Archive for category: Cover Story
Mikå Mered / December 19, 2011 11:43 pm
Antarctica is home to more than emperor penguins and a few dozen humans with science citizenship barricaded in small hermetic bases. It is also host to an estimated 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons, alongside large quantities of gold, silver, uranium, and many other rare metals underneath a pristine ice cap still virgin of commercial exploitation. Securing a territory with such a rich underground, in whole or in part, would bless any country with durable energy security and, thereby, increased political independence in the international arena.
Matt A. Getz / October 24, 2011 12:44 am
In 2008, President Barack Obama had a clear idea for Latin American foreign policy. The Bush administration, distracted by events in the Middle East, had pursued a harmful hemispheric policy of blustering unilateralism and neglect; Obama, conversely, would pursue a “new partnership” with the Americas, one marked by cooperation and mutual interests. His subsequent election was heralded throughout Latin America as [...]
Tehreem Rehman / May 4, 2011 3:52 am
While some monetary sacrifices for governmental agencies are inevitable, the latest push to deprive Planned Parenthood of all federal funding is not solely motivated by the desire for fiscal conservatism. Instead, the burgeoning campaign against funding for Planned Parenthood is overtly purported to be a means of rectifying an existing ethical dilemma: forcing Americans to finance abortion services through their tax contributions.
Greer Feick / March 4, 2011 3:04 am
In July 2009, President Barack Obama made his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa and took his wife and daughters to the Cape Coast Castle, a ghostly whitewashed fort in Ghana that was used to hold and ship Africans to the Americas during the time of the Atlantic slave trade. In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Obama compared visiting Cape [...]
Taylor Thompson / December 5, 2010 10:12 am
America’s ability to wield power effectively in the global commons is a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy and a key source of American influence, but today’s world is witnessing a dramatic expansion of those commons—into outer space. America’s response to this broadening terrain will carry tremendous weight for the stability of the international system. Satellites allow U.S. forces to communicate, [...]
Alex Smyk / October 31, 2010 8:23 pm
Endless crowds of the desperately poor have long been a common sight in the sweltering South Asian metropolis of Dhaka, Bangladesh. But the forces pushing migrants into the city are not what they once were. Today, the shantytowns of Dhaka overflow with rural farmers fleeing a countryside devastated alternating Biblical floods and fierce droughts. The city is seen by these [...]
Mark Hay / May 12, 2010 11:27 pm
Whenever Americans recall Somalia, whether considering lofty foreign policy aims or simply reflecting upon the chance encounter with the name, our minds inevitably snap back to October 3, 1993 and the tragedy that was the Battle of Mogadishu. This is a memory of eighteen U.S. soldiers lying senselessly dead and desecrated, one even decapitated, in the streets of a hostile city. Given the striking clarity with which Black Hawk Down has memorialized the chaos and the horror of this battle, it is no surprise that the trauma remains fresh in our collective consciousness. At the time, the shock of this loss and the seemingly intractable and inhuman belligerence and disorder of the nation compelled the U.S. and all other foreign forces to withdraw. Somalia did not fit with the spirit of the times, the notions of how intervention and aid was to be conducted. After 1993, Somalia dropped off the map of U.S. foreign policy, relegated to a distasteful and repressed memory, and no one has been able to make a great case for a return.
Andrew Hamilton / March 18, 2010 6:35 am
When I moved to New York City last year to attend Columbia University, I knew that finding housing would be a challenge; after three weeks of frustration, I finally managed to find an acceptable studio apartment one mile north of campus. What I didn’t know was that the apartment was available because the previous tenant had recently leapt to his [...]
Narayan Subramanian / December 18, 2009 7:34 am
With movies like The Day After Tomorrow depicting the apocalyptic consequences of global warming, the issue of climate change has since transformed from being simply a “Hollywood problem” to a reality we must confront. Global warming deniers have long since been discredited, and an urgency to address climate change has heightened in policy spheres and also in the public imagination. It is the unfortunate fact that climate change is not an issue that can be simply tackled by one well-meaning individual or even one nation. Maintaining the sustainability of our planet is a collective responsibility, because it affects us all. An effective and lasting solution—or, at the very least, a hope of one—can only be reached through global consensus. The Copenhagen climate summit that will take place early this month provides an opportunity for nations to collectively define the direction of climate change policy over the next few decades.
Jacqueline Mauro / October 18, 2009 5:11 pm
We all know what’s going on in Washington: somehow health care, the driest of all dry political issues, has become the most incendiary topic in politics. Politicians are shrieking at the President, constituents are fired up about… something, and grown men are crying into their pillows at night.
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