. "Once again, a 'pro-American' autocrat seems to be rapidly losing his grip on power, with his U.S. ally only half-heartedly standing by him."

China
Red Menace
In the New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick comments on the lawlessness of Chinese financial markets and the implications for the U.S. economy. "Given America's tiny savings rate, without Chinese purchase of U.S. T-Bonds, the American economy would likely go into a downturn so severe, well, it's best not to think about it right now," writes Kurlantzick. "China matters too much to the global economy for its markets and banks to be run with all the opaqueness of a bookie's office."

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