2016 is shaping up to be a potentially critical year for Afghanistan. ISIS is rising there, the Taliban is gaining ground, the stability of the Afghan government is deteriorating by the day, and national elections are coming in October. The US, China, Pakistan, and the Afghan government are currently holding talks aimed at bringing the Taliban to the table to try negotiate an end to the war.

Of those countries, it's Pakistan that is the most significant. Pakistan has probably the most influence of anyone over whether those talks will succeed in getting the Taliban to agree to sit down and negotiate a peace agreement with the Afghan government. But there's a lot more going on with the peace talks that are perhaps the country's best or only remaining hope.

To understand how this works and why it matters, I spoke to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Afghanistan. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Jennifer Williams: Could you start by just explaining how Pakistan has been involved in the conflict between the Taliban and Afghanistan historically?

Vanda Felbab-Brown: That goes back to the creation of independent Pakistan, with issues having to do with the Pashtun minority in Pakistan, which is also the majority population of Afghanistan, and irredentist claims by Afghan Pashtun politicians, as well as the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States, who at different times supported either Pakistan or Afghanistan and played the two against each other.

Then you have the Taliban emerging in the 1990s, and Pakistan fully supports the Taliban: They help equip it, they provide intelligence, advisers, and during the Taliban era when they ruled country, Pakistan is one of only three countries that recognize the Taliban regime.

They continued supporting the Taliban throughout the past decade, and US-Pakistan relations became very fraught and complicated. It's never been easy. Pakistanis sometimes use the expression that the United States treats Pakistan like a condom: uses it when they need it then discards it when they are finished with it. It's a fairly common saying in Pakistan, especially in the military. So there is a sense of betrayal on the part of the United States, untrustworthiness, that it's an exploitative relationship on the part of the US toward Pakistan.

I should also say that Pakistan has long supported many Islamic extremist groups as part of its asymmetric policy toward India, and some of these groups have now mutated, or they slipped Pakistan's full control.

Even with respect to the Afghan Taliban, there is a lot of support from the Pakistani state intelligence services and military to the Afghan Taliban. At the same time, Pakistan has been under enormous US and international pressure to act against them, and so they will take the occasional action against the Afghan Taliban as well. But those actions are mostly seen as halfhearted, incomplete window dressing.

JW: So what role is Pakistan playing today? I know that they just had the four-party talks and that Pakistan has been insisting that these talks take place in Pakistan. Are they trying to speak for the Taliban?

VFB: I'm not sure that it's a fair characterization that they are speaking for the Taliban. Certainly the Afghan government, including in the latest talks, often insinuates or alleges that Pakistan speaks for the Taliban. But they clearly do not.

The relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan is hardly smooth and perfect. Many members of the Afghan Taliban deeply resent the level of Pakistani interference, even as the group has been supported by Pakistan. There is a lot of Afghan Pashtun nationalism also among the Taliban that deeply resents the influence and attempts at control by the Pakistani state.

Part of the key issue in the relationship is that although Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban, and although it has historically supported other extremist groups, it does not have perfect control. And arguably, its control is diminishing. And so they posture, they do their double game. They want to appear strong, and so they posture that they have much greater control than they have, but at the same time they deny that they have any nefarious role.

In reality, they are playing both sides against the middle, and they often have much less capacity to control and rein in the extremist groups, including the Afghan Taliban, than many assume. The widespread criticism of Pakistan is one of its duplicity and its nefarious activity and its lack of willingness to act against the Afghan Taliban. Those are true, but they are also coupled with limits to their capacity. They are riding a tiger that they cannot control fully.

So they have been hosting these four-way talks that involve them, the US government, the Afghan government, and the Chinese government. The Afghan government is desperate to achieve some sort of negotiated deal with the Taliban. It feels under tremendous pressure, the military is taking a pounding from the Taliban, and the government lacks legitimacy.

The US has similar views on the notion that the way out of the predicament in Afghanistan is a negotiated deal. The Chinese also like the idea. They have their own influence in Pakistan. China would very much like to say that they finally achieved what the US failed to do over the past decade, that they will bring peace to Afghanistan, and that they will do it by enabling the negotiations.

Pakistan is responsive to China. Their relationship with China is much stronger than their relationship with the United States. They often tell the US that China is their old friend, that China is the country that hasn't betrayed them, unlike the United States. China has promised massive economic development in Pakistan at $40 billion. The Pakistanis often say to the US that the Pakistan-China relationship is "greater than the Himalayas and deeper than the ocean." Very flowery.

JW: What's the relationship like between the Afghan government and Pakistan today?

VFB: The crucial man there really is the Pakistani chief of the army staff Raheel Sharif; no relation to [Prime Minister] Nawaz Sharif. I think that there is sort of goodwill and motivation right now, even on the army staff — but that is juxtaposed with, again, the limits of control even the chief has. With almost clockwork regularity you have a round of negotiations in Pakistan or you have a meeting between Raheel Sharif and [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani, and the next day a bomb goes off in Kabul and people die, or the Indian consulate is attacked.

All those ploys are meant to destroy any beginning of a more positive relationship and have been very effective in subverting the process. The same goes on between Pakistan and India. Meanwhile, Ghani is taking an enormously risky strategy with respect to the negotiations. It's vastly unpopular in Afghanistan, and many, many Afghans hate Pakistan and blame it for all of their troubles.

They use Pakistan as the explanation of everything that ever goes wrong in Afghanistan. And the Pakistanis are responsible for a lot, but there's much, much blame and responsibility that lies on Afghan politicians and Afghan people.

So Ghani's outreach and engagement with Pakistan is extremely unpopular. He's spending an extreme amount of political capital, and does not have support from his partner in the government, Abdullah Abdullah, and the northern Tajik factions that hate Pakistan with great vitriol. So the more Pakistan is unable to deliver things like the Haqqani network, reducing or stopping its attacks in Kabul, the more politically impossible for Ghani the process will be.

JW: So what does that mean in terms of the stability of Afghanistan's unity government?

VFB: The unity government is extremely strained. "Unity" it isn't. The Pakistani negotiation angle is just too big for the strain. It might be strategically important. It might be a very significant element in getting any negotiation going, but it's also extremely politically costly, and the longer it doesn't produce anything, the more politically costly and unsustainable it will be.

In October, there are supposed to be parliamentary elections and district elections in Afghanistan, and, more important, this loya jirga [a national assembly of Afghan elders]. And unless there is some sort of major breakthrough by the summer, a lot of the negotiations and political process with both the Taliban and Pakistan will be put on ice, because it will just be politically impossible in the context of the loya jirga and the elections.

So they really have until the summer to make some sort of breakthrough, and then you will have months of morass and extreme political instability in Afghanistan, but it will also not be conducive in any way to improving either the relationship with Pakistan or the negotiations.

JW: How does Pakistan fit into the rise of ISIS in Afghanistan? What's the relationship there? And how might this affect the peace negotiations?

VFB: The rise of ISIS-Khorasan is one of the most interesting developments. It complicates the negotiations for the Taliban. They oppose the negotiations, and they're a big problem for Mullah Mansour and those who want to negotiate. They enable defections, make them easy, and make them costly.

At the same time, it is interesting because ISIS does not have the same linkages to Pakistan that the Afghan Taliban had, even though ISIS includes many defectors from the Taliban. They quite specifically reject what they call the "yoke" that Pakistan has put on the Afghan Taliban, and they call the Afghan Taliban leadership traitors because of the close relationship with Pakistan.

Moreover, ISIS-Khorasan also has quite a few members of various Pakistani extremist groups like Lashkar-e Taiba and members of TTP [Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan]. So there is also a lot of resentment and hostility toward Pakistan.

I think the rise of ISIS might make Pakistan be cooperative to some extent, but on the other hand, I think it will also reinforce in the mind of many Pakistan security controllers that it's important to cultivate the Afghan Taliban as friends against the bigger danger of ISIS.

JW: Now that ISIS-Khorasan has directly targeted Pakistan, the consulate in Jalalabad, do you think Pakistan will take action?

VFB: I think they'll take action against ISIS and groups like Tehrik-e Taliban. I don't think it will produce more resolve to go after the Afghan Taliban. That's my view. Others are hoping that they will finally accept the realities and really believe that they have to fight all of the insurgents, all of the terrorists, and that they cannot differentiate among them. I am not persuaded that that will, in fact, happen.

JW: So what does this all mean for the prospects for peace? Are you hopeful at all?

VFB: I think the peace negotiations are important, but I am skeptical that anything will happen quickly.

I think that if by summer the Taliban has been willing to join the negotiating table, that will be an important breakthrough, but nothing will be agreed. The summer will be very bloody, and then there will be the political [wrangling] associated with the loya jirga and the elections.

In my view, even if the Taliban comes to the negotiating table, we are looking at years of negotiations, and certainly no breakthrough before 2017 and likely much longer.

And so the question is whether we, the United States, are prepared to stand by with Afghanistan for that long and whether the Afghans will have the resolve. So it's really important that the military and the police fight as hard as they can, because the weaker they fight, the more they defect, the more intimidated they are, the more brain drain that flows from Afghanistan, the stronger the Taliban is viewed and the more intransigent they will be in the negotiations. Now the negotiations will be very much about the military battlefield as much as they will about what's happening at the table for a long time.

This interview was originally published by Vox.

Editor’s Note: The following chapter is part of the report, "After the Drug Wars," published in February 2016 by the London School of Economics and Political Science's Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy.

Even as the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto has scored important reform successes in the economic sphere, its security and law enforcement policy toward organized crime remains incomplete and ill-defined. Despite the early commitments of his administration to focus on reducing drug violence, combating corruption, and redesigning counternarcotics policies, little significant progress has been achieved. Major human rights violations related to the drug violence, whether perpetrated by organized crime groups or military and police forces, persist – such as at Iguala, Guerrero, where 43 students were abducted by a cabal of local government officials, police forces and organized crime groups. This has also been seen in Tatlaya and Tanhuato, Michoacán, where military forces have likely been engaged in extrajudicial killings of tens of people. Meanwhile, although drug violence has abated in the north of the country, such as in Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey and Tijuana, government policies have played only a minor role. Much of the violence reduction is the result of the vulnerable and unsatisfactory narcopeace – the victory of the Sinaloa or Gulf Cartels. 

The July 2015 spectacular escape of the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world’s most notorious drug trafficker – Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo – from a Mexican high-security prison was a massive embarrassment for the Peña Nieto government. Yet it serves as another reminder of the deep structural deficiencies of Mexico’s law enforcement and rule-of law system which persists more than a decade after Mexico declared its war on the drug cartels.

The Peña Nieto administration often pointed to the February 2014 capture of El Chapo as the symbol of its effectiveness in fighting drug cartels and violent criminal groups in Mexico. The Peña Nieto administration’s highlighting of Chapo’s capture was both ironic and revealing: ironic, because the new government came into office criticizing the anti-crime policy of the previous administration of Felipe Calderón of killing or capturing top capos to decapitate their cartels; and revealing, because despite the limitations and outright counterproductive effects of this high-value-targeting policy and despite promises of a very different strategy, the Peña Nieto administration fell back into relying on the pre-existing approach. In fact, such high-value-targeting has been at the core of Pena Nieto’s anti-crime policy. Moreover, Chapo’s escape from Mexico’s most secure prison through a sophisticated tunnel (a method he had also pioneered for smuggling drugs and previously used for escapes) showed the laxity and perhaps complicity at the prison, and again spotlighted the continuing inadequate state of Mexico’s corrections system.

Read the full chapter here.

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Is it possible to isolate the well-established mode of Arctic cooperation from the disruptive impact of the Ukraine crisis? Many stake-holders in cooperative projects with Russia keep insisting on an affirmative answer and seek to bracket out tensions emanating from such obscure locations as Debaltsevo or Mariupol. The European Union (EU), which is due to adopt a new Arctic Policy by the end of the year, would have been content to maintain the focus on environmental protection and economic development; the discussions in Brussels, however, have increasingly shifted to far less appealing “hard security” matters. Officials from the European Commission seem deeply reluctant to deal with Russia’s military activities in the high north but have to acknowledge that they are making it much more difficult to cooperate with Russia. As April’s Arctic Council ministerial meetings approach, the United States and Europe must be realistic about the ways in which far away events will negatively affect the possible achievement of their goals. 

Moscow is expanding rather than camouflaging the scope of exercises undertaken by its newly-formed Arctic Joint Strategic Command. Russian President Vladimir Putin used to proudly proclaim Russia’s abiding interest in Arctic cooperation, but even the most pro-engagement Arctic partners cannot fail to see that Russia’s interest is clearly slackening. This may be partly due to the disappearing attractiveness of exploration of the Arctic resources, since the estimated production costs of the off-shore platforms go far beyond the expected returns on the current level of oil prices. Another reason may be the disappointment in the commercial prospects of the Northern Sea Route (or Sevmorput), where maritime transit contracted by an astounding 77 percent in 2014, after several years of promising growth. A further reason may be Moscow’s recognition that the much trumpeted (and still not submitted) claim for expanding its “ownership” over the Arctic shelf cannot be legally approved because Denmark has presented its own claim, and the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf cannot make any recommendations on clashing claims.

It is hard to find an active lobby in Russia for sustaining cooperative projects or at least the joint work in the Arctic Council, as many actors who promoted the Barents Cooperation in the 1990s, are either on a short leash (as is the case with regional governors) or branded as “foreign agents” (the NGOs that want to avoid such branding have to curtail or cut ties with Western colleagues). The appointment of Dmitri Rogozin as a chair of the new government commission on Arctic matters bodes ill for the cooperative endeavors because this firebrand “patriot” deservedly holds a spot on U.S., EU, and Canadian sanctions lists. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry is still circulating a message of commitment to the Arctic dialogue. The forthcoming session of the Arctic Council ministers in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, might test this commitment with the issue of granting observer status to the EU. It was Canada who blocked the resolution of this issue at the previous meeting in Kiruna, Sweden, in 2013, but the controversy about seal products has been resolved, and Canada is ready to put the question on the agenda as its chairmanship of the Council expires. European Commission officials expect that during the 2015 meeting, Russia will raise objections because the EU is now seen as an antagonist, but EU officials still feel it is important to force Moscow to put their opposition on the record.

One external party that aims at enhancing and also at reformatting the Arctic cooperation is China, and while Moscow has to show eager attention to Beijing’s opinions, it cannot be comfortable with this “encroachment.” Russia’s traditional position has been that Arctic matters were the responsibility of the littoral states, but China insists on having a say and even entertains notions of the high north as a “global common,” a prospect which Moscow finds hard to swallow. 

It is indeed futile to praise the value of cooperative ties when seven members of the Arctic Council are compelled to tighten step by step the regime of sanctions against the eighth member, which is sinking into a deep economic crisis but persists in building its power projection capabilities in the High North. The usefulness of engaging Russia is beyond doubt, but it would be irresponsible to expect that joint projects in monitoring climate change could reduce the risks from expanding Russian military activities. The high north is one area where Moscow fancies itself to be in a position of power, but so far it has not found a way to enjoy it. It is not my intention to give the Kremlin war-mongers ideas about putting this military advantage to good political use, but when the likes of Rogozin or Nikolai Patrushev (secretary of the Security Council and former head of the Russian Federal Security Service) profess particular interest in the Arctic, it is only prudent to expect a brainstorm of sorts. The technique of “hybrid war” is not only the continuation but also a driver of Putin’s politics of confrontation, and this drive transforms the unique Arctic landscapes into just another “theater.”

This weekend the United States will assume the chairmanship of the Arctic Council for a two-year term. While the Obama administration has been preparing for this for several years, it remains to be seen how the president will balance the concerns of most Arctic residents who view development of the region as vital to improving their economic and social livelihood and those individuals inside and outside the administration who want to limit development out of concern for the how economic development may cause local environmental degradation while also accelerating climate change.

As part of this preparation, in May 2013, the president launched a new National Strategy for the Arctic Region based on three principles

1. Advancement of U.S. security interests defined as ensuring the ability of our aircraft and vessels to operate, in a manner consistent with international law through, under, and over the airspace and waters of the Arctic; to support lawful commerce; to achieve greater awareness of activities in the region; and to intelligently evolve our Arctic infrastructure and capabilities including ice-capable platforms as needed;
2. Pursue responsible Arctic regional stewardship defined as protection of the Arctic environment and conservation of its resources, establishment of an integrated Arctic management framework, charting of the Arctic region, and employment of scientific research and traditional knowledge to increase understanding of the Arctic;
3. Strengthen international cooperation defined as working through bilateral relationships and multilateral institutions, including the Arctic Council, to advance collective interests, promote shared Arctic state prosperity, protect the Arctic environment, and enhance regional security, and to work toward U.S. accession to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Undergirding these principles were commitments to make decisions using the best available information, to foster cooperation with the state of Alaska, other international partners, the private sector, and to consult and coordinate with Alaskan natives to gain traditional knowledge. As part of this new strategy, the president appointed Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr. as the U.S. special representative for the Arctic in July 2014. Shortly after his appointment, and in several major speeches since, including one at Brookings, the admiral has stated that the administration’s agenda centers on stewardship of the Arctic Ocean including insuring its safety and security, improving economic and living conditions for the regions’ inhabitants, and addressing the impacts of climate change on the region. 

The administration’s new policy was buttressed in January 2015 by an executive order designed to enhance coordination of all the various agencies responsible for different aspects of federal oversight of the Arctic (Alaska). Paradoxically, however, the fact that the reorganization came nearly in tandem with the announcement of new wilderness restrictions on the exploration of oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Arctic Coastal Plain. This announcement left many Alaskans skeptical on how further restrictions on development of the state’s resources could be viewed as improving economic and living conditions of people in the region. In a February 2015 meeting of Arctic Council Senior Arctic Officials (SAOs) in Yellowknife, Canada, the administration looked to put meat on the bones of what it intended to pursue upon assumption of the chairmanship of the Arctic Council. This resulted in an additional elucidation of 15 broad themes that had originally been presented in a Virtual Stakeholder Outreach Forum on December 2, 2014 in Washington, D.C..

The announced reorganization of government agencies and lines of authority dealing with U.S. Arctic and Arctic Council policy has done little or nothing to streamline the overlapping and sometimes conflicting policies governing natural resource development or energy projects in Alaska. These overlapping jurisdictions are well highlighted in a major new National Petroleum Council (NPC) report, Arctic Potential: Realizing the Promise of U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas Resources. This report was prepared at the request of Energy Secretary Moniz to address how best to pursue prudent development of Alaska’s offshore oil and gas resources and ironically issued shortly after the president’s closing of ANWR. Whether or not the White House was even aware of the NPC’s report, which represented months of substantive work by many people, remains open to question.

The Arctic reorganization plan did little to resolve some key questions as to actually who is in charge of Arctic policy in the United States. While Admiral Papp was named “Coordinator” of the U.S. Arctic Council Chairmanship, this position is not listed in the Council’s enabling documents. Historically, the foreign minister or the secretary of state of the country chairs the Council while a career diplomat chairs the meetings of the senior officials dealing with the day-to-day activities of the Council. It appears that Admiral Papp has neither of these positions. In any case, it looks from the organizational chart that the White House science advisor will be the real coordinator of U.S. Arctic policy.

The chief problem that U.S. Arctic policy must resolve is that while in the Arctic Council we have to address issues affecting the entire Circumpolar North, our domestic Arctic policy centers only on Alaska, where a slew of domestic agencies have overlapping and often conflicting oversight and regulatory responsibilities. The situation is made still more complex by the large amount of the state that is owned by the federal government. This makes it almost inevitable that any resource development project by private or state interests will run into federal government restrictions, in terms of needing to cross federal land to get a resource to market, permitting to ensure that water resources are not polluted, or making sure that fish and wildlife habitats are not disturbed, etc.

Our Arctic policy also suffers from an acute lack of awareness by most Americans that we are an Arctic nation with a huge maritime boundary and very limited resources (ice-worthy ships, proper navigation charts and aids, lack of port facilities, lack of search and rescue capabilities, lack of knowledge of what fishery resources we possess) to protect it. While many of these issues lie outside the scope of the Arctic Council, many are cross-cutting with our Arctic neighbors, most notably with increased traffic in the region (from tourism, fishing, energy development, and shipping) comes the increased possibility of an accident. Currently, the United States does not have the capable means (both in terms of timely response and adequate infrastructure) to respond to an accident in the Arctic, which could be catastrophic, as all of these industries are active and gaining popularity every day.

As the United States takes the helm of the Arctic Council, there are several core issues that the administration must address. Some critical questions are: What is the U.S. position on the development of the Arctic’s oil, gas, mineral, and fishery resources? What specific action is the United States prepared to support in the Arctic Council to uplift the standard of living of Arctic people across the Circumpolar North? Given that each icebreaker costs at least $700 million and that we only have one in operation, what resources are we prepared to expand to build a fleet capable to respond to events in the Arctic? Should any of these expenses be viewed as vital to our national security and defense, and if so, which budget should they be taken out of? What role does the United States in its chairmanship role see for closer interaction between the Arctic Council and the Arctic Economic Council? Would the United States support the closing off of certain ecologically sensitive parts of the Arctic to all commercial exploitation? Finally, how does the administration in its Arctic Council leadership role get its Arctic policy in sync with that of the state of Alaska in its recently released Alaska Arctic Policy Implementation Plan?

Other Arctic nations surpass the United States in terms of Arctic policies. Norway, Russia, Canada, and even Denmark (through complicated ties with Greenland’s claim on the Arctic) all have the Arctic at the front and center of policymaking decisions. I hope to see these issues addressed as the United States moves to enact effective policy on the Arctic over the next two years as the alternative is too great a risk and too great a wasted opportunity. 

Can the United States and Russia actually cooperate in the Arctic? It might seem like wishful thinking, given that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asserted that there is in fact a “New Cold War” between the two countries in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. Many people—at that conference and elsewhere—see the idea as far-fetched. Sure, Russia is launching air strikes in what has become an all-out proxy war in Syria, continues to be aggressive against Ukraine, and has increased its military build-up in the High North. To many observers, the notion of cooperating with Russia in the Arctic was a non-starter as recently as the mid-2015. There have been, however, significant changes in Russia’s behavior in the last several months—so, maybe it is possible to bracket the Arctic out of the evolving confrontation.

These and other matters were the subject of discussion at a recent conference at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University in New York, in which we had the pleasure to partake last week.

Moscow learns its limitations

Russia steadily increased its military activities and deployments in the High North until autumn 2015, including by creating a new Arctic Joint Strategic Command. There have been, however, indirect but accumulating signs of a possible break from this trend. Instead of moving forward with building the Arctic brigades, Russian top brass now aim at reconstituting three divisions and a tank army headquarters at the “Western front” in Russia. News from the newly-reactivated airbases in Novaya Zemlya and other remote locations are primarily about workers’ protests due to non-payments and non-delivery of supplies. Snap exercises that used to be so worrisome for Finland and Norway are now conducted in the Southern military district, which faces acute security challenges. Russia’s new National Security Strategy approved by President Vladimir Putin on the last day of 2015 elaborates at length on the threat from NATO and the chaos of “color revolutions,” but says next to nothing about the Arctic.

The shift of attention away from the Arctic coincided with the launch of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, and was strengthened by the sharp conflict with Turkey. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin—who used to preside over the military build-up in the High North—is these days travelling to Baghdad, instead. Sustaining the Syrian intervention is a serious logistical challenge on its own—add low oil prices into the mix, which threw the Russian state budget and funding for major rearmament programs into disarray, and it’s clear that Russia is in trouble. 

The shift of attention away from the Arctic coincided with the launch of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, and was strengthened by the sharp conflict with Turkey.

The government is struggling with allocating painful cuts in cash flow, and many ambitious projects in the High North are apparently being curtailed. In the squabbles for dwindling resources, some in the Russian bureaucracy point to the high geopolitical stakes in the Arctic—but that argument has lost convincing power. The threats to Russian Arctic interests are in fact quite low, and its claim to expanding its control over the continental shelf (presented at the U.N. earlier this month) depends upon consent from its Arctic neighbors.

Let’s work together

Chances for cooperation in the Arctic are numerous, as we and our colleagues have described in previous studies. The current economic climate (i.e. falling oil prices, which makes additional energy resource extraction in most of the Arctic a distant-future scenario), geopolitical climate (sanctions on Russia targeting, amongst others, Arctic energy extraction), and budget constraints on both ends (Russia for obvious reasons, the United States because it chooses not to prioritize Arctic matters) urge us to prioritize realistically.

• Improving vessel emergency response mechanisms. Though many analysts like to focus on upcoming resource struggles in the Arctic, the chief concern of naval and coast guard forces there is actually increased tourism. Conditions are very harsh most of the year and can change dramatically and unexpectedly. Given the limited capacity of all Arctic states to navigate Arctic waters, a tourist vessel in distress is probably the main nightmare scenario for the short term. Increased cooperation to optimize search and rescue capabilities is one way to prepare as much as possible for such an undesirable event. 
• Additional research on climate change and methane leakage. Many questions remain regarding the changing climate, its effects on local flora and fauna, and long-term consequences for indigenous communities. Increasingly appreciated in the scientific community, an elephant in the room is trapped methane in permafrost layers. As the Arctic ice thaws, significant amounts of methane may be released into the atmosphere, further exacerbating global warming.
• Expanding oil emergency response preparedness. The current oil price slump likely put the brakes on most Arctic exploration in the short term. We also believe that, unless all long-term demand forecasts are false, an additional 15 million barrels of oil per day will be needed by 2035 or so—the Arctic is still viewed as one of the last frontiers where this precious resource may be found. At the moment, Arctic states are ill-prepared to deal with a future oil spill, and more has to be learned about, for instance, oil recovery on ice and in snow. The Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic was an important first step.
• Preparing Bering Strait for increased sea traffic. As the Arctic warms, increased sea traffic is only a matter of time. The Bering Strait, which is only 50 miles wide at its narrowest point, lacks basic communication infrastructure, sea lane designation, and other critical features. This marks another important and urgent area of cooperation between the United States and Russia, even if dialogue at the highest political level is constrained. 

Can the Arctic be siloed?

There is no doubt that the current cooled climate between Russia and the other Arctic states, in particular the United States, complicates an ongoing dialogue. It is even true that it may prohibit a meaningful conversation about certain issues that have already been discussed. 

Skeptics will argue that it is unrealistic to isolate the Arctic from the wider realm of international relations. Though we agree, we don’t think leaders should shy away from political dialogue altogether. To the contrary, in complicated political times, the stakes are even higher: Leaders should continue existing dialogues where possible and go the extra mile to preserve what can be preserved. Russia’s desire for expanding its control over the Arctic shelf is entirely legitimate—and opens promising opportunities for conversations on issues of concern for many states, including China, for that matter.

Realists in the United States prefer to focus on expanding American military capabilities, their prime argument being that Russia has significantly more capacity in the Arctic. While we would surely agree that America’s current Arctic capabilities are woefully poor, as our colleagues have described, an exclusive focus on that shortcoming may send the wrong signal. 

We would therefore argue in favor of a combined strategy: making additional investments in U.S. Arctic capabilities while doubling down on diplomatic efforts to preserve the U.S.-Russian dialogue in the Arctic. That may not be easy, but given the tremendous success of a constructive approach in the Arctic in recent years, this is something worth fighting for. Figuratively speaking, that is.

Event Information

On April 24, 2015, the United States assumed chairmanship of the Arctic Council for a two-year term. Over the course of the last year, the United States has outlined plans within three central priorities: improving economic and living conditions for Arctic communities; Arctic Ocean safety, security, and stewardship; and addressing the impacts of climate change. Working with partners on the Council, U.S. leaders have moved forward policies ranging from joint efforts to curb black carbon emissions to guidelines for unmanned aerial systems conducting scientific research. With half of its short chairmanship behind it, what has the United States accomplished over the last 12 months? What work remains to be done?

On April 25, the Energy Security and Climate Initiative (ESCI) at Brookings hosted U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic Admiral Robert J. Papp, Jr. for a keynote address on the state and future of U.S. leadership in the Arctic. ESCI Senior Fellow Charles Ebinger moderated the discussion and audience Q&A.

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• The halfway point of the U.S. Arctic Council chairmanship: Where do we go from here?

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• The halfway point of the U.S. Arctic Council chairmanship: Where do we go from here?

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) will boost earnings for over 18 million low-income working families in the U.S. by more than $30 billion this year. This survey finds that the EITC provided a $737 million boost to the Chicago regional economy in 1998, and lifted purchasing power in the city of Chicago by an average of $2 million per square mile. Large numbers of Low-income working families lived not only in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods, but also in smaller cities throughout the region like Aurora, Joliet, Elgin and Waukegan. The survey concludes by describing steps that state and local leaders could take to build on existing efforts to link working families to the EITC, such as increasing resources for free tax preparation services, helping EITC recipients to open bank accounts, and expanding and making refundable the Illinois state EITC.

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The Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-area nonprofit promoting urban sustainability, has a long-run vision of a Chicagoland building energy-efficiency system, which, if started up quickly, would help to effectively deploy relevant stimulus dollars in the near-term. Its activities focus on ramping up existing weatherization and retrofit programs in the short-term to take best advantage of current stimulus dollars while at the same time building the institutional capacity to launch and sustain a new regional initiative aimed at coordinating energy efficiency information, financing, and service delivery for the seven-county region over the long-term.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) is using ARRA and other resources to work toward a long-run vision of a sustainable regional energy efficiency system. CNT envisions a centrally-coordinated initiative— either through a new stand-alone entity or a formalized network—to manage the financing, marketing, performance monitoring and certification, information provision, supply chain development, and customer assistance required to efficiently scale up the delivery of retrofit services for all types of buildings across the Chicago region.

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The United States exported and imported $4.0 trillion worth of international goods in 2014, making it the world’s second-largest trader, after China. The responsibility for moving all those products falls to the country’s 400-plus seaports, airports, and border-crossing facilities, though a smaller group does most of the country’s heavy lifting. In fact, ports in just 10 metropolitan areas move 60 percent of all international goods by value.

This level of concentrated port activity creates a spatial mismatch in the country’s trade flows. While a few ports handle a majority of international trade, few of the goods leaving or entering those ports start or end their journey in that port’s local market: 96 percent actually move to or from other parts of the United States. As a result, problems within and outside certain port facilities—whether a labor dispute like the recent West Coast port strike or congestion near Philadelphia’s seaport or airport—quickly become logistical costs borne by the entire country.

The 10 largest metropolitan port complexes represent a wide range of U.S. geographies, modal specialties, and international connections. Total volumes for these port complexes, listed below, are based on an aggregation of imports and exports across all sea, air, truck, rail, and pipeline facilities in each region. All data are from 2010, and you can find more detailed metrics within the Metro Freight interactive.

10. Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI

Total Value: $92.8 billion
Local Share: 4.6 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($41.5 billion)

A traditional Midwest powerhouse of production, metropolitan Chicago is home to a variety of industries and infrastructure assets that connect it to the Midwest and global marketplace. The proximity of factories, warehouses, and rail lines to its major port facilities, particularly O'Hare International Airport, places Chicago at a strategic crossroads for goods distribution.

9. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

Total Value: $103.9 billion
Local Share: 4.4 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($77.6 billion)

The San Francisco metro area—and the Bay Area as a whole—may be more well-known as a center for tech innovation, but it also contains some of the largest port facilities in the country. The Port of Oakland and the Port of San Francisco  account for the bulk of water traffic ($55.3 billion overall) moving through the area, while Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport help transport nearly $48.6 billion in electronics, precision instruments, and other high-value goods.

8. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

Total Value: $116.9 billion
Local Share: 8.2 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($89.4 billion)

The Seattle metro area plays a critical role cycling goods throughout the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the country, largely owing to the key connections its port facilities have forged with China ($47.9 billion) and Japan ($22.0 billion). Valuable transportation equipment and electronics represent a large chunk of these port volumes ($52.7 billion), although sizable amounts of machinery, textiles, and agricultural products are also processed through area facilities. The Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma are especially important in this respect, as they look to partner more closely in years to come.

7. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

Total Value: $123.7 billion
Local Share: 2.0 percent
Top Trade Region: Latin America ($97.2 billion)

Miami is the country’s primary gateway to Latin America, especially when excluding petroleum-related trade moving through Gulf Coast ports. And while the region and state have made impressive investments at the Port Miami seaport, it is actually Miami International Airport that generates the most regional trade ($74.8 billion). Miami’s facilities are a key component of Florida’s statewide strategy to use trade and logistics to grow local industries.

6. Laredo, TX

Total Value: $124.4 billion
Local Share: 0.0 percent
Top Trade Region: NAFTA ($121.0 billion)

Laredo may only house 250,000 people, but it might be the most important Texas metro area you’ve never heard of, considering that virtually every international good passing through it heads somewhere else in the U.S. The border town is the southernmost point of Interstate 35—the so-called NAFTA superhighway—and handles almost half of U.S./Mexican surface trade. With automotive and other supply chains continuing to stretch across the binational border, Laredo is poised to grow in importance over the coming years.

5. Anchorage, AK

Total Value: $137.4 billion
Local Share: 0.2 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($136.0 billion)

Anchorage may be thousands of miles from the closest U.S. market, but it has a long legacy as a major connector to the Pacific marketplace, resting less than 9.5 hours by air from 90 percent of the industrialized world. In particular, Ted Stevens International Airport was the cargo hub for Northwest Airlines Cargo, once the country’s largest carrier, and still has a vibrant freight business led by FedEx Express and UPS hubs. Continued growth in high-value, low-weight goods trade with Asia can only benefit Anchorage’s cargo business.

4. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX

Total Value: $168.1 billion
Local Share: 10.6 percent
Top Trade Region: Latin America ($48.3 billion)

As one of the world’s leading centers for energy and chemical production, the Houston metro area—along with other parts of the Gulf Coast region—depends on an enormous set of seaport facilities to transport these goods. Collectively, $100.6 billion of energy products and chemicals/plastics pass through these ports annually, accounting for about 60 percent of all their international goods. Stretching more than 25 miles in length and situated close to the Gulf of Mexico, the Port of Houston houses many of the area’s marine terminals.

3. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI

Total Value: $206.7 billion
Local Share: 4.9 percent
Top Trade Region: NAFTA ($186.6 billion)

Although the Detroit metro area contains a number of freight facilities, such as the Port of Detroit, that unite the Great Lakes region, its land border crossings to Canada make it one of the busiest sites of commerce in North America and beyond. Each year, nearly $175.8 billion in international goods travel by truck and rail between Detroit and Canada—relying almost exclusively on the aging Ambassador Bridge and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel. The planned New International Trade Crossing (NITC), however, holds promise for expanding capacity at this crucial junction.

2. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

Total Value: $349.2 billion
Local Share: 9.7 percent
Top Trade Region: Europe ($153.9 billion)

The Port of New York and New Jersey, which spans several marine facilities including the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, is one of the biggest freight assets in the country, cementing the New York metro area’s role as the chief East Coast seaport complex ($185.0 billion). Remarkably, almost the same value of goods ($162.7 billion) flows through the area’s expansive air cargo facilities, including John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. Combined with New York’s enormous amount of global corporate headquarters, New York is the country’s most globally fluent metro area.

1. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

Total Value: $417.5 billion
Local Share: 6.0 percent
Top Trade Region: Asia Pacific ($362.2 billion)

The Los Angeles metropolitan area not only boasts two of the largest seaports in the Western Hemisphere—the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach—but also has one of the busiest cargo airports nationally, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Together, these port facilities channel a wide range of international goods like electronics, machinery, and textiles across the country, many of which come from Asian trade partners like China ($211.3 billion) and Japan ($58.5 billion). Still, only a fraction of these goods actually start or end locally (6 percent), speaking to the port complex’s extensive geographic reach in the U.S.

Last month, a team from the Metropolitan Policy Program, along with a delegation from the city of Chicago, traveled to Mexico City as part of the Global Cities Economic Partnership (GCEP). Launched at a 2013 event sponsored by the Global Cities Initiative (GCI), this novel partnership aims to expand growth and job creation in both cities  by building on complementary economic assets and opportunities.

Together with representatives from World Business Chicago, the Illinois governor’s office, and members of Chicago’s tech startup scene (organized by TechBridge), the Brookings team arrived in Mexico City just as, after a 20 year debate, reforms to devolve greater autonomy and powers to the largest metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere were finalized.  Central to that reform is Mexico City’s enhanced ability to plan and implement its own economic development policy, underscoring the growing importance of city-regions assuming roles once solely the province of state and national governments: fostering trade, investment, and economic growth.

Chicago and Mexico City illustrate this trend through the GCEP. Emerging from a GCI analysis that identified unique economic, demographic and and social connections between the cities, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera established a novel city-to-city collaboration. Since signing the agreement, government, business, and civic leaders in both cities have been experimenting with new approaches to jointly grow their economies.  They have tried to foster more trade and investment within shared industry clusters; link economic development support services; and leverage similar strengths in research, innovation, and human capital.

This trip to Mexico City focused on one of GCEP’s early outcomes, a formal partnership between Chicago tech business incubator 1871 and Mexico City incubator Startup Mexico (SUM) that facilitates the early internationalization of firms in both cities. Both organizations advanced the creation of a residency program that will enable entrepreneurs from both incubators to have a presence in each other’s markets.

The GCEP approach of city-to-city global engagement has inspired other GCI participants to try their own models, forming economic alliances to ease global navigation and engagement. San Antonio, Phoenix, and Los Angeles also crafted agreements with Mexico City, each focused on different opportunities built off their distinctive economic assets and relationships. Portland and Bristol have investigated how to leverage their comparable “green city” reputations in the U.S. and U.K., connecting mid-size firms in their unique sustainability clusters for collaboration on research and joint ventures. Similarly, San Diego and London are testing how to promote synergies among companies, academic centers, investors, and workers in their shared life sciences subsectors such as cell and gene therapy.

Home to half of the world’s population, cities generate about three quarters of the world’s GDP, and now serve as the hubs for the growth in global flows of trade, capital, visitors, and information. The future prosperity and vitality of city-regions demands finding new approaches that take full advantage of these global connections.  

The Global Cities Economic Partnership emerged from work supported by the Global Cities Initiative: A Joint Project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence, and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are solely determined by the scholar

Image courtesy of Maura Gaughan