American Strategy Program

Archives: American Strategy Program Articles and Op-Eds

Is US Failing to Respond to Reform in Cuba?

  • By
  • Anya Landau French,
  • New America Foundation
November 11, 2011 |

For the first time in 50 years, Cubans will be able to freely buy and sell their homes. As news of this long-awaited and the biggest yet of Raul Castro’s slow-moving but continuing, irreversible economic reform campaign in Cuba reverberated on and off the island, policymakers in Washington are increasingly – embarrassingly – out of step with what’s actually happening on the island today. It's like the US embargo has become a wax feature at Madame Tussauds: questionably life-like and stuck forever in one moment in time.

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Next Challenges for Tunisia

  • By
  • Leila Hilal,
  • New America Foundation
November 10, 2011 |

Last month Tunisians went to the polls to elect a 217-seat constituent assembly to rewrite the country's political and legal map. The elections were widely venerated for their transparency and efficacy, marking a uniquely positive development in the otherwise stalled Arab Spring. As the official review of the preliminary election concludes, a wide consensus prevails to move on to the next challenges in the nation's transformation.

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Cuba Legalizes Private Real Estate Transactions

  • By
  • Anya Landau French,
  • New America Foundation
November 4, 2011 |

On the heels of news that Cubans would now be allowed to buy and sell used cars of any kind (they used to only be allowed to do so with the pre-1950’s era almendrones sputtering around the island), today Cuba announced that natural-born Cubans and permanent residents will now have the right to buy and sell their homes, and transfer ownership to others on the island.

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With a Friend Like This

  • By
  • Anatol Lieven,
  • New America Foundation
November 1, 2011 |

If Washington wishes to improve relations with Pakistan, it needs to stop regarding Pakistan as an ally, and to start regarding it as an enemy — at least as far as the Afghan War is concerned.

Seeing Pakistan as an ally has not only obscured the reality of the situation, but has bred exaggerated bitterness at Pakistani “treachery.” And since Pakistanis also believe that America has “betrayed” them, the result is a thin veneer of friendship over a morass of mutual distrust and even hatred.

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Big Ideas from Small Places

  • By
  • Parag Khanna,
  • New America Foundation
  • and David Skilling, founding director at Landfall Strategy Group
November 1, 2011 |

In the current phase of globalization, financial, ecological, political and social crises are occurring simultaneously and magnifying each other in unpredictable ways. From the Fukushima nuclear meltdown reshaping German politics and the European power industry, to America’s sub-prime mortgage meltdown threatening the Eurozone, such chain reactions are undermining an already fragile stability.

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China's Bubble Has Kept More Than its Own Economy Afloat

  • By
  • Afshin Molavi,
  • New America Foundation
October 31, 2011 |

Is China a bubble?

This question - once the domain of a small group of China sceptics in the global investment community - has gone mainstream. Time magazine posed the question on its cover, warning its readers to "Be Very Afraid of the China Bubble". Global news agencies such as Reuters and Bloomberg are raising troubling questions about China's over-leveraged banks, inflated housing prices and highly indebted local governments. A Wall Street Journal columnist recently wrote: "Forget Greece. Forget Italy. Forget 'Occupy Wall Street', The really ominous news right now? China."

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India’s Approach to Counterinsurgency and the Naxalite Problem

  • By
  • Sameer Lalwani,
  • New America Foundation
October 31, 2011 |

Since its independence in 1947, India has fought dozens of campaigns against four distinct and independent insurgencies on its soil—in Punjab, Kashmir, the Northeast, and the Maoist insurgents of central India—as well as one foreign campaign in Sri Lanka.

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Five Comments on Palestine Joining UNESCO

  • By
  • Daniel Levy,
  • New America Foundation
October 31, 2011 |

So the UNESCO's general conference has voted to admit Palestine as a member. The U.S. government has made good on its Congressionally-mandated commitment to withhold its dues payments to UNESCO.

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U.S. Looks Increasingly Irrelevant as Mideast Peace Broker

  • By
  • Jonathan Guyer,
  • New America Foundation
October 21, 2011 |

While a growing number of influential voices here and in the region insist that the nearly 20-year, U.S.-sponsored "peace process" has reached its terminal phase, the administration of President Barack Obama remains committed to reviving direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

"…[M]oving forward, we want to see progress on the peace talks," State Department spokesman Mark Toner has emphasised repeatedly over the last two weeks, which have seen Washington's special envoy David Hale shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

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Majority of Cuban-Americans for Warmer U.S.-Cuba Ties, Poll Says, But...

  • By
  • Anya Landau French,
  • New America Foundation
October 19, 2011 |

Florida International University has just released the results of a poll on Cuban American attitudes on Cuba and US policies (this is their tenth poll over the last twenty years). This latest FIU poll raises a lot of the big questions on the table right now and gets some contradictory answers.

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